That night we stayed in some of the guest bedrooms in the Thrane residence. Beren cleaned up the mess he’d had to leave when he’d taken Tyne to the hospital, then insisted on feeding us until we were ready to explode. Once the meal was over, he went upstairs to light the small stove inside the bathroom that heated water going into the tub. He generously offered me the use of it, and by offered I mean practically shoved me into the bathing room, leaving behind a small plate of butter biscuits as inducement for me to take my time.
‘You do stink a little,’ Reichis said, after Beren had left. The squirrel cat gave me a sniff. ‘Kind of like dead rat that’s been eaten and then pooped out again.’
‘Thanks.’
He sniffed again. ‘Then it’s like a blind buzzard with no sense of smell ate that and then he went and pooped—’
‘I get it, all right?’
I removed my travel-stained clothes and hunted around the bathroom for a spot to put them where they wouldn’t serve to dirty up the place. Eventually I settled for hanging them outside the window.
I dipped my toe in the water and found it hotter than I expected, but something about standing around naked in someone else’s house felt unnatural to me, so I eased myself into the prodigiously large brass tub. First I made sure to balance the small plate of butter biscuits on the flat rim. It had been a long time since I’d eaten anything that hadn’t either been picked off a tree or spent its final moments in a squirrel cat’s jaws.
Once I got used to the heat, the experience became incredibly soothing. I hadn’t realised how many aches and pains I’d accumulated in four months of hard living. Sixteen years old and already I feel like an old man.
‘Hey, Kellen,’ Reichis said.
I opened up an eye to see him balanced precariously on the edge of the tub. ‘Yeah?’
‘What’s it like?’
‘What’s what like?’
He very carefully poked a furry foot into the water. ‘This. Sitting there in a tub of hot water.’
‘It’s … nice, I guess.’ Sometimes Reichis can tell what I’m feeling. I guess the squirrel cat was curious about my sudden sense of comfort.
He pointed a paw towards a short stool next to the tub. ‘Put that in. The water’s too deep for me.’
‘Are you serious? You want to take a bath? I thought cats hated water.’
‘I’m not a cat, moron. I’m a squirrel cat.’
I’ve learned it’s best not to test Reichis’s patience when it comes to issues of species, so I relented and reached over to grab the stool and set it down at the other end of the tub. The seat sat about five inches below the surface of the water. ‘Okay,’ Reichis said. ‘I’m going in.’ I think he was talking to himself more than me. He put one front paw then the other on the top of the stool, tipping his chin up to keep his nose above the water. He stayed like that for a moment, then hopped the rest of himself in. After a few minutes I was staring at a slightly wet and very confused squirrel-cat face.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
‘I’m not sure. What’s it supposed to feel like?’
‘Warm.’
Reichis nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s warm.’
‘Comfortable, I guess.’
He nodded again. ‘Yeah … that’s the word.’ His gaze softened, the lids of his eyes half-closing. Then he settled himself on his back and stared up at the ceiling, the top of his muzzle and his feet sticking out of the water. ‘Comfy …’
‘You sure you’re okay?’
He stuck out a front paw and gestured over to my edge of the tub. ‘Gimme,’ he said, sounding half asleep.
I wasn’t sure what he was talking about at first, and then realised I’d left the plate there. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Gimme.’
Not knowing what else to do, I picked up one of the butter biscuits. I was going to put it in his paw, but he’d already stuck it back under the water, and instead opened up his fuzzy little mouth. I deposited the biscuit there and was soon treated to the sound of a squirrel cat nibbling on a butter biscuit while moaning rapturously. ‘Oh yeah,’ he mumbled, the words sounding garbled on account of all the chewing noises. ‘This is how I want to spend my life from now on.’
‘What about hunting … I mean, murdering rabbits?’
Reichis swallowed. ‘Right now I just want to murder another one of those biscuits. Gimme.’
I really don’t understand squirrel cats.
I must have fallen asleep because I woke to a knock at the bathroom door. ‘Kellen?’ Seneira asked.
‘Just a second!’
