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Chapter 46. The Urgan Nagru Designer Label
by Nallmian (substitute author)
Rea was not accustomed to sneaking around, nor to spying on other beasts without their knowledge or consent. She wasn't even sure why she was doing it. Yet the fact of the matter was, there had been something different about Aras when the group had assembled the morning after Sybil…after Sybil…when they had assembled that morning. The wolverine seemed more alert, more energetic, and more purposeful. But there had also been another quality there, something dark, something that wasn't evil, but was harsher than what she had sensed about him before. Yes, all of her instincts told her that something had changed with Aras since that night, and she wanted to find out what.
Earlier that morning, Aras had decided that the best course of action was to return to Evnakt, regroup and plot their next move. Eventually, the whole group had agreed, being given little choice in the matter as Aras started walking back. The walk back to Evnakt had been long and quiet, and despite the fact that they were a group, it had been a very lonely trek as well, each beast alone in their own thoughts. Yet through that whole journey, Rea had been unable to keep her thoughts from returning to Aras and that uncanny feeling just on the edge of her intuition.
"Home, sweet home! " Thalliv declared with an exaggerated attempt at chipperness that drew only sharp glares from the other beasts. "Well, I'm only trying to—"
"Your efforts are wholly unnecessary, and ineffectual besides, so please be silent" Antonio snapped at him. The stoat had been a veritable ball of tension for the whole walk back. It didn't take a dreamsayer to see that he had been deeply affected by the procession of disasters that had stalked them .
"Our quest has not been wholly fruitless, though our companions be lost," Silisk said. "Mayhaps we should give our reliquary to Sarkleyet and—"
"No."
Silisk shifted around Antonio's shoulders to look at Aras. "There is no need to interupt my counsel, Ikaras." For a beast with such limited facial features, it was amazing to Rea just how disapproving Silisk could look.
"I'm done running around doing Sarkleyet's errands. It isn't our fault that he went into business with a paranoid security fanatic who hid their prized invention. Assuming it ever worked in the first place."
Thalliv bristled in indignation. "I'll have you know that Master Nevyeer and Master Sarkleyet tested their—yipe!" The weasel gave an involuntary yelp as Aras clapped a monstrously strong paw on his shoulder and yanked him to right in front of the wolverine's face.
"I. Don't. Care. Sarkleyet didn't tell us all the ridiculous games we'd have to play, and somehow failed to mention that there was a dangerous lunatic running around the city. If he thinks he can treat us like slaves, then maybe he should get off his tail and find his own Brandy."
Upon reaching the mansion, Aras had left the group and gone inside, presumably to tell Sarkleyet exactly this. However, something about him still felt…off, and Rea wanted to know what it was.
That was why Rea Lightbringer, a nearly grown female and a dreamsayer at that, was now playing a game she hadn't played since she was a cub, namely stalking an unsuspecting beast and trying to remain undetected. It seemed to be working. The wolverine had not appeared to notice her presence as she had followed him from a distance down the winding halls of the mansion. The wolverine's posture was straighter and his gait more brisk than it had been before. That harsh aura she felt from him…it was like something out of the wild. Wild. That's the word that described what he felt like, as though there were instincts within him that he had restrained for a long time only to let loose the previous night. The feeling scared Rea a bit. It was not unnatural, all beasts had that place in their hearts that was still wild, but Siren spoke of the need to tame this nature, to be in balance and connected with the rest of the world. She did not feel that Aras was in balance.
The wolverine went straight to a large set of double doors and knocked. Moments later, the door swung open and he entered. Rea waited for a moment, and then crept forward as quietly as she could. Checking down the side hall, she found it devoid of servants or anyone else, and so she pressed her ear to the door to try to hear what was going on inside.
"—risky venture. Was there anything else?" Rea only heard the end of Sarkleyet's first sentence, but she could hear it quite clearly. The marten was not attempting to be quiet.
"I need to be honest with you." Aras responded.
There was a pause. "Excuse me?" Sarkleyet asked.
"Before Red Dusk broke me out of the prison cell, I was approached by a Major in the Long Patrol. He offered me my freedom, if I provided him with the names and details of vermin leaders on Evnakt."
