Nadhari said nothing -yet. The priest was being unnecessarily harsh with the girl. After all, she had been with Acorna the entire time. That was as good an alibi as anyone needed, in Nadhari"s book. She distracted the girl"s tormentor with a suggestion. "If I were you, I"d post a few men on the rooftops. The attacker may have come from above."
"From above?" the warrior priests scoffed. "You didn"t see the body, did you, lady? It was clearly a frontal attack-gutted and the face ripped off. And it had to be a wild animal that did it. Only where would you find an animal like that around here?"
Nadhari said nothing. This was not her team, she was not in charge, and she did not want to say too much in front of these men. They were potential enemies and Edu"s spies. But privately she thought of the fearsome creatures that once roamed the rainforests, steppes, and deserts of the planet. There had once been plenty of likely predators out in the wild places.
The murshim, a bear-like creature that was taller than a man when standing on its back paws and had two rows of razor-like teeth on each jaw. But the murshim had been extinct since the Battle of Binda destroyed the section of forest that was their last known dwelling place. n.o.body had won that fight. The Bindalari were slain by the Durg, one of the fiercest of the militant steppe-tribes. The Durg were mostly killed by the fleeing murshim, who were in turn killed by the tardy reinforcements for the slain Bindalari. No glory was had by any living thing that day.
Also there had been the rock wolves, or yowim, who prowled the remotest moorlands of the steppes, but they were already quite rare during Nadhari"s post-Felihari childhood among the Div. By the time she had seen forty seasons-was ten years old by Standard reckoning-the head of the last yow was said to hang over the entrance to Binda Temple. Its body had been devoured by the Temple guardians.
Once there had been wild felines as well, but these had gradually been a.s.similated into the Guardian line and were now protectors of the people, not attackers.
Unless... could the priest have been attacked by the guardian of an enemy Temple?
The warrior priests had deserted the two women to awaken dwellers in houses between this place and the one where the priest was slain. The quiet of the night was broken for a time by their door poundings and demands, and the sleepy, frightened, or indignant responses of those so rudely awakened. Probably most of them had just returned to sleep - or tried to, after the outcry when Bulaybub"s mangled body was found.
Nadhari wished she had gathered more information at the Temple before she came out here. She looked up thoughtfully, jumped, caught the edge of the roof, and hoisted herself onto it. A ladder to the roof would stand inside the room beneath her boots, where the people of the house could use it but an outsider could not.
The girl Miw-Sher whirled, alarmed, and with a sharp lift of her head, saw Nadhari"s red uniform pale against the deep maroon sky. She met Nadhari"s eye and saw the finger the older woman had placed over her lips.
Nadhari gestured that Miw-Sher should continue on, and followed her, leaping from one flat roof to the next, her boots making no more sound than the furred feet of a Temple guardian.
Much of the night had been spent dining with Macostut, and now the edge of Singha, the forerunner sun, gilded the horizon. If Edu wished this girl to pay for Bulaybub"s life by dying a similar death, Nadhari thought, he should have waited to send her out until the attacker had rested and grown hungry again.
Suddenly the scarlet night was split open with a scream.
Miw-Sher, with the gate in sight, froze in her tracks, but Nadhari turned and raced back across the rooftops until she was looking down upon the warrior priests and a woman who stood sobbing, pointing at the trail of blood leading from her hearth to the door and down the street.
"Something has been in my house!" she cried.
"Where were you when this happened?" the leader asked suspiciously.
"Tending my sister and her children. They"ve come down with the sickness. I"ve been gone for two days. When I got here, the door was half open. Soon as I got the lamp lit, I found all this!"
"Lucky for you that you didn"t come home sooner," the guard told her. "Murder"s been done. b.l.o.o.d.y awful mess. The murderer must have come in here to clean himself up, but by the look of it he was interrupted, probably by the hue and cry when Bulaybub"s body was found. It gives us a trail to follow, anyway."
The woman gave a little whimper.
"Fan out, men!" the leader commanded.
"Oh, excellent planning," Nadhari said. The frightened woman yelped again when she looked up and saw a tall stranger standing on her roof and peering down at her through the darkness. Nadhari made a gesture of quiet rea.s.surance to the woman. "I"m here to help hunt the thing that disturbed you," she said. She continued speaking very quietly, to the priests rather than to the woman. "Whatever killed the priest and left this convenient trail will appreciate your thoughtfulness, Brother. It will no doubt much prefer to kill your men singly rather than as a group."
