Part 4

Acclimation

           The old man pulled him to the building's far wall and held him there with a single soft-furred palm. Ynn stood behind him, her ragged ears mercifully blocking most of the sun. The brick felt cool against his back, wet from morning dew. All around them were the sounds of a real peasant community: the grinding of wooden wheels on dirt, the hisses and snorts of livestock, the background hum of traders and friends and neighbors pursuing their daily routines. It became a single noisy blur of people and things that he the palace-born, milk-fed, forever-coddled prince had never seen or heard, and with the light it began to give him a low, dully throbbing headache that addled his senses. Isgarod patted Vauhya's face and whistled at him.
           "Hey, boy, are you feeling okay?"
           "I'm, ah…" He searched for the right word. "Overwhelmed. Never been in a peasant village." He blinked. His voice rasped, sounding like dusty air and dried grass. "My head hurts. The smells are all too strong. Maybe it's just morning grogginess." Ynn shook her head.
           "It's a pretty harsh morning, boy. Even out here the early-day breeze isn't usually so chilling and wet. I suggest you find a place for yourself inside - there's a tavern nearby called Hope's End. You go there, you get some food, get something warm in you, and it'll pass. You probably need to recuperate."
           "She's right, Vauhya. Only the gods know what you've been through, but you can't be in good health after only a few days. Don't force your body past its limitations."
           "I won't," Vauhya promised. He smiled wanly, winced as Ynn flicked an ear and the sun flashed in his eyes. "I… I'm grateful for what you did, saving me. Grateful beyond what I know how to say. Just… well, if we ever meet under better circumstances, I'll repay you a thousand times over." Isgarod laughed softly, leaning a bit on Vauhya then.
           "Oh, you will, will you? Well then, we'd be fools not to make an investment, wouldn't we?" He pulled a fist-sized drawstring bag from his worn leather belt and pressed it into Vauhya's open palm. "Now, it's not much, but it'll keep you warm and fed for a few days." Vauhya's ears folded in shame, then. What'd changed so dramatically that he'd ruin a couple by taking their charity? Under the dirt and bruises, wasn't he still the same person?
           "No, keep that," he resolved. "I'm not going to take it. I appreciate your good will, but I've been enough of a problem already. Better if I don't hurt you any more than I already have." Ynn growled at him softly.
           "Take it. It's not much. I figured in our overhead; you won't be setting us back any, just taking the profits out of this run. We'll have enough to buy goods to take back down the highway. We've been at this game for a long time, boy. We can afford to send you off with more than a few kind words. You take that, use it to stay alive, and that'll be our contribution to the world."
           There was no use in arguing; Vauhya held up the pouch and squeezed it in his paws, feeling the familiar smooth roundness of coins inside. Isgarod took his paw off of Vauhya's chest, letting him move freely, but still regarded him with an elderly air of concern. Vauhya opened up the little cloth bag and dumped the two gold and six silver coins it contained into his cupped hands. They were right; it wasn't much. It was still more than he deserved.
           "We're going to stay here for the night," Ynn offered. "The town holds its market day tomorrow, you know. All the farmers in a few days' travel time will come with their goods; the population nearly doubles. This town, Norsghar, is really just a trade village. Might find something interesting if you stay: we'll happily share your company."
           "I need to keep moving."
           "Well, I suppose we won't stay together, then. You ought to go visit Hope's End. Unless you plan to stay alone you'll need to find someone to travel with, and that's the best place I know of." For a moment she hesitated, then spoke very carefully. "You don't plan on traveling alone, do you?" Vauhya shook his head.
           "No. I'll find someone going in my direction or someone that I can pay to follow me." It was his turn to hold fault for an awkward silence. "Well, it's safer if you're not seen with me. I remember my friends: those who help me. If I ever get the chance…"
           "You'll repay us?" Isgarod patted him on the shoulder. "We know. Be very careful, young man. Be careful with those women's weapons, be careful with that pittance we gave you, and be careful with who you decide to trust. You're young to be out against the whole world."
           "I'll be careful. You do the same." The scars on Isgarod's face twisted with his mouth into a cheerful expression and he backed away, letting Ynn take her turn to give a farewell. She leaned forward without reaching out any hands and brushed cheeks with him lightly. "Goodbye, Ynn. I appreciate everything."
           "Hope's End," she whispered. "And try not to be so articulate. You even sound court-bred, milord." He flicked an ear back.
           "I don't understand."
           "Young man, I was trading and bluffing my way through this province long before you were born. There's no point in trying to fool me." The short guard hairs on her cheek scratched at his own as she craned her neck to press him backward, but she rocked back on her heels and came away from him before he could register protest. "Don't worry, Vauhya Yoichi, we won't tell anyone. Just be quick." For a moment he stood there dumbly, shocked at her recognition. Then he blinked, nodded, and mouthed his thanks. "Come, love," Ynn purred, "we've got business too. Take care, boy." The old woman turned to her mate and clapped his shoulder, pulling him with her back to their cart.
          

