Treecat Wars (35 page)

Then came the disappearance and murder of Red Cliff. In the image, Dirt Grubber knew the body he and his two-leg friends had buried. He sought for and found Beautiful Mind among the invalids, still holding to life because she would not make her mate’s sacrifices mean nothing.

Finally, the events that had led to battle…Keen Eyes’ plan. The plan working. Nimble Fingers. Hope rising, chased by despair and loss as a kitten chases its own tail. The horror of the battle. Bringing home the dead and wounded. Waiting…waiting….

For Sour Belly, that wait was one for death, for now all knew Trees Enfolding blocked the only way out and Trees Enfolding had no mercy in its heart.

<
But what of this Nimble Fingers?
> Dirt Grubber asked in desperation. <
He did not seem like a bad fellow. Surely he would help you
.>

Sour Belly’s reply hit as hard as the claws of a death wing in the night.

<
Nimble Fingers wishes to help us, but he was badly injured when he tried to stop the fighting. His own clan mates were too caught up in battle rage to know when they rent the very one they had come to rescue. His life is safe, but he is too weak to go to his clan, and surely we cannot aid him.
>

* * *

Anders contacted Scott MacDallan as soon as they were aloft.

“It’s a bad situation. Neither of us are treecat experts—”

“Who is?” Scott asked dryly. “Even Stephanie would be the first to say we’ve barely touched on their complexities. Go on.”

“Okay, then. It’s a small clan. They didn’t stand still for us to count or anything, but we’re guessing there were no more than seventy-five individuals—and that includes a lot of kittens and some adults who were obviously invalids. Not only from the fighting, either. There were what I guess you’d call chronic cases, too.”

“Probably smoke damage to lungs,” Jessica cut in. “We saw a lot of healing burns, too. Scars by now, but ugly.”

“And a lot of the healthier adults were seniors.”

“How could you tell that?”

“Valiant just gave me that impression,” Jessica replied for Anders. “Then there’s that theory that males get more rings on their tails the older they get. If that guess is right, well, we saw a lot of tails with a lot of rings.”

“Oh!” Anders added. “Again, we’re guessing because we didn’t trying get too close, but under all that fur they seemed pretty skinny.”

“So you think this is Survivor’s clan.”

“Well, I hope it is,” Jessica snapped, “because the thought of another group of treecats that miserable makes me want to cry!” She paused. “Sorry. It’s just that I think Valiant’s as upset as I am. We’re not doing each other any good at all right now.”

Scott’s tone was soothing. “I understand. What else?”

“They’re poor,” Anders said. “My dad’s been studying treecat garbage, remember? I know what they should have, and they don’t. I didn’t see
any
gourds, and they don’t have many baskets, either. And the handful of those I did see were clumsily woven, like just getting them done was enough. I saw some nets, but…I’ve visited Lionheart’s clan with Stephanie, and how they live is different. They have nice baskets. They have perches in the trees with pads on them—some are practically pillowed! They weave weatherproof nests thick and insulated enough to stand off even a Sphinxian weather. They keep furs. They store food. This clan had none of that.”

Jessica agreed. “I’ve gone home with Valiant. His clan’s on the small side, too, but the difference is obvious. It’s not just stuff this clan doesn’t have. It’s how they move around. These guys were sluggish, like they were tired right down to their bones.”

“Are you sure they weren’t just on guard because there was a strange treecat and two humans in their settlement?” Scott asked.

“Absolutely,” Jessica said. “Even the kittens looked beat. You can’t tell me that even the best-behaved kids in the universe would just sit and watch. They’re not only starving physically; I think they’re emotionally beaten. I think they know they’re not going to make it through the winter with what they have and they’re giving up.”

“That’s a lot to say based on one visit,” Scott said, “but I’m not saying I don’t believe you. You say Valiant is down?”

“Very. Utterly despondent. When we first got in with the clan, he was really pleased, especially when he and this other male treecat were nose to nose. I’m guessing they were talking up a storm, but somewhere in there he got sad. He’s in my lap now, and he’s never there when I’m flying.”

“I took a bunch of images on my uni-link,” Anders said. “None of them are going to be art pieces, but I’ll copy them over to you, if you want. Take a look. You’re not going to get the emotions, I know, but you’ll have more than our word for it.”

