Wynter was standing in the kitchen of her old cottage. The sun slanted through the partially closed shutters and illuminated a vase of white poppies on the scrubbed table. She was so afraid. Her heart was hammering in her chest and there were black edges to her vision.
Outside they were murdering her cats. She could hear them yowling and calling out to each other in their pain and fear. She didn’t want to see, but she couldn’t help but look and she flung out a hand and knocked the shutter back.
They had slung washing lines across the yard, up high, passing from the gables of the workshop across to the roof of the stable. The cats hung by their necks, silhouetted black against the white hot sky, the washing lines bobbing and swaying under their weight. They were dying slowly, dozens of them, their legs and tails trashing and scrabbling at the air, their mouths open, pink tongues and needle teeth flashing in their swollen faces.
Their awful cat-wails, their high, baby-strangle yowls, filled the sun laden air, and Wynter felt she was going to get sick. But she was too frightened to run outside to help them. She knew that all she had to do was cut the lines and they might survive, but she was too frightened, and she just stood there as the terrible, unearthly noise clawed at her stomach and her heart.
"You can never be friend to a King, sis."
She leapt at the voice and turned to find Alberon sitting at the table, his crossed arms resting on the wood.
He had grown into a beautiful young man, the very image of his father, as alike the king as Razi was different. The sun made fire of his red-blonde curls, and copper-wires of his eyelashes. His big-featured face, his broad mouth, his sleepy blue eyes were all as she recalled them. He was looking at her with a sad kind of affection and for some reason the sight of him made her want to weep, there was no joy in it at all, just a bitter, bitter sorrow.
He turned away from her and looked out the window, his face creasing in distaste at the sight of the cats. He got to his feet, stooping slightly to keep sight of the yard. He already had Razi’s height, but there was a broad shouldered, bullish physicality to him that was all Jonathon, more power than grace.
"The things we do," he said in sad wonder. "The things we find we must do." He gestured to the yard, and looked at Wynter with his vivid eyes. "Here comes the last of them now," he said.
The horrible screeching started up again, and Wynter knew they were bringing more cats down from the castle, great wicker baskets full of them, all tumbled together, clawing and screaming and terrified.
She ran to the corner, her hand over her mouth, because she knew she was going to be sick.
***
She woke in the chair, and the screaming continued. She was alone. Razi and Christopher had left as soon as Razi was dressed, and she had sat herself down, vowing to listen for their return. She must have dozed off and now the candles were burnt out. Two hours maybe? That seemed right, two hours asleep, and now the air was full of screaming. Hollow and thready, but real nonetheless and here. She leapt to the window, and even before she looked down into the orange garden she knew what she would see
Heather Quinn was racing through the moonlit trees, her mouth wide, her loose hair flying. The moonlight shone through her and almost made her solid as she flitted through the trunks, and passed through the stone benches. She ran on transparent feet, her hands up the windows that overlooked the courtyard, begging for someone to listen.
Wynter had never seen Heather Quinn, but everyone knew what to listen for in the night, should Heather come a calling. She had been a King’s Mistress, Jonathan’s grandfather’s mistress to be exact, and had flung herself from the Sandhurst tower. She was the castle’s harbinger, a foreteller of death, and people took it very seriously when she made her crazy, screaming circuit of the complex in the dead of night.
Down by the stables the hunting dogs began to howl in their kennels, their rising, ethereal wail a musical overtone to Heather’s screams.
Wynter leant far out her window, expecting shutters to open and lights to blaze, expecting people to begin shouting and calling, and checking each others’ rooms. But all that happened around the courtyard were some discrete movements at windows, and some quietly closed shutters.
Heather’s desperation grew as no-one paid her any heed, and she ran a frenzied circle around the orange garden, her face turned up to the blank windows, pleading for attention. She spotted Wynter, leaning out into the moonlight, and her mouth stretched wider, a horrible gaping chasm in her distorted face. She turned an unnaturally sharp angle and raced through four orange trees in her desperation to get to Wynter. Her eyes widened to apple-sized voids and her hands seemed to stretch up, the fingers growing as she sped like lightening across the grass.
