Wild Dog City (Darkeye Volume 1) (15 page)

"I'm sorry," said Maha, and crouched there,
her eyes downcast. Mhumhi realized his mouth was still open. He
closed it.

"You'd better go back," said Kutta, walking
closer, shooting looks at Mhumhi as she did. Maha picked up the
candle in one hand.

"Wait," said Mhumhi. She turned to look at
him. He stepped over and gently licked her forehead, and then
pressed his own against it.

Broken
Glass

Mhumhi curled up with Kebero that night.

He let Kutta speak to Sacha, far downstairs,
when she demanded to know why they had gotten back so late. In his
cowardly way, he had slunk right by and up the stairs as Kutta
started to talk, mixing the lies with the new truth that they had
learned.

He hadn't said a word to Kebero, he'd just
gotten on the bed and curled up around the sleepy puppy. Kebero had
seemed groggy but happy about it.

Bii was in the corner, hunting a cockroach.
He hadn't spared Mhumhi more than a glance since he came up. He was
crouched by a little crack in the floorboards, big ears trained
downwards, full of furious predatory intensity.

Mhumhi watched him with a strange curiosity.
He had not thought about it, but Bii was a killer. Even the little
bugs had lives, after all. Bii consumed those lives. And the rats
and mice that other dogs ate were alive too, and even had
blood.

He licked Kebero's head, thinking. Kebero had
a pulse, and blood, and underneath his skin there was meat. Just
like the little hulker children. But Mhumhi had never considered
eating Kebero. He licked him again, to apologize for even thinking
about it.

Mhumhi had always known, in a vague way, that
the meat he ate had been something alive once. He could not
remember that it had actually been explained or described to him,
but it must have, mustn't it?

What living creatures had all that meat come
from?

So much meat- meat to feed a hundred hundred
thousand dogs- where had it all come from?

Bii suddenly lunged forward and stuck his
nose in the little crack. A second later he drew away, squirming
cockroach caught in his jaws, and crunched downwards.

Mhumhi watched him eat it, the evident
pleasure he took in consuming it, even as the cockroach's legs
still slowly rotated as he did so.

Kutta came dashing up the stairs and threw
herself on the bed.

"What, what is it?" Mhumhi said, startled, as
she crawled up next to him, whimpering. He licked her ear, feeling
the dried blood encrusted on it.

"Sacha just went outside," she said. "I don't
know where she went, I don't know what she's going to do… I thought
she wouldn't be upset!"

Mhumhi pressed close to her, whining softly,
trying to comfort her as she lay there and shuddered. Kebero
twisted and pressed against his stomach.

"Where's Sacha going? Wh-wh-why did she
leave?"

His voice went shriller, up to a puppyish
yap.

"Is she leaving like Mo- like Mo- like Mother
did?"

"No, Kebero, of course not," said Mhumhi,
though the words sparked some alarm in him. Sacha could not leave,
could she?

"She won't leave," said Kutta, or more
moaned. "She has nowhere else to go."

Her words made Mhumhi swallow, and he turned
back to pay more attention to her ear, gently picking at the dried
blood with his tongue.

"She'll be back," he said, between his
ministrations. "She needs her time. You know how she is. She'll be
all right."

Kutta said nothing, just closed her eyes and
let him tend to her ear. Mhumhi felt Bii's eyes on them from across
the room.

"We have to tell her," he said.

Beside him Kutta went stiff.

"No… no, we can't…"

"We
have
to," he insisted. "We can't
possibly go on keeping such a big secret from her, not if we want
to… you know. She needs to be part of it. She's our family,
Kutta."

Kutta was silent for a long while. Finally
she said, "But she'll be so mean and- and
bossy
about it
once she knows."

Mhumhi lifted his lips in a smile and nuzzled
his sister, his cheek bumping against hers.

"It'll be better anyway. She'll know what to
do. She always does, right?"

Kutta gave a soft sigh and leaned back
against him. Their breath commingled. Mhumhi felt the close warmth
of his sister, like the pressing weight of the hulker's arms around
his neck, the strange and gentle effect of body against body.

He found himself worried, somewhat, for Kutta
had not eaten anything that day for herself. They'd missed the
second dispensary time since they had come back so late. Mhumhi
hoped that Sacha at least had gone and eaten. None of them could
really afford to skip a day right now, not with the meat being
spread so thin.

