The night watch guard's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The kittens came back up the tunnel one at a time, slow on the stairs, blinking at the courtyard light. By the time the last one climbed out of the hollow tree, they were full-grown again. Their coats settled. Their swords fit their paws. The guard counted six and let her shoulders drop. Whisper Thornpaw stood at the edge of the courtyard with the broken crystal in her satchel, waiting. "Your fine," the guard said. "I am lifting it. Play at the gates whenever you want." She pulled the slip from her coat pocket and tore it in half. Whisper watched the pieces fall. "Cold ground, warm ground," Whisper said. She offered a paw. The guard took it. They shook once. Whisper turned and walked out through the iron gates without looking back. The guard led her six to the stone post by the gates. She lit the tall floor lantern inside the door. Its star-cut panels threw light across the small room. The cats sat in a half circle on the flagstones. "New rule," she said. "There is still music out there. Not the harp. Something else." She made them listen. Past the second bell, a thin line of notes drifted in from the woods, pale and curling, neither close nor far. The cats' ears swiveled toward it together. "You do not chase it alone," she said. "You walk in pairs. You keep each other's lantern in sight. If you find the source, you raise your lantern straight up. The rest of us come to that light." She walked them through the route. She took them along the wall, past the hollow tree, to the edge of the moor where the drifting notes hung thickest in the air. The notes were visible there if you stood still long enough — faint marks moving on nothing, like ink in water. She marked the turning point at the old stones and the turn back at the gate. Two pairs would walk the outer line. One pair would hold the post. She had each cat lift its small lantern overhead until she could see the signal clear from the far end of the wall. The smallest one struggled. She knelt and adjusted his grip until the light stayed steady. At the third bell she called them in. They came at a run, six lanterns bobbing through the dark, and formed up at the post door. She raised the tall lantern from its hook and held it above her head. "Watch is set," she said. The cats answered with a low, even sound, not a meow, something closer to assent. She sent the first pair out. They went without flinching. She stood in the doorway and watched their lights move along the wall, and listened to the music she still could not name.