The Questing Game

That generally ended that. Azakar and the Vendari went back to training with Faalken observing, and the Wikuni were very quiet and very still. Kern returned to the sterncastle, but Miranda knelt by the rope coil and gave him a disapproving look. "I don't know how you keep getting yourself into trouble, you wayward child," she told him with a sudden impish grin and a wink. She reached down and picked him up, then settled him on her lap again as she sat back down to her needlepoint.

Dola

"Tarrin, come here," Dola

Tarrin looked up at Miranda, who calmly moved the dress and her arm so he could jump down from her lap. He did so, approaching his mentor with not a little trepidation, sitting calmly in front of her and waiting.

"What you have done is reprehensible," she told him. "You specifically promised me that you would not do such things, and it took you all of a day to break your word. You are coming close to forcing me to punish you, and that is something that neither of us will enjoy."

"It wasn't my fault," Tarrin replied to her in the ma

"Do not meow at me, student," she snapped in a commanding tone. "Present yourself to me this instant."

Tarrin forgot that she couldn't understand him like that. He shapeshifted to his humanoid form, going from having her tower over him to towering over her, looking down at her with a curiously neutral expression. "It wasn't my fault," he repeated. "They attacked me first. They knew the punishment for disobedience."

" That is not your decision to make!" she raged at him. "It is not your place to determine who lives and who does not! This vessel is under the flag of Kern, and those matters are for him and him alone to determine!" She crossed her arms and glared up at him, which took Tarrin aback. This kind of vehemence was so totally unlike Dola

Tarrin lowered his head. There wasn't very much he could say to that. He had no regrets over what he did, only that Dola

"Look at me, Tarrin," she ordered, and he met her gaze involuntarily. "No more of this. Do you understand me? No more. From now on, you adhere to the rightful law, rather than your own."

"Yes ma'am," he said guiltily.

"Now go below. You are to spend the day in your room. You may come out at di

He glared at her suddenly, more than a little irritated that she would dare to punish him, but the steel in her eyes caused his indignance to fade to an expression of suppliance. "Yes ma'am," he sighed, shuffling past her, shifting back into cat form, then walking slowly towards the stairs.

In the tiny cabin he shared with Dar, Tarrin silently fumed. The idea of being sent to him room was infuriating enough, but to be punished for something that was the right thing to do a

That he would show throat to someone he could break over his knee made him snort slightly, but that was the way things were.

He paced back and forth on the floor, his mind racing, but then he began to calm down as the instincts of the Cat, so strong in him when in cat form, began to defuse his anger. It saw no reason to be angry. He was there because he agreed to it. He could have refused. And after all, the room wasn't that bad. It had a nice bed with soft covers that were perfect for snuggling down and sleeping out a boring day. He jumped up onto the bed and did just that, laying down on top of the goosefeather pillow, letting the scents of the wool and cotton and feathers mingle with the salt air and the tar and wood of the ship, and the lingering scents of Dar and his sisters, who visited the room quite often. Those scents were the important ones, the smells of family. It made him miss his natural parents and Je

So much of everything centered on them. They were everything to him, and there wasn't anything that he wouldn't do, no depth to which he wouldn't go, to defend and protect them. His sanity almost orbited his tight-knit group of friends and siblings. Without them, there just didn't seem to be any reason to be here. Every day he would look out over the sea, and the vision of his home would appear, the cool forests at the edge of the Frontier. The place he grew up, the familiar paths and game trails, the little village with the hardy people who lived on the fringe of civilization and accepted life as it came to them. He had no reason to be here aside from his oath to the Goddess and his friends. But the word he gave to the Goddess was an intangible thing, and because of that, the Cat in him had trouble rationalizing his devotion to it. But his friends were an immediate, tactile foundation to which to attach his life and his focus. He had been withdrawn from them lately, not very talkative, existing at the edge of their circles, but they had become the totality of his life. Without them, he would leave the ship, leave the quest, and return to Aldreth.

At least he thought so. It wasn't something that he thought of for very long, when he allowed himself to think about it at all.

He had had enough of thinking for a while. Curling his tail around himself, he settled in and, in an exercise that was no longer more than an idle thought, lured himself to sleep.

That sleep was disturbed by the smells of pork stew. Opening his eyes, he saw Dar entering the cabin carrying a thick bowl of it. Dar was sweating, and the acrid scent of it marred his usually pleasant spice-like scent that all Arkisians seemed to have. It wasn't all that warm, so he must have been laboring on the deck.

"Tarrin," he said with a smile, holding up the bowl. "I brought you some lunch."

Jumping down off the bed, Tarrin shifted back into his humanoid form and looked down at the youth. Dar's brown eyes were as compassionate and expressive as ever, eyes that could never hide the young man's true feelings. Anyone with a mind to do so could read Dar's every emotion in those brown eyes. Those eyes looked at him with friendship, even a little fraternal love, and he smiled as he offered the bowl. Dar had always been a good friend, a true friend. He didn't speak that much, intimidated by the august presences that surrounded him, and it was very easy to overlook him when he stood among the giants and rarities that made up Dola