---v---

           It was time, Vauhya reflected, that his circumstances stopped changing. Being a prince had been fairly simple, and he'd gotten quite good at it, but then the world had gotten at his back and he'd ended up a cook. Well, that was fair enough; as a prince he'd never really studied war or taken measures to curb his brother's courtship of the sher'amn. Perhaps the trial was a deserved loss. Going from a partnered, decent merchant to a partnerless vagabond, however, was something he'd done nothing to warrant.
           The sun was in his eyes again. He stacked his coins up and shoved them into his pocket, grimacing at the prospect of having to survive on them for any length of time. Money was still a fairly novel concept to him: royal life didn't much involve money. Possessions weren't exactly unknown, but as a prince he'd never had to soil his hands with currency. A prince just asked and the servants provided anything he wanted. Vauhya tried to see the good in his new situation: after all, in money he had new lifelong puzzle, the proper distribution of limited resources. Somehow, though, that wasn't much comfort.
           He turned and ambled into town with a sort of controlled forward stumble. The villagers only gave him passing looks before turning back to their work. He frowned at them, feeling partway disdainful of the way they kept themselves; the villagers all had ears like worn rags, tawny gold and cream pelts turned muddy brown by smudges of dirt, and shapeless clothing that looked like it'd been folded from uncut cloth bolts. Then he looked down at himself and felt ashamed of his indignation. He didn't look much better than they did.
           All of the storefronts had pictures of the goods they offered featured prominently on signs and across their walls, but few had actual written names. It made sense: peasants didn't need to read, and teaching took both time and wealth. Still, it made the village seem vaguely child-like.
           As he walked down the road Vauhya searched the buildings for signs of a tailor, but found none. There probably wasn't one in a community so small. His single consolation was the bar, which grew as he approached until it towered to the side of him. 'Hope's End,' the sign hanging from the roof read. The picture above the text was… well, honest. A hrasi man was slumped over a table with a beer pitcher, a drink saucer, and a fellow inebriate lying next to him. Vauhya hooked his claws into the door, pulled it open, and stepped inside.
           The scenery was really not very different than that of his last home. At the far wall a counter separated the bartender from the rest of the room, with the doors to the storageplace, basement, and kitchen situated behind it. Even in the late morning the place had a good number of people, though most were eating meals rather than drinking liquors. The conversation didn't even waver when he entered - he was nobody. Vauhya rubbed his nose, trying to get the smell of dirt and manure out, but it was a baseline scent in the town, and the only alternatives were cheap liquor and vomit.
           He noticed two unpartnered hrasi from among the bar's patrons. The first, a man in simple, soil-colored breeches, was bent over a bowl at the counter. The second was a figure in formless black cloth who sat at a corner table with his or her back turned to the room, not a scrap of fur showing save a long, darkly ashen tail that curled around a its owner's left boot. Vauhya found the darkly dressed character unnerving; he opted to walk to the bar and sit beside the drably clad young man, who gave him one quick glance before returning to his soup.
           The bench was hard wood, a single great slab of tree trunk running the entire length of the counter that had somehow been made to fit through the doorway. For all its magnificence it was still hard enough to make his tail ache. Across the counter the bartender, a light brown, heavily scarred woman not unlike Faura, was staring at him with a bored and somewhat surly expression.
           "How much is a meal?"
           "Depends," the bartender answered. She picked up a rag from behind the counter and began wiping off the area in front of him. "What do you want?"
           "Something hot."
           "Meat? Grains? Soup?"
           "Meat, definitely." He thought. "And some soup. Grain soup, with bread and pepper oil. Do you have that?" She nodded dully.
           "What kind of meat? I've got geri, jhesa, aouin, and nika in the larders."
           "Geri. And something to drink too - you have milk?" The man next to him snorted and laughed quietly, while the bartender simply stared.
           "Milk. I like that. Sir, we've got beers, liquors, and ales." Gods, this was quite an establishment.
           "Anything you might serve a kid?" She blinked.
           "Beers, liquors, and ales. I suppose we have boiled water, if you consider that a drink."
           "Water, just water…"
           "Fine. Two and one-half marks, then." Marks? Vauhya produced a single silver coin, letting it spin on the counter and then settle. The bartender grimaced, but took it. She took another silver from the folds of her clothing and dropped them both on the counter, one after the other. She was probably listening to the sounds they made. Seemingly satisfied, the bartender dropped them into a bag beneath the counter and then reached down into another, causing the rain-like patter of coins brushing each other. "We don't usually see anything much higher than a full mark here," she explained. The woman came up with a pawful of finely engraved, rectangular iron-copper slips and counted seventeen out onto the counter, then added a single slip half the size of the others. "There. Seventeen and a half marks. I'll have cook start on it."
           Vauhya pocketed the slips as the bartender disappeared into the kitchen. He slumped against the counter, put his head on the ragged cloth of his shirt, and stared at the man lapping up beer next to him. Gods, but he was weary. The man eyed him with no more interest than he did any other patron, just watched Vauhya quietly as he tended to his drink. It was the same for the others there; they all moped in their actions. Maybe it was the life they led.
           No one had anything to say to him, keeping instead to their own company - Vauhya waited listlessly as his meal was prepared. In a way it was a relieving change from the courtesans who'd once flung themselves at his feet. When a cook's young attendant came and wordlessly set out his meal, however, the loss of such annoyances seemed a small consolation.
           A single clay bowl was set out in front of him, in a reddish stone saucer. Three grey coals burned slowly at the saucer's edge to keep the bowl's soup warm. The grain soup itself looked like it had four or five types of raw seeds, their husks boiled off and turned to a watery, slightly milky broth; he took the tiny cup of pepper oil and poured it all in. The bowl hissed and spat at him as the fat of the oil ignited. The soup bubbled and turned orange with the pepper oil's tint, then settled as the red and yellow flakes of pepper swirled in among the pale white kernels. Vauhya took the wooden ladle provided him and cautiously supped a bit. It tasted bluntly of pepper: nothing exotic, just a peppery volume of grain and water. He ate all of it, then gingerly picked up the bowl and lapped out the last streaks of grease at the bottom.
           By the time he was done the bartender had returned, holding in one hand a plate with geri and black bread and in the other a simple saucer of water. She set them both in front of him as he looked up at her, licking the soup out of his beard. The geri was horribly overcooked: the edges were nearly brown. Nonetheless, he tore off a strip of meat the size of his finger, pushed it into about as much of the bread, and devoured the entire thing. It was sweet and bitter, but as gritty as a mouthful of the Rhe'jah - Vauhya forced himself to swallow before growling angrily.
           "There's sand in this bread!" he hissed at the bartender. She nodded.
           "Of course. It's sand bread."
           "I didn't ask for sand bread. I asked for bread." The bartender's ears flattened and she dropped to eye level with him, propping herself up with an elbow on the counter and a hand under her chin.
           "Maybe our well-decorated interior confused you," she drawled, "but we're not the royal kitchens." The man beside him chuckled again, coughing into his beer this time. "I don't know where you're from, but we don't serve pure grain bread here." Vauhya frowned, took another bite of meat and earth, then flicked an ear back towards the kitchen.
           "You have a reason for putting sand in your loaves?" The woman stared at him as though he was the greatest fool in the world. She explained slowly, enunciating every syllable.
           "Because it's faster and cheaper to mill grains into flours if you add something rough, and if I added nettles you'd slump over dead on that counter."
           "Oh."
           The woman snorted and made it a point to turn her back to him. All right, so he hadn't known that. Was that supposed to be common knowledge? Vauhya grumbled to himself. It'd been an honest mistake… and his fellow bar patron was staring at him with a poorly concealed grin. "What? What is it? Something funny about me?" Soft laughter was his answer.
           "Where… where are you from?"
           "Nowhere special." Vauhya turned to stare at his meat and sand, then forced down another mouthful. "It's just not common knowledge where I come from," he managed to cough between chews, "that's all." Another laugh. Vauhya suddenly realized how badly his tail was thrashing in agitation and quickly stilled it.
           "Apparently not," his companion agreed, seeming not to notice. "You have a partner with a bit more sense?"
           "Not yet… that's why I wanted to talk to you." Another swallow of grit and Vauhya couldn't keep from wincing.
           "If that's so bad, why don't you share it with me?" He nodded and pushed the bread and meat towards the man while he made his offer.
           "You unattached?"
           "I knew you wanted to ask me that." The man took a piece of bread and chewed on it thoughtfully. "Sorry, already bonded - smith's nephew. He's an apprentice; I'm a fletcher. We make arrows. Pretty good ones, if you're interested." Vauhya's hopes died down as he closed his eyes and sucked on a cut of soft, still-bloody geri meat.
           "Not really," he answered gruffly. "Just need a traveling companion." He thought of the questions that might bring and quickly elaborated: "-that is, to replace my old one. We… met bandits on the way here. We were just planning on traveling, but now I'm stuck here until I can find someone to leave with, you see."
           "Well, then you certainly won't leave tonight. The whole town is partnered right now. You know, 'hrasi coming in pairs' and all of that drift. Tomorrow, though - tomorrow there's going to be a market. There's this one slaver that usually comes in on market days. A few more travelers too. How much do you have?" Vauhya blinked. What? Oh, money.
           "Six gold, one silver, and seventeen and one half marks."
           "That much, ah?"
           "Not so much where I come from."
           "I'm sure. That'd be… six groups of twenty twenties, plus twenty, plus seventeen and a half…" The fletcher tapped his paw on the counter absently and looked up, struggling to do the numbers in his head.
           "Two thousand four hundred thirty seven and one half marks," Vauhya supplied. The man frowned and batted an ear after a moment.
           "Right. Not nearly enough for a slave." Vauhya flinched. The man pointed at remaining crust and crumbs of the charcoal sand bread. "Can I have that?" At Vauhya's nod he snatched it up and shoveled down his mouth. When he was done he threw a single of the one-mark slips on the counter and stood up. "I enjoyed talking to you, but you're all out of bread and that's really dulled the experience. You want my advice?"
