At least he’d fallen only a foot or so from her. He reached out his bound hands toward hers, but she yanked them back with a gasp, then saw his face and seemed to lose her fear.
“That’s right,” Matt told her, “I’m your fellow captive. Hold still, now, and I’ll untie you. Then you can do the same for me.”
Slowly, the girl lowered her hands and held them out. She had to be very brave or very naive, Matt decided, since she didn’t seem to be wary of him at all. He’d have to warn her about strange men, especially since there were very many a lot stranger than himself.
He picked at the knot, pulled a rope-end loose, then untied the whole intricate mess in a minute. “The first one is always the hardest,” he told the girl. “My turn, now.”
He held up his hands, lying on his back. She picked at the knot with slender fingers that scarcely seemed up to the task but were apparently much stronger than they looked, for she slid the rope free more quickly than Matt had.
“Thanks,” he said. “I think I can manage the feet myself.” He sat up and started on the knot at his ankles. By the time he finished, he found her standing before him. “Quick work,” he said approvingly, and climbed to his feet. “My name is Matthew Mantrell.”
“I am … Helga,” she said in amazingly good Merovencian. Matt stared. Then he said, “Little far from home, aren’t you?”
“I come from the north,” she said noncommittally.
Matt frowned; she didn’t look Allustrian-but that was her own affair. He shrugged. “Well, the first order of business is to get you home. Where do you live?”
“The north,” Helga repeated, spreading her hands. “I cannot tell you more.”
“Well, the road back to Allustria leads through lands I have to visit anyway,” Matt mused. ”I’m afraid it’s going to be a long trip. How did you get here, young woman?”
“By sea,” she said.
Not very helpful, was she? “Father a merchant?” Matt asked. “What happened to him?”
“Pirates,” she answered.
Matt felt a stab of sympathy for the girl and wondered if she’d been part of the spoils his Mediterranean pirates had taken from the merchant who had become his fellow galley-slave. After all, if the smuggler had bought him from the slave market, why not her?
But he wasn’t about to ask—he didn’t want to arouse bad memories. “Well, let’s find our way to one of the city gates,” he said. “Maybe we can join a caravan going west.”
Helga nodded without saying anything, and Matt turned away with a sigh. She wasn’t going to be much company, was she? But that didn’t lessen the responsibility he’d taken on, of returning her to her home. For a moment he had a vision of what his own little girl might look like at fifteen or sixteen—very much like Alisande, probably, but with Jimena’s bone structure. If she were lost in a foreign land, wouldn’t he want some other young father to take her home? Definitely he had to lead Helga home, even if her father didn’t manage to escape.
He turned back to see if she was following—but she wasn’t. The slovenly street was still and empty. The girl had vanished.
CHAPTER 9
Matt looked around frantically, but the narrow street was completely empty. Apparently Helga had been afraid of him after all. But she couldn’t have gone far—he’d only turned his back for a few minutes. “Helga!” he called, then winced at the loudness of his own voice in the alleyway. He lowered his tone, hissing, “Helga! Where are you? I won’t hurt you, but nightwalkers might!”
His answer was a plaintive mew from his feet.
Matt looked down and saw a small white cat looking up at him pathetically.
“Later, kitty,” he said. “I have a girl to find.” He set off toward the narrow space between two hovels, thinking he might find a hiding place behind. The cat followed him, mews changing from plaintive to demanding—and growing louder and louder. As they neared the hovel, Matt realized the windows were only square holes and the door nothing but a piece of rough cloth. At that pitch and volume, Small-and-Furry would wake the neighbors! He turned around to the cat and knelt, exasperated. “Look, I have to try to find someone, and you’re not helping! You’ll wake half the neighborhood, and they’ll chase me away, and I’ll never find her, and I have to keep her safe!”
The little cat sat down and gave a determined but softer meow.
Something about the tone seemed familiar. Matt looked more closely and recognized the outsized ears, the small and slender form. “Balkis!” he hissed.
The cat looked at him as though he were crazy.
“No, you can’t be,” Matt sighed. “Wrong color. Well, I’ll tell you what—you go your way and I’ll go mine, and if you find a young girl wearing a white robe, you meow loudly, okay?”
For answer, the cat leaped onto his thigh and scooted up to his shoulders.
“Ouch!” Matt said aloud, then cut back to an agonized whisper. “Velvet paws! Velvet paws!” He went still, remembering the last time he had said that—and reminded by his own words that Helga had been wearing a white robe.
Purring in his left ear. He turned his head and found he was looking directly into the cat’s eyes. “You are Balkis, aren’t you? But you’re also Helga. How else did your coat change color?”
The cat gave an indignant meow.
“No use denying it,” Matt told her. “I’ve found you out.” Softly, he sang,
The cat meowed in outrage.
The cat leaped down from his shoulder, then squalled protest as her form fluxed, stretched, then steadied into Helga’s. She spat a verse in Allustrian, though, and instantly flowed back into the form of a small white cat.
“Gotcha!” Matt whispered triumphantly. “So that’s why you’re white—you’re wearing a white robe now! What were you wearing before, a brown dress?”
Balkis turned about and, with great aplomb, sat with her back to him.
“So now I’m being punished, am I? To think that all this time I’ve been traveling with a teenager! Wise of you to disguise yourself as a cat, though,” Matt said thoughtfully, “especially on a ship full of pirates. You wouldn’t want to have appeared as a pretty, voluptuous girl there.”
The cat peered over her shoulder at him with a feline frown.
“Oh yes, I know you’re pretty.” Matt remembered that cats were very susceptible to flattery. “A uniquely attractive cat, in fact. The touch of the exotic is fascinating, and the huge eyes and shiny coat would make any mouser yowl with envy.”
Languidly, Balkis stood up and stretched, arching her back, then sat down again, just happening to be in profile.
Matt saw he was making progress, but he wasn’t getting her back into human form. Transformation spells wouldn’t work—she’d proved that was one bit of magic she had down pat, probably didn’t even need to think about.
He decided on shock tactics. “Is that why you stay in cat disguise? Because you don’t think your human form is pretty?”