Chương 5: Rightfully Hers

She had been up for a while. Long enough to circle the ledge twice over, nose into every crack in the stone she hadn't bothered with the night before. Long enough to bat a loose pebble across the floor and chase it down twice, just to feel her own legs answer that fast. Long enough to sit very still and listen to her own heartbeat, steady and quick, nothing dragging behind it the way it used to. She felt young. Not new, not different, just young, the way she hadn't felt in longer than she could count.

It was hard to sit still with that feeling in her. The climb up went easier than the jump down had. She found the gap in the rusted grate on the first try. No circling. No doubling back. Her claws caught stone she couldn't see and held there without slipping. When a ledge crumbled under one paw, she was already past it, moving before her body had time to fall. She still couldn't see. It just didn't matter anymore. At the top she pushed her head through the gap and the city hit her all at once. Woodsmoke.

Wet stone drying in the sun. Someone's bread, burnt at the edges. Under all of it: horses, unwashed wool, the river a few streets over. Faint, but steady. She'd never noticed how loud a city smelled until she'd spent a stretch of time somewhere with almost nothing to smell at all. The light was wrong for morning. Low and orange, sliding toward evening. She sat at the mouth of the grate a moment, trying to work out how long that made it. She couldn't tell. Longer than a day. Maybe two.

She shook the last of the tunnel off her fur and started walking. The streets felt strange under her paws. It wasn't just her new body. She'd been out here before, just never often, never for long. Outside had never been safe the way the guild was safe, and she'd always known better than to push her luck with it. Now she was moving through it fast, and she barely touched a paw down before she knew what was under it, smooth stone or cracked, dry or slick. A cart rounded a corner too fast.

She was already three lengths clear of it, watching from a doorway, without having thought about moving at all. The guild yard, when she reached it, was not the yard she'd left. Packs sat lined against the wall by the door, more of them than she'd ever seen out at once. Someone had a whetstone going, the scrape of it steady under everything else. Voices carried from inside, quick and clipped, too busy to slow down for anything. Nobody was laughing, not the way they usually did.

She noticed that before she noticed much else. She crossed the yard low, same as always, and nobody saw her at all. That struck her as strange, and then it didn't. Nobody had looked up when she left, either. As long as she could remember being here, she'd never once been the thing anyone had to go looking for. The kitchen door stood open. She slipped through it into the smell of stew and old smoke, warm and familiar enough that something in her chest let go before she'd even decided to let it.

"Amber?" Flint was across the room, a coil of rope half over one shoulder, and his voice cracked right in the middle of her name, like he wasn't sure he could finish it. She looked up at him and meowed, the kind of sound she never usually bothered making at anyone. Flint went still for half a second. Then he was down on one knee, the rope forgotten on the floor beside him, hands moving over her, quick and careful.

"Where have you been." He kept his voice down, but it came out uneven, like he had to hold it there on purpose.

"I walked half this city calling your name." If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. She headbutted his knee. That got a short laugh out of him, more relief than humor.

"There she is." He picked her up, both arms, and held on. She let him. She pressed her head under his jaw and meowed again, softer, into his neck.

"You smell like the sewers," he muttered into her fur.

"I don't even want to know." A short breath, most of the tension going out of it.

"You're here. That's the part that matters." She didn't understand most of what he'd said. She understood the shake still left in his hands, and that he wasn't putting her down, and that was enough to be going on with.

"Flint?" Garr's voice from the doorway, low, and then nothing for a second while he took in what he was looking at. A grown man, holding a cat like he didn't want to put her down.

"She came back," Flint said, and didn't let go. Garr crossed the kitchen, slower than usual. He stopped in front of Flint and looked at her a long moment, quiet.

"Let me see her." Flint handed her over. Garr patted her down, quick and practiced.

"Where'd you get to." Not really a question. She let him.

"She's more lively than usual," Flint said. Garr didn't answer right away. He set her down on the counter, careful, and stepped back half a pace, like he didn't know what to do with what he was looking at.

"You don't do that," he said, quiet, mostly to himself.

"You don't just go." She held his gaze and said nothing, because she had nothing to say. No words for the cold, or the room under the city, or what it took to get out of it. Whatever he saw in her face instead, it eased something in his shoulders, the same easing she'd felt in Flint's.

"Well." He rubbed a hand down his jaw. Some of the tired look from before was back, worn thinner now, with something new sitting under it.

"You're here. That'll have to do." Voices rose in the front hall, someone counting packs out loud, someone else arguing about rope length. Garr's head turned toward it before he could stop himself, half his mind already on the expedition even standing right here.

"Go on," Flint told him.

"I've got her." Garr went, but slower than he needed to, glancing back once like he wasn't fully sure she'd still be there when he turned again. The second Garr was gone, she slipped out of Flint's grip and dropped to the floor. He gave her a look, then shrugged and headed for the hall, and she followed, keeping pace at his heel. Thorn caught sight of her from over by the packs and nudged Flint with an elbow.

"She's back." Flint glanced down at her without breaking stride.

"Walked right back in on her own."

"There you go," Thorn said, louder now, enough that a few heads turned.

"Cat wanders off and finds her way home fine. Rest of you lot planning on managing that too, or just her?" A couple of them laughed. The new one, still fumbling with a pack strap by the door, looked over and grinned like he needed the excuse to.

"If the cat's got more sense than me, I'm in real trouble."

"Debatable, either way," Flint said. That got a real laugh out of the room, short but real, the first she'd heard since she got back. He set her on the beam over the flue, her spot, the warmest one in the building, and the old heat sank into her before she'd even settled her paws.

"Stay put this time," he said, and there was no real order in it. Just a man asking a cat for something he knew she couldn't promise. She watched him go back to his rope, coiling it slower now, glancing up at her every few loops, like he was making sure she hadn't slipped off again the second he looked away. From the beam she could see the whole hall. Packs. Maps. A sword laid out on a table, getting oiled by someone who kept checking the edge like it might have changed since he last looked.

Someone laughed at something across the room, low, and someone else told them to shut up and coil faster. A game of dice going in the corner, half-hearted, more for something to do with their hands than any real stake in it. She looked at the closest pack, out of habit more than anything, and something new happened. A faint light sat around the buckle, right where a hand had touched it. Thin and pale, fading even as she watched. She blinked and looked at the sword next.

The same light clung to the blade, brighter where the oil had just gone on, a color she'd never seen before. She looked down at her own paws. Nothing there. Just fur, just claws. No light at all. From up here she had the whole hall in view, same as she always did from this beam. Flint, still coiling that rope, glancing up every few loops. Garr, somewhere past the doorway, already back among his maps, but some part of him still on this beam. The dice game. The sword. The rope. The flue warm beneath her.

This was hers. Every inch of it, every person in it, hers and hers only, in a way nothing past that gate had ever been. [SYSTEM] Territory not registered. Register this location as: Territory? Mine. It's always been mine. [SYSTEM] Territory Registered: The Guild Hall. She put her head down on her paws and did not look away from any of it. It was hers. All of it. It always had been.