Marmalade watched him for a time, noting how high he lifted his feet and gauging his pace. Then, with a dart no mouse could have avoided, he dashed across the man’s path, yowling as he came. The man leaped in surprise, tangled his own feet, and came down hard on his hands and knees. Marmalade had already vanished himself. I want to kill you, he told the intruder.

  The man got to his feet, wiping his skinned hands on his trousers. “Just a cat,” he said, and then, “Just that damned cat.” He considered for a moment, then shouted, “You can’t hurt me, cat! And if I get my hands on you, I’m going to kill you.”

  He stood for a time, staring all around himself in the dimness. Marmalade had no fear. When the man set off again, he ghosted along behind him. When the man ceased glancing back over his shoulder, he waited a dozen steps more. Then, silent as the spring wind, he raced up behind him and shot up his back. He scratched the man’s face in passing, not as deeply as he would have liked, for he wouldn’t chance the man grabbing him again. The man shrieked and cursed and clutched at his face. Marmalade ran to the side of the path and crouched in the grasses.

  “You damn Witted beast! Damn you! I’m going to kill you.”

  Try. Marmalade invited him. Just try. He lashed his tail. He saw the man stoop and grope for stones. He wouldn’t find any on the grassy path. Marmalade growled in his throat. It was amusing to watch the intruder straighten up. It was even more amusing to watch him pretend he wasn’t sneaking up on the cat as he ventured closer.

  When the man sprang, Marmalade leaped back, but only a dozen paces. He crouched again, growling and lashing his tail in unmistakable challenge. Go ahead. Catch me. Kill me.

  The man was in a fury now. He sprang and fell on the place where the cat had been. Marmalade yowled victoriously and dashed away. The man scrabbled to his feet and followed, shouting threats.

  Shout all you want! Words can’t hurt me!

  “I’ll give you more than words when I catch you, you demon beast!”

  Twice more the cat taunted him and twice more the man sprang. The third time, Marmalade darted into deep tussocks of grass and crouched. But he was not hidden. He saw the man spot him, and he tensed every muscle in a desperate need to be ready. The man sprang and Marmalade darted back to where Pell had been as the undercut edge of the grassy cliff gave way. The man roared and as the earth collapsed beneath him, he clutched desperately at the tussocks. They tore free and went down with him, falling toward the rocky beach and clutching waves below. He shouted as he fell.

  Marmalade, heart thudding, ventured closer to the cliff and peered over. At first, not even his cat’s eyes could penetrate the deepening night. He could make out the white lace as the waves met the rocks.

  “I’ll kill you, cat!” the man shouted from below. “I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

  It hadn’t worked. The man hadn’t fallen far enough, and the earth collapsing with him had cushioned his fall. The intruder clung to the cliff face, glaring up. The cat was reasonably certain the man couldn’t see him. He poked his head out a bit farther to look directly into his face.

  Perhaps you’ll kill me. But not tonight.

  Then Marmalade turned and retreated into the deep grasses. He hunkered down to wait. He listened to the noises the man made as he climbed, slipped, and climbed again. The night was getting away from him; he’d have no time to hunt tonight. It was very irritating. He shouldn’t have to be doing this. The female should be defending her own territory. What was wrong with her?

  It was some time before the man slithered up onto the top of the cliff. He lay there for a long time, just breathing, before he pulled himself to his hands and knees and then staggered to his feet. He brushed uselessly at the wet mud that streaked the front of his fine clothes. Then he gave it up. “Damn you, cat!” he shouted to the open night. Marmalade remained still, and the man resumed his journey to town. The cat followed.

