Shadow of the Father (32 page)

He returned to his original site, where he began throwing bags aside. He could definitely smell the leather of the crown’s satchel, and a faint trace of the fox aroma that had been on the costume. Most of the old bags came apart in his paws, and the ones that didn’t were empty. At the bottom, the leather was slimy with mold, but he pulled at it anyway, until his fingers touched the cold floor of the cellar. Enough light trickled in through the window by now to let him see quite plainly what his nose had been telling him for the last half hour, almost since he’d arrived. The bag was not there. The crown was gone.

 
Yilon followed Dinah along the broad streets of the heights to where they grew narrower and dingier, windows streaked rather than shining, brick crumbling, stickiness on the flagstones under his paws. He saw shadows in every corner he looked, so after startling for the fourth time, he stopped looking, worrying more about tripping on missing stones.

Ahead of him, Dinah was focused and tense, judging by the curl in her tail and the constant flicking of her ears. He didn’t disturb her with any more questions until they reached a street he recognized, though he wasn’t sure whether it was because it was the first street he’d been on before or if it was simply now light enough for him to make out the familiar pattern of the houses on it. Dinah turned before he would have, though.

“Isn’t it up that way?” He pointed.

She followed his finger. “If you want to walk in the front door,” she said.

“There’s a back door?”

She nodded. “Come on.”

They walked up a narrow passage between houses, around a yard and up a neglected grassy patch that had once been a park. When they cut back down between another row of houses, Dinah stopped him and pointed, across two black porches. “There.”

“Wouldn’t Maxon go out the front?”

“We can see the street from here.” She nodded the other way, down along the house they were standing behind. “One of us should keep watch this way, the other there.”

“Why don’t I just go down to the corner? I can hide behind that house and see more of the street.”

She shrugged indecisively, and he realized then that she had little better idea of what they were doing than he did. “Well,” he said, “are we looking for Min, or waiting to follow Maxon?”

“I’m guessing both. If we find Min, he’ll probably be following Maxon, won’t he?”

Yilon nodded. Since she was watching the back yard, he kept an eye on the street. More foxes were moving back and forth, but it was now light enough that he could see that none of them was Maxon. “How do you know the house?”

“Shh,” she said, indicating the house they were near.

He lowered his voice. “Okay. How do you know the house?”

She sighed. “Leave it.”

He wanted to, but curiosity burned brighter. “If there’s anything that would help me figure out what’s going on…”

“No.”

After that, he kept quiet. The sun crept closer to rising, brushing the bricks and flagstones in brightening reddish light. The morning was already warmer than the previous day; perhaps this was the late summer Corwin had talked about. Yilon watched the foxes pass on the street, but still did not see Maxon, although one of them looked familiar. He was rubbing his paws together, but his muzzle was down and mostly hidden by a cloak, so Yilon couldn’t say what was familiar about him. The feeling nagged at him, until he forgot it not five minutes later.

“There he is,” he hissed, grabbing Dinah’s arm. Maxon had just appeared on the street, walking slowly with his head down. The clothes, the gait—it was definitely him.

Dinah followed Yilon down to the street. Both of them scanned the area, but saw no sign of Min. “He’s got to be around here somewhere.”

“Maybe he didn’t follow Maxon. Maybe he went looking for you.”

Yilon looked back at the Strad house. “One of us should check there. Just in case.”

“One of us has to follow Maxon.” Her ears were flat, her eyes wide as she followed his gaze back to the house.

“Can you do that?” He didn’t like the idea of going into the house, but she clearly was terrified to. “I’ll go into the house, check around quickly, and we’ll meet back at your place where Colian is.”

She bit her lip. “All right.” She stared, trying to work out something in her head. “Listen. There’s bad people in that house. There’s…”

He nodded. “I know. That’s where Kites came from. Go, you’ll lose Maxon.”

Unexpectedly, her paw reached out and squeezed his. “Be careful.”

“You too.”

He watched her slip away into the street behind Maxon, waited until they’d both turned a corner to creep back up the gap and around to the back door of the house.