He fell asleep with this sense of unease
within him, curled with Kutta and Kebero. Sacha did not return to
join them for the rest of the night. Nor, for that matter, did
Bii.

The next morning he woke up abruptly, jerking
his head up. There was a great deal of noise and barking coming
from outside, and sunlight was filtering brightly through the
curtains and onto the floor.

"What's going on?" Kutta asked sleepily, her
eyes still tightly shut. "Is it another fight?"

Mhumhi recalled the fight that had occurred
in the street a few days ago, with the golden jackal and the
blue-eyed domestic. It seemed like an eternity had passed since
then.

He got to his feet, gently dislodging a
sleepy Kebero, and jumped off the bed. Behind him Kutta whined
softly.

Mhumhi went downstairs and was startled to
see Sacha there, standing by the door with her nose pressed to the
crack and her short tail quivering. As he walked closer she spared
him a brief glance.

"Something's going on outside," she said. "I
think it's the police. It's got the foxes all riled up out there. I
don't dare even open the door."

"Did you sleep down here last night?" Mhumhi
asked, glancing at the tattered couch.

Sacha's response was somewhat clipped, as if
she didn't approve of him broaching the subject. "Yes. I came back
late. Didn't want to wake anyone up."

"Oh," said Mhumhi, and he went over to try
and lick her chin. She tolerated it, he thought, better than
usual.

They heard Kutta coming down the stairs
behind them. Her footsteps faltered. "Sacha?"

"Hush, I'm trying to
listen
," said
Sacha, very stiffly. Kutta came up and stood close beside Mhumhi,
looking up at him.

"The police are outside," he murmured to her,
and her ears went back.

"For who?" she asked. "For what?"

"Hush!" said Sacha, and then she suddenly
jumped back from the door as someone scratched it loudly.

"This is the police!" the dog outside
shouted. "You must open up! We're conducting a search!"

"A search for what?" Sacha growled, rearing
up to balance her small weight on the door, as if that would be
enough of a deterrent. "Who gives you the right, Liduma?"

"Open up," the voice repeated.

"Come on, Sacha, let's not cause trouble,"
said Kutta, swallowing nervously. Sacha growled and jumped up to
tug down the door handle. Liduma pushed in at once.

"Is this everyone living here?" she asked,
rudely shoving by them to prowl through their kitchen and living
room.

"We've a fox upstairs, recovering from an
injury," said Sacha. "Though I bet you woke him up with all that
noise. What's going on? What's this about?"

"A fox?" Liduma flicked an ear at them, her
nose twitching. "Typical." Her dusty pelt seemed to be hanging off
her bones, her swollen teats sagging, and when she licked her nose,
her tongue was pale.

"You don't look so well, Liduma," Kutta said,
waving her tail down by her heels. Liduma wrinkled a lip.

"Where's Pariah? I haven't seen her recently.
Is she here?"

"No, she is not," said Sacha.

Liduma looked down her nose at her. "Don't
lie to me, Sacha. I could have this place searched-"

"Do it," growled Sacha, her stub tail
quivering, "do it, scat-worm, you should smell we're not lying.
Pariah left."

Liduma started to growl, but it turned into a
surprised cough.

"Left?"

"Permanently. Why are you looking for
her?"

"She wouldn't leave," said Liduma, sounding
doubtful. She glanced at Mhumhi. "I thought-"

"She's really gone," Mhumhi confirmed. He
kept his head low. Liduma could be a bit of a bully, but she'd
never done anything more than harass them, and she'd never seemed
interested in their mother before...

"Those upper-city police are biting into your
territory, aren't they?" said Sacha. "You look like you haven't
eaten in days."

Liduma gave another coughing growl. When she
stepped forward Mhumhi saw a fresh, pale bite wound on her
shoulder.

"The police are united," she said. "The
painted dogs-"

She stopped short, shooting a glare at
Mhumhi, and he tucked his tail.

"We have nothing to fight over. The one you
have upstairs- it's not a domestic?"

"So are you looking for domestics?" asked
Kutta.

"Answer the question!"

"I already said it was a fox. Use your nose,"
said Sacha. "What's going on with the domestics?"

Liduma drew a thin breath through her nose.
"They're all to be arrested."

