Oji moaned. His right leg and head throbbed, and his underbelly felt raw, as if he had slept on a bed of nails. When his eyelids stopped flickering, the lights obstinately persisted in their clicking death rattle, as if everything outside him suffered slow, painful extinction. A rush of cool air fogged the dingy blue tiles with cold condensation, and as his head bobbed, sweeping the room, a tiny camera, perched in the corner like a wasp, tracked his gaze.
Dropping to the floor, Oji padded across the cracked stone. Dirt clung to his claws. On one throbbing paw, a burning welt was taped up, no doubt the site of an insidious injection, and his underbelly felt scraped because it was shaved.
While the iron bars were crowded thick as shark teeth, Oji slipped his paw through to drag back a beetle, which squirmed under his paw.
Oji cocked his head to keep the camera in the corner of his eye. While he could squeeze his head with only a little difficulty through the bars, his observers no doubt waited for him to do just that.
Oji was not the disappointing kind, but did not like to be predictable, either. Like Vieno's smell, still thick and malignant in the cell.
How long ago was it, he wondered, since he stood on the other side of those bars, sneering at Vieno? Was it hours or days? He was as ravenous as if he hadn't eaten in days. His stomach not only gurgled, but like a seashell, its nauseous, liquid hunger drowned out everything else. While crunching into the cockroach satisfied a momentary craving, in the buggy, salty aftertaste, his hunger roared louder and stronger.
Following a crackle, a sputter, and a hiss, a deep voice blared, "you're not a prisoner, cat. We're just short on beds. If you feel up to it, you can go about your business." If the voice was deep in scale, under the layers of boredom and annoyance, it seemed shallow in tone. "Whenever you feel up to it, go about your business."
Squatting on his haunches, Oji stared up at the camera. "If you're really not holding me, how about opening my door?"
"Why? It's not locked, and you're such a little ragamuffin, you could slip through the bars."
"I was considering it."
"Is that what you were doing?" He yawned. "Don't mistake observation for interest. Slip away or stay, it's all the same to us."
"'Us.'" Oji's eyes narrowed. Who was sitting with this lackadaisical guard? "Would you be comfortable slipping through a door the width of your head?"
When the guard grumbled, the room seemed to groan around the speaker's echo. The door clicked. Although a heavy door, it was so well balanced and oiled that when Oji batted it, it swung a foot wide.
"Where do I go now?"
"I'm not the concierge." There was a scornful twist in his angsty voice. "I have no itinerary, list of amenities, hot towels, or lattes. I'm here to watch."
Oji muttered, "why take me, then?"
"As if I, personally, was responsible for your inconvenience." He sniffed. "How catty of you. Perhaps—and I'm only waging a guess—you shouldn't stick your whiskers where they don't belong."
"Not that I'm complaining at being let go, but am I not as good a get as the fox?"
"While you're not a prisoner, per se, no one said you were free to go. But you may wander our halls as you wish."
"You're still observing me."
The speakers clicked to dead silence.
Outside his cell, a table and chair faced a maintenance closet, its door slightly ajar, an elevator,
and a closed door numbered 312.
Oji sighed as he looked up at the elevator buttons. Even given the run of the place, he could never press those buttons, and was confined to this floor. As only wizards knew the trick of storing power, Oji could only shapechange near a gate or another source of magic.
In the hallway, his whiskers twitched on Vieno's lingering scent, dust, and dry concrete, and in the broom closet, old paint and fresh poisons. Rickety brooms leaned inside, their painted handles chipping, and the buckets were streaked and beaded with noxious chemicals. On a hook hung old overalls with leggings, so ragged and frayed that the blue denim had nearly faded white.
As he padded towards room 312, Oji felt a surge of energy. When the mottled gray window glinted, there was a muffled tinkle, as of glass breaking, then the roar of flame and the rush of air flowing under the door, wicking the stray hairs on his underbelly and tickling his paws.
While not as thunderously strong as the paint gateway, a whispering potency rumored the eerie proximity of Alsantia, as if a world could go stray, like a cat, and meander down alleys of possibility to entwine two realities.As the strange coalescence of magical power pooled inside him, goosebumps pricked his shaved ribs.
Oji turned in agitated circles. To give into his inborn curiosity of what lay behind the doors would be not only to give into his animal instincts, and prove himself a beast, but to give the observers what they wanted, to prove himself a beast in a menagerie. While his chest puffed out in wounded pride, he felt his curiosity overwhelm his pride, and if it was not for the power coiling in the room and bleeding off through the door, his nature might have won out over his good sense. But when another possibility spilled over him, he took the opportunity.
Oji rubbed against the door and the hum of Alsantian magic until he pressed his furry face against the cool wood and raw power. Despite himself, he purred. While he had more love for Earth than his own world, any freedom he had felt here was an illusion, and true freedom lay on the other side. If he had pretended to be a housecat for so long that he doubted the strength of his own mind,
this deep inhalation of magic beckoned him back to Alsantia.
