Kaz flicked a glance at the humans, who were still trying to get more information from Doran. When he looked back at Kyla, however, she shook her head firmly. No, she didn’t want to tell them.
He was torn. On the one hand, he and Lianhua had talked about this. Letting someone know what you were doing could be the only reason you survived the consequences of your actions. They needed to trust each other.
On the other hand, Kyla had already taken off without him once, and he had a feeling that she would have done so again if he hadn’t come when he did. The hole she was hiding was large enough for her, but definitely not for the humans. If Kaz told the others what she was doing, he would lose her trust.
So, did he choose his cousin over the humans, or the humans over his cousin? Whose trust would he betray?
Glancing behind him once more, Kaz could see that Doran was tiring. His fear had kept him going, but now his wounds and the long day were wearing on him. He would probably fall into sleep or unconsciousness soon.
Kaz picked up his charcoals and paper, carefully rolling the kit back up, with each tool in its place. It took a while, but not long enough, and Kyla was clearly impatient.
The end of his time to decide came when Mei poked her nose out of the hole, squeaking softly at Kyla. The fuergar was covered in dust, her fur brown and white, rather than glittering with metallic threads. She dropped another scale onto the pillow, and Kyla snatched it up. Without another glance at Kaz, the puppy laid on her belly and wriggled through the hole after the rodent.
Quickly, Kaz swung over the box, settling into the soft depression that was still filled with his cousin’s warmth. He, too, laid down, but found that his shoulders were too wide to get through the hole. He could see that it widened out further on, but he couldn’t simply remove a few more bricks in order to open it up enough.
Li landed beside him with a soft thump, and she poked her long neck inside as Kaz sat up again. Her wings jammed at first, but then she gave a fierce hiss, letting out all of the air in her lungs, and she slipped through.
That wasn’t what Kaz meant, but it reminded him that he, too, had a way to become smaller. He had only taken this human shape so he wouldn’t be attacked before he could explain who he was. The only humans around right now knew either him or Kyla, and he could be himself again. Preferably before his cousin and his dragon got too far ahead.
Sitting up, Kaz looked over the box, making sure that everyone was focused on Doran. Their backs were toward him, and all of the humans looked frustrated, including their prisoner. Kaz laid back down, pulling some of the blankets up to cover him, and closed his eyes.
The last time he returned to his true shape, Kaz had been clinging desperately to his self-image in the midst of a breakthrough in his cultivation. It was more accidental than intentional, but he didn’t think it should be that much harder to do it on purpose.
Kaz pictured his true self. His fingers twitched as he imagined drawing charcoal across a smooth stone wall. There were his long snout, sharp teeth, pointed ears, sweeping tail, and deep blue fur. The longer locks on top of his head fell just so, while his chest was deeper and not so broad. He drew in a breath, feeling the expansion of lungs that were subtly different. His heels came up, feet lengthening, posture shifting, and…
He opened his eyes, lifting his arms. They were his. Covered in dense blue fur, with large knuckles and thick claws. His shirt hung from his body, far too large now that he was a good head shorter and quite a bit less bulky. His pants puddled around his hips, along with his sagging belt, and Kaz quickly opened his pouch, removing the offending items and tucking them away. He couldn’t put on his fuulong silk loincloth without standing up, so he would have to start out naked, but wasn’t that how all lives began?
And, in a way, he did feel as if he had been reborn. He felt free for the first time in…possibly ever. He was himself, not pretending to be other, briefly and gloriously allowing himself to leave behind the expectations and promises of his previous self. It was a very peculiar feeling, but as he laid down on his belly, extending his arms ahead of him, and slithered down the hole, he almost enjoyed the scraping of pebbles against his stomach and the tugging of rough stone on his fur.
It took less than a minute to make his way through the tight passage, in spite of the fact that he could barely move his arms or bend his legs. Never once did he get the terrible, remembered feeling of the stone closing in on him, crushing his heart and stealing his breath. Was that because he knew he was stronger than when he was a young pup, crawling through an endless tunnel, or because he knew he wasn’t alone?
