“Yes. The mice…”
“That’s right All right, then … you call me in the morning when you’re ready, and I’ll take him down on patrol again: show him the differences between the gates, get him familiar with the track layout on the upper level.” She yawned once more. “Sweet Iau, but I have got to get off days… I am just not a day person. Urruah, you take tomorrow evening off, though I wouldn’t mind having you on call during the early daylight hours, at least till I get up.”
“No problem. This is going to be going on for a while, and Yarn’s right about one thing: watching Hmahilh’ is always educational. She’s some strategist.”
“Right. I’ll have a walk around the block, then turn in. ’Luck, you two.”
“ ’Luck, Rhi…”
She went down the steps, looked up at Yafh and Arhu as she passed. “Hunt’s luck, gentlemen… I’m done for today.”
“Don’t want to stay and see the epic struggle?” Yafh said. “You’re working too hard, Rhiow.”
“Smile when you say that, Yafh. ’Luck, Arhu … see you in the morning.”
“All right,” he said, but he was still gazing at that empty spot… with less of an estranged look, this time. The expression was thoughtful, and Rhiow was not entirely sure what to make of it… but then, that was becoming the story of her life, where Arhu was concerned.
She saluted them both with a flirt of her tail and walked on down the block. From above, a voice said, “Oh, look, she’s going to go out and try to get some after all.”
“It won’t matter… Even if she knew what to do with a tom, she couldn’t find any really select blood.”
Rhiow had had about enough for one night. She laughed out loud. “What, like yours?” she said, intending her voice to carry as well as theirs had. “Hairballs at one end, fur-mats at the other, and twenty pounds of flab apiece in the middle? This is considered ‘select’? Things must be pretty bad in the Himalayas.”
Feline laughter came from all up and down the street. There was a flustered silence from above, followed by annoyed hisses and growling. Rhiow turned the corner to finish her circuit of the block, then headed for home, walking up the air to her own rooftop and smiling slightly.
When Rhiow got home, she found that Hhuha had gone to bed already. Iaehh was sitting up late, in the big leather chair by the empty fireplace, reading. As Rhiow’s small door clicked, he looked up in slight surprise, rubbing his eyes. “Well, there you are. I was wondering if I was going to see you today.”
Rhiow sighed. “Yes, well,” she said, “we all have long workdays sometimes.” She went to her dish for a long drink of water.
Iaehh put his book down, got up, and took the dish right out from under her nose.
“Hey!”
“You can’t drink that,” Iaehh said, “it’s got cat food in if He started to refill it from the sink.
“As if I care at the moment!” Rhiow said. “Do you know how salty that pastrami can be? Put it back!”
“Here,” Iaehh said, “here’s some fresh.”
“Well, thanks,” Rhiow said, and sighed again, and started to drink once more.
“Your ‘mom,’ ” Iaehh said softly, sitting down with his book again, “is terrible about giving you fresh water.”
“My ‘mom,’ ” Rhiow said under her breath as she drank. She smiled slightly. There was no question that Iaehh had noticed over time that Rhiow was, to use the annoying ehhif phrase, more “her” cat than his: he teased them both about it, Hhuha directly and Rhiow in the usual one-sided dialogue.
Well, it wasn’t Iaehh’s fault, Rhiow supposed. He simply had no gift for making a lap the way Hhuha did. He somehow seemed to have more than the usual number of bones. Nor (when he did make a lap) did he seem capable of sitting still for more than thirty seconds. Always running in all directions was Iaehh: running to work, running home, running out to the store, just plain running. She liked him well enough: he was thoughtful. He just wasn’t soft or still the way Hhuha was; and when he held her, no matter how affectionately, there was never that sense that Rhiow had with Hhuha that there was a purr inside the ehhif too, and their two purrs were in synch. Just a personality thing. But he does mean well…
She finished with the water and came over to him to thank him: jumped up in his lap and began to knead his knee and purr. “Ow,” he said, “ow ow OW ow—”
“Sorry,” Rhiow said, and curled around and settled herself, still purring. “Here now, you just sit still and relax—”
He stroked her while propping the book off to one side, on the other knee, under the lamp. For a little while they sat that way, Rhiow closing her eyes and beginning to feel blessedly calmer after the day she’d had. Saash had reported in briefly that after they’d left the bout of hauissh, she’d bedded Arhu down without trouble; he’d be out until at least dawn and maybe longer, from the looks of him. Urruah had been very good, better than she’d expected. So had Saash.
How long they’d be that way, as tomorrow progressed, was a good question. For once it had become plain that they would all have to go Downside, she had felt Urruah’s and Saash’s fear at once. There was no hiding it from team members, not when the three of them had worked together so closely, for as long as they had…
Iaehh sighed and put the book down. “Oh, come on,” Rhiow said under her breath, “couldn’t you have made it a record? Thirty seconds or so?” But no: he lifted her, got up, and carefully put her down on the seat where he had been.
“I’m bushed,” he said. “This way when I get in bed and your mom says, ‘Did she come in?’ I can say, ‘Yes,’ and be allowed to go to sleep. ’Night, plumptious cat.”
She breathed out in resignation and watched him make the rounds of the apartment, checking the locks, turning out the lights, finally slipping through the bedroom door and closing it softly behind him.
Rhiow lay there, looking around the room in the fault yellow light that came up in stripes through the narrow Venetian blinds: reflection from the streetlights down the alley outside.
“Plumptious,” she thought. Is that a real ehhif word? I must look that up.
Oh, well… I have other things to do first.
Rhiow started washing, beginning as she did so to make a mental list of the spells she thought they would need for their journey. She felt like stuffing her head full of everything she could coax out of the Whisperer, and all the other spells she routinely carried with her, useful-seeming or not, from the air hardener right down to the “research” spell that had come with her Ordeal. But normally, the Whisperer would let you carry only so much; Her preference, apparently, was for you to call on Her as you needed new material. She would then provide it for you, whole, in your mind. There was a certain extra security, though, in having the spell ready to go, all spoken in your mind except for the final syllable…
But still.
Downside…
In the darkness, now that there was no one to see, Rhiow shuddered. Bad enough that tune had done nothing whatever to mellow her memories of the team’s last trip. But now there was an added problem: Ainu’s voice, dry and strange, crying: It doesn’t matter. It’s coming anyway.
And what had the rest of that meant? It came before. Once to see. Once to taste. Once to devour—
She tried washing a little to get her composure back, but it didn’t help. Finally she stopped and, instead of flinching away from the issue, “turned” in mind to face it.