"I heard what was going on, Dolanna, but we decided not to barge in and mess things up," he told her. "I doubt that two Were-kin on edge would be very receptive to party crashers."
"Wise as always, old friend," she told him with a straight face. "And I will tell you now. Haley's condition is among one of the best kept secrets in Dayise. That secret will not be revealed by us. Is that understood?"
"Aye," Azakar said as Faalken nodded.
"Is that clear, your Highness?" Dolanna called in a raised voice.
From behind the door of the room she chose for herself, there was an angry stamp of a foot.
"I am glad that that is settled," Dolanna said calmly. "Now, our dinner has arrived. Let us get to it before it gets cold. Tarrin, fetch the others, if you please."
The meal was spectacular, and the long rides living on sea rations made it that much more heavenly. Tarrin found himself competing with Azakar over who would get the largest portions, even though there was more food on the table than the entire group could possibly eat. Tarrin had forgotten what meat tasted like without a cup of salt on it to keep it from spoiling, and it had been since the Stormhavens since he'd had goose or venison.
After the meal, Tarrin lounged on the couch lazily as Dolanna and Faalken went downstairs to speak with Haley. The others said their goodnights and wandered to their own rooms, to partake of beds larger than rowcots that didn't sway with a ship. Tarrin missed the swinging of the deck, in a curious way. Such motion wasn't all that bad when one wanted to be lulled to sleep, but then again, he'd rarely slept in his bed in humanoid form. His cat form was much more comfortable for sleeping in cramped conditions. Now that he was thinking of it, he'd spent the last two months in cat form more than in his humanoid form. He found it hard to believe that there had been a time that he didn't know how to shapeshift. It was second nature to him now, something he didn't even have to think about anymore.
He worried about Haley. The Were-wolf was in a position to do some serious damage. He could call on the others, and they could come, or at the very least try to get here before they left. Tarrin wasn't all that worried about a fight with him, he looked rather scrawny and easy to overwhelm, but that possibility wasn't lost on him either. He'd rather avoid fighting with him, if only because he was a friend of Dolanna. That gave him a little respect in Tarrin's eyes. Not much, but some.
He wondered what it would be like to be something other than a cat. Wolves were fairly large animals, and he rather doubted that there were any wild ones on the city-islands. How did Haley stand it? Surrounded by humans all the time, unable to express the other side of himself. At least Tarrin could move about in his other form at will, being lost among the other domesticated animals. But Haley was a large predator, an animal that organized into packs that cooperated with each other. How did he translate that into living on the small island, surrounded by humans and Wikuni? For that matter, why was he here in the first place? A Were-wolf would have no business in such a place. Maybe he did change form and go out. Not to hunt people, or even animals, just to go out and walk around in his wolf form, pretending to be someone's pet. A pet that would turn heads, but a pet nonetheless. At least Tarrin didn't attract attention. He was just another cat.
Cat. He had to find a cat to replace him on the ship. He owed Kern that much for everything the grizzled old sea captain had done for them. With everyone in bed and Dolanna downstairs, he figured it was the perfect time to go ahead and do just that. It was dark, and that meant that the cats were out, searching for their nightly meals. It wouldn't be that hard to track down a stray black cat and offer it a permanent home.
Besides, after two months cooped up with the others, he wanted a little time by himself.
Getting out of the inn was as easy as going downstairs and padding through the crowded common room, then out the open door. Nobody noticed him in the bustle of serving girls and raucous patrons. After slipping out, he was loose on the streets of Dayise. They were crowded streets, filled with many Wikuni and sailors of every nation on the planet, and it was still well represented by merchants and other business men. The other business of the night was prostitution, and he only had to walk a few blocks before returning to the areas where hard currency girls plied their trade. But his business that night had nothing to do with harlots or merchants. The scents of other cats weren't easy to find, and he realized that the island nation didn't have a very large population of land-based animals common to mainland cities. There were wild cats about, but they were very spread out and not easy to find.
Tarrin spent a few hours tracking down the widely scattered wild cats, but none of them were suitable. The cat had to be black, and had to be large enough to pass for him. He found nine cats during those hours of slinking through alleys and winding streets, avoiding the humans and Wikuni, and none of them were the right coloration. He worked his way back towards the docks, finding another scent in a filthy garbage-strewn alleyway that had human scents in it as well. A relatively fresh scent. Looking up, Tarrin realized that the smell, masked by the stench of the refuse, was strong enough to put the owner of it in the alley. There was also a strong smell of blood. He hadn't seen any humans when he came in, and there wasn't a blood trail to justify the strong smell. But there was alot of blood near the alley's end, even spattered on the walls. Whatever had happened had happened here, and that there was no blood trail leaving said to him that the victim had to still be here.
It took only a moment to find the source of that smell, and the discovery filled him with a near rage. It was coming from a very young woman, barely more than a girl, who had been thrown into a pile of reeking garbage. She had been beaten so severely that he couldn't make out any facial features, and was still literally pouring blood from many savage lacerations and slash marks, saturating the garbage upon which she had been cast. Someone had literally tortured the young woman, whose clothes marked her has a prostitute, then left her for dead. Tarrin changed form and gently lifted her out of the pile, then set her on the dirty cobblestones of the alley's paved floor. She was still alive, but that would only be for a moment longer. She was nearly gone. Tarrin instinctively reached out and touched the Weave, and placed a paw on her bare, slashed belly. She had nearly been disemboweled by a knife. She was injured both inside and outside, broken bones, cuts, abrasions, bruises to her internal organs, one of her eyes punctured by the point of a knife. That someone would willingly inflict such ghastly injuries to a defenseless woman and leave her alive, letting her suffer until time took her from the world, seemed monstrous. Utterly monstrous. There was more, lower down, an anomoly in her body's chemistry-
She was pregnant! She was with child, and many of the injuries centered around her stomach. Had the attacker known she was bearing life? If so, had the attacker specifically focused on killing the unborn?
High Sorcery would not be held back this time, but it didn't matter. Tarrin's fury gave him an icy control that knuckled the awesome might of High Sorcery under, and without thinking about it, he managed to control that power that had always overwhelmed him before. Tarrin's paws limned over with the ghostly radiance that marked the use of High Sorcery, and he wove together those flows of water, earth, and Divine power that made up a healing spell, then released it into her. The girl's back arched severely as the intense cold sensation froze over the pain, but her slashes and lacerations stopped bleeding and began to seal over. Hidden injuries also healed over at an astonishing rate. Her eyes filled back in and repaired themselves, and her broken nose took on the shape it had originally held. Bone marrow was magically incited to produce the essential elements that made up blood, and broken bones quickly and seamlessly set themselves and fused. After the healing was done, Tarrin wove together a pure weave of Divine energy and released it into her, letting the power of the Weave itself infuse the girl to replace the vital energy she had lost in the healing. She would still feel exhausted, but it would be more of a feeling of exertion than the usual feeling that someone had sucked all her blood out through her nose that accompanied normal Healing. She was pregnant, and if he didn't replenish the energy she had lost, her unborn would suffer because of it.