tribe. Together with my acolytes, I assembled an enormous store of information — a store that would subsequently become very useful during my years of exile.”
“Oh?” Heldo-Bah inquires pointedly. “And what has become of that collection? For there are more than a few in our tribe who contend that you carried out your ‘study’ by dissecting the living bodies of Bane prisoners.”
“Can you never cease your childish prattle, Heldo-Bah?” Keera says angrily. “Those were fables, made up by a few Outragers.”
“I’m simply asking, Keera,” Heldo-Bah says. “You know that I despise the Outragers even more than you, or indeed than any other Bane. I merely wish to know what truth, if any, there is in the tale.”
Caliphestros snorts in dismissal: “If you will believe such stories, Heldo-Bah, there is little point to continuing either our discussion or our actions in concert.” The old man’s features grow momentarily puzzled: “But is it true that you despise the Outragers — and that others in your tribe harbor similar sentiments?”
Keera and Veloc nod in turn, leaving it to Heldo-Bah to say: “Despise them? Why, we as good as left one for dead, not a week ago. And an important one, at that—”
“Heldo-Bah!” Keera commands. “There is no reason to reveal what we may or may not have—”
“Oh, but there is, Keera,” Caliphestros says. “If you will pardon my interrupting you. This hostility among the Bane against the Outragers was not a fact that was contained in my study of your tribe. During my years in Broken, I actually tried to rouse similar sentiment against another group of murderers turned sacred soldiers — the Personal Guard of the Merchant Lord, of whom we have just been speaking. Those posturing villains who, after my banishment, tortured and murdered my acolytes.”
Heldo-Bah’s mangled brows come together in distrust, and his filed teeth again show in the skeptical curl of his lip. “Truly, old man?”
Caliphestros takes in an excited breath, yet he hesitates: he knows that the veracity of his next words, and the greater trust that they will — with luck — breed, cannot help but be crucial to the future of the little band’s present undertaking; but as ever, secrets shared make him uneasy. “What I tell you now, I say in confidence. Fate having brought us together in a vital undertaking, I must trust in the sincerity of each of you, and must also be able to trust that you comprehend the need for constant discretion — for that undertaking will require from us all the best efforts and truest belief in one another that we can muster. And so — can you, all three, pledge me that trust and that assurance? And will you believe me if I pledge the same?”
Among the foragers, it is Veloc who nods assent first, quickly and eagerly; Heldo-Bah, not surprisingly, continues to appear uneasy, but also agrees to the compact, after only a few moments’ further consideration; but Keera, somewhat surprisingly, displays the most cautious aspect. “If that be so, my lord,” she says, “then — in the spirit of the honest alliance you would establish between us — there is yet one thing that we must tell you.”
Both Veloc and Heldo-Bah appear suddenly alarmed, as though they know exactly what Keera is referring to, and dread its announcement; yet Caliphestros — to the surprise of all the foragers — smiles kindly, indeed, almost indulgently. “Yes, I thought there might be.”
Heldo-Bah throws his hands toward the branches of the forest ceiling. “There — you see? He reads our very thoughts — an undoubted a sorcerer, just as I have always maintained!”
“Hush, Heldo-Bah!” Veloc orders; and then, to his sister, he murmurs, “So long as you are certain, Keera …”
Keera keeps her gaze on Caliphestros’s gently smiling face. “How did you know, my lord?”
“How could I not?” answers the old man. “I do not know if you realize as much, Keera, but you Bane, inscrutable as your activities may sometimes be, are not obscure, when conversing with one another. And last night, as we were packing my instruments and materials, there was one subject that all three of you seemed anxious to mention — save that every time any one of you came near to it, one of the others would give the careless speaker a boot in his backside, or the flat of your hand across his head.”
Caliphestros coaxes Stasi a few steps away from the others, and faces northeast, toward Broken: for the distant mountain and the city walls atop it have now been plainly revealed by the dawn, across the river and through gaps in the much thinner lines of trees on the riverbanks. “So,” he says, his voice scarcely audible. “She has been in the Wood again …”
The foragers move slowly closer to the spot on which stand the white panther and her rider. “She has,” Veloc says. “And you know more about this Wife of Kafra, my lord, than simply her station and rank — as we supposed you must. And, apparently, that she has been in the Wood before. But you are certain that we’re talking about the same witch?”
Caliphestros inclines his head in agreement, but keeps his eyes on the horizon. “A tall woman with coal- black hair that falls in straight, gleaming sheets, and eyes of a darker green than Stasi’s, but just as brilliant?”
“The very one,” Heldo-Bah answers, clapping his hands to the sides of his head in resignation. “Allow me to guess — she is your daughter? Or are you yourself a half-breed demon, who had your way with some mortal female — and a female of great beauty, she must have been — when you still had legs?”
To the forager’s somewhat accusatory suggestions, Caliphestros offers only a small laugh. “You are wrong in every respect, Heldo-Bah. The woman you saw is no kin to me — or no
“That cannot—” Veloc stops before he can complete the question, allowing himself time to frame it more cautiously. “I would not have thought that possible, my lord. For the Wives of Kafra, Bane historians have long known, are the God-King’s mistresses, as well.”
“Fool, Veloc,” Heldo-Bah chastises quietly. “Did you truly think that a woman demented enough to seduce a Davon panther would pause at bedding her own brother?”†
Keera alone sees that Caliphestros winces and trembles abruptly at this question. “My lord?” she asks. “Are you unwell? Shall we rest a short while, and prepare some of your medicines?”
The old man smiles faintly at the question. “No, Keera … although I thank you. But not even I have medicines to cure such foolishness and tragedy …” Again he looks up and through the trees to the northern horizon, as if he can see into the chambers of the God-King’s palace itself; and, as he indulges this seeming vision, he murmurs just one name:
Keera approaches Caliphestros and Stasi carefully; and when she is beside them, she summons the nerve to ask, “That was — is — what she is called?”
Caliphestros nods again. “It was and is, Keera. A name derived from the legends of those whom the people of Broken know as the
Ignoring a scoffing grunt from Heldo-Bah, Keera says, “I do not wish to reach for conclusions before we have sufficient reason, my lord, but—”
Keera grows suddenly silent, turning toward the northwest with an expression that Veloc and Heldo-Bah know only too well: for it betrays the detection of some new danger. A gust of wind has coursed through the series of long, high gorges that comprise this portion of the valley of the Cat’s Paw, and finally made its way to the rock on which the tracker stands with Caliphestros and Stasi; and, almost immediately after turning away to the left, Keera turns back round again, to glance down and see that the white panther has also detected something on the breeze, and that her large, brick-red nostrils are flared open.
The panther’s ears slowly go down and back, down and back, until they sink beneath the crown of her head; and she is already growling in both alarm and warning, as well as opening her mouth and taking quick, steady breaths in the quietly peculiar way that cats do at such moments. Caliphestros, in a whisper, explains to Keera that, when employing certain exceptionally sensitive organs found inside their mouths, cats can actually
Yet Keera is little interested in academic matters, just at this instant:
