This was originally supposed to be a 8000-word one-shot. We know how those turn out. This has three parts to it. The two others are already written and will be posted within a few days of each other.

I don't like breaking up the end of a story with my babble, so I'm just going to say right up here: I love attent- uhh, reviews. Yeah.

No One Owns the Rain

(I)

Marel perceived – both eyes kept sharp unlike Nirvan, who lost an eye for the gaze that had wandered about the Duke's pubescent daughter – the dimness of her hair in her reflection upon the meticulously washed marble wall. White-gray stone with black veins, polished to show herself and the garden in sharp clarity. The green of her eyes flashed bright against her dusty face, and she watched her tongue tease a parched lip. A splash, and her reflection vanished in the movements of her rag, although the wall could not improve beyond its current state.

Less water for the slaves in the midst of drought, so it was said. Mysteriously, there was enough to clean the walls beyond spotlessness, carried by slaves from the river six miles away, allocated to the Duke's cleanliness. When the humans turned to immerse themselves in petty gossip, Marel wrung the rag into her mouth. It tasted like stale dirt and charcoal but its welcome wetness made it sweet. She noticed a shadow shift and looked upward. Nirvan's single eye peered down at her before turning away, seeing nothing. She didn't need to respond to express their bond.

Nirvan, she assumed, was chimney-sweeping this afternoon. Normally a job reserved for cat-tribe children – Marel herself was spared the duty by being just too large at capture – Nirvan made the tight squeeze for Mistress Fiela's chimney on account of her weak lungs, which allegedly could not tolerate the presence of fur. Bitterly glaring at the reflection of a moist and healthy hyacinth, Marel thought to herself that the Mistress enjoyed the slave-tended gardens enough.

From the start, as was legend, Mistress Fiela had always rained trouble upon them like a heavy storm cloud. The birth of perhaps no other mortal had demanded so much blood in retribution. The loss of the Duchess demanded the death of all the midwives; the illness of the infant brought the miracle doctor's "cleansing of the household"; the survival of the child brought misery to an already beaten people. When Marel quietly asked Nirvan how he could fall for such an accursed human, he replied in his stoic murmur, "It was not my gaze that wandered." Marel hissed at his rashness, but the innocence of his worker's hands made her realize her mistake with his words. So it was that a grown hawk once accused of indecency toward the Mistress lived, and further was assigned to clean her chimney weekly, even in the summer.

With a trembling scrub, Marel realized that she could barely contain her rage. Dry heat seeped into her skin and robbed her head of water until a headache throbbed strong against her eyes. She remembered when life was not this contradictory street-corner spectacle of meaningless motions and sounds. Even Nirvan, he needed words. He came the closest to the truest dance of life, to the existence of spirits dancing together, doing only what was real, knowing meaning without the confusion of words. She was a child when she was stolen from these ways, but some things, she felt, needed no time to become wisdom. They were meant to know these things by the pulse of their laguz blood.

She glanced down the wall to marvel at the strong bodies arranged in submissive acts of weeding and cleaning. Where had their blood gone? It seemed that all of it had been sucked from them by the dry, lifeless air of the manse.

Marel stole a second gulp of water, and with that she was caught and lashed.

"You should not test them," Nirvan murmured. "It is very hot." She hated the proper high Begnion accent in his voice. He hadn't the slightest hint of wildness in his words or his mannerisms – perfectly tamed.

"Why I am thirsty," Marel grated with tired agitation. She lay on the dirt floor of the slaves' cabin, wishing she could nurse the wounds placed cunningly on her upper back.

Covered with dust that could not conceal his thirst, Nirvan gazed at her with one steely gray eye. "You should not test them," he repeated, before showing her the waterskin he stole himself. With a cry of delight and need, Marel reached for the leather container. Even the slosh of moving liquid that met her ears sounded wet. In the dimness, several dozen jealous eyes turned their way. "One small drink, lioness." The young cat did her best to meet the description of a small drink and consoled herself with a single mouthful. "There is no more water in River Saepe."

