Stivo was locking the cage door. He was in such a rush to back away from her that he dropped the key. Kate reached for it. Stivo put his boot over it and kicked at her hand.
Plain Kate rolled over and looked up at the gathered Roamers. The cage bars cast shadow bars all around her. She crouched up and heard the gasp: Behind her the lines of shadow stretched straight, uninterrupted by the shadow she should have had, across the dirty straw and the white droppings of the chickens. She could almost feel them, going right through her like cold spears. The faces that looked down on her were marked with awe and fear.
“No shadow,” whispered Daj. Even she looked afraid. Plain Kate crouched there, breathing hard.
“They were right.” Stivo’s voice was flat with wonder. “In Samilae, where they wanted to burn you. They were right. You are a witch.”
“I’m not,” she sobbed. “I’m not.”
“It’s thegadje burn their witches,” said Rye Baro. “That’s nothing to do with us.”
“But it’s us they burn!” Stivo exploded.
“I’m not a witch! Stivo, please.” Plain Kate reached through the bars and touched his boot. “Ask Drina. Ask Drina, she knows—”
“Drina!” Stivo jumped back from her hand as if she were a snake striking, scrabbling the key up from the mud as he staggered away. “Drina! I told you not to bring your trouble on my Drina. My God, what she has already seen, without falling in with—” he sputtered. “With demons!”
Horror closed Kate’s throat. She could only whisper, “I’m not.”
“We are taught,” said Rye Baro, his voice still thoughtful, kind, “that only the dead have no shadows. But Stivo has told us of his wife’s brother, who gave up pieces of his shadow to give power to the dead. We do not know which is the case here.” He cut off the rumble of voices with one raised hand.“Plain Kate Carver. What can you say about this?”
She swallowed, and sat up as straight as she could.“A witch.” Her voice cracked. The crowd held its breath like one great creature. “A witch took my shadow.”
“And what can you say about Wen?”
She tossed her head like a nervous horse.“I—It’s not me. I don’t know what’s happening.”
“And Drina?”
Kate’s throat tightened. “She…” It came out as a whisper, and even in her own ears, she could hear the guilt in it. A mutter rose from the gathered Roamers. “She was only trying to help me. I—I’m sorry.” Stivo crowed with bitter triumph, and the crowd was suddenly loud. Kate wanted to say more, but was afraid to.
Again, Rye Baro lifted a hand for silence.“We do not know enough, here.” He pulled at the tip of his long nose. “We must have talk about this. We will take counsel. We will see if Wen dies.”
Plain Kate heard Daj breathe in hard at that.“Daj, I didn’t,” she pleaded. “Wen—I didn’t. Ask Drina. Daj!Mira! Mother Daj! Ask—”
“That’s enough, child,” said Daj, and she turned away.
¶
Sun. Sun after endless weeks of drizzle and mist. It felt unreal, and it made Kate feel unreal, numbed, and queasy. The bear cage grew hot. It smelled high and sour of the chicken baskets, but beneath that it still smelled like the bear: rank; and it still had some of the bear’s fleas. Plain Kate scratched and pushed the stale straw to the cage edge.
Then through the straw heap came Taggle, ambling, slipping through the bars, a half-dead muskrat in his teeth.“Wrph,” said Taggle, around his catch. He spat the creature out and put a paw down on its back like a young prince putting one boot on a footstool. “Did you find the sausages?”
Plain Kate snatched the cat up and whipped her head around, panicked that someone might have heard him. The muskrat tried to stagger away.“It’s escaping!” the cat shouted.
“Taggle!” Kate shouted back. Then she made herself whisper, though it came out as a hiss. “Taggle, they’re going to kill me.”
“What? Who? And would you please stop that muskrat!”
Kate released him, and he bounded once and killed the creature with a single strike to the back of the neck. Then he turned back to her and tried to recover his nonchalance.“You were saying?”
“The Roamers. They found out about my shadow. They think I’m a witch. They—we can’t let them find you here.”
“Oh, nonsense. They adore me. Everyone does.”
“We’ve both got to get away from here, Taggle.”
Taggle stuck his head through the bars. The tight squeeze slicked his whiskers back.“You won’t fit,” he said, popping his head back in.
“I know that. We need the key.”
“Well,” he said. “That’s simple enough. I will go and steal it.”
Kate’s heart dropped at the thought. “If they catch you—”
“Bah.” Taggle flicked his ears. “They won’t even glimpse me. I am the king of catspaws, the lord of lurking. If the key is what you need, then I will obtain it for you. Where is it?”
“Stivo,” she stuttered. “Stivo hung it from his belt. Taggle, if they catch you, they’ll kill you.”
“They shan’t catch me,” he said lightly, and slipped out into the grasses.
He’d left her the muskrat, like a lover’s token, like a promise of return.
¶
Plain Kate dropped her head back against the bars. They were hard against her hair, and comfortless. The barred roof broke the sun into stripes of shade, but no shade touched her. It was like not being able to blink, like not being able to scream in a dream. She pushed up the sleeves of her smock to scratch at her flea bites and watch the long scab seep blood.
The ground beneath her seeped water, and her leggings were wet, the wool sticking to her and smelling. In the front of the cage, where the frightened Roamers had milled, the sun drew curls of steam from the churned mud. She watched it, looking at the scuffed footprints, the. twin pits of Rye Baro’s twin canes, which were like eyes, and the big marks of Stivo’s boots. Just in front of the door she could see where he’d stepped on the key.
The shape of the key was pressed into the mud.
Plain Kate stared at it. A shape of hope.
She had, as she always did, the whittling knife her father had given her when she was three. It was tucked into a sheath stitched into her boot. If she had wood—and her mind was already choosing, something hard, ash, oak, for hard edges, strength in the lock—if she had wood, she might carve a key.
Plain Kate fingered the objarka cat on its thong around her neck—but it was too small. She started to rummage through the straw and mud, keeping her head up, watching the council tent. Voices came hard and soft, rising and falling. Outside the tent, Wen lay ashy and still on his mat, and Daj hunched beside him, her hands on her face, singing something. No onewas watching the cage.
But there was no wood. Kate searched through every bit of straw. She dug her fingers into the mud in hope of roots but the only ones she found were fine as tangled hair.
Suddenly from the tent came a burst of shouting. Taggle streaked out of the front flap, running low and fast as a fox, the cage key in his mouth. Some of the Roamer men came crashing out after him. She saw Stivo with an axe in his hand.
Taggle was fast, faster than the men. He was bolting straight for her. He would make it, but then what—
Stivo threw an axe.
The flat butt of the axe head hit Taggle behind the ears. The cat tumbled tail over head and lay limp as a pelt. The axe head flew free of its handle. Stivo lifted Taggle by the back legs like a dead rabbit. He picked up the axe handle in the other hand. He strode over toward her with Taggle’s head swinging.
Plain Kate was sobbing. She didn’t want to cry in front of Stivo, but she couldn’t stop. He dropped Taggle’s body in the churned mud before the cage. “Is this your creature, witch-child?”
Taggle cracked open a yellow eye.“Her name,” he drawled, thickly, “is Katerina, Star of My Heart.”