Imraldera swallowed and discovered her heart once more—it raced double-time. But when the child advanced, still moving on its hands and feet in a grotesque crouch, Imraldera advanced as well. She did not break its gaze. It snarled again, half lunging. She showed her teeth and took another step forward, still not shifting her eyes.
With a wolfish yell, the child barreled at her legs. Imraldera leapt to one side, caught it by the back of the neck, and pushed it firmly to the ground, holding it there. The child roared and howled and flailed its limbs, but though it struck Imraldera several times, she did not let go. She braced herself, pressing into the little one’s back as well as its neck. As it struggled, she clucked to it gently, sounds she had once made to her baby sister. The only sounds she could make, as natural and mild as wind-murmuring branches in a tree.
She could not guess how long it took; at last, however, the child ceased struggling. Sweat dripped down Imraldera’s forehead. But she did not move. The little urchin lay perfectly still for some time. Then softly, it moaned. The sound was not human. Imraldera hadn’t expected it to be.
Carefully, she loosened her grip and sat back. The child scrambled up, sitting cross-legged with its hands planted on the ground before it. It shook its head, and even this close, Imraldera could not guess its sex. It turned those snapping yellow eyes upon her, head tilted to one side.
Very slowly, Imraldera put out her hand, palm up. The child leaned forward and sniffed. Half expecting to be bitten, Imraldera leaned in and gently ran her hand along the top of the little one’s head, down around behind its ear. The child blinked. It pushed into her hand, still whining, still panting.
Then, much to Imraldera’s surprise, it crawled forward, climbed into her lap, and immediately fell asleep. Imraldera scarcely dared to breathe. She wrapped her arms around the scrawny limbs, feeling every bone in the creature’s body. Tears formed in her eyes and escaped in swift drops down her cheeks.
Poor thing, she thought, rocking gently to and fro, as a mother rocks her newborn. Poor, loveless little thing.
“I must be mistaken.”
Hri Sora stood transfixed upon her roof, watching the scene being played out on the streets of Etalpalli. She could not believe her eyes. The fire in her breast flared in her fury at such a picture of tenderness enacted in this place of death. She gnashed her teeth and tore at her own hair, leaving lines of blood streaming through the lank strands.
“I must be mistaken!” she raged. “How can a woman of the Land be . . . be compassionate to one of them? The little monsters! The little fiends! They have his eyes, yet she stretches out her hand to them?”
The fire boiled like sickness inside. She doubled over and vomited flame and ashes that fell from the rooftop down to the street below, burning the stones black.
15
IT SERVES ME RIGHT. I should never have become involved.”
Eanrin sat on the windowsill, looking up and down the street. Iubdan’s beard! He had turned his back for two minutes! Why were mortals incapable of staying put?
This was unfair, though he hated to admit it. Though the streets of Etalpalli had a tendency to look alike, he knew that this street was not the one he had left only a few moments before. Things had shifted when his back was turned. That, or the room he had just explored was some sort of portal, rather like the Faerie Paths themselves, only smaller and undirected. He should have guessed. He should have known when he sniffed those heavy shadows that they would cut him off from his companion.
What if something happened to her? A lonely mortal without guide or direction in this place of empty ghosts . . .
“Not your business!” he snapped at himself, leaping down into the street. “You should have left her by the River to begin with. How many times have I told you? Thank the Lights Above you lost the girl at last! Good riddance, I say!”
He started up the street, paused after two steps, turned, and started back down. Crouching and becoming a cat, he sniffed and strained his ears, searching. But the street was absolutely empty, without a trace of Imraldera. The girl had never been here.
“Dragon’s teeth,” the cat hissed. He sat and wrapped his tail tightly about his front paws, ears turned back and looking so much like horns that he could have been a fluffy orange devil. He closed his eyes the better to listen, the better to smell, the better to sense with that strange sixth sense of cats that would alert him to any other nearby soul.
But there was nothing.
“This is the way it will always be,” he growled, still with his eyes closed. “This is what you must expect when the Hound hunts. You’ll be driven to Paths you never chose, driven to duties you never wanted. And then, it will all fall apart about your ears! Give in once, and you’re doomed. Allow yourself to care, and—”