"Which, Saepe?"

Nirvan cupped his hands as if holding water like a deep river basin. All rivers within a day's travel had run dry. She had overheard from one of the Duke's cartographers that soon, only Lake Semper would stay wet.

"Is judgment," she said, closing her eyes away form Nirvan.

"We are the dying."

"Humans need more. We find. Survive." He said nothing with his irritating voice. She sensed that he was humoring her. "Almost night."

"I will leave you be." He took the waterskin from her impassively, rose, turned mechanically to leave.

"Human lover."

Nirvan turned to appraise her quietly, indignation echoing deeply in the shadows of his face. Aware of the dozens of others in the room, he said only, "Good night." The door clacked shut with the latch, and Marel smiled to herself. That look was her favorite part of him. If only he would show it to anyone else.

Nirvan once was, and still appeared to many others to be, an extension of the humans who enslaved them. His perfect mannerisms and utter, genuine humility marked him as the same as that opposing race. She wanted to rip out his wings at the time; he didn't deserve to bear them. Every morning he came to shepherd them to the carriage in the back to unload barrels of wine. Every morning he watched over them like a human. The raven in Nirvan's old post – she didn't know his name but remembered him as The Rooster in her head – possessed none of the redeeming qualities she eventually found in Nirvan. The Rooster was a traitor through and through. So were the other false-laguz watchers. They were all happy pets in their human clothing and human mannerisms. Nirvan was different. That was why he fell.

There was no wine for them to move the next morning. The Rooster informed them all that the shipment was attacked by thirsty bandits and that they would be assigned elsewhere. "The doctor is short on his draughts," he said (or more fittingly, cawed) with his creaky old voice. "Master needs one to visit the apothecary."

Mistress Fiela had taken ill again. The Duke never remarried and doted most thoroughly over his only child, an all but continual anxiety with her fragile health. At one point they sent for the doctor weekly, but the Duke quickly realized that a doctor must remain in residence to watch her at all times. Now the trips were monthly to restock on his various curatives.

None looked eager to volunteer for the task of walking to the nearest unfriendly town in the heat. The Rooster picked one, and the middle-aged tiger obligingly left. With that, they were dismissed to their barracks.

Marel felt faint between the heat and thirst as she walked back to the cabin. The term "barracks" was used loosely in regards to the places where they slept. The structures were all old but strong, walls and roof of stone, with nothing on the inside but space and dirt ground. As she entered, her eyes adjusted slowly to the dimness. She rested in her space by the wall, leaning back until the sandstorm in her vision passed.

When her senses recovered, she saw that all the others had drawn their attention to the back of the room. Marel followed their gaze and saw a dark-eyed hawk standing upon a makeshift podium of a stool with uneven legs. For a moment, she thought she saw Nirvan – they had similar build and coloration – but the moment he moved she dispelled that notion. Nirvan was polite, unassuming. This hawk was bold. A leader.

"We will rise, or we will die," he was saying in a magnificent baritone, as loud as he dared. Marel felt his words seize her focus. In another life he could have been a magnificent orator. In this one he was known as a gardener. "The Duke has enough water for us all. This water was carried on the backs of our brothers." Roars of appreciation, half-swallowed with fear and disuse, mumbled throughout the cabin. "The Duke has enough food for our stomachs, enough medicine for our sick. But we have let him have too much of each one of us! He cannot own us!"

Marel would have cheered if she were the cheering sort, yet was surprised by the silence to this. The hawk frowned upon them all and said, in a most stately voice, "We belong to the legacy of our ancestors. We were born as the children of the earth. The sky belongs to us – the dirt belongs to us – we own the rain, and it will fall when the Goddess blesses our kingdom!" The crowd stirred at the mention of rain. Murmurs rose to swallow the intended climax of, "We will be free!" Whispered disapproval swallowed the words to be lost within the crowd. But those words wormed their way to the back of the room, where Marel murmured back, "We will be free."

