Chương 258: 12.3

Adelyne wondered just what she was doing here. In Kaeketeh she had actually been useful. She knew those streets, she could speak to the guilds, dock workers, street rats, orphans and whores. The work was something she could tell was helping her lady and her city. But the capital? Trapped in the palace where the servants dressed like minor nobles themselves? Adelyne didn't have any part in this.

Worse still, while she was sitting in one of the servant's rooms of a guest wing almost as large as Kaeketeh keep itself, one of their traveling companions had decided to bother her instead of doing whatever it was sorcerous talking cats did in palaces. He'd not spoken too, been in the presence of or really even looked much at Adelyne since they met up on the journey. But now he was speaking to her!

"Hello there child of Kaeketeh's streets. I think it is long overdue that we had a little chat." Adelyne was familiar with cats. There were plenty who lived on the streets in Kaeketeh. There were also just as many who lived better than Adelyne had in the decadence of midtown. At least better until Jewel claimed her as a bonded woman. How the life of a pet and a bonded servant were so similar left a bad taste on Adelyne's tongue. So yes Adelyne was familiar with cats.

But that did not mean she was comfortable with one that spoke.

"Uh, y-yes lord sorcerer sir." Adelyne knew cats and she knew for a fact that they didn't 'frown' like that. Not when they were displeased. A few did look unhappy all the time but that was not the same as a proper frown. Cat's had a way with their eyes and their tails and how they held their backs. Fizzbunches the Lord Sorcerer did those things as well. But he also could squish and bend his face in ways no cat ever could or would. He could smile. He could raise a single brow.

He could look smug as well as surprised in ways entirely unlike a cat. He could also glare far more severely." Cease the mask little Muhtal, There are no airs between us children of the street. You're no courtesan needing to shine yourself like false copper. There are business-a-do tween us to settle and silver heavy for your palm. Respect tween be our ilk you ken?"

The cat's voice, who had never once been anything but the haughtiest of noble prattle any time Adelyne had ever heard it, sank from those cultured heights like a stone into the river vah. And it was definitely on the south side of the river at that. Where the piss and shit made a stink that was enough to water the eyes. That was how the lord sorcerer's voice had changed in that single moment. Before she even knew what she was doing she responded with a snap as she would anyone else on the street who said as much.

"Laughs to that any deal with a posh tongue wizard." The cat in a red floppy hat who was anything but that grinned with bright yellow eyes. Tail flicking in the way she had seen on more mundane beasts of his kind right before the prepared to pounce." Names slathered onto I might be so by fearful high shitters it true, but not my roots that sink low from above. Not by claws sharpened on high or purses heavy came I. From the gutter stink climbed I. In a hungry night was born me, in alleys did I beg and steal."

Adelyne boggled, it was not Kaeketeh slang he was speaking. It was not even any words or language she had ever heard. It was flowery, smooth, roiling and sonorous. It crept into a soft almost (appropriately) cat-like yowl sometimes. But under the words she did not know like the street and cobbles under her toes and the crowd wrapped around her in a cloak she knew every meaning clear as a knife in the dark. Meaningful and solid as a silver grosz plucked from a purse."

So from my streets to yours I repeat myself little kitten. We've business to balance." Adelyne huffed then nodded to the wizard that was a cat and not. Was of the familiar street and imminently foreign.

"Fine, what you want?" He nodded to her and spoke with words that were actually legible. Convenient as the strange sorcery where she had still been understanding some foreign tongue before was.

"My associate tells me you've spoken for your streets in Kaeketeh. And that it has done well for you and yours and the interests of the Countess Jewel as well. Tell me, what do you know of my business with your mistress?" His voice was smooth again, but even so it didn't take on the snooty noble's words that sounded like midtown. It was a familiar street tongue. Adelyne huffed and dropped the awkward tone and fancy words that were such a poor fit for her.

Although it galled how all of her work to try and sound like was proper has already proven a waste.

"I dunno, Your Lady Jewel's friend? She gets along well with that weird slinking bog thing that smells like farts." The cat smirked up at her.

"I admit Tsulogothulan has endeared themselves far better with the Lady Jewel than was strictly intended. But no one but foolish prattling lords and ladies think there is any friendship between us." Adelyne considered him. His voice was reminding her of how some of the older boys talked when she was a kid. Acting clever cuz he was bigger and older. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Full of himself but also canny.

Watching out that the other kids in their particular alley got at least a bite to eat. Not well, not kind really. Adelyne had been bruised as much from those for things she deserved as not.

"I heard tell you lot of wizards were tight-knit and tied with her though." The Wizard who was a cat nodded.

"Just so, but it's by business with her father. And business of our own there too that we are so close. But a business I hear you might rightly understand." He jumped up from the floor to the bed of that servant's bunk which Adelyne had found softer than any place she had yet slept. Which made sense, the servants in the palace were dressed like nobles, why wouldn't they sleep like them.

"Tell me Adelyne, speaker of the street, daughter of Kaeketeh in all her filth and spite. Why did you risk the Countess Jewel's wrath abandoning your bonded labors?" Adeleyne opened her mouth to speak but before she could even start to say the words he was cutting her off.

