Catacombs (15 page)

Being the queen, she had not nursed her own kittens. She had not seen them for more than a few moments before the nurse took them away to clean them, let them pull nourishment from
her
body, and presumably teach them something about being cats. Nefure would wait until they developed manners before she herself undertook to instruct them, however perfunctorily, in being royalty.

She rested for a time after the onerous task of giving birth, and though she missed the ministrations of her usual servants, who were caring for new kittens, she got a great deal of extra attention from the toms among her courtiers, including the new tom from the star cats, the one she supposed had sired her latest litter.

At some point she recalled that these kittens were supposed to assist her in dominating the universe, so she thought perhaps she should have a look at them. Only two moon cycles had passed. She expected they would still be as adorable as kittens were supposed to be—as everyone swore she had been—and yet old enough to be presentable.

Viti-amun, her principal maid and captain of her guard, fetched them and brought them to her.

They had stripes and spots in gray and black. One had an unruly
reddish ruff around her neck and black striped legs and tail, and another was totally white. They scratched their longish fur often with their monstrously huge feet; their grotesquely, monstrously, appallingly huge feet. She’d been told they were “polydactyl,” but Pshaw-Ra had made it sound as if that were a good thing. The extra toes didn’t deform the paws of the male she had taken—what was his name? Jockey? “There must be some mistake, Viti-amun. You have the wrong kittens. These cannot be mine.”

Viti-amun looked trapped. She knew better than to contradict her queen and yet she didn’t wish to seem derelict in her duty. “I found these kittens where I was told to look for yours, Majesty,” she said.

The kittens looked confused and rather stupid. They seemed to expect something of her. “Well, they won’t do. That one is hideous.” She indicated the little female with the red ruff and striped legs. “Their feet are much too large. Have the doctors remove some of those toes, or better yet, dispose of them and I’ll start all over when I get in the mood again. And fetch my father, the Grand Vizier. He has some explaining to do. Am I correct in surmising that my city is now filled with this sort of ill-bred offspring?”

“Most of the kittens look similar to these, Majesty, yes. The Grand Vizier indicated they had turned out as he expected and wished.”

“That is why I must speak to him. They are not as
I
expected or wished. The red-maned one is far too ugly to be from my elegant line. And all of their faces and tails are too fat, their body lines stocky, their eyes not set at the proper angle. Oh no, they will not do at all.”

Nefure’s tail swatted back and forth as she issued her edict, and the kittens, led by the red-ruffed one, decided she was playing and attacked the tail.

She swirled and swiped, but the kittens rolled under her swings, and the minute she righted herself attacked again. “Get the little monsters off me!” she cried. “And bring me Pshaw-Ra
now!
”

———

Viti-amun’s brother and first lieutenant, Vala-ra, deployed the guard to find the Grand Vizier while Viti-amun made the kittens scarce. She had hoped her mistress’s pride in herself would spill over into pride in her kittens, that the old vizier’s promises that the kittens were the key to universal domination and absolute power would be enough to endear them, however superficially, to the queen. But she had underestimated the depth of Nefure’s superficiality.

Viti-amun’s own darling kittens by the handsome Barque tom Bat, with their beautiful big ears and clever many-toed paws, were waiting when she and the young princes and princesses returned to her house. Essentially a security officer, she had selected a home with access to the tunnels of the underworld, though she had not had occasion to use it for anything other than checking on the status of some project or fetching the queen a serving of kefer-ka. Now she wished she had force-fed the kefer-ka from the wisest and oldest of the ancestors to Nefure. Perhaps it would have helped suit her to the throne. Why Renpet had allowed her sister to run her off was a subject of great speculation.

There was no time now to consider what might have been or should have been. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that, having decided her own kittens were not worthy to be in her presence, Nefure might wish to rid her realm of all of the kittens mothered or sired by the Barque Cats—and right now, there
were
no other kind of kittens. Viti-amun was quite fond of them, both her own and the little princes and princesses, for all that they might someday take after their mother.