She remembered word of the last revolt from two years past. All the slaves of Begnion had rose to join it. In her mind, she imagined waves upon waves of laguz, swelling in ranks that continued beyond sight. Their power was so uncontrolled that at its conclusion after nearly a year of struggle, it moved the Empress to act – or at least speak. Like a consolatory offering she promised freedom they never obtained. "We will tear Misaha from her throne!" the hawk called, barely controlling the urge to shout in his momentum. "We will finish what our brothers bravely begun."

And, finally, the speaker asked, "Who will join?"

Who? Who answered? None. Marel waited vainly for another to say I will. A dubious, noncommittal murmur ran through the meeting hall. In disbelief, she herself stayed silent.

"We have enough strength between all of us," the hawk angrily addressed. "It need not be used for the benefit of others."

A tiger in the front row rose and gave a snarl at the speaker. You will not tempt the young ones. Marel understood by instinct, and a stir among the others of the beast tribes showed that they understood as well.

The hawk did not understand. "Yes! You have your anger. Use that anger!"

Impatient with the silent and timid masses, Marel pushed herself to her feet and stood. Within seconds, every head in the crowd had turned to her. Her eyes flickering from disengaged faces to the hawk, she said in modern tongue so the speaker would understand, "We was not born to live this way."

These acts have always failed, the tiger growled.

With palms up in an exalted fashion, the hawk descended from his makeshift podium to approach Marel. As he strode amongst the sullen and dispirited, he raised his eyebrows toward Marel with an air of faint conspiracy. He extended his palms to Marel. She looked down at them awkwardly, wondering what he expected of her. Hesitantly, she ventured to lay her hands on his. Clasping her hands tight, he said quietly – but as if more loudly than he had rallied them – "They will never have our pride." She liked to think that the whole room heard.

Marel traced his light side-to-side movement as he transferred his weight from one foot to another. He pressed his dried lips together and she saw his tongue dart to wet them with spit, despite knowing that would only make them drier. His dark eyes searched her face, and Marel's own green eyes followed their movements with momentary distrust. But soon this stranger was done searching her, and he turned back toward those gathered. "No one else?" He gestured toward Marel and the protesting tiger, still mistaken. "You would so easily give up what it means to be laguz?"

They have already given up, Marel intuited briefly. She quickly stifled it alongside all of her doubts. And then, a lone laguz rose from the far sight of the room. For a moment, she was surprised as all throughout the room, young laguz, faces full of desperate hope, rose in succession. Then even reason overpowered her inhibitions.

"We will succeed, or we will die." The hawk lowered Marel's hands and slowly paced back toward his podium. "And we will not die. Not here. The Goddess wouldn't allow it."

The plan spread through the barracks within two days. On the day of rebellion, Daienese roasted deer rib would be served. Their kitchen-worm would poison the meat that no slave would touch and the wine that no slave would drink. After the humans had eaten their fill, the sweeping-boys would knock over every vase in sight as the alarm. Then they would take their buckets and fire pokers, their brooms and their kitchen knives, all the instruments of their submission. With these they would beat down what remained of the guards and they would be free.

By the third day, her head whirred and throbbed with dryness. The night before, she and Nirvan had finished the last of his water. The scarcity had begun to affect even the nobles. A fine layer of dry dust collected outside the mansion walls. The Duke's beloved flowers were allowed to wilt. The region had gone as yellow and barren as late fall. She heard that a pair of human servant girls had been flogged that morning for drinking from the warm bath they had prepared for the Duke. They were permitted to drink the murky, soapy water afterward.

The middle-aged tiger, with a face worn like an elder's, approached Marel in the evening, before Nirvan's typical visit. This is foolishness, sister, he growled to her as respectfully as he could. Do not throw your life away.