As the magic gushed, flesh spilled until he fountained into human form. Only the tail remained, but he was still catlike, with eerily reflective green eyes, and ginger hair spitting up in tufts. Oji would never be comfortable with nakedness. While he didn't care if the bored humans spied his naked human body, it didn't feel right walking around uncovered, his hairless limbs constantly dipped in the cool air. It was like always being wet, an agitation he could do without if standing upright and having hands weren't so useful. While the ancient philosophers had said these forms were also natural for talking animals, Oji would never feel at home in this bare skin. On touching the doorknob, the tickle on the inside of his palm was so excruciating that he had to grit his teeth to get a grip on it, and when the dust scent was stronger inside, his human nose might not have been so discerning, but it was especially adept at sneezing, which he did, several times, before cupping his hand to his face and stifling the loud retorts.
Bookshelves lined a large room, in the center of which were three black wooden tables, one heaped with D ring notebooks, loose papers, pens, and markers, another with vials and bottles linked by tubing, and a third with a dusty monitor, computer tower, keyboard, and stacks of folders and manila enevelopes. All of these effects were lit along one side by a gloaming black light—like twilight captured in glass like a butterfly, then forced to shine indoors.
Turning toward the flickering twilight, Oji saw a towering, ovoid streak of blue energy, wavering like a humongous candle. While he guessed it to be a gate, he couldn't imagine stepping insde without being cremated alive.
When more insectlike cameras, perched in opposing corners, did not track his movements, to Oji they seemed more suspect, as if ready to pounce.
"What's your game?" Were they waiting to follow him through? Expecting he would play the part of an unwitting guide? "I can show you around if you wish."
"If you know what's best for you," came the bored, sardonic voice, "don't go in."
"Let's say I don't know what's best," said Oji.
"Don't think I care one way or another what you do. Advising you is the curse of my objectivity."
"You're a scientist."
"Did you think I was a guard?" he sniffed. "The very idea."
"You're just a voice. I don't have much to go on."
"On the contrary," said the arrogant voice, "whenever I open my mouth, I give you too much information. It's quite generous, really."
"Very charitable." Oji didn't bother to mask his sarcasm.
"There's a method to my madness, you know."
"You mean you paint the world crazy with a very broad brush."
"Very droll."
As Oji treaded around the fountain of black flame, he forgot he wasn't a cat, and wondered why each step made so much noise.
When the elevator dinged, Oji trod back around the flame. While a raging fire had neither front nor back, he guessed the side facing the laboratory was the entry way. "I've made up my mind."
"Have you?"
"It's likely a trap, but I'm going in."
"I knew you would come around."
"Why should you care?"
"Well," drawled the voice, "you're running such a boring show. Something should have happened by now."
"Far be it from me to keep my audience waiting."
"I'm hardly on the edge of my seat. I'm watching the Tonys."
If Oji was a normal cat, he might have been satisfied in The Mansion of the Shining Prince:
unending food and drink, unlimited catnaps, and, with no other cats in sight, sole dominion of all he surveyed, including the idle Animalytes and their dilettante teachers, the Elderliches. Although they didn't bow and scrape to him, they scratched his ears and belly. While petting and pampering could ease even a talking cat's loneliness, it did nothing to ease his doldrums, or the sense that his proper education was lacking, not only for a crown prince, but for his own kind. While too intelligent by nature to sulk for long, the stark absence of his species had made Oji contemplative. Having made it a habit to question everything, even the proverbial gift horse, Oji padded gingerly around the whirling whorl in space to peer in its glinting mouth from all angles.
If he knew it was a door to Alsantia, he would have darted through in a flash, but having heard a little about this other world, Havala, Oji wasn't so quick to tiptoe into another parallel world. Perhaps parallel worlds were layered in strata, and wading into Havala would take him even further from Alsantia. If Havala wasn't tangent in any way to Alsantia, why should he go there? He would not only be no closer to home and the responsibility of his crown, he would be even further from his duty.
Oji drew up to the very rim of the portal.
"What are you waiting for, cat?" The voice crackled crisper and cleaner. While Oji flicked his head this way and that, he could not find the speaker. The hackles on his neck rose higher, and despite his round boy's ears, like phantom pains, the ghosts of his cat ears flattened on his skull anyway. <
"Where are you?" he growled. "Why are you hiding? I'm no threat to you like this."
"I'm not hiding." The voice laughed. "I'm standing in plain sight....on the other side of the portal."
"Where? Alsantia?" Although Oji tried to keep desperation out of his voice, he had not enjoyed his Earth homecoming at all, and was, indeed, desperate to be gone. "Or Havala?"
"Maybe you could tell us?"
"You're not alone?"
"While I am, indeed, alone," droned the deep voice, "I act for the benefit of many."
"One small step for the psychotic. One giant leap for the megalomaniac."
"Which megalomaniac do you mean?" tittered the deep-voiced man. "These days, everyone insists on their own point of view."
"That must be exhausting for a narcissist like you."
"Maybe I'm only trying to help? Maybe you're the paranoiac?"
"You drugged me, shaved me, and put me on a shabby mattress in a cell. That's a weird idea of help."
"We only wanted to fix your voice box," snickered the deep voice.
"You stuck me in the hand!" shouted Oji. "It's not in there!"
"Our talking animals are stitched cloth, with electronic voice boxes wadded in cotton and stuffed in their paws."
