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CHAPTER

Sixty-Six

T HE FOX WAS sitting on a camp bed in the medical tent. There was nothing wrong with it, but it had smelled food, more specifically chicken soup. It was on its fourth bowl. “Another,” it said to a passing nurse.

She frowned her disapproval. “That’s your last one, Contender Ballari. You’ll make yourself ill.”

The Fox gave her a look that would haunt her for the rest of her life. “Thank you,” it called after her, as she ran away crying. Manners were important. It licked the bowl clean. “I knew a bowl once,” it remembered, nostalgically. “What adventures we had. Did I ever tell you of my friend the bowl, Ishmahir?”

The Fox abbot was sitting on a high stool, a few feet away. His hood was down, but his hands had disappeared into his sleeves, as he clutched himself around his pudgy middle. There was a conversation they should be having, about the Dragon Trial, and Ruko becoming emperor, and what they should do about it. Ten minutes ago, Fort had entered the medical tent in a fury. “So it’s true—you abandoned the Trial, you piece of—”

And then he had stopped, abruptly. Beneath the lantern light, the creature he had mistaken for Cain was suffused with an eerie copper glow. Shadows distorted its features, sharpening its cheekbones. “I would not take that tone with me,” it said softly, “if I were you. Ishmahir.”

Fort had stumbled to this stool, and not spoken another word since. He had watched this thing that was not Cain. How it lifted its nose to smell the air, when someone new entered the tent. How it studied them with a keen and hungry eye, while rambling apparent nonsense. Always that one keen, hungry eye.

The Fox was still reminiscing. “It was a magic bowl. If you dropped it on the floor, it didn’t break, except when it did. We were great friends.” A melancholy sigh.

Fort took a swig from his hip flask. The drunker he was, the more sense this made. Acceptance. Acceptance was key.

The nurse returned with a fresh bowl. She was shaking as she handed it over. The Fox breathed in the soup steam. “You bring me food. This pleases me, tiny trembling friend of the Ox. Go well, go well.”

The nurse backed up, and ran.

Fort swallowed another mouthful of whisky, and found his tongue at last. “You called me Ishmahir.” No one had called him that in decades. “What may I call you?”

The Fox drank its soup. It was humming a familiar tune. I am the wedding without a bride, I am the box with nothing inside. Nobody trusts me, what do I care? Look in the mirror, I am not there. Who am I? Who am I?

I am the Fox.

Fort dropped from his stool to the floor. “Welcome, great one.” He pressed his forehead to the floor.

The Fox found this adorable. But it had just remembered a serious matter it needed to discuss. A matter of great urgency. “My altar, Ishmahir.”

Fort dared to look up. “You are not pleased with it, my Guardian?”

The Fox was not pleased, not at all. “Too much incense, too much gold. Too many flowers. Not enough chickens. There were no chickens on my altar, Ishmahir. I looked, I searched very hard.”

Fort prostrated himself. “Forgive me, great one. From this day, your altar will be piled high with chickens.”

“How wonderfully chaotic,” the Fox said, instantly appeased. “On a secondary matter, I sniff trouble ahead. For you and for this world. You must hide.”

Fort sat back on his heels and opened out his arms in a kneeling Fox salute. “First Guardian, I am your abbot. My place is with you.”

This the Fox did not like. Clingy. “No. You will hide. I shall tell you where.”

Fort touched his forehead to the ground a second time. “Might I ask one thing, before I leave?”

The Fox clutched its bowl tight. “This soup is mine, you will not take it from me, I will bite you.”

Someone else might have been wondering at this point—is this the creature I have devoted my life to? But the Fox abbot would not have his Guardian any other way. “I would never take your food, Great One. I only ask after our friend, Cain Ballari. Is he… well?”

“Oh he’s having a marvellous time,” the Fox lied. “Don’t you worry about him, Ishmahir.”

“Will we ever see him again?”

The Fox bristled, teeth bared. “You said one thing, I answered your one thing.”

A very hasty obeisance from the abbot.

“Come closer, Ishmahir,” said the Fox, “and I shall tell you where to cache yourself.”

Fort shuffled closer, carefully.

The Fox pressed its nose against Fort’s ear and licked it, rather sweetly. Snuffled the abbot’s lank grey hair.

After a pause, Fort said, even more carefully, “You were going to tell me where to hide, Great One?”

“So I was,” said the Fox, and whispered in Fort’s ear.

It was an excellent hiding place, they were both pleased.