Better thrown away than thrown at their feet, she hissed back.

He seized her with arms empowered by a lifetime of servitude. It has been tried before. It will only be our loss to bear.

Complacency! She pulled away from him as best as she could. You, you are still in chains. You have been too weak all your life to try.

Stricken, he quickly withdrew. Only when she saw his retreating back did Marel realize the sting of her sentiment. She guiltily prowled away to rest in another part of the room.

Sure as the sun, Nirvan came to their barracks shortly after. He communicated to her with a flicker of his gaze and a roll of his shoulders that he had heard of the plans. The sun was rapidly setting beyond the horizontal slits in the slaves' chambers that passed for windows. Slaves were never spared something as precious as candles, and Marel knew that she would have to send him back to his own cabin before darkness came to blind his hawk tribe vision.

She could see his cues in the near-dark, but she knew that he could not see hers. She touched the tip of one bound wing and gave a brief purrlike growl, like a mother calling for her naked kittens to feed. He shifted his wings away. For an instant she felt sorrow, but it vanished as he knelt closer to her and laid his blackened hands on her shoulders. He gave a small murmur that meant nothing in language, yet was full of concern and uncertainty when it fell upon her ears.

She ran her gaze, still perfect in the dimness, over his sooty brown hair, his worry-worn face, his labor-worn body. Marel had the thought that Nirvan should have been born a storyteller, with his perfect acting, pleasing voice, and sensitivity to spirit. Nirvan was born a slave. His mother and father tried to find something in each other amidst the chains upon them, and so he was.

Whatever the circumstances, Marel refused to believe that Nirvan was born to serve. He was born in chains, but that said nothing of what he was meant to be. Within him, Marel saw a brilliant mind, searching for shelter in which to flourish. She focused on his deeply intelligent gaze and ignored the eerie shadow beneath his other eyelid, as she had trained herself. When she looked at it by accident, a shiver would pass through her at the odd drooping shape, leaving a half-crescent of cavernous pink flesh visible, like the slit of a human's stage mask. That was something done to him, she always reminded herself, and reflected nothing upon Nirvan himself.

Marel murmured back determination and a challenge to his worry. She took his blackened hands in her roughened palms and thickened nails, squeezing them in a mix of reassurance and urging. A look of faint surprise and consternation flashed across his face. She pressed against his hands even more tightly, shooting him a look that she almost regretted: a desperate look, a look full of rage, a look consumed by loathing for the humans. Full of accusation – that he was a coward and that she would rebel, here and now, damn wisdom to hell. He flinched and drew back, the strength of her venom clear even to his vision.

"I will if you must," he said finally, breaking the air between them. Annoyed, she nodded curtly to him. But more gently, thinking on the danger that he embraced for her, she touched his hands to her cheeks. She ignored the ever-present scent of smoke imbued in his flesh and concentrated on the faint sour but earthy hint of his sweat. "If something happens," Nirvan began, looking at Marel. Marel looked back at him, reading the worry that had haunted him for the last three days.

"Nothing bad happen," she reassured him.

He shook his head firmly and gripped her tightly, as the tiger had. "If it comes to it, I wish for you to understand that you should not risk your freedom for me."

She stared at him. A veil of fine dust drifted in a ray of sun, giving him a faint glow – or perhaps it was the dehydration. Gently, she swat his arm. "We go together." He just shook his head again. This was something Marel would not accept. She seized him about the waist, burying her fingers in his feathers. "Stop," she said. With an air of resignation – how Marel hated resignation – Nirvan brushed his fingers through her hair as if soothing a child. She rejected his touch, as she had always rejected indignity. Hurt showing in his face, Nirvan released her as she leaned back by herself against the wall.

"Don't let it be for nothing," he cautioned in that perfect Begnion accent she hated.

"Never. We succeed."

