Page 38 of Xel: Broken Bond

Once more in a joyful mood – and ignoring the lingering thread of guilt I felt about it – I finished my breakfast quickly, then called for Bribie to follow me over to the cattery. Once the cats and dogs were taken care of, I dropped Bribie off at reception, explaining to Bo what my master and I would be doing today. There was a dog bed in the corner behind Bo’s desk, and Bribie slumped down there in a happy heap, ready for a nap after the excitement of greeting all the other dogs in the kennels.

I paused to watch him for a moment, and that was enough to get Bo’s attention. “Anything wrong?” she asked, glancing at Bribie.

“He gets tired very easily,” I said, knowing he really hadn’t done all that much this morning. He’d walked to the kennelsthen played with the dogs for a few minutes, and now he looked thoroughly tuckered out.

“He’s old,” Bo said, her tone sombre. “Reallyold. We honestly didn’t expect him to last this long. We do our best to look after him, and to make his last days comfortable, but he’s not long for this world.”

I nodded, feeling my scales ripple. “Thanks for looking after him today. I’m sure he appreciates it.”

“No problem at all,” Bo said. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

I headed off for the old barn, knowing I could check in with my master on my way past the new barn to see if he needed anything. Sure enough, as I arrived, he was in the midst of coaxing Huckleberry out into the field. The donkey had continued right along with his efforts to be as stubborn as possible, refusing to go out to the paddock in the morning, and then refusing to come back to the barn in the afternoon. Clyde was currently standing in the middle of the paddock braying loudly, as if calling to his friend to come and join him, but Huckleberry would not be convinced.

“Do you want me to get a carrot?” I asked my master, but he shook his head.

“No. If we keep doing that, it’ll only reinforce what’s already a bad habit. He needs to learn to listen without being offered food all the time.”

“Is there anything else you’d like me to do?” As I stood there, I casually reached up to grasp the support beam over the doorway of Huckleberry’s pen. Islowlydid one single pull-up, knowing it would make my biceps bulge, at the same time as lifting my shirt to display a strip of my stomach. Okay, so maybe I wasn’tquitedone torturing my master this morning. I lowered myself down and dropped to the ground, looking expectantly at my master.

“Uh… No, it’s fine. You go ahead,” he said, thoroughly distracted from his task. “I’ll, um…” His gaze snapped back upto my face as he gathered his thoughts. “I’ve still got to clean out the polvers’ pen, but that’s the last thing on my list. I’ll see you over there in about half an hour.”

Now that he wasn’t being asked to go anywhere, Huckleberry suddenly decided that he did want to go out to the paddock after all. He set off at a quick trot, causing my master to yelp and dash after him, in order to avoid being dragged along by the lead rope. I grinned and left him to it, heading up along the dirt road and around the stand of trees in front of the barn.

I opened the doors wide again, having noticed how much dust simply drifted out the front of the barn while they were open. Anything that meant less sweeping for us was a good thing. Then I did a brief inspection of the ground floor. There were some rotten planks with nails in them, and I decided it would be as well to remove the nails and stack the planks before attempting any sweeping. I’d need a hammer, some gloves and a bucket to put the used nails in, so I headed for the storage cupboard to collect some gear.

The instant I opened the door to the dark little room, I knew something was off. I’d been trained for my entire life to pay attention to small details in order to best serve my master – a dirty countertop that needed wiping, an empty packet in the bin that indicated an item to go on the shopping list, a slight frown that displayed dissatisfaction with a meal. And so now, I froze in the doorway, uncertain as to what the problem was, but absolutely certain that there was one.

I glanced around the barn, checking for droppings or scratch marks. Had an animal broken in overnight? I couldn’t see anything out of place, but at the same time, I didn’t think a bird or a lizard would be making me jittery. And it couldn’t be anything larger than that, given that the main doors had been firmly closed.

I looked around the dark room, then activated the light on my comm. Nothing seemed obviously damaged or displaced. The ceiling was intact, the tools were still lined up where we’d put them yesterday afternoon. I drew in a slow breath, trying to focus my senses… Oh! It was the smell, I realised all of a sudden. But whatwasthe smell? I couldn’t have explained exactly what the difference was, just that the storage room today smelleddifferentfrom the way it had yesterday. Something very slightly musky. But it wasn’t likely that any wild animal could have gotten inside the storage room. The door had been closed when I’d arrived.

I scanned the room again with my comm light, wondering if I was just jumping at shadows, or if I was imagining things…

I froze all over again, my heart rate doubling while I instinctively slowed my breathing to make it as silent as possible.

Sticking out from behind a stack of wooden crates was a pale blue foot.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

XEL

Moving slowly and cautiously, I reached through the door of the storage room, wrapping my fingers around the handle of a shovel. I picked it up carefully, so as not to make too much noise… though it was an iron-clad guarantee that the person hiding in the corner knew I was here. If they were planning on attacking me, though, I could only hope to arm myself before they decided to move. A shovel wasn’t a grand sort of weapon, but it would be better than nothing.

With the tool in hand, I stepped back, letting more of the natural light shine into the room. With the shovel held up in front of me, I couldn’t keep my comm light focused on the crates where the person was hiding.

Steeling myself for a dozen different possibilities, I said loudly, “Come out. I know you’re there.” It was possible that this person was just looking for food or shelter and had no intention of harming me, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

Nothing moved inside the storage room. “Come out,” I called again, putting a little more impatience into my tone. If theythought they could bluff their way out of this, they would soon realise they were wrong.

Then another thought occurred to me. What if the person behind the crates wasn’t so much apersonas abody? Had they been injured and crawled in there looking for a safe place to shelter, and then died from their injuries?

At the same time as I was trying to sort through all the possible scenarios, another question occurred to me. The foot I’d seen was clearly a light blue, perhaps a shade or two darker than my own. But the problem there was that I could only think of two intelligent species in the known galaxy that had blue colouring. One was the Halagals, and the other was the Vangravians. And the foot I’d seen was too large to belong to a Halagal.

But I couldn’t think of any reason another dimari would be hiding in our barn. Dimari didn’t leave their masters, and if someone’s master died – as mine had done – they were almost certainly going to cling onto anything familiar, rather than go traipsing alone across the countryside.

No matter which way I thought about it, I couldn’t come up with any reasonable explanation for the blue foot sticking out of our storage room.

“If you don’t come out, I’ll go and fetch one of the dogs. And then they can drag you out of there.” It was an empty threat – I would never allow a dog to deliberately injure anyone – but the person in the storage room didn’t know that.