Captain's Fury

Chapter 31

For Isana, visits to the largest cities of Alera had never been pleasant. The constant pressure of the various emotions of so many people packed into such a small area was a constant distraction. It was a low but steady "noise," like being constantly accompanied by half a dozen nightmarishly persistent crickets. It was never horribly loud, but it didn't stop, and the intrusive sensations could make it maddeningly difficult to sleep or concentrate.

Isana feared that she might desperately need all of her concentration in the hours to come.

The rooms Tavi had rented for them were plain, but roomy and well kept. They were outrageously expensive by the standards of the steadholts of the Calderon Valley, but her travels had broadened her outlook somewhat even if they hadn't fattened her purse. By the standards of Alera Imperia, the price was more than reasonable-even if each day's rent would also have paid for the food of an entire steadholt for a day.

The boardinghouse, however, was apparently frequented by merchants who were particularly close about their money. Negotiations of one kind or another were in progress in rooms below and above her, as well as in the house's tiny garden, and from the feel of it, they were ferocious affairs. She tried to rest as best she could, once they were there, but the constant, surging flutter of the city made it problematic.

Isana rose quietly from the bed in the room she shared with Kitai, slipped into her shoes, and donned her dress and cloak. Perhaps if she stretched her legs a little, she would tire enough to rest. She drifted to the window and looked out. The lane below, though it was nearly midnight, was well lit with furylamps, and she could see two different pairs of men in the uniform of the civic legion patrolling. The street would be safe enough.

She turned to find Kitai sitting up in her bed, stretching. "Can't you sleep, either?" the girl asked Isana.

"No," Isana answered quietly.

"It's the watercrafting, isn't it?" Kitai said.

"Partly," Isana said, and the word came out with more of an edge than she had intended. She paused, softened her tone, and said, "Mostly."

Kitai tilted her head. Her green eyes were almost luminous in the dim light from the street's furylamps. "Are you leaving the city, then?"

"I thought I'd take a walk," Isana said. "Sometimes a little exercise helps."

Kitai smiled. "I have need to walk as well. Perhaps we should do so together."

"I'd like that," Isana said. She added, diffidently, "Perhaps you should put some clothes on first, dear."

Kitai's mouth turned up in a slow smile. "Why do Alerans always insist on such things?"

Ten minutes later, they were walking together down Craft Lane. The home of the majority of skilled labor in the city, the houses were almost universally dark and quiet. Few people were on the street. Those few were mostly younger men, late apprentices and early journeymen, presumably returning to their beds after time spent in less sober quarters of the city.

"Kitai," Isana said quietly, "there's something I've been meaning to ask you about."

"Yes?" she asked. She wore her cloak with the hood up, hiding both her decidedly conspicuous hair and the canted eyes of her Marat heritage.

"Regarding you and… and Tavi."

Kitai nodded, her green eyes shining with amusement. "Yes?"

Isana sighed. "I need to know about your relationship with him."

"Why?" Kitai asked.

"Because… because of things I am not free to share with you, your… your friendship with him could cause… relations could be a factor in…" She shook her head in frustration. "What does your relationship with him mean to you, precisely? Where do you see it leading you in the future?"

"Ah," Kitai said in a tone of comprehension. "Those kinds of relations. If you wished to know if we were mating, you should have asked."

Isana blinked, then stared at Kitai, mortified. She felt her cheeks burn. "No. No, that isn't what I meant at-"

"Not nearly often enough, of course," Kitai said with an exhalation somewhere between a sigh and a growl. "Not since we left the fortress. We can't on the ship. Never when the Legion was in the field." She kicked a small stone at the buildings on the other side of the street with a scowl. "Alerans have a great many foolish rules."

"Kitai, that isn't what-"

"He was very clumsy at first," Kitai confided. "Except for his mouth." She smirked, and added drily, "But then, he's always been clever with that."

Isana began to feel somewhat desperate.

"It was as if no one had taught him what it was he ought to do. Which I suppose could be another problem you Alerans have. After all, if no one has any idea how to go about it, no wonder you all get so nervous just talking about it."

"Kitai," Isana said weakly.

"They started paying me for doing what I was doing anyway, in the Legion, and I considered purchasing instruction for him. It seemed as useful a purpose for spending money as any. But I was informed by the women working at the Pavilion that it was improper-and that by Aleran standards, practically anything I did was going to make him happy, provided I did it naked." She threw up her hands. "And after all that fuss about wearing clothing in the first place!"

