Brave Story (46 page)

Wataru hesitated, and in that instant the boy beneath him threw him off. Wataru fell to the floor.

At that moment, something black and slender came through the window from outside, wrapping itself around the hand of the boy holding the knife. Wataru saw it jerked taut, and the boy was yanked away from the cat-girl.

“Whoa!” the boy shouted, as he flew through the open window and disappeared outside.

The three remaining in the room stood in shock. Again the long black cord lashed through the window, this time wrapping itself around the chest of the boy next to Wataru.

Of course! The whip!

One hand on the window and the other gripping her whip, Kutz leapt inside onto the bed. “I’m a Highlander, and you are under arrest!” she said with authority, jumping down to the floor in front of the boy and giving him three swift kicks with the tip of her leather boot. The boy groaned and slumped to the ground.

“The one outside didn’t fare much better than this one,” Kutz said, baring her white teeth in a smile. “Are you two okay?” she said to the girl on the bed. “Ah, the wound on your back’s opened!”

Then the world began to spin.

“What’s wrong, Wataru?” Kutz chided. “Don’t worry, you saved her. Of course, you wouldn’t have been able to do it on your own. Good thing I was watching your every move.”

“I…see…thanks,” Wataru said, clinging to the edge of the bed.

“You okay?” the cat-girl asked, twitching one ear.

“The open casks…” Wataru muttered. “I think I’m drunk.”

Chapter 6
The Highlanders

It took a full day for Wataru’s hangover to mend.
By the time his headache, dizziness, and nausea subsided and he was able to eat again, Kee Keema returned from his trip to Sakawa.

“Never have I been so surprised in all my days!” the waterkin announced, clapping his hands furiously and literally bouncing in his chair. His loud voice echoed through the lodge. “I made it between Gasara and Sakawa in record time, I did. Yet still, in a few days, you managed to not only tangle with Kutz the Rosethorn but become the hero of Gasara!”

“I didn’t do anything so amazing,” Wataru said. “Just the sort of thing they’re always doing in the TV mysteries my mom watches.”

“TV mysteries?” Kee Keema said, cocking his head. “Something from the other world? Anyway, Kutz wanted you to come down to the branch when you were feeling better. So let’s get going!”

Down at the branch they found not only Kutz waiting for them but the tiger-man Trone and a wizened man with long whiskers that Wataru hadn’t met before. He looked like a goat.
Must be another -kin,
Wataru thought. His eyes were gentle and sparkling with intelligence.

“This is High Chief Gil, responsible for all thirteen Highlander branches in the land of Nacht.”

High Chief Gil reacted to Kutz’s rigid introduction with a warm smile, as he took Wataru’s hands into his own. “Quite impressive to stand up to two violent criminals like that at your young age, my brave Traveler.”

“If Kutz hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have stood up to much,” Wataru admitted. “I was wondering, what happened to the wounded girl, the kitkin?”

It was Kutz who answered. “She needed more stitches after the fracas in her room, so now she’s resting. Give her a few weeks and she’ll mend up nicely, I think.” Then she grinned. “Her name’s Meena, by the way.”

Wataru’s face reddened. “I gathered from what they said that she was helping them…she wasn’t going along with their plans willfully, I hope?”

Kutz glanced at the Highlander official. Gil, still sitting, leaned toward Wataru. “Indeed. Those two boys threatened her and made her help them steal. She pretended to be a victim to save you, in fact. How did you know?”

Wataru explained how he had put it all together: the girl whispering “I’m sorry,” how she could have used her tail to cut her own back with a knife, and how he realized if he claimed to know who the criminals were, they would suspect Meena had ratted them out and come to get her.

“That’s some brain you got, Wataru!” Kee Keema said, clapping his hands. “Why I could be as old and grizzled as the Elder, and I’d never come up with that!”

Wataru didn’t bother explaining that co-conspirators pretending to be victims were a pretty common plot twist in the TV shows his mom watched.

“You want to meet them?” Kutz said, standing up and dangling a ring of cell keys in her hand. Wataru quickly followed after her.

“It turns out they’re both refugees from the north,” Kutz explained as they walked down the hall. “Five years ago, when they were nine and eight years old, they paid a smuggler to take them and their parents on a merchant ship crossing the sea. Sadly, the ship ran into trouble, and their parents died. These two washed up on the shore near Bog and moved to a refugee camp. Apparently they didn’t care for life there, so they escaped and began their career as thieves. They’ve been moving from place to place, stealing and worse, for about a year now.”

“I don’t get it. They risked their lives to cross over here, only to become thieves? Why?”

“Ask them yourself.”

The two were being kept in the same tiny cell that Wataru himself had been thrown in when he was the suspect. One was lying down on the bed, but the other—the older of the two, Wataru thought—was sitting on the floor, and his eyes gleamed when he saw Wataru in the doorway.

“Having fun, boys?” Kutz asked cheerfully. “I brought you a friend. He went through quite a lot on your account. Thought you might want to apologize to him, hmm?”

The sitting boy looked to the side and spat on the floor. The boy on the bed sat up and glared at Wataru. Seeing them in the light of day, Wataru realized he had seen them before that night. During the day, when everyone had been visiting him at the lodge after he claimed to know the identity of the criminals, they had been there, standing apart from the onlookers.

They looked better fed now than they had been then, for sure, but their eyes were still hungry.

Trone appeared at the end of the hallway and began walking toward them when the older of the two leapt suddenly to his feet, grabbed the bars to the cell and began shouting. “Keep that stinking foul beast away from us! I don’t want his stench in our room!”

Shocked, Wataru took a step backward. Trone kept walking toward them, grinning broadly. On the other side of the bars, both of the boys were standing up now, spitting and raging.

