Off Leash Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Rudy sputtered, "What? Oh, yeah, the TAU. Oric will probably show up in a day or so and whisk you off to their never-never land. Lucky." Rudy glared down at me from his perch near the ceiling.
"TAU?" I paced below him, eyes crossing, trying to look at my muzzle, the spell wire looked to thread in and out of it.
Rudy responded with the tone of voice of a phone employee reading the company boilerplate. "Talking Animal Union. We represent all animals with the gift of speech or capable of speech within the domain of the council of Merlins. An animal being defined as a being possessing corporeal form but lacking hands and viewed as nonhuman by those on the other side of the Veil. The TAU endeavors to insure familiars are well treated and allows no bonding to take place without its blessing.
"Yeah, the Talking Animal Union. Anybody who's got no thumbs but can think is invited to join. These days you'd better be familiar material, though, not that you'll have any trouble with that, with the whole apex predatory thing."
I blinked. If I was going to study the spell more, I'd have to find a mirror. I'd try to figure out how the thing worked later. At the moment it was thrilling to have regained the power of conversation, even if the only conversant available had a sour note to his high-pitched voice. I eyed the sofas, trying to determine which would be the most comfortable to chat Rudy's small ear off from. "You don't sound happy with them."
"Well, yeah, the entire union's run by grumpy ex-familiars who'd eat me for lunch if I ain't careful." He chuckled. "A few have tried anyway, but they've all run afoul of Rudy's Rocket." He shook his minuscule fist at an unseen ex-familiar.
"Really?" I said.
"Oh, don't you worry--you'll get it too if you try to eat me! I've added bigger cats than you to the ol' gallery."
I estimated that Rudy would be about one bite--two if I decided to eat the tail too. "I'm not planning on eating anyone that talks."
"That's what all you preds say."
I decided to change the subject. "So what makes a, uh, person a good familiar?" I jumped up on a sofa. It creaked in a threatening manner.
"Those, for one." Rudy pointed to my eyeballs. "Binocs make magic easier for some reason."
"Magic is visual?"
"For humans, yeah. It's what they got. They're blind to magic, at least in the raw. Cats are supereasy. You guys see magic everywhere. I hear it. Dogs smell it. Burrowers feel it."
"So only animals that see magic can be used as familiars?"
Rudy smacked his face with a paw. "No, that's what the circle is for." He pointed at the broken glass. "The circles make magic inside them cast a shadow. But in order to see it right the Magi's gotta look at it from two different angles, and they all want depth perception they say rodents don't have, which is utter bitter almonds." Rudy pointed his nose at me and gritted his teeth in concentration as both his eyes turned towards me. "Can you see both of my eyes?"
I could and nodded.
"See, it can be done! Cats ain't special! You're just easy. Nobody wants a rodent as a familiar, but it fixes the whole familiar shortage problem in two secs." Rudy slumped as he talked, clearly not enjoying this path of inquiry. "It's not complicated--well, magic is, but familiaring ain't."
"So magi need a familiar to do any magic?"
"Weren't you listening to Sabrina? Even without all her stuff she could hit you with a lightning bolt as long as she ain't grounded."
I quirked my nonexistent eyebrow at the squirrel.
"That's why she floats everywhere--otherwise she'd just shock herself. It's real showy with all the sparks and stuff, but she can't arc lightning bolts into anybody more than five feet away without Cornealius. That's force dancing; it's real powerful, dangerous stuff. But you saw how it strained Cornealius."
I settled on the couch, curling up on one end. "Yeah. That's not normal?"
"It just meant he was way more involved in it than he wanted to be."
"But the force came from a ring around her finger, not him," I said, trying to ignore a sudden itch that settled onto the top of my right paw, the one still blackened with soot.
"Oh, she used a ring? Maybe he was just nervous that she'd trip up and take out a wall." The squirrel chuckled. "If magi used YouTube, there'd be a channel just for force dancing fails."
"The TAU teach you all this stuff?" I kept my eyes on the rodent and off the paw with the soot, itch and the discomforting feeling of uncleanliness.
The squirrel chittered angrily. "The TAU taught me nothing. Didn't ya hear me? I'm a rodent."
"But you said."
His beady little eyes narrowed. "Stop asking questions! This is the way it works! You're a cat--you have absolutely nothing to worry that tiny empty space between your ears." His tail beat back and forth in such a way that I was sure projectiles would follow. "Simply by existing, Oric will train you and wizards will duel for the right to even bid on you. Then Sabrina gets paid, and if I'm lucky I'll get paid too."
I blinked at the usually chipper squirrel's sudden switch to bitter almonds.
Rudy shook himself before starting to groom his tail. "And let me tell you it really sucks to be stuck on 3G when this town finally got an LTE network two months ago. I'm living in the stone age." His voice scaled back to its usual carefree tenor.
