Shadow of the Father (18 page)

“Who… who’s ‘we’?” Yilon gasped.

“You should be more curious about your world.” Kites withdrew the knife. Yilon’s relief was short-lived; the other fox’s paw moved to a different point on his stomach and pressed in. Yilon flattened himself against the wall as best he could, but he couldn’t escape the knife point. He tried to move to the side, but as he did, Kites pushed harder, causing an intense burst of pain that made Yilon cry out. “We certainly know about you, lordling, you and your mouse friend. It’s a good job you got rid of him. Saved us the trouble.”

Desperate, Yilon pushed at Kites, but the other fox swept his arm aside with ease and pressed him hard into the wall with his shoulder. “If you don’t tell me now,” Kites said, “I can come up with other places to stick this knife. He grabbed Yilon’s paw and pressed the knife point to it. “Now: who told you where our house is?”

“Lady Dewanne!” Yilon cried the first name that came into his head. Warmth leaked into his fur from the two wounds in his stomach.

Kites withdrew the knife, but didn’t let go of Yilon’s paw or move away from the wall. “That’s a very interesting answer,” he said. “It’s almost certainly a lie.” He looked past Yilon to the alley. “I happen to know that she’s the one person who would—”

There was a thud, and Kites’s head jerked forward. Something clattered to the ground. The pressure holding Yilon to the wall slackened, then vanished as Kites sank to his knees with a cry. He clutched his head, dropping his knife to the stone.

Yilon stared down at him, then to his left, to the shadows that hid the junction of the two buildings. A shape emerged from it, hurrying toward him.

“Sorry,” a vixen’s voice said. Her muzzle came into the light: a slender, light-colored face below two determined amber eyes. Large dark brown ears flicked all around, but her eyes stayed on the still-moaning Kites. “Took me a little while to get around behind you. Do you have a weapon?”

“Who are you?” Yilon stared at her. She wore a nondescript brown jerkin, with no tunic underneath, and trews rather than a skirt. In fact, were he unable to smell her, he would not have known she was female, even with the silver necklace that swung free as she picked up the fallen dagger and a large stone from the ground.

She shoved the stone into a pouch at her waist and straightened. Her eyes flicked to his midsection, where he could feel more wet warmth leaking. “I said, do you have a weapon?”

“No.” Yilon watched, mesmerized.

“At least that excuses your pathetic lack of resistance.” She turned away from him and brandished the dagger she’d picked up at Kites. “Give me one reason not to cut you open right now.”

He lifted his muzzle, his eyes focusing on the vixen. A smear of blood stained the fur over his right eye. “You,” he snarled, and staggered to his feet, lunging at her.

She raised her arm, sidestepping him. As he lurched past, she plunged her knife into his throat.

Kites gurgled, falling hard to the flagstones. Yilon found himself unable to look away from the shuddering body, even as the smell of urine reached his nostrils. The vixen, similarly fascinated, remained frozen until the neck of the prone fox was soaked in red and the body’s twitching had subsided. Then she swiveled her head and ears up. “No, don’t help,” she said, with some sarcasm. “I can take care of myself.”

Her voice sounded higher, faster than before.

Yilon gaped at her. “Come on,” she said, and grabbed his paw.

As violently as Kites had, she dragged him out into the alley, but away from the side street. “Keep your paw on the wounds,” she said, looking from right to left. “I don’t know if any more of them are out there.”

“I didn’t see any,” Yilon said. He pressed a paw to the wetness on his stomach, the one on the right that hurt more.

“You didn’t see me,” she snapped. “This way, across the street. Act normal. Hurry. Before too long, you’re going to reek of blood.”

He could already smell it all over himself. Quietly, he hurried behind her through a thin crowd of meandering foxes, across a paved street to an alley on the other side that was barely larger than the one where Yilon had been cornered. He hesitated at the entrance, but the vixen was already halfway along it to the daylight on the other side, so he padded in after her.

They emerged into a small twisted street, angled upward. The vixen padded to the right, following the street and then turning left, then right again, climbing up each time, onto another small street only four houses long on either side. Each house was tall and elegant of grey stone with colorful designs over the doors and windows. On the left hand side of the street, one window stood open, an elderly fox leaning on the sill looking out. He followed their progress down the street, but they didn’t say anything as the vixen walked up to the house opposite.