The whole area behind the houses was silent and still. If they’d posted guards, Yilon didn’t see any. He crept closer, wishing Sinch were with him. It wasn’t just that the mouse knew more about sneaking around than he and Dinah combined; it was that their adventures were always fun. Of course, they’d never had an adventure with stakes quite this high. The image of the knife in Kites’s throat flashed before him again before he was able to banish it.

There was a jog in the wall of the house which created a small corner. Yilon padded into it and flattened himself against the old brick, nose filled with the smell of dirt and ancient stone, ears perked to catch any conversation. Sinch would be able to climb up and crack the window open, but Yilon didn’t trust himself to be able to do it both silently and without falling.

Of course, the night they’d met, Sinch had still been learning. Yilon had only been Divalia a few weeks. He’d been walking around the gardens at dusk, trying desperately to banish the gnawing ache of homesickness in his gut, and had not seen Sinch until the mouse had tumbled to the ground right in front of him.

“I’m new here,” Yilon had said, “but aren’t you not supposed to do that?”

Sinch had tried to scramble away, but Yilon, sensing a kindred spirit, had laughed and told him to relax. He’d taken Sinch down to dinner, amused that the mouse was so nervous (though he only learned the full reason later), and feeling happy that he was able to both help someone else and flaunt the rules of the palace. Sinch had relaxed by the end of the night, helped along by some of the palace’s mead, and had promised to come back later.

Yilon supposed that ache of homesickness was what had brought that particular memory to his mind. His groin tingled at the memory of the night they’d both finally admitted they found each other attractive—he, at least, had been feeling it from that first night. It had been a nice couple years, he thought, and it was nice that there were a lot of mice there. Sinch could find a place to live, a nice mouse to devote himself to, and the two of them could remain friends. He would have them over to the palace—old rules cast aside by then—and their cubs would grow up together. It was the best he could hope for.

He fidgeted against the wall, realizing he had not been listening carefully. More and more foxes were walking down the street out in front, and some were talking. The rattle of a carriage sounded in the distance. Yilon sighed and edged further along the wall, toward the back of the house, under a different window.

Another fox walked through the alley behind the houses, so Yilon adopted a casual pose as though he were waiting for someone. The fox glanced at him but didn’t stop.

It occurred to him that if Min had been following Maxon and had stayed to listen to the house, he was probably somewhere around the house, maybe around the other side. Nothing was happening inside the house here, anyway. He waited a little longer, to make sure nobody else was coming along the alley, and then moved around the back porch.

He strolled past, as slowly as he could while remaining nonchalant. Two stairs led up to a stone porch that was littered with old leaves and some dirt accumulated against the stone railing. In the center of the porch, cracked stone defined a doorway in which hung a heavy curtain. The breeze that barely moved the curtain, blowing toward the house, was no help in detecting any scents that might have lingered on the porch. On the other side of the house, he glanced at the back windows once, then turned the corner and walked toward the street. As soon as he was out of sight of the porch, he crept back against the wall again and perked an ear.

He still heard no sounds, but now he could smell the breeze coming past the back porch. It took a few seconds to sort out the combination of scents that tickled his nostrils. One was more familiar than the rest. “Min,” he breathed.

He edged back along the wall, peering around the corner to the back. Still, nothing moved there, and no sound came from inside the—

The house’s silence was broken by a muffled cry. “Help!”

Yilon snapped his head around. It was Min’s voice, without a doubt. He padded back to the window in time to hear a thump, and then another cry. This one was followed by silence and then, after a span of four or five breathless heartbeats, a high-pitched giggle.

If he’d harbored any doubts about going inside, they were gone in that moment. He ran to the back porch, pushed the heavy curtain aside, and charged in.

He found himself in a tiny anteroom in front of another curtain, this one tied down. The giggling came from inside once more. Yilon pushed at the curtain, but it was tied at the corners. He attacked the knots, undoing them as quickly as he could, and wishing Sinch and his knife were there to help, trying to ignore the thick smells coming from inside the house, hoping that the sour smell of blood was old. “Come on,” he muttered, pulling at the twisted pieces of rope. As soon as he got two knots undone, he had enough room to push past the curtain.