I watched the squirrel warily; every question I asked generated at least a half dozen more. Yet one thing had become crystal clear; I wanted no part of this world. Losing my thumbs, my house and my girlfriend in exchange for the chance to be sold off to some pimple-faced apprentice did not sound like a fair deal to me.
I made to tell Rudy as much, but a thunderous bang knocked my reply right out of my mouth. Raw instinct surged as I vaulted over the back of the couch and pressed my body to the floor. Then the thud came again. Gunshot? The sound came from the front of the house. On the third boom I finally IDed the sound. Somebody was knocking with enough force that it was amazing that the door had not been blown off its hinges.
My heart still thundering in my chest, I rose, my muscles coiled for action. I didn't see the squirrel anywhere. Did animal control see me in the back of Sabrina's car and were hoping to rescue her? The banging continued--three more knocks and then a woman called out in a perfectly normal voice, "Mistress Sabrina!" Now I understood why my parents' cats startled when you rang the doorbell. Sudden noises seemed to have a class of loudness all by themselves.
I crept forward through the house, towards the front door, curious to see who this could be. Another magus? Two long panes of glass framed either side of the front door, covered by long shades that prevented me from clearly seeing the person beyond. Yet, I still saw the vaguest of outlines, framed in dim red light. I crept forward on my belly until I pressed my head against the wall right under the window. Slowly, careful not to give myself away by bumping the blind, I angled my head to look up through the bottom of the window, sighting up through space between it and the blind.
Wide eyes stared down at me from a face framed with fire red hair. Her blue eyes followed the theme, the color of burning gas on a cook top. A white brilliance flooded my vision before I could make out much more than that, and I recoiled with surprise. Despite the doorway being behind me and through several walls, I was momentarily blinded. I froze, trying to blink away an afterimage that existed off the map of my visual field.
"Thomas, get away from that door!" Sabrina's voice climbed to scandalized pitch. Belatedly I obeyed, my vision clearing just in time to see her swoosh past me.
Above I heard the scrabble of claws on wood. "Come on, Thomas, you don't want this one to get a look at you--trust us on this," Cornealius said.
"Yeah, yeah. Your damn ward against eyeballs blinded me again." Really I was fine. Curiosity made me linger as Sabrina hurried to the door. It did not open until Sabrina had her hand around the doorknob.
A small thump next to me made me glance down to see Cornealius. He jerked his head in the direction of a darkened doorway across from us. One I hadn't been into yet. Apparently they hadn't realized that this cat was already out of the bag. With a roll of my eyes I followed him, giving the contents of the room a cursory glance. An office of sorts with a huge desk and three plush sitting chairs placed against the opposite wall. Ascertaining that nothing in the room was a threat, I halfway peeked my head out into the hallway. Cornealius hissed in frustration, which I ignored. Were all magi as crazy as Sabrina? I wondered where the hell Rudy had gotten off to.
Sabrina glanced back at me with a stern glare, mouthing the word "Bad!" A different ring from her other hand lit briefly as she motioned in my direction. My vision faded to black as I heard the squeak of hinges.
I stumbled back from the blackness, momentarily panicked that Sabrina had just blinded me on a whim. But no, the blackness hung in the hallway, a displaced shadow. Deep within the darkness itself a tiny spot of yellow twinkled, a hole of light within the darkness.
I looked down at Cornealius as Sabrina's voice rolled through the shadow unencumbered. "Why, O'Meara! To what event do I owe this surprise?" Cornealius mouthed something at me but reading weasel lips was a skill that I did not possess. Clearly they wanted me hidden, and while I trusted them so far that neither he nor Sabrina were going to kill me, perhaps there were other options that did not involve getting sold to the highest bidder at a pet show. Maybe they'd understand once we had time to chat, but I doubted Sabrina would hear me through the layers of her condescension.
"Doing my job, Elder. Archibald is dead and I'd like your assistance." O'Meara's voice had just a slight tang of an Irish accent, and her tone was business-like.
"Oh, my! Poor Archie. He finally blow himself up? He's been soft in the head for two years now. Dear Guardian, of course I shall help. Hand me your sword and I shall resume my former duties of the protector of the region," Sabrina said with sugary sweetness.
There followed a moment of silence, so thick and angry that I could smell it before O'Meara spoke. "Elder, it will be a cold day on the elemental planes of fire before I relinquish my position to you or anyone else. If you really want to help, you can start by telling me where you were last morning at about 10:00 a.m."
