The Wildings (4 page)

“Rats!” she said crossly.

“Hello there!” said the kitten, scrambling to her feet.

Beraal blinked. The kitten was supposed to run for her life—that’s the way the world worked.

“You really are a cat!” the kitten said. “Oh my, your fur’s so beautiful! Isn’t it scary being in a tree? I would be scared if I was high up in a tree! My mother’s not here—she was in the drainpipe with me, of course, but then the dogs came, and then the Bigfeet came—never mind that. This is my first time outside, but I expect you’re used to it. I’m not, it makes me dizzy, and I was just going to go inside. My name is Mara, what’s yours? Do you want to come over and chat? Please come, there’s room on the stairs for both of us.”

Beraal felt her head swimming. But there were no Bigfeet on the stairs, and all of Beraal’s instincts were telling her that this was the best shot she would get at killing the kitten. She padded up the stairs, evaluating her prey.

“You’re the most beautiful cat I’ve ever seen!” said Mara. “Though honestly, I haven’t seen that many. I was born under the bridge over the canal, and then there was the drainpipe, you see. But what lovely fur you have, it looks so soft!”

Beraal decided she’d had enough, this kitten was making her head spin … She laid her ears flat, hissed once in warning and let her claws slide out, preparing to spring.

“…  why are you making that face? That’s really scary! You’re frightening me! You’re a mean old ugly cat, and you were supposed to be my friend. I want my mother NOW!!!!!”

Beraal blinked, shaking her head to try and get the noise out of it. Up close, Mara’s broadcasting volume was unbelievably loud; it was as though someone had set off firecrackers in her head, and it hurt so much that she had had to stop in mid-pounce.

She became aware that she was being watched by Mara, who had backed up and was within easy reach of the kitchen doors. If Beraal moved too soon, she had little doubt that Mara would dart for safety through the doors. The only question was why she hadn’t done so already. The big cat stared at the kitten, puzzled, and found herself looking into Mara’s reproachful eyes.

“I wanted to be your friend,” said Mara. “It’s lonely out here. My Bigfeet are fine, but I don’t know any other cats. You were coming up here to talk to me, I thought, and then you started … 
MEAN OLD CAT! I HATE YOU! I WANT MY MOTHER NOWOWOWOWOWOW!!!!
”

Beraal waited till her head cleared.

“Please,” she said to the kitten, “could you stop doing that?”

“NO! YOU SCARED ME! AND ALL I WANTED WAS A FRIEND! MARA IS SO SAD!”

Beraal sighed, as the cat network in Nizamuddin lit up all over again with exclamations and protests, the lines crackling from the dargah nearby all the way to Humayun’s Tomb on the other side of the main road. Somewhere in her head, Katar was demanding to know why she hadn’t killed the kitten already. Hulo was saying he was on his way if she wanted backup. Out on the roof, a Bigfoot head popped up and Beraal knew she’d have to get off the stairs soon, especially as Mara was continuing to yowl at the top of her lungs.

Ignoring the sense that her head had been invaded by a troupe of those infernal Bigfeet marching bands, Beraal decided she might as well take a shot at a kill. She gathered her haunches in, waggled for take-off and, her claws extended, made a powerful leap at Mara.

The kitten was sitting just inside the doorway, her mouth open as she mewed her head off. She wasn’t looking at Beraal, and wasn’t protecting herself. Beraal rose smoothly into the first arc of her pounce, just as Mara sniffed and moved to the left, to better clean her whiskers.

Beraal overshot, landed in a small puddle of water and found herself skidding in an undignified fashion into the house. She fetched up sharply against the wooden leg of a table and lay there, winded, her eyes closed.

There were noises above her head. Bigfeet voices. They came closer, and Beraal shivered, trying to move her paws, but she could do little more than twitch. From beneath the table, she saw a Bigfoot scoop Mara up, cooing at the kitten and bearing it out of the room. The other Bigfoot was fiddling with the doors, and Beraal shakily got to her feet just in time
to see the kitchen doors leading to the staircase being firmly shut. She shrank back under the table as the Bigfoot passed her, and stayed there for a while, her heart hammering. Mara appeared to have stopped sending; there were no further messages, nothing to distract Beraal from the awful knowledge that she was now trapped in a house, at the mercy of two Bigfeet and a kitten she had tried and failed to kill.

