She opened the box. It was no longer filled with the eerie, clotted darkness. It was just a box. There was a plain leather bag at the bottom. Remembering the weight, Kate drew open the purse strings. There was a scrap of paper, and—
The bag was full of thin, gleaming coins, mostly silver, but a few copper or—now that Kate looked—they were gold. It was a guild fee. A hundred times a guild fee. A thousand.
“Taggle,” she said. “Look!”
“Ca-ca-cat,” he stuttered. “K-Katerina. Cat.”
She knew it was the moment, and she turned to him. The cat looked up at her with the last trace of his broken heart, and then turned to look at the gold coins with simple gold-coin eyes. He said nothing. Forever after that, he said nothing.
“Taggle…” said Kate. Her voice broke. “T-Taggle…”
On the paper, in a hand so fierce it threatened to topple and break like a wave, Linay had written:
Kate. I hope you live.
Something flashed through her, surprising her with a sting of tears. She thought it was bewilderment, anger, fear—before she recognized it: grief.
“I did,” she told the paper softly. “We both did.” She picked up the cat, who whirred and purred and flowed up onto her shoulder. “And we’ll keep on living.”
And so they did, not always without trouble, but happily, and well, and for a long time thereafter.