“Do it,” Scott said. “I’m going to have to go back to my patients for a few hours, but I’ll view the images as soon as I can. Are you two heading back to Twin Peaks?”

“Yeah. Jessica promised her mother she’d be back to make dinner. Ms. Pheriss is doing her best to get everything at the Harringtons’ spiffy before they get home next week.”

“Closer to four days now,” Scott reminded him. “Richard emailed me their ship schedule. We’re all going to meet at the Harrington steading for a conference as soon as they’re home.”

“Good!” Anders said. “I’m glad.”

But somewhere deep inside, he wondered why he didn’t feel gladder.

* * *

Dirt Grubber was haunted by memories of the Landless Clan. He was all too well aware that without the intervention of Death Fang’s Bane, Windswept, and their friends, his clan could be in much the same position—if not worse. Like the Landless Clan, they would have found it difficult to move to a new location without trespassing on territories already claimed by other clans or, worse, settled by the two-legs.

There but for the kindness of some impulsive younglings go we
, he thought.
Surely I can do something. But what?

He brooded during the flight to Windswept’s home. Even after the evening routine was over and she had fallen into troubled sleep, he tried idea after idea, much as he would have tested plants in various types of soil and light. Somewhere in the darkest hours, he came up with the plan.

The Landless Clan needed to be transplanted. That was certain. However, their route to new lands was blocked by the Trees Enfolding Clan. Nimble Fingers was willing to act as ambassador, sharing his experiences with the Landless Clan with his own, but he was too wounded to travel.

If Windswept could treat Nimble Fingers, perhaps even help bring him close to where Trees Enfolding nested…Surely the Landless Clan would have had enough time by now to realize that the outsiders could help them. He was sure he could convince them of what must be done.

The only problem was, how could he explain to Windswept what he wanted?

Chapter Eighteen

“What
is
bothering you, Stephanie?” Marjorie Harrington inquired. “You’re squirming inside your skin like a demented stutter bug!”

Despite herself, Stephanie giggled at the image. Stutter bugs were one of Meyerdahl’s more colorful insect analogues. They were also about the size of her hand, and they communicated by drawing air over vibrating spicules that covered their garishly decorated sides. A stutter bug in full mating chorus looked like a bright orange, hairy beanbag someone had stuffed with a vibrator.

“Sorry, Mom!” She shook her head contritely. “I guess I’m just more nervous tonight.”

“Well, sure,” Karl put in, supporting her excuse loyally. “It’s the first time they’ve let you take Lionheart anywhere off-campus, Steph!”

“I’m sure that explains it,” Richard Harrington said in a tone which—to his daughter’s knowledgeable ear—suggested he was rather less certain of it than his words implied. Fortunately, he let Karl’s explanation stand, although the look he gave Stephanie suggested she might well find herself revisiting the topic with him later.

Well, of course I will! We really should’ve told them already
,
but if we had, they’d have climbed onto the next Manticore-Sphinx shuttle come hell or high water. And the same people who would’ve wondered why Karl and I were running for home would wonder why
they
were scooting back to Twin Forks while he and I were still stuck on Manticore
.
Especially when they hadn’t even seen us in the last three months!

“It was nice of the Foundation to lean on the restaurant’s management,” Richard said instead of following up on the reasons for his daughter’s obvious anxiety.

“It sure was,” Stephanie agreed sincerely as the taxi grounded at the entrance to the park around the Charleston Arms. The same footman who’d opened the door for her and Karl on their first visit opened it again, but this time he smiled at them.

“Welcome back,” he said. “I understand you two are heading home to Sphinx in a day or two?”

“Yes, we are,” Stephanie acknowledged, and gave him a sincere smile. He’d turned out to be a much more worthwhile person than she’d assumed that first evening. “Steve, this is my mom and my dad. Mom, Dad—this is Steve Cirillo.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Cirillo said, shaking hands with Marjorie and Richard in turn. “You’re probably tired of hearing it, but you’ve got quite a daughter here.”

“That’s not really the kind of thing a smart parent admits she’s tired of hearing,” Marjorie replied, and he chuckled.

“And this—” Stephanie reached up to touch Lionheart’s ears “—is Lionheart.”

“So those old…fogies in the front office finally said you could bring him, did they?” Cirillo glanced at Stephanie’s parents from the corner of one eye as he changed nouns in mid flight. “Good for you!”