           "I'd love it," Vauhya said tiredly, then took the water saucer and rudely poured it down his own muzzle. Courtly manners were lost on the poor bastards anyway.
           "You're probably a merchant's son from a big, safe city. I'm right, aren't I? Find the next trip that way and get your tail onboard. The world is rougher out this way." I wish I could, Vauhya thought with annoyance, but his outward reaction was a setting-back of the ears. Nothing more, though: he saw the man tense and forced himself not to do the same. "Huh. Don't wait here for too long, boy."
           He watched the craftsman saunter past the tables and through the door, then muffled a snarl. Another loss. What was left of the water swished in the saucer as he tilted it back and forth, frustrated. These people weren't very helpful. They weren't afraid of angering him either. Without help, though, he wasn't going to stay alive for very long. He wasn't Iluin: Ynn and her husband had proved that.
           Vauhya finished his geri quietly, then drank the rest of the water and stood up. Nobody else in the room looked like they were going to be any more receptive; none were particularly open in their posture. Maybe he could pay one of them to help him find a partner… damn! His pockets were too light - he stuffed his hands into them and snarled lowly at himself.
           "That furless, anemic, ragged-eared bastard!" Vauhya growled under his breath as he suddenly found himself poorer. He'd been left with his almost-eighteen marks. Ragged-eared 'fletcher'…
           He stood there, staring at the exit, seething at his own ineptitude. Anemic bastard peasant was probably still near enough to catch, but he couldn't chase the man. There were already more than enough people that wanted him dead. Still there were no eyes or turned heads; then he knew the rest of the men and women there were pointedly ignoring him. He scoured the room for someone - anyone - that looked in the least inviting. The darkly dressed figure in the corner was still an option. There were no others. Hai, he reprimanded himself, one might think that after last season you'd be more wary of people wrapped in black cloth…
           "Ah, hello," he whispered as he approached the person from behind. "May I sit with you?"
           "That's what I'd intended," an equally soft feminine voice answered. The person sat up in her chair and twisted to stare at him. Two auburn eyes set deep within a face of grey regarded him impassively, betraying nothing of their owner. One of her arms rested on the back of her chair while the other she kept on the table's edge: there was no move for a weapon on her part. Still, he stumbled back warily and put a hand on his lleiri's hilt. "No," the woman chastised him, "There's no need for that. You'll just scare the patrons. Come, sit with me." He took the empty seat offered to him and sat at her beckoning, but watched her with incredulity.
           "You're not going to kill me?"
           "I don't plan to." She reached into the folds of her loose black attire and slowly pulled out a reed and metal scabbard. With an air of uninterested confidence she set it down on the table, the handle of the lleiri pointing safely towards him.
           "Whose sher'amn are you?" he hissed with quiet desperation. "You're not Hahrum's, I'm sure."
           "No, I am simply loaned to him for a time." Alarmed, he reared back, ears folding down to his skull. "No," the sher'amn soothed. "Calm. Just listen. You were too thorough in slaughtering all of his, you see. Meera, Enaiya, and Urai are the only ones he has left, and a lord of his age should have at least twenty or fifty, so others and I are on loan from the family until we can train a new generation for his sisterhood."
           "So. But you're not here to kill me?"
           "That was why Hahrum sent us here, yes, but my lord had other intentions." It worried him, her candor. Slyness was an ill omen among her kind. He stiffened and put a hand on her lleiri's grip: she made a point to watch him do so, but simply perked her ears and maintained her affable demeanor.
           "What did you mean, 'us'? There are several of you?" She lazily lifted a hand and slashed the air, a dismissing 'no'.
           "Two. Myself and… hrrn, my 'apprentice'. She is Hahrum's, but I've left her to wait for you at the smithy. It was the place I least expected you to first visit. Don't worry, prince-"
           "Vau," he interrupted. "Or Vauhya, but preferably just Vau." The sher'amn gave him a conciliatory nod.
           "I'm here to deliver a message for you, a message from my lord. When I'm done I'll collect my apprentice and head south, towards the Kahrel Valley. I won't have met you, you understand. We'll go as far as Yeru, then take the southern highway back up to the capital. Don't follow." The sher'amn's ears flattened a bit. "I honestly didn't expect you to come here; I thought you had more sense. There are pairs and larger groups of us scouring this region for you. The only way out is straight north, up towards the Rhe'jah."
           "I'm not going to humbly wander into the desert of exiles."
           "Nor should you. If you kept to the side of the mountains that face it, however, you could travel back east without being noticed. That's part of my message." She raised her chin slightly and acted as though she was appraising him. "You're familiar with the family? Your cousins, specifically?"
           "Of course. Any particular one?"
           "My lord T'chierah. Son of your late father's older sister Yalra." Vauhya nodded.
           "I know him. He's the one who inherited his mother's coastal estate a few years ago, isn't he? We were on good terms." He thought for a moment. "The last time I saw him I was ten years old, and he sixteen. I suppose that's why I don't remember you. We… gods, we went sailing." Those were old memories, as musty and scattered as any memory could be at his age. "Huh. Yes, it was just him, and my caretaker Faura, and I. We went out on the waves until the shore disappeared and Faura's nerve broke. Yes, oh yes, I remember T'chierah."
           "That sounds like him. He's as close to water-loving as I've seen any hrasi be." The woman had a look on her face, a small smile of recognition. Nostalgia? It wasn't long in staying, and quickly wilted into the vaguely troubled expression ubiquitous to the sher'amn. "Vauhya, you must understand how things are. I'm the younger half of a sisterhood of two; Kahri is my elder by two years. Our lord T'cheirah: kindest lord any sher'amn ever had. His wife, Ylsad, is neither petty nor resentful of our presence; we are terribly fond of them both, my sister and I. Together the four of us have lived contentedly for almost three years."
           "And your complaint? You've become as powerful and successful as any woman can become without being a noble yourself." The sher'amn batted her ears and leaned forward to put her face directly in front of his. She lowered her voice and growled softly.
           "Hai, don't interrupt me." She stopped for a moment, then furrowed her brow and continued. "You're only halfway right. Out of the three most beloved people in my life, you see, I've seen one this season, and her briefly. Hahrum sent my lord and his wife back to the estate because he didn't want any of your sympathizers in his court. Kahri I was at least able to spend a few hours with several days ago; we crossed paths on our patrol. The only scent I have caught from my lord, however, was born on the letter he sent me."
           "The letter that he sent asking you to find me?" Vauhya asked quietly. The sher'amn bobbed her head ever so slightly. So the toll that spring had asked of her was nearly the burden it'd brought him. Her situation further suggested that justice wasn't much of a factor in the world's workings.
           "My lord knows that he is being held hostage to secure the cooperation of my sister and I, and that furthermore we are being kept away from him to ensure his support. He tells me to show the world a brave face, but what does it matter if I come home to find his corpse, or to find that my mistress was killed to frighten him into compliance, or that my sister was killed while looking for you? What does it matter if I die alone, far from anyone who'd mourn me? He understands, as I suspect you do. It's important that you know how much the clan is suffering under your brother's rule - he's a divisive fool much too far addicted to power. He will undo centuries of greatness in a mere ten seasons, I suspect, and given his flirtations with the church I will be quite pleasantly surprised if he doesn't prove to be the end of the clan entirely. It's more important, however, that you know you still have friends and allies in your family. My lord is one of them." She leaned back then, the urgency having suddenly fled from her demeanor. "If you want to return, take the northern mountain range and go back east. My lord T'chierah is entertaining several other family allies there as guests through the summer. He invites you make an appearance."
           "That's halfway across the continent!" He insisted with a whisper. It was trouble enough just to get out of town... "How am I going to make it there on foot before fall?"
           "That's not something I can help you with. Steal a mah'sur, if you must." The sher'amn began to rise, then stopped herself. "Hai, are you alone?" Embarrassed, Vauhya nodded silently. "Gods… I knew we'd had good hunting at that inn, but… Gods." She grimaced. "I'm sorry about that, if you care… market is tomorrow, by the way the peasants are talking. You… you might find or buy some company there." Vauhya lowered his gaze and shook his head with a feeling of defeat.
           "I'm nearly impoverished, barely better than a serf. I've got this cloak, these clothes, and my two lleiri. Nothing else."
           "I heard rumors that you were dabbling with lleiri. Hundreds of men and women die each year of their own foolish arrogance while trying to wield them. Do you have a weapon that you can really use?" He unclipped his shorter lleiri from his belt and laid it on the table. "I see," the sher'amn said slowly. "And you think you can use that? It's nearly alive, Vau. It chooses you."
           "The White One showed me how to use them. They're not 'alive': they're just built oddly. There's nothing mystical about them. I appreciate the concern, but the White One trained me well."
           "Heard about that too. I scent legends, having a fallen prince who can use a sher'amn's blade." Vauhya smiled wanly, but by the reaction he got it was obvious that the pain showed through.
           "I suppose," he said quietly. "But legendary nobles aren't often robbed. Stealing a slave at a village market: gods, it'll be awfully heroic of me, won't it?" He pushed the lleiri away. "I'll find a partner: you should retrieve yours. Just tell me which city is closest to the estate." The sher'amn stood, took her weapon and scabbard, then stared at him with something like concern.
           "Wikedu, I believe. It's a fishing village east of the capital and north of the estate." She patted his shoulder and looked down at him earnestly. "I can't help you with your lack of a partner, but I'll pray for your success, Vauhya. If you see my T'chierah or Ylsad, tell them I dream about being home." Then she looked at the door and pulled her hand away. "I'm going to kill that kid if she hasn't stayed where I put her. Luck to you, Vauhya."
           "Luck to you," he answered, but was a little slow; he ended up mumbling to her back. Once more alone… damn. And he hadn't even asked for a name. It was dangerous to leave while the two sher'amn were roving about. He leaned back in his chair and raised his hand in the air, beckoning the bartender to him. Seventeen and a half marks sounded like a lot. Surely it'd buy enough liquor to keep him in a comforting stupor for a while…
          

