Quickburned

Cats

A few months ago...

Fiera Kulasani, known as the Lioness, always looked to him like a chosen of Sol Invictus ought to look. Her eyes were startlingly yellow against dark Southern bronzed skin, what little of it was seen behind the veils hiding most of her face, and she always moved and spoke with more grace than he'd ever possessed.

Silhouetted against the late morning sun at the top of a ridge, riding her great ornery sabertoothed sandtiger and both of them glowing in burnished plate armor—well, she cut a far finer figure than he did.

"Raith," she called down to him as Dirt picked his way up the ridge. "You are after the demons?"

"Sure am, dove," he said. Fiera narrowed her eyes at him, but it wasn't "darlin'" so she didn't gut him where he stood—she hated "darling." "How long you been trackin' them?"

"Not so long as you, by the look of you. Come," and she touched a hand to the big cat's neck to turn her and led him down to where her people waited. It was a handful of folk, really—large for the deep desert, but only about as numerous as his gang had been, once. Camels and thornbacks grumbled to each other under the weight of their burdens.

He spent the hottest part of the day grateful under the thick shade of double-woven fabric, with the scent of mint tea and dates in his nose instead of beetle stink. There was even enough canvas so the animals had shade as well, where the camels and Dirt rested while the thornbacks soaked up the heat like sharp disgruntled sponges outside.

"We know where they go," Fiera was saying as the sun cooled and they roused from the slow drowse of midday. "The queen, as far as I can see, desires a spectacle of power, and what better display than to conquer the jewel of the South?"

"She's heading to Chiaroscuro, then," Caleb said, lifting his hat and scrubbing a hand through gritty hair. "Damn."

"We are not going to let her reach them."

"'Course we ain't," Caleb agreed, and he could feel the caste mark start to glitter dangerously on his forehead, and jammed his hat back down over it. "You got a plan?"

Fiera shook her head. "Beren will be back soon. He will have the information we need to make such."

"Alright then. Let's keep on that gal's heels then."

"We know she has Zalikar with her, as well." The growl which reverberated through the tent could have come from either of their throats—sand tiger or Lioness. "Zalikar, and a small gang of mortals. Desperados. Raiders. Misanthropes of other stripes."

"Zalikar! That little cockroach finally crawled out o' his hideyhole. Well, well." Caleb's grin turned positively feral. "Guess alla the monsters flock together. Let's see if we can't get 'em both."

There was a man with the group, pale eyes tinged with amethyst among the darker golds and browns and blacks of the tribesmen, and there was something about the way he moved. Something familiar, and half-forgotten. Caleb couldn't look away. More often than not, the man was looking back.

"You don't look like one o' her folk," Caleb said, that first night when the group settled down around a meal. Which "her" was obvious—Fiera glowed like burnished gold where she stood, speaking quietly with the fellow whose turn it was to cook.

They were close enough to see the glow of the demon army's campfires as a smear on the horizon; their own cook fires carefully banked and shielded. Fiera's folk, at least, were no strangers to staying hidden in war even if their leader drew every eye, and Caleb approved of their precautions.