The Cat Who Knew How to Cry

4. SUSPICIONS (part 1)

Helrotes are always going on about Alasais' cats being disloyal, narcissistic, cunning and vengeful

bastards... See, even they can't deny the many wonderful traits of our personalities!

Those Terrible, Terrible Cats, Enaor an Al Emenayit

"... And now, please look to your left. This is one of my favorite specimens. On display in vessel number twenty three is the result of twoheaded leech venom from Lake Snake Bisque on the Alaean body. Rather a fascinating change in pigmentation, wouldn't you say?"

Mor Oddeye turned his head half-heartedly. Bound with chains and floating in a greenish liquid inside a tall, metal-coated vessel was the naked corpse of an Eale. Poison had decorated his black skin with hundreds of ashen snowflakes, marked at the center by the leech's kiss like a swollen pink navel. The deceased was beaming a big smile, and not without some smugness, as if death had caught him admiring his own glorious coloring in the mirror.

"It's not the bites that are truly interesting, however. The Bisque should be visited in autumn when these delightful creatures enter their mating season. O! If you've never experienced their crawling under your skin, you don't know what it is to be tickled, which means you cannot consider yourself a full-fledged Alae."

"Deny it all you want, Enaor, your pops had to have been an an Kamian. A rotten apple doesn't fall far from the tree..." muttered Mor, stretching out to his full considerable height over bags of dried herbs.

They rustled cozily as he tossed and turned, paying respect to the many different "masterpieces" surrounding Oddeye. Indeed, he was in a veritable green forest of vessels stuffed with Enaor's carcasses: charred, gnawed, shredded and folded into a pig's tail. Soldered into the side of each was the thing that cut short the life of Anaeis Meori's deranged son that particular instance: string with bells, somebody's hand, pincer or stinger, handful of topaz dust, set of shiny torture devices or jar of moldy preserve made from Lurrijan moss.

"Ab an Kamian? Then how do you explain my exceptional gift of magic?" Enaor inquired buoyantly.

It took Mor's eyes a few moments to find him: the current reservoir of Enaor's rebellious spirit, sealed in one of the vessels, differed from the other pieces of the collection only in that it was relatively intact, surgically removed claws notwithstanding.

"Touché. He could have been an an Meanor – they are loopy enough, too," Oddeye agreed readily. "So listen, o great mage and sorcerer, aren't you tired of hanging there?"

"How could one grow tired of such exquisite company as you?"

Mor gave him the kind of stare one might bestow upon a dog cutlet, then half-closed his eyes wearily. Oddeye's ears were twitching involuntarily: there were thudding noising coming from beneath the floor, the source of which Enaor was more keen to ignore. There was something both lulling and unpleasant about it...

"O, sister Irera!" Enaor suddenly exclaimed; in joy he wriggled like an eel and was now hanging upside down in his vessel, having caught a toe on a ring just under the lid. "Have you come to release me?"

"That depends on you," she said, tossing to Mor a leather pouch with his dinner; hastily undoing the tie-strings, the hungry telepath sucked in with gusto the aroma of marinated snails.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Mute as a fish," echoed Enaor, blowing bubbles.