Helrotes are always going on about Alasais' cats being disloyal, narcissistic, cunning and vengeful

bastards... See, even they can't deny the many wonderful traits of our personalities!

Those Terrible, Terrible Cats, Enaor an Al Emenayit

"... And now, please look to your left. This is one of my favorite specimens. On display in vessel number twenty three is the result of twoheaded leech venom from Lake Snake Bisque on the Alaean body. Rather a fascinating change in pigmentation, wouldn't you say?"

Mor Oddeye turned his head half-heartedly. Bound with chains and floating in a greenish liquid inside a tall, metal-coated vessel was the naked corpse of an Eale. Poison had decorated his black skin with hundreds of ashen snowflakes, marked at the center by the leech's kiss like a swollen pink navel. The deceased was beaming a big smile, and not without some smugness, as if death had caught him admiring his own glorious coloring in the mirror.

"It's not the bites that are truly interesting, however. The Bisque should be visited in autumn when these delightful creatures enter their mating season. O! If you've never experienced their crawling under your skin, you don't know what it is to be tickled, which means you cannot consider yourself a full-fledged Alae."

"Deny it all you want, Enaor, your pops had to have been an an Kamian. A rotten apple doesn't fall far from the tree..." muttered Mor, stretching out to his full considerable height over bags of dried herbs.

They rustled cozily as he tossed and turned, paying respect to the many different "masterpieces" surrounding Oddeye. Indeed, he was in a veritable green forest of vessels stuffed with Enaor's carcasses: charred, gnawed, shredded and folded into a pig's tail. Soldered into the side of each was the thing that cut short the life of Anaeis Meori's deranged son that particular instance: string with bells, somebody's hand, pincer or stinger, handful of topaz dust, set of shiny torture devices or jar of moldy preserve made from Lurrijan moss.

"Ab an Kamian? Then how do you explain my exceptional gift of magic?" Enaor inquired buoyantly.

It took Mor's eyes a few moments to find him: the current reservoir of Enaor's rebellious spirit, sealed in one of the vessels, differed from the other pieces of the collection only in that it was relatively intact, surgically removed claws notwithstanding.

"Touché. He could have been an an Meanor – they are loopy enough, too," Oddeye agreed readily. "So listen, o great mage and sorcerer, aren't you tired of hanging there?"

"How could one grow tired of such exquisite company as you?"

Mor gave him the kind of stare one might bestow upon a dog cutlet, then half-closed his eyes wearily. Oddeye's ears were twitching involuntarily: there were thudding noising coming from beneath the floor, the source of which Enaor was more keen to ignore. There was something both lulling and unpleasant about it...

"O, sister Irera!" Enaor suddenly exclaimed; in joy he wriggled like an eel and was now hanging upside down in his vessel, having caught a toe on a ring just under the lid. "Have you come to release me?"

"That depends on you," she said, tossing to Mor a leather pouch with his dinner; hastily undoing the tie-strings, the hungry telepath sucked in with gusto the aroma of marinated snails.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Mute as a fish," echoed Enaor, blowing bubbles.

"What are you breathing, o defective one?" Irera asked tenderly, looking down on him.

"Nothing. Your daddy didn't even leave me any air. That miserly bastard – he'll be shedding fur and he'll choke before letting you have even a pinch," Enaor whined.

"What did Malaur say?" Mor interrupted him.

"Nothing. Aside from a long lecture that I don't know my own father," Irera kicked a nearby stool in frustration. "That he had proved his competency as the head of our house more on many occasions. That behind our patriarch's antics there is a purpose, a calculated plan, and I shouldn't be so simple as to be misled by them, and... Hey, are you blowing bubbles at me?!" she hissed at Enaor, ready to pounce.

"What did you expect, dear sister? Any creator is going to defend his creation."

"What are you talking about?"

"It was Malaur that had corrupted Selorn. Your daddy was a real darling when he first got to Briee. Nothing but manners and restraint – a kind of royal restraint, I might add... Until he got mixed up with the an Kamian crew, and they were bad news even then. The result is before your eyes."

"I don't know what's that in your vessel, but – " Irera began.

"A tantalizing tincture of alcohol and herbs," Enaor finished the thought in an unctuous voice. "And if you would be so kind, dear sister, as to release that pretty claw of yours and make a ti-i-iny little hole in it, you too could enjoy this delicate bouquet tinged with a note of intoxicating alanae."

"Don't even think about it!" Mor bellowed, nearly choking on a snail. "That thing is made of abyss glass. It's the only thing negating his magic."

"It didn't even enter my mind," Irera assured him. "So, what were you pontificating about Selorn and Malaur?"

"That it was Malaur himself who had created this incarnation of Selorn, the hardnosed psycho. He'd even planted a rumor that your pops had been demoted by his fellow Rulers of the Great Forest for some te-e-errible crime that nobody dares to speak of for fear it would turn their brains to jelly."

"And the part about devouring Elven babies – was that him, too?" asked Mor, surprising himself with the question.

"Nope, that was born on its own," Enaor declared with authority. "Anyway, Malaur had long been on the lookout for someone to play the role of a bloodthirsty monster from Al Emenayit."

"Why? What's his angle?"

"Do you really not see it, Irera? You're his foster daughter, for crying out loud! Selorn is an incredibly powerful telepath, the terror of all enemies of the feline race..."