She paused, her paw on the handle of the door, staring down at it and not at Yilon. A door, Yilon noticed, not a curtain. “He needed killing,” she said, ears flat.

“I’m not arguing,” Yilon said.

That must have been the right thing to say, because a moment later she opened the door. He touched the wood grain as he followed her inside. She pointed to a staircase that swept along the curve of the right wall. “All the way to the top,” she said. “I will collect Colian and I’ll be up in a moment.”

She had a paw on the door handle at the back of the room before he thought to call out, “Hey.” She turned. “What’s your name?”

She gave him a long look, then shook her head. And then she was gone.

Yilon stared after her, then up at the stairs. The first step didn’t hurt much, but by the time he reached the third floor, his stomach was aching and his legs were sore. He was glad to reach the empty bed that lay beyond the door at the top.

 
“Cozy place,” Valix said when they’d returned to Sinch’s room. She sat in the corner of a wall near the door, arms draped across her knees.

“It’s home. For now.” Sinch’s mind was racing. He wouldn’t be able to get word back to Yilon, let alone retrieve the crown, until he got rid of Valix. Which would be easier in a public place. “Is there a good place to go to get something to eat?”

She tilted her head. “Are you asking me to lunch?”

“Er…” Sinch flicked his ears. “I thought you had to follow me everywhere.”

“Aye, well.” She shrugged. “Difference between following you to lunch and being asked to lunch.”

He put on a smile. “If we’re supposed to be manacled together, might as well enjoy it.”

She rose to her feet. “Suppose.” She squinted at him. “Don’t get ideas.”

He opened his paws to show they were empty. “About what?”

“About me. Or running off. Balinni may be a creepy old bastard, but he’s my boss.”

“He is creepy, isn’t he?” Sinch gestured for her to precede him out the door, but she grinned and shook her head. So he walked out ahead of her, and waited for her in the stairwell. “Do you love that head as much as he does?”

“What, Kishin?” Valix snorted. “It’s a useful disguise. Balinni’s old enough to remember when it was harder for us to do jobs in the city. Go left out the street and through the alley there.”

With the sun high, the streets were less crowded. In the bright light of day, the detritus in the street looked less formidable, and more like the alley behind his home in Divalia when they couldn’t afford to pay the garbage-haulers for a month. Except that the whole Warren was littered with debris, and the mice clambered over it as if it were nothing but pebbles.

Valix directed him down a wide street, the first he’d found in the Warren in which he could stretch his arms out to either side and not brush stone or brick. Despite the open space, the mice kept to the walls, avoiding the open street center, and Sinch followed them, diverting around grimy puddles and piles of broken reed and straw chairs when necessary. “Do people just throw their furniture in the street when they’re done with it?” he murmured.

“How much furniture do you need? Turn in here,” Valix said, at a narrow alley between a crumbling brick building and a rough stone edifice.

In this alley, Sinch could barely move without touching the building to either side, even with his shoulders hunched together. He wondered what would happen if another mouse were to come in the other direction, but perhaps because of the time of day, or because the residents of the Warren knew to travel this alley only in one direction, they did not meet anyone else.

When they emerged into a crooked little street on the other side of the alley, Sinch caught the scents of vegetables and spices on the air. Valix gestured in the direction of the breeze and said, “There, you can smell it now, eh?”

“Mmm.” He stopped at a puddle large enough to be a moat, and turned to look back at Valix.

She grinned. “Get your feet wet, princeling.”

He rolled his eyes and stepped deliberately into the water, unable to keep from flinching at the chill and slime of it. A weight landed on his back, pushing him forward and nearly toppling him over. He felt arms around his neck, and then they were on the other side and Valix dropped off of him. “Thanks for the ride,” she said. “I hate getting my feet wet.” She stuck her muzzle forward, daring him to challenge her.

Sinch just laughed. “So that’s why you wanted me to go ahead,” he said.

Valix pulled her head back and studied him. “Aren’t you the pleasant one,” she said, and waved ahead of them. “It’s around the corner. Climb up to the second floor.”