At least no one was walking close enough to hear the conversation. Isana began to mumble something she hoped Kitai would not take as encouragement- then caught a swift brush of the girl's emotions. Isana stopped in her tracks and arched an eyebrow at Kitai. "You're teasing me."

The Marat girl's eyes shone, as she glanced over her shoulder. "Would I do such a thing to the First Lady of Alera?"

Isana felt her mouth hang open for a moment. She closed it again, and she hurried to catch up to Kitai. She was silent for several paces before she said, "He told you?"

"He may as well have," Kitai replied. "His feelings changed every time he spoke about you." Her expression sobered. "I remember what it felt like to have a mother. I felt it in him for you."

Isana regarded the girl for a time as they walked. Then she said, quietly, "You aren't what you appear to be at all, are you?"

Kitai arched a pale brow at her.

"You appear to be this… barbarian girl, I suppose. Adventurous, bold, careless of manners and proper behavior." Isana smiled faintly. "I asked about your relationship with my son. You've told me a great deal about it."

Kitai shrugged a shoulder. "My father has a saying: Speak only to those who listen. Anything else is a waste of breath. The answers to your questions were there, if you listened for them."

Isana nodded quietly. "What you have with Tavi… it's like your people's other totems, yes? The way your father is close to his gargant, Walker."

Kitai's eyebrows shot up. "Doroga was not mating with Walker, when last I knew." She paused a beat, and added, "Walker would never stand for it."

Isana felt herself laugh despite all.

The Marat girl nodded at that, and smiled. "Yes. It is much the same." She touched her heart. "I feel him, here."

"Are there others, like you? With Aleran… I don't know the word for it."

"Chala," Kitai said. "No. Our peoples have never been close. And whelps are usually kept safeguarded from any outsiders. I am the only one."

"But what clan would you go to?" Isana asked. "If you went back to your people, I mean."

She shrugged. "I am the only one."

Isana absorbed that for a few moments. "That must be difficult," she said quietly. "To be alone."

Kitai bent her head, a small, inward smile on her lips. "I would not know. I am not alone."

Love, deep and abiding, suddenly radiated from the Marat girl like heat from a stove. Isana had felt its like before, though seldom enough, and the power of it impressed her. She had thought the barbarian girl an idle companion before now, someone who stayed near Tavi out of her sense of enjoyment and adventure. She'd misread the young woman by a great deal, assuming that the lack of emotion she generally felt from the girl had meant that there was no depth of conviction in the person behind it.

"You can hide yourself, your feelings. The way he can," Isana said quietly. "You let me feel that, just now. You wanted to reassure me."

The Marat girl faced her, unsmiling, and bowed her head. "You are a good listener, Lady Isana."

Isana bit her lip. "I am hardly a lady, Kitai."

"Nonsense," Kitai said. "I have seen nothing in you to indicate that you would be anything other than one of nobility, refinement, and grace." She pressed something into Isana's hands. "Hold this for me."

Isana blinked as Kitai handed her a sack of heavy burlap. She looked around. The Marat girl had directed their steps while they walked, and Isana had not realized that they had left Craft Lane. She was not certain where they were now. "Why do you want me to hold this?"

"So I have something to put the coldstone in after I have burgled it," Kitai said. "Excuse me." And with that, the girl stepped into a darkened alleyway, flicked a rope up over a chimney, and calmly scaled the outside of a building.

Isana stared for a moment, aghast. Then footsteps sounded down the street, and she looked up to see a pair of civic legionares on their patrol. For a moment, Isana nearly panicked and fled. Then she berated herself sharply and composed herself, slipping the bag underneath her cloak.

The legionares, both of them young men, dressed in leather tunics rather than the military lorica, nodded to her, and the taller of the pair said, "Good evening, miss. Are you all right?"

"Yes," Isana said. "I am well, thank you."

The shorter of the two drawled, "On a pretty spring evening like this, why wouldn't you be. Unless you were lonely, of course."

His immediate and… somewhat exuberant interest ran over her, and Isana felt her eyebrows go up. She'd spent comparatively little of her adult life in places where she wasn't known, by reputation at least, if not by sight. It hadn't occurred to her that she would be effectively anonymous, here. Given the apparent youth of a powerful watercrafter, with her hood up and the strands of silver in her dark hair concealed, she would look like a young woman no older than these legionares. "Not lonely, sir, no," she said. "Though I thank you for asking."

