AUTHOR'S NOTE: I know it's been a few days since my last update – I'm sorry to have kept you guys waiting! I've had a very busy week – thank heavens for weekends, when I have more time to work on this story. And it's only Saturday, so look for another chapter to pop up much sooner than this one did.

Please continue reviewing – I love your feedback! Thanks so much!

Chapter 10

"Shasta!" Headache, sore ribs, and all, Shen flung her arms around her brother. She quickly pulled back – much to his obvious relief – and examined him more closely. "Are you all right? What on earth happened to you?"

Her brother rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, Shen, does it look like anything happened to me? I've just been eating and sleeping for a while. Oh, and listening to lords and ladies discuss important state secrets. Technically – " he once again crinkled the first two fingers of each hand to form quotations – "I had the best meal I've ever eaten."

Shen almost wished she could punch him, but she didn't have the heart. As it was, she did manage a properly severe eyeroll and a sharp smack to his arm. "Shasta, for – for – for the love of heaven! Were you trying to condemn me to the streets of this wretched city forever? Did you not think I'd be wandering all over the place looking for you? Did you think at all? And if you were going to make me search all over tarnation, why in the name of paradise and every last one of its inhabitants didn't you at least save some of that 'best meal I've ever eaten' – " here she lowered her voice exaggeratedly and wiggled both hands in imitation of his imitation – for me? Aaugh!" And with this last exclamation, she smacked him again and stamped her foot hard on the ground – only to step straight on a rather sharp rock and be saved just in time from falling flat on her face by her bemused, still-grinning brother.

"I say!" rang a decidedly exuberant but still sharp voice from above them. Shen fell even harder against Shasta in her haste to crane her head for its source.

"You may as well give up trying to get out of here quietly if you're going to make all that racket!" continued the voice, cheerfully ignoring its own advice. Shen finally found her feet – plus one aching heel – just in time to see the fair-haired head popping out of one of the mansion's upstairs windows. Her first thought was, Who on earth does he think he is? The second was, What is that on his face? Dirt? Maybe a black eye?

And the third was, For the love of heaven, but he looks like Shasta, even from this distance. Same fair hair with that reddish light to it – though a little longer – same age, same shape of the face…even his voice sounds similar. I wonder if he has the same blue eyes behind those bruises? No wonder Shasta got mistaken for him – assuming that boy is the one the Narnians were after in the first place. Wait…could he be related to us somehow? He certainly looks like it; from this distance, if it weren't for that lovely bruise around his eye, even I might mistake him for Shasta…

"Sorry, Your Majesty!" Shasta's exaggeratedly formal yell startled Shen out of her thoughts. He even topped off his exclamation with a deep bow.

Shen thought the other boy might be rolling his eyes, but his bruises made it impossible to tell for certain. "I told you my father is 'Your Majesty,' not me! Anyway, who's that girl? Your servant? No, wait – your aunt?" She could definitely see his broad, teasing grin now.

"Hey!" Shasta shot back.. "She's my sister, Corin, mind your tongue!"

Corin? Corin?

Her mind raced back years upon years – to a tall, purple-robed man on a ship, with a baby's frantic cry emanating from the corner of the cabin in concert with the screams she couldn't hold back; to a raft where she knelt in terror of a walking Lion, with her arms around the same baby; to the tiny doll she'd fashioned for herself with scraps from her own clothes, when the baby grew bigger and learned to walk and talk, a doll she'd named…Corin? No, not Corin. Not quite. But the name was so very like Corin – so close – so very close…

"Sorry," she vaguely heard Shasta shout back up to the strange – yet so similar – boy. "She usually does respond when you talk to her, you know…"

He received a light smack on the arm for that as his sister tilted her head back up toward the boy, who was now regarding her with a certain semi-concerned interest similar to that of a person who gazes upon a litter of baby kittens and wonders if they are asleep or dead. "Sorry about that." She quickly remembered the boy's social standing – and his father's – and dipped in a respectful curtsey, causing the boy to flash another smile before bowing with even greater exaggeration than her brother had. Hm. I guess important Narnian people aren't so different from important Calormenes, after all, since we've met one of each. One turns up her nose and ignores us, and one loves making fun of us.