A hand clasped his as the passage widened, Kyla grunting as she tugged him out. To his surprise, Li didn’t hiss or snap at his cousin, nor did she complain when Mei emerged from a nearby tunnel and then came over to sniff at each of them, including the dragon.
Kyla didn’t even look surprised to see that he’d returned to his proper shape. Perhaps she’d realized that the only way he would fit was if he changed forms. Her tail wagged as she gave the fuergar a bit of something crumbly and yellow, and in exchange, Mei dropped yet another of the scales. This one was black, rather than red, and it was noticeably rounder than the first two. Were there more than one kind of xiyi?
“Where are we going?” Kaz asked, looking around. It was obvious that the fuergar had been working hard, because the familiar grooves of teeth-marks were visible everywhere. The passage through which they’d crawled looked to have been created entirely by the rodent, passing as it did through solid stone, but the other tunnels had originally been formed of some kind of shaped brick, curving up to create an arch over the foul-smelling crust on the ground.
Kyla shrugged, looking at Mei. “We follow her.”
And so they did. Kaz carried Li whenever he could. Some of the tunnels were too small for this, however, and the dragon was forced to walk, leading to a long litany of complaints about the smell and the feel of the dried gunk crackling between her toes and collecting in the grooves of her scales.
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“I think these tunnels haven’t been used in a long time,” Kaz said as they finally came to the end of that passage. More of Mei’s work was visible here, where the fuergar had had to chew away an area where the bricks had broken apart, blocking the tunnel.
Thinking he was speaking to her, Kyla nodded agreement. “The other sewers were wet, even before the rain. Things dripped down onto us, and everything was fresh.” Her nose wrinkled in disgust. “This is much better.”
“Do you think this part is connected to the other?” he asked, and she shook her head.
“The rain didn’t get in here. These are blocked off or separate.” She looked around. “Hopefully that means there are no salamanders or stone lizards here.”
It took Kaz a moment to realize that ‘stone lizard’ must be another name for the mana-filled reptiles who came through the incursion, and then he halted mid-step. “You had to fight those beasts?”
Kyla shuddered. “They were everywhere after the flood. They got washed down into the sewer, just like the salamanders. The salamanders drowned, though. The stone lizards just got hungry.”
Kyla, Mei, and the human females had been through more than Kaz realized. His arms tightened around Li. “I’m glad you’re safe,” he told his cousin, his tail tucking down behind him. It was good to be able to express himself properly again.
Kyla paused, her ears and tail lowering in response to Kaz’s words. “I’m sorry I left without saying anything. I thought it would be like when I explored the Deep alone. I thought I could handle it. I was wrong.”
By the last words, she was almost whimpering, and Kaz stepped up beside her. Leaning in, closer than he usually liked to get to anyone, he shifted Li to one arm and gave the pup an awkward hug. Li even rested her head briefly between the pup’s drooping ears.
The three of them stood in silent rapport for a moment, before something else occurred to Kaz. He pulled back, staring at his cousin. More precisely, staring into his cousin. Her core was bright, red almost overwhelming the subtle notes of yellow and blue, just as it had when last he looked.
“The salamanders had cores. All of them,” he said. “Did you-?” He couldn’t bring himself to ask, even knowing that he himself had given in and eaten one of their cores, and it hadn’t harmed him.
Kyla’s shoulders tensed. “I didn’t know they all had cores. I only found one. I…” Her voice trailed off, and then she shrugged off the remains of her pack, swinging it around so she could take out a small package, neatly wrapped in the same kind of oiled cloth that had protected the jejing moss. Her fingers trembled as she opened it, revealing a round red stone that burned brightly in her palm.
“Father said not to eat them. That pups were too weak, and would lose the battle with the beast within. It didn’t make any sense,” she said, eyeing the thing hungrily.