Opening the trapdoor in her floor, she told the children they were all going to play a hiding game. She shushed their questions and pushed them onto the stairs, closing the trapdoor behind her. Now she knew she must put as much distance between the kittens and her own house as possible, lest the queen send the guard—Viti-amun’s
own troops—to ensure that the kittens were dispatched.

Vala-ra could not understand what the fuss was about or why it was necessary to act as though the vizier needed to be apprehended. All he had to do was put out a call on his com and Pshaw-Ra answered immediately. He explained that the queen wished to see him, but did not say how displeased she was.

“I am at the city’s outskirts now,” Pshaw-Ra said.

“Stay there,” Vala-ra said. “I will meet you.”

Minutes later the two tawny sleek-furred cats met in the middle of the road farthest from the temple.

“Got her tail in a twist over something, does she?” Pshaw-Ra asked when he saw Vala-ra’s face.

“I’m afraid you must come with me, Grandsire,” Vala-ra told the vizier, who was in fact his oldest living ancestor. Pshaw-Ra had cut quite a swath among the ladies. “She doesn’t care for the looks of the new kittens.”

“Looks? Who cares about looks? Didn’t she see those amazing paws? Does she fail to—excuse me—grasp that with those paws and the superior intelligence of our race, our progeny will be able to do without humans altogether?”

“She doesn’t like the paws. Viti said she might settle for cutting off the extra toes of the kittens instead of killing them, but she finds the kittens ugly. Even her own.”

“You think she’ll listen to me?”

“I think from what Viti said about the mood she’s in, she might have you skinned and thrown into the desert to die.”

“Why in the name of Bast did you let that fur-brained female take control of the throne? Renpet was supposed to be crown princess.”

“Was she? That is not what Nefure told everyone. She had a circle of toms to do her bidding when she made her move, and they
and their servants pursued Renpet and Chione with weapons. They would have killed them if they’d caught them. By the time the guard found out, Renpet was gone, Nefure had assumed the throne, and when you returned and deferred to her, that validated her rule.”

Pshaw-Ra snorted. “I wish everyone would stop trying to interpret my moves or divine my motives. I am highly mysterious for a good reason. I don’t want others to know what I’m doing.”

Vala-ra knew that this was precisely the problem with trusting the vizier to exercise any sort of leadership, even by inference, and his ears flattened with irritation. “Look,” he said, “if you get away, I can always claim you escaped. You could disappear. You do that well.”

“Is that censure in your voice, grandson? Never fear. I have a plan. I always have a plan. Right now this is my plan. I will keep Nefure busy, and you evacuate the new kittens—I have a feeling you had better evacuate the Barque Cats as well. Take them underground and lead them to the River Apep.”

“Then what? Drown them?”

“Certainly not! Do I have to think of everything? You will see my apprentice Chester. Tell him all is in readiness and if I am not there when it is necessary to contact the outer worlds, he should start without me.”

Vala-ra passed the message on to Viti-amun when he and the Barque Cats, kittens, and those of the Mau who wished to join them, caught up with Viti and the kittens. “I will return to assist Grandsire,” he told his sister.

She inclined her head, and like the warrior she was, headed the column of cats and led them through the maze of tunnels, halls, caverns, and corridors, always west, toward the Apep underriver and the Valley of the Royal Dead.

———

Pshaw-Ra could not believe he had sired such a stupid daughter.

“They are an abomination,” she declared. “I cannot believe you talked me into defiling myself with one of those creatures—polluted the purity of our race by having us mate with the outsiders to produce such ugly kittens.”

“Majesty, I—” he began, but even he could not talk fast enough to stem the great sandstorm of Nefure’s rage.

“I want those kittens destroyed. I want the outsiders destroyed. I want them
all
expunged from our genealogy for good.”

“May I remind Your Majesty that our genealogy is at an end without the contributions of the Barque Cats?”

