She settled down in his lap and made herself comfortable while he stroked her. “You’re a nice kitty,” Iaehh said. “Aren’t you?”
“Under the throat,” Rhiow said, “yes, right there, that’s the spot …” She stretched her neck out and purred, and for a while they just sat there together while bright squares of the late afternoon sun worked their way slowly across the apartment.
“Now, why can’t the people at work be as laid back as you,” Iaehh said. “You just take everything as it comes … you never get stressed out …”
She stretched her forepaws out and closed her eyes. “If you only knew,” Rhiow said.
“ … you don’t have any worries. You have a nice bed to sleep on, nice food whenever you want it …”
“As regards the food, ‘nice’ is relative,” Rhiow said with some amusement, kneading with her paws on Iaehh’s knee. “That ‘choice parts’ thing you gave me the day before yesterday was parts, all right, but as for ‘choice’? Please. I’d be tempted to go out and kill my own cows, except that getting them in the cat door would be a nuisance.”
“Ow, ow, don’t do that … ! You go in and out whenever you like, you don’t have a job, you don’t have to worry about anyone depending on you …”
Rhiow’s tail twitched ironically. “Wouldn’t it be nice if it were so,” she said softly, and sighed. Any wizard had daily concerns over whether or not she was doing her job welclass="underline" you pushed past those doubts and fears as best you could, secure in the knowledge that the Powers that Be would not long allow you to go on uncorrected if you were messing up. Yet that routine, negative sort of approval sometimes fell short of one’s emotional needs … it left you wondering, am I giving enough? The Powers which made the Universe have poured Their virtue into me for the purpose of saving that Universe, piece by piece, day by day. Am I giving enough of it back? And—more to the point—is it working?
“What a life,” Iaehh said.
“You’re not kidding,” Rhiow said.
“But I still wonder … is it good enough …”
She opened an eye and looked up at him.
“I don’t know sometimes,” Iaehh said, stroking her steadily, “if it’s fair for me to keep you. Just because … you’re all that’s left of her … I don’t know, is that a fair reason to keep a pet?”
Rhiow sighed again. His tone was reflective, his face was stilclass="underline" but the intensity of Iaehh’s grief for Hhuha was no less obvious for lacking tears. For one thing, Rhiow could hear the echoes of his emotions: even non-wizardly People could manage that much with the ehhif with whom they spent most of their time. For another thing, Rhiow was an experienced wizard, fluent in the Speech. Understanding it, you could thereby understand anything that spoke. You could also speak to anything that spoke, and make yourself understood: but this was strictly forbidden to wizards except when engaged in errantry, on wizardly business that required it. Rhiow had sometimes been tempted to break her silence, but she had never done it—not even when Iaehh had clutched her and wept into her fur, moaning the name that Rhiow herself also would have moaned aloud in shared grief, if only it had been allowed: Susan, Susan…
Iaehh stroked her, and Rhiow could hear and feel his pain, a little blunted from that first terrible night, but no less easy to bear. She knew the way it came to him in sudden stabs, without warning, at the sound of a telephone ringing or a ra’hio commercial that had always made Hhuha laugh. “I worry that you’re lonely,” Iaehh said slowly. “I worry that I don’t take care of you right. I worry …”
“Don’t worry,” she said, snuggling a little closer to him.
“And this place is expensive,” he said. “Too big for one, really. I think I ought to move … but finding another building that allows pets is going to be such a hassle. I wonder if I shouldn’t find you somewhere else to live …”
Rhiow’s heart leaped in instant reaction: fear. He’s going to try to rehome me, she thought. Someone would adopt her who she hated, and she wouldn’t be able to get out and go about her business. Or—there were ehhif who, meaning nothing but the best, would not give away a pet if they could no longer keep it. They would take their cat to the vet and have it—
Ridiculous, another part of her mind snapped. You’re a wizard. If he seriously starts thinking about giving you away, then one day you can just vanish.
Yes, said another part of her mind: and to where? To live with whom? Wizard Rhiow might be, but she was also a Person … and the one thing People hate above all is to have their routine disrupted. To lose the comfortable den, the sympathetic tone-of-mind of Iaehh, the food at regular intervals, and find herself … where? Living in a dumpster, like Urruah? Rhiow shuddered. “Iaehh,” she said, “this is a bad idea, I’d really you rather didn’t follow this line of thought any further …”
But what about him? said still another part of her mind, and Rhiow much disliked its tone, for it was like the voice which often spoke of wizardry and its responsibilities. What about his needs? How much pain do you cause him by being here, reminding him of Hhuha every time he sees you?
And what about my needs? Rhiow retorted, fluffing up slightly. Don’t you think I miss her? Damn it, what about my pain? Haven’t I done enough in service to the Queen and the worlds to be allowed a little comfort, to think of myself first, just this once?
No reply came. Rhiow disliked the silence as much as she had the voice when it spoke. It sounded entirely too much like the Whisperer, like Hrau’f the Silent, that daughter of Iau’s who imparted knowledge of wizardry and the worlds to feline wizards … and who often seemed to have left a kind of goddaughter to Herself inside you, stern as a goddess, inflexible as one, asking the questions you would rather not answer.
What then? Rhiow said silently. Do I have to let him do this? Do I have to let him get rid of me?
Silence: and Iaehh’s stroking, all wound up with his pain and the way he missed Hhuha. Rhiow licked her nose in fear. She could practically feel his anguish through her fur.
The Oath was clear enough on the matter, the Oath which every wizard of whatever species took in one form or another. I will guard growth and ease pain … And you kept the Oath, or soon enough you began to slip away from the practice of your wizardry into something which did not bear consideration: into the service of the Lone Power, Who had invented death and pain. Entropy was running, the energy bleeding slowly away out of the universe: the Lone One would widen the wound, hurry the bleeding in any way It could. Tricking or manipulating wizards so that they used their power to Its ends was one of the Lone One’s preferred techniques.
I will not be Its claw, to rip the wound wider, Rhiow thought. Brave words, the right words for a wizard. But it was inside her that she felt the claw, already beginning to set in deep. She looked away from Iaehh.
If this situation doesn’t improve…
…then leaving may be something I have to consider.
“No,” Iaehh said, “of course not, stupid idea, it’s a stupid idea …” He stroked her. “If I have to move, it’ll be to somewhere with pets, of course it will. Sue would be furious if I ever let anything happen to you—”