[Belin]

Your Majesty,

Please accept my humble apologies for my failure in the market. Be assured that my next endeavor will not have similar results. The cause of your worries will be removed as expediently as possible. I hope you are not fond of leftovers.


The cats were gone. Farucan stalked through the warehouse at ever increasing speeds, in search of something to smash. “Rugs,” he muttered, “nothing lately but these idiotic rugs.” He kicked one as punctuation and was only slightly dismayed when it tottered and he had to catch and rebalance it as it threatened to fall on him. He made a note to have the thing burned the next day as unusable. There was some measure of control in this mercantile life, and there were no cats in it at all. He’d have to consider it as an alternative to his true profession. He’d had enough of this. He never wanted to see a cat again. Ever. He kicked a couple more rugs on suspicion of having cat designs and didn’t bother to catch them this time. He was in a rage.

He was not used to being bullied by a creature he could have picked up in his two hands. In fact, he had gotten out of the habit of being bullied at all, here where he was far from the king and outranked most of those he dealt with. Even the cats were only messengers, and beasts at that. But the demon was different. The demon had commented on his failure, a very serious breach of protocol in Harad, and one used only by those who wished to demonstrate that the one they rebuked was worthless. It meant an attempt that had not even been worth making and an interlocutor whose anger was to be dismissed. He wondered whether it had known that. Certainly everything in its bearing had suggested much the same attitude. “You must succeed,” he mimicked bitterly. Who was this creature to give him orders?

He was troubled to find himself upset at the unfairness of the rebuke. The fact that he had done more than could possibly be expected under the circumstances, which was certainly more than these miserable beasts who would certainly be lost without him had, was only relevant if he accepted the position the ghost had given itself as his superior. It was as bad as the king…and as necessary as an ally. His decisions had been rational, but he had not thought them through properly, reacting instead through fear and a reflexive tendency to respond to commands. He hated himself. But he hated that beast more.

He sat down to write another note, one he would send to his assistants in the kitchen, who had told him everything he needed to know. It would contain instructions not only for the heir but for a certain dish of cat food as well.