---v---

           This new place is as terrifying and enrapturing as any I've ever seen. The suffering and misery here defies all attempts at full description; I could write a hundred lines and not capture the images around me. I imagine that for every Iluin here there must be a thousand of the farmer serfs we see working the fields, poor souls who Iluin says live and die in the same plots of dirt that they were born on. I'm not sure about that last bit, honestly - I haven't broken the language barrier yet, just chipped away at it. That's a safer subject to discuss; I don't think I really want to focus on life here. We'll switch now.
           Our language studies are going well, thankfully. Phrases I can learn quite easily. It's a bit like programming by imitation - you find a block of sounds that get the alien to do something, memorize it, and it's a new phrase to add to your collection. Of course, just as with programming by imitation, you're bound to use the command out of context half the time. My friend has some rather amusingly quizzical expressions. I suppose that to that extent Iluin is as fluent in English as I am in her language. We both know commands like 'stop' and 'wait', for instance. It's only when we get to conveying new information and building new thoughts that the communication really breaks down, mostly because I don't understand her tongue's structure. Sometimes I hear <actor> <action>, sometimes <action> <actor>. My hypothesis is that the proper sentence structure of her language varies according to diction and the types of thoughts to be presented, but I haven't been able to pan out any specific underlying grammatical rules.
           There is, I suppose, always the possibility that Iluin is simply mad. She is keeping me, after all. I prefer not to think about that either, though. Is it hypocritical of me to superstitiously refuse to address a possibility in the hopes that it won't turn out to be true? Well, yes. It's the old ostrich's head-in-sand technique, I suppose, though that particular animal behavior is really a myth. But let's be objective about the whole thing. After all, I'm the one seeking human companionship by writing down my thoughts on a granola bar wrapper. If Iluin is insane, she's in good company.
          
           -Dr. Rachel Mitchell, diary excerpt from 11/2/2182
          
           Entering that first township made Rachel's stomach turn. Outside the city walls were something between slums and subsistence farms - there were mud slicks and wooden huts spattered haphazardly at the roadside. Bony, emaciated adults and children came out of their homes to stare at she and Iluin as they rode by. There were crowds of them, covered with filth that kept their ragged clothes clinging to their gaunt figures; like wartime refugees they watched hungrily, coming out of their squalor to see the opulent rider and her hairless friend. Before, Rachel had considered Iluin uncivilized, dirty, uncouth, and barbaric, but compared to these poor souls the woman was a queen. These people were like animals. They had a primal look in their eyes. Not sorrow, not hatred, not even jealousy - just hunger.
           The aliens began to clot, folded back away from the road and hovered at the edges in tightly pack groups. Smaller children clutched at the legs and waists of the larger adults, presumably their parents, who in turn rested comforting hands on their tiny shoulders and heads. What a ragged lot they were - something like mange was eating at their fur. She imagined that they were all probably perpetually ill from nutrition deficiency and that even something as innocuous as a cold would probably devastate their population. It was a nearly intolerable sight; Rachel bit her lip and shuddered.
           Iluin looked on stoically as she road them through the alien shantytown. A young child broke through the ranks before its elders could stop it and stumbled towards them. Two adults - presumably the parents - stared at the child with something between Iluin's distressed ears-down expression and one of total helplessness. They were too scared to step out and save the reckless youngster.
           "Amou," it pleaded. The child walked to Iluin and cried out the same word. "Amou." Pre-industrial society at its worst - god, its ribs were improbably prominent, even through all that hide and fur. If she hadn't seen the poor young thing alive she wouldn't have believed anyone could survive in such a state.
           "Iluin." Rachel put a hand on her friend's shoulder and squeezed hard. "Iluin." Iluin was flustered to say the least: she looked back at her, then down at the child. "What, you're just going to ignore him? What kind of woman are you? Give him some food at least, or whatever it is that he wants." Unflappable Iluin just stared at her. The child stared at her. Rachel scowled and irately wondered why they couldn't just have all spoken English. "Iluin, don't ignore me, damn you. Just a bit of food or something. We won't miss it."
           "Hai," Iluin said slowly, and equally slowly she reached a paw through the front of her cloak to pry at an inner pocket. She drew out a single silver coin, rolled her wrist back to toss it at the child, then hesitated. Instead she passed it back to Rachel with a disturbed look. "You, Rahkl," she said softly. "Not I. I not do." Rachel felt Iluin's tail batting at her leg anxiously. What was this? Trepidation? The child stared up at her with simple, innocent desire.
           "Amou." So soft - Rachel looked at it in pained sympathy and tossed the coin down with a smile.
           Roaring, they descended from all sides.
           As the coin fell into the child's open palm he was buried in a throng of shouting bodies. Suddenly the crowd was a pack of frenzied beasts fighting and squabbling. Rachel cried out and pulled close to Iluin, who watched with a kind of saddened disdain as the youth's crippled foot disappeared under a mat of muddy fur and flesh. The shouts drowned out shrieks from below. A flash of silver arced up from the pile and landed at the feet of what Rachel had thought to be a parent. Smarter, that one fled as the mob attacked the ground where the coin fell.
           Iluin turned back and craned her head to stare straight at Rachel. Around their mount was like the eye of a hurricane; the people of the slums were not foolish enough to attack. Iluin didn't appear particularly scornful of her. No, she stared at Rachel with that soft gaze that looked for a reaction, as if wondering if Rachel even understood what she'd done.
           "No," she answered breathlessly. She felt her face tingling, sweating. "I… Iluin! No!" That - that wasn't supposed to happen! "Th- this: why?" Iluin stared at her for a moment, then turned to the writhing mass below them. She hissed softly.
           "Hai. Go." And she snapped the beast's reigns, moving them out of the commotion, leaving the impoverished men and women to squabble behind them. Rachel bit her lip and held on as her companion moved them safely away. Animals… no. No, they were desperate. She'd gotten someone killed, gotten a child beaten to death by a mob chasing after one stupid slip of metal. Oh, god. That was murder. An act of charity in a world so alien that it twisted the offering into something unthinkable.
           "God," she mumbled into her friend's neck. She hadn't meant to! "Oh, god. Oh… oh, god." And in Iluin's alien tongue, "I… not know, Iluin! I not know! I friend, not hurt! I…. I-I…." Oh, hell. She couldn't even find the words. The mount slowed, then came to a stop amongst the field of shacks and weeds. Mud squelched under the beast's paws, moved in sheets as worn pads bore their ton of weight into the ground. Behind them the shouts were dying. God, dying. And it was all grey, from the veins of clay in the dirt to Iluin's sweeping cloak to the harsh monochrome expanse above them. Rachel felt cold, numb, and surreal. Leather squealed as Iluin turned around halfway in the saddle and swung her arm over Rachel's head to face her. There was that seeking look from her again, but this time Iluin's ears wilted.
           "Hai, Rahkl. Friend." Even the cat stopped then, looking for a way to explain what she felt with the limited vocabulary they shared. More aliens appeared from their homes, forming a new crowd, but she ignored them. Iluin thought for a minute, her brow furrowing in concentration. It was hard to imagine what was going on behind those inscrutably green eyes, or what she was thinking when she wrinkled her thin black lips and bared the slightest bit of fangs. She stared down at Rachel's stomach, unwilling to meet her eyes, then finally rumbled a gusty sigh and settled for a simple "Friend."
           It was Rachel's turn to be speechless, then; she shuddered. Leathery pads touched her face, devoid of even the telltale pinpricks of claws, drew down to hold her jaw. Rachel closed her eyes as shook as two soft, alien thumbs pressed under her chin, and then one hand was gone, returned to loosely grip the back of her head and pull her down into a bed of rough cloth and soft, wispy fur. One hand stayed at the nape of her neck, pressing her into the soft musky warmth of Iluin's neck. She held to Iluin's thick shoulders, digging nails into furry knots of muscle. There was no complaint, just a throaty rumble, a warm hand at her back, and a soft pressure holding her face into waiting fur. There must have been another crowd around them then, all staring, but she couldn't dredge up enough vanity to care. Iluin didn't move or speak until Rachel let go and sagged into her pelt with harsh, ragged breaths.
           Then that same hand grabbed at the loose flesh of her neck like a scruff and gently pulled her upright. Iluin's ears were back. She shrugged out of her cloak and then wrapped it around Rachel. A concerned feline face stared at her breast as furry hands fiddled with the cloak's brooch, securing the cloak and then tugging it around her. Iluin touched the upset strands of fur on her chest and neck and her ears twitched. "Wet," she noted. Rachel wiped her eyes and forced a smile, a fake, shallow smile.
           "I'm sorry, Iluin."
           "No. I'm friend," the cat rumbled. A bit of the sentiment was lost in the angry yowls and hisses of Iluin's language. More, though, was lost in the bleakness of life around her. Rachel slumped in the saddle, but her friend hooked a claw under her jaw and made her look upward. Iluin was giving her an expression about as distraught as she'd ever seen. "Hurts?" Iluin asked softly. It wasn't really a question. She threw a hand back towards the road where the child had been mauled. "They are… hrrrn, they…" All around them cats shuffled and backed away at the exchange. Rachel didn't really notice; she felt cold. "Dangerous. They have no food, no… Hai!" Their steed shifted as Iluin snarled, teeth out and glinting in the light of clouded late afternoon sun. It was hard to keep from being frightened to death by that noise, but even fear took her mind off what she'd done. "Hai, no words. Rahkl, be fine. Not hurt. They not hurt. They not…" Iluin made a strangled, exasperated noise, then sighed again. "I have the words. You don't. You be fine, Rahkl; not hurt. Please?" Rachel stared hollowly at the cat, understanding the words but missing the meaning. Did Iluin think that killing that child had been okay? Were they like the ancient India's untouchables, no better than meat and about as available? Or maybe it was something else; she hoped so. She shuddered and put a hand up to her forehead.
           "Ugh… not be fine. I try do." Iluin stared at her, patted her cheek, and pushed herself back to face the reigns. She'd tried, but it hadn't helped much. There was a cold metal lump in Rachel's stomach and it wasn't going anywhere. God… she'd killed.
          