"I'm Corin," the boy continued. "Are you Shen, then?"

"Yes, your – um – lordship?" So Shasta didn't hold his tongue so well, after all. We are so lucky we're not both in chains, or worse.

The boy waved his hand and rolled his eyes. "Only grownups call me that. Narnian and Archenland grownups, anyway. Although you look sort of like a grownup. I bet you're as old as Queen Lucy!"

"Narnian Queen," Shasta muttered to Shen, at the same time the latter called up to Corin, "How old is she?"

"Her sister Queen Susan says ladies don't tell their ages," Corin replied, causing Shen's face to redden – rather deeply, too, she suspected – "but Queen Lucy doesn't care. She's having her eighteenth birthday this summer. So how old are you? Or are you too cowardly to tell?"

Coward? Coward? All right, so maybe I wouldn't have left home without a good deal of help, and I was so nervous this morning that if it hadn't been for my brother, I probably would have turned my back on Tashbaan and headed straight back to said home, but you call me coward for refusing to give my age?

"Perhaps I should learn from your Queen Susan's example," she answered instead, "for my brother and I are almost certainly her subjects." And it's none of your stupid business how old I am in any case. I really wish I could tell you that.

"Oh, don't bother," Shasta called up to Corin. "She's just had her eighteenth birthday this past winter." He dodged Shen's swing and added, "But she's no coward at all. She's just as brave as a Tarkaan, really."

The other boy shrugged. "All right, then – " he began, but quickly glanced behind him. "Somebody really is coming this time. Don't forget to talk to my father!" And he disappeared from the siblings' sight faster than Shen could blink.

Shen immediately rounded on her brother. "What on earth – " she began, only to be cut off by a loud meow from the neighborhood of her feet.

"Hey, there," Shasta greeted the golden cat, immediately lowering himself down and petting it. "Do you live here?"

Shen shook her head. "I'm pretty sure it doesn't," she answered, and as though to prove her point, the cat took advantage of Shasta's upward glance at his sister, slipping out from between his hands and trotting off several yards away before turning and meowing at them as it had been doing with Shen all afternoon.

For once, Shen agreed with the animal wholeheartedly. "Come on," she urged her brother, starting toward the cat at once. "Let's get out of here before whoever that Corin was looking at spots us."

Shasta shrugged, but followed his sister, who in turn almost without thought followed the cat, which had begun briskly weaving down through the streets toward the city gate directly opposite the one they'd entered that morning.

"All right," Shen began, once they were what she deemed a safe distance from the house. "Seeing as how I got pushed, shoved, knocked out, and very nearly robbed trying to find you, I would love to hear an explanation."

Shasta's nonchalant manner abruptly changed as he glanced at her with – is that actual worry? "Robbed?"

"No, nearly robbed," Shen answered, the annoyance she'd so gladly foregone in the wake of her brother's unexpected safe reappearance finally creeping back into her voice. "The cat stopped them."

Shasta crinkled both eyebrows – his left more than his right, which had been an endearing habit of his when confused since he was two years old – and briefly waved his hand in the cat's direction. "That cat stopped them?"

"Yes." Shen regarded her brother's disbelieving look for a few moments before adding, "It growled and hissed more loudly than I've ever seen a cat do – even the village cats when Arsheesh threw stones at them. It clawed the one man across his face with both its paws, and then they both ran away."

After a moment, Shasta tilted his head in apparent acceptance of her story. "And it's been following you around ever since?"

Shen shook her head. "No, the other way around. I've been following it."

The disbelieving look returned. "Shen, aren't I supposed to be the one doing all the 'technically' crazy things?"

Shen shot him a brief glare. "It led me straight to you, Shasta. And that Corin boy – whom you have yet to explain to me, by the way."