THE KITCHEN WAS DARK AND SILENT
, and while Beraal could hear the Bigfeet, their voices were muffled and far away. She stayed under the table, her eyes closed, her heartbeat coming back to normal. The house was crisscrossed with Mara’s scent patterns, testifying to the kitten’s peregrination; without being told, Beraal knew that the kitten was allowed to roam the floors, but not the shelves or the tabletops. The scent of Bigfeet was so strong that it made Beraal anxious, It had been a long time since she had set her paws inside a house.

Her eyes adjusting to the dimness, she came cautiously out from under the table, padding silently to the doors. She nudged them, hard, but all that earned her was a sore nose. The black-and-white cat leapt up on the sink next, careful not to make a noise; but the windows were firmly closed. The only exit from the room led into the house, and Beraal growled deep in her chest—a low, subterranean hum—as she thought of what it meant. The house was not her territory; it belonged to Mara, as every last scent trail told her. The fear of being found by the Bigfeet formed another tight knot in her stomach.

Standing at the door, Beraal did a quick survey. The kitchen opened into a much larger room, filled with furniture. It appeared to be free of Bigfeet and of Mara, and hesitating only briefly, Beraal padded in. Her claws clicked loudly on the wooden floor, and the noise made her freeze. She pointed with her muzzle for a long, long while before deciding she hadn’t been heard.

She could almost smell the fear rising off her own fur, and when she realized that her paws were slippery with sweat, she made herself pause and wash, the rasp of her tongue calming her down. Beraal looked around the room, and felt her panic subside, replaced by curiosity.

In the centre of the room was a large carpet, and this she padded over, gingerly pressing her paws down on the surface and reflexively shooting out her claws when she realized it felt like fur. The cat stropped her claws meditatively on the carpet, enjoying the paw massage as her claws stuck into the fabric and were then slowly yanked free. She jumped up on a sofa and almost mewed in shock when she found her paws sinking into the soft cushioning; it was a relief when she leaped onto the back of the sofa instead, and began to walk along its soft but stable length. There were tables dotted all around the room, and these some instinct told her to avoid; she sniffed at a lamp and moved hastily back when it wobbled from side to side.

When she looked at the walls properly, her great green eyes widened. She could see the sky, and forgetting her fear of the Bigfeet, Beraal moved fast, breaking into a run. She leaped for the window, and fell back with a thwack when she hit its glass
barrier. Astonished, she put her nose to the glass, sniffing, unable to understand why she could
see
the sky and the trees, but not smell or feel them. The glass was smooth, giving her nothing to work with—no scents, except for Mara’s and the Bigfeet’s, no tastes, nothing at all.

The fur on the back of her neck prickled and her instincts kicked in before she was entirely conscious that she was responding to the presence of Bigfeet. She whirled, her tail rising, her hackles up, her teeth bared, and then she crouched for cover under a small table as one of the Bigfeet walked past.

The Bigfoot was heading left, so Beraal headed right, her eyes rolling back all the way as she shot into yet another room. The cat’s flanks were heaving in panic; all she wanted to do was leave, find her way back to a place where the ceiling didn’t press down so heavily on her, where the skies were open, where there were trees and drains to explore, and where it didn’t feel so closed, so small.

There were no windows in the room, but there were no Bigfeet, either, and Beraal stopped her headlong flight just before she hit the wall. She turned on the balls of her feet, her claws halfway out, her nostrils flared and her mouth open in a silent snarl; the room stank of the kitten, reinforcing the sense of unease she felt at being in another cat’s territory.

Outside on the stairs, the hunter’s task had seemed simple enough. But here, surrounded by Mara’s scent, Beraal’s instincts were kicking in, telling her severely that it was the height of bad manners to attack another cat in its own territory, never mind Katar’s orders. If the kitten attacked, she would be on the defensive; it might be smaller, younger and less experienced,
but this was its home. Beraal looked around the room, searching for an exit, trying to make sense of her surroundings.

She froze as a tiny orange heap of fur stirred on one of the sofas. Beraal’s fur stood on end, and she growled low in the back of her throat.

Mara turned over on the cushion, stuck her paw in her eye, and emitted an unmistakeable snore.