“I think Ms. Adair had a lot to do with it. She and her cousin,” Stephanie said.

“The Earl usually does get what he wants,” Cirillo agreed, and waved them through the ornamental gate. The days when he’d assigned a minder to make sure they didn’t get lost—or steal any doorknobs—were long past, and Stephanie smiled at him again before her parents followed her and Karl past the gate and along the gravel walk across the restaurant’s manicured park.

There was less traffic about than usual, although the paths were seldom actually very crowded. It had taken Stephanie a couple of visits to realize that the Charleston Arms wasn’t actually a public restaurant at all. In fact, the entire facility was a private club which belonged to the Earl of Adair Hollow. The restaurant was open to the public three days a week, but not on Fridays, which was when the Foundation regularly met here. She’d wondered, since she’d discovered the way things were actually organized, why it had taken so long to clear her to bring Lionheart along. She knew Landing had stricter regulations than Twin Forks about permitting “animals” into eating establishments, but they made plenty of exceptions for service dogs and Beowulfan fox bears. Probably just bureaucratic inertia, she’d decided, and the fact that the Earl himself had returned to the Star Kingdom this week from his extended business trip probably explained why they’d suddenly managed to overcome that inertia.

Of course—

Lionheart’s sudden, rippling snarl cut her off in mid-thought.

* * *

Climbs Quickly tensed, muscles coiling tightly. His ears went flat to his head and his bared fangs showed bone-white in the illumination spilling from the tall pillar of light behind him and his two-legs.

I should have tasted them sooner!
he told himself fiercely.
Am I a scout of the People or a just-weaned kitten who cannot be trusted out of the nest on his own?!

Even as he thought it, he knew he was being unfair to himself. Death Fang’s Bane’s mind-glow had been clearer and brighter since her parents had arrived at the learning place, but it remained more shadowed than it ought to be, and he was no closer to understanding the reasons for those shadows. Except for the increasing certainty that they had much to do with the People, that was. And the echo of her fretfulness had seeped into his own mind-glow. It had not dimmed his perceptions, but it had focused his own thoughts on his effort to understand what concerned her so, worrying at it like a death gleaner at a two-day-dead horn blade.

Two-leg mind-glows were always strong, but that was part of the problem. He had grown accustomed to being forced to barricade himself against their intensity, like someone shielding his eyes against too-bright sunlight. And he had been allowing himself to luxuriate in the mind-glows of Death Fang’s Bane’s parents—and in the way her own mind-glow had taken comfort from their presence, even if she had not managed to release whatever was causing so much anxiety. But even so, he knew his own preoccupation with her worry was the only reason he had missed the oncoming mind-glows until it was almost too late.

* * *

Stephanie’s head snapped up, turning automatically to the left. It wasn’t until much later that she grasped the real reason she’d looked in that direction and realized she’d
felt
it from Lionheart. At the moment, all she saw was a blur of movement coming out of the shadows and the undergrowth…and headed straight at
her
.

“What the—” her father began.

“
Richard!
”

That was her mother’s voice, and adrenaline rocketed as she realized her parents were in danger, as well.

“
Steph—!
”

Karl called her name in a hard, harsh-edged voice, but she scarcely heard him through the high, snarling crescendo of Lionheart’s warcry, and she felt herself dropping into a half-crouch.

Five of them
, a ridiculously calm corner of her brain reflected.
At least five. How—?

But there was no time to worry about how they’d gotten onto the Charleston Arms’ grounds, and she felt Lionheart catapult from her shoulder.

* * *

Climbs Quickly launched himself into the overhead branches, snarling his challenge. It wasn’t the first time his two-leg, his
person
, had been in danger, and the red fury of rage roared through him. The People knew how to deal with threats to those they loved, and his scimitar claws slid from their sheaths.

Yet even as he snarled, even as he tasted Death Fang’s Bane’s fear—for her parents, not for herself—he tasted a sudden spike of fresh and different apprehension flooding out of her. Apprehension with a familiar tang, even if he had never tasted it so strongly before. She was frightened for
him
, and not just that he might once more be injured as he had been when they faced the death fang together. In its own way, this fear was even sharper than the fear she had felt then, because it was more focused, something which had been with her longer, and he hissed again, more fiercely, as he realized what it was.