Shasta shrugged. "Oh, that. He's the prince of Archenland." Undisturbed by his sister's highly-raised eyebrows, he continued, "Apparently he accompanied the Narnian king and queen here, and he ran away last night, so the king thought he'd caught him when he saw me and brought me back to the house. He came back after all the Narnians left – well, except for those guards." Seeing his sister's quizzical look, he continued, "Well, you didn't see them, but I did. They were walking in the hallway downstairs – at least as far as I know. They're probably the ones Corin heard coming."

"All right." Shen gave a barely perceptible nod. "But what happened the rest of the time when you were gone? You had to have been there a couple of hours at least."

"Oh, right." Shasta shrugged again. "I rested and ate, mostly. Their food was so good! They had roasted bird and dried plums and glazed greens with nuts and raisins, and this amazing frozen liquid that tastes like fruit and sugar, and to drink – well, I think it was wine, but it was yellow, and it tasted so much better than the wine we had at home – I mean, in the cottage."

Despite herself, Shen couldn't help but wish she'd gotten a taste or two of the banquet her brother was describing. Frozen sweet liquid? And yellow wine? Well, they are important rich people…Oh, come on, Shen. Bread, cheese, and milk aren't so bad – especially before they've spoiled. You could have had nothing for lunch, after all. She shook her head in the hopes of clearing it out a bit; it was beginning to ache again. "So what did the king say to you?"

"Not too much," her brother replied. "He kept on asking me why I ran away at first, and so did the queen, but they stopped after their friend told them I'd been in the sun too long and needed a drink."

"The queen? He has a wife, then?"

"Oh, no." Shasta shook his head. "She's his sister. She's the Queen Susan Corin was talking about. She came here to see about marrying Prince Rabadash, and – "

"Hold on a minute." Shen stopped mid-stride to stare at her brother. "Prince Rabadash? The Prince Rabadash?"

"Of course not," Shasta replied with an almost completely straight face. "I'm sure it was one of the two hundred other Prince Rabadashes the Tisroc keeps hidden away."

He seemed to expect more than a slight raise of his sister's eyebrows, but, seeing it was all the reply he would get, continued his story. "Anyway, Queen Susan said she didn't want to marry Prince Rabadash, and they all began talking about how he and the Tisroc would never let them leave the country if she said no to them. So she and King Edmund and all of their friends started planning about how they would invite them to a feast on the Narnian ship tonight, except that instead they're going to leave as soon as it gets dark and go back to Narnia."

Shen turned her already-aching head so sharply to look at her brother that she cringed and had to twist it back in its previous direction in order to avoid passing out, or nearly so. "Do they want a war so badly? Hashim told me Narnia was a tiny country, even if it still existed, and the Tisroc has thousands and thousands of soldiers!"

Her brother frowned slightly, then looked at her and shrugged. "I don't know; they seemed to think they had a good chance of avoiding it. Their raven friend said – "

"Wait a minute," Shen interrupted him. "Their raven friend? You mean a bird?"

Her brother favored this with a look that plainly said, You're kidding, right? "Yeah. I think he was one of their counselors, or advisors, or something." Noticing that his sister had stopped dead in the shade of a palm tree at the side of the road, he tossed his right hand in slight exasperation. "Oh, come on, Shen. Bree and Bren did say other animals talk in Narnia. You get used to it after a little while."

Shen blinked a few times, then rubbed both temples with her palms before shrugging, although she did not move from the shade – and neither did the cat. "All right. What were you saying this raven said?"

"Oh, right. Well, he said the Tisroc would have to go through Archoff – no, Arches – "

"You mean Archenland?" Shen volunteered, her tone conveying a hint of annoyance. Come on, Shasta. Hashim went over this with us more than once.