“That is your fault. If we can have kittens with them, we can have kittens among ourselves if you’ll only apply yourself to the task and stop running off to conquer the universe all the time. After all, the late queen and you produced
me.
”

He badly wanted to say that she was proving his point about the decline of their race but merely purred assent and bowed with his tail curled over his back. “As you wish, Majesty. I will return to my laboratories at once.”

“I will see to it that you do. Phylla!”

A grizzled black queen stalked toward them from the shadows of the temple. “Majesty?”

“Escort the Grand Vizier to his laboratory. Post a guard to stay there with him. Do you understand?”

“I do, Majesty. It shall be done.”

I didn’t have to wait for the fugitive cats to arrive to know what I had to do. Pshaw-Ra came to me while I was having a nap and instructed me to go to the pyramid ship, which he said was fully fueled, and take it into space to try to find someone to help us leave the planet.

I rose and found Jubal, who was fishing at the underground river. He pulled out his net full of fish and hauled them onto the bank, saying,
Okay, but I’m coming with you
.

Carrying the net with him, he returned to the nest Renpet and Chione had made for the kittens. “More cats are coming,” I told Renpet. “Your sister has rejected her own kittens and ordered the deaths of them and all of the others, and she is not very fond of my kind either.”

Renpet spat. “She would! Do you think the exiles would help me mount a revolt against her?”

“Why bother? The boy and I go now to bring help to evacuate us all—no need for you and the youngsters to stay here among cats so stupid they put up with your sister as queen. Frankly, my dear, we’re all too good for them.”

Renpet froze suddenly, her ears back and her fur as puffed out as it would go.

“Chester, I am afraid …”

“Of her? Pffft! By the time she finds you, if she does, the kittens would be able to send her hiding under a bunk. She’s a bully-girl, Renpet. You’re worth ten of—”

“I’m not talking about her. I—I hear the great snake.”

“You said you thought you had but—”

“Not
had
. I hear it
now
. Listen.”

She was laying down, and when I lay still beside her, I felt it too—the same ominous
thump-bump thump-bump
I remembered from our first encounter with the worm.

“Can Chione block him from us with her wall-controlling thing?” I asked.

Renpet consulted with her handmaiden. “She tried.”

Jubal questioned Chione a little more, and told me,
She felt the snake break through the last barrier she put in front of it. We’d better get out of here. We can’t go too far, though, because those other cats are on their way. We don’t want them to walk right into the snake
.

Can it cross the river?

I don’t see the river giving it any major obstacle, but I think it’s a good idea to get the river between us and it
.

The kittens were now too big to make carrying them in our mouths any kind of an advantage, but Jubal and Chione scooped them up. Jubal lifted Shahori and one of his sisters onto his shoulders, where I usually rode, and Chione extruded the bridge, using her little device, then scooped the last two kittens into her skirt and crossed the burbling water. Jubal was right behind her, and Renpet and I were on their heels.

But something else was right behind us.

The fresh smell of the water had masked the snake’s musk until it was upon us. Renpet shrieked and I spun and leaped at the same time, sounding my own battle yowl and landing on the snake’s long forked meaty tongue, knocking my mate off it.

Chester!
Jubal cried behind me.

I stared, for a split second transfixed by the bobbing head and
dripping fangs, and back down the stinking grinder that was the snake’s inner musculature, good for swallowing me whole and crushing me inside it.

I was too young to die! As the snake tried to flick me back into its throat, I pulled backward with my front claws, raking the sensitive tongue. The snake spasmed, shrinking from the damage dealt it by my built-in rapiers, and I jumped off, twisting in midair to land on my feet.

The serpent had pulled itself into a huge coil inside our cave, filling it halfway to the ceiling.

Hearing a strange cry, I saw Renpet was trapped between the serpent’s lower jaw and a cave wall. She raked at its hide with all of her claws but the serpent didn’t notice her or the scratches.

I ran toward her but Chione was ahead of me. Jubal picked me up and flung me backward, onto the riverbank beyond the cave. I slid just short of the edge and scrambled back up again. He jumped around hollering and made jabbering noises at the snake, drawing its attention from Chione, who hugged the wall as she reached for Renpet.