Eight.
The gray-and-black-brindled fur of the Condor"s elusive first mate blended easily with the shadows, froze into invisibility when Federation personnel pa.s.sed them, and vanished out the gate while the Linyaari amba.s.sador engaged the guard in a debate over whether or not she required a pa.s.s to come and go. They seemed to have no shortage of guards here at the Federation post. The sentry facing Acorna now was a new one, older and apparently more dogmatic about her orders.
"But the lieutenant commander already gave his consent," Acorna insisted, "and High Priest Kando requested that I help with the illness among the Temple cats. I am on a mission regarding that illness now."
"I"m sorry, Amba.s.sador, but I am not authorized to grant you random access to and from the civilian sector. Sets a dangerous precedent. These people are a lot of alien savages, though it"s not diplomatic of me to say so. Why, look down the street, will you? Can you hear the ruckus? See it. They"ve been carrying on like that for quite some time now. And who is that woman on the roof?"
Acorna peered down the street. Two blocks over, Nadhari was outlined against the first watery rays of the first sunrise. She was looking down. Someone was weeping. "That"s Commander Kando. She came with us on this ship. But she is from here originally," Acorna told the guard. "It looks like she needs some help. If you don"t mind, I"ll just go see what"s going on," she continued, skirting around the rubbernecking guard and skipping away from her before the woman looked down again. "I know you cannot desert your post. I"ll just check to see what happened, render any needed a.s.sistance, and be back to let you know what it"s about." When the guard started toward her, clearly intending to detain her, Acorna ran up the street, calling back, "No, no, you should stay at your post. I will be back later with the details." The guard, torn between duty and curiosity, finally resumed her place by the gate.
If RK was ahead of her, Acorna saw no sign of him. The cat didn"t respond when she sought his thoughts. Perhaps he was still put out with her over the blood drawing.
Approaching the knot of people, Acorna looked up and asked Nadhari, "What happened here?"
The warrior priests turned on her. "Who are you?"
"Look at it!" one of them said, pointing at her. "It has a horrible horn in the middle of its head. It"s a demon! It must have been what killed Bulaybub."
Nadhari leaped to the ground as lightly as RK might, managing to land between Acorna and the armed men. "Steady, Brothers. This lady is not a demon or a killer. She is the amba.s.sador from a world of wonderful peaceful beings called the Linyaari and a guest of my cousin, Edu, your high priest. She is also the doctor who healed your sacred Temple cats."
The poor woman whose house they cl.u.s.tered around seemed to Acorna to be in great distress. She smelled of illness, but that didn"t explain the b.l.o.o.d.y trail leading from her home.
The woman shrank from Acorna. Before Acorna could try to gain her trust and form a mental bond with her, she heard RK"s thought-speech, (This blood belongs to the one I saw last night.
He is not a ritual dancer. He is one of us, and yet not one of us. He is injured, and he has the sickness.)
"There is a murderer loose, Amba.s.sador," the head warrior priest told Acorna. "Someone or something murdered Brother Bulaybub. We believe that the same person or thing has left this trail behind."
"I see," Acorna said. "That makes sense, but why do you say thing?"
"Because what was done to our brother wasn"t done by any human hand. He was clawed to death, gutted - "
Nadhari interrupted, sparing the woman householder the details. "Were you acquainted with Brother Bulaybub?" she asked the house"s inhabitant.
The woman shook her head wildly.
Acorna mentally reached out for RK, but he shrugged off her mental touch. He was moving away rapidly.
(I am on the case, Acorna. I go now to chase the sick one down. I would bring him back to you, but he is very big.)
(He is also dangerous. He killed a man.)
(Oh, yessss,) RK hissed, and she could see his tail lashing. (But I too can be dangerous!)
She knew that. She had seen him attack the Wats when they had tried to kill Thariinye and her. But while RK was much larger than a domestic cat, he was much smaller than a tiger or a lion.
(I must take the vaccine to the Temple. Please, if you find him, hide and tell me. I will get help.)
(The first pounce is mine,) RK said fiercely.
(You"ve been aboard ship too long, Roadkill. Just see that you don"t live up to your name. Becker would be heartbroken.)
But the intrepid animal wasn"t listening. He was on the scent and stalking his prey.
Nine.