Shadow of the Father (36 page)

Disturbed though he may be, he tied knots well. Yilon managed to get a little play, moving his wrists an inch or so apart. After that, the ropes held fast.

His ankles were a bit looser, but not much. As he struggled, he rolled onto his back, and his head turned toward the other side of the room. His eyes focused despite himself, and his struggles stopped.

Against the wall under the window, he could see the long, red tail of a fox, its white tip smeared with brown dirt and blood. The fox it had been attached to lay sprawled on the opposite side of the room, next to an overturned chair. The white wall and stone floor around him were smeared with his blood, and one of his arms was bent at an unnatural angle. He wore a guard’s uniform that had been… Yilon couldn’t help thinking the word… shredded. “Min,” he hissed.

Min didn’t move. Yilon tried again, more loudly. “Min!”

“Hm,” came a high voice behind him. “I’m not sure he can hear you. Maybe there’s, hee hee, something wrong with his ear.”

Yilon looked up in time to see Shreds saunter across the room. He bent over the fox and pulled up the head by one of the ears. Min, if it was him, still did not move or react. With a quick motion, he slashed the knife across its base and turned around, swinging the severed ear in one paw, the knife in the other. “Here,” he said, kneeling down next to Yilon and holding the thing up to his muzzle. “Why don’t you take a look?”

The triangular piece of flesh hung inches from Yilon’s nose, reeking of blood and death, but under it, he could smell Min, and that clenched a fist around Yilon’s stomach. He gulped and then convulsed, turning onto his side and spewing the contents of his stomach onto the floor.

“Oh, hee hee,” Shreds said. “There’s something wrong with your stomach. Let’s, hee hee, let’s have a look, shall we?”

He dropped the ear and pushed Yilon onto his back. With an easy gesture, he slipped the knife up the front of Yilon’s tunic. The cloth parted with a rip, falling away from his stomach. He cast about for something, anything to say to stall the lunatic. “What happened to him?”

A peevish look flashed across the fox’s muzzle. His mutilated ear flattened. “He kicked me,” he said. “We were having a nice conversation, hee hee, he wouldn’t even miss his tail, and then he kicked me.” He rubbed his side with the paw that wasn’t holding the knife, and then looked down. “Oh, see, this is the problem, hee hee, did my brother make these holes? They’re too small, and they’re all patched up.”

“Your… brother?”

“I had a brother,” Shreds said, picking at the stitches with the point of his knife. “I
had
a brother.”

“Kites?” Yilon tried to edge away from the knife, but Shreds pressed it harder against him.

“You killed him, that’s what he told me, said not to tell Gran, but she doesn’t even know about Father, why would I tell her? You killed him.”

“He was going to kill me!” Yilon said. “He was stabbing me in the stomach!” He knew there was no reasoning with Shreds, but the longer and louder he talked, the better the chance that someone might hear him, that Dinah might come looking for him. From the position of the sun, he couldn’t have been unconscious for long. “Wasn’t going to kill you, no, no.” Shreds had pulled the stitches out of one wound. He ran the knife across the bare, shaved skin, and then slid the point into the wound again. “Just wanted to know how you got here.” He stared into Yilon’s eyes, and giggled. “
I’m
going to kill you.”

He made as if to plunge the knife down. Yilon jerked back and winced as the point tore the edge of the wound. “Hee hee,” Shreds said.

“Don’t worry. I won’t kill you right away. We have time to play a little.”

“I didn’t kill him!” Yilon said. “And he would have killed me!”

“He just wanted to play!” Shreds wasn’t giggling now, and too late, Yilon realized that he might have made a mistake in talking more about Kites. “He just wanted to play!”

“I don’t know how he died!” Yilon yelled.

“This is how we play,” Shreds said. He grabbed Yilon’s tail, and started chanting, “Line up the mice, five to a row, take off their tails and swing them below.” With a jerk, he pulled the tail out from under Yilon and raised his knife.

“I’m not a mouse!”

“Line up the mice, four to a row, take off their feet and see how they go,” Shreds sang. He pulled Yilon’s tail straight out. Pain flared at the base. Yilon pulled against the grip, but Shreds held him in place. He lowered his knife and ran it along Yilon’s tail, parting the fur. When he found a space between the bones, he pressed the knife down.