---v---

          The scenery was much the same as they approached the walls, identical but for the great sandstone structure that grew as they neared it. Walls of roughly hewn red stone reached twenty, thirty, perhaps even forty feet high in the air, and though they were in some places cracked or blackened and smudged with dirt, they were still quite imposing. Rachel swallowed heavily and unconsciously ducked, pressing into Iluin's spine for a moment or two before realizing what she was doing. It took them a few seconds to cross under the arch; the wall had to be three or four meters thick. Then suddenly they were past it and inside the city.
           Rachel thought she was going to drown.
           There were hundreds of Iluin's kind, clusters and crowds and pairs, all moving every way at once. Merchants, she belatedly realized, and for the moment traded fear and guilt for innocent curiosity. The individual differences were stunning. Pelts: brown and gold and red and grey and every shade in between, with dapples and spots and stripes and blotches of furry color, with dyes of unlikely, clashing colors, with alien characters and sigils shaved in right down to the skin, with odd patterns brushed into the fur so that they looked like walking, talking, tufted-eared crop circles. Their clothing was no better; all had kilts, breeches, or pants, but from that their attire varied wildly, and came in hues from garish oranges and piercing greens to drab browns and midnight blacks. She and Iluin were not the only ones on beast-things - riders were everywhere, ambling through streets tiled with white and orange sandstone, looking about the many stalls where cats hawked their goods, and generally trying to keep their mounts from stepping on the pedestrians who crowded through the roads and came dangerously close to being gored or stamped underfoot. Incense burning in bowls every twenty feet gave off a misty haze of sickly sweet smoke that mostly blanketed out the stench of shit and rotting trash. Apparently the limit of their central sanitation system was a network grooves in the sides of the street that ran downhill and into small tunnels through the outer wall. Out the outer wall and into the slums…. Shops and stalls lined the street-sides, offering passerby glass flasks with a myriad of liquids, slabs of meat, weapons, cloth, and countless other trinkets. All shouting, all waving their hands - Rachel felt woozy.
           As they moved through the crowds, whole groups of aliens turned to look at her and snarl or exclaim their surprise and disgust. Ears fell in radial ripples around them as though she'd been a naked-hided stone tossed into a furry pond. Pearly whites were bared on dozens of faces. Brows furrowed and no small number of agitated howls went up. She'd been expecting ignored-animal status.
           Several individuals pushed through the general mass of bodies and yelled at Iluin, hissing and spitting unintelligibly alien messages. Iluin snarled back and reached for the polearm-sized blade she'd left strapped to the beast's pack. That got them a wider berth. "Hai, al'ylra aetch has'yah!" Iluin yelled at them, then unceremoniously snapped the reins of their beast and began plowing a way down the street, seemingly unconcerned with trampling the local citizens. She held onto Iluin uneasily.
           Buildings… the buildings were wrong. Rachel couldn't put her finger on it, but something just felt wrong about them. Not enough right angles: that could've been it. Curves and triangles featured prominently. The building materials were nothing special - whitewashed brick and well-lacquered wood with either thatched roofs or sheets of red tile. Somehow, though, the way it was all put together jarred with her human sensibilities. Only Escher would have felt at home there.
           Escher! An artistic madman: poor choice for an analogy. Did that make Iluin and her kind crazy, or just alien? Conversely, if they were suddenly the norm, was she crazy? Or had she been insane to begin with? Images of a child being torn to shreds by a starving mob over a little piece of metal… she shuddered. And in front of her Iluin rode on, ears perked, the whole murderous episode already forgotten. Was this now the psychological standard, the moral status quo? Not that Rachel had been particularly moral herself back home, but what she'd seen earlier had just been barbaric…
           Home. That hurt too, though not in the same way. The opportunity of a lifetime, and now all the glory she might've had was dashed because no one would ever know where she'd gone or what she'd done. More, there'd be no more true discovery to sate her appetite with. No more quark-determinant microscopes, no more fusion power, no more fast cars and fast food, no more poorly researched sci-fi movies or nights spent gazing at the fish in the pet store because it was the only entertainment she could afford. No more asinine deans or naive grad students, no more papers to read or to write or to proof, no more too-sweet lemonade in the south faculty lounge, no more lunches spent on the chem. building's manicured lawn, informally tutoring circles of worshipful underclassmen as the sun warmed her back. No more October walks along fog-grey shorelines, no more days spent snowed in at the labs, playing chess with the janitor, who was the only other soul who ever stayed overnight, and no more quiet office room chats with brilliant students who came to her for lack of an Oracle, wanting answers for questions that no one before had ever thought to ask. All gone, all of it.
           Iluin didn't protest when Rachel burrowed into her back and dampened that silky white pelt with tears.
          