"Very funny. But not an argument for me to follow you through the gate."
"What if I promise to bring you back?"
"Then it's not Alsantia?"
"Who cares where I am? You think I'm lying. Even if it's Alsantia, I won't let you stay here."
At that, Oji almost darted through the portal. His unseen opponent was good, Oji reluctantly admitted to himself as he padded around the room, looking for the concealed speaker. His convoluted reverse psychology had nearly tricked Oji through the portal.
"Come on, cat." The deep voice was exasperated now. "Where are you?"
"You know very well I'm on Earth."
The room door was rapped, then struck with such a ringing whack that Oji backed into a table.
"My friends have arrived," said the voice.
"Maybe they're my friends?" suggested Oji.
"That was likely a rifle butt," the deep voice said, "but keep dreaming."
"Fine," said Oji. "I'm coming through."
As this was Oji's third world gateway in as many days, and the last two times he had leaped through only to be startled and caged on the other side, this time he tiptoed in. But on gingerly lifting his hand, inching it closer and closer to the whirling gyre, and touching a fingertip to the rippling surface, the room faded all at once, and he splashed through a flood of nothingness.
The nothingess ebbed in the musty smell of a dank, black void. Even as a boy, his cattish eyes soon became accustomed to the light, or the lack of it, first seeing the glint of the wavelets, then the gleam of a rippling stream, and the looming, shadowy sterns of boats.
Oji backed up step by step until a hard corner jabbed the small of his back. The pain was staggering. He might have slumped to the ground had he not grasped a coarse wooden crate.
Starlight and joined moons shone through skylights to glint on the river running under the huge warehouse. While the river's other end was obscured by crates along the far wall, one bank ran under the wharfs which comprised the feet of the gigantic warehouse.
If the spotlight glare of the conjunct moons said this was no longer Earth, he wasn't so familiar with his homeworld to know that he was, for a certainty, on Alsantia. "Where are you?" he hissed.
"Just waiting for the right moment." While somewhat tall and shockingly corpulent, with a belly jutting out nearly to his arm's reach, the bulky man nonetheless seemed smaller than life, as his voice was so thin in the flesh that Oji was reminded of a rat squealing under his paws. Oddly, Oji couldn't shake the grungy scent of rats, as if the man's resemblance had shaken up his other senses.
Then he saw them, shuffling in a creeping mass behind the hulking, rodent-faced man. One rat pivoted up on its haunches until it stood upright in the crowd. While its coat was glossy,
and its face was noble and magnanimous, as if it had far better things to do than head a swarm, its oily voice seemed to catch fire around the edges, so that it not only vented a slippery sarcasm but a burning contempt, which it smeared on the corpulent man. "You have done well," it oozed, "so well, in fact, that it's all downhill from here. Down the hatch." At his cackle, the other rats chimed in, a cacophanous din echoing in the warehouse.
The rats waited only a moment before surging over the human, whose screams were soon cut off in the gnashing teeth, then the crunching and constant compaction of the mass of rats on the quivering heap, which slowly settled to the warehouse floor like a falling blanket, then slid away from bones cracked into sharp shards, jutting up like a gory garden.
Oji's eyes bulged, as if he was in the implacable grip of another, monstrous kitten; no matter what urgent signals he sent his paws, legs, neck or tail, nothing would turn, being stiffened by the horror of the swarm.
"Don't worry." Nearly as long nose to tail as Oji, this long, lean rat had whiskers twice as long as his, great probing wires that jerked like sinister puppet wires when he snickered. "We don't like the taste of cat, even those pretending to be boy kings. Your airs don't change your catty aroma or your gamy taste."
While Oji was still in the grip of an icy fear, his limbs thawed gradually in the rat's red hot, disdainful stare. "Should you be eating your ally?"
"Listen to him, boys." The rat snickered and jeered. "We're picking his last shreds from our teeth, and he dares question us."
"Had he no friends?"
"They're a world away." In underscoring his gleeful scorn, the rat's tail lolled, bobbed, then stuck straight up, as if adding an exclamation point.
"Not so far as that," said Oji. "They're just on the other side of that gate."
"There may as well be a dozen gates in a row. Stupid humans!" He jeered louder. "They can't hear us!" As the exclamation points swarmed into the rat's shout, he echoed in the capacious warehouse.
"Yeah!" the others crowed, "stupid humans can't hear us."
"What about that?" said Oji. Sometimes it was good to be a boy. Pointing, for instance. While a cat could lazily indicate things with a head toss, when its paws darted out, everyone always assumed it was hungry, or playful. But when a boy points, it arouses curiosity, and when that boy is a prince, whether or not you respect the authority of their claim to the throne, it is hard to repress a look.
When the rats turned their greasy heads, a few guffawed. Oji was pointing to the heap of bones.
While corpulent in life to the point of sluggishness, his bones were brisk and cracking clean now. When they saw it, they slunk forward until two touched it with their noses, while the others ringed them in a wary circle.
"What is it?" barked the long-whiskered rat.
While the tiny box had resisted their teeth, it was squawking now.
"It's a transmitter," said Oji. "Like the Albatron, except without any wisdom but what the user brings to bear."
The rangy rat moseyed over to the skeletal corpse. "I don't see anything."
