Plain Kate

And so Kate and Taggle walked together, back toward Lov. They started early, their shadows stretched together, cat and human, down the long road behind them.“Your voice,” said Kate. “How…how long?”

“A—” Taggle stopped, head tilted. “I cannot make sense of time.”

“It’s not a matter for cats,” said Kate softly.

“No.”

“You will always be my friend,” she said.

His tail quirked and he growled fiercely,“I should think so.”

A last day. The country seemed as if a great curse had been lifted. White clouds drifted across the mirrored puddles on the road. Kate’s shadow grew stronger as the sun swung up the sky.

“Do you remember that horse of Behjet’s?” said Taggle. “The one who gave us such a jouncing?”

“Xeri,” said Kate.

“I clawed his ankle. And the camp dog, the brown one. I rode on his back for half a mile.”

“I remember.”

“And the—the—” he stuttered. “That bird, big—”

“The heron.”

“I could—”

“You could have killed him,” said Kate. “You could have taken him from above.”

“Ah,” said Taggle.

“You’re the king of the creatures,” said Kate. “You’re a panther, you’re a lord.”

They went in silence for a while. The road’s edges were embroidered with aster and wild carrot, glowing white and purple in the sun.

“Taggle?”

“Mmmmm…” he mewed.

“It’s nothing.”

“I’m here,” he said, thick-tongued. “I—”

“You will always be my friend,” she said.

Evening, the bridge to Lov. Ahead of them, Kate’s shadow was spread like a cape across a puddle. Taggle leapt the water in a silver arch, effortless, graceful. He turned back and quirked his whiskers: a cat’s beckoning.

“Taggle?”

“K-Katerina,” he stuttered. “Yessss…”My voice is still here, he meant. But it was a cat’s hiss in his answer.

“Let me carry you,” said Kate, and picked him up.

“Merow,” he said, and butted fondly at her ear.

They came round the city. Small boats bobbed in the pool outside the water gate. White storks paced among them. And there was the green barge. Kate hoisted Taggle onto her shoulder and waded out and climbed aboard.

So much had happened to her here: The tiny piece of decking seemed too small to contain it. But the redvardo was small too. And the lowest drawer of her father’s cabinet had been smaller still. Perhaps it was time to stop choosing small places.

Taggle poured himself out of her arms and hopped down into the hold.

She followed. That space too seemed smaller than it had, and more ordinary. The coiled ropes were looser, the wild herbs more stale. Lightning had lived there, but now it was gone.

The bunk was made up, and the box that had once held her shadow was resting in the middle of it. The stag on the box lid seemed almost alive in the swaying light. Beside it on the blanket was her white dress with its lace trimmings, the jar of salve that had healed her hands, the roll of hand tools, the knife she had refused to take. They were bundled together and tied with a red ribbon that had cost a kopek or two. Kate pictured Linay making up the bed and heading off to die. Had he been thinking of her? Had he wanted her to have the things that he’d given her, in the strange time when they had been almost friends?

She opened the box. It was no longer filled with the eerie, clotted darkness. It was just a box. There was a plain leather bag at the bottom. Remembering the weight, Kate drew open the purse strings. There was a scrap of paper, and—

The bag was full of thin, gleaming coins, mostly silver, but a few copper or—now that Kate looked—they were gold. It was a guild fee. A hundred times a guild fee. A thousand.

“Taggle,” she said. “Look!”

“Ca-ca-cat,” he stuttered. “K-Katerina. Cat.”

She knew it was the moment, and she turned to him. The cat looked up at her with the last trace of his broken heart, and then turned to look at the gold coins with simple gold-coin eyes. He said nothing. Forever after that, he said nothing.

“Taggle…” said Kate. Her voice broke. “T-Taggle…”

On the paper, in a hand so fierce it threatened to topple and break like a wave, Linay had written:

Kate. I hope you live.

Something flashed through her, surprising her with a sting of tears. She thought it was bewilderment, anger, fear—before she recognized it: grief.

“I did,” she told the paper softly. “We both did.” She picked up the cat, who whirred and purred and flowed up onto her shoulder. “And we’ll keep on living.”

And so they did, not always without trouble, but happily, and well, and for a long time thereafter.