"
All
of the domestics?" cried Kutta.
"On what grounds?"

"On the grounds that they are domestics!"
snapped Liduma. "We have reason to believe that they are helping or
harboring hulkers. So they're all to come in now."

Mhumhi raised his head, ignoring Kutta, who
was trying to catch his eye. "Why go after them all of the sudden
like this?"

Liduma gave a grunt and scuffed the dirty
floor with her paw. "Some new information came in, up top.
Somebody's been tampering with the dispensaries. Zoo Park, West Big
Park, Center Road..."

"The Center Road dispensary's down?"
exclaimed Kutta, and Liduma put her ears back.

"Never mind about Center Road. It's the
hulkers' fault. And the domestics are helping the hulkers. Up top
they've finally decided to do a sweep and wipe them out for good.
There can't be more than a few dozen left, anyway." She coughed.
"It's taken them long enough to get to it, if you ask me..."

"What are you doing with the domestic dogs
that you catch?" That was Sacha, her gaze, as ever, very sharp.

"Question them," said Liduma. Her voice had
dropped an octave. "You'd better not be protecting anybody."

"We're not."

"I mean it," growled Liduma. There was a wary
edge to her tone. "Those above me, they asked for Pariah by name.
If you're hiding her..."

"Tell them she's dead, then," said Sacha.
Both Mhumhi and Kutta flinched.

"That's a lie," snorted Liduma.

"She died doing what she always did," said
Sacha. "You know what I mean."

Liduma stared at her for a long moment.

"Well," she said, "if that's true- I suppose
it was bound to catch up with her eventually."

"Like you and your pack never did," said
Sacha. Now she was growling, high-pitched. "You sat and watched-
you useless police brutes. You could have stopped her. It was your
duty to stop her."

"Sacha," said Kutta, disbelievingly.

Liduma made no response to this. Her shoulder
flexed, and again Mhumhi saw the shining bite mark.

"There's another announcement I've got to
give you," she said.

"And what is it, then?"

"You're only to go to the dispensary in the
afternoons from now on."

"What?!" exclaimed Sacha. "Are you saying our
dispensary isn't working either?"

"It's working just fine." Real exhaustion was
showing now in Liduma's voice. "We're splitting up the feeding
times, that's all. The Zoo Park and the Center Road dogs go in the
morning, and the Oldtown dogs go in the evening. It reduces
fighting."

She cast her eyes over their stunned
faces.

"If I were you," she said, "I'd find
somewhere else to live. Soon."

Her gaze lingered for a long moment on
Mhumhi, and then she turned around and stepped out of the
house.

"I don't believe this," Sacha growled, as
soon as her painted back had disappeared outside. "Splitting up the
times! And they're expecting to feed even
more
dogs from our
dispensary! I've already heard that some dogs waited so long they
didn't get fed yesterday!"

"What are we going to do?" Kutta said. "We're
already trying to keep a low profile, and now this… We have no
choice but to go all together now."

"I know," said Sacha. "Though it may work in
our favor if there's some confusion, at least. The police will be
busy breaking up fights from the two different districts in the
morning, I'll bet. They'll be tireder when it comes to us." Her
eyes got small and crafty. "Perhaps… perhaps we could even sneak in
Kebero."

"Really?" Mhumhi burst out, tail wagging. "We
can start taking him?"

"He's not really big enough," said Sacha,
"but at this rate no one'll be behind to watch him. He's small, he
can pass for a big fox if the police are all as tired as Liduma is.
There aren't many Simien wolves around anyway; I doubt they'll be
that familiar with them."

"He'll be excited," said Kutta, smiling.

"Don't let him get too excited," Sacha
replied, tail stiff. "If he acts like a puppy, he'll ruin it.
Impress that upon him, would you?"

"I will do my best," said Kutta. "I bet he'll
listen better if Bii tells him, though."

"Well, tell Bii," said Sacha. "Where is he,
anyway? Hiding out upstairs?"

Mhumhi and Kutta exchanged a look, and Kutta
said, in a worried way, "We haven't seen him since last night."

"He must be out hunting in the sewers, then,"
Sacha said. "He told me his leg was feeling all right again. Though
why he'd choose this morning… We'll have to explain it to him when
he gets back." Her eyes narrowed with annoyance. "If he's decided
to take off…"