The rough stone building at the corner, held together without mortar, buzzed with sound through the high-up windows. If there were a street-level door, it was buried beneath piles of reed and stone fragments. Around the corner, though, a pile of stones led up to a ledge on the building opposite, from which Sinch saw they could jump to the large open window.

He’d made far longer and more dangerous leaps than that, but he couldn’t tell whether Valix was impressed when she landed beside him on the window ledge. Too late, he realized that he could have jumped inside and lost himself in the crowd, and besides, in the thick aroma of vegetables and broth, he was quite hungry.

They dropped to the floor, in an area cleared for just that purpose. Valix steered him past the long stone benches filled with mice slurping out of little bowls to the back corner of the room. A stooped mouse in a grey woolen shawl was ladling soup to a line of mice. “Best soup in town,” Valix whispered to him.

The mice in front of them were all handing over small copper coins in exchange for the soup. Sinch dug in his pockets, but Valix put a paw on his arms as he did. He looked back, but she didn’t say anything, just nudged him forward. When he got to the front of the line, the server held out her paw.

“Hello, Shaimin,” Valix said.

Shaimin turned her head just slightly. “Afternoon, miss,” she said. “This young’un with you?”

“Aye,” Valix said.

“Right.” The old mouse handed Sinch a bowl of soup, then ladled out another one for Valix. That ended the transaction; she turned to the small mouse who’d stepped up behind Valix and took his copper, preparing his bowl of soup.

It wasn’t easy to find two seats close together. Sinch stood in the center of the room, looking, while Valix walked directly to the landing area and stood near a bench, over a mouse in a patched tunic, who got up immediately. The other mice scooted to either side, leaving two spots for them. Sinch sat next to her on the stone, looking around at the lowered heads of the mice around them, and the resentful looks from those further away. None was dressed as well as Valix. Most wore patched clothes, and some wore no shirt at all.

Valix sat and lifted the bowl to her muzzle, unconcerned by the surrounding looks. Everyone around them was doing the same, and there were no spoons around, so Sinch followed suit. The soup was full of noodles and vegetables, a little bland, but pretty good, and he said so to Valix.

“Told you,” she said, slurping enthusiastically.

He lowered his voice, conscious of the mice around them, who’d inched away from them anyway. “So, you’re pretty important here.”

“Balinni is,” she said.

The mouse on Sinch’s other side muttered something under breath, something that sounded like, “Trouble.”

“How many mice work for him?” Sinch asked.

Valix paused in her slurping. “Enough,” she said, and her eyes passed over to him to look at the mouse beside him, who looked away immediately, then stood and left. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You pull this off, you’ll be in just as good.”

Over his bowl, he tried to see if there were some way he could escape. The thought crossed his mind that he could use the sympathy of the other mice to keep Valix restrained if he could somehow communicate that he was a prisoner. The problem was that they were not just antipathetic, but also afraid. So he finished his soup when she did, and stood with her.

“Outhouse is down the street,” she said. “I need to go too.”

He would’ve thought that the perfect opportunity to get away, except that when they’d made it to the front of the line and the exiting mouse was holding the outhouse door for Valix, she dragged Sinch into the outhouse with her. He barely had time to sputter, “What—” before they were inside, the door closed.

“Well,” she said, undoing her trousers, “can’t very well trust you to just stand around, and I can’t hold it in all day.”

“But I—you—” He slapped a paw over his eyes as she shoved her pants down and twisted to face away from her.

“I’ll be quick, then you can go.” She sounded amused. “I can leave you in here alone if you want. There’s only one other way out of here and even if it led anywhere, I don’t think you have the balls to take it.”

He did ask her to leave when she was done, and as they walked away from the outhouse, he saw the looks the line of mice gave her, the same looks she’d gotten at the soup tables. “So are you and Balinni the toughs of the town?” he asked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sinch crossed to an alley, noticing that the paths Valix guided him to were remarkably free of debris. “In Divalia, there were toughs, guys who smuggled big shipments of food and drink, guys who knew where you could get stuff. I always knew when one of them was around because people would act differently around them. But it wasn’t like this, it was more like… like some difficult job they did. Like the guys who come to pick up the rags, or clean out the cesspools.”