The black-and-white cat sat down heavily on her haunches, her whiskers radiating disbelief. She stared at the kitten, but made no move to get closer to it; instead, she washed the tip of her tail and her whiskers roughly, walking herself through what was a most unusual situation. She was used to cats fighting back, or spitting their defiance at her, especially if they were outside cats in new and unusual surroundings. She would have been able to deal with fear, which would have been a normal reaction for any kitten that had been hunted by an experienced warrior.

But barely ten minutes after being stalked and hunted, Mara had reacted by rolling herself into a little ball and going to sleep. Beraal had never come across any kind of prey that had demonstrated this degree of suicidal unconcern for its own safety.

She tested the air, letting her whiskers probe for signs of the Bigfeet; her sense of space and direction was kicking in, despite the vast differences between mapping the lay of the land outside, which she was used to, and figuring out an unfamiliar Bigfeet house. Beraal listened hard, like a cat at a mouse hole, but her instincts and whiskers told her that the Bigfeet were at least two rooms away.

The older cat licked her paws thoughtfully. She checked her
claws and used the carpet to strop them till they were as sharp as knives. Slowly, careful not to make the slightest sound, she crept forward, moving towards Mara, using the table and chair legs for cover. Part of her attention was on the doorway, her ears cocked to listen for any sign that the Bigfeet might return. But her eyes were fixed on the kitten’s sleeping form, and her muscles tensed. One pounce should do it, in Beraal’s estimation; one pounce would be enough to get her up onto the sofa, and if she timed it right, she could break the kitten’s neck with her trademark sharp killing bite, before Mara woke up or felt the slightest pain. And then she could find an open window or a door and leave this horrible shut-in place and never have to come back again.

“You came back!” said a happy voice. “How nice of you to come back, I didn’t think you would, so I took a nap to recover from all the excitement! Have you seen my basket? This is where I sleep at night, it’s very comfortable! This is a mouse—a cloth one, not a real one, but it makes a perfect pillow! Would you like to play with my ball? I have a ball and a mouse, see?”

Beraal scrabbled for balance in mid-leap, managed to twist sideways and came down hard on the edge of the sofa with a thump. “Mrrrowwwwff!!” she said involuntarily and shut her eyes. That had been a hard thump; she felt distinctly wobbly.

Her ears were being gently washed, and a small but comfortingly raspy tongue went over the sensitive patch of fur on her forehead. It was so soothing that Beraal kept her eyes closed, even though her mind was scratching at the door, trying to tell her that this was all wrong, that no self-respecting
assassin would let the subject of her assassination wash her ears. She opened her eyes, and found herself staring into Mara’s upside-down face. The kitten had clambered onto her back and was balanced on her neck, washing her face with zealous intensity. Beraal blinked. This was extremely pleasant, but she felt she ought to protest—Mara had started washing her whiskers now, and despite herself, Beraal let out a tiny purr.

Mara purred back and walked down Beraal’s face, making the cat yelp. Before she could voice a protest or growl, though, the kitten had cuddled up to her, and Beraal felt her stomach being gently kneaded by Mara’s claws, as the kitten purred and purred and purred.

“I really should—” she began. Mara closed her eyes and continued to knead, her small paws massaging Beraal’s stomach in a way that was quite delicious, and that reminded the older cat of the pleasures of having a litter. She looked down at the orange head.

“But you’re not my kitten,” she said firmly, pushing Mara away from her stomach and getting to her feet. The kitten batted at her paws, and Beraal laid her ears flat and growled.

Mara’s eyes grew wide. The kitten put her head to one side, considered Beraal carefully and produced a surprisingly good imitation of the other cat’s growl.

Beraal lowered her head, hunched her shoulders up and moved menacingly forward.

Mara lowered her head, hunched her shoulders up and smacked Beraal on the nose with her claws out, leaving a trail of blood and pain.

“My paws and whiskers!” cried Beraal. Her eyes blazed as
she slammed her paw down where the kitten stood, but Mara shot to the right, and she missed by a hair.

“Just you wait, you misbegotten, mangy, rotten little ball of fur,” said Beraal, her teeth snapping down hard and missing Mara’s tail by an inch. Her nose hadn’t hurt like this since she’d got it caught in a mousetrap some months ago, and now all she wanted to do was to break the stupid kitten’s neck in two.