"Shh. It's for listening."
Having skittered closer, no sooner had the noble, glossy rat laid eyes on it than he scurried back to his swarm. "I know what that is. Fall back!"
"We had an agreement." The feathery, creeping voice reminded Oji of talking vultures. It squawked so high, and wheedled so nauseatingly sweet, that the burst of static was a relief. After a short pause, the receiver squeaked, "what else do you want?"
"We're good," said the glossy rat. "I would say you have nothing we want, but that's not precisely true."
"Why pussyfoot around?" Even drowned in static, the voice was recognizably Max Milano's. "If you want something, I want to know."
"Sniff it out yourself, you old ratter. Come calling once you've figured it out."
"I have a better idea." Whispers hissed like oil popping in a pan, and green ovals lobbed through the portal. "Knock, knock!"
The tumbling grenades were still midair when Oji turned, darted down the wharf steps, then flung himself into the cold river, which foamed, churned, and whirled as rats plopped in the brisk current, streaking past Oji's downstream scramble.
Swept under the hurtling spray of rats until his shaved, tender belly scraped on the rocky riverbed, Oji's lungs burned on their last, desperately clutched breath before he finally broke the surface to tread water, shedding more rats than water. As his sopping, bedraggled head and ears streamed into the river, the vermin he scattered drowned, bobbed, or flowed each according to their skill.
"There he is!" While Max Milano now stood on the bank of the river, shaking his fist, it was now not static, but incoherent rage, which dissolved the rest of the tottering, howling scientist's tirade,
the only recognizable portion being his demand for the cat, skinned or not, dead or alive.
As the Earth men dashed along the pier, Oji clawed through the muck, dragged himself on the sandy banks, then scampered back to the swirling vortex. As he neared Max, eldritch tendrils streamed from the midair eddy, its purring energies not only melding with him and drawing the cat out like a whisper, but cloaking him in his solidified shadow until a sleek, powerful shadow-puma pounced, sailing not only over the cringing scientist, but the upper fringe of the scintillating blue gateway.
"Why so mad?" The collected shadow made Oji sound not only older, but gruffer, as he growled a coarse chuckle behind the bright, fluttering gyre. "Sorry. Calling a scientist mad could be construed as offensive—so let's be absolutely clear. Why so crazy, Max?"
"You stupid cat." As the muttering scientist tottered around the bright blue whorl, he gripped his long, black cane so tightly, and pounded it so hard on the docks, that the cane buckled, then snapped back like a spider leg, seeming both more flexible and more alive than its brittle holder. "Did it not occur to you that being instrumental to our plans benefits you? There's no future for you here."
"On the contrary," sniffed Oji. "I have an illustrious future. I'm to be crowned king."
"It is I who should be clearer, you monstrously stupid housepet prince. There's no future for you in Alsantia because there's no future for Alsantia." Having hobbled around the portal, the mad scientist's eyes glinted nearly as bright as the brilliant portal.
Despite the stomping treads of Milano's red-uniformed minions, with a supreme effort—
having lately been anything but the master of his own fate—Oji kept his face aloof. Hopefully, the masking shadow concealed his fear and anger, that this decrepit, soulless scientist—no less a monster for all his feebleness and emptiness—claimed to know not only his future, but the end of his world.
With an effort, Oji controlled his instinct to flee. He reminded himself that the Earthers either wanted him to flee, if this was an exploratory mission for them, or they wanted someone or something specific which only Oji could provide. While Oji had the occasional companionship of some unusual people, not only Animalytes and Elderliches, but the Queen of Alsantia herself, there was only one thing to which Oji had exclusive access.
The noble pelt. But what could it mean to Earth people ignorant of Alsantian ways?
They were almost upon him, and he would have to decide. No matter their plans, Oji wanted to be free. And not only free, but free on Alsantia. Not that his steps weren't already chosen. If the future was wet clay for everyone else, his future steps had already dried into tracks that any beast could follow: coronation, crown, and war. Suvani would have the historic war she craved.
While Oji's experience in Alsantia was limited, he had not only paid attention to the Elderliches in Worlds class, but listened carefully to the adventures of the sphinx and the griffin, who had waged an all-out bragging bout to minimize the monotony of their captivity. Most importantly, since nothing he had heard would prove a help on these shadowy docks god knows where, he was a good guesser, and from this sharp intuition, he drew some conclusions.
Where a dock warehouse was built, other ships would anchor. As Oji sprinted in shadowy puma-form down the quay, the Earth humans struggled to keep up, until he crossed from shadow to light, leaving the cover of the warehouse roof for the boardwalk running to the unknown city.
Bright daylight not only dissolved his shadow fur, leaving him a wet, bedraggled ginger cat, drizzling on the quay, but glinted on the endless docks, ships, sails, and the strangely pastoral skyline, a cityscape shaped from wood and stone cluttering grassy hills.
While the glare caught him by surprise, so that the enormous fleet and the woodland city that went on forever were contracted in his dim squint, when he saw he was only a scurry away from a multitude of hiding places, he breathed a sigh of relief. Although he chose his hidey-hole at random, and only patted himself on the back later when he realized its usefulness for escape, he did not know the full extent of his good fortune.