  The cat had been to town before. Sometimes he followed the woman when she went to do errands or work for others. She would turn and shake her apron at him and tell him to go home, but he simply hid and then followed her. Town was an interesting place. There were fat rats beneath the fishmonger’s shop. There were female cats, too, some sleek and some ragged, and all howling for him to come join in battle and then in mating with them. He’d made his share of kits for the village. And thus he knew that there were dogs, too. During the day, they roamed the streets, but at night, they stayed closer to their doorsteps, guarding their masters’ homes. As the man entered the village and the cat followed him, he became less than a shadow as he wound his way along the fronts of porches and through weedy alleys. Some of the homes and businesses of the village had wooden boardwalks in front of them, and they provided excellent shelter for a small animal seeking to remain unseen. The streets were mostly dark. Lamplight fingered its way between shutters to lie as bars across the street. But there were carts with empty traces and deep shadows under them, left in front of their owners’ homes. A drapery of fishing nets hanging and waiting to be mended offered him a long stretch of dappled shadow.

  He was crossing a street to follow the human male when a yellow hound spotted him. With a snarl of delight, it sprang after him. Marmalade fled. A wooden porch beckoned. Another very large dog slept curled in front of the door it served. There was no help for it; it was the only shelter close enough and he darted under it, only to discover that it concealed an older, collapsed walkway that blocked his retreat. A moment later, the hound’s front shoulders collided with the porch step as he thrust his snapping jaws and head under the planks. Marmalade flattened himself against the collapsed structure and found himself just out of reach of the dog’s jaws. He leaned in with a slash of razor claws, scoring blood on the dog’s sensitive nose. The hound gave a loud yelp and withdrew.

  An instant later, however, it was back and starting to dig. The stupid hound would not have to move much earth to be able to cram himself under the boardwalk and reach the cat. He was a large enough dog that Marmalade had no hope of winning against him in a fight. Yet fight he would. He stood his fur up proudly, fluffed his tail, and growl-yowled his defiance. He hated this, hated going into a fight he would lose, one that might even cost his life. Yet there was no help for it, just like his uneven combat against the intruding male. If one must die, one died fighting.

  He danced forward to deal the dog a slash across his face. But before his claws could connect, the dog vanished with a startled yelp. A moment later, the sounds of a full-fledged dogfight greeted his ears. The cat wasted no time. He poked his head out of his hiding place and then streaked away at top speed. In passing, he observed that the watchdog from the porch had seized the hound by his hind leg and jerked him out. Mine, mine, mine was his sole brutish canine thought. The porch was his, whatever was under it was his, and he would kill the intruder before surrendering it. He was a huge dog with massive jaws; the hound had no more chance against him than the cat had had against the hound. Let him see how he liked such a fight!

  He found a quiet spot in an alley and groomed all his fur straight again before he went on. The damn hound had put him off the man’s trail. Well, the night did not have to be entirely wasted. There were always the fat rats under the fishmonger’s shop to consider. He shuddered his coat all over, gave his shoulder one more lick to make one orange stripe match the next, and then trotted purposefully on.

  There were rats aplenty creeping about under the fishmonger’s, and even more nudging through the trash heap of the tavern next to it. He had just killed his third one and was eating the tender belly out of it when he heard a voice he knew, raised in an anger that was also tediously familiar. Gripping what was left of the rat in his jaws, he padded through the darkness to the front of the tavern.

  The intruder male was there, with a noisy woman at his side. “You have no right,” she was shrieking, but not at Pell. “I’m a woman grown and I can do as I please. You can’t make me go with you.” She was not the cat’s woman who fed and sheltered him, so he had little interest in her. Yet he dropped the rat and, under cover of the tall grasses along the side of the tavern, crept closer. He flattened his ears and paid no attention to the woman’s yammering. She was not what interested him; what fascinated him were the three men who stood in a half circle, almost ringing Pell and the shrieking woman. One was an older man, big but looking both tired and sad. He would fight, thought the cat, but without much heart. The men who flanked him, however, were hard muscled and narrow eyed. Their shoulders were up as if they were wild dogs putting up their hackles, and their feet were set wide. And they were glaring at Pell.

  The cat sat down. He curled his tail neatly around his feet. Hello, bigger dogs, Marmalade greeted them. He watched.

