I was returning to the fire when I stepped on the fourth feather. As I stooped to pick it up, I saw the fifth one glinting in the sunlight, not a dozen paces away. The fifth one shone with extraordinary colours, dazzling to the eyes, but when I reached it, I decided it had been a trick of the sunlight and damp, for it was as flat a grey as its brethren.
The Prince was not by the fire when I returned, though he had built up the fire before he left. I set the two feathers with the three I had found the night before. I glanced about for the lad and saw him walking back towards me. He had evidently visited the stream, for his face was damp and his hair washed back from his brow. When he reached the fire, he stood over me for a time, watching me as I killed the crab and wrapped it and the mussels in the flat fronds of seaweed. With a stick I nudged some of the burning wood aside and then gingerly placed the packet on the bared coals. It sizzled. He watched me pushing other coals up around it. When he spoke, his voice was even, as if he commented on the weather.
‘I’ve a message for you. If you do not bring me back before sunset, they will kill them both, the man and the wolf.’
I did not even betray that I had heard his words. I kept my eyes on the food, edging the coals closer to it. When I finally spoke, my words were just as cold. ‘Perhaps, if they do not free the man and the wolf before noon, I will kill you.’ I lifted my face to look into his, and showed him my assassin’s eyes. He took a step back.
‘But I am the Prince!’ he cried. An instant later, I saw how he despised those words. But he could not call them back. They hung quivering in the air between us.
‘That would only matter if you acted like the Prince,’ I observed callously. ‘But you don’t. You’re a tool, and you don’t even know it. Worse, you’re a tool used against not just your mother, but the whole of the Six Duchies.’ I looked aside from him as I spoke the words I must. ‘You don’t even know that the woman you worship doesn’t exist. Not as a woman, at any rate. She’s dead, Prince Dutiful. But when she died, instead of letting go, she pushed into her cat’s mind, to live there. She rides the cat, a shameful thing for any Old Blood one to do. And she has used the cat to lure you in and deceive you with words of love. I do not know what she intends in the end, but it will not be good for any of you. And it will cost my friends’ lives.’
I should have known that she was with him. I should have known that that was the one thing that she would not permit me to tell him. He hissed like a cat from his open mouth as he sprang, and the tiny sound gave me an instant of warning. I leaned to one side as he threw himself at me. I turned to his passage, caught him by the back of his shirt, and jerked him back towards me. I pinioned him in a hug. He threw his head back in an effort to smash my face, but got only the side of my jaw. I had long been wise to that trick, as it was one of my own favourites.
It was not much of a fight, as fights go. He was at that lanky stage of his growth when bones and muscles do not yet match one another, and he fought with the heedless frenzy of youth. I had long been comfortable in my body, and I had a man’s weight and years of experience to back it. With his arms tightly pinioned, he could do little more than toss his head about and kick at me with his feet. I recognized abruptly that no one had ever grappled with him this way. Of course. A prince would be trained with a blade, not with fists. Nor had he had brothers or a father for rough play. He did not know what to make of being manhandled this way. He repelled at me, the Wit equivalent of a mental shove. As Burrich had so long ago with me, I deflected it back at him. I felt his shock at that. In the next moment, he redoubled his struggle. I felt the fury that coursed through him. It was like fighting myself, and I knew he set no limits to what he would do in an attempt to injure me. His mindless savagery was limited only by his inexperience. He tried to fling us both to the ground, but I had his balance too well. His efforts to wriggle out of my embrace only made me tighten my grip. His face was bright red before his head suddenly drooped. For a moment he hung limp and gasping in my arms. Then he rasped in a sullen voice, ‘Enough. You win.’
I let go, expecting him to drop to the sand. Instead, he spun, my knife in his hand, and thrust it into my belly. At least, that was his intent. The buckle of my swordbelt deflected it, the blade skidded across the leather of the belt, and then plunged past me, wrapping in my shirt as it went. The blade so near my flesh woke my anger. I caught his wrist, snapped it sharply back, and the knife went flying. A blow from my fist to the side of his neck hammered him to his knees. He yowled in fury as he fell, and the sound stood my hair on end. The glaring glance he turned on me was not the Prince’s, but some awful combination of cat, boy, and a woman who would master them both. Her will was the one that brought him up off his knees and springing towards me.
I tried to catch his charge and control him, but he fought like a mad thing, clawing and spitting and ripping at my hair. I hit him hard in the centre of his chest, a blow that should have at least slowed him, but he came back at me, his fury doubled. I knew then that she had full control of him, and that she would care nothing about pain I dealt him. I’d have to damage him if I wanted to stop him, and even at that moment, I could not bring myself to do that. So I flung myself to meet his charge, wrapped him in my arms and used my weight to bear him down. We came down very near the fire, but I was on top, and resolved to stay there. Our faces were inches apart as I made good my hold on him. He twisted his head about wildly, and tried to strike me in the face with his brow. The eyes that met mine were not the Prince’s. She spat up at me and cursed me. I lifted him and slammed him back against the earth. I saw his head bounce off the ground. He should have been near stunned, but he darted his mouth at my arm as if to bite me. I felt a surge of fury that started somewhere so deep it was outside me.
‘Dutiful!’ I roared. ‘Stop fighting me!’
He went limp in my arms. The woman/cat glared at me furiously, but slowly she faded from his eyes. Prince Dutiful goggled up at me in terror. Then even that faded from his eyes. He stared like a dead man. Blood outlined his teeth. It was his own, leaking from his nose and over his mouth. He lay very still. I felt sickened. I peeled myself away from him and stood slowly, chest heaving. ‘Eda and El, mercy,’ I prayed as I seldom did, but the gods were not interested in undoing what I had done.