Kira's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Kira reached the shrine before dawn. The carving waited under a cap of moss. She wiped the stone clean with her palm. The goddess's name sat there, deep and old. But the lines around it made no sense. The marks were a script Kira had never seen. She traced them with one claw and felt nothing come loose in her mind. She could not read the curse that ruled her blood. To break it, she first had to understand it. She sat back on her heels. Anger rose, then cooled into a plan. Someone in the valley must know this script. Scholars kept old records. The grandest house she knew stood a half day's ride off, a stone complex with a bath wing and a stable full of horses. Travelers said its owner collected ancient things. If anyone owned books on dead scripts, it was there. Kira copied the marks onto a scrap of cloth. She drew each line slow, checking twice. Then she whistled, high and sharp. Her grandmother's two blue falcons dropped from the bamboo and landed on a fallen beam. They had followed her through the night. She tied the cloth to one bird's leg. "Carry this ahead," she told it. "Let the scholar see what I bring." The falcon shrieked and climbed. Its mate rose after. Both birds turned toward the far house and vanished over the trees. Kira rode hard. By midday the stone complex filled her view. Painted tiles ran along the roof. A stable sat at one end, and inside stood horses of every color, a gray, a black, a brown, a painted white. They stamped as she passed. Her tiger smell reached them before she did. A servant met her at the gate and took the cloth. Kira waited in a cool bathing chamber while water dripped somewhere behind her. The servant returned, face stiff. "The master knows this script," he said. "But he will not read it for you." "Why not?" "It is temple writing of the cat goddess. He says to speak her words is to invite her eye. He wants no curse under this roof." The servant held out the cloth. "He asks you to leave." Kira took the cloth back. Her claws dented the stone floor. She had found a man who could read the curse, and he had shut the door on her. But the servant had slipped, and she had caught it. Temple writing. The script belonged to the goddess's own priests. That meant a temple had once taught it. Temples kept students, and students left records. She stood and tucked the cloth away. The scholar would not help. So she would find the place that trained men like him. She walked back to the stable, mounted, and turned her horse toward the valley's old roads. The script had a home. Kira meant to ride to it.