‘You want me to eat something you’ve been carrying around in your mouth?’
He gestured with a paw to his body. ‘You see any pockets here?’ The thin lips of his mouth pulled back in what I assumed was a grin. ‘Of course, there was one other place I could’ve stored it.’
Ech. ‘This is fine. Thanks.’ I reached for the piece of green leaf in his paw but was distracted by the sounds of arguing from outside the room.
My mother’s voice was faint, weary. ‘We must rest another day, Ke’heops. You can barely stand as it is. The effort is too much.’
‘No,’ he replied. I don’t think I’d ever heard my father sound so tired. ‘I will finish this. I just need … a moment.’ A key was scratching at the lock, as if he kept missing the keyhole.
‘Ah, crap,’ Reichis said, pulling the weed away from me.
‘What are you doing?’ I whispered. ‘In about one minute my parents are going to come through that door.’
‘That’s the problem, kid. Even if you swallow the lightning weed, it’ll take longer than that to go through your stomach and into your blood.’
The thought of being discovered by my parents, of being tied back down to the table, this time with stronger restraints that meant I’d never escape, drove me half mad with fear. I started trying to clamber up to the window, but I couldn’t. In desperation I turned to Reichis. ‘Help me,’ I said. ‘Please, I can’t …’ That was when I noticed he had stuck the leaf back in his mouth and was chewing it. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Give me your arm,’ he said, his mouth now full of foaming green muck.
‘What? Why –’
He growled and then reached out with his paws and grabbed hold of my right wrist. Before I knew what was happening he bit down on it hard, his teeth piercing the skin and sinking deep into the flesh. I was about to scream from the shock and pain when something changed inside me. It felt like a flame running up the length of my arm, into my chest and down through the rest of my body. The room lit up, every colour brighter, clearer. I could think clearly again. More importantly, I could feel the strength return to my limbs.
‘Works best when it goes straight into the blood,’ Reichis explained, leaping up onto the windowsill. He looked around longingly at the jars and instruments in my mother’s study. ‘If you want to bring any souvenirs, kid, I’d do it now. I doubt you’ll want to come back here anytime soon.’
I couldn’t imagine anything I’d want from my parents ever again, but then I saw the deck of cards Ferius had given me sitting on a little shelf near the table, the razor-thin steel one and the dark red card on top. I grabbed them and stuffed them into the pocket of my trousers. ‘Let’s go,’ I said as I climbed out the window and into the night air. ‘I’ve got everything I’ll ever need from this place.’
29
The Hideout
I scaled the wooden trellis that ran down the side of the house to the garden. On a normal good day it would have taken me ten minutes to do it without breaking my neck, but with the lightning weed in me I got down in less than one.
‘How do you skinbags ever escape from predators when you move that slowly?’ Reichis asked from where he was still perched outside the window. He sprang, spreading his arms and legs wide. The furry membrane between his limbs billowed as it caught the air, and he glided down effortlessly, swooping past my head to land several yards ahead of me. Without pausing he bounded out of the garden and on to the street. I followed as fast as I could, which turned out to be pretty fast considering I was barefoot.
We ran down the streets and alleyways of my neighbourhood, staying in the shadows, avoiding places where people congregated. I tried as hard as possible not to think about the black markings around my left eye, about the pain that still laced my forearms where my own parents had tried to permanently counter-band me, and the fact that the life I had always envisioned for myself was now truly gone.
Shalla and Ferius are out there somewhere. Focus on that.
Reichis seemed to have a remarkable knowledge of the town, leading us through small paths between houses, into other people’s gardens that just happened to lead out onto darkened alleys.
‘How do you know the town so well?’ I asked, running close behind.
‘I’m a professional, kid. I’ve been casing your place for days. I worked this route out the first night.’
Squirrel cats have professions?
Reichis and the other squirrel cat kept up the pace, making it hard for me to catch my breath. It wasn’t until we found ourselves outside a burnt-out single-storey building near the edge of the Sha-Tep district that he allowed us to stop. ‘You can go vomit in there if you want,’ he said, pointing with his snout towards the blackened door hanging off one hinge that led inside.
‘I don’t need to vomit. Why would you think that?’ I asked.
Reichis walked up to me and sniffed. ‘You’re definitely going to puke, kid.’
A sudden wave of nausea overwhelmed me. I ran inside the building and dropped to my knees, green, foamy bile pouring from my mouth as I coughed uncontrollably.
‘Yeah,’ the squirrel cat chittered quietly behind me. ‘I probably should have mentioned that lightning weed has a few unpleasant side effects.’
‘You think?’ I asked, wiping my mouth with my sleeve only to be overcome once again. I knelt there, unable to do anything but shiver as my guts churned. A light rain started outside, rare for this time of year. It pattered against the slat wood roof, dripping through the gaps to land on the back of my head and neck as I heaved over and over onto the dirt floor. Kill me, I thought. Just kill me right here and now.
Reichis sauntered over and sat on his haunches. ‘Can’t you … you know?’ He made an odd circular motion with one paw.
‘What?’
‘Do some magic or something. Aren’t your people supposed to be good at that?’
A chittering noise from just outside followed by a soft growl drew our attention, but Reichis didn’t seem concerned. ‘Oh, right,’ he said, turning back to me. ‘You’re an invalid or something.’
‘I’m not an invalid. I’m just …’ Just what? I stared down at my forearms where my parents had tattooed counter-sigils into five of the six bands. Iron, ember, sand, silk, blood … the metal inks my father had tattooed onto me were thick and perfectly formed as though they were shackles melted into my skin. But shackles can be broken. These can’t. All that was left was the band for breath, weakest of the six.
‘Hey, kid,’ the squirrel cat said. ‘You’re leaking again.’
‘I’m not crying.’
He gave a little snort. ‘Sure. Must just be your Jan’Tep magic summoning rain from your eyeballs.’