Chapter Eighteen Cat
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Cat
Cat wakes to the sound of wood shifting on the fire.
His eyes open slowly, first catching sight of the flames, then drifting idly to what lies beyond.
In the dark gloom of the shadows, a large pale shape floats just above the ground.
Cat’s eyes struggle to focus. The shape is round, white, streaked with dark grey or black.
It has eyes. A face. Furry and lethal and—
That’s a nightcat, Cat thinks, gasping and jerking just a little as the realization takes hold.
He does not make it far. The sharp sting of something else entirely presses against his throat.
A sword. Someone has found them. The blade rests against his skin, promising reprisal should he move any further.
He blinks through the flames, but the nightcat is gone and all he has been left with is an assailant in the woods.
Elician is still asleep, limbs loose around Cat’s body and slipping from him every time Cat subtly shifts or moves.
His head is turned to the side, his too-short curls tangling messily against the earth.
They are still growing in, not nearly long enough to cover his face.
He’ll be recognized, Cat knows. Elician is clearly not Alelunen, and trying to lie about it would earn neither of them any favours at all.
‘Sit up,’ the assailant commands, quiet enough not to disturb Elician, though the blade shifts just enough to incentivize Cat into action. ‘Slowly.’
He sits up. The blade follows him. It does not cut him, but it stays there, waiting for the opportunity. Elician’s cloak falls from Cat’s shoulders. He breathes in deeply. Cat waits for a command.
He hears nothing as the man steps into focus between Cat and the fire, turning his blade so its point aims at the centre of Cat’s throat. ‘Tell me, Your Grace, what is the ruling couple of Soleb doing so far into Alelune without escort or invitation?’
There had been little hope in hiding that Elician was Soleben, but to know how quickly they were identified is somewhat of an embarrassment. Cat imagines Lio will be furious when he hears of it.
‘We don’t need an escort,’ Cat says quietly. ‘We cannot be harmed.’
‘That sounds very much like hubris, Your Grace.’ The stranger’s voice is light, slightly higher in pitch than either Cat’s or Elician’s, and utterly without malice.
Unlike Nured, who would have gloated at the capture, there is almost an air of exasperation lurking in this man’s tone.
I know this voice, Cat thinks. I know this uniform.
‘Though truly, only someone with incredible hubris would light a fire in the Grünewald…That smoke can be seen for leagues. Anyone could have found you.’
The man wears brown leather boots and thick trousers.
A leather cuirass covers his chest, and long sleeves reach down to his wrists and are tucked into brown gloves.
At his shoulders a deep blue cloak is pinned into place.
The hood is up, and a dark cloth obscures the bottom half of his face, but that is pointless. Cat knows who this is.
‘And yet you came alone,’ Cat says. ‘So, are you not equally overconfident?’ No other human soul registers on the edge of his consciousness – at least, not anyone close enough to offer support.
Scouts may have tracked their position…but only this man has approached.
(There is also, much to his great disappointment, no sense of any other large living creature in the vicinity.
His nightcat, it seems, had not been there at all.)
‘Are you so certain?’ the man asks, very slowly lowering his sword.
‘Yes.’ Then, with growing confidence, murmurs, ‘I wrote you a letter.’
‘I received your letter,’ Captain Partho says, returning his sword to the scabbard at his side.
He turns, then, to inspect their fire. The flames have died quite a bit in the night, but a small one still burns over the largest branch Elician found.
It stays upright amongst a strong bed of coals, and Partho warms his hands over it, rubbing them twice to encourage the blood to flow faster through his body.
‘I’m surprised you recognized me. It has been a very long time since we last met, Stello. ’
‘I’ve been thinking of you,’ Cat replies quietly. It is, perhaps, not the most elegant admission, but he continues as best he can. ‘I have been thinking of the past.’
His father had smiled in the moments before Cat killed him.
He had leaned into Cat’s touch, wilfully embracing him even though he must have known what would happen.
His weight forced Cat to the ground when he had not been prepared for it.
But someone pulled former Prince Consort Marias’s body off Cat in the end.
If Cat thinks hard enough, he can almost see Partho’s face in that memory.
And as Partho pulls back his hood, revealing his dark curly hair and his delicately curved jaw and bow-shaped lips, that memory only grows stronger.
