28
The Negotiation
There was a moment when the squirrel cat had first appeared at the window when I’d thought I might be hallucinating. I was still drugged, after all, and I’d been strapped down to that table for several days.
‘Are you simple, kid?’ the creature asked.
‘Simple?’
‘Slow. Dumb. Thick. Stupi—’
‘I get it,’ I said. ‘The answer is no.’
The animal reached a paw into the narrow three-inch gap that separated the two wood-framed horizontal panes of glass. They were secured in position by a lever that required a small key to unlock it. When I was younger I used to try for hours to find a way to get it open, with everything from thin steel pins to a mallet. ‘You won’t be able to open it,’ I informed the animal as he floundered at it with his paw. ‘The only way is if you have –’
The lock slid off the lever and down onto the floor. The two halves of the window swung open and the squirrel cat clambered onto the sill and settled on his haunches.
‘How did you do that?’ I asked.
‘Do what?’
‘Undo the lock.’
He looked at me with a quizzical expression on his furry muzzle, his head tilted to one side. ‘I thought you said you weren’t simple.’
The sound of another chittering voice came from outside. It seemed to irritate him. He turned his head towards the open window. ‘It was a joke,’ he said. ‘I’m being friendly.’
‘You brought another …’ It occurred to me that I wasn’t sure how to refer to the animal. Did they prefer being called squirrel cats or nekheks?
‘She insisted on coming,’ he said, turning back to me. He raised his shoulders towards his ears and dropped them again. I took this to be a shrug. ‘Females! Am I right?’
I had absolutely no idea what he meant. ‘Yeah, females,’ I said, then feeling particularly awkward, I asked, ‘Do you have a name?’
He chittered something at me, then, seeing the confusion on my face, repeated it.
‘Reichis?’ I asked.
‘Close enough.’ He hopped off the windowsill and onto the table, then crawled onto my chest, his claws tapping against the fabric of my shirt. I had to stop myself from trying to shake him off. I’d seen what those claws could do. ‘So,’ he said, peering at me with those black beady eyes, ‘we should probably get the negotiations started.’
‘Negotiations?’
He let out a breath that I caught full in the nostrils. It was disgusting. ‘You sure you ain’t—’
‘I’m not simple,’ I said, irritation temporarily overcoming my anxiousness. ‘I’ve just never … negotiated with a squirrel cat, that’s all.’
‘You don’t say.’ He sat back on my chest, leaning on his haunches as he glanced around my father’s study, his eyes pausing on every shiny bauble and metal instrument. ‘Nice place you have here,’ he said. He brought his paws up to just below his whiskers and starting clacking his claws together as his thick bushy tail twitched excitedly.
‘Why are you doing that?’ I asked, suddenly suspicious.
Reichis seemed surprised. ‘Doing what? I’m not doing—’
‘You’re tapping your paws together.’
‘No, I’m not,’ he said, and immediately brought them back down.
‘Yes, you were. I saw you. What does it mean?’
He hesitated. ‘It’s … It’s something my people do when we’re, you know, intimidated by a superior intellect.’ He looked down at me. ‘That’s why I’m going to free you in exchange for only four … five of these little trinkets you have here.’
‘Five?’ I’m not sure why the number bothered me. None of the items in the room belonged to me anyway, but I had the feeling he was trying to con me.
‘It’s a good deal, kid. Trust me.’ He started blinking his eyes at me in a strange repetitive pattern. ‘You want this deal, kid. You want to say yes.’
My experience with squirrel cats was admittedly limited, but there was a connection between us that made me recognise what he was doing. ‘Are you trying to mesmerise me?’ I asked.
‘What? No.’ He stopped the blinking. ‘I don’t even know what that is. Mesmerising? Never heard of it.’
‘You’re a terrible liar,’ I said.
That seemed to genuinely offend him. ‘I’m an excellent liar,’ he growled, baring his teeth at me. ‘You tell anyone otherwise and I’ll—’
He was interrupted again by the chittering from outside.
‘Gods damn it, leave me alone,’ he muttered.
Squirrel cats have gods?
He started chittering back to the other animal out the window, too quickly for me to follow what he was saying. Then he turned back to me and grunted. ‘Fine. Look, kid, since technically you set me free from those other skinbags, I’ll get you out of your current predicament for free.’ He turned back to chitter out the open window. ‘Even though I saved his stupid sister from bonding with that sick mutt, which is how I got nabbed in the first place.’
