A Fistful of Earth: Chronicles of Marsdenfel #2

Year 532, New Calendar - part IV

I finish crying; wash my face with water from the skin. I don’t touch the food Dakadza brought me; that would accept his marriage proposal.

Not that I have to be willing, for the lulna to force the issue, but I might as well not make it easy for him.

I work on the ropes’ knots, ignoring the pain in my raw wrists and fingers. It’ll hurt more, by the time I’m done—but my magic can fix me up, easy enough.

Insects buzz with nightfall as the light dims, and I don’t smell my mother. She must’ve changed shifts—and nobody’s harnessed me, so she must’ve kept her mouth shut.

I sit in my tent and breathe carefully while full dark comes, familiarizing myself as much as I can with the surrounding scents. My sense of smell be n’t so good on two feet.

Full dark. I wriggle out of the loosened ropes, cracking a few bones in the process. The pain brings nausea with it, but I shove it aside with an ease that stems from practice.

Good middle-class women aren’t so practiced with or cavalier about pain.

I shake off the thought and my green underdress. The dress bundles up well.

Then I take four feet.

There has to be a more efficient way of keeping clothes on-hand with this changing thing. Maybe I’ll figure it out someday, when I’m in a culture that won’t try to kill me for what I am. Creator knows I could easily live long enough to find one.

Or create one.

I shake my head against the thought. I’m difficult to kill, not invincible. A foundling servant who’s been blessed with some highborn friends. A barren foundling servant, who also happens to be a barbaric creature that many would happily kill. Remarriage, particularly to someone of high enough rank for me to create the culture…is not for me.

I smoothen the fur on my side. Watching my husband wither while I hardly aged would be downright depressing, anyway.

I take a deep breath, confirm that everyone’s in place for me to creep out, and lunge out the door onto my tent’s guard before she can raise an alarm. Myrecats aren’t quite the size of an adult human, but they’re heavy. She goes down hard, hits her head, and is too stunned to protest when I choke her with my paw.

We’re heavy. And I’m on the large end for a myrecat. Probably as big as King Liathen II.

I recall my father, the lulna, who captured me as a myrecat. I might even be bigger than him.

I duck into my tent long enough to grab my bundle of clothing with my teeth and slink into the darkness. I’m dark—grey, mostly, but with a bit of brown and russet in there, and blond in my underbelly. Such a pretty mottled thing.

 I find that space between the camp and those who keep watch and move quickly. It’s foolish to leave a king’s gift behind, but there’s no way I can carry both it and my clothes.

Ah, well. King Liathen’s socially inept enough that I doubt he’ll take insult at me losing it.

Guards ring the camp too close together for me to get out without being seen, but that’s not my only option. I find a spot with a weaker guard—weaker in magic, not in body; I don’t want to kill anyone—and make a running start.

The guard, a youth who’s still filling out with a man’s muscle, sees me coming at him. His eyes widen.

He trills an alert, but before anyone can react, I land on him, knock him down, and keep on running.