Flight of the King (12 page)

She'd received a letter from Digby Barnes just after the Elder's death, telling her in coded terms how to find him and the RATS. We've
had to get a little cat to help find
the vermin,
the note had said. It might have seemed harmless to any other eyes, but to Gwen and Tremelo it had been a clear hint at how to find the RATS.
Her tail twitches quite smartly,
especially when she plays in the old papers.
Neither Digby nor the other RATS knew that the Elder had been killed—and more important, they didn't know Tremelo was the True King.
Gwen was eager to tell the RATS the news. Would they believe her? Would they fight for Tremelo, the man they only knew as the myrgwood-smoking son of their former leader, the Loon? There was only
one way to find out.

Gwen began her search in the market, where the walls were thick with dated political posters and flyers: “old papers.” Once, the market had been teeming with merchants and vendors,
but now many of the shops surrounding it were shuttered and closed, abandoned by people who had fled the city. The only shop that remained was a bakery. In its front window sat a heaping basket of
raisin bread, fogging up the glass with its oven-fresh warmth. Gwen's stomach grumbled as she gazed through the window. She hadn't realized how hungry she was—she had grabbed
everything she owned the night before in the tree house, but she'd already eaten the tarts Phi had brought from the Fairmount dining hall.

“What do you want? Get away from there!” An angry woman with a flour-spattered apron stood in the doorway of the bakery. “Unless you're buying, bark off!”

“I—I'm sorry,” Gwen sputtered, backing quickly away. But she wasn't watching where she was going, and she tripped over someone's foot. That someone glared
down at her.

“Disrupting the peace, are you?” grunted the man who stood over her. “Can't have that.” He didn't wear the uniform of a kingdom guard, the officers
who'd kept order under Parliament's regime. Instead, he wore plainclothes, and a wide red sash that crossed his middle. Gwen couldn't be certain who he worked for—but she
was willing to bet that he was Dominae.

The baker woman disappeared, slamming the door behind her.

The man looked at Gwen's muddy traveling boots, and the rucksack on her shoulders.

“Where you coming from?” he asked.

Gwen heard a growl by the man's knees, coming from a skinny black dog with bared teeth, tethered to the man by a long chain.

“Who wants to know?” she asked him.

He grinned at her.

“This is the Dominae's city now. It's our job to know everyone's comings and goings.”

Gwen heard a jittery hoot from above her—three owls watched her, clustered together on a window ledge.

“I…” She struggled to think of a story. “I'm going to visit my uncle,” she said. “He's…been ill.”

One of the owls hopped down from the windowsill and came closer to Gwen.
Don't
, she tried to tell it.
Can't you see you're in danger?
Gwen pushed herself up
to stand and dusted off her pants.

“And by the looks of you, you crossed some nasty terrain to get there. I find that
very
sweet. And very interesting.” He winked at her, a gesture that was not at all
comforting. Then he snapped his fingers.

The dog bolted on its chain at the man's command, its teeth flashing. It leapt on the poor owl. Gwen cried out; she felt the owl's fear behind her own eyes, and a wrenching pain in
her side.

The man snapped his fingers again, and the dog let go of the frightened owl and trotted back to its kin.

“Since you're new here, let that be a lesson to you,” laughed the man. He sauntered away down the market street.

Gwen leaned back against the stone wall. The pain ebbed.

“I'm sorry,” she said to the little owl. Its wing was clearly broken, and it had a bite on the side of its head. It hopped away. “Maybe I can help you,” Gwen called
after it. But it was no use. The other owls flew away, hooting sadly. They knew it hadn't been her fault, she could sense that. But they also knew that being around her meant being in danger.
This is what Dominance does, Gwen thought mournfully. It eats away at the bond until it's not just your own that's broken—it's everyone's.

She limped toward an alley wall where the layers of outdated posters were thick. It didn't take her long to find a white chalk drawing of a cat, no bigger than her hand, on an old poster
supporting Parliament's tax on fish. The tail of the cat in the drawing was crooked, pointing to the end of the alley. She walked in that direction, looking out for more white cats along the
way. At the end of the alley, she saw one drawn on a flyer for Viviana herself, its tail pointing in the opposite direction of its head, to a curving stone stair behind a tenement building.

Gwen followed the signs, hugging the stone walls along the empty Gudgeons streets—only a few citizens, as bedraggled as she was, hurried past. Finally, Gwen found a drawing of a white cat
curled up sleeping on an advertisement for a long-past concert. The advert was pasted onto a sagging wooden house the length of half a city block, with a sign over the door that said
THE ALLEY CAT
. She knocked anxiously. No one answered, but she could hear voices inside. She knocked again, and was sure that she saw someone looking at her from behind the shutters of
a window on the main floor.

Through the door, Gwen heard a muffled voice.

“Did they have fruit at the market?” the voice asked.

Confused, Gwen stepped back. It was either a mistake, or the RATS were testing her. Digby hadn't said anything in his cable about a password or secret question—but then, his message
had been so vague, she wasn't sure. It was best, she decided, to simply be honest.

“I don't know,” she began. “But Digby Barnes would know who I am, and maybe he could help me…find the fruit?”

“No fruit, no admittance,” the voice said.

“Wait, please,” Gwen asked, her voice shaking. “I don't know the answer to your question, but I want to help—I have some news—not from the market, but
from—”

“Not interested!” the voice said.

“Please just tell Digby I'm here!” Gwen pleaded, but she received no answer.

She refused to be shut out, not after everything she'd been through. She began pounding on the door, hardly caring if anyone else heard. Luckily, the street was shuttered and barred.
Everyone was afraid, just like her.

Finally, the door opened. Someone grabbed her arm, and pulled her forcefully inside.

