The Book of Night With Moon Read Online Free Page B

jumped down from the baluster. Others might retreat into unease at her job, or envy of it: Yafh simply saw Rhiow's errantry as some kind of obscure scam perpetrated on her proper allotment of leisure time. It was one of the things she best liked about him. " 'Luck, Yafh," she said, starting down the sidewalk again. "See you later."
    "Hunt's luck to you too," he said, "you poor rioh. " It was a naughty punning nickname he had given her some time back— the Ailurin word for someone's beast of burden.
    Rhiow went on her way, past the empty doorsteps, smiling crookedly to herself. At the corner she paused, looking down the length of Third. The light Sunday morning traffic was making her life a little easier, anyway: there was no need to wait. She trotted across Third, dashed down along the wall of the apartment building on the corner there, and ducked under the gate of the driveway behind it, making for the maze of little narrow alleys and walls on the inside of the block between Third and Lexington.
    This was probably the most boring part of Rhiow's day: the commute down to the Terminal. She could have long-jumped it, of course. Considering her specialty, that kind of rapid transit was simple. But long-jumping took a lot of energy— too much to waste first thing in the morning, when she was just getting started, and when having enough energy to last out the day's work could mean the difference between being successful or being a total failure. So instead, Rhiow routinely went the long way: across to Lexington as quickly as she could manage, and then downtown, mostly by connecting walls and rooftops. The route was circuitous and constantly changing. Construction work might remove a long section of useful wall-walk or suddenly top the wall with sharp pieces of glass; streets might become easier to use because they were being dug up, or alternately because digging had stopped; scaffolding might provide new temporary routes; demolition work might mean a half-block's worth of barriers had suddenly, if temporarily, disappeared— at least, until construction work began. Typically, though, Rhiow would have at least a few weeks on any one route— long enough for it to become second nature, and for her to run it in about three-quarters of an hour, without having to think much about her path until she got down near Grand Central and met up with the others.
    This morning, she spent most of the commute thinking about Ailh-down-the-road, the poor thing. Ailh was a nice enough person: well-bred, a little diffident— a handsome, close-coated little mauve-beige creature, with brown points and big lustrous green eyes. Not, Rhiow had to admit, the kind of cat one usually meets on the streets in the city; which made her unusual, memorable in her way. But apparently Ailh also couldn't control herself well enough to keep her scratching outside, though she had access to the few well-grown trees in their street. It was a shame. A shame, too, that ehhif were so peculiarly territorial about the things they kept in their dens. Being territorial about the den itself, that any cat could understand; but not about things. It was one of the great causes of friction between two species that had enough trouble understanding one another as it was. Rhiow wished heartily that ehhif could somehow come by enough sense to see that things simply didn't matter, but that was unlikely at best. Not in this life, she thought, and not in the next couple either, I'll bet.
    Just west of Third on Fifty-sixth, Rhiow paused, looking down from an iron-spiked connecting wall between two brownstones, and caught a familiar glimpse of a blotched brown shape, skulking wide-eyed in the shadows of the driveway-tunnel leading into the parking garage near the corner. This was one of the more convenient parts of Rhiow's morning run: a handy meeting place fairly close to the Terminal, where the ehhif knew her and her team, and didn't mind them. Not for the first time, Rhiow considered