“I’d sooner just burn the city down,” the raven said, hopping and flapping up
onto Mriga’s shoulder as she stood up.
“A bit late for that, I fear.” Mriga looked around her at the smoldering
barricade, the scorched and soot-blackened faces of the surrounding buildings.
“The cats have been busy setting one another’s tails on fire, and not much
caring what else catches and goes up as they run around screeching.”
“Cats …” Siveni said, sounding thoughtful.
“Yes: my thought exactly. We’ll deal with one or two of them before we’re done.
But first things first. Where’s my puppy?”
Tyr woke up with the upset feeling that usually meant she’d had a dream of the
bad old days before the Presence came. But by the time she was fully awake, she
had already realized that this time the feeling had nothing to do with any
dream. For a few minutes that part of Sanctuary slammed its windows shut against
the bitter howling that emanated from the garbage heap behind the Vulgar
Unicorn. Tyr’s throat was sore, though, with smoke and her long crying the day
before, so that she coughed and retched and had to stop.
She lay there panting, deep in griefs apathy, not knowing it, not caring. The
garbage all around her smelled wonderful, and she had no appetite for it. Inside
the Unicorn there was the sound of people moving around, and from upstairs a cat
wailed an enraged challenge, and Tyr couldn’t even summon up the energy to get
up and run away. She made a sound half whimper, half moan, and behind it a
feeling that a human looking through her mind would instantly have recognized as