CURSOR'S FURY

“Come, Aleran,” Kitai said, and set out after the lone Cane.

“Wait here,” Tavi told Max. “We’ll be back in a minute.”

“Uh. Sir?” Max said.

Tavi ignored him and followed Kitai. She led him into the twilight, until they found the fleeing Cane, crouched in the feeble shelter offered by a half-collapsed earthen overhang beside a stream.

She stared at them with wide, frightened eyes, and gathered a number of small, piteously mewling forms to her breast.

She.

She.

Tavi stared at her, speechless. A female Cane, with young. Newly born from the look of it. She must have been giving birth while the Canim retreat began. No Aleran had ever actually seen a female Cane, and over the centuries it had given rise to a number of unsavory rumors about how the Canim perpetuated themselves. The truth was simpler, more obvious, and embodiment of it shivered in the rain before him, clutching her young to her, as desperate and as frightened as any Aleran mother would be in her place.

Tavi stepped forward, toward the female Cane. He lowered his chin toward his chest and bared his teeth.

The female’s eyes flashed with desperate anger, waging against even more desperate fear, and then her ears flattened, and she tilted her head far to one side, her body bending to bare her throat in abject surrender.

Tavi relaxed his own stance and nodded at the Canim female. Then he tilted his head slightly to one side, and moved a hand at her in a brushing-away gesture.

The female lifted her head and stared at him, ears twitching.

“Go,” Tavi told her. He struggled to remember the proper Canish word, and settled for the one Varg would occasionally use when he thought Tavi was taking too long to move a piece on the ludus board, while making the same gesture. “Marrg .”

The female stared at him for a moment. Then she bared her throat again, rose, never taking her eyes from him, and vanished into the dark.

Tavi watched her go, thinking furiously.

The Canim had come to Alera-and brought their mates and offspring, their families with them, something that had never happened before.

Which meant…

“Great furies,” Tavi breathed. “I am not afraid of Nasaug anymore.”

Kitai stared after the female Cane and nodded grimly.

“I’m afraid,” Tavi whispered, “of what drove him from his home.”