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His evasive reply piqued my curiosity. “How much older?”
“A little older.”
A smile crept onto my lips. “Come on, Qita. Don’t youwantto tell me about your grand and impressive age?”
His tail twitched slightly beneath the covers. “I know what you’re doing, human. You’re tempting me.”
I shrugged. “What could it hurt to tell me?”
The cat rolled his eyes. “Very well. I told you my grandfather witnessed the destruction of the old capital?”
I nodded. “Yeah. That happened over a thousand years ago.”
“Well, that conversation might have happened because we were reminiscing about that time.”
My eyes widened. “Youwere alive then? A thousand years ago?”
“Don’t act like that!” he scolded me as the blanket was thumped with even more force. “I was just a kitten! Hardly more than twenty!”
“But you still remember it?” I persisted.
His tail relaxed and he shrugged. “Just bits and pieces. My granddad was reminding me of what happened to us as we escaped the destruction. Our. . .our human companions weren’t quite so lucky, nor were many of my siblings.”
His words sucked all the enthusiasm out of me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up painful memories.”
He had a faraway look in his eyes as he shook his head. “I would rather remember them than forget.”
I scooted forward onto the end of my chair. “Whatdoyou remember of that time?”
His whiskers twitched again as he stared ahead. “Flood and fire. Screaming and shouting. All of it mingled into a single night of catastrophe. The rising of the Thaqiba broke with the rising of the dawn.” He shifted beneath the covers as I watched the memories flood across his eyes. “I can still remember seeing them for the first time, standing there in the middle of devastation. The unceasing tide of water that crashed one last time against their barrier before it receded into the ocean, and all was calm.” A deep sigh escaped him and he closed his eyes. “I think I’d like some calm now. . .”
I was disappointed, but I smiled at him as I stood. “Thank you again.”
He wrinkled his furry brow. “I said there was no need for that, human.”
I leaned down and pressed a light kiss to his brow. His eyes were big and I swore I could see a faint blush glow from underneath the fur on his cheeks. “You have a big heart, Qisa.”
The cat shifted beneath the blanket and closed his eyes again. “Y-yes, well, that’s enough thanks for one night. Now get out of here so I can get some sleep.”
I slipped out of the cave and plopped myself on the overturned log beside Ben. He set his half-finished bowl on his lap and studied me. “You look as though you have news for us.”
I nodded. “And do I.” I recounted Qisa’s tale to me down to his age admission.
By the time I was done, Ben had a bemused look on his face. “I must admit I’m surprised to hear he was so modest about his age.”
“I’m surprised he’s alive at all,” Dak spoke up as he set about pouring a bowl of soup for me. “Somebody with knowledge I had hoped was lost put that poison on the dart.”
Ben lifted an eyebrow. “What sort of lost knowledge?”
Dak handed me the bowl and jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of his cave. “Knowledge only something that old would know about. Even my old man never found the exact recipe for this stuff, so potent and coveted was it. He scoured every library he could find, and some he could steal, to find that one.”
“Does it have a name?” I asked him.
He pursed his lips. “Aye. It’s called the King’s Bane. Nobody but the royal house knew how to make it, and everyone always knew somebody had gotten on the wrong side of his majesty when they died of that poison.”
I cocked my head to one side. “If nobody ever knew the recipe, then how could anyone tell what kind of poison it was?”
Dak tapped the left side of his nose with one finger. “The nose. It has the foul odor of death on it. Nothing else on the island has that scent.”
