Raja Whiskerji's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Raja Whiskerji had three days of water and no idea where to point his paws. He sat at a corner table in the trading post, ears flat against the heat. On the table lay his grandfather's letter. It named the ruins where the sacred relic of his clan still waited, buried past the salt flats called Razorflat. No cat of his line had ever walked back out. Raja meant to be the first. The trouble was simple. Every story placed the ruins somewhere different. One trader swore they lay north. Another laughed and pointed south. Raja had asked six people and gotten six answers. Guesswork meant wandering the flats until his canteen ran dry and his bones bleached white like all the others. A shadow fell over the letter. "You're reading that wrong," said a low voice. "Those tales are bait. The flats eat cats who believe them." Raja looked up. The speaker wore a black patch over one eye and a battered leather coat heavy with buckles. A smuggler, by the dust on his boots and the way the other patrons leaned away from him. His one gray eye studied Raja like a coin he wasn't sure was real. "They call me Kasim Dune," the man said. He dropped into the opposite chair without asking. "I run cargo across Razorflat. I'm the only one who comes back." "Then you know the ruins," Raja said. Kasim smiled with half his mouth. "I know the safe wells. I know the ground that holds and the ground that swallows. A map lives up here." He tapped his temple. "It is not for sale." "I'm not buying it," Raja said. "I'm hiring you." The smuggler's eye narrowed. From his coat he drew a small creature and set it on the table. A dragon hatchling, no bigger than a kitten, with dark fur and glowing orange markings. A red bow hung at its throat. It yawned, and a thread of smoke curled up. "This little one eats twice what I do," Kasim said. "Guiding costs. Half now. Half when we reach your ruins alive." He let the word alive sit there. "If we reach them." Raja emptied his pouch on the table. Coins, a jade ring, a brass compass. Everything he owned. "That's all of it." Kasim counted it with one finger. The hatchling sniffed the ring and sneezed a spark. For a long moment the smuggler said nothing. Then he swept the coins into his coat. "We leave at dusk," he said. "The flats are cooler by dark, and the things that hunt by day go blind." He stood. "One rule. When I say stop, you stop. Men who argue with me are buried where they argue." Raja folded the letter and tucked it away. He had his map now. It walked and talked and demanded everything he had. It also answered only to a man he did not trust.