"Not the clever lie we tell the marks streetdottir. What was your real business running out and risking your neck?" Her teeth hurt with how hard they met one another in her sudden terrified panic. The eyes of the cat were golden, but the light in them shined like a starlit knife in the dark. She found her words quiet despite them being alone in the room. It felt right, like there was a murmur of a crowd near them in spite of the eerie quiet of the palace.

Like the candlelit room set aside for Jewel's servants was in fact an alley just a turn away from crowded markets. The simple stone floors feeling more like cobbles and the scent of wood, strange herbs and dry sweat replaced by rotten filth and dirt and smoke of a city, not Kaeketeh's city but one that had air that in spite of its foreignness tasted similar.

"The Lady Jewel would have been angry, angry with the fools on the street, angry with the entire city. She would have been angry and she would have done more of the same as she did with the bloody footmen." Fizzbunches nodded to her, but despite him being a black cat sitting on a bed, well lit by clean candle light he gave the impression of one of the children she had been paying silvers for news on the street. The thought reminded her of the spark that had driven Adelyne to action.

"She thought she'd made them children, She didn't see the difference. She didn't even realize what was going to happen. She wouldn't have understood. And then she would have blamed them for doing what anyone would have found proper!" He was looking at her, and those golden eyes were not the gold of metal. It was the gold of cheap oil wicks burning pig fat off reeds. Or a sparse fire burning weakly on a cold night. Adelyne stared into those eyes and saw the warmth that only touched abandoned children and broken men.

The fire tucked away in the corners for those that couldn't even get a spot in the bunk houses. The words continued nearly without her wanting too.

"It woulda been a disaster!" And he nodded again. The fire of those warming coals vanished with a slow blink, and when they returned it was just golden yellow cat eyes again.

"Just so streetdottir, just so. And that Adelyne of Kaeketeh is my business, it's the business I've called together a circle of wizardry for. That is why the labor of a year of my city has gone into the deals I've made for the Baron of Rochford so far." He spoke and there was in his purring throat the sound of soft and thin-shod feet on twisting alleys. His voice had an echo of a quiet night. He kept talking.

"Jewel is undeniably what the people in the Ridgetails call a Tyrant Wyrm." Which was obvious to anyone in Kaeketeh. Even the blind, deaf and infirm knew that. Jewel's voice echoed in their bones.

"But she is not the first. And by the words I've gathered from across your realm and beyond she may in fact no longer even be the only one." Adelyne felt her stomach drop out inside her.

"We are all very fortunate that Jewel has turned out as docile as she is." The thought was stuck in her head, harsh and catching, like a fisherman's hook. She stared down at the cat who sounded like strange and yet so familiar alleys.

"So tell me Streetdottir of Kaeketeh. Do you care to make a bargain for the good of Kaeketeh, her streets and all who walk upon them?" Her throat felt dry. The cat which could smile how no cat ever should stared up at her. Eyes like the dying coals which pushed back the chill burn of the night. Finally she found her voice.

"What's your catch? What's the price?" She wanted to believe if it was too much she'd refuse. But the terror of not just Jewel but another wyrm like her? One considered less docile?!

"A simple trifle, serve your lady in the spirit that you have already. Speak for the streets, look where she won't see, think what she won't consider, be where she cannot go, listen in places where her overly rich blooded entourage cannot pass unnoted." Adelyne glared at the cat.

"As soon as we get back to Kaeketeh I'll do that anyway." The smile grew sharp, the teeth shined. Adelyne knew cats and those were not the teeth of a cat. They had the points but the look of them shined more like a man's then any feline creature.

"Oh you misunderstand streetdottir, this service would start immediately." She glared harder at the sorcerer that was both a cat and not.

"Don't quite see how I'm going to do that lord sorcerer. This is the bloody capital. I don't know shit from silver here." The servant's quarters grew both darker and lighter than it had before. The walls seemed to loom and bend. The ceiling felt like it had opened up over them. The stone of the floor felt like the seams had sunk away and the stones rounded into cobbles.

"Well that's where the nature of your payment comes from, daughter of Kaeketeh." Adelyne looked around the room, at the simple walls, the too tall ceiling, the fine and tightly fitted stone floors. Her eyes told her one thing, but her nose, her ears, her toes in their shoes and the air on her neck all said something else entirely. She was by all sights in a well candlelit chamber fit for a dozen servants. But the air itself loomed and pressed in. The wind blew between strange buildings.

The murmur of a crowd shifted and brushed around her. The Temple and the god botherers warned about prayer. They warned about pleas made openly with the heavens. They warned about the bargains that could be struck with the stars. Adelyne looked down at this cat, who could fill a simple room with the air of a city. Who could speak to her with words she did not know and still be understood because they spoke from the streets. Not the streets of her home, but somehow still the same streets. Familiar.

"Alright you bloody smug fuckface, What's the offer?" Adelyne was not sure if her grandfather would have approved or boxed her ears for this. She wasn't sure if she was thinking before or after the trouble. But he was only asking her to do what she already wanted to do. Surely there wouldn't be any harm?