Silence passed between them. Nirvan reached for her again, catching her hand. He didn't say a thing, but she felt the doubt that still pulsed through him with every heartbeat. For a fleeting moment, she feared something she could not place, something incoherent in thought and form. Before she could identify it, she said, with emphasis, "Must succeed."

She knew it would be the day of the rebellion. Marel had seen the deer butchered in the backyard at dawn. She didn't know what specifically Daeinese roasted deer rib was, but she did know that it involved deer, a meat rarely involved as the Duke favored poultry. The leaders of the rebellion wouldn't risk any conflicted signals.

And yet, before lunch, Marel reported to the Rooster, loathing the knowledge that she would serve as if it were any other day. In her first task of the morning, Marel knocked upon Mistress Fiela's door, the small square of parchment held between her thumbs in a false show of respect. At a curt, "Come in," she stepped in the room. Fiela laid upon her bed, her eyes still on her book. Her elaborately braided blonde hair tumbled around the tops of her ears and curled against her shoulders. Her lips were deep pink with nourishment and full with moisture. Although she was said to be ill, Fiela appeared to be filled with more life than Marel and Nirvan together.

Marel could hear the scuffling in her chimney. Though she knew it to be Nirvan, duty forced her to ignore him. Instead, she knelt to the side of Fiela's bed, message extended to her tender, groomed hands. Fiela took it curtly and glanced it over while Marel waited to be dismissed.

She remained bowed at Fiela's bedside while the young noble fumbled about her nightstand in search of a pen. With every passing second, she wondered if Fiela would find some cause to berate her. Marel imagined – careful not to let it show – reaching beyond Fiela's fancy braids and frilly dresses, curling her fingers around that delicate pale throat, snapping it with the power that over a decade of labor had granted. Finally, Fiela found a pen and began to write.

A clank and a gasp came from the fireplace. Marel lifted her head out of turn to look, a gesture above her station, but one that fortunately went unnoticed as Fiela herself brought her attention to the fireplace. "What is it?" she said with more annoyance than concern. Marel remembered herself and lowered her head again, eyes fixed on the side of Fiela's bed.

"An accident," came Nirvan's voice, with veiled distress, from the echoing space. "Nothing worth your worry, Mistress."

Nirvan's feet dropped with a light scuff on the cinders. Rolling her eyes as far as possible, Marel could catch a glimpse of Nirvan rubbing at his face, as if trying to remove something that had fallen into his eye. The sounds of Fiela's writing became erratic, but Marel didn't dare to steal a glance. Eventually, Fiela folded the mssage and stuffed the slip in Marel's face. "Healer's ward." Nirvan had hoisted himself back up the chimney.

Marel took the slip, trying her best not to think too hard of Nirvan murmuring, Nothing worth your worry, Mistress... She headed for the door, seething beneath her complacent exterior. Fiela kept on reading.

Still many hours until noon.

Shatter.

Marel jumped at the sound of a breaking vase and looked for its source. The small sweeping raven boy who overturned it guiltily bent to clean it up. It wasn't the signal. When the overseer came to penalize him, she kept her steady gaze on the floor. She scrubbed at a particularly stubborn scuff mark as the boy gave brave whimpers under the lash. The ornate clock on the far end of the hall told her that the Duke would soon sit for his lunch. Her ears turned this way and that expectantly. The slightest tink of ceramic against stone disturbed the dusts of anticipation within her.

She passed an hour this way. By its end, discomfort crept upon her in the form of doubt. Surely the Duke would have began his lunch by now. Eventually, by the time it was too late to be called morning, a small team of guards approached her. They had many other slaves in tow, and with a quick order, brought Marel into the line. As she marched alongside the others from room to room, rounding all of the laguz in this wing of the manse into their group, she sought news in the others' faces. Yet those who met her eyes looked equally lost.