At the end of a row of rowboats and dinghies was a tiny coracle. Slinking down the dock steps,
Oji ducked under the coracle's seat. As his uniformed pursuers milled with the crowd, fighting the flow of humans and talking animals, he chuckled.
When two shabbily robed people—one man, one woman, both dark complexioned—clambered down the dock stairs, they chattered all the way. While their chitchat was incomprehensible, having recognized it as Ephremian,Oji drew a single, important meaning: as Ephremia was on friendly terms with the talking animal kingdoms, this may, indeed, be his escape route.
When they neared the coracle, Oji shrank, wedging himself between the oarlock and the boat bottom, again joining to the surrounding shadow, if in a dingy and unmagical way; As cold river water seeped from Oji's fur to pool beneath his shaved underbelly, the chill made his hackles rise, and he steeled himself against his instincts, which told him to spring a mile into the air.
When the Ephremians stepped into the craft, it quivered, and as they lowered their goods to dry spots on the floor, the way they braced against the rocking of the coracle showed they had veteran sealegs.
As their conversation came to a grunting finish, the man snatched the oars with a jovial grumble and a toss of his head, hunkered down, and dragged the coracle away from the wharf with astonishing speed. While he jerked the paddles with powerful strokes, the coracle's glide was graceful.
When the woman bent down to scrape up the water with a tin cup, Oji cringed, and sidled gingerly, here and there, to dodge her bailing of the boat. He had nearly stowed away without discovery when the dropped tin cup clattered and sprayed him, and he was seized in both of her hands.
"What do we have here?" From her stilted Alsantian, Oji realized this was no sailor. Her wicked grin was likewise undermined by the imperious glare which had just cowed her muscular minion. Even if she only played a part, Oji knew not to make the mistake of underestimating the lordling. If she was
not as dangerous as she prentended to be, that only meant that she was more dangerous than she pretended to be.
When she dangled him over the river, he yelped, "don't!"
When she hesitated, the man paused between strokes and grunted, "if you were just a cat, we would have treated you as a guest. Cats are not only welcome, but sacred, on Ephremian vessels."
"What's the problem?" he whimpered, looking uneasily at the frigid river. Oji had his fill of being dunked for one day. "Am I not a cat?"
"As you well know," said the woman, "you both are, and are not, a cat. The Ephremian word is kulzura: a speaking thing, like us. You have being, a soul."
"What about your hospitality laws?" fumed Oji.
"You weren't invited," the man droned laconically. "While a true cat lives everywhere and is welcome everywhere, you are kulzura, and have a place in the world. Unless you mean to say this is your boat?"
"You know it is not." Oji cringed, then brought all four paws in front of his eyes. "If you're throwing me into the river, please do me one favor."
"I swear nothing," said the woman, "but will entertain your request."
"Don't tell me when," said Oji. "Let the shock hit after the water. I've had my fill of being wet today."
"It is too late, Jemor." She cast her eyes skyward. "I pity this wretched creature."
"I knew it when I saw him," chuckled Jemor. "Your head is full of fairy tales. Which one? The Prince of Cats? The Boy King?"
Oji froze in her grip, even as she lowered him gently, not to the coracle floor, but beside her on the seat. "Do you know me?" he asked.
"Why would I know you?" Jemor's brows knitted. "Help me out, Djerinia. What did I say?"
"I'm not sure what he meant." Djerinia looking at Oji appraisingly. "While he's no prince, he's certainly a cat. In truth, I was thinking of that tale. You know me too well, Jemor"
"I knew it." He smiled, then scowled again. "But why should I know him? Are you famous, cat?" He turned to Djerinia with a bewildered look. "Are there any famous cats?"
"Only the one," said Djerinia. "Cat, how are you called?"
While Oji felt queasy, it wasn't the gentle rock of the coracle, but the strange banter, almost like a private language shared by the guard and the poorly-disguised noblewoman, which clouded him with anxiety and ill humor, manifesting in an ill-advised decision to run the joke into the ground. "My name is Casz."
"You're joking."
"My name's a joke to you?" While Oji feigned much of the scorn, some was real, due to being disgusted with the situation and the past day.
"If you're named after the hero of The Prince of Cats." Crossing her arms, Djerinia looked at Oji askance, as if he had committed some grievous error.
"He must be a prince," grumbled Jemor.
She snickered. "What do you mean?"
"He's such a bad liar, he must be famous. And though he lies, I want to believe him anyway."
"Why are you on my boat, storybook prince?" said Djerinia. "I won't call you Casz."
"But it's my name..." While Oji tried to voice an exclamation point, it came out a wobbling question mark, sailing off on a sea of ellipsises. "It is."
"It isn't," said Djerinia. "Though I begin to believe you are some cat prince. Answer my question. Why are you here, and what do you expect of me?"
"That's two questions."
"I know it," said Djerinia wearily, "and from two, a hundred more can breed, quick as vipers. But if you answer my questions well, they'll get stopped here and won't swarm into tomorrow."