---v---

           Fool, a little voice in her head cried out. Fool, fool, fool. It'd been far too early to take her charge into town. Rahkl had calmed down a bit, though, or at least had stopped leaking. Obviously her partner needed to adjust to the world. Now the woman was back in control of her bodily functions, if a bit red in the eyes. Iluin kept a hand around her friend's waist and hoped that the composure would last. Made her wonder where Rahkl had really come from when she'd ridden in on that fiery, flying siege machine.
           Maybe Rahkl was unsettled by the confusion. She was, after all, suddenly on foot, towing her gun and her pack down a street where the people around her didn't think much of brushing against each other. Iluin kept them at bay for the most part, but she couldn't do anything about the growls and derisive jeers. Staying in the bushes was clearly an option out of paw. There'd been good reason to switch to footpad: Rahkl was simply too visible when riding loftily above the clouds. Regrettable that she'd only managed to get six silvers for the beast, but it was nonetheless six silvers more than she'd paid for it. Now Rahkl was giving her anxious, weary looks as they hauled their belongings past throngs of gaily-colored craftsmen and traders.
           "Hai, Rahkl, in here," she murmured, pulling her furless friend under the awnings of the curb and through the cloth draperies of an informal door. Incense hung heavily inside, permeating the bolts of cloth strewn about the room. From the shadows she could pick out a loom, a thread-maker's wheel, barrels of spun yarn in varying qualities of fineness, needle sets, pins, scissors, knives, thin chain link sheets: all the trappings of a modern tailor. In the far corner a portly old man sat at his desk, scrawling notes into a well-worn leather notebook. Pale yellow light flickered at his side from a single white candle in a golden glass flameguard. He looked up at the brushing aside of his entranceway's cloth and smiled, then frowned as he saw Rahkl behind her. With a scrabbling of claws on polished stone he got to his feet, revealing splotches of black on an otherwise grey pelt, dappled in a loose line that ran from under his chin into the neck of his shirt. At first the man looked indignant, but his nostrils flared and his stance grew less rigid as he saw the great sword she'd left strapped at her back. Iluin doubted that her arm would reach high enough to draw the damned thing, but it had always been there more for inspiring terror than for than actual use.
           "Excuse me, miss, but I don't al-allow… er, that is… please, can you leave your animal outside?" Iluin grinned, but restrained herself. No sense in spooking him.
           "Rahkl'd be all claws if she'd understood that." Then she frowned. "Hai, well, and if she had claws. You're a tailor, fa?"
           "Fa," he said cautiously, moving back towards the wall. "Hai, stranger, I may look alone, but I have friends out there. One shout and -"
           "Nothing like that," Iluin soothed. "I need clothes for myself and my…" She eyed Rahkl and favored her with a small smile. "Hrrrn, for my animal." The elderly man just blinked.
           "What? You want clothes? For, f-for…" he gestured helplessly at Rahkl. "For that?"
           "You do understand, then." Rahkl watched the entire exchange and then opened her mouth to speak, but Iluin deftly put a paw over it and held her friend's overly shortened muzzle shut. The tailor looked confused and mildly upset.
           "I'm sorry, miss, you want me to make clothes for that? What is it?"
           "I'm not sure myself," Iluin admitted. Always hide a truth inside a lie, her elder sher'amn sisters had once said. Makes the whole package more palatable. "I found her south of here. Some kind of domesticated herd animal from the tropics, I'd say. Come, have a look. She's safe around people." Mentally Iluin was switching between mirth and a bit of embarrassed guilt. Gods knew what Rahkl would deign fit to say if she understood.
           The tailor shifted his weight from foot to foot as if trying to decide whether or not to bolt. Finally he stepped away from his desk and padded very slowly towards Rahkl. "she's safe," Iluin repeated. The man got almost within arm's reach of her companion, then sort of orbited nervously.
           "That clothing is very odd, and your beast's figure is all wrong. Its proportions are off… Hrrn. It looks dangerous. Miss, I'd really prefer that you tie it up." She looked from him to Rahkl and then back.
           "I don't think that's necessary."
           "But I'd need to measure," he protested. His ears set back and his brow furrowed anxiously. "I'd need to… gah, I'd need to touch it."
           "You can touch her, just be gentle - no claws. And stay away from her chest. She doesn't like to be touched much there." The tailor let out a distressed hiss and shuffled backward, then performed his odd foot sway again. He kept moving his eyes from Rahkl's gangly legs to her chest and face.
           "I can see why," he offered awkwardly. Iluin hissed at that. "N-not that I mean anything by that. Yes, you're quite right, miss. Anything you want I can do." Iluin looked at him critically.
           "Hai, go on. She'll let you touch her. Doesn't even have pointed teeth."
           Rahkl grimaced in a comical mirror of the tailor's ears. Both seemed equally squeamish toward one another. With great trepidation the tailor approached and Iluin saw her companion stiffen. "Rahkl," she growled in a warning tone, but Rahkl didn't move at all. She suffered the strange hrasi's grip; Iluin thought her friend bore it rather well.
           "So fine," the tailor breathed after a moment. He'd grabbed at Rahkl's collar and was rubbing a fold of the shirt material between his fingers. "I've never seen a weave like this before. I'd need a month to make a single hand-length of fabric this tightly woven. Hai, and the material… It's like silk, but stronger and finer than anything you'd get from a silk tree orchard." Typical artisan - absorbed solely by his craft. Then he seemed to smile a bit, as if realizing that he might enjoy himself. "This could be a challenge. It'll be interesting, a nice change in the hunt…" He blinked and sobered, ears twitching down even further. "Hrrn, but I'll need exact measurements. Hai, the top: do you think you could convince this creature of yours to take it off?"
           That took a while. Rahkl had a lot to say about why she wasn't surrendering the shirt. This time, however, the language barrier and Rahkl's agreed-upon silence worked to Iluin's advantage, and after a few bouts of failed argument the item in question was laid out in the tailor's lap. Rahkl herself sat indignantly between spools of yarn and loose sheets of fabric, knees tucked up and grey cloak draped about her. The tailor had wanted the rest of Rahkl's foreign garb, but Iluin was only willing to distress her bond-partner so much.
           Then there were the measurements. The tailor was too skittish to put his hands on Rahkl and get the lengths he needed, and every time the fool man managed to find enough courage to do so Rahkl balked at being touched. Finally she'd had enough of their delaying. There were other things to do. Iluin snarled and whirled around to bare fangs at a customer who warily put his head through the cloth doorway, then spun on back her heel to round on the Rahkl, who was doing her best to inconspicuously lean away from the tailor's measuring stick.
           "Hai, tailor," she growled, and the man turned around with one ear pricked. "Do me. This is taking too long." The man nodded and gathered up the assortment of measuring sticks at his feet, bundling them up in a spare piece of coarse blue cloth and moving them nearer. He'd taken his notebook and set it out to a blank page when attempting to measure Rahkl, but now deemed the probability of writing something down high enough to actually fetch his quill and ink. Rahkl watched uneasily as the tailor set various length-sticks against Iluin's back and arms to find her body's proportions, then laid his palms against her back and legs to find and sketch the correct contours of her frame. The whole festering process took no more than three minutes.
           Thankfully, it proved enough. After Iluin was finished it really took very little cajoling to convince Rahkl to do the same. She stood there, wavering and shivering through the whole thing, looking as though she'd much rather be eaten than measured. To be fair, Rahkl was much nuder than any hrasi could ever be. There was no subtlety to her body's design and no pelt of any sort, just a mane that looked absurd without the rest of a proper coat to go with it. One could see every group of muscle in her figure so well that it'd hardly be more informative to flay away the skin and bare them. Still, her overreaction was just that, and frustratingly so.
           "I've got the dimensions," the tailor said after a wait twice as long as it should've been. Iluin nodded curtly and flicked an ear towards her bond-partner, who was struggling with the left leg of her pants.
           "You can do it?"
           "Fa. You tell me what you want, I tell you the price, and if we agree I'll start working. I can do anything for you." She nodded gratefully and patted the old man's cheek. His ears perked and he straightened up, hopelessly trying to match her stature: it was the typical male response. He had no idea who'd just gifted him a rare token of affection.
           "My thanks. For myself I need something vaguely fashionable, but nondescript. Something that'll go well with that grey cloak. Perhaps, oh, shin-length breeches and a shirt from the softest fabric you have. For my animal… something that's soft and very warm. Full-length pants, breeches, a shirt, and a thicker cloak." She scowled at Rahkl's frail form. "Ah, could you try to copy her chest piece? And perhaps feet coverings too? I don't think boots alone are going to be warm enough." And as an afterthought, "Hai, colors. White, gold, green, or brown. Nothing bright. And I'll want to pick them up later today." That made him gape.
           "F-f-fa… Ah, miss? That's a lot to do before nightfall. I'd have to bring in my wife and daughters to finish it. Especially because it's mostly making clothes for an animal, it'll be hard to do, and harder to do well. Hai…" Iluin blinked. She knew this game.
           "And hard means expensive. So how many marks will it be to have it all done by dusk?" He considered that, numbers running through his head faster than kiirin on a chase.
           "Hrrn. Not marks, miss. Silvers at least. I'll have to leave and find my three best cloth workers to do this. I could do it for… hrrn… six hundred marks." Iluin's ears went flat.
           "Hai, that's theft! Two hundred."
           "Five."
           "Three!"
           "Four," the tailor said with unarguable finality. Iluin stared at him, then sighed.
           "I sold a mah'sur for a hundred and twenty marks today, and now I'm paying four hundred for two sets of clothes. Hai…"
           "I'll make sure they're done superbly," he offered, then patted her shoulder with a smile. Muscles tensed involuntarily, but she was focused enough not to kill him. Gods no, Iluin wasn't going to hurt the man. She wasn't about to go through that measurement process again.
          

