Chương 356: 8.1

A cat walks through a hall. Stepping exactly, no, precisely as it pleases—preferring to pass in twisting paths around every stabbing sunbeam. Another king sits fat and plump, awaiting in his throne, a different seat, and different place but stinking of the same as all do. Light paws on expensive stone, carved and set by skilled hands. Just like those craftsmen, the paws, tail and dark fur are forgotten almost before they are seen. A cat walks, but soon, it's not alone.

First, one, and then, around a corner two, then four, and now eight. Each taking separate ways, each taking separate halls, to different floors and different doors and separate rooms and individual occupants. And in days and hours and single blinks of warm gold eyes, each black cat endears itself to courtiers and servants. It's an old trick, a favorite game, a long-since-used-play. So few on the old streets and houses of Ghergeintat are foolish enough to treat cats with anything but caution and reverence now.

But strange cities, foreign and soft streets, foolish and blind prey wander here. Oblivious even to the beast at their roots which sups upon their grandeur. It felt good to play the game again, to trick prey as a mere cat, and be in many places and have no one even think to question how. Who don't even consider that a cat could be anywhere but where it was. Each assured in their own private place with only one. Just a single cat, Why would there be more? Why would there be dozens? Why would there be hundreds?

The voices speak in empty words, yet truer then they would to any lover. The hands stroke and press down fur and please it to its rumbles. The wall's deep stones shift and loom and lurk, with hunting stars beneath them. A cat walks and it sits and it plays and it listens and it is stroked. But most of all a cat is there. Slowly, but surely, always there. A kind of creeping that is done before gazing eyes. Hiding plainly while known.

A slinking done proud and openly, a cat is here and there and everywhere it needs to be. It sups on dozens of morsels, little bits of meat, favorite sweets, tasteless things it pretends to enjoy. It entertains a building, a court, a city with its own seeming enthrallment. Beyond the walls of the palace the cat is not black, it is brown, it is tan, it is mottled in splotches of black and white. It is young and it is old. Limber and limping.

But most of all a cat is there waiting and listening and everywhere a cat is stalking. A conversation murmurs, a secret is revealed, it slips free and into the ears of one ear and settles with its brethren into the avenue of a whole. Another stone to fill it, another brick to build a bridge. Words and moments, streets and pathways and stairs revealed. Thoughts and fancies into secrets and conspiracies. Knowing building up into rivers of rumor.

But more important than what was said, the currents of secret conversation were flowing through like rain pooling in gutters of a thought-forgotten-alley-way. What emerged was the shapes that were traced between. The secrets in the court joined the ones in the city. Over cobbles and between walls. In windows and through granaries. A cat hunted, a cat stood, a cat listened. Not always the same cat but always a cat. Soldiers speak to loved ones in the dark of the night and a cat is close to hear.

Women gossip as they spin and a cat watches for mice. Pieces of a city still obscured slowly revealed by the path of lies and truths. Slowly by pebbles and slabs of stone laying themselves down into slowly revealing the prey which was stalked. An offering of a slain rat is laid to rest at the east and west gate of the original city's walls, the oldest of its foundations, long since overgrown but still watched by the hungry stars in the city's bones; one hunter of man to another buying passage.

It was only right to pay respects to a god in his city, Especially if one is to hunt his streets and halls. A cat licks its paw, sitting aloof from a man that thought himself a king. Once again, like always, a not-quite-secret reveals itself. A figure is there, arriving unannounced, a thing of silk and baking heat. The blow of a desert sand that has ground cities to dust and sapped the water from a thousand throats.

That was one of the dreadfully dull roads laid out plainly for the cat, beneath attention and notice except here it was offering up something hidden. A cover for deeper, truer things. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. The words were spoken in a language that was not Courtly Magarskan but a rougher harsher dialect. And further hidden in the way that wind and sand and humming music in silk was so much more the voice as anything else."

Our answer to Murad the conqueror is still no." The man that thought himself a king glared.

