The Big Meow

Rhiow looked at Hwaith. “I thought you said it wasn’t going to rain until October,” Urruah said.

Hwaith shrugged his tail. “Poetic license,” he said. “Anyway, it didn’t rain last night. At least, not anywhere else…”

Rhiow was beyond being all that concerned about the weather. She was bristling still, and still hearing the silent distress of Hrau’f the Silent, of one of the Powers that Be, over something long-dreaded, half-expected, now coming terribly true. In the meantime, the Silent Man had stopped typing, and was staring at the half-finished page in the typewriter. I hate it when these things don’t have an obvious ending… Rhiow heard him think.

Then Rhiow stepped down onto the Silent Man’s desk, because now – however bizarre it seemed – she understood what she needed to do. She sat down by the right side of the typewriter, and stared at him until he felt the weight of her regard and looked her in the eye.

“Cousin,” she said in the Speech, “I am on errantry, and in the Queen’s name, I greet you. Now let’s talk business.”

And the Silent Man didn’t move an inch except that his eyebrows went right up.

The Big Meow: Chapter Five

You don’t look English, the Silent Man said.

Rhiow threw a glance at Urruah. “Did I miss something?” she said.

Urruah tilted his head to one side, looking thoughtful. But before he could say anything, the Silent Man said, We’ve got a lot of Brits around here. They’re real big on the Queen.

“Ah,” Rhiow said. “I take your meaning now.” She purred, slightly amused. “You mean the queen-ehhif whose territory includes London. No, sorry, not that Queen. We have one of our own, who is of…for the moment, let’s just say a higher order.”

Those very cool eyes rested on Rhiow for a moment, and the Silent Man’s hand went off to one side, as if searching for something that wasn’t there. Then he very visibly brought the hand back to rest in front of the typewriter, and put the other hand down on top of it, as if intent on keeping the first one where it was.

“Am I meant to understand,” Rhiow said, trying not to sound too threatening about it, “that you have no problem with the idea that a cat might be able to speak?”

Oh, on the contrary, the Silent Man said, I’m thinking that this all probably has something to do with the medication. They keep telling me they’re sure they’ve got the dosage right now; but every time they say that, I get some strange new side effect. He gave Rhiow a rather cockeyed look, though again it had that cool, assessing quality to it. I’ll grant you, though, this side effect’s a lot stranger than some. And I usually don’t get them this late in my day…

“I’ve been called a lot of things in my time,” Urruah said in the Speech, “but never a side effect.”

The Silent Man looked at him. One talking cat, he said, might have been an accident. Two starts to look like a coincidence –

“And three would be enemy action?” Urruah said. I wonder, he added silently for Rhiow’s benefit, should we tell him that’s what we’re here about…?

I wouldn’t rush that, ‘Ruah. Look at him – he’s a bit on the brittle side, at the moment. And tired. Let the simplest part sink in first.

The Silent Man laughed, just a barely audible hissing sound. And a smart guy, too, he said to Urruah. Okay, you’re making the case for ‘hallucination’ a whole lot stronger now…

“I’m sorry if all this strains your sense of your grasp on reality,” Rhiow said, “but sometimes, to keep that reality in good order, such interventions become necessary.” She glanced at the page in the typewriter. “It would seem that you’ve seen something unusual: something that may have a bearing on the reason we’ve come here.”

The Silent Man leaned back in his wooden typing chair, so that it rocked back a little on its base. He looked from Rhiow to Urruah and back again, and shook his head. I seem to be seeing a lot of unusual today, he said, and rubbed his face with both hands. As he let them fall, for a moment a look of great weariness and pain showed in his eyes: but a second later it had been so completely sealed over that Rhiow wondered for a second whether she had really seen it. So let me get this straight. Cats can talk…

“Some cats can talk to humans, or ehhif as we call them,” Rhiow said. “Yes.”

“But only when our business specifically requires it,” Urruah said, “as it does now.”

Okay. But how come my cat doesn’t talk to me?

“She doesn’t know the Speech,” Urruah said. “She speaks Ailurin, like most cats do.”

The Silent Man looked unblinkingly at Urruah. There are two secret cat languages? he said. Oh, come on, now, that’s one too many. What a shame: I was starting to believe you weren’t the drugs talking…