“See?” Trone said, coming to stand beside Wataru. “They risked their lives to escape from the north, yet inside their hearts, they’re still living firmly within the borders of the Empire.”

In the Northern Empire, the dominant ankha had decided that other races were inferior and without value, Trone explained. They imprisoned and killed his kind for the slightest offense.

“Oh be quiet, you two,” Kutz snapped. “If you don’t like it in there, I’m happy to send you back up north.”

Kutz’s words only agitated them further. “You look like one of us, but you smell like one of them,” the older boy growled.

“Death to you all!” his brother joined in.

“I’m afraid the one on its way out is your empire, not us,” Kutz said, almost sorrowfully. “By pushing the non-ankha out of the way, you’re ignoring so many resources, so much potential.”

“Shut up, beast-lover! All of you together don’t add up to one of us!” the older brother shouted.

Wataru took a step closer to the bars. “Where did you find Meena? What did you threaten her with?”

The brothers looked at each other for a moment, then pointed their fingers at Wataru and laughed uproariously.

“Stop that!” Wataru shouted.

The older brother’s face suddenly went serious. He stepped up to the bars and muttered something in a low, poisonous voice.

“What did you say?” Wataru asked, leaning closer.

The boy spat on his face at point-blank range.

“Ack!”

As Wataru wiped his face, the brothers laughed again. “Just watch. When we ankha have brought the south together, you’ll all be sent to the camps. You can lick our boots three times a day for your meals.”

“Boots?” The younger brother said, howling with laughter. “You mean butts! They can all live in our latrine and eat whatever drops down!”

Trone put his hand on Wataru’s shoulder. “Back to the office.”

Wataru nodded. Kutz stood a while longer, looking with weary eyes at the two boys before turning to follow.

“I’ve heard about conditions up there from refugees, but still…” Kutz frowned as she collapsed in her chair. “Even if it’s all true, what makes boys like that tick, I wonder?”

“You’re seeing the shallow pool that is us, Kutz,” said Gil. “Sadly, we all have it in our natures to be like them.”

It was true that the Northern Empire had suffered greatly due to its discriminatory policies against non-ankha peoples. Their workforce had dwindled, and their strength had weakened. Things were so bad, they couldn’t even grow enough food to feed their own people, the high chief explained to Wataru. “There are formal trade agreements drawn between the North and the South. Only the agreed-upon amounts of food and supplies may be exchanged. Still, that does not cover their need, nor do the supplies reach all the peoples of the north.”

So northern merchants had formed alliances with treaty-breaking smugglers in the south and lined their pockets with black-market trade.

“But of course, this contraband entering the North is far overpriced, again, not reaching the hands of those who need it most. Thus, the refugees come.”

“So who exactly lives well in the Northern Empire?” Wataru asked.

“A circle of privileged elites,” the Highlander replied slowly. “The family of the current Emperor Agrilius VII, nobles, politicians, officials, and the wealthier merchants.”

Gil nodded in the direction of the holding cell. “My bet is that the parents of those two boys belonged to that elite class. That’s the only way they would have been able to raise the funds necessary to purchase passage to the south. Not too high-class, of course. Perhaps the father was a petty official of some kind. I would assume some venture of his didn’t pan out, and washed up, he found himself unable to stay where he was.”

“You’d think they would come here and absorb what was different from the empire in the north. Why can’t they let go of their prejudices?”

The official’s lip curled in a faint smile. “Not all refugees from the North are like those two brothers, you know.”

“Yes, of course, but…”

“Failure and disillusionment are realities, but ideologies are made of dreams. And dreams, it would seem, do not fade easily,” the high chief explained. “Those two could not find success in the North with its prejudiced system. Yet still, those ideas were burned into their hearts from a young age. Such things are hard to give up. That is why, even though they may change their location to the south, those same ideas stick with them here. Doubtlessly, they would like to claw their way up to being privileged elites in our land and repeat the same mistakes their parents made.”

“Stupid,” Wataru spat.

“Stupid, indeed. As foolish as the North’s policy of discrimination against non-ankha. Yet, Wataru,” the Highlander leaned forward, his voice still calm, “that which is foolish is sometimes far stronger than that which is right, possessing an uncanny power to move men’s hearts. And foolish ideas have always found easy purchase on small parts, hearts with holes, hearts like hollow, barren trees waiting to be filled.”

In the corner, Trone nodded. “We in the United Southern Nations, we Highlanders do not fear the Northern Empire. But we fear the ideas they bring to our land. Like a plague, they cannot be seen with the eye. But they afflict not those who are weak of body but those who are weak of mind.”

Wataru remembered the drunkard at the lodge, how he had said those things about Kee Keema, yet quailed at the slightest word from the little lady.

“By the way, Chief,” Kutz said, tapping Gil on the shoulder. “Think it’s time to tell Wataru?”

His eyes went wide. “Of course! I had almost forgotten.”

Gil looked between Wataru and Kee Keema. “Wataru, as a Traveler you have a great journey ahead of you. You go to meet the Goddess, yes?”

“Yes.”

“You will need funds for your journey, then. So, you must find a way to earn them. It just so happens I have an idea.” Here, the Highlander official grinned. “I was hoping you would join us. You would perform tasks for the Highlanders, and for that you would be rewarded, even as you travel. You can even use our branches in other lands to help gather information about the tower you seek. It is like two birds with one stone, yes?”

Wataru glanced up at Kee Keema. The waterkin’s long tongue went whistling out to lick the top of his head. He looked as surprised as Wataru felt.

“But, he’s just a kid,” he said. “Isn’t he a little young to become a Highlander? I mean, it’s quite dangerous…”

“Yet he has already proved himself on one case, has he not? I believe he is qualified. And you will accompany him on his journey, yes?”

Kee Keema broke into a smile. “Of course! I’ve just received the chief’s permission!”