when she explained why she was closing herself off. I don’t like cages either, he said balefully, chittering in anger. They put my mate and our little ones and me in a cage, and then we were sold.
At last they walked through wrought-iron gates topped by the imperial seal: a crossed sword and wand, topped by a crown, wrapped in a jagged circle.
‘My uncle loves animals,’ the prince said dryly as the girl stared at the scene before her. ‘He tries to give them room, and the foods they prefer, and companionship. The ones that don’t thrive in captivity he sends back to their homes.’
She should have realized that the man who showed such devotion to his birds might pay similar attention to other creatures. While the animals here were contained, they had far more space in which to move than she had seen in the royal menagerie when she had first arrived in Tortall. Lions basked in the sun, living at the bottom of a well too deep for escape. A lively brook flowed through the enclosure, and desert trees grew on one side, offering shade from the midday sun. Chimpanzees raced around an immense cage equipped with a large, many-branched and leafless ‘tree’ for their enjoyment. On an island in the middle of a deep pond, strange, reddish-faced monkeys Kaddar identified as macaques climbed over and around heaped rocks.
Giraffes gazed at her solemnly over a tall iron fence. Daine couldn’t help herself: she went to them, hands out, letting the wards on her power fall slightly. Startled, the giraffes dropped their heads low on their impossibly long necks to lip her fingers and say hello while Zek warned them to behave themselves.
‘It’s all right,’ the girl told him, smiling as a young giraffe snuffled her tunic. ‘They’re grazers. They won’t hurt you.’
We don’t have anything like that where I come from, the marmoset replied with offended dignity. We have proper animals there.
Kaddar, who’d been taken aside by a keeper, rejoined her. ‘Has your king anything this good?’
Daine bristled at the smugness in his voice. The hot reply on her lips was cut off by Harailt. ‘Actually, we’re trying something a bit uncommon.’ He gave Daine a half wink. ‘We royal university mages are working with builders on a new kind of menagerie, a bit like this one, but much broader in scope. We duplicate the lands each animal comes from – plants, weather, and all; you see where the mages come in. When it’s done, within the confines of the royal menagerie, a guest will visit small pieces of Carthak, and the Copper Isles, and Scanra.’
Kaddar’s eyes lit with enthusiasm. As he pelted Harailt with questions, Daine wandered down the curving path with Zek and Kitten, out of sight of the others. Here she discovered a pit in which giant, long-nosed pigs drowsed in a deep pond. Their noses, shorter than an elephant’s but nearly as flexible, pointed towards Daine as she passed. Opposite them, a colony of mongooses watched her from behind wire mesh that enclosed a high and far-reaching mound of burrows. Beyond them the path took an abrupt left turn.
This last enclosure lay below ground level, inside a glassy wall four yards down from the girl’s feet. The area was less well kept than the others. A small pond lay near the wall, but much of the water in it had evaporated. The grass was brown-edged and lay in patches on bare, dusty-looking ground. The remains of shattered bones lay everywhere. In the back, lying out of the sun in a shallow cave, were three shaggy, spotted brown bodies.
She opened a wider crack in her magic’s defences, reaching for these strangers. ‘Please come out,’ she called aloud. A twitch of movement: three rounded pairs of ears came to bear on her.
You smell of cold places, one voice, commanding and female, said. You smell of frozen rain and pine trees. You smell of far away. Me and my boys never had a whiff of someone like you.
Blinking huge eyes in the sunlight, the speaker came to the foot of the wall. She was followed by two smaller males.
Daine wished she could meet the god who had moulded these creatures. There was a god with imagination. The source of the shattered bones had to be those powerful jaws, equipped with strong teeth. The least of these creatures weighed more than she did. On their fours they were tallest and heaviest at the shoulder, their spotted fur covering slablike muscle. Their hindquarters were low and short, but strong. Small tails sported jaunty tufts at the end.
‘They’re beautiful,’ she breathed.
‘Spotted hyenas,’ Numair said at her elbow. ‘From the grass plains of Ekallatum, far to the south. Night hunters, for the most part – see the eyes? They have the strongest bite of any mortal predator – it crushes even the bones of water buffalo. Hyena packs are matriarchal—’
‘Matri-what?’ she asked. Kitten voiced an enquiring whistle of her own.
Numair smiled. ‘Their society is ruled by females. Each pack is led by sisters.’
‘Sensible of them,’ Daine said, grinning up at him.
‘Excuse me.’ It was Varice. She bore down on them with a brittle-looking smile. ‘I’m sorry. These animals aren’t to be shown to visitors. I don’t know why the emperor keeps them, when he doesn’t even like them … Numair, Daine, please come back. There’s another part of the menagerie you haven’t seen.’ Linking her arm through Numair’s, she led him away from the hyenas.
Come back sometime, offered the female hyena. Me and my boys are always around.
‘I’ll do my best,’ Daine promised. ‘C’mon, Kit.’
When she caught up to the rest of the group, the prince led them through a second barred gate. ‘This is my uncle’s other collection,’ he announced. ‘Each and every one was captured and brought here for causing trouble for humans.’
Kitten screeched. Daine hushed her, but felt like screeching herself. The cages in this wide courtyard, none of them as pleasant as those for the mortal animals, held immortals. Brass plates on each cage identified killer unicorns, griffins, the flesh-eating winged horses called hurroks, and giant, lizardlike hunters known as Coldfangs. Here, too, she saw unlikely combinations of human and animal: giant, human-headed spiders called spidrens and centaurs of both the peaceful and blood-hungry kinds, the former with hooves and hands, the latter with talons.
To her surprise, one cage held a man and a woman with steel-feathered wings and claws instead of arms and legs – Stormwings. The male had a pale, intense face, aquiline nose, and fixed, hungry eyes. The female’s nose was hawklike, her dark eyes imperious. She had been beautiful in her youth, it was plain, and now, older, she was haughty and commanding.
Daine looked at Kaddar. ‘I thought your uncle was allied with the Stormwings!’
‘He is,’ replied Ozorne’s nephew. ‘The price of the pact with the Stormwing King Jokhun was that Queen Barzha and her mate Hebakh be kept here. Believe me, she would have caused as much havoc in Carthak as Stormwings have in the north, if my uncle had not made the alliance.’
Daine was trembling. ‘What do you feed them?’ she asked, shaking off someone’s restraining hand. ‘Do you bring folk in and scare them, so they can live on that? And these cages are too small. The griffin can barely open its wings.’ Kitten muttered unpleasant things in dragon.
‘They don’t need food, and they don’t require more room,’ said Varice impatiently. ‘You know these monsters don’t fall ill and die. Unless you kill one, they live forever. Would you rather let them raid villages and destroy crops?’
‘We mean no criticism of the way the emperor chooses to run his domain,’ said Duke Gareth. His eyes locked on Daine with a message she couldn’t ignore. She looked at her shoes, biting her lip before more rash words spilled out. ‘Daine speaks only because her bond with all