The Age of Undeath

7. Cat save the Queen - Stariel

Her brain screamed at her to get up and run. This was her chance. The avishkar's beak hung open, his eyes wide and luminous in the dim light. Stariel reckoned he was in shock. He would not stop her. Blood spread further into the expensive rug, a black creeping shadow that the fibres drank until saturated. The stains would never wash out.

Despite fantasising about killing Clémence Duval all week, Stariel had not pictured something so brutal or unceremonious. It would have been a dramatic execution, one filled with witty speeches and a declaration that she was reclaiming the house for the elves. With one deep cut or thrust to the heart, she would have ended it, and the servants would cheer and the butler would look sick with dread as he realised how terribly he'd treated his sovereign...

With her last trembling breath, Clémence twitched her arm across the rug, reaching for the open door and staring into the corridor beyond. She didn't reach very far before the convulsions ceased and her final, burbling gasp faded into silence.

"Get up, now!" Stariel flinched from the ethereal cat that popped into existence right before her eyes. Melora's sharp voice cleared the fog clouding her senses. Commotion filled the corridor. A nobleman in a satin-stitched doublet hurled into the study, his eyes bulging as he registered Clémence's lifeless form.

"You murderer!" the nobleman rounded on the avishkar and Stariel staggered off the cold floor. The window was still ajar. Clanking footsteps resounded from the street below – City Watch running somewhere. Could it be here, already?

Melora stood on the sill, her tail lashing through the wall like it was made of air. Stariel heard a crowd teeming towards the study now. She scrambled onto the desk; grabbed a fistful of curtain to help propel her across the glossy wood.

"I didn't kill her!" cried the avishkar.

Trembling, Stariel braced against the window frame and heaved. It shuddered upward. She smelled smoke outside and heard yelling. The dark garden path loomed twenty feet below. "You need to teach me better magic," she muttered to the cat. Slipping her legs through the gap, steeling her nerves for the coming shock, Stariel hesitated.

"What's a broken bone? I can fix that." Melora trotted off the sill, hovering on the other side of the windowpanes.

Before Stariel could fully stuff her torso through the gap, a man seized her cloak. Then her elbow.

She clung to the window frame, nails biting the wood, chips of paint crumbling against her skin. It offered no substantial purchase. The man tugged her off the desk and onto her feet. With her centre of balance returned, Stariel swung and kicked, throwing him off with relative ease. She tried one more lunge for the window, but her cloak snagged again. Spectral talons clutched the fabric. The avishkar met her gaze and she recognised the dread in his eyes. They were surrounded.

"I have her, Felipe, do not worry," he said. The nobleman who'd pulled her from the window stepped back, running a hand through his blond hair. "She is merely frightened. I don't blame her."

Melora pressed a paw over Stariel's lips. "Wait." She bit off her denial. As usual, no one saw nor heard the glowing cat, Stariel's patron Goddess – lady of the storms and mother of the wilds. The avishkar frowned. No doubt because all he could see was Stariel going cross-eyed and pouting.

Captain Vallen marched into the crowded study, her armour clanking. Behind her stood the General of Tucapon's military, his arm ensnared by that noblewoman again, like she could possess him if she held on long enough. When she saw Clémence, she shrieked. "Lady Duval – is she... She is dead! Oh, how terrible. Who would do such a thing?" She hid her face against the General's bicep. He raised an absent hand to pat her head, as anyone might their dog.