"I'm here because I was hiding." When he paused, they glared, and he continued. "I hid for many reasons, the chief of which was that I am being pursued." Predicting their impatience with that answer as well, he said, peevishly, "while I don't know precisely why, I think they want me to lead them to the Noble Pelt." Oji breathed an exasperated sign. "And they hope to trail me to the Noble Pelt because I am Oji, Prince of True Alsantia."
"If you are Oji," said Djerinia, a mirthful sparkle in her eye, "many pursue you."
"Don't I know it," said Oji moodily. "More enemies than friends."
"You might have made some." Djerinia smiled. "Your story has the ring of truth."
"Why do they want the Noble Pelt," grumbled Jemor.
"I wish I knew." Oji.sighed. "Have I answered your questions?"
"You have."
"What about mine?"
"You didn't ask any."
"You asked my questions for me!"
"No," she shook her head. "I only assumed. You've guessed your way this far yourself, have you not? ,You want more than I can predict. I'm no wizard. I'm only a little wise by virtue of my office."
"My questions are easier than you assume: will you help me? Can you help me? How could you help me?"
"Maybe that answers your question." She stretched her finger towards a gigantic ship, whose looming masts seemed more suited to oceans than rivers.
"Do you mean the ship?"
"Not precisely," she said. "I mean my ship."
Unlike most ships docked in the harbor, this massive craft was moored farther out, its keel so deep that it couldn't come anywhere near shore, and anchored with not one, but six gleaming, oiled chains, until it seemed a bright waterbug perched on the rippling water.
A ladder was dangled, and two ropes threaded through hooks. After Djerinia started up, Jemor hooked each end of the coracle, then followed.
"Won't you join us?" she called down the side.
"I'm honored," said Oji, "but not entirely qualified to climb a ladder. And I wouldn't want to tear up the hull of your boat."
"I doubt you could. It's treated with izinir and harder than stone and smooth as glass. Jemor, if you would."
"Send a third hook," Jemor roared. "I'll put it in his collar."
"I'll have you know I've never worn a collar in my life."
"I'm joking." Having climbed back down a few rungs, Jemor swung the rest of the way, snatching Oji up by the scruff of his neck. Jemor did this so well that Oji wondered if he was part cat.
Tucking Oji under arm, Jemor raced up the ladder alongside the coracle, which with grunting, cranking twists of the pulley, was winched to the deck.
Djerinia wasn't joking about the pristine finish of the floorboards. If Jemor's steps boomed across deck, there was no creak or groan in answer from the gleaming, waxed wood panels. The entire vessel was kept in a state of high police, with sails laundered to a white, nearly fluorescent glow, a rack of poleaxes with oak leaf blades sharpened and oiled to a piercing brilliance, and the scent of fresh paint rising in waves from the prow, which bore a pegasus-shaped battering ram that seemed to sprout from the ship, as if the entire vessel was whittled from one piece of wood. Whether the diplomat's watercraft was one piece of wood or, more likely, tens of thousands, the ram was made of the same obdurate wood, and for all its exquisite detail, was no doubt as much weapon as ornament.
Jemor placed Oji gently at Djerinia's feet.
"My prince," she said. "While we were just leaving, we can take you to your tree."
"My tree?" Oji hoped this wasn't a weak attempt at feline humor. "Where are we, anyway?"
"Technically, where you stand is Ephremia, as this is a diplomatic vessel. In actuality, this is the principality of Teriana."
"Teriana? Isn't that in Alsantia?"
Djerinia's eyes narrowed in the briefest flutter of contempt and impatience before continuing. "Your tutors were remiss. Teriana both is, and isn't, Alsantia. While it lies within the borders, no one born here, animal or human, lays claim to that distinction."
Oji scowled, and paced in a long, loose circle around Djerinia. From somewhere near, the tug of magic rubbed his edginess to a point of high anxiety, while grounding him and swelling him with strength. "I didn't mean to quibble about technicalities, Djerinia. Equating Teriana with Alsantia was no political statement, but only my ignorance of geography, having been a world away for so many years. Moreover, human borders mean nothing to animals. You're all tresspassing in our ancient lands—even Ephremia."
"Then you don't know about Teriana."
Oji quailed inside. She took entirely too much comfort in quizzing him—was she ambassador, sea captain, or schoolteacher? "I'd rather hear more about Ephremia."
"I'm sure you would," snorted Jemor.
"As would we all," nodded Djerinia. "First, there is the trick of taking leave of Teriana."
"Isn't Teriana the Free State?" asked Oji. As Elderlich lessons came back to him, his confidence was restored.
"Only in song and proclamation. While that rhetoric continues to this day, Teriana was annexed by Alsantia. Although it was technically a peaceful annexation, the Regent's dogs howled at the gates,
dragging the siege engines of three kingdoms. Outmanned a hundred to one by the vandals outside screaming for blood, even the most hardline advocates for independence advocated signing the treaty and paying the tribute. That said, you will not find a native-born Terianan who does not resent their new Queen."
"Then why won't they let us leave?"
"While we have never been the best of friends with Teriana, and have often stood apart as trade rivals, there is no blood spilled between us, and they would happily show us out, were it not for Prince Vemulus and the Queen's armies."
"Teriana is at war?"
"Not yet. Teriana is again besieged, and this time it may come to war."
"If you're ready to embark..."