It expands, cloudy images he has never quite been able to discern gaining vibrancy. Blank-faced forms lurking in the corners of the few memories he can adequately summon gain sharpened clarity. He had known this man, known him well. ‘You taught me how to use my sword.’
‘Is that what you remember?’ Partho asks. He does not sound bothered by the information. Fond, perhaps. Wistful. ‘You were a fine student.’
‘You were a fine teacher.’ It earns him a smile, painfully familiar. ‘I don’t remember much more.’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to. I hardly remember my youth, and I did not spend my time in the cells.’ At this, Partho’s voice gains an edge to it. He leans back from the fire, letting his arms rest on his knees as he turns ever so slightly to face Cat properly.
‘You were my father’s closest friend,’ Cat says.
‘Yes.’
‘I killed him.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why are you here, my lord?’
‘Because I am the Steward of the Blue Palace, Stello, and when you wrote me your letter, you called for my aid. You are the Blue Palace’s master.
I too am yours to command, and I have brought all the Blue Guard here to help you find your way home.
’ Cat does not know how to respond. He strains for the right words: a show of thanks, a familial oath, a proclamation.
Nothing comes to him. Since the day his father died, the Blue Lands have been closed, icily silent, unwilling to show any great sign of support to the crown beyond the bare minimum of duty.
But here, for him, Partho has brought their standing guard.
‘I have something for you,’ Partho says.
Even crouched down as he is, his balance remains perfect on the balls of his feet.
He reaches his hands to the back of his neck and fiddles with something beneath the neckline of his cuirass, pulling it free with only some resistance.
Cat’s breath leaves him as he scrambles indelicately to meet Partho halfway.
Dangling from Partho’s fingers is a black cord, and from it hangs a blue stone in the shape of a crescent moon.
It glows bright and perfect in the dim dark of night.
Cat’s fingers wrap around the stone. Heat radiates through it, travelling through his hand, his arm, his core.
He shivers at the change in temperature but does not dare let it go, cradling the pendant to his chest like the treasure it is. ‘I thought I lost it.’
‘When we learned how you died, your father asked that I do what I could to find it. And so I did,’ Partho responds. ‘The boy who threw it in the Schism was punished.’
Cat hears the echoes of the water rushing around his head as the water from Alelune’s greatest tributary into the Bask River held him down. ‘He didn’t know better.’
‘He did.’
It is not an argument worth having. It is far too late to change what happened now. ‘Thank you,’ he says at long last. It is woefully insufficient. ‘Thank you for finding it.’
‘It belongs to you and only you,’ Partho replies. ‘As do the Blue Lands…and that crown.’ He pauses then, glancing over Cat’s shoulder to peer at Elician. The Soleben king breathes deeply and has not moved while they’ve talked. ‘Your marriage…tell me, was it forced?’
He says the words as if they pain him, as if the notion of it is too uncomfortable to bear.
His hand twitches back to his sword hilt.
For a moment, Cat sits with that knowledge, lets it course through him.
Partho is concerned for him. He cannot remember the last time someone, other than a Reaper, had shown such concern for him in Alelune.
His mother, probably, but her concern was a nuanced, fragmented thing.
Beyond her…perhaps it truly had been his father or indeed Partho himself.
He wishes he could remember more of the man; he wishes he knew what else there is to recall.
‘No,’ Cat murmurs. ‘No, it was not forced.’
‘You must understand what it looks like,’ Partho continues. ‘Him, an Alelunen prisoner for over a year, his uncle murdering our queen, then returning home to gain a crown and our queen’s heir as his husband.’
‘It was my choice,’ Cat says. ‘I suggested it.’
‘To make amends?’
‘To stop this war.’
‘You needn’t share his bed for that.’
‘I wanted to…share his bed. I wanted this.’ Cat glances back at Elician, then to Partho. ‘Please understand that,’ he entreats as best he can. ‘He…he makes me happy. I wouldn’t have married him otherwise.’
Captain Partho, Steward of the Blue Palace and his father’s best friend, nods only once.
‘Should that ever change,’ he swears quietly, ‘you will not be forced to continue such an alliance. You will not be trapped against your will again, Your Grace.’ The threat and promise are both utterly without compromise.
‘And should I do anything to elicit that wrath, my lord,’ Elician says, voice croaking even as his eyes crack open to peer at Partho, ‘then I thank you in advance for ensuring his well-being.’