been a good idea to have been caught near an octopus when the changes came. Failing wings, he could have used another complement of limbs.
He landed on the ground, still atop the branch. The force of impact jarred his brain and made him dizzy. Jem was there, trying to help him up. Jem was taller than Ree by a full head now, but the look in his eyes was the same as it had been two years ago, when he’d decided to cast his lot in with Ree and that they’d stay together come what may. “Are you all right?”
Jem’s gaze was balm to Ree’s heart. He brought the screaming kitten down off his shoulders and put up a hand to prevent Jem reaching for it. “Don’t touch it. That Damn Kitten is full of needles.” He put it carefully on the ground, where it ran to rub on That Other Damn Cat, who hovered nearby and who gave Ree a reproachful glance.
Ree sucked on the claw wounds on his fingers. “Gee, I rescue her baby and she glares at me. You’d think she’d treat me like a hero.”
Jem sidled close, smiling but only half joking. “I think you’re a hero. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“Well . . . it just might be, if only—” He stopped. He stopped because having raised his head, he’d caught sight of something against the sky. But it was a good thing he stopped, because what could he tell Jem?
“What is it?” Ree never could hide anything from Jem: the younger boy caught his expressions before anyone else would.
Ree pointed. “See smoke, up there? It’s not cooking fires. It’s darker, and it doesn’t look right. I think it’s a house burning. And look, there’s another one farther off. That means soldiers.” His chest and stomach tightened. Soldiers meant trouble. He didn’t know if it was the Empire coming back to make sure everyone paid their taxes and to take away the boys who were old enough to be in the army, or if it was one of the bandit lords they’d heard about.
It didn’t matter. Either would kill him, just as they’d kill the wild hobgoblins that haunted the forest. That was the law, and maybe it was right. After all, who knew what would happen to Ree when Jem grew up and moved into the world of men and left Ree behind, alone with the beasts?
If there were soldiers coming, Garrad had to know. He was the farmer here—an irritable old man whose temper protected a heart big enough to take in a city waif and a hobgoblin when Ree and Jem had arrived two winters ago.
If they hadn’t found Garrad just in time and if he hadn’t been willing to shelter them on his farm, Jem would have died of a horrible persistent cough he’d caught after they’d left Jacona. To be sure, Garrad would probably have died too, as he’d injured himself in a fall and been unable to get up and look after himself. But all the same, even in that situation, Ree knew most humans would have turned him out. Garrad taking to Jem was easy. Jem looked enough like him he might have been his grandson. Taking to Ree, though . . . what human in his right mind would want to offer shelter to a creature part rat, part cat and part human?
Now Ree and Jem ran to find him. Jem had the advantage over Ree, his legs having gotten much longer, loping over a cluck of chicks pecking at the dirt and barely avoiding a head on collision with one of the goats. Ree followed behind, his claws digging into the dirt, the farm animals scampering away from his path.
Garrad was in the barn with the cows. When the boys had come, there had been two cows and an old horse and not much else. But Ree and Jem had had to kill some of the wild hobgoblins to defend the farm. It wasn’t something they talked about. They just did it. They patrolled the forest and kept the bad or stupid hobgoblins away and killed the ones who wouldn’t obey.
The hobgoblin furs fetched handsome prices, as did the herbs and mushrooms they gathered in the forest where villagers from the nearby hamlet of Three Rivers were afraid to go. Now they had four milk cows, an unruly herd of goats, and a donkey. The donkey had come straying in from the forest, arrived from who knew where. She was a yearling, wounded and weak. Perhaps Jem had thought she was like him, because he’d nursed her to health, and now he harnessed her to the cart he took down to the village once a week to sell milk and cheese and herbs.
Garrad looked like a prosperous farmer, in clothes they’d had made from bought cloth and not homespun. And they looked like a prosperous farmer’s grandsons. In all except Ree’s unfortunate modifications.