Kaz, too, felt the pull, but somehow it wasn’t nearly as strong as it had been before. Was that because he was more powerful, or because he’d already eaten one? He reached out and curled Kyla’s fingers around the salamander’s core.
“I think he was right, but also not right,” he told her, remembering his own experience. What had Heishe said? “The flames are yours, to do with as you will. Take them in. Don’t fight them, or one of you will lose. There is no battle, only ki.”
Kyla stared at him. “What does that mean?”
He chuckled, but Li let out a little hiss of agreement.
Kaz looked between both of them. “I think it means that we’re fighting a battle we were never meant to win,” he said slowly. “Because we were never meant to fight. I’m still figuring out how this world works, but one thing I’m almost certain of is that it’s all supposed to work together. I don’t know how or why it became a battle instead of a cycle, but the power inside that core is already yours as much as it is anyone’s, which is not at all.”
“That… makes no sense,” his cousin said, hands on her hips as she mock-growled at him.
He laughed. “I know.”
They all turned as Mei squeaked at them. The fuergar was staring out of the next tunnel, her nose quivering above a bright gold disc. Instead of a scale, this time she had a coin.
Kaz crouched, holding out his hand, and Mei came closer, dropping it into his palm. Absently, he dug out an extra skewer he’d stashed away in his pouch. Pulling off a piece of meat, he gave it to Mei, then handed the rest to Li. The dragon and the fuergar looked adorably similar as they both clutched their treats in the little paws, but Kaz kept that thought very carefully tucked away in the back of his mind. Li most definitely would not approve.
“Do you have any more?” Kyla asked, and he looked up to see that she was all but drooling, her eyes huge and locked onto the skewer. “Adara only ever brought bread, cheese, and dried meat. It was good, but that looks even better.”
Kaz’s tail swept across the dirty ground behind him as he straightened. Opening his pouch, he removed another skewer, then a third. This one was dropped by a human walking in front of him, who chose not to pick it up again. Kaz had sniffed it, and it seemed fine, so it joined the rest of the random things that had gone into his storage item since he entered the city.
Kyla accepted the first skewer, and Kaz kept the one that had been dropped. He brushed away a few pieces of dirt and bit into it. Yes, it was perfectly edible, and still warm, thanks to the power of his pouch.
“Does Mei bring back many of these coins?” Kaz asked, holding it in his free hand. Which wasn’t so free, actually, because Li was perched on the attached arm, and the dragon was done with her own food, leaving her looking for more. She was already eyeing the gold disc greedily.
Kyla shrugged and nodded, tearing off another chunk of meat. She chewed, then swallowed hard before saying, “Four or five, I think. I lost track after she started bringing scales.”
Kaz distracted the dragon with the last bite of his skewer, and switched hands. Lifting the coin, he turned it. If the memories he’d regained of his early life were accurate, he was once able to tell different kinds of metal apart by smell, and perhaps a bit of that ability was returning as his ki shifted and grew, because he sneezed as a sweet, mellow scent reached him.
“I think this is an Imperial coin, not a Holiander groat,” he said. “The Imperial coins are almost pure gold, while the groats-”
“Have five percent silver, with anywhere from ten to fifteen percent copper,” his cousin told him. At his look, she shrugged. “I’d never seen a coin before, but Ija made sure I knew what they were, and there are drawings in some of the chiefs’ books. Ija said humans like the coins we make, because they only have enough silver in them so they won’t bend.”
“We make coins?” Kaz asked, caught off guard by this revelation.
Kyla’s tongue lolled in amusement. “We’ll make anything, as long as the trade is good. We haven’t bothered with these since the mountain was closed, though.”
That…made sense.
Mei squeaked impatiently, and they turned to look in her direction again. The fuergar was staring at them, and everything from her quivering whiskers to her uplifted paw said she was ready to go whenever they were ready to follow.
Kaz glanced back at the passage behind them. There was no sign anyone was following them, not yet, but he couldn’t delay them any longer. He nodded to the fuergar, and she skittered into the shadows of the next tunnel.