At the sharp pain, Yilon swung both his legs up and kicked Shreds as hard as he could. He caught the fox in the shoulder and sent him hard against the wall. Using the momentum, he got to his knees and threw himself against the stunned Shreds, with no real idea of what he was going to do other than keep attacking, keep him off balance. The knife grazed his hip and then fell clattering to the stone floor. For a wild moment, Yilon thought he would be able to knock the other unconscious. He slammed against him again, is bound paws scrabbling at the floor for the knife.

Then teeth sank into his shoulder. Classic mistake; he could hear his instructor saying, “Never bite in a fight, because that gives your enemy leverage on your head.” He tried to swing his shoulder around, to bang Shred’s head into the wall, but his body twisted awkwardly and he only managed a light tap against the stone. Shreds did open his jaw, but only because his paws had gotten hold of Yilon’s torso. He threw Yilon to one side, sending the young fox roughly onto his stomach. Yilon’s jaw smacked the hard stone; spots danced before his eyes as he struggled to get to his knees again. A moment later, Shreds was on his back, forcing him to the ground.

“Hee, hee,” he panted in Yilon’s ear. “I like, hee hee, a bit of a, of a fight. It makes the trophies, hee hee,
so
much more meaningful.”

“Let me go,” Yilon said as calmly as he could. “I’ll reward you. Money, land…”

Shreds was moving around to straddle his hips. His paw yanked Yilon’s tail up. As he settled himself, Yilon felt the uncomfortable hardness of the other’s arousal. “Don’t,” he said, squirming as hard as he could. Shreds pressed down harder, holding his tail up.

“Only two rewards I want,” he said. “One is this.” His paw yanked Yilon’s tail painfully.

Yilon gritted his teeth, waiting for Shreds to tell him the other. Finally, he realized that Shreds was waiting for him to ask. He resisted, until his tail was yanked again, the pain more intense, and he feared Shreds would just take it off. “What’s the other?” He prayed it had nothing to do with the hard sheath rubbing into his thigh.

Shreds leaned over. His hot breath came in Yilon’s left ear. “I want my brother back,” he said. Before Yilon could respond, Shreds sank his teeth into the ear. He pulled, and then a cough sounded, out in the hallway.

Both foxes froze. Shreds started to move first, until something struck his head. Yilon felt the impact through the teeth in his ear before they released, and the weight atop him toppled slowly to one side.

“Dear Canis,” someone breathed behind him in a tone that was almost a prayer.

“I told you,” a sharp female voice said.

“Dinah!” Yilon called. He heard a scuffle. “Let me go,” she growled, nearby. “You can’t just…” He coughed, again, and Yilon recognized Maxon.

“I already did the other one,” she said. “It’ll be a better world without them both.”

“
You
did?”

“Excuse me,” he called, “but could someone untie me?”

“Stay away from him,” Maxon said sternly. Paws worked at the knots around Yilon’s wrists, and then his ankles. He turned himself over, stretching his arms and wincing at the bite in his shoulder. Maxon had taken the ropes he’d pulled from Yilon and was binding the unconscious Shreds the same way. Dinah stood by the door, pointedly facing away from Min, but when Yilon sat up, she walked around Maxon to his side.

“Are you okay?”

“My tail hurts,” he said, “but it’s still attached. And he bit my shoulder. And my ear.”

“You’re bleeding here, again.” She pointed to his stomach.

He looked down. “He ripped out the stitches.”

Dinah shook her head. “Colian has never been as busy as he was this night.”

“What are you doing in this house?” Maxon demanded.

Yilon lifted his chin. “I came in to find… to find Min. He called for help.”

Maxon shook his muzzle. His ears sagged, the sunlight highlighting the grey fur on them and on the top of his muzzle. “You came in here to rescue a guard?”

“
My
guard,” Yilon said. “He was here… because of me.” The weight of that truth bowed his head. If he hadn’t involved Min in this… if he’d kept Min with him, or given him orders to remain behind…

Though Dinah and Maxon were facing the back of the room, where Min lay, neither of them looked in that direction. Maxon straightened and held out a paw to Yilon. “Let’s get out of this room,” he said. “There are some things I need to say to you.”

Yilon didn’t reach out his paw. Maxon met his eyes. “My lord,” he added. His eyes were steady and calm, a hard brown, but his head as bowed in respect. Yilon lifted his arm and grasped the steward’s paw.

“Shall we return to the house?” Maxon asked.

Yilon shook his head. “I think I would rather sit down for a bit before walking back, if you don’t mind,” He bunched up part of his tunic and pressed it to the wound in his abdomen. “I’m not bleeding that much, but I don’t feel too steady.”

