A sharp pattern of knocks came to the door. The boys stood up immediately, then listened carefully for five seconds. They froze.
Three sharp bangs on the door. All looked to Kehel. He nodded. They needed to get out of here, and fast. As Kehel undid the small latch on the hidden floorboard, jumped in, and began to clear the way for the others, Otian jumped in after him.
"King's Own, searching for a feline-child," he murmured. They all hardened. They knew one boy who acted very much like a feline, and knew the King's Own could be looking for no other. Following Ty's emergency-for-King's-Own-plan, they headed for the twin hatch and exit located in the kitchens.
Someone screamed, then another person snarled. The boys looked at each other inside the tunnel under the floorboard, all of them having lowered themselves into it. The words of their Tehea ran in their minds and between them, a living echo.
"This means let me or go in, shut the door behind you."
That, though heavy enough, did not ring within their minds alone. The laws, and their promises, did as well. Kehel felt his heart ripping between duty and need…
"The third law is to obey. You obey the leader without doubt or fear of consequence."
"The fourth law is to follow. This is the most important rule. All the pack follows the pack leader, their confidence placed in his hands without regret. When the path twists and turns, trust the leader."
"What happens if, for any reason, the leader went astray?"
"When the leader of the pack is vulnerable, the pack chooses. Remember, the first law is to protect. Protect the pack with all it takes, with all you have to give. And if obedience messes with the first two laws, what do you do?"
The boys looked to him. He nodded silently as they all proclaimed, shouted, and cried out what they had said then, what they knew in their hearts that they must do, what they would do now that the choice rested with the pack. It weighed on them, but they would do it. The First Law was to protect.
"Toss it out the window!"
Bracing themselves on sides of the wide opening from the large floorboard and to the promise they had made their Tehea, they leapt from the hole that lead to the tunnel.
Something in their blood sang to them, trouble, trouble, trouble. They ignored it. The trouble was not theirs, it was Ty's and they were going to save her or die trying.
They burst through the door, launching themselves outside. As Terry, Otian and Leej launched themselves at the attackers, Kehel took a moment to realize something the others had not…
"Take prisoners!" he shouted. "This isn't the King's Own! Find out who they are and their business here!"
Pages were now emerging from the rooms that lined the hall. Terry nodded to Leej, who nodded and pulled away from the fighting, slamming people back into their rooms and quieting the noise. 'If the King's Own heard, they were all as good as heavily pounded', Ty had drilled into their brains. They were not about to forget anything the Tehea had told them in a hurry.
"Martyr!" Otian said loudly from a corner. Kehel ran to him and saw on the floor, lip split, a deep cut on the back of the skull, a raw black gash on a thigh that had been wrapped unceremoniously with a leather thong and tied tight, her braids tinged with blood and black dust, Ty.
"Get me up, Kehel," she growled. Kehel got to the floor on his ankles, took both her arms in his and pulled her upright. She signaled Otian to guard the door to her room and motioned Kehel to follow her inside her own room. She whistled a small bit of a tune Kehel had never heard and Sabi leapt from the closet.
"Mistress, what have you done to yourself again?" she demanded, running to a corner and drawing from it a small pot with a cracked lid.
"Again?" Kehel asked, raising an eyebrow as Sabi took from the pot a bit of some green liquid and rubbing it on Ty's wounds. It looked very painful, but the Tehea did not wince.
"Yes, again," Ty growled, placing her hand over the wound, muttering something and then seeing it heal as the hand was removed. She got up and faced Kehel as eye-to-eye as she could, being ten inches shorter.
"I've been watching this carefully, Kehel, and watching it for a while. This bullying appears to be bigger than us, bigger than the palace, bigger than Corus. Something's coming up on that horizon, Martyr, and we need to stop it."
"Or?" asked Kehel, bending over to look her directly in the eye. Ty's eyes and figure became hard as stone.
"Or we'll all be dead by the end of the month."
She strode past him, flung her door open and looked to the fighting. Four men, hardly more than boys, were only bloody rags on the floor. Three remained. Ty whistled to Terry and Mel, who took them and hauled them through her door and into her room. She then turned to Leej and Otian.
"I want this vermin under ground where I can't see it," she told them, her voice an angry purr. "If I can find 'em, you'll be in tomorrow's stew, so get on to it."
Nodding, they left. Just as they were silently turning to corner, Otian asked, "the blood?"
Ty looked like stone once more. "Burn your clothes, I don't care if you're wearing naught but your skin on your way back, or simply pass by your rooms to get other garments, but burn those you're wearing and scrub yourselves raw. Their essences can be tracked otherwise. And under them fingernails too, Bazhir, or I will smell the filth on you. Right to it and back to your Tehea for a meeting before bed. Make haste, I like to sleep at night."
They nodded and left at a swift gait, imitating Ty's own, very carefully made jog for noisy knights who really shouldn't be making noise. Spitting on the side of the wall where the blood was, she bent down and untied a millimeter of her left earlobe braid.
"Frakhel gone," she said, speaking a word so rude that it should not be uttered, a word meaning the most heinous of crimes. Spitting on the floor once more, she retied the braid and sealed it, watching the blood disappear from the floor. Growling slightly, she went inside her rooms to interrogate and wait for Otian and Mel to return so she could report.
The hunt, as she had predicted, had begun. Now was time to see whether they were predator or prey.