"I see. I should have expected as much. Perhaps I have underestimated the Long Patrol. I assume, though, that if you are telling me this you are not irretrievably in the Major's tunic pocket?" Sarkleyet did not sound overly concerned, but Rea could detect a tense undertone to his voice.
"No. But I have to give him something, or he'll have me executed. So, my plan is to tell him what I know, but then lead him on a false trail, so that Red Dusk can ambush him and kill him." Rea was disturbed to hear how matter-of-factly Aras could speak of this sort of thing.
"An interesting proposition. Yes, I think that's the best course of action. It may be more profitable to capture than to kill him. An officer in the Long Patrol has both information and bargaining value. This can easily be arranged. If I may ask, though, what prompted you to tell me all this?"
"I got tired of the hares treating me like an errand runner or a slave," Aras grumbled.
Sarkleyet chuckled. "Yes, I imagine it is rather demeaning to be treated as an inferior by your own prey…you have eaten hare before, I imagine?" Rea gasped quietly. She had wondered about Aras, but to hear her fears confirmed so casually…the wolf jumped slightly as she heard the sound of a chair suddenly squeak and heard Aras start walking towards the door.
"Ah, Ikaras…" Sarkleyet seemed to realize he had made a faux pas. "I do appreciate the infor—"
Rea barely managed to step away from the door before it opened and Aras emerged. Her eyes widened, and she tried as hard as she could not to look guilty. Rea had never been a good liar, though, and her heart pounded as she tried to think of an explanation or excuse. She never needed one, however, because Aras just kept walking, leaving Rea alone in the corridor.
Rea waited for him to get further along, and then hurried to rejoin the group outside, arriving just in time to hear Antonio ask Aras "What exactly did you say to him?"
"Just what I told you I was gonna say, Antonio, that we weren't going to play his game anymore and if he tried to force us we'd . . ." Aras was unable to finish his sentence because at that moment Pearl burst through the door flung her arms around the wolverine in a gesture that seemed to surprise Aras as much as anybody else.
"You're alive. We saw Dirano and I feared the worst," Pearl said.
"Yeah, well, we didn't all make it out of that jungle."
[i]No. No we didn't…oh, Sybil…. Those awful moments with the dying marten came flooding back to Rea in an almost overwhelming wave.
Pearl looked confused, but then began demanding to know where Sybil was, and for a while nobeast seemed to have an answer for her. How do we tell her something like this?
Finally, it was Silisk who filled the void, indicating Dirano with a tilt of the head and a flick of her forked tongue. "Miss Sybil was taken by the same creature who…"
Silisk's explanation was interrupted by a sudden shriek of rage and grief. A female wildcat burst onto the scene and began pounding ineffectually at Aras, sobbing.
"How could you? What did you do to him?"
"Whoa now! It wasn't me!" Aras held the female's clawed paws away from his body, speaking firmly but gently. "It was a crazy sable named Castille."
"Castille? Never met him but I've heard the name. Nasty piece of work that one." Rea jumped at the new voice. She turned to see a trim, rather handsome fox step up to the group. She hadn't heard his approach at all.
Pearl frowned. "Do I know you?"
The fox grinned. "Well, Ms. Pearl your friend, Brull, calls me Pretty Ears and you'd certainly be welcome to do the same."
Antonio looked at the newcomer. "Well...'Pretty Ears'..." The stoat frowned, as though annoyed by the informality of the nickname. "Do you have some business with us?"
The fox nodded. "The Boss-you'd know him as Brull--sent me to tell you that he, the young vixen and the monitor all made it out with the vermin prisoners. They're holed up in the Oasis. Brull wanted me to come tell Pearl where we are."
'Did they find my kit? Do they have Sandy? Is she alright? Tell me what happened!" Pearl was practically frantic.
Pretty Ears stepped back from the vixen. "No, they couldn't find her. But they got a lot of other beasts out and made ol' Marcion a very unhappy squirrel."