  There was shouting, but the woman remained defiant. It reminded him very much of a queen in season. There was the yowling female and the circle of males who wanted to claim her. But a true queen would have been slapping and slashing at them, daring them to prove themselves worthy of possessing her. This woman merely shrieked and shouted and stood defiantly behind her very poor choice of a male. The cat rumbled low and waited for the bigger dogs to attack.

  The oldest male seemed to be the leader of the three. They would not charge Pell and pull him down unless he gave the signal. Pell was clearly overmatched, and yet the old man did not take action. He appeared to be listening to what the female was yowling rather than merely subduing her with his strength. Foolishness.

  Don’t let her defy you. He tried the thought carefully against the man’s mental boundaries. In the dim light of the tavern lanterns, he saw the man scowl. He narrowed his eyes as if he’d just remembered something.

  She is yours, the cat reminded him. Not his. Don’t let him take her away with him. He has no right to her!

  The old man suddenly stepped forward and grabbed the woman by the upper arm. She turned on him, claws raised to scratch, but the man blocked her with the ease of experience. “Come with me, Meddalee. For your own good. You’re drunk right now. I’m taking you back to the boat so you can sleep it off. And tomorrow, when the tide changes, we’ll be going home. And by the time we get there, maybe you will have decided which you want more: this ass who has no future other than making more bastards, or an inheritance from your father. Because I promise you this, girly. You can’t have both. Ever.”

  His words took something out of the girl. Her fight faded and she pushed the hair back from her face, to stare at her father in blurry disbelief. “You wouldn’t,” she slurred out, but she did not sound certain.

  “I would,” her father asserted. He lifted his stare to the intruder. Pell was standing with his fists lifted, as if he only waited a reason to attack. But with his seizure of the female, the moment had come and gone and Pell had not acted. “I assure you, Pell. You may lead my Meddalee away from me and down a garden path, but my money won’t follow her. Not now, not ever. You’ve abandoned one woman and one child. And that for me is your measure, forever. I’m done with you. And if my daughter has even a fraction of her mother’s good sense, she’s done with you, too. Come along, Meddalee.”

  And that was it. The cat hissed low to himself in dismay. They hadn’t attacked the intruder male, hadn’t killed him or even struck him. He lashed his tail in frustration, then stilled. Provocation. That might be the key.

  She thinks you’re a coward. They all think you are a coward. They’re walking away and you’re doing nothing. Nothing. They’re right. You are a coward. You’ve always been a coward.

  “Meddalee!” Pell suddenly bellowed and stumbled forward in a drunkard’s charge. Her father kept his grip on her arm and pushed her to keep walking. She looked over her shoulder and cried dramatically, “Pell, oh, Pell!” But by then her father’s men had closed on the hapless man. They pushed him down easily. Marmalade watched them from the shadows, big blue eyes wide. But they toyed with him as if he were a mouse. When he stood, they pushed him down, talking and laughing as they did so. But there was less good play in him than there had been in the rats Marmalade had caught earlier. The fifth time he was shoved into the dirt, he still muttered oaths but crawled off into the darkness on his hands and knees. At the edge of the tavern porch, he collapsed and rolled himself into a ball. The two men looked at each other.

  “No,” one said. “He’s done, Bell. Let him go. He ain’t worth killing.”

  The cat did not share their assessment. He remained where he was for a time, pondering his own chances against the man now. But he remembered that the man had been faster than he had first thought. He recalled too well the savage clutch of the man’s hands around his body. No. There had to be a better way.

  He moved out of the sheltering shadows. The men were vanishing up the street. He went to where Pell was curled and sat down just out of reach. He yowled loudly until the man uncovered his head and stared at him.

  Coward.

  The man just stared at him, eyes wide.

  Get up. Go after her. Fight them.

  “Go away. Damn Wit beast!”

  The cat stared at him for a moment longer. Then he sprang at him with a sharp hiss and was pleased to see Pell cover his face with his arms. No, he thought as he trotted away. That one was too cowardly to start what needed to be started. He’d have to find another way.

