"Thank you ever so much," she said with a bright smile to her pupil.

"Are you alright, brother?" Allia asked in Selani as Dar helped Dolanna from the room.

"I'm fine, just a little headache," he replied. "I think Dolanna took the brunt of it."

"I think she did too," Keritanima agreed. "It was about the same as being hit in the head by a cannonball. I can only imagine how bad it was for her, since she was the lead."

"Sorry," he apologized to Keritanima.

She snorted. "It was a calculated risk," she replied. "At least it wasn't a complete failure. I doubt we'll get you into a circle, but at least you remembered that part about non-humans. That's new information, and that's always good to have."

"Whatever," he yawned. "How are dance lessons going?"

Keritanima visibly bristled. "You have alot of nerve to ask that," she said ominously.

Allia giggled like a little girl. "She has the other dancers in a state of terror," she told Tarrin. "They're afraid she's going to pull out a knife and stab them."

"What about you?" Keritanima challenged. "Didn't you break Jak's arm this morning?"

"I can't help it if he can't land on his feet," she shrugged.

"Renoit's talking about making you dance instead," she told the Selani in a light tone.

"Fine. Unlike you, I find nothing wrong with dancing. I enjoy it."

That seemed to take the wind out of Keritanima's sails. She gave Allia an irritated look, then took Tarrin's paw. "Well, at least Tarrin understands," she grunted.

"No, I don't," he said bluntly. "But I'm not going to tease you about it. If you don't like to dance, then that's fine."

"Hmph," she snorted. "I'm going to spend time with Miranda. At least she doesn't make fun of me."

And with that, she stormed out.

"She'll never learn," Allia chuckled.

"What were we teaching her?" Tarrin asked curiously.

"That fear is there to be conquered," she replied easily. "Keritanima is afraid of dancing in front of people. Stagefright, I think Renoit called it."

"That's a strange condition for someone who lived her entire life in the public eye," Tarrin mused.

"True, but she was always in a position of control before, or at the very least she was on familiar ground," Allia reminded him. "This time, she must dance to the beat of another's drum, in unknown territory. It's an entirely different situation."

"If you say so," he shrugged.

"I do say so," she teased, poking him lightly in the ribs. "And I also say that it's time for you to take a nap."

"But I'm not tired."

"But I am, and I miss napping with my brother," she said. "I'm starting to chafe at the time they take from me to train."

"I don't mind. You don't have to be right beside me for me to know you're near."

"Yes, but we don't talk as we used to do, deshida," she sighed. "The loss of private conversation could make us drift apart again, and I won't have that." She scooted up onto the bed more fully. "Now make room."

Tarrin gave her a light smile, then shifted into cat form. She laid down on the bed without a word, and Tarrin curled up beside her. His head nestled under her chin, he could hear the beating of her heart within the vessels of her neck. He listened to it for quite a while, listening to it slow, become stable and calmed as Allia drifted off into sleep. The sound of that, the coppery scent of her, the very feel of her closeness was usually more than enough for him to enter a state of utter security and contentment. Much as he felt with Janette, Allia's presence made him feel totally safe and secure, knowing that she wouldn't allow anything to happen to him.

Closing his eyes, he began to purr. To him, there were few things better in life than peace.

GoTo: Title EoF

Chapter 7

The city of Tor was alot like home.

Tarrin and the others stood at the rail, looking at the port city as they approached. The city's architecture was dominated by wood, cut from the thick forests surrounding the city's stone walls and farms. Wood houses with thatch or tiled roofs covered the visible city skyline, with the occasional stone house, tower, or turret breaking up the wooden monotony. Very few of the houses were painted, the vast majority of them either whitewashed or covered with wattle and daub to protect the wood against the corrosive salt air. The result was a city of white and brown, the white of the walls with the brown of the thatch or the slaty grayish color of those houses with either tiled or flat roofs. Tor was a very large city, sitting in a very wide basin, almost like a teacup saucer, a depression in the land around the mouth of the River Tor, which bisected the city. The buildings they could see on the waterfront were all warehouses. Tor was a merchant city, dealing exclusively with the food grown in the breadbasket lands of the Free Duchies and sent down the river by barge. It was the sole reason the city thrived.

That wasn't the only thing to look at. There were many ships in the city's wide, undefended harbor, and most of them were military in nature. Tor maintained a decently sized navy to protect ships in its waters, but Keritanima remarked that they were rarely concentrated as they were now. Cargo ships, fishing boats, and flat-bottomed barges being ferried out to a wide sand bar to the left of the city had to carefully wind their way through anchored naval vessels.

"I wonder what's got Tor all stirred up," Faalken asked absently as they looked out at the city.

"What do you mean?" Dar asked.

"They have an army camped just outside their walls," he replied, pointing to the where the wall of the city descended right into the water. "They're flying Torian banners. It's a friendly army."

"And they've called in their entire navy," Keritanima added. "They're definitely worked up about something."

"We are certain to find out soon enough," Dolanna said dismissively. "Renoit said we would be here for nearly ten days."

The performers were somewhat puzzled, and not a little worried, as the ship slid into port, its ropes being caught by dock workers. Tarrin was in his human shape, using the meditative techniques that Allia had taught him to shunt the pain away to the side, to make it something not worth holding his attention. Because he looked that way, the other performers had forgotten who he was, or perhaps didn't consider him to be dangerous, and had gathered around his group of friends. "What's the matter?" Dar asked one of the gymnasts, a small, lithe young girl whose name Tarrin did not know.

"There's nobody here to greet us," she said pensively. "Usually the Dancer attracts a crowd at the dock, and we greet them. But there's nobody here."

"Maybe they have something else to worry about," Faalken predicted. "An army, a navy, and I don't see a whole lot of people moving around. Something's definitely going on."

Keritanima blew out her breath, then immediately looked at Miranda. "Don't start," the mink Wikuni said immediately.

"I'm certainly going to start," she said threateningly. "You still haven't recovered from your injury yet. You're going to take it easy, do you hear me?"

"I'm not a china doll, Kerri," she said dismissively. "If I've been well enough to dance, I'm well enough to do some of my real duties."

"Come come, my friends, just because there is no crowd to meet us does not mean we are going to just sail away!" Renoit's voice boomed over the deck. "We have a tent to raise! Let us begin making ready!"

Tarrin's position in the troupe had been redifined after the incident with the other gymnasts. Now he was nothing more than a deckhand, hired help to aid the circus in setting up and breaking down their carnival. He was confined to his human form when working in the public eye. He moved with the others towards the hold, but Miranda took him by the arm and pulled him aside. "I'm going to need someone to go with me," she said. "Sisska will be busy with the carnival, and you're the only one she'll trust to take her place. What do you say, Tarrin, want to be my escort?"