Maxon led them to a sitting room that, thankfully, smelled only of age and decay. Yilon brushed spiders from a padded chair and sat gingerly, while Maxon and Dinah pulled their chairs up to a small table. “What about the old vixen?” Yilon asked, pulling the halves of his tunic around him.

“She’s closed in her room,” Maxon said. “Silver must have done that. Before we leave, I’ll find you a new tunic. I think you’re silver’s size.”

Yilon shuddered. “I’ll go naked before I wear something of his. He’s insane.”

“He wasn’t always,” Maxon said. “Losing his brother… Dewry should never have told him about that.”

“You didn’t know them,” Dinah said. “They were always like that.” She got up from the chair and walked to the door, then the window.

Maxon cleared his throat. “He is worse now than he was two days ago. Fair?”

“Did you see the tails in the hallway?” Yilon couldn’t stop himself from saying.

“Yes, but…” Maxon stopped himself, nodded his head gravely. “It is a fair point. But this is not the time for local justice. When we leave here, I will call a guard, and he will be taken to prison.”

“Should we even be here now?” Yilon looked around. “What if someone else comes back?”

“The only other person who would come here is Dewry, and he will be gone at least another hour. Long enough for me to say what I need to say. I would prefer not to put this off.” He coughed.

“Who’s Dewry?” Yilon rubbed his shoulder. The bites didn’t feel deep.

Maxon took a breath and let it out without coughing. “He is Sheffin’s—the late Lord Dewanne’s—son.”

 
Yilon stared at Maxon. “That’s impossible.”

Maxon shook his head. “Lord Dewanne was fifty-eight years old when he died. Dewry turns forty next month.”

Dinah, who had stopped her pacing around the room at Maxon’s announcement, now began again. “That’s why I didn’t know him.”

“He has spent the last twenty years or so in Divalia,” Maxon said. “But let me go back to the beginning. I believe we have time, and it is important…” He coughed. “I want you to hear the story.”

“Go on,” Yilon said, and Dinah sat down again as well.

Maxon took a breath. “I was twelve when Lord Dewanne selected me to be his personal servant. My father was a miner; he died in a collapse of the mines. The mice who were supposed to have built the constructs…” He shook his head. “I joined the guard, to support my family. Lord Dewanne—he was not the lord then, just the heir, so he was in charge of the guard—he saw that I was not old enough to be a useful guardsman, but rather than dismiss me, he took me into his service. I was close to his age, only four years younger.”

“He was my age then,” Yilon murmured.

Maxon inclined his head. “As captain of the guard, Sheffin spent a good deal of time out in the city. His father wanted him to get to know the people of Dewanne he would one day govern. That is how he met Kayley.”

When neither Yilon nor Dinah reacted to the name, Maxon pointed toward the adjacent room. “Kayley is the old vixen in the next room. Dewry’s mother.”

“Oh,” Yilon said. Maxon nodded. “She was different then, of course. Younger, vibrant, energetic. Sheffin visited her many times, telling only me where he was going so that I could make excuses for him if needed. And then one day, he came back and told me she was going to have a cub. ‘If it’s male,’ he said, ‘he’ll be my heir.’

“His father would have nothing of it, of course. Kayley was beautiful, but she was common, and a match had already been arranged with Delia. That’s Lady Dewanne. She’s of a noble family, and their cubs would have been…” He shrugged.

“Was she unable to have cubs?” Dinah leaned forward.

Maxon did not answer immediately. “Lady Dewanne’s private affairs are not mine to discuss,” he said finally. “Kayley, now, she was determined to have her cub. She believed that he would one day rule Dewanne. Sheffin’s father wanted her to not have the cub. Sheffin tried to convince her to take the cub elsewhere once he was born…”

“But she had to have been in season,” Dinah cried. “How did he not know she was in season?”

Maxon’s ears lowered. “He did not know. She entered early, I believe, or perhaps he was in love with her and thought that if he made out to have been tricked, his father would relent. In any case, his father was unsympathetic, and Kayley’s cub therefore fatherless.”

“But not as far as she thought,” Yilon said.

Maxon inclined his head. “Indeed. As Dewry grew up, she told him he would be lord one day. I got to know him well, for whenever Lord Dewanne wished to send her money or food, I was the one tasked to take it. He would not trust anyone else. And when Dewry turned ten, Lord Dewanne sent him to Divalia to be tutored with the other noble children.”