When the father’s flank has sealed, and puffy proud flesh shows where soft speckled coat grew, when he has risen and begun to pace his cage, limping and staggering and dull-coated but hungry and determined—then the old creature comes and slides part of the bars of the cage aside. The mother’s ears come up, her eyes forward. Around her, the brothers-and-sisters lie or crouch or turn tensely, lips tight with worry across closed teeth, tails low slung or quivering just at the tip.
It could be a trap. The men are known for the traps they set, and some are very clever.
The father hesitates. He has crowded to the corner of the cage, furthest from where the old creature stands. Now, as she backs away—slowly, and with the dragging gait of the hip-lame—the father comes forward, hesitation-step, only to pause with one forepaw lifted just inside the cage. The threshold dares him; he lowers his head and flattens his ears.
The cub sidles forward, out of range of the mother’s teeth. She might warn it back, and it knows the doorway is safe. The cub has crossed it many times.
The cub leaps up, lightly, beside the father, who tilts his head at it. And then it leaps down, and the father follows, staggering a little when his weight hits weakened forelegs. But the cub is there to steady him. There is a static moment when the father wavers and the mother and the brothers-and-sisters lean forward, held back as if by chains and collars. Then their reserve snaps and the pack surges forward, sniffing and wriggling and surrounding the father until the cub has to put its bone and jewel arm around him and hold him up against the onslaught of relief and congratulations.
And the mother, though the cub does not think the old creature hears the thanks in it, lifts her head to stare at the old creature and fans her tail once, gently.
When dusk comes, the cub shows the pack some of the things it has learned. Such as where the den of the enemy is.
Though anyone could tell it for its stinking.
Days passed, and the stream of afflicted grew. In the mornings, at first light, Bijou would shuffle from her bedroom to find one of the door-warders had already set water to boil for coffee. She would stir the porridge—sometimes she had to pull the spoon from a servant’s hand to do so—and stump to the front door, the child by now usually beside her, and perhaps a jackal as well. When Bijou opened the portal, the cold morning would greet her—and, shivering upon the street before her house, a line of men and women: some with livestock, some with loved ones, some hunched over their own necrotizing injuries.
Bijou would treat them as best she could, the ones that were within saving. The ones that were not within saving could not be allowed to go free. But Brazen took responsibility for those; he went before the Bey and prevailed upon him to open the jails as quarantine, which the Bey could do without involving his advisors. There, those that died and would not lie down could be kept in custody.
This did not prevent some from dying untreated, of course, and soon Messaline fluttered with stinking pigeons and swarmed with necrotic rats. The river fouled and only covered cisterns stayed safe for drinking—though some must, perforce, drink the river water or go thirsty. And still Bijou’s bone and jewel creatures brought her more and more of the dead and dying.
Bijou’s unquiet loft hummed with people—the comings and goings of Brazen’s household, the child’s jackal wardens like ghosts about the garden, the sick. And, more and more, it was also busy with the recovering. Once healing had begun, many of those returned to assist with the still-sick. Lazybones hid in the attics so that Bijou hardly even heard it. The street before Bijou’s house, and for yards in every direction, took on the aspect of a fair.
The first treated animal to be released was the cat, new forelimbs silenced cunningly with tiny leather pads upon the toes. Bijou carried it to the back garden wall and set it down, stroking its ears when it twined her ankles. “Go on,” she said. “Be about your business.”
As if the work she and Brazen had put into it and its brethren had made them, like her Artifices, capable of understanding her speech, the cat looked at her, meowed condescendingly, looked away again, and with a smooth leap mounted the garden wall.
Two hours later, it returned with the neck of a fluttering undead pigeon gripped in its teeth, the bird shedding gobs of putrescence and pecking at its eyes.
“Oh thank you,” Bijou said. “Just what I wanted.”
As she lurched forward, Brazen burst from her loft, a parchment fluttering from his fingers like a fan. By its freight of ribbons and wax, she knew the source even before he called, “Bijou! I am summoned to speak before the Bey!”
Brazen went alone, on foot, so as to seem humble. He went with the dawnlight, Iashti’s time, for a good beginning. He went in sandals and plain robes, so as to seem scholarly, but though his turban was coarse black cloth, still he wound it seven times. And having wound it, and made his sash tight, he also divested himself of all weapons.
When he presented himself before the kapikulu guarding the Bey’s gates, they searched him as carefully as he had anticipated, but they did not demand his letter of invitation before allowing him passage. It served as a small reassurance that his star had not yet fallen irretrievably.
Such things could change very fast, when it came to politics. But it seemed that they had not changed yet.
The Young Bey sat upon a gilt platform amid silken rugs and mirrored cushions, a tray resting at his right hand upon a low cradle. Kapikulu stood like skirted statues at every corner of the room, their coats as stark as the marble floor.
Aware of their gaze, and the attention of the Young Bey, Brazen lowered himself to the stones, swished the skirts of his linen robes out from under his knees, and crept forward. He thought of the jackal-child as he slid his palms across cold marble, tracing pewter-and-black veins. When his fingertips touched the edge of the platform, he paused and touched the floor with the peak of his turban.
“Your excellence,” he said. “Your unworthy servant begs your indulgence.”
“Face me,” the Bey said. Brazen pushed himself back onto his suffering knees.
“At your command,” he said, so the Bey rolled his eyes at him.
“Come, sit,” the Bey said. “And pour the coffee. Let us set aside formalities today, Brazen, and be men who were once teacher and student.”
Though he called himself a man, the Bey’s hands were as smooth as his cheeks, or the silken pillows he rested his backside on. Those hands lay upon his knees as Brazen edged up the stairs, careful never to turn his back. He sat one step below the Bey, off the cushions, and reached to pour two tiny cups of tarry coffee. The smell rising with steam from the cups was so rich and bitter it made his eyes water. There were sweets also, layered heaps of nuts and honey and threads of pastry.
Brazen served two to the Bey and chose one for himself, lifting it on a cloth napkin once the Bey had taken a bite of his own. This was a gesture of great trust, and a subtle message. The Bey had spoken as if man to man, and taken food from his hand. This conversation was not one of a subject to his ruler, but rather one between two acquaintances.
That also implied that the Bey did not anticipate that he would be able to offer any assistance, which did not surprise Brazen at all. But first there were pleasantries to be dispensed with, and so they were. And there was coffee to be sipped, and so it was.
And finally the Bey leaned down close to Brazen’s ear and spoke softly, for his hearing alone. “You have come to beg assistance against Kaulas the Necromancer.”