Her brother didn't seem to pick up on the hint. "Yeah, Archenland. It's right next to Narnia, or something." He ignored Shen's very obvious eyeroll. "So the raven – Sallowpad, yeah, that was his name – said that in order to capture both countries, the Tisroc would have to bring a huge army with him. But I guess the only way he knows how to get to Archenland and Narnia is to cross the desert and go through an oar – no – oasis, and they'd use up all their water by the time they got there, and it wouldn't have enough water to get them all the way to Archenland. Sallowpad said the only way he could move his army there was if he went by this other way that almost nobody knows about. I guess you have to start at the Tombs of the Ancient Kings and turn around till you're looking at Mount – "

"Shasta, hush!" Shen's innate caution finally overrode both her now-pounding headache and her curiosity. "If there's some sort of secret road from here to the northern countries that anybody here could use to attack them, then perhaps you'd best not blurt it out for the entire city to hear!"

Shasta opened his mouth to reply, then apparently thought better of it, choosing instead to shrug and concede the point. "All right, but we should tell Aravis and the horses – "

"Oh, double blast it!" Why didn't I ask him this first? Has the heat made my mind shut down completely? "Aravis! You haven't seen her at all, have you?"

Her brother stared blankly back at her. "No. I thought we were going to meet up with her when we left the Narnians' house."

Shen raised her eyebrows even farther. "No, we got separated – I mean, I got separated from her and the horses. I don't know where they are."

Her brother's eyebrows seemed determined to rise farther than hers at any cost. "How did that happen?"

Shen quickly explained what had happened between the Narnians' arrival and Shasta's escape from their lodgings. Shasta showed a good deal of concern when she related the near-robbery incident that had awakened her, but to her chagrin, his most pronounced reaction after that was a mixture of disbelief and annoyance over her choice to follow the cat around the city – "Come on, Shen, aren't you always saying not to trust strange animals? Shouldn't you technically – " his fingers almost unconsciously bent in that eternally annoying quotation-marks gesture – "have left it alone so it wouldn't bite you and you could – oh, I don't know – ask actual people where the Narnians or the Tarkheena with the three horses were staying?"

Shen bit her tongue to avoid a very nasty response, instead inflating her cheeks and emitting a long, slow breath between her teeth. Finally, when she deemed herself calm enough to avoid verbally punching her brother in the jaw, she spoke as quietly as she could. "As I already told you, Shasta, seeing as how it led me to you, I don't see why you're complaining about it."

Shasta opened his mouth to reply, then shut it – probably less, Shen decided, because of her annoyance than because the cat, now squatting directly beside her, had been staring at the boy unblinkingly since he had begun admonishing his sister.

After an awkward moment, during which the cat, seemingly satisfied that Shasta had decided against insulting it further, finally looked away from him and began rubbing against Shen's legs again, the girl emitted another long sigh. "In any case, we still need to find Aravis and the horses."

"Don't you think she might already be waiting for us at the tombs?" Shasta was quick to offer. "After all, she did say the other day that she's been through Tashbaan before. She'd know her way there well enough."

"And just leave us here – especially since she has the horses?" Shen protested. Her brother opened his mouth, but she waved her hand to cut him off. "Even if the thought crossed her lovely little highborn mind, you know Bree and Bren and Hwin would never let her go through with it."

Shasta reluctantly conceded the point. "All right, but that doesn't mean she isn't there anyway. She seems almost as much a stickler for plans as you."

Shen rolled her eyes, partly in exasperation and partly in hopes that changing the positions of her facial features would help ease the ache that was now assaulting her neck as well as every part of her head and face. "All right, maybe. But I'm sure she's much more likely to be looking for us – unless she's been captured herself."

"By who?" her brother asked, his bewilderment completely genuine.

Oh, for heaven's sake, Shasta! "Oh, I don't know. Maybe her father or her fiancé?" She tilted her head more emphatically with each successive word.

Her brother's cheeks briefly reddened. "Oh, right." He paused for a moment. "But Hwin and Bree and Bren would have interfered, don't you think?"

Shen was pinching the bridge of her nose assiduously by now. "I don't know, Shasta. Maybe, but they could only go so far without revealing that they're talking horses. And they can't do that, no matter what."

"I suppose not," her brother conceded reluctantly, his face falling slightly. "Still – even normal horses do go wild sometimes. They could surely get away with pretending that!"

