He fell over backward in an utterly comical manner… or so it looked to the big swarthyehhif,who glanced down to see what had caught in his apron. But the cause was Urruah, who (still sidled) had simply reared up on his hind legs again, grabbed Arhu once more by the scruff of the neck, and thrown himself over backward, so that the two of them fell down in a heap.
Theehhif stared.Arhu struggled, his legs waving around wildly, until he realized that he wasn’t going anywhere and that (to judge by the soft but very heartfelt growling noises coming from just behind him) he would be truncating his present life by trying to. Theehhiflaughed out loud … as well he might have at the sight of a young and apparently very uncoordinated cat, lying on his back and kicking like a crab.
“Arhu!” Rhiow hissed at him. “Get out of there!”
Urruah let Arhu go, looking blackest murder at him. Arhu righted himself, shook himself all over, looked with desperate longing at the meat, and then at Urruah, and slunk back around the deli counter.
Urruah came close behind him. Rhiow thought for a moment, then came unsidled, and sat down against the wall as Urruah shouldered Arhu out into the concourse again, out of theehhif’sdirect view. He craned his neck to try to see where Arhu had gone, and couldn’t; then went back to his work, chuckling.
Urruah sat down between Arhu and the deli counter, and glanced over at Rhiow.I’m going to kill him. You know that.
I think you won’t Besides, you’d have to wait your turn, at the moment. “So,” Rhiow said to Arhu, who was on the point of turning around and trying to find another way around the counter. “What wasthatsupposed to be?”
“I’m hungry! Look at all that stuff up there! They’recaching!”
He tried to get around Urruah again. Urruah hunched up his shoulders and narrowed his eyes in a way that suggested Arhu could do this only if he was willing to leave his skin behind.
“Ehhifsave food,” Rhiow said. “It’s weird, I know, but they do it. Let it pass for the moment. You’re starting to look like one of those people who has to be taken everywhere twice: the second time, it’s always to apologize. Arhu,stopit and sit down for a moment!!”
“But Iwantit.”
“So do I, and we’ll have some shortly, but anybody with more than usedhiouh-litter between their ears would know not to dance around the way you did! Like ahouff,I swear. Anybody would think you’re a stray.” She usedauuh,the worst of the numerous words for the concept.
“lamastray,” Arhu said sullenly.
“Not anymore, you’re not. You can be a ragged-eared, scarred-up, shameless, unwashed, thieving, bullying reprobate later in life if you want, or else you can be respectably nonaligned. Just as you please. But right now you’re in-pride, and you’ll behave yourself respectably, or I’ll know why.”
“Oh, yeah?” he spat. “Why?”
Rhiow hit him upside the head, hard, with her claws just barely in, and knocked Arhu flat. The thump was audible some feet away: one or twoehhifpassing by glanced over at it.
“That’swhy,” she said, as Arhu started to get up, then crouched down to avoid another blow, and glared up at Rhiow, wincing and flat-eared. She held the paw ready, watching him with eyes narrowed. “And don’t flatter yourself to think you can make so much trouble for me that I’ll let you run away from your beatings, either. The Powers sent you to us, and by Iau we’ll keep you and feed you and teach you to know better until you’re past your Ordeal, or of age, or this-life dead: you won’t get away from us any sooner than that.” She glanced around at the others. “Isn’t that so?”
Saash blinked and looked off vaguely in another direction. Urruah yawned, exhibiting every one of his teeth, long, white, and sharp; then he looked lazily at Arhu, and said,“I like the dead part.”
Oh, thank you so much for your help,Rhiow said silently to them both, growling softly.Saash, didn’t you think to get him something toeat,all today?
I was about to, when he started his little stunt with Abad. And then you showed up, and we went straight out, and I assumed you would stop for something, butno,we had to come straight here, by the High Road, no less, and by the time we got near food he was ravenous, and why do you expect him to have behaved otherwise?
Rhiow bristled … and then took a breath and let it outWell, you know,she said, after a moment,you may have something there. So box my ears and call me a squirrel.
Saash looked at her with annoyed affection.Not today. I’m saving up all your beatings to give them to you all at once. Probably kill you.
“What’s a life or two between friends?” Rhiow muttered. “I’m sorry. Now, Arhu, listen to me because you’ve got to get this through your head. We donotgo out of our way to attract attention. A wizard’s business isnot to be noticed.And it’s notehhifattention we’re working to avoid! We’ve been doing strange things around them all through their history, and they still haven’t worked out what’s going on. There are much worse things to worry about. Though we work for the Powers That Be, not all the Powers are friendly … and if you carelessly raiseyour profile high enough to get noticed by one of them in particular, She’ll squash you flatter than road pizza, eat all your nine lives, spit them up like a hairball, and leave you nothing but a voice to howl in the dark with! She is no friend to wizards, or life, or any of the other things you took your Oath to defend. And even if you don’t take your Oath seriously yet,Shedoes … andwill,if She catches you.”
He stared at her, ears down, still wide-eyed: not the usual insolent look.Maybe it got through,she thought.I hope so.“So behave yourself,” Rhiow said, “because I’m personally going to see to it that your ears ring from moonrise to sunset until you do. —Meanwhile, we’re not going to linger here; we’ve been visible too long already. But for the Dam’s sweet sake if youhaveto come out in public and beg, at least do it with some dignity. Watch this.”
She slipped around the counter and strolled through the door over to the open space just beside the big glass counter laden with all the meat and cheese: then she sat down demurely and put her tail about her feet. There she waited.
The big man behind the counter had gone back to the business of making a pastrami and Swiss on rye. Rhiow gazed at him steadily, and when he felt the pressure of her look, she opened her mouth and trilled. It was practically a shout for a cat, but Rhiow knew matehhif beardthis sound as a small conversational half-purr, not grating or intrusive, but inquisitive and polite. When he looked over at her, Rhiow did it again, stretching her mouth a bit out of shape to approximate the human smile, far more pronounced than a cat’s.
The man looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. Then he shrugged. He glanced from side to side to see whether anyone was watching, then reached down to the pile of pastrami he had already cut, and threw a big slice in Rhiow’s direction.
She was ready for this. In an instant she was up on her hind legs and had caught it in her paws. Then she dropped it, picked it up in her teeth, and trotted around the counter and out with it: not hurried, but businesslike, with her tail up and confident.
Off to one side, Rhiow dropped it for the others to share. The sound of theehhif’slaughter was still loud behind the counter.“The outside’s got pepper on it: it’s an acquired taste,” Rhiow said to Arhu. “Better just eat the middle. — Now did you see how that went? I picked up that technique from myehhif:don’t ask me why, but they think it’s hilarious. If I go back, that man will give me more to see me do it again.”
“It’s a waste of time,” Arhu muttered around his mouthful. “You could have just sidled and took it.”
“No, I couldn’t. You can’t take anything but yourself with you when you sidle. If you steal, you do it visibly… and that’s just as it should be.”