The Cat #5 by Jean Johnson

Author:Jean Johnson [Johnson, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

These are really good plans,” Akelly told Amara, eyeing each of the sketches the Shifterai woman had come up with in the last three hours.

"You needn’t sound so surprised,” Amara retorted dryly. “This is one of the things I’m trained to do.”

“I am surprised. You’ve managed to come up with some very good ideas in a very short period of time.”

Trevan had stayed with her just long enough to help smooth over the initial meeting with Akelly before both of them had left Amara to her self-appointed task. She had worked hard and fast after returning from the cove to find five different maps of the streets and buildings that used to exist, along with a goblet of a nasty, bitter, milky-white brew called Ultra Tongue, something that the youngest brother, Morganen, had insisted she drink. The potion was supposed to grant her the ability to speak and be understood in any language, though its most blatant effect so far was the very useful ability to read old languages.

It made her eyes twitch, but Amara could live with that, since it allowed her to read the local writings flawlessly. Being able to read that writing had helped immensely in her work. Having the original maps, replete with notations of things like warehouses, taverns, marketplaces, and the like as recorded during different periods over the course of several centuries of city growth, had given her a very good idea of what a coastal city needed.

Now, alone together in the main map room, Amara eyed the freckled outworlder. Her envy was still there, but Trevan’s suggestion about finding a new purpose in spite of his and his brother’s exile mingled in her brain with the suggestion that she try being in charge of the city-to-be . . . which she was already designing, admittedly. Now, looking at the incipient Queen, Amara gave in to her curiosity. “Would you answer a question, for me?”

“What do you want to know?” Akelly returned, tugging one of the older maps back into reach so she could trace some of the water pipes, or maybe it was the sewage system.

“Why did you abandon your world for this one? Why even come here in the first place?”

“In the first place, I didn’t have a choice. I was kidnapped out of my bed by Morganen.” Akelly gave her a sidelong look. She smiled a little at Amara’s blatant confusion. “I had enemies, in the other realm. After failing to run me out of town through petty harassment, they decided to burn me out of my home . . . while I was asleep in my bed. Morg saved me. For whatever reason, he was looking for Saber’s Destined bride in other universes. I was one of a handful of possible candidates. When he saw me endangered that night, he plucked me to safety. And then refused to send me back until Saber and I both got past our stubborn dislike of each other and realized we had a lot in common.

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