Shen took a thoughtful breath in, then pursed her lips worriedly. "Maybe. But they might not have succeeded."

"Or they might have," her brother replied sharply.

"Well, in any case – " Shen raised her voice slightly – "we still don't know where Aravis or the horses are. I don't know if it's best to try and find her, or try and find the place where the Narnians took you in case she goes back there, or go to the tombs and hope they've all made it there already." She held up a finger as she listed each option.

Shasta considered this for a moment, then admitted, "I don't think I could find the way back to where we got stopped." He glanced at her uncertainly. "Could you?"

Shen slowly shook her head. "No. Not unless the cat wants to lead us back there." She peeked at the cat, which was still seated solidly on the ground. "And if it doesn't…" She turned back to her brother. "…then that option's no good, which technically leaves us with two more." She sighed a bit emphatically at Shasta, whose face betrayed the tiniest hint of a smirk. "Unless we want to wander all over a part of the city we clearly don't belong in looking for somebody who might not be there and risking getting caught, that leaves us with just one."

Her brother favored her with one of his quirky half-grins. "And if we don't want to do that, we 'technically' have one more." His sister's eyeroll made the grin a full one. "We could leave the city, find our way to the harbor, sneak aboard the Narnian ship, and not worry about the desert at all. We could even go to the tombs and pick up Aravis and the horses on the way – "

Shen, blowing out a very exasperated breath, was about to interrupt him, but the cat beat her to it, rubbing suddenly against Shasta's legs and letting out a pointed meow. The boy immediately stopped talking and bent down, apparently thinking the animal wanted to be petted, but it deftly avoided him and began trotting down the street again, stopping after several yards to turn and meow loudly at the siblings again.

Shasta shook his head, then turned to address his sister. "That has got to be the strangest cat I have ever seen." He blinked as though suddenly thinking of something, then tilted his head. "Can it talk?"

Shen shook her head. "I asked it if it could, but it just stared at me."

"Hm. Maybe it likes me better." Before Shen could smack him, Shasta trotted over to the cat, then bent down to look it in the eyes. "Can you talk, then?"

As Shen walked to catch up to the two, she saw the cat grace her brother with a brief glance and a pointed blink, then turn around, raise its tail, and trot away. Seeing her brother's disbelieving and almost comically put-out expression, she couldn't hold back a fit of nerve-fueled laughter.

Shasta threw her as dirty a look as he was capable of, causing her to laugh even harder.

Finally, another meow from the cat brought Shen out of her mirth and Shasta slightly out of his sullenness. "It can talk pretty blasted well for a cat that can't talk," he muttered, then, a bit more clearly, "so suppose we follow the fifth option?"

Shen looked at him quizzically. "What's that?"

Her brother gestured toward the cat with a sweep of his hand. "We do it your way and follow the cat."

Shen did a bit of a double-take at that. "I thought you said it was a dumb idea for me to do that in the first place."

Shasta rolled his eyes. "No. I just said it didn't make any sense for you to do it, since you're always warning me about strange animals. Besides, if it really led you to me, then shouldn't it 'technically' be able to help us find the others?"

Shen's eyeroll abruptly turned into thoughtful consideration as her right hand wandered up to rub her earlobe. Finally, she tapped the end of her nose and sighed. "I still think we should go to the tombs first, but maybe it can find a faster way there than I can."

As if in agreement, the cat emitted a soft meow, rubbed against Shen's legs, and shot her another look before walking onward – more slowly this time, but still purposefully. Shasta and Shen exchanged a brief but meaningful glance before the former tilted his head slightly, and Shen fell into step ahead of him.

Lovely. We're putting our fate into the hands of an animal that can't even talk.

Oh, come on. It did help you find Shasta. Come to think of it, it helped you find those coins, too.

Well, if it's that smart, it should be able to talk. Shasta's right; the animal is downright uncanny.

And his other ideas – not to mention yours – were so much better than this, were they?

Fine. I'll follow it for now. But if it leads us into any overshadowed or suspicious-looking streets, I will drag Shasta away from it, even if I have to knock him out first.