At last, they arrived in the dining room. They entered near the foot of the table, to the left. Even from her distance, Marel could see wisps of steam rising from garnished platters of large ribs. Daeinese roasted deer rib. At the other exits, similar groups of laguz also stood entrapped by guards. A few other groups arrived, and the hall was full. Still, they waited.

Marel spotted the nervous sweeping boy not far in front of her in the group. She wondered if he knew of the rebellion, if he in his youth had been entrusted with the secret and understood the severity of what was happening.

This crowd stood in daunting suspense for a full half mark before the Duke stepped into the room at the head of the table. He brought with him a single human boy, perhaps twelve years of age, with soft blonde hair and healthy cheeks. Wordlessly, he brought the boy to the table and speared a cut of rib to his plate.

His taster, Marel realized with trepidation. All noblemen had one, but for a man of relative political unimportance such as the Duke, the taster would only be used when his master had a reasonable suspicion of poisoning. The Duke fixed all of them with a cold gaze as the boy obediently ate his fill of the roasted rib with a side of leafy greens and fine wine. Those present looked amongst each other and at the child, the hall quiet but for the sounds of his chewing.

The boy's eyes wandered from group to group as he ate, always glancing back at the Duke nervously. As if sensing the death awaiting him, his look pleaded with the guards and slaves in the hall. None stopped him from eating.

He had nearly finished his plate. Suddenly, he lurched and choked out a sound. Gagging and spitting, he braced himself on the table and vomited on the white tablecloth. A ripple of tension passed through the assembled slaves. The Duke gazed at them coldly as the boy fell to the floor, struggling and seizing, giving agonized cries.

The Duke said a single word: "Guards."

All around them, one guard dove through each group and pulled out a laguz. Only feet away from her, Marel saw the sweeping boy yanked toward the front. Each ground had a guard with one laguz, facing the center. They were all terribly young. The room was quiet again. No more sound came from the taster. "Disregarding, for the moment, the lethal disrespect you have shown for your Master, you have cost me my tasting boy. I seek justice for him. Guards."

With the laguz unmoving in shock, the guards around the room slew the young laguz in near-unison. Marel's vision swam in a sickening confusion of blood and metal. She would later think that they should have revolted at this. They were all gathered in this one room, at least five laguz to each guard. Yet they all stood still, unprotesting, unfighting, unstruggling.

From a distant room, the sound of a vase crashing found its way to her ears.

A ripple of beast ears turned toward the western wall. A single tiger shouted and dove for his guard, only to be quickly speared mid-stride. Marel's feet felt frozen where they stood, even though she would later reflect that the signal had come in every way imaginable. A single laguz cawed, "It is my doing..."

When her mind and memory returned to her, she was with a different group of laguz, headed for the gardens in the back of the mansion. The guards led them toward the hideous scent of blood mingled with flowers. Days before, she had walked this very path to scrub the walls. Days before...

They rounded a corner and her empty stomach turned. The figures weren't people. Not anymore. There were seven of them, bound arms over their heads by decaying wrists to crooked wooden poles. At first she saw only blood and crude imitations of bodies. "Look!" the overseers barked at them, striking at a tiger who looked away. So she forced herself to look at them. Her mind on a dust cloud a thousand paces away, she observed the remains of wings and tails with bizarre distance. She guessed that there were three tigers, two cats, a raven and –

A hawk.

Oh Goddess, a hawk with ragged long brown hair – with a slender but masculine frame – the thousand small details of his identity had been destroyed in their cruelty and mutilation, but could it be –? Could it be?

She was faintly aware that she was crying – they were sneering, the overseers – she couldn't care less about that or the tears present on her cheeks as she fought for her breath through the shock pressing down on her chest.

Was that all her hopes were meant to be? This? Was that it? Was that all that their rebellion had done – destroyed the only comfort she had here? Killed the man who had been her closest companion for more than half her life? She couldn't imagine the coming years without Nirvan. How much longer did she have? A hundred years? Two hundred?

Could it be?

Kill me sooner, she thought between gasps.