"But not every enemy can be opposed openly," Mor nodded with understanding.

"That's right. He can't just break into the mind of some ambassador or merchant or what have you and force them to dance to his tune. Well, technically he can, but most nations would deem such an act a crime against identity."

"Can Selorn's manipulation be discovered?"

"Of course not. Our telepaths leave no puddles or any other marks in others' heads. But the very fact that Mister X might all of a sudden change his position on matter Y after speaking with Mister S. an A. A. would raise some eyebrows, wouldn't it?"

"It would."

"But if the same Mister S. is infamous for feasting on Elven babies, such an abrupt shift in attitudes might not seem to suspicious. So Mister X's nerves had failed him... Could have happened to anyone."

"But why is one any better than the other? I mean, why does it matter if Selorn bullied your Mister X into submission or manipulated him via telepathy? It's a crime either way," Irera shrugged her confusion.

"Ah, but who is Selorn bullying? Of all the more or less law-abiding non-Alae, can you think of a single actual case of him killing anyone? Or forcing them to do something under duress? You can't, can you? That's my point. He doesn't need to do anything – his reputation does all the work for him," Enaor sighed with envy. "And that, my children, was the effect sought by Malaur in convincing Selorn to play the role of an unhinged maniac."

Irera turned around, hiding her dismay. She had never looked at her father from such an angle.

"That's all very interesting, Enaor. But why the confessional mood all of a sudden?" asked Mor, having finished his snails.

"You think I like it here, imitating a pickled eggplant?" Enaor scoffed his disdain.

"You need only tell Selorn what you and Inlir had been working on, and he will release you right away. I don't know why you're resisting, either – the mages will figure it out eventually anyway."

"Oh, I bet. They can't even figure out how I'm able to speak with you through this glass," he knuckled the vessel pointedly.

"Be that as it may. If this is a contest in stubbornness, Selorn will not be beat," Irera with noted with conviction. "Besides, if you're so good at figuring out his intentions, can you explain what grandiose plans hide behind his desire to snack on roast dragon meat?"

All traces of levity evaporated from Enaor's face. He even returned to a regular position.

"I don't know. But I really don't like any of it. Neither does mother. And what she likes least of all is that Selorn keeps trying to shake out of me something that I myself haven't a clue about," he added after a pause.

"Meaning?"

"I have no idea what Inlir and I were doding," Enaor spread his arms.

"Did he erase your memory or something? All of it?" Mor arched his brow suspiciously.

"And the strangest thing is that Inlir could never have pulled off the job so cleanly," said Enaor, his lips nearly pressed to the glass. "It was somebody else. And may I wake up as a mouse if this somebody wasn't an Eale."

"A traitorous Eale? Seems hard to believe."

"And how could Selorn not have sensed that your head was empty?"

"That's the thing..." gurgled Enaor. "I'm not entirely certain that he didn't sense it. I think that I'm sitting here for another purpose entirely."

"As bait for the traitor?" Irera guessed.

"That's a possibility. But I don't think it's all that simple. Call me crazy, but there's something going on with Selorn, I can sense it with my tail. Whatever his scheme is, I want no part of it whatsoever."

"Truth be told, I don't find it particularly amusing that he's locked up here," said Mor in a flat voice.

"Then release me! If not for me, at least for your own benefit."

"Are you trying to bribe us, fishy? With what?"

"With something you won't be able to refuse – I'll tell you how to spy on what's happening in Patriarch Selorn's office."

Mor and Irera exchanged incredulous glances.

"Can you really arrange that?" the Eale female asked with only her lips.

"Uh huh."

"He'll catch wind of it," said Irera dubiously, glancing upward – where, behind the thickness of wood and stone, hid the chambers of Patriarch Selorn.

Enaor sighed, surveyed his captors with a long, critical look, and sent a mental message to Mor.

"If you shift your foot a little bit to the left, right on that seam dividing the tiles, you'll get hit with lightning and pass out for about ten seconds. My telepathic abilities will be unblocked, and that's enough time for me to force Irera to make a hole in the vessel."

***

A still summer eve descended upon the green plain, covering the land with its warm belly. When the final customer had left, Irson Trimm closed down the Lair and moved to the rear side of the building, which housed his personal quarters. Sitting up on the windowsill, he rolled up his pants and sleeves, and savored the long-sought silence. A slumberous lawn stretched out before him as far as the eye could see, peppered with the hazy sparkles of lunar oxalis, rare saplings and reddish blots of crawling shrubbery.

Back when he was a student at the Lindorg Academy, he hadn't been able to refuse his classmates who had gotten it into their heads to go and get identical shiny tattoos. However, his inherent loathing toward such pretentiousness pushed him to put the tattoo in a place where it wouldn't be on display. And now, the bare sole of his foot, hanging from the window, was a veritable lighthouse for moths, flies and mosquitos (which, thankfully, weren't fond of Tanae blood). Irson smiled, remembering how his father liked to tease his mother, jesting smogthat he had married so poisonous wife that even mosquitoes wanted to part of her.

There was a knock on the door. "Speaking of mom and dad," groused the Tanae and, with a reluctant hop down to the floor, turned on the light with a soft hiss. Why oh why were creatures so stuck on picking at old wounds! His fingers lingered a few moments on the door knob before turning it. Irson stepped to the side, allowing his guest – a human male around fifty years of age – to come through.