The sounds of movement in the house drew our attention. I realised then that the moon was coming up fast, and soon my parents would be coming in to begin on the next band. Oh spirits of the first mages, I prayed, please don’t let them do it to me again.
‘Hey, kid,’ Reichis said, suddenly sniffing around my face. ‘Put a dam in that river. We’ve got work to do.’
‘I’m not crying,’ I said.
He gave his little huh-huh-huh laughing sound. ‘Now who’s a terrible liar?’
Before I could reply he crawled over to the strap holding my right wrist. He started working at it with his teeth, pulling for a few seconds on one side, then moving to the other, the whiskers on his face tickling my wrist even as the hairs on his tail got in my nose. I was afraid I’d start giggling like an idiot, but in less than a minute he had the first strap off. ‘Think you can do the other one?’ he asked. ‘I’ll get going on your ankles.’
I reached over and started undoing the strap over my left wrist. I was a little embarrassed that it took me longer than it had taken him.
‘Okay,’ he said, when all four restraints were off me and he’d jumped back onto the windowsill. ‘You’re free, kid.’ When I didn’t move, he started making a waving motion with one paw. ‘Go on, little bird. Fly away. Fly away now.’
Squirrel cats, it turns out, are sarcastic assholes.
As quietly as I could, I swung my legs off the table and got to my feet. It turned out to be a bad idea, because a second later I was face-flat on the floor.
Chittering resumed from outside the window.
‘I forgot, all right?’ Reichis chittered back. He hopped down onto the floor next to me. ‘You’re still pretty drugged, kid, and they’ve had you tied down for a couple of days so you’re bound to be a little out of it.’
‘A little?’ The only reason I hadn’t yelled out when I’d hit the floor was that I could barely feel my face. Slowly and awkwardly I got to my hands and knees. There was no way I was going to be able to climb out the window.
‘Don’t worry,’ Reichis said, seeing my discomfort. ‘I brought something to help with that.’ He opened his mouth and reached in with one paw to pull something small and green from inside one cheek. ‘It’s lightning weed. It’ll perk you right up.’
‘You want me to eat something you’ve been carrying around in your mouth?’
He gestured with a paw to his body. ‘You see any pockets here?’ The thin lips of his mouth pulled back in what I assumed was a grin. ‘Of course, there was one other place I could’ve stored it.’
Ech. ‘This is fine. Thanks.’ I reached for the piece of green leaf in his paw but was distracted by the sounds of arguing from outside the room.
My mother’s voice was faint, weary. ‘We must rest another day, Ke’heops. You can barely stand as it is. The effort is too much.’
‘No,’ he replied. I don’t think I’d ever heard my father sound so tired. ‘I will finish this. I just need … a moment.’ A key was scratching at the lock, as if he kept missing the keyhole.
‘Ah, crap,’ Reichis said, pulling the weed away from me.
‘What are you doing?’ I whispered. ‘In about one minute my parents are going to come through that door.’
‘That’s the problem, kid. Even if you swallow the lightning weed, it’ll take longer than that to go through your stomach and into your blood.’
The thought of being discovered by my parents, of being tied back down to the table, this time with stronger restraints that meant I’d never escape, drove me half mad with fear. I started trying to clamber up to the window, but I couldn’t. In desperation I turned to Reichis. ‘Help me,’ I said. ‘Please, I can’t …’ That was when I noticed he had stuck the leaf back in his mouth and was chewing it. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Give me your arm,’ he said, his mouth now full of foaming green muck.
‘What? Why –’
He growled and then reached out with his paws and grabbed hold of my right wrist. Before I knew what was happening he bit down on it hard, his teeth piercing the skin and sinking deep into the flesh. I was about to scream from the shock and pain when something changed inside me. It felt like a flame running up the length of my arm, into my chest and down through the rest of my body. The room lit up, every colour brighter, clearer. I could think clearly again. More importantly, I could feel the strength return to my limbs.
‘Works best when it goes straight into the blood,’ Reichis explained, leaping up onto the windowsill. He looked around longingly at the jars and instruments in my mother’s study. ‘If you want to bring any souvenirs, kid, I’d do it now. I doubt you’ll want to come back here anytime soon.’
I couldn’t imagine anything I’d want from my parents ever again, but then I saw the deck of cards Ferius had given me sitting on a little shelf near the table, the razor-thin steel one and the dark red card on top. I grabbed them and stuffed them into the pocket of my trousers. ‘Let’s go,’ I said as I climbed out the window and into the night air. ‘I’ve got everything I’ll ever need from this place.’