  The woman was drunk and walking unsteadily. She was also weeping noisily. It was easy for the cat to catch up to them. Night was deeper, even the dogs were sleeping more soundly, and Marmalade trotted unseen down the very center of the road. He followed them as they walked down to the boat harbor. He did not like walking out on the wooden dock; the boards were spaced for a man’s stride, not a cat’s. But he was sure-footed and silent as a shadow. They came to a boat, one that smelled more of wheat than fish. One of the men lifted the woman and set her feet on the boat. She sank down bonelessly, bowing her head and sniveling miserably. A watchman came out of the dark to greet them.

  “It’s just us. Bringing Meddalee back.”

  There was some conferring, and someone was sent to wake someone else. Another female, stumbling with sleep, came out on the deck. The cat wondered if the males knew how annoyed she was to be given charge of the drunken girl. But she accepted the burden, dragging her to her feet and walking her into the boat’s house and down a short walkway. Unnoticed, the cat followed her.

  She took the woman into a small room and sat her down on a narrow bed. She pulled the shoes from her feet, then pushed her back on the bed and spread a blanket over her. “Sleep it off,” she muttered to her, and then leaned across her to open a porthole. “Fresh air do you good,” she added, and then left, shutting the door behind her. For a time, there were other noises, the sounds of men’s boots, the mumble of conversation.

  When all was still on the boat, the cat jumped lightly to the bunk. He poked the sleeping woman’s face. She did not stir. He leaned closer and bit her lightly on the cheek, as if he were rousing Rosemary to be fed. She muttered and turned her face away from him. Her graceful neck shone white in the lantern light that filtered in from the small window.

  There would be no sport to this.

  Rosemary lay down next to her boy but did not dare to sleep. Exhaustion buzzed her head, and she traversed the night in that state that is neither rest nor wakefulness. She arose before dawn, refusing to think about the crowing that did not happen. She had let the fire go out, and it felt very strange to rise and perceive her usual chores as useless things. Marmalade had not come back. Her heart smote her when she realized that; she hoped he had not gone off somewhere to die, and then she thought that perhaps that was for the best if he had. He had no home now, any more than she did, and no one to offer him kindness or shelter. “Eda take him into your heart,” she prayed to the goddess and did not think that she wasted a prayer on a mere cat.

  She decided to ready the cow for travel before she woke Gillam. When she limped out to the cow’s byre, she could only stand and shake her head at the terrible trick fate had played on her. Two gleaming new calves, red and white as their mother, lay curled together in the straw beside the cow. She had dropped them both in the night without even a bellow. The cow looked at Rosemary with placid, trusting eyes. “Good cow,” Rosemary whispered, and then walked away, leaving the door of the byre open. Pell would not, she was sure, put the cow in and out and bring her buckets of fresh water or stake her on the best grass. All she could do for her was to leave the door open so she could come and go as she would. Her thoughts were bitter as she walked back to the cottage. Had Pell never come back into her life, she would have been shouting and dancing for joy at this multiplication of her wealth. Now she was just giving her good fortune to a man she despised, a man who would not treasure it, and losing whatever coin she might have gained from Hilia.

  In the cottage, she rolled up one coverlet and stuffed it into her carry bag. She slung it from her shoulder and wished her goods were heavier even as she wondered how long she could carry them and Gillam. Her knee was swollen and thick. It didn’t matter. She didn’t try to wake the boy, but picked him up, settled him on her shoulder, and limped out. She left the door hanging open behind her. Clouds hung low, threatening rain. Not a good day to begin a journey, but her only choice.

  Pell hadn’t come home. Was he sleeping it off in the tavern? Had he gone to his parents’ house? How long would it be before he came home and discovered she was gone, stealing his son? When would he see the cow and her calves and realize that she hadn’t taken the animal anywhere, that she had simply left? She contemplated the climb up the steep trail to the cliff-top path reluctantly, comforting herself that once she was there, the trail leveled out and the walking would be easier.