"While the waterways are not blocked, Vemulus deployed craft of his own. You can see them from our crow's nest."
"Then you can't leave."
"We can leave anytime we wish. As ambassadors, we cannot be stopped. However, Vemulus is within his rights to search our vessel, and if he finds anything amiss, or thinks it would be amusing to plant it himself, he could treat us as spies. It is often the fate of ambassadors in enemy lands."
"Ephremia is at war with Alsantia?"
Djerinia wrinkled her nose and scratched her head. "I'm not sure, Oji. The last I heard, it was heading in that direction."
"What choice do we have?" rumbled Jemor.
"That's a valid point," said Oji. "Stay here and get caught in the siege, or get set afire by Vemulus's fleet."
Jemor snickered. "Then there's no hope. The boy doesn't see a way out for us."
"I'm not a boy."
"You act like one," said Djerinia. "Sometimes I see it in you out of the corner of my eye."
"You're very perceptive. Sometimes I look like one."
Djerinia turned to Jemor. "Are the preparations made?"
"How would I know? I was with you. I just now finished lashing down the coracle."
"See to it, will you?" While Djerinia smiled, her tone held an edge.
"You already said as much on the way. I know my duty." Jemor sighed, then trudged to the helm, where he began talking to the helmsman.
Djerinia turned back to Oji. "Could you turn back into a boy now?"
"Back? Your assumption that's my natural or better shape is unfortunately a common human prejudice."
"I'm sorry." Having dipped into a shallow bow, Djerinia honored Oji with a thin-lipped smile.
"As to changing shape, ordinarily, I might say no. While I know the words, I must borrow the power from enchanted places to work the spell. But since I've boarded your craft, I've felt the pull of magic."
Djerinia furrowed her brow. "Really? While there's no shortage of enchantment on an Ephremian ship, most is the everyday variety. If I had known something on my ship called out to talking cats, I might have made changes. What could it be?"
"During our conversation, it's gradually grown stronger. I'm inclined to think it's in the direction of your heading."
The drawn anchors hit a great variety of notes, from high-pitched ringing to sharp bongs, as they rattled and scraped up the ship's hull. While Oji watched and waited, expecting and hoping to see them unfurl, the sails remained trussed to the masts. Instead, oars slowly telescoped from concealed oarlocks to dip into the river. Like the wingspan of some colossal bird of legend, the oars boggled the mind, being twice the ship's length from stem to stern.
"I know you Ephremians have a reputation for being tricky..."
"Well-deserved." Having hustled back, Jemor now jetted long huffs of air. Oji realized the old Ephremian was both older and heavier than he looked.
"...but I can't see how you did that one."
"That? The trick is yet to come." When Djerinia's arrogant sniff lifted still higher, until her nose tipped back into a wary, withdrawn apprehension, this ruffle soon smoothed into her placid, proud demeanor. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I hope you don't get to see it."
"On the contrary. May I live to see it."
The Ephremian embassy ship glided on, parting the water with such grace that its smooth, watery path was so glassy, it seemed to hover above the water.
As they neared the lookout Alsantian ship, they first saw cruel faces, then giant shields, which the soldiers locked into a scaly sheet, upon which they drummed the shafts of spears. These quivering clangs made the whole metal mass seem like a thing alive: one moment, they seemed like vermin swarming in a cage, and the next, they were one gigantic, ravenous mass, a dragon fused together from meshed killers and locked shields. While this caged mob beast made Oji's heart pound, it was clear they respected some pre-established law, boundary or command.
As Oji paced nervously, the magic tension became more powerful and insistent, until he exploded first into a nervous cough, then into a boy.
When one hiccup followed another, he tried to stifle it to no avail; while he greatly wanted to speak his mind, less because he had anything to contribute than because he didn't want to be overlooked, he did not want to be embarrased by a childish hiccough, and waited until he knew the timing.
"Why aren't they closing?" he said at last, hiccuping under his foreleg.
"Why is he on deck?" Jemor instantly soured into a surly ship's mate, having eyed Oji's boy form with no sign of recognition.
"Who are you?" asked Drezinia.
"Oji. This is my human form."
"Well, I'd hardly call it human. The tail becomes you." Drezinia gestured to his gingery plume, which arced behind his back. "Keep that out of sight. While not noted for their creative thinking, even Alsantian soldiers would pick up on that clue." Harumphing like the proper sea captain that she was, she turned back to the soldiers, whose vulgar display had proceeded into full-blown ogling and catcalling of not only the captain, but her armored guards. "As to your face, who would know it here?" She snickered. "Your profile doesn't appear on Suvani's coin."
"Only some vultures," he said.
"Those vultures?" She pointed vaguely to the craft.
"No, not those goons," said Oji.
"Not them," she sighed, raising her hand towards the crow's nest, which Oji instantly saw would better be dubbed a vulture's nest, consdering its stationed lookouts: five grimy, seedy-eyed vultures bending ravenous, sunken glares on Oji.
"No sudden moves, your highness," said Drezinia. "Even if they're not looking for you, they are looking at you."
"That's funny." Doubt ruffled the fur of Oji's spine. "From where I'm standing, it looks like they're looking through me."