"Truly? The Djinn Nation will offer no more support? Even though the sorcery of the northerners is now explicitly the cause of the Wallachians' rise to such power?" The figure spoke with a huskiness of smoke in the night on dunes. The creaking of leather and the booming of sand." The work of our feral and uncivilized peers in the north was in this case done well. The-blood-drinking count is well shackled to his vow."

A cat simply listened, unimpressed by its company and unnotable even by those that thought them a peer to it. Even by she who spoke in wind and silk and should have known what was listening to her. But such was the way of fools, Such as one who called himself king Murad the First.

"With all due respect to the honorable representative of the Djinn Nation, But the Wallachian horrors are not contained to their borders! I have missives of them bey-" A cat turned to watch, the pull in the air, the heat of the desert, the hiss of sand filled the voice with a dryness that could sap a lake dead." An eventuality made by your own hand, Murad the conqueror, do not think we do not have eyes upon what you have done. You will receive no more of our number for your endeavors with Wallachia.

This working is beneath us and the terms of our pact with Murad the Conqueror and his line." A set of avenues finally met together, their pavement sealing into a glorious whole. Framing a deeper and more hidden structure in the boroughs of the conspiracy all the better. The king, for his part, was silent before with an effort a cat could see pained misplaced pride, he dipped his head.

"Can I at least expect your support and presence here in court while the Wyrm Countess and the Northern Djinn attend?" The figure the cat noted was boring and unremarkable, for what would a cat care about a void where a woman should be, wrapped in wind and silk and shifting sand; All the more terribly dull for how openly it was known why she would be there.

A painfully obvious and unobfuscated fact of Magarska, of this palace, of this foolish man who thought himself greater than the hands that had built this palace for him. A cat turned its attention to a corner, to watch through a stone wall where a cat was enjoying a treat of salted fish, waiting for a most interesting stone to be added to another alley in the streets of conspiracy." For the wyrm, no. The Djinn Nation of the God-Given and our pact is clear. She is not among the forces we are compelled to engage.

But for Erhard the Iron Hand? I will attend and match him. This suits our terms." In an alley watching mice feast upon a rind of bread a cat scoffed in a way much unlike a cat. Audacity and pride of all these fools! The Djinn Nation of the God-Given? Twenty-Two wizards with five one might call weirds among them did not make a village, never mind a city, let alone a nation! The stars had also made it very clear to a cat that they were not the providence from which such as they were sprung.

"Very well, and there is still no enticement I can offer to call the God-Given into council for an amendment to the pact?" A cat in the room with the man-who-thought-himself-king began grooming its face furiously, paw over eyes and ears, licking over each paw for the feigned grime that might have been there, perfect fur made even more shining and pristine. The emptiness shaped like a woman with silk and sand wrapped around her stated as dry as any other of her utterances."

You've already spent the opportunity our pact allowed for this place in your line Murad the Conqueror, The next in your line may call on us and make an offering when he supplants you. No sooner." And then with the theatrics of many that a cat found very foolish, the void of a figure vanished in a flurry of wind, sand and whirling silk. The man who thought himself a king sighed in frustration and then turned towards a cat.

Golden eyes blinked in commiseration, and for an added hint of camaraderie a paw was shaken and a yowl of displeasure offered. Quite a lot of very fine dust had gotten onto the black fur as much as it had the glittering finery of the man who thought himself king. Laughter filled the throne room that had been occupied only by a cat, the king pretender, and the emptiness shaped like a woman.

Then the man allowed himself to stop pretending to be a king, and simply smile and make nonsense noises to the black furred figure who contemplated his offer with visible and poised disinterest. But eventually a cat, black furred and perhaps shaking to try and dislodge some unfortunate dust strutting across the fine black and white stone of the throne room floor. Then leaped upon the man to receive strokes of fur and scritching to ears.

And there was a companionable silence until the man who sighed in brief relief at finally forgetting to be a king began to speak of more secrets. A cat listened and rumbled in pleasure. The secrets, rumors and conspiracies weaving ever tighter together. Framing the hidden shape of its prey.