“You trying to wake the dead?” a woman said as the door shut behind her. “Who are you? What do you want here?”

All around the room, mistrustful eyes worked her over. She didn't recognize anyone from the previous fall, when she'd hid with the RATS and the Elder in The White Tiger bar or the
underground tunnels below the city.

“Please, I've come from Fairmount. I'm looking for Digby,” she said, trying not to let her voice tremble.

“That's right, you are!” bellowed a familiar voice. Digby Barnes, the massive bartender from The White Tiger pub, pushed his way through the crowd toward her. He put a meaty
hand on her shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly.

“All, this here's Gwen, and she's the Elder's main girl,” Digby said, turning to the room.

“What if someone followed her here?” asked one of the onlookers, a woman with a scratchy voice and dirty apron. “How do we know she hasn't brought them right to our
door?”

“There was no one else outside,” Gwen said quietly.

“And they'd have taken her off straightaway,” interjected Digby. “She's smarter than that. Now, she gets whatever she needs, no questions.”

“Thank you,” Gwen said in little more than a whisper. “Can I have something to eat?”

A few minutes later, she was bundled in an armchair, with a bowl of hot soup in her hands and a blanket around her shoulders. The citizens of the Alley Cat had warmed to her after Digby's
welcome, especially when she'd recounted the run-in with the Dominae guard.

“They're all over the place, like cockroaches,” Digby said. “Viviana set them up just before the Midwinter holiday, in the name of ‘public safety.' Public
bullies is what they are.”

“How have you been getting on here, with them around?” she asked. “Are they spying for her?”

Digby laughed.

“You have to have a brain before you can report intelligence, don't you? No, they're just the lowest rung on Viviana's ladder. Give the nastiest bunch the easiest job to
do, and make them think they're important. Their only job is to remind everyone that Viviana's taken power.”

Gwen thought about the way the man had just snapped his fingers to make the dog attack, and shuddered.

“Still, can't be too careful. We've had to keep moving each week to stay ahead of them. Someone's always having to go 'round and change the tails on our little
drawin's. But we want to hear about you, lass,” said Digby. “And the Elder. Did you make it to Fairmount? What did Tremelo have to say for himself?”

Gwen's heart began beating wildly, something she hadn't expected. She took a deep breath.

“The Elder is dead,” she said.

It was the first time she'd had to say those words out loud. They sounded so final, so horrible, coming out of her mouth that she wanted to take them back and apologize. But it was the
truth. He'd been a link between the RATS and the old king who they loved. What's more, he had been the only person in the world who cared for Gwen herself. And he was gone.

She heard a gasp and many whispers from the RATS assembled in the room after she spoke. Digby's ruddy face went pale, and he looked down at his hands. For a long moment, everyone was
silent. Then:

“How did it happen? Was it the Dominae?” asked the old woman in the dirty apron.

“Did Tremelo have something to do with it? Was it at the school?” asked Digby.

“Did you see whoever did it? Did you kill them?” shouted a younger man with dark, angry eyes.

More questions from the gathered revolutionaries seemed to crowd around Gwen like beggar children in the market asking for a snailback or a piece of bread. She shrank back and set the bowl of
soup onto the bar with trembling hands. She wished for sleep—but more than that, she needed to tell the RATS everything.

“He died at Fairmount,” she said, feeling the sting of the words as they left her mouth. “We went there to find Tremelo—you thought he'd be able to help you, but we
realized that he…” She paused. Looking around the room, she wondered whether she could truly trust each and every person there. As for the RATS, they were hanging on her words, mouths agape
and eyes staring.

“The journey was too much for the Elder,” she said instead. “And Tremelo will help, but…but you'll need to wait for his word.” She would tell Digby
later—alone—about Tremelo's true identity. He would know who to trust.

Tiredness washed over her, and her shoulders slumped. She looked to Digby.

“All right, that's enough,” he said, reading the pleading look in her eyes. “Time for all that later.”

He waved the RATS away and guided her out of the main room and down a hallway. He stood aside an open door at the end of the hall, and let Gwen into a small bedroom. It was clear to her from the
folded pallets and piled rucksacks that at least three people were sleeping there, and she wondered how many RATS had come forward and joined the movement in the few weeks since she'd left
the city.

“Not much in the way of room,” he said. “But it's yours if you need it.”

“Thank you,” Gwen said. Eagerly she unrolled a pallet and lay down. Despite the rising wave of voices from down the hall, she quickly fell into a deep sleep. For the first time in
many days, she felt safe.

The next morning, she had to tiptoe over the snoring bodies of several other inhabitants of the Alley Cat to get down the hall to the main room. There she found Digby sitting with a mug of hot
sap milk.

“Glad you're an early riser,” he said. “I've got something for you, and it's best the others don't see it just yet.”

Digby took a wrapped package out of his pocket, and handed it to Gwen.

“He told me that if something was to happen to him, this needed to go to you.”

Gwen sat next to Digby on a stool and held the package in both hands. It was heavy, the size of a fist. She unfolded the bits of muslin tied with twine around the object.

She recognized it as soon as the first piece of muslin fell away. It was the bit of the Statue of the Twins that the Elder had brought back to Parliament with him, those many months ago. She
could still make out the fox's paw—the girl twin who'd transformed, while her brother had remained a human. The first Animas bond.

Underneath the piece of stone was a note. Her fingers shook as she lifted the slip of parchment to read.

Gwen had always wanted to journey to the Seers' Valley with the Elder. Now he was asking her to go without him, tasked with ensuring the fate of Aldermere. Tremelo would not become a king
without her help—she felt at once important and all alone.

Digby put a heavy hand on her shoulder.