"If looks could kill, those stares would be trailing daggers," agreed Derinzia. "Ouch. We can assume they know you're not human, but some talking animal under their purview."
"But they're not budging," said Oji. "They're like falcons in a cage. On orders, like the pikemen."
"Our hopes may be in vain."
"You mean they may not be letting us by, but letting us through," said Oji, "so they can fall in all at once, crushing us between them in their advance."
"Let them try," she said lazily.
"What? Let them not try, if it's all the same to you."
When horns blew, the hackles on Oji's spine rose, and as his hands flew to his ears, they seemed to swim slowly through air thickened by the curdling scream of the horns. Even the water was churned by the high pitch of the horns.
On that signal, the war galleys glided swiftly by dozens of oars, while masted warships lurched, dragging lowered anchors that dredged up loose sediment from the seafloor. Despite the disparity in speeds, escape was unthinkable, for within minutes, all had converged on the embassy ship, as if they meant to transfix the Ephremians with their prows.
As Jemor barked orders, hatches clapped open to gleaming metal tubes echoing with drumming heels, but as the Ephremian guard rose topside, milling to their stations, the drifting warships skirted past, their cargoes of pikemen, werewolves, and talking wolves, foxes, rats, and vultures eyeing them malevolently, but loosing neither a single arrow, nor even a single missile of spittle from the sneering lips curled towards the Ephremian diplomats.
"What's going on?" With a bemused smile, Djerinia clutched the side of the boat and leaned in, as if she wanted to close nearer to her mysterious enemies every inch she could, then growled, which to Oji sounded very feline, as if there was a cat in her ancestral tree. "Jemor, come closer." Her command rang so clear and authoritatively that a few Alsantians broke from their massed shield wall, as if they meant, absurdly, to fulfill her order by leaping into the ocean.
"What?" he barked back. "Be sure, Drezinia."
"If you're questioning my orders now?" she snarled, "then it's captain to you."
"Do you have orders to engage with enemy vessels, captain?" His coarse bass voice rose to a clear, emphatic baritone. "Here I thought we are envoys of peace."
"Did I say engage? Come closer! Or what am I to say of myself? That while passing within the bounds of knowing the reason for a troubling, important thing, I hewed to the book?"
"While I weep for Terania, captain, should we not bring warning to our own land?"
A hatch clattered, admitting a tall, rangy Ephremian sailor to the deck. This one was as unlike her musclebound and armor-bound second in command as possible, having a neck reminiscent of a goose, a broad, long nose that brought to mind a pelican, and a horse-like mane. "Your grace," she said.
"What is it, Valikus?"
"You're summoned."
As stepping onboard for the first time, Djerinia gave Valikus a frank, appraising look. There was neither love nor anger in that look, but stark disbelief. "Who? Who would have the audacity to take me from the helm now?"
"No one on board, your grace. The summons came from the quzena."
"I see." Drezinia sighed and turned to Oji. "If you were in my position, your highness, what would you do?"
Oji stammered, "I don't know. Why ask me? I'm not really a prince."
"Because if you ever did have the souls of many on your conscience, I'm certain it would weigh on you. Given my office, would you think of saving the hides of everyone aboard, like Jemor? Is it foolish to worry about this good and pleasant place?"
"Shouldn't you take your message? Certainly, if the messenger managed to come through an army and by river, it must be important."
"Humor me, cat. We're not going anywhere. Not yet." She directed a withering and scathing glance at Jemor.
"There's no faulting Jemor," said Oji. "Those we don't know are less protected by anonymity than neglected by it, when we persist in thinking of them as ciphers. Acting for the greater good—in other words, acting as a king—l would act in such a way that not one came to harm through the actions of enemies, through my own inaction, or even through an accident I could have foreseen."
"All of which means what, precisely?"
"I'm with you, Drezinia. While we might be attacked, the intelligence you might gain would benefit millions in Ephremia."
"Thank you. You're in charge." She turned to Valikus. "Let's go."
"Me?" Though Oji was in boyish form, it came out as a mew. "You must be joking."
"I can't trust Jemor not to turn tail while I play back the message, and you're the highest ranking civilian on board."
"I'm not Ephremian! I'm not even Alsantian, according to Suvani."
"That's a mark in your favor, cat. Ephremia was always on good terms with the True Alsantians."
"Where were you then," he muttered, as she disappeared below deck.
"What now, mate," said Jemor.
"What do you think? Follow her last order. And don't bother asking what it was," Trailing off moodily, Oji scooted over to Drezinia's spot on the deck wall.
As sparks, stone, and glinting ashes flew from Teriana's wall, an enormous wave of stags, horses, bears, wolves, hounds, falcons, eagles, and tinier beasts surged toward the massed Alsantians. As the Alsantian cavalry charged to meet them, not only cruel knights on hungry unicorns, but houdas stuffed with archers mounted on gigantic kariks, something swelled up from the onrushing animals.
They loomed gigantic, these massive metal animals, bringing glaring, gnashing heads to bear,
not on the unicorn knights rearing beneath their tremoring paws, but on the swirling gray clouds,
one of which seemed to fragment from its formation, then hurtle toward the fray.
"Turn back!" called Oji. "Turn now! There isn't time!"