Streets here were swept at least once each day by one of the work gangs. With his night vision, Ree could scamper through them as if it were full daylight. He hardly thought about where he was going. And perhaps that was for the best. If he had nothing in mind and just turned on whim, the soldiers would find it harder to follow him. It would be harder to anticipate random movements.
Their voices grew fainter till even his enhanced hearing could hardly pick them at all. Ree breathed deeply. It was working.
As he came to a narrow lane between overarching buildings, he slowed down and looked around. His mad turnings had brought him to one of the tenement districts, where the shabby buildings leaned so close to each other they almost touched above the lane. Black alleys barely wide enough for a hand cart separated the buildings. The sun never reached the mud beneath.
He lifted his feet off the dismal muck and sighed. He needed to pick his way more carefully now. He had already trodden in more than enough to leave a scent trail even a human could follow.
Lifting his foot, he shook off the worst of the filth. These lanes had never been paved. They went from ice in winter to mud in summer, and since the magic died they had more than just mud and ice in them. He had been born somewhere like this. He’d played in these streets—or walked forlornly along them—when his mother locked him out of her rooms.
Ree crept slowly through the darkness, listening, listening. His enhanced hearing picked up the sounds of people in their houses—whispers, conversations, a sleeper turning in bed, a child crying forlornly.
Smells seeped over the ever-present stink of waste. A hint of stew that made his stomach growl, reminding him that he had not eaten since last night. Old beer, rancid as it mingled with older straw in the closed alehouses. Unwashed humans, ripe with sweat from days of work in the summer heat. Acrid smoke from cooking fires. The smells were signs of life in the darkness.
But the streets themselves were almost deserted. This area had once bustled day and night. But since the curfew, no one wanted to risk a crossbow. A shadowed figure in darkness could be mistaken for a hobgoblin, and who was going to say the soldier who fired the crossbow hadn’t thought he was killing a monster? Certainly not the dead person.
The quiet felt wrong to Ree. Ominous. Even though he could never go out among humans again, Ree wanted to know people were still out there on the streets—feasting, fighting, flirting. People on the streets meant things were normal again, and normal meant that people would fear hobgoblins less. And not hunt a young street rat, constantly making his life a living hell.
He walked down the street, listening, listening for the sounds that told him at least people were still living in their houses, still safe. He felt a nostalgia for that life he’d never had, for that life that would never be his—for a family and a quiet snug home, where he could turn in his bed, pull the covers over his head, and be safe.
His ears, reaching for the sounds of normalcy picked up marching. Marching feet. His fur rose in hackles on his neck. Marching footsteps came from farther up the lane. He stopped. Then darted into the nearest alley.
“What the—” someone said, near him.
Panicked, Ree spun to the unexpected voice. A hulking shape loomed out of the blackness as the marching feet grew closer.
A hand closed around his neck. Ree’s claws came out. He squirmed, scratching out with hands and feet to make the human in the army uniform let go. He had to. He had to defend himself, to force the human to leave him be. He somehow wrapped his body around an arm that seemed thicker than his chest, his feet kicking at the man’s neck.
The hand let go. Ree tumbled to the ground, gasping. The dead weight of his attacker fell on him. Almost flattened him. Was the man dead? Had Ree killed him? There was a trickle of something warm-soft onto his neck, some liquid.
Oh, he could smell well enough the sharp, metallic tang of blood. But he didn’t want it to be blood. He didn’t want to have killed someone.
Oh, not the first time. Never the first time. But Ree didn’t want to kill. He didn’t want . . . Every time he killed someone, every time his instincts—no, the rat’s instincts, or the cat’s, took over and killed a human, Ree felt that he’d become a little less human. Eventually, his humanity would be all gone. Drained away.
He had lost too much humanity already.
Blood trickled onto his neck, draining away the man’s life, and Ree wanted to stand, to squirm, to flee. But the marching steps approached and he held his breath and hoped, hoped they would pass without pausing.
Closer, he could hear their breaths, and smell the individual men. Not moving, Ree felt blood fall on him, felt the man shudder, stop breathing.
Along the main alley, the marching steps passed away. Slowly, slowly. Ree remained still. Holding his breath.
When the silence had lasted long enough, Ree dug his claws into the mud of the alley and pulled himself from beneath his attacker. His muscles seemed to have gone to water. His movement was too slow. Too slow.
I’m just tired. That’s all. Tired. Give it a little while.
Pulling away from beneath the dead weight, he took deep breaths. His nostrils filled with the smell of blood and filth. He stared at the man he had killed, shaking as he realized what it meant.
Dangerous hobgoblin. They’ll hunt me down and kill me. There could be no doubt the dead man had been killed by a hobgoblin. Human murderers did not leave claw marks clear across their victims’ throats.
He heard a sound. A breath. It came from behind him.
He paused, shocked. He was not alone.
Ree froze, terror rising to choke him. Someone had seen him kill the man. He felt as if his lungs filled with freezing air.
Someone. There was someone. The person would call for help, and he would be killed like an animal. Like the animal he was. He’d killed someone with his claws, with his . . . He’d killed out of sheer panic.
The soft, muffled sound came from deeper in the alley.
For a moment, Ree trembled on the edge of fleeing, then he recognized the smell that lurked beneath the blood and worse. Aw, crap. Not that. He turned slowly, half dreading what he would see, half expecting it.
He stumbled in the direction of the breathing, in the direction of the smell.
The boy lay in the muck. It was hard to say how old he would be: younger than Ree, but not by much. He was all human, but he had the hollow, young-old look all the street rats got sooner or later.
Seen too much, Ree thought. Felt too much.
It was the gag and the way he had been tied up with his ragged pants that made Ree’s gut churn. Aw, crap. You poor thing.
He fell to his knees besides the boy. He saw the momentary panic in the youth’s eyes, and then an odd sort of relaxation, resignation, as if he’d given up the fight and consigned himself to anything fate wished to throw at him. As if the worst possible thing the boy could imagine had happened—and now something worse loomed.
Ree could well imagine what he looked like to this stranger, this shocked stranger. How would he have felt, in the old days, if a monstrosity with rat fur and broad, green cat’s eyes knelt by him . . . touched him.
Gently, Ree reached for the knots. Just the knots, every movement deliberate and slow. Still, the boy closed his eyes and tensed.
The knots were so tight it hurt Ree’s hands to work them free. He would not use his claws to tear through the thin fabric: likely these were the only pants the boy owned. The gag was a little easier, although when Ree’s eyes adjusted and he saw the bloody marks from a beating—probably administered with a rough-edged belt—etched on the boy’s shoulders and face his claws nearly came out anyway. He stifled a hiss.