Plain Kate

She had, as she always did, the whittling knife her father had given her when she was three. It was tucked into a sheath stitched into her boot. If she had wood—and her mind was already choosing, something hard, ash, oak, for hard edges, strength in the lock—if she had wood, she might carve a key.

Plain Kate fingered the objarka cat on its thong around her neck—but it was too small. She started to rummage through the straw and mud, keeping her head up, watching the council tent. Voices came hard and soft, rising and falling. Outside the tent, Wen lay ashy and still on his mat, and Daj hunched beside him, her hands on her face, singing something. No one was watching the cage.

But there was no wood. Kate searched through every bit of straw. She dug her fingers into the mud in hope of roots but the only ones she found were fine as tangled hair.

Suddenly from the tent came a burst of shouting. Taggle streaked out of the front flap, running low and fast as a fox, the cage key in his mouth. Some of the Roamer men came crashing out after him. She saw Stivo with an axe in his hand.

Taggle was fast, faster than the men. He was bolting straight for her. He would make it, but then what—

Stivo threw an axe.

The flat butt of the axe head hit Taggle behind the ears. The cat tumbled tail over head and lay limp as a pelt. The axe head flew free of its handle. Stivo lifted Taggle by the back legs like a dead rabbit. He picked up the axe handle in the other hand. He strode over toward her with Taggle’s head swinging.

Plain Kate was sobbing. She didn’t want to cry in front of Stivo, but she couldn’t stop. He dropped Taggle’s body in the churned mud before the cage. “Is this your creature, witch-child?”

Taggle cracked open a yellow eye. “Her name,” he drawled, thickly, “is Katerina, Star of My Heart.”

Stivo leapt backward, dropping the axe handle and warding his face with crooked fingers.

“Taggle!” sobbed Kate. She reached through the bars for him. Stivo was still backing away. “Taggle!”

She fumbled and turned the cat’s warm body. He was squirming a little. “Hold still,” she whispered, and took him under the arms and cradled his head and eased him through the bars. She kept one hand on his heaving ribs as she pulled down the driest straw and built a bed for him. Stivo was gone. “Oh, Taggle,” she said. “Taggle, I’m sorry.”

He tried to look at her. His eyes crossed and he didn’t move his head. “I dropped the key.”

“Don’t worry. Little catspaw, little lord of lurking…” She stroked his side and watched him get limper and longer as he drifted off to sleep.

Suddenly he opened his eyes again. “Did you save any muskrat?”

“All of it.” She set it beside him.

“Mmmmm.” He blinked slowly and softened again. “When I rise from my nap…” And then he was really asleep. She watched him breathe. She watched the council tent, where voices were louder now and she heard Stivo sounding shrill with anger or fear. No one was coming—not yet.

Plain Kate looked at Taggle sprawled out hurt and limp. Then she leaned her shoulder and arms between the bars and reached for the axe handle. Her fingers brushed it and she inched it across the mud until she could pick it up.

The axe handle was split, it turned out, and the split was tied closed with a scrap of fraying gingham. It was sloppy work and it made her angry. She could easily have fixed it for Stivo, if only he had asked. Then he might not have hated her. She wedged the handle under her foot and pulled up the split wood until it snapped. She closed her fist around the scrap of wood and took her knife from her boot.

¶

Plain Kate carved and no one came to kill her. The men stayed in the tent. The women stayed away. Swallows swooped through the afternoon sky. Daj sang her drone over Wen, who did not even twitch. Taggle slept on, cuddling his muskrat like a child with a doll. All the while the hard wood curled away from her small blade, and no one saw.

She was so hot and flea-bitten that she was almost glad when evening came, though she could feel her time running out, the way the bread had in the skara rok. The key was now almost the same shape as the impression in the mud, but it would not go into the lock. She made it thinner, sliver by sliver.

With the day went the heat. Mist rose from the stream, from the river, from the wet ground itself. Kate huddled in the damp, dank straw. A fire was lit in the council tent, and the canvas glowed. Marsh light bobbed near the river, like a boat lantern. Another light came up to her through the fog and the shape of a man came behind it. It was Behjet with a tallow lamp. He was holding a blanket. He passed it through the bars. It reeked of horse. She wrapped it around herself.

“Is your cat all right?”

Kate tucked a corner of the blanket over Taggle, covering him from sight.

“He’s a fine little beast,” said Behjet. “But it is strange thing, don’t you see, a cat who steals keys. It makes a man think.”

Kate said nothing.

“My brother says he spoke.”

Still Kate said nothing.