---v---

          There was more to do; as soon as Rahkl had gotten her clothes on and become reasonable they were back out on the street.
           Being a wandering fighter didn't promise much of a salary, but early on she noticed a thief working his way through the crowded boulevard. She and Rahkl were far out of sight before the young man realized that someone had unburdened him just as kindly as he'd been in lightening others' loads throughout the morning. Even considering the town's place as a trade node, the youth's catch was generous: a pawful of gold and silver that counted out to nearly six thousand marks. Hai, so much for sher'amn nobility…
           The main problem Iluin encountered was that of finding what she wanted. Everything was out of place; the city's planners hadn't given much thought to placing storefronts, and the shops she did find were infuriatingly eclectic. The simple things were easiest: boiled bandages, a new whetstone, a bag for Rahkl that wasn't shiny silver. However, the town's goods availability went ragged as soon as Iluin tried for anything even remotely uncommon. For example: soap. Now, one might reasonably consider that a town of a cramped several thousand, perhaps even ten thousand if the outlying slums were included, might value sanitation and personal hygiene, but there was not so much as a fleeting scent of soap throughout the whole community. Of course, when she'd gone looking for soft brushes that'd be kinder to Rahkl's hide, fa, they had those.
           Perhaps the worst was the half-day search for children's primers. Iluin didn't really expect a bookstore; the only one she'd ever been to was in Sasako, the historic capital and cultural seat of Yoichi province, and that one had catered solely to nobles from foreign lands who wished to learn Yoichi history. Of course this scatterbrained burg had three and (logically) none of them had exactly what she wanted. Iluin had wandered for a few hours looking for a miracle, perhaps a teacher selling off unusable texts or simply abandoning the profession. There were no such individuals. In the final reckoning of things she'd been forced to settle for a text on some sort of complicated mathematics, a tattered copy of S'jet Yoichi's rather ruthless 'Assassin's Manual', and a volume of some obscure poet that two of the three store owners had recommended as simple and naturalistic. Two of the purchases she had slight reservations about, but the manual she'd grown up reading. Perverse, yes, but not nearly as much so as some of the choicer bits of her childhood. Being reared to be a killer was a considerably different from being reared to be farmer or smith.
           Rahkl bore the whole adventure about as well as could be reasonably expected of her. Mostly she acted frightened, and was apparently not accustomed to walking for any great length of time. Twice Iluin thought she saw someone following them, and twice she pulled insistently at Rahkl's arm until the woman relented and they dodged together through hazy rows of alley markets until the Iluin's premonitions receded. She neither saw nor heard anything suspicious afterward. Lunch was milk with ice and two slabs of burnt geri meat eaten as they walked in search of medicines. The meat was burnt partl

