"Why would they pack jewelry in a crate and leave it in here?" Jula asked curiously.

"Exactly why you're asking," he replied. "How better to protect valuable goods than by hiding it in a sea of other goods? Unless you know exactly where to look, what are the odds of finding it?"

Jula looked about to say something, then she blinked and laughed ruefully. "That's so clever it almost makes me feel stupid," she said.

"This thing is in pretty bad shape," Tarrin noted clinically, holding up the battered old jade necklace. "Odds are, the man that bought it doesn't think it's as old as it is, or maybe not as valuable. Maybe he doesn't even know it's here. With so much stuff, how do they know what is where?"

"Records," Jula replied. "They probably have records saying exactly what they have, and where it was stacked."

"They'd have to," he agreed. "Or else they'd spend all day just trying to find things."

"What now?"

"Now, we leave," he replied, putting the objects back in the crate, and pushing the boards back into place to conceal his vandalism."

"Why not keep those?" Jula asked with a light smile.

"Because they're useless to me," he said simply. "Now drop your weave, and keep quiet. We're going back to the window."

The trip back to the second story was uneventful, mainly because the guards made so much noise that it was child's play to keep away from them. They were so loud that Tarrin had Jula lead the way, letting her exercise her senses to pick a path that would steer them away from them. She did very well, leading them in a very wide circle around the three watchmen, and back to where the ledge of the second story hovered over the floor. It was a simple matter to jump up to the ledge. Tarrin and Jula paused, kneeling on the edge of the second floor and looking down over the large expanse of stored goods. "How was that?" she asked in a whisper.

"Not bad," he complemented. "But we're not out of here yet. We still have a wall to climb."

That turned out to be no problem either. They waited for the single patrol to go around the building, then they darted out and started up the wall. Tarrin surprised Jula by vaulting up more than half the height of the wall and holding fast with his claws, then starting up as soon as he knew he wouldn't slip off. Jula gave him a slightly annoyed look, then backed up and tried it herself. She managed to hit the wall at the zenith of her jump, but her claws slid on the plaster for a split second, making her eyes go wide and causing her to gouge holes in the plaster with her claws to get solid purchase. He waited for her at the top, watching her climb up, and she gave him a hot look when she reached him. "Why didn't you tell me to do that?" she demanded.

"I thought you were experienced enough to think about it on your own," he replied calmly. "I see you still want to think like you have your old human body. You need more practice."

"This is new for me."

"That's no excuse," he told her. "Now, do you want to sit up here and argue until they see us, or do you want to get down and argue where we won't get caught?"

She gave him a hot glare, then threw her leg over the wall and started down.

After dropping off the wall, they darted across the open area and quickly returned to the rooftops. Tarrin knelt down to give Jula a chance to rest after their adventure, taking out the medallion and holding it up. "Get it off your chest, cub," he said calmly as the medallion began to glow with a faith radiance. The pull was very weak; the next object was some distance away, to the north.

"I know I must seem like a baby to you, but I'm not a child," she said in a growling tone. "I do know some things, Tarrin. Stop being so surprised when I show you that, and don't berate me because I'm not a perfect Were-cat female. I was human alot longer than you were, and I guess I have alot of what you would call bad habits to break. This isn't easy for me."

"And it makes you think about them when I bring them up," he said calmly. "I'm not trying to humiliate you, cub. I'm trying to make you think about things. And it's working."

"It's making me mad."

"Anger is a good motivator," he shrugged. "There were times when I wanted to kill Jesmind and Triana. You're getting nothing different than what I got myself." He stood up. "After we're done tonight, we're going to have a very long talk. You're going to tell me anything I want to know, and just to warn you, I'm going to ask some very personal questions."

"Why?"

"So I can get to know you better," he replied calmly. "So I won't be surprised when you show me you're not a child. I haven't done it yet because I wanted you to get a little bit more comfortable with me. Some of the answers aren't going to be what you'd say to anyone other than a husband. And maybe not even him."

Jula flushed slightly. "That personal?"

"More personal than that," he affirmed. "When Jesmind did it to me, I considered dying before answering her a few times. But then again, it probably won't be that bad for you."

"Why not?"

"Well, you're older than I was," he said absently. "You're a mature woman, so it's probably a very good bet that you're not a virgin."

Jula blushed furiously. But the remark caused her scent to shift, shift quickly, telling him that she was probably realizing what he had been smelling the whole time. She was coming into the peak of her estress, and that was making her very interested in him.

"I'm not going to grill you about your sexual history, like Jesmind did to me. I think she did that just to see how she could best go about seducing me, though," he said, tapping his chin absently. "Jesmind had what you'd call ulterior motives, from the very start. Anyway, all I really need to know is how connected you are with your sexuality. It's something that impacts what I have to teach you."

Jula laughed nervously. "You are going to teach me about sex."

"No. I'm going to teach you about the social customs of our own kind," he replied immediately. "And some of those are customs involving mating. We'll go into that later, though," he said. "I can see that talking about that with a male disturbs you. Probably because you're still feeling instinctual attraction."

"How do you know that?" she demanded, blushing again.

"The first thing you did when I said you're not a virgin is blush. The second thing was advertise your availability with your scent. I told you before, cub, you can't hide that. I can even tell that you're coming into your cycle of fertility, and that's part of the reason why you're feeling the way you do. You've been exuding that all night, whether you know it or not. To use a crude term, you're in heat, Jula. You'll learn all about those things when I explain how Were-cats interact socially, and you get a better understanding of your Were half."

"Well, I feel, exposed," she said hesitantly, sitting down on the raised ledge that served as a guardrail to keep people from walking off the edge of the roof.

"Welcome to reality, Jula," he told her. "You're not in a private world anymore. None of us are. Our scents give away a great deal of what a human would consider private. I can smell it when you're aroused. I can smell it when you're angry, or frightened, or even when you're happy. I can even smell it when you lie. Your scent gives away many things that you used to be able to hide from other humans. Because we live in a race of beings who can't hide things from each other, it makes us very open. That's probably one reason why the Were-cats seem so moody or irrational. They just don't hide their feelings, because in our own society, there's no reason to do it."

He sat down beside her. "Another thing you're going to find out is that we don't hold things against each other," he told her. "Since we can see into the emotions of others, what they feel doesn't impact us as greatly as it would a human who had such knowledge. We all know that we're rather mercurial in that regard. Were-cats in general are pretty emotional, but we're a bit flaky, to use an easy term. What we felt before doesn't really matter. It has to do with our instincts. When they're stonger, you'll understand. The past doesn't really matter to us. What we feel one day is nothing like what we feel the next, and what we felt yesterday usually doesn't matter. So if I got angry with a Were-cat, she wouldn't immediately hate me. She knows I'll get over it. And after I do, it's like it never happened."