Pearl was visibly crestfallen, but she turned to the rest of the assembled beasts rather than ask further questions. "The Oasis is my...establishment. It's one of the few intact buildings that isn't owned by Sarkleyet. You're all welcome to come and stay there."
Antonio sighed. "I suppose we are in urgent need of a new interim base of operations."
Aras shook his head. "You can go on ahead. I have things to do."
"But…"Pearl looked concerned.
"Don't worry about it, I'll be along later." The wolverine stalked off, leaving the group in his wake.
Pearl began talking to the rest of the group about how they would get back to the Oasis, but Rea wasn't listening. A terrible thought was going through her head. What if he's hungry? What if he's going to go kill and eat somebeast else? She glanced at Pearl, at Antonio and Silisk. Should she tell them? What if she was wrong? What if they didn't believe her? No, that would be the wrong thing to do.
"Uh, why don't you go ahead and go. I want to check and make sure Aras is alright. He's still upset about Sybil." It sounded a little odd even to Rea, but nobeast challenged her on it.
"You're right, that's probably a good idea," said Pearl. The vixen then gave her instructions on how to find the Oasis.
Rea thanked her and began to follow Aras at a distance. The wolverine went deep into the city, into what Rea was pretty sure was territory held by the Felldoh's Heirs. Rea backed her ears and began to look around anxiously for any threat, wondering why Aras didn't seem more on edge about their surroundings. Suddenly, the wolverine ducked into the abandoned shell of a building. Most of one wall had been torn away by the storm, and Rea was able to find a hiding place in the alley across the street and still see in.
The wolverine stood in the middle of the hollowed out building for a moment. Suddenly, a group of hares emerged from the shadows, and Rea gasped. However, Aras seemed utterly unconcerned, and the hares did not make any move to harm him. Instead, one hare vanished, and reappeared moments later with another, older hare.
"Ah, Ikaras. What do you have to tell me? I trust you've been gathering information dilligently?" said the older hare.
"I wanted to give you an update, Major Calderon. When the Red Dusk broke me out of the prison cell, I was taken to the manor of a wealthy marten named Sarkleyet. He blackmailed me into going on a hunt for some mythical potion called the Red Brandy. Since I knew that the Long Patrol would rather keep any weapons out of the hands of vermin, I went along with it." Aras proceeded to give an account of the hunt for the brandy, glossing over the deaths of Sybil and Dirano.
Rea's eyes were wide at this point. Aras is a spy? He's been secretly working for the hares this whole time? What else has he been hiding?
"Well, did you find the bloody potion yet?" Calderon asked impatiently.
"No. But I can give you all of these details about Sarkleyet, so that you can mount an attack on him, and kill him."
Rea didn't even want to hear any more. The wolverine had fooled all of them, not just the group looking for the Brandy, but Sarkleyet and Major Calderon as well. She had to go back! She had to tell the others...
Rea slowly eased her way out of the alley and began trying to retrace her steps. However, the wolf was unused to the winding, redundant streets of Evnakt. It didn't taker her long to become rather lost, wandering from street to street looking for some sort of landmark.
Suddenly, Rea's sensitive ears caught the sound of a small piece of rubble being disturbed. She froze in place, trying to figure out where it came from. Am I being foll--
An arrow suddenly embedded itself in Rea's calf, and the wolf went down hard. Another two arrows found their marks in her back, sending white-hot lances of pain through her body.
Panic gripped the wolf. Despite the terrible heat in her leg, she forced herself up and desperately tried to seek shelter. Another arrow sank deep into her shoulder, disabling her left arm, and it was all she could do to stumble into a filthy alley that seemed the same as all the other ones she had seen in this dreary place.
"So, they have wolves in Evnakt, wot wot?" There was a nasty chuckle as a hare stepped into the alley, blocking the exit, a curved dirk in his paws and a bow slung across his back. The hare's fur was unkempt, his uniform was torn and he had a slightly manic look in his eye. "I've had my fill of treating vermin with satin gloves. Even Major Regaworth can't take me to task for killing of a savage beast like you."
"Why are you doing this? Stop!" Rea, tears in her eyes tried to shrink further away.
