The Secrets of Jin-Shei. Alma Alexander

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      Both girls departed, pursuing their own errands, equally stung. It was the summer, it was the heat. Tempers were frayed everywhere.

      But this was the summer of trial for both of them.

      Xaforn was intent on becoming. All her life she had been a chrysalis, and this was the last summer she would have to wait for her metamorphosis. If she was good, if she stayed ahead of the pack, autumn would bring promotion, and the next year would, maybe, bring more than that. Xaforn knew, knew with a passion born of yearning, that once she was a full-fledged Guard she would always have a place to belong, she would know who she was, she would have a home.

      Qiaan was equally focused on being. She was cast in a role, but one which she found it difficult to interpret. She was young, but she was not unobservant – and there was a coolness between her parents, a coolness which she could sense deepen when she entered the presence of both of them at the same time, a coolness which her mother then passed on to her when her father departed once again to take up his duties at the compound and the Palace. Qiaan was an unwitting pawn in some adult game – but that was just an instinct, not a knowledge, and she had no idea how to act in order to lessen the impact of the situation on her own life. She tried to be a dutiful daughter, to the best of her ability. When her mother, a transplanted Southerner who was sometimes fiercely homesick for her own people, thawed far enough to share some aspect of her childhood or her culture with Qiaan, the child tried to listen, to learn – but those times were rare, and it was more common by far to be rebuffed by a cool word or a refusal of a touch. Rochanaa did her duty and passed on to Qiaan all that a mother should teach a daughter – but no more than that.

      They were both, Guard foundling and Guard daughter, fiercely lonely.

      In the third week of Chanain, with summer coming to a boil and the skies bleached white with the heat within city walls, Xaforn turned a corner in the Guard compound and discovered four boys surrounding a hissing and bedraggled cat. They appeared to be passing something from one to another, laughing, keeping it from the cat which was trying to get at whatever it was, ears flat, fangs bared, howling.

      The boys were all three or four years older than Xaforn, and at least two of them were Guard family. Ordinarily she would have left them to their hijinks – what business was it of hers what they were doing to the cat? But then she distinctly heard the thing being tossed from hand to hand whimper softly, and caught a glimpse of a spread-eagled kitten tied to a pair of crossed sticks.

      The Guards were just, fair, honourable. This was part of the training, the foundation of Xaforn’s ‘family’. Wanton cruelty had no place here. Besides – although that had nothing to do with it, of course – she rather liked cats.

      ‘Put it down.’

      The timbre of her voice took even her by surprise. It was low, level, dangerous.

      One of the boys turned – not one of the Guard ones – and obviously failed to recognize her. He saw a girl, long braid swinging forward over her shoulder, dressed in wide trousers and summer over-tunic, bare feet thrust into a pair of rope-soled sandals.

      ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘You want to play? Ow!’ Distracted, he’d allowed the mother cat a free swipe, and she had caught him squarely across the shin. He kicked, hard, swearing first at the cat and then, turning, at the girl who had been the indirect cause of his wound – and who had not moved.

      ‘Put it down,’ Xaforn repeated, taking on the kitten’s cause. One of the other boys did recognize her, and tugged at the scratched one’s sleeve.

      ‘Dump it,’ he advised his friend, eyes flickering over Xaforn. ‘Not that one.’

      ‘You afraid of a girl!’

      ‘That girl, yes. She’s a Guard.’

      The other boy snickered. ‘A trainee Guard kid. I got me a trainee Guard kid. Let’s see what they teach them in classes.’

      Both the Guard boys were now hanging on the arms of the young show-off, but advising caution merely seemed to inflame his desire to make trouble. It had been he who had been holding the spread-eagled and weakly meowing kitten in his hands; now he tossed it to his fourth companion, who stood looking indecisive as to whether to listen to his gang leader or the two insiders who seemed to have information that the leader lacked.

      Xaforn was a head shorter and much lighter than her opponent, and all the boy saw was a thin girl who had challenged his authority. One good blow, and it would be over – she’d be across the courtyard, in a heap in the corner, and there would be good blue bruises all over her face the next morning – or at least that was the plan. He swung, and he never knew what hit him. Xaforn ducked under his arm, pivoted on the ball of her foot, came up behind him and landed a blow on the small of his back and across the kidneys which felled him to his knees, and then drove the edge of her hand into his solar plexus as he tried to rise. He swayed for a moment, his eyes crossed and focused on the tip of his nose, and then fell face first into the cobbles.

      The rest, throwing down the kitten, fled.

      It had taken a fraction of a second. Xaforn was left in possession of the field, triumphant, a little guilty.

      ‘You aren’t supposed to beat up the general population,’ a voice said, apparently giving tongue to her guilt.

      Xaforn looked down. On her knees on the dusty courtyard cobbles, heedless of a pretty silk robe, Qiaan was extracting the kitten from its torture apparatus.

      The mother cat had retreated a few steps and now stood growling softly deep in its throat, but making no sudden movements.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ Xaforn said waspishly.

      ‘Just passing through, same as you,’ Qiaan said. The kitten fell into her hands, freed at last, barely breathing. Its eyes were still closed. ‘I don’t even know if it’s old enough to be weaned yet.’

      ‘Will she take it back?’ Xaforn said, coming down on one knee beside Qiaan to have a closer look at their prize. Both girls were completely ignoring the erstwhile bully, who was still on the ground, groaning.

      ‘Even if she did,’ Qiaan said, ‘it might die. It’s so tiny. I wonder where those bullies found it.’

      ‘They probably killed the rest.’

      The mother cat snarled, but when they looked up at the sound she was gone, melted away into the shimmer of heat. Xaforn sighed.

      ‘Well, that’s that.’

      ‘Do you want it?’

      ‘What would I do with it?’ Xaforn snapped. She’d been caught in a moment of softness and it rankled – especially because it had been Qiaan, of all people, who had been the one to see her succumb to it.

      ‘Then why did you save it?’

      ‘Because they were Guard,’ said Xaforn. As though that made all the necessary sense in the world. In her world, it did.

      Qiaan could even understand it. But her understanding didn’t change matters. ‘It’s dead anyway, then,’ she shrugged. But she tied her sleeve into a makeshift sling and cradled the weakly mewling kitten into it. It quested with its tiny nose until it found her finger, and then it started sucking on the fingertip, hard, making СКАЧАТЬ