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It was late, well past midnight. Jesmind stood in Tarrin's room, putting her shirt back on, more than aware of the scent of the Selani, fresh and on the far side of the door.
Seducing him hadn't been in the plan, but she wasn't sorry that it happened.
Tarrin was, was nothing like she thought. She had thought him out of control, walking the edge of insanity. He was. But it wasn't for the reasons that she thought. She had believed it was the Cat driving him mad, but the Cat was only the instrument and not the hand pushing it. If he were removed from the Tower, from the situation that was slowly and inexorably driving him mad, he would be well. His very demeanor was so much different from that young, scared, trusting cub that she had met so long ago. He had become hard, grim, almost fatalistic. She couldn't blame him for the changes, but she understood what those changes meant. He was slowly losing his humanity, and if it did not stop, he would go mad. What could not destroy him quickly would destroy him bit by bit, slowly eroding away that which made him what he was, destroying the young i
The Cat had nearly driven him mad, and now the Tower itself was trying to finish the job.
Oh, it wasn't the Tower itself, it was the situation. Tarrin was living in fear, and if he were human, it may be something that he could deal with. But he had the Cat with him now, and the Cat was changing Tarrin's usual reactions to such things. What was the danger now was Tarrin's conscious mind, because he would make the decisions that would turn him into a ruthless monster.
Blinking, she settled the shirt over her lean stomach, then marched deliberately for the door that adjoined Tarrin's room with the Selani's. She knew the Selani was awake, and was fully aware of what was going on. And the Selani didn't disappoint. She stood near her own door in the small room, wearing nothing but a nightshirt, and holding two slender swords in her hands. Her look was one of grim determination, and it seemed to Jesmind that she had been torn between charging in there and saving Tarrin from her, or trusting in Tarrin's judgement and not interfering.
Jesmind would need that trust.
It was something that, unfortunately, she could do little to help him with aside from taking him out of the Tower. But she couldn't do that now. Things had changed, and taking him back was no longer an option. She couldn't force him, and she was in no condition to fight. She had only one thing to say to the Selani, which she did as the woman stared defiantly at her. "I'm leaving," she told her bluntly. "Watching him is now your responsibility. Keep him alive, Selani. If you let him get killed, I'm going to hunt you down and take your hair for a bellpull."
And then she left the Selani before she could respond.
Creeping through the north tower in the dead of night, the female Were-cat avoided guards and Sorcerers with an ease that would make the greatest master thief envious. She crept across the Tower grounds and entered the main Tower itself, her delicate nose following a faint scent trail set down some hours before. It was faint and deeply covered by a multitude of other scents, but her exceptionally sensitive sense of smell followed that smell of human and lavender and silk and ivory quite easily. She moved in utter silence, her large padded feet making not even a whisper of sound on the stone of the floor, her white fur seeming to absorb the darkness and merge with the shadows created by the glowglobes. She flitted from shadow to shadow, hallway to hallway, moving through the Tower like a ghost, raising not a whisper of sound or flicker of motion to alert those that moved around her, totally oblivious to her passing.
In all the Tower, there was but one human that Jesmind would even come close to trusting. She reached that person's door not long after entering the Tower, using a single claw to throw the latch and entering the small, elegantly appointed room of the human woman that had taken in her cub in her absence and protected him as best she could.
Dola
"And what brings you past my door at this hour?" Dola
"Don't push it," Jesmind told her. "I still can't believe that I'm doing this."
"Doing what?"
"Trusting one of you," she spat. "But my cub trusts you, so I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt."
"And what, may I ask, would you need my trust for?" she asked calmly and to the point.
"Something is going on," she said bluntly in reply. Dola
"You give little credit to him," she said.
"Oh, I give him alot more credit than you think," she retorted, "but Tarrin's a backwater country boy thrown into a viper pit. He's not used to seeing intrigue and backbiting, and it is credit to say he's noticed something that he's really never seen before."
"I stand corrected," Dola
"Because there's alot more going on here than just some errand that Tarrin can run for the Tower," she said. "Tarrin made mention of the fact that they brought Allia and the little Wikuni in as well, and all three of them seem to have alot of attention from the Keeper and the Council of Seven."
"I have noticed that, yes," Dola
"No," Jesmind snorted. "They're collecting them for a reason, and they don't seem to be too picky about how they get them."
"What do you mean?"
"Remember when you caught me?" she asked. "Remember that collar that was around my neck?"
Dola
"That's right," she spat. "And it was a Sorcerer that put that damned thing around my neck."
"How do you know this?"
"All of my kind have a touch of Druidic magic in us," she replied. "Some more than others. My own Druidic power rates about at the level of pond scum, but I can tell the difference between a Priest's chant, a Mage's spellcasting, and a Sorcerer's weaving. I tell you right now, woman, that one of you put that collar on me. One of you set me loose in Tarrin's bedchamber. I don't know if they wanted him dead or just wanted him to be Were, but there was no accident about it. I remember specifically being sent after him. I rather think that they wanted him dead, myself. That he survived was a stroke of the wildest luck. When he turned Were, they just added him to the other two. An added bonus."
Dola
"Because only a fool wouldn't know that something's going on," she said. "Since I think that whoever caught me sent me to kill him, it makes me wonder why half of you Sorcerers want to train him, and the other half want him dead." She crossed her arms and looked down at Dola