To his surprise, he emerged into a large room as nicely furnished as any in the governor’s or Dinah’s house. Carpets lined the floor and walls, with bell pulls hanging in between the tapestries, and several fine wooden cabinets around the room bore candlesticks, two small mirrors, books, and what looked like a collection of grooming tools on their smooth tops. The sight was so at odds with the filthy exterior that Yilon had to stop for a moment, staring around to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. And yet the smell matched perfectly: decay and rot and blood.

Two doorways led off to the right, one to the left, and one straight ahead. He crept cautiously toward the near doorway on his right, his fur prickling at sounds of movement and the smell of blood, growing stronger. A foot from the door, his ears caught a soft, tuneless humming. He paused, his insides turning cold at the emotionless, distant sound.

The nearest bell pull caught his eye. The rope was smoother than he’d ever seen, although it had numerous loose fibers sticking out of it.

An odd, disquieting smell came from it, drawing him closer to examine it in the half-light of the room.

It didn’t look to be woven or braided. He peered more closely, lifted a finger to touch it—

—and jumped back, revolted. The thing was a tail, a mouse’s tail.

Yilon stared at it, then looked wildly around the room. All the “bell pulls” were mouse tails, not hooked up to anything, just hanging as trophys. He staggered against the nearest cabinet, making it rattle as the grooming tools jumped. Reaching down to settle them, he saw that there were two silver pairs of scissors; the rest were vicious-looking knives, curved and straight, serrated and slender. And there was a space on the top of the cabinet where two more of the gleaming blades might have rested.

Min isn’t a mouse, he told himself; but the memory of Kites poking the knives into his stomach came back to him. The house was still silent; now not even the sound of movement or humming coming from the room to the right. He crept back toward it and was just about to look around the corner when a scratchy voice echoed through the large room.

“What are you doing here?”

He spun around to see an old vixen. Her smell reached him in the same moment, through the miasma of the room: she was the one who’d accosted him on the street. She shuffled toward him, glaring. “Come to steal, have ya?” Her voice raised. “Thief! Thief!”

“No!” he hissed. He glanced at the curtain he’d come in by. He could probably duck out, be outside in a moment. But Min was still in here.

His whiskers twitched at movement behind him. A light paw fell on his shoulder and spun him around. He only briefly saw a fox his height grinning at him as happily as if he were a long-lost relative. The white shine of the grin, the one long canine tooth he could see, that image was what stuck in his head as the fox’s arm whipped around and something struck the side of his head. Pain flashed, stars exploded in his field of vision, and then blackness.

 
Sinch rocked back and forth in the cellar. He kept staring at the place where the crown should have been. This was it, this was his ultimate failure. Yilon had trusted him to take the crown and hold it safely until needed, and he had failed. Someone had followed him, had come into the cellar and had not wasted any energy rooting through the decaying sacks. Whoever it was had gone directly for the crown, able to sniff it out, knowing exactly what they were looking for. And he had been careless, had let himself be followed. Maybe it was Balinni, negotiating over price, all the while laughing inside at the stupid mouse from the capital who thought himself so smart.

There had to be carriages leaving for Divalia every day. He had enough money that he could find passage on one. At worst, he could buy food and walk down the pass. Maybe he would freeze to death. He kicked at one of the sacks. The prospect of returning to Divalia felt no more attractive now than it had earlier. The empty leather bags only gave him extra motivation; they didn’t reduce the pain of the decision. But there was nothing else he could do. He’d lost the crown; Yilon would never trust him with anything again.

The bag tore into pieces under one more kick. It hadn’t taken him long: Not only his life in Dewanne, but his friendship with Yilon, all of it in tatters. At least when he returned to Divalia, his family would be there, his friends among the thieves. He could go back to stealing trinkets, sneaking into the palace to catch glimpses of the life the nobles lived.