I got myself out of the bath, managing not to kick over Reichis’s stool in the process, which would have led to any number of bites and claw marks on my freshly cleaned skin. I grabbed hold of a towel and quickly dried myself off and then ran my fingers through my hair. There was a mirror above a small sink that reflected my newly washed features. So that’s what I look like.
‘Kellen? I just wanted to—’ The handle started to turn.
‘Don’t come in!’ I yelped, and wrapped the towel around my waist. Ferius had once told me that people in the borderlands aren’t as concerned about nudity as the Jan’Tep, but I’d always suspected she was just setting me up to embarrass myself at some point in the future.
Satisfied that I was maintaining at least some small degree of propriety, I opened the door. Seneira was holding a bundle of clothes that I recognised as my other set. As a Jan’Tep initiate, I’d had all kinds of clothes: school clothes, casual clothes, formal clothes. An outlaw basically has two pairs of the same grubby travelling clothes and that’s if they’re lucky.
‘My father’s gone back to stay with Tyne. I cleaned up your spare garments as best I could,’ Seneira said. ‘They should be dry – I hung them by the fire.’
I considered apologising for having run out of Tyne’s room before, but then it occurred to me that if Ferius had covered for me with Beren, maybe Seneira had believed it too. I guess I just wasn’t ready for her to know what a coward I was. ‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the bundle of clothes from her.
She seemed to be staring at my torso, which was lean and tanned from four months in the borderlands but still wasn’t much to write home about. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, self-consciously.
‘You have scars,’ she said.
‘Doesn’t everybody?’ I grabbed at the shirt and put it on.
‘Not when they’re our age. Not as many as you, anyway.’ She caught my eyes then, and I think she felt bad for me. ‘I’m sorry, Kellen, I didn’t mean to—’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. It wasn’t as if I’d spent my life getting beaten or anything, but I’d managed to get into enough scrapes over the past months that I was looking the worse for wear.
Seneira’s gaze went past me then to where Reichis was still lying back on his stool. ‘You bathe with your animal?’
When she said it like that, it sounded much worse than I’d thought. ‘I … Not usually, he just—’
‘Kellen,’ Reichis growled, still lying back in the water, ‘you tell that bitch that if she ruins this for me, I swear to all nine squirrel-cat gods I’m going to pull out her eyeballs and make her eat them.’
‘What did he say?’ Seneira asked.
‘You really don’t want to know.’
She nodded. ‘I should let you get ready for bed. I was just hoping …’
I found myself profoundly aware of my lack of clothing and couldn’t imagine any ending to that sentence for which I was prepared. ‘What is it?’
‘Ferius says you’re going back to the Academy tomorrow. I … My father won’t let me go there. He says there’s too much chance of someone spotting me.’ She held up a small cloth object in her hand. It took me a moment to figure out that it was a child’s toy that looked vaguely like a horse. My people don’t have dolls – they’re too much like the kinds of sympathy figurines used by some mages to send pain to their enemies. ‘Could you take this to Tyne? It was his favourite toy until a couple of years ago. He always says he’s too old for toys now but … I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being stupid.’
Okay, not what I expected.
I took the doll from her. ‘I’ll take it to him.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, and then caught my eyes. ‘Tell him I love him, would you? I don’t think he really understands what’s happening. When I left the hospital, he thought I was running away again, leaving him behind. I never wanted him to think … I’ve made a mess of everything, Kellen.’
I started reaching for something comforting to say, but by then she had already gone, leaving me standing there in my towel. ‘Come on, Reichis,’ I said, as I started to put on the rest of my clothes. He gave me a dirty look but managed to rouse himself, hopping off the stool and onto the edge of the tub. ‘Dry me,’ he commanded, pointing to one of the spare towels.
‘What’s got into you?’ I asked. ‘One bath and you turn into a spoiled house pet?’
‘Dry me –’ he repeated, then got onto all fours and prepared to shake himself, an event that would almost certainly leave me completely soaked – ‘or I’ll dry myself.’
One thing I do know about squirrel cats? They can really be jerks sometimes.