"Don’t let her talk to you, child! They’ll hang you from a tree."
Wynter leapt back from the window, partly from fear of Heather Quinn, but mostly at the shock of a cat-voice so close to her ear. Heather Quinn broke away as soon as Wynter was out of sight, cutting left in that unnatural way, and flying past under the window. She shot out of the orange garden and passed under the fountain arch, her screams fading into the distance, headed for the river.
There was a small, orange cat nestled on the windowsill, hidden in the shadows behind the shutter. It regarded Wynter with phosphorescent eyes and she backed away from it, unsure of its intent. It blinked at her. It seemed to be waiting. Wynter looked about her, took a breath and curtsied as in the old days.
"All respects to you, mouse-bane," she said very softly, " well met, this night."
The cat sighed, uncrossed its paws and rose to its feet. It dropped from the windowsill, like an unfurling silk scarf, and landed with a barely audible patta-pat on the wooden table beneath. "Close the shutters, fool. You will be watched."
It had been so long since Wynter had heard cat-voice. That curious, whining growl, all long drawn out and with too many rrrrrr’s. Wynter couldn’t help but smile at its familiar, impatient tone.
The cat watched her with all the inherent scorn of its species, and switched the tip of its tail, pit-pat, pit-pat, as Wynter quietly snapped the shutters closed.
It tutted, and sighed and yawned as Wynter found and lit another candle, and tapped its claws on the table, as she finally turned and gave it her full attention.
"So you’re ready then, are you?" it said in disdain. "Quite sure, miss? Want to go bathe perhaps? Or take a stroll?"
"I’m sorry, good-hunter. I cannot see so well in the dark as you."
The cat pffted and turned its head as if to say, Oh please, don’t bother. Flattery will get you no-where with me.
Wynter spread another curtsey and, knowing every cat’s love for title, introduced herself formally, "Protector Lady Wynter Moorehawke, at your service, good-hunter."
The cat rose to its feet, suddenly furious and Wynter blinked at its hissing anger.
"I know who you are girl-once-cat-servant, why else would I be here? Dost thou think, after all that’s befallen, we’d deem to speak with any but you?" It flowed around itself in a prowling figure of eight, grizzling under its breath until it managed to regain some self control. Then it sat back down and sneered its green-eyed glare at Wynter once more. "GreyMother sent me to warn you."
"GreyMother? GreyMother lives?" Wynter laughed out loud in shock and joy, but the cat just stared at her, it's lip curled, until Wynter took her seat and gripped the chair arms to maintain her composure.
"GreyMother lives, though old, old, very old now. And Coriolanus too, though much weakened and always poorly from the poison."
"I’m so sorry," whispered Wynter, tears once again springing to her eyes at the thought of her precious friends.
The cat looked at her as if she’d let loose a fart, its nose wrinkling in disgust. "What care I for your sorrow, human? I am here for revenge on he-who-betrayed-our-trust. That is all, and to use you as an instrument of his downfall. That too, is all. Don’t speak to me of your sorrows. I despise them. We all despise them, as the nothings they are."
Wynter felt the tears roll down her face at the cat’s awful hatred. "But I did nothing…" she whispered.
The cat stood again and prowled again, releasing a low irritated yowl. "Arrwwww. Hush up, hush up, creature. I do not care. Listen to my message and act upon it! That is all you need to do."
"I will not bring about the downfall of the King!" said Wynter, her voice suddenly steely. " I will not aid you in your destruction of the crown."
The cat turned sly eyes to her and smiled its needle-toothed smile. "The ghosts are surging," it said. "They are this very minute about to rise." It slunk across the table and brought its smiling face up close to Wynter’s, tilting its head as if it meant to rub its cheek against hers. "They will thwart your friend, he who is son-but-not-heir to the King."
"Razi?" exclaimed Wynter, half rising from her chair.
"Aye," breathed the cat, "Razi."
"Bring me to him!" said Wynter and the cat’s smile widened.
End of excerpt.