As I peered into the darkness that hid me from view, I realized with a shock that I could see the women, partially. A trace of their outlines. They were dim and hard to make out against the brighter spots of light in the door and doorframe but definitely there. Sabrina stood, her back to me, hand still on the doorknob, poised to shut it in the other woman's face, although she had opened the door wide. Beyond her, O'Meara stood. While Sabrina radiated her warm iron, O'Meara's aura throbbed with angry heat. The precise meaning of that? I had no idea. What I could see was that although O'Meara was a few inches shorter than the wiry Sabrina, she probably outweighed her by a factor of two. Not fat but thick, possibly curvaceous, but looking through Sabrina blurred her features too much for a detailed inspection.
"Now, will you be inviting me in or will you continue to hold me at bay on your stoop and air our conversation to the whispering winds? Or shall I tell the story of how you came to reside in our fair town? I'm sure your new ward would love to hear that little tale. Particularly the body count."
I looked at Cornealius. "Body count?"
The weasel replied in a harsh whisper. "She's a seared kettle calling Sabrina a black pot. You don't want anything to do with her."
"I want to meet her, actually. This cat won't be bagged." I think both Sabrina and Cornealius were too busy wincing at the pun to stop me from plowing through Sabrina's little privacy curtain. The darkness felt cool on my nose as I pressed through it. Beyond it I was greeted by a glare from Sabrina, whom I ignored, circling around to get a better look at O'Meara. Her build did indeed have curves, curves of muscle and bosom. Had she been within the pages of a fantasy comic, you'd call her a thin dwarf until she stood next another person. I had no doubt she could cleave me in two with the sword that hung at her waist.
The women's faces became fun house mirrors of each other, Sabrina's an angry scowl and O'Meara's a hearty grin that displayed deep dimples. O'Meara spoke while Sabrina chewed on her tongue, no doubt preparing a tongue-lashing for later.
"Ah, you must be Thomas Khatt." O'Meara stepped through the doorway, pushing past a now yielding Sabrina. She wore a simple sleeveless red dress crafted from a thick fabric, its hem just overhanging the top of her heavy work boots, which were decorated with fiery insignias.
A bolt of surprise went through me, and my thoughts ran out of my mouth. "How do you know my name?"
"Oh, you talk already!" O'Meara looked at Sabrina in surprise.
"With a familiar his size you have to be able to communicate. Although I might have to check his ears because it's clear he doesn't listen to anything we have to say."
"I just want to ensure that you're giving me all my options. Getting sold at auction to highest bidder sounds like a lousy way to pick a life partner."
"The other ways are even less savory: a desperate and unscrupulous magus could grab you off the street, bond you against your will with pain lash built into the bond ensure obedience," Cornealius said, trotting out into the foyer along the walkway above, eyes on O'Meara. "TAU is not perfect, but it an improvement from the days of yore. Which is why Rudy notified us and not O'Meara."
O'Meara's hair seemed to catch fire and redness blossomed in her cheeks. "I'd never!"
"If I really wanted you out of the picture, dear, I would have let you have him. You've been without a familiar for a year. You wouldn't be able to resist. I'm saving you the trouble really." Sabrina's voice oozed grandmotherly condescension.
O'Meara cast a sideways glance at Sabrina but looked me in the eyes. "Welcome to the noble and upright side of magi society, Thomas. Unfortunately Cornealius is right. The TAU is what we have; both magi and the familiars are at the mercy of its bureaucratic machinations. It may not be great, but when powerful magi live for about two hundred or more years, change is slow." She knelt to extend a hand out towards me, her sword making a loud clink against the wall. "You did turn out very handsome."
Instinctively, I extended my head towards her and gave it a tentative sniff before my mind caught up with my body. Smoke and cinnamon clung to her and threaded through the musky smell she had in common with Sabrina, the human scent perhaps, and piled on with a recognizable tang of sweat. The scent was not of the unclean but one of toil. I liked it.
"He will make some initiate very happy," Sabrina added.
"Initially at least," Cornealius said, bouncing with haughtiness. "The poor soul will very quickly find that Thomas is obstinate, lazy and entitled." He climbed up onto Sabrina's shoulders like a fuzzy snake and grinned down before my brain registered the insults. "He'll make an awful familiar."
The anger kicked in, a bit belatedly to be of much use. It knotted up my back and peeled my lips away from my teeth a little, held in check by the twinkle in the weasel's black eyes.
"See? No sense of humor either."
"Of course not--he is a feline, after all." Sabrina smirked. I let myself relax a little and said nothing, my anger fading to annoyance. I wondered how often they "found" familiars.
O'Meara sighed and stood, crossing her arms impatiently. "Are you done showing off and insulting your acquisition, Elder? We still have some business to discuss, like where you were last night. I also need to speak to Rudy, the double-crossing little rat. Just how much more did you promise him?"
Sabrina smiled. "Rudy is a dear, but the rodent loves his electronics more than vague promises of future favors. Besides, Thomas will be safer here with Cornealius and me. Now let us retire upstairs. No sense dragging Thomas through your inane interrogations."