The taller one frowned, and a practical, professional kind of suspicion rippled across her. "It's late for a young woman to be out alone, miss," he said. "May I ask what you're doing here?"

"Meeting a friend," Isana extemporized.

"Little late at night for that kind of thing in this part of town," the shorter legionare said.

The taller one sighed. "Look, miss, no offense, but a lot of these young Citizens from the Academy book time, then don't show up for the appointment. They know they're not supposed to be seen down to the Dock Quarter after dark, so they promise the extra coin to get you up here, but-"

"Excuse me?" Isana said sharply. "Exactly what are you accusing me of doing, sir…" She snapped her fingers impatiently. "Your name, legionare. What is your name?"

The young man seemed somewhat taken aback, and she felt his flash of uncertainty. "Urn. Melior. Miss, I don't want to-"

"Legionare Melior," Isana said, pressing her aggression with the kind of self-assurance no younger woman could quite have matched. She reached up and lowered her hood, revealing the silver laced through her hair. "Am I to understand that you are accusing me"-she gave the last word very slight emphasis- "of prostitution?"

The shorter of the two frowned and returned with restrained belligerence, "Well why else would you be out here alone this late with-"

The taller one stepped firmly on his foot. Then he said, "I meant no accusations, my lady. But it is my duty to keep things in order here at night."

"I assure you, young sir, that everything is in order," Isana replied firmly. "Thank you for your concern," she said, then added a slight barb to her tone, "and for your courtesy."

The shorter legionare glared at his partner, then at Isana, and seemed to come to some sort of realization. "Oh," he said. "Right."

The taller one rolled his eyes by way of apology. "Very well, my lady," he said, and they continued on their way.

Once they were out of sight, Isana let out an enormous breath and leaned against the nearest building, shaking slightly. A fine contribution to their mission she would have made, from the inside of a cell with any other wayward ladies of the night they'd collected. For goodness' sake, there was even the chance that she might have been recognized as something other than an anonymous Citizen. She hadn't exactly been a celebrity during her previous visits to the capital, but there had been a number of speeches on behalf of the Dianic League. There was always the chance, however slim it might be, that she might be recognized.

"That was well-done," murmured Kitai's voice. The Marat girl came down the side of the building with the grace of a spider, landed, and dislodged her line with a flick of her wrist. She hissed as she quickly took a pouch whose neck she gripped in her teeth, and held it away from her face. Little wisps of steam trailed from the pouch, and a small patch of frost had begun to form on its surface. "Quick, the bag."

Isana opened the thick burlap sack, and she realized that it was several layers thick and heavily lined, a sack designed specifically to contain the fury-bound coldstones. Kitai opened the pouch and dropped a rounded stone the size of a child's fist into the sack. The evening air was brisk, but a deeper chill followed the coldstone, and Isana hurriedly shut the heavy sack over it.

"What have you done?" Isana asked quietly.

"Acquired something we need," Kitai replied. "Whatever you said to those two was effective. Could you say it again, perhaps?"

"Again?" Isana replied.

"If needed." She nodded at the sack. "I have to get the rest of them."

"And you're going to steal them?" Isana asked. "What if you're caught?"

Kitai jerked her head back as if Isana had slapped her, and arched one pale, imperious eyebrow. "No Aleran in this entire senseless, pointless city has ever caught me," she said, with the perfectly steady confidence of someone telling the truth. Isana could feel that in her voice as well. Kitai sighed. "Well," she admitted. "One. But it was a special circumstance. And anyway, he's asleep right now."

Isana shook her head. "I… I'm not certain what you think me capable of,

Kitai. I believe that you are skilled at this sort of thing-but I am not. I'm not sure you want me to come along."

"Faster, if we can walk openly on the street," Kitai said. "One woman alone will be questioned. Two women, walking quickly, will not be. And I cannot take the heavy bag along with me. I would have to leave it behind each time I climbed. I would feel better if it was being watched than if I had to leave it lying in some alley."

Isana studied the Marat girl for a moment, then sighed, and said, "Very well. With one condition."

Kitai tilted her head. "Yes?"

"I want to talk to you about Tavi as we walk."

Kitai frowned, her features concerned. "Ah. Is that considered to be appropriate, then?"

"Between us?" Isana asked. "Yes. It's something called girl talk."

Kitai nodded as they began walking again. "What does that mean?"

"It means that you can speak openly and plainly to me without fear of being inappropriate-and I won't be outraged or angered by anything you tell me."

Kitai gave the city around them an exasperated glance. "Finally," she said. "Alerans."