Her face was pale, her eyes closed.
The cat wormed his way still more fully into her lap and trilled, “Don’t be cross. That’s just how Glomar and I are with each other. The whole rivalry business is all in good sport. We’re on a race, you understand. Whoever rescues Gleamdren first gets to continue wooing her while the other backs off. You see how it is?”
She opened her eyes slowly. He blinked up at her, as sweet and charming as he knew how to be. She licked her cracking lips. Then, raising her hands, she signed:
“I do not know your true name.”
He watched the finger movements like he might eye a buzzing fly. Sitting up on his haunches, he caught one of her hands between velveted paws and gave her fingertips a firm lick. “You know I don’t understand. Just nod yes or no. Are we friends?”
She sighed and tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. Shooing the cat from her lap with no concern for his ruffled dignity, she leaned forward and started drawing in the dirt of the street. He watched her hands tracing lines and patterns.
The tip of his tail twitched impatiently. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
She nodded. Her jaw was set, and she shifted where she sat to broaden her drawing, giving as much detail as she could with her finger and dirt.
“Is this . . . is this the story of how you came to be by the River?” the cat hazarded, dancing backward out of the way of her arm.
She nodded again. At last she sat back and pointed. Her eyes pleaded with him to understand, to try. Under that gaze, Eanrin had no option but to sit and stare at the scribbles in the dust, stare with all the intensity a cat can muster. His pupils dilated until the golden irises were like rings of eclipsed sunfire. Imraldera watched him, chewing her bottom lip and waiting.
At last the cat lashed his tail and raised his whiskered face to her. “I’m sorry, my girl. It looks to me like the Greater Stick Bug pursues the Lesser Stick Bug over the back of a giant alligator. Can’t make a thing of it otherwise.”
Imraldera tossed up her hands and shook her head, desperate to force back the tears that would insist on springing to her eyes. The cat, ever sympathetic, purred again and rubbed his cheek along her bowed shoulder. His whiskers tickled her skin, and she pushed him away. So he became a man again and, suddenly embarrassed, backed away from her.
“See here,” he said, crossing his arms over his stained white shirt, “I promised you that as soon as this little adventure was through, I’d help you find your way home.”
“What if I don’t want to go home?” she signed.
“Please stop waving your hands! Help me, and I’ll help you. That’s a nice way to work, isn’t it? But we’ve got to find Lady Gleamdren and, as you know, neither Glomar nor I”—Eanrin cast a glance back at the captain, who waited several paces away, avoiding as much female emotion as possible—“has any notion how to navigate this dragon-blasted city. But we’ve got to find some way.”
Imraldera scarcely listened as the poet rattled on. She gazed at her drawing, at the scenes she had tried and failed to depict.
If only the Beast had devoured her.
See the truth, Starflower.
She squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head, willing it to clear. But when at last she opened them again, she saw something in the dirt, just beyond the marks of her drawing. Interested, she got up and, still ignoring Eanrin, stepped over for a closer look.
It was a Dog’s enormous footprint.
“What are you looking at?” Eanrin demanded as both he and Glomar stepped up beside her.
She pointed. Glomar swore. “So they have passed this way! We’d best get away quick-like, or they’ll double back and find us.”
Eanrin agreed and both turned in the direction opposite the footprint. But they’d not gone two paces before looking back to find Imraldera, still intent upon the street, following another print, then another.
“What are you doing?” Eanrin demanded, beckoning her. “Come back, princess!”
She looked his way and shook her head. Then she started off at a trot, following the trail of the Black Dogs. Eanrin and Glomar gave each other bewildered glances. With shouts of “Beard and crown!” they hurried after the girl, along the ever-shifting streets.
But where the Black Dogs ran, the road remained straight.
Fascinated, Hri Sora watched the events playing out in her city like a grand lady in a theater box watches a haphazard play. It was a mess, a disaster, a tangle of impossibilities, yet she could not look away.
“The girl is no fool,” she observed.