The hare just smirked, offering a melodramatic flourish of his dirk wielding paw. "Captain Forlian Woxley at your service, Madame Wolf. Sixth in my family to serve in the good old Long Patrol. And then that trollop Major thinks she can just toss me out on m'duff over bitty-itty disagreement."
"I'm not hurting anybopdy! Please stop! Leave me alone!" Rea turned and tried to hobble away, but the hare leapt onto her back and sank the dirk in deep...and suddenly, Rea's legs just stopped working. The deadened limbs felt like they weren't there at all. She couldn't feel them, couldn't move them. But there was still pain, horrible pain, when the hare ripped the dirk out of her spine.
Rea's screams of agony rent the night as the hare sheathed the dirk and pulled out a shorter, wider blade. "Don't be such a noisy gel. Try and die with some honor, eh?" The hare advanced. "I seem to remember a story about a certain fox who made quite a name for himself by pretending to slay a wolf. What was his name? Oh, yes, Nagru! I'll probably make Major if I can match his kill. I'll go back and they'll all see me and then it'll be Regaworth wot's out and me wot's in."
The hare walked up to Rea and kicked her to the ground. "Some of our majors are just such bally nuisances, dontcha know? That stuffy old maiden aunt Regaworth, insisting on bringing along her pet vermin to guide us, making us spare vermin who she thinks aren't related to our work here. Well I say every vermin who still draws breath is our business."
The hare leaned forward and sneered at Rea. "There's lots of other prissy bureaucrats in the Long Patrol these days. About time they got a proper warrior in the upper ranks. Major Woxley's going to cut quite a figure walking around in his wolf-skin cloak, now won't he?"
Rea's tear-filled eyes widened further. She had heard terrible stories of what some beasts sought to do with the pelts of her kind, but had dismissed them as only that. Now not only did she find these stories to be real, but it was going to happen to her. Siren, why? She was going to die in horrible pain, alone, many miles from home, abandoned by her companions, her deities and everyone else.
Rea's heartrending howl of sorrow and pain must have carried across most of the island. Even the crazed Captain Woxley paused and stopped talking as he heard it. The howl went on and on, but when no other beasts materialized, the hare shrugged and advanced on Rea, slamming her to the ground with a powerful footpaw and crouching down next to her body.
The short blade flashed in the air, and suddenly Rea's left paw was nothing but a mass of white-hot pain as Woxley began to cut the fur away. Rea's screams grew louder as her blood pooled around her, and she tried desperately to escape. Even half-paralyzed, the strength of a wolf was sufficient to knock Woxley off his balance several times. Finally, the hare snarled, pulled back the wide bladed dagger and jabbed it into the side of Rea's abdomen, making a long, vertical cut down her abdomen. The wolf screamed louder as the blade sliced through muscles and entrails. The hare rolled the quickly weakening wolf onto her side to try to prevent blood from spoiling her fur.
Time lost all meaning for Rea as the horrible pain racked her whole body, Woxley's knife peeling fur away from her paw, wrist and arm. She stopped noticing her own screams after a while, and only barely noticed when Woxley suddenly dropped the wide bladed dagger, groping for his bow desperately.
"Oh sh--" Suddenly, there was a blur as a great dark shape slammed into Woxley, who was torn away like a fly in a gale. There were shrill screams from the hare accompanied by several bones snapping in quick succession and the sound of tearing. It didn't take long for the hare to go silent.
Blood loss and shock had done most of their work, and Rea was barely able to recognize the newcomer as Aras.
"A--Araaaas." Rea reached up with her unmangled paw and touched the wolverine's own paw. A final vision came to her, a series of brief scenes united only by cold, loneliness and the feeling of not belonging. There were so many of them, a bleak tapestry so different from Rea's own life, which now began to flash before her eyes. Mama and Papa teaching her the ways of her tribe, days spent playing with the other pups, the long nights the tribe spent together around their fires. Rea had never been alone. Not like Aras had.
"Aras...you poor creature." Rea stopped fighting the inevitable, stopped feeling the pain, and let the winds carry her to Siren and her ancestors.