It paused. “How does all this sound to you? Have I left anything out, Princess? Would you care to add, subtract, or amend my words in any way?”
She shook her head no. “I think that about covers it, Mr. Cat.” She gave it a sharp look. “How do you know all this?”
“It is my job to know things,” the cat said. “Cats know lots of things about the world and its creatures, especially people. Cats watch and listen. It is what they do best.”
“So you have been watching me?”
“Haven’t you noticed me?”
“Once or twice on the way here. Not before then.”
“Which points up how unobservant people are when it comes to our place in their lives. We wander about freely, and no one pays much attention to us. It allows us to go almost anywhere and discover almost anything without anyone realizing what we are doing. We know so much about you, but no one ever considers what this means. Cats are highly underrated in this regard.”
“Well, I admit to not seeing you before yesterday. But I don’t understand why you would want to know anything about me in the first place. What is the point in knowing all this stuff?”
The cat regarded her silently for a long moment and then yawned deeply. “I should think it would be obvious. I am here to help you.”
She was aware of a growing stiffness in her legs from her prolonged crouch, and she stood up carefully, rubbing her muscles. “Could we continue this conversation on the porch so that I can sit properly in a chair?”
“So long as you don’t expect me to go into the cottage, we can. I prefer open spaces to cramped ones.”
She walked over to the porch and sat down in one of the old rockers that bracketed the front door, wrapping herself in a rough blanket that was draped over one arm. The cat padded its way onto the first step and sat down again. All around them, the night remained deep and silent, and no one appeared to interrupt their conversation.
“How are you going to help me?” she asked after they were both comfortably settled.
“Well, that depends,” the cat answered. “For starters, I am prepared to take you away from here. Tonight.”
“You can do that?”
“Of course. If you really want to leave and not go home to your parents, I can take you somewhere else and your grandfather’s guards will not be able to prevent it. If that is what you really want.”
“It is,” she said. “Assuming you can do as you say.”
The cat said nothing, but instead went back to cleaning another paw—or perhaps it was the same one—licking the fur this way and that, worrying the pads with careful attention to the spaces between, acting as if there were nothing more important in all the world.
“You must possess considerable magic,” she said.
“Your father thought so.”
“You know my father?”
“And your mother. I have helped them, too, in the past, before you were born. Have they told you nothing of me?”
She shook her head. “I think I would remember you, if they had.”
“They should remember me, too. They should remember me well. I did much to help them avoid a rather unpleasant end when the old wizard, the one before Questor Thews, tried to regain control of Landover’s throne from your father and very nearly killed him in the bargain. Your father was in flight, too, at the time, wandering the countryside, searching for answers. Very much like you, Princess.”
“I didn’t know that. They never said anything about it.”
“Parents don’t tell their children everything, do they? Some things they keep to themselves because they are private and don’t need to be shared. Or perhaps people think these things are best forgotten, a part of a past that has gone by and won’t—with luck—come around again for a visit. When all this is over, you might not want to talk about what is going to happen to you, either.”
“What is going to happen to me?” she asked quickly.