because the vendor sold the cuts as failures more cheaply but mostly because Rahkl refused to have her meat cooked any less thoroughly.
           More walking then, strolling through the bazaar in search of a few of the rarer coagulants and perhaps some mold cultures to make plague-ward with. A few desert traders had collected in the darker parts of those less-used pathways; they were Alman'queda, a wily people with a culture that'd survived unchanged for centuries, remaining constant through the senseless turmoil that'd held the whole race firmly in squalor for over half a millennia. They were distinguishable by their short desert pelts and their garishly bright, billowing clothing. Most likely they were there for an exchange of goods; they cloistered around a few rugs spread over the cobbled street, the fine sheets of silk covered with exotic wares. Each passerby received a long stare and the high-pitched clinking of jeweled and metal earrings as the traders' ears passed their judgements. Rahkl got a stifled chorus of chimes as the whole lot of them curled their ears down against their skulls, but Iluin waved their questions away with half-truths and few answers and flatly refused a pair of offers to sell her bond-partner. They had what she'd wanted, though, as well as a few of the more exotic mold strains from the far southeast, strains of questionable legality. She bought it all.
           The sun was swollen crimson by the time they returned for the clothing. It suffused color throughout the sky, sending out bands that went orange, then pink, and finally a warmly glowing yellow. The shadows grew longer as Iluin scoured the town for a room, her partner leaning heavily on her, heaving with a dry pant and limping a bit. The fires in the streets' incense bowls played games with the dark, sending wisps of light against yellow-white walls in a way that somehow reminded her of sunbeams on water. Little nika came out to hunt bugs, flitting about them in their aerial caprices and daring even to harry Iluin herself, snapping at the chitinous eight-legged nuisances that the involuntary flicks of her ears had previously been dealing with. Iluin lazily raised a hand, then abruptly snapped at one that was particularly overzealous and plucked it out of the air. Rahkl gaped as Iluin presented the squirming, scaly little thing to her, watching as the nika whipped its tail impotently against her partner's arm. Iluin grinned and turned it over, exposing a patch of thin white belly scales. She was careful not to damage the beast's iridescent wing webs as she folded them against its body. Rahkl babbled something incomprehensible, but her tone conveyed the message well enough, and she gasped ever so slightly as she gingerly received the squirming flyer.
           "Soft," she exclaimed, cradling the tiny critter and stroking its underside. They were, in an odd way. Smooth would have been a better description, but she wasn't sure Rahkl knew smooth. It wasn't the kind of nika she was used to; this far north the more common greens began to thin out from the cold, slowly being replaced by ever-larger concentrations of their smaller and hardier brown cousins. Even for a brown the one Iluin had caught was a runt, fitting entirely in Rahkl's delicately cupped palms. It sat there, either stunned or confused, then got its bearings and hopped into the air, spreading its wings and alighting back into the chase. Rahkl turned to her and smiled in her unassuming Rahkl way. "Thank you," she said softly. Iluin quickly touched a silencing paw to her lips lest someone overhear, but the thought was there. The thought was there.
           And much later at night, while Iluin lounged on their pallet, Rahkl stood at the window of their third floor room and watched two smears of moonlight trace their paths across a dark bowl of star-lit clouds. Inscrutable Rahkl with her immobile ears and porcelain features was suddenly very hrasi in her mood and posture. Iluin remembered that, remembered her long nights spent staring through shuttered windows at the stars. She sat up and glided to her partner's side, brushing at that ridiculous female mane that poured to paper-thin skin on fragile shoulders like a waterfall of light.
           For the first time Rahkl didn't flinch, didn't protest, didn't react at all: she stared up at the two blurry orbs above them with a pained expression. Only one thing was on Rahkl's mind and it was so clear it hurt. She was standing at the window thinking about the child from the morning, perhaps one of two or three people still grieving, still lamenting and shaking over a situation that was possibly everyone's fault but her own. Somehow Iluin sensed that her bond-partner felt higher than the world around her: she had a naïve aura about her, a foolish confidence, and she bore so many inventions and tricks that Iluin couldn't keep from feeling like the savage.
           She wanted to pull Rahkl into her arms and soothe her friend's tired shivers, wanted to explain it all, but they didn't have enough words. There simply wasn't any way to say "They're too far for one woman to fix," or "It wasn't you who were at fault, but the aristocrats who create such places" when all the words at your disposal couldn't carry you much farther than 'food', 'safe', 'bad', and 'thank you'. No, she couldn't help her that way. Instead she wrapped an arm around her friend's shoulder and pulled lightly, gently prying Rahkl away from the window. The expression there was one of quiet, resigned sorrow,
           "Hai, Rahkl. Friend, ah?" And the furless woman shuddered.
           "Iluin, that..." Rahkl pointed out the window and then waved her hand next to her chest, comparing herself to a child's height. "I that. I do that. Iluin, I do that!"
           "No," Iluin purred softly, "not your fault. Don't worry." She leaned forward and licked a spot of grime from Rahkl's cheek before switching back to words her bond-partner knew. "You didn't do that. I, hear? Me. And them. Not you." She sighed when Rahkl pulled away and her eyes began leaking again. "Hai… don't do that," she gently murred, rasping out her tongue to wipe those droplets away. Tasted like salt.
           "Iluin," her partner managed to cough, "I… not that. All - all this." Another expansive gesture. "All dangerous. All bad. Not…" she trailed off, even farther from the right words than Iluin, and leaned against the wood and the smooth stone wall of their ill-lit room, shaking and holding her head. "Hurts," she mumbled. "All this."
           "Not the world you're accustomed to, hrrn?" Iluin took those fragile wrists into her hands and put Rahkl's arms back down to her sides. Faint little pulses ran through those two junctions of veins, more prominent than anything one might feel through thick hrasi hide. The feeling was terrifying, as though she were holding eggshells, as through might break them with a stray clawtip. Rahkl looked up at her with a haggard expression. Two small water lines from eyes to jaw marred her features and her too-bright mane clung to her cheeks. It was almost easy to forget that she was a person. "Hai," Iluin quietly reprimanded her. She drew a single bared claw across Rahkl's damp cheek. "Stop that. You're with me; it's safe. I'm your friend."
           "No," Rahkl moaned softly. "Not you." A moment of soft whimpering, then, when Iluin opened her mouth, "No, quiet. Be quiet. It… I…" And Rahkl brushed past her to sit on the pallet and untangle her thoughts. Iluin waited patiently, watching silently, until Rahkl sucked in a deep breath and tried again with a steadier voice. "All this hurts. All not safe. You safe, understand? You friend. All-not-Iluin is not safe. Is bad." Rahkl tugged at her collar, then mimicked pulling it off. "That? Bad." Then she grimaced and tossed an imaginary coin to the floor. "That? That I bad. I do. You say not? I say I not understand. That bad, that dangerous. Understand? I… I not understand you, not understand all, I do that: do bad. I not understand, I not safe you, not safe them." Then she let her neck go lax and dropped her head. "You not understand…. I dangerous."
           Iluin blinked. Her partner was crazed. Rahkl didn't understand hrasi and thought it made her dangerous? Then there was something about the tailor. Different customs, maybe, perhaps even customs from a different world. Everything different, everything changed with the flick of an ear. She tried to imagine being Rahkl in that shop, nearly being forced to do something that was either terrifying, mortifying, or both. She imagined pushing away at night because sleep was somehow easier done alone, imagined what it must have felt like to be pinned down by a grotesque figure with twice her strength who had claws and fangs and made her feel like prey, who rested a muzzle of too-sharp teeth at her neck every night and ignored protest, who growled and pawed at her in its sleep and might accidentally slit her throat if it sneezed. She imagined that person being her one friend, imagined moving through a sea of unfriendly Rahkls whose expressions all turned to sneers of disgust as they saw her. She imagined acting in sympathy towards a Rahkl-child and watching it be devoured by a barbaric mob, horrified and not understanding the savagery she'd caused, or even why she'd caused it. Gods… She imagined how little a salve it'd be to be told that such a murder wasn't her fault.
           Iluin crossed what little distance remained between them and sat next to her friend, then laid an arm around her companion's back. Hai, what was she supposed to do? She grinned inwardly at an imagined possibility. 'Hai, Rahkl, I know that empathy isn't what you'd guess to be my sharpest claw… actually, my claws are probably my sharpest claw…'
           "Rahkl?" she asked softly. A beleaguered face turned to her and Iluin pushed herself farther back onto the makeshift mattress. "Come here, Rahkl," she purred gently, patting her thigh in the same come-hither gesture one might use on a child.
           Blankets lay in a disheveled pile against the wall, supposedly washed since the last guests had used them. Iluin had her doubts, but nonetheless picked at them for the softest one and draped it over her lap. Rahkl stared at her and blinked furiously, wiping at her eyes. "I understand, Rahkl," she said very softly. "I understand. Come here."
           Rahkl went, sliding her legs onto the pallet and throwing weak arms about Iluin's chest, burying her head into Iluin's belly fur and making harsh noises: not the usual snuffling but just a series of ragged breaths. Iluin held her there as she had done before and waited until her friend quieted, stroking that pretty mane with claws pulled. Such a fragile person. "Friend," Iluin provided, offering the one shelter-in-storm that she could. It didn't seem to have much effect.
           As the moonlight from the window waned, her charge slowly turned to a heaving body in shades of grey. Rahkl's shirt folded and straightened with every breath, a dance of cloth across her back. She didn't speak a word or pull away as Iluin very gently laid her on the pallet. She just looked tired, with something in her eyes as though she wanted to say, '"Go ahead, do anything you want. I don't care anymore". But Iluin didn't bother her companion with unwanted affection, just shifted under her, rolled her atop, and then pulled the blanket over them both. Rahkl dug her arms under Iluin and hugged her, burrowing into the hollow of her neck.
           Iluin thought they'd fall asleep then, but after a moment Rahkl seemed to reconsider and pulled her head back. They looked at each other in the falling light, Iluin waiting patiently and Rahkl's mood undivinable as ever. Crinkles appeared in Rahkl's pale brow as she frowned and then it was Iluin's turn to rear back as her partner craned her neck forward and touched her lips to the pad of Iluin's nose, there and then gone before Iluin could finish her breath.
           "I'm sorry."
           Iluin wanted to say something, but Rahkl was already nuzzling herself a spot back at her neck. Instead she purred throatily and put her own arms at Rahkl's back, squeezing her friend closer and arching her spine as Rahkl did the same. The last thought she had before drifting away was one of warmth, calm, and long-missing contentment.