10 After the Chase

Somehow, my mad dash through the sleeping city found me wandering back to my family home. I didn't realize it at first because the crossbow bolts Seriin had embedded in the wall had been removed. I guess you don't get to be an assassin for the Serpent Empire if you don't bother to clean up after yourself.

I took a few minutes to carefully look around the outside of the building for a bit and see if there were any giant mobs of mice or shadowy Serpentfolk hanging around. I didn't find any, though there was a small group of cats and another group of rats keeping vigil. They seemed be watching me, the house, and each other equally. But neither group seemed interested in bothering me, so I decided to just let them be.

Satisfied that I was unlikely to be murdered in the next few minutes, I very carefully and very quietly opened the door to my family's apartment and slipped inside.

As it turns out, I was not nearly as stealthy as I had believed.

"What are you doing?" my mother asked. She was standing at the end of the hallway, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "Why aren't you in bed, Corvus?"

"Um," I said. "There was a cat outside my window." That was true, at least.

My mother shook her head. "I swear, you and animals," she muttered.

I nodded and gave what I hoped passed for a bashful and slightly embarrassed smile, before starting to make my way to my room.

And that's when my younger sister showed up. "What's going on?" she asked, yawning as she did so.

"Nothing," I told her. "There was a cat outside."

"Wasn't there also a snake lady?"

I froze. "What?"

"I heard something about people shouting about Serpentfolk," Dove said. She was giving me an odd look. "I think one of the voices was yours."

"Uh, yeah," I said, my eyes darting from Dove to my mother and back. "There was a drunk wandering around, rambling about the Serpent Empire."

"One of them sounded like a lady," Dove said. <I heard you and Sarissa and I don't know if I was dreaming or not, so please tell me.>

"Uh, you were dreaming," I said. I was trying to figure out how Dove had said that last bit without moving her mouth. In fact, now that I thought about it, her voice had sounded slightly off there as well.

…and, now that I really thought about it, something similar had just happened with Seriin hadn't it?

Dove nodded, but she didn't seem convinced. "You should both be dreaming," mom said. "Go back to bed. And Corvus, stop running out into the night to chase cats."

It had kind of been the other way around, but I decided not to bring up that particular detail.

"Right," I said. "Sorry mom." I quickly hurried to my room.

At the side of my bed, I finally paused to take a breath and see if I could process all this madness. My mind swirled around topics of cats, rats, mice, Serpentfolk, and strange voices. And then I had to admit to myself that I could not, in fact, process this nonsense.

"You should rest, Peacemaker."

I glanced up, and saw a rat, white with a black head, sitting on my window sill. "You doubtless have questions," the rat said, "but you are no use to anyone if you are too tired." <You will be the instrument of my rise to power.>

"What?" I started, but my words died in my mouth as the rat began waving its paws around, and I saw small lights dancing around it. And then I felt tired. So very tired. I collapsed forward onto my bed and everything went dark.