“Granddad,” Jem shouted as he came into the dim, cooler barn, which smelled of clean animals and fresh milk.
Garrad was sitting on the milking stool, milking one of the cows. White liquid splashed into a tin bucket. He looked up and frowned at them. He always frowned, but Ree had learned to read the expressions, and this one was alarm. “What is it?” His hand reached for the stick that rested near him. Jem had carved it to help Garrad walk when they’d arrived, but now it was used mostly as a pointing tool and a weapon. “What happened?”
They told him. The smoke. Soldiers. Garrad’s thin, hawkish face grew grim. “Well, then,” he said. “If they’re coming they will come. There ain’t much we can do, is there? Not like we can pack up the farm, the animals, and those damn cats and all and hide out of their way.”
“I can go to the forest,” Ree said. He’d deliberately hung back, in the shadows of the barn, behind Jem a bit and out of Garrad’s line of sight. “And stay there, you know? It might make it easier for you.” Easier surely, if the soldiers didn’t think they were harboring a wild hobgoblin, which was as much a capital crime as being a hobgoblin. Not that Ree had ever quite understood how it could be a crime when he’d had no control over it.
Garrad snorted and turned back to his milking, his movement so jerky that the cow shifted her back leg and gave a low, surprised moo. “You cutting out on your family, boy?” Garrad said, as he gentled the cow. “Yeah, you might have to hide when the soldiers come, but not in the forest. Stay nearby, boy, we might need you. Or don’t you care?”
There were no words to say how much Ree cared, so he simply said, “All right,” and went to muck out the goats.
Peering through the narrow air slits high up in the barn let Ree see Garrad leaning on his walking stick so he looked as helpless and inoffensive as a cranky old man could, and Jem pretended to support him all the way across the field. Ree didn’t think it would help.
It had taken the soldiers three days to get to the farm, and each day smoke pillars had risen up from the valley bringing with them a smell of unclean smoke. When he climbed the trees near the farm, Ree knew the soldiers were burning out places. And the column in which they moved grew, with long lines of people tied up behind the soldiers. Slaves or prisoners, didn’t matter which. Even children were tied up and dragged along, little ones, barely able to walk.
Garrad snapped at Ree when Ree couldn’t eat and said they would be all right. But it seemed to Ree no better than a magic incantation, and everyone knew magic wasn’t much good anymore.
Jem and Garrad approached the soldiers—Garrad doing his best to limp, Jem supporting him solicitously. The leader of the soldiers didn’t dismount. He stayed atop his big gray mare, glaring down at them like a man who knows a put-on when he sees it.
He looked like one of those big mean bastards, built solid, like Garrad’s outhouse, and he sized up Jem and Garrad like a trader checking furs. Or—and the older memory made Ree swallow and wipe his hands on his pants— like some of Ree’s mother’s customers when they looked at him, back when he’d still been human. Before she’d shooed him away to avoid his being sold to some of those that preferred boys.
The commander’s metal armor glinted in the sun. About half of his soldiers had the same armor, the others a mix of metal and leather, but all of them had swords, and some of them had long bows. They weren’t Imperial soldiers—those all had metal armor—but they moved like men who’d worked together and knew their strength.
The big one grinned at Jem, licked his lips, and then looked at Garrad. Before he could say anything, a different man rode into Ree’s view. This one wasn’t a soldier. He was dressed like Ree’s idea of a lord, only he didn’t have a sword. Instead, he had a big leather bag, and he held a rolled paper in his hand.
“Is this the farm of Garrad Lenar’s son?” He spoke as if he smelled something bad, all thin and whiny.
Garrad nodded. “It’s my place. And you’d be?”
The man sniffed. “We represent the Grand Duke Parleon, who owns this land.”
“Really?” Garrad leaned forward on his cane. “Last I heard it belonged to the Emperor. Emperor Melles, so I heard.”
A few of the soldiers looked at each other. They must not have expected to hear anything about the Emperor here.
