Chapter 34: Running away

What to do now? He had averted the immediate danger, but there seemed no way to explain his way out of this one. Considering several possibilities, such as killing them and blaming it on someone else, Kira concluded that it was time to leave as he was under too much suspicion anyway and had been putting his departure for far too long. Hurriedly he gathered up all of the money that he had stored under his mattress and placed it in a purse that he hid at his side before throwing on the warmest clothes that he owned. This was his day off, so he should be allowed out of the palace and with a bit of a head start, he could buy some food in the city before heading off, ideally with Cat.

Aura chose this time to return to their room. "Leaving without me?" she asked, stepping inside before stopping and looking down at the two unconscious bodies. Watching to see what she might do, Kira held his tongue, but she surprised him by quickly closing the door behind herself and turning to him, "Did you do this?" she said accusingly, watching him intently.

"Yes," replied Kira struggling to find the words, "I'm going to need to leave Ostermark now; so do you want to come?" he had been debating asking her to come for a while, but at that moment, it seemed unfair to assert that she couldn't, and so he made the offer.

"Sure," she responded, seeming to be entirely willing to go along with the situation as she got dressed to go outside and produced her own hidden purse, "How did you do that?" Aura questioned him, gesturing towards the bodies.

Guessing that this was as good a time as any to be truthful, he told her, "Cat and I are manipulators."

Hearing this, Kira had expected her to try and get some more information out of him or be shocked that he would keep such an enormous secret from her but instead she just seemed excited, probably believing that her chances of a successful escape had just increased. "Let's go then," he said, leading the way, and just like that, they left the palace for the final time with the guard on the gate cheerily waving them off, having got to know them over the weeks that they had passed each other. It almost seemed mean to leave the poor man there as they probably would be kicking themselves later when the apprentices woke up.

Once out of view of the palace, and with the roads still quiet early in the morning, they started running towards the north of the city where they expected to find Cat and pick up some food along the way. Around one corner was a stall selling packs of meals, and they stopped briefly to buy several for themselves. Their stop was so sudden that the same person that had been following Kira last week almost entirely stepped around the corner, expecting them to have moved on before making a not-so-innocent U-turn and disappearing again. "We're already being followed," commented Kira.

Now, all that remained was finding a Cat, losing the man and exiting the city - simple. This was easier said than done but, supposing that Cat might turn up on his own, Kira led Aura thundering through a winding set of backstreets, trying to lose their pursuer even as their footsteps echoed off the encroaching walls to give away their position. Rounding one corner, there was a dead end as the alley had been bricked off with a two-pace-high wall that wouldn't be easy to climb over. Standing their ground, the pair looked back and waited for the person to arrive, both bracing themselves across the several streams of muck that flowed past them.

When the man did come into view, he was a tall, mean-looking fellow with a chiselled face, and he had a red bandana covering the bare top of his head. Knowing that the game was up, he smiled sweetly and opened his mouth to question where they were going in such a rush. Unfortunately for him, he never made it that far because, flying past Kira's head, a small bird rushed at him and transformed into a wolverine before landing squarely on his face and maiming it. Before their pursuer could even scream, he was unconscious and hitting the floor with a load thwack.

"That was unnecessary," smiled Kira, unable to stop himself from feeling some satisfaction at Cat's actions; he also then added, "Oh this is Cat," to Aura, who took it well, grinning back at him because of what an adventure this promised to be!

Following Cat, who was now an actual tabby cat, they arrived at a narrow staircase that went up two floors and ended in a door that led into an attic. Pushing it open, Cat headed inside, and Kira guessed that this was his hide-out in the city. Before he could enter, Kira had to allow Cat some time, and so he held back Aura too, who looked at him questioningly until he told her, "Cat can't make clothes when he transforms." Thirty seconds later, they went inside.

It was a dark and musty space only lit by the light from its open door and through cracks in the ceiling that sent golden beams of light down, catching on the dust that hung throughout the air. To one side, Cat was sat on a low bed, back in his usual form, and, to the other side, there was a large, open wardrobe filled with various outfits. "Quite the mess you seem to have landed in," Cat said, breaking the audible silence.

"We're going to leave the city," replied Kira.

"Hmmm, can I come with you?"

"I was going to ask you to come, so definitely." Kira told him, relieved to have Cat with him even if he had already been fairly sure that the boy would be coming.

Hearing this, Cat got to preparing himself to go, packing various changes of clothes, and he handed over a couple of rucksacks to Kira and Aura for their food as well as clothes that didn't have the palace logo plastered all over them. "I won't look," he said as he left the two of them to get changed at opposite sides of the room. Suddenly, both were very interested in staring at the inside of the roof as they did so.

Satisfied that they looked like any other normal citizens, Kira led the way back outside, and they ran down the rickety stairs, this time turning off from them earlier and across several low rooftops away from the palace. Cat and Aura both looked to him to decide on a direction as they surveyed the sprawling mess of buildings that unfolded before them, with the streets between them slowly coming alive as the sun poked its head over the horizon. "We're going to go northwest," Kira told them both with certainty.

"Why?" asked Aura.

"It's away from Krinestadt," Kira immediately replied, although he wasn't certain if there wasn't another reason to go that way that was currently hiding from him.

Climbing down from the roofs when they became too spaced out to keep walking over, they jogged through the outskirts of the town and up a gradually rising hill that overlooked it. Once there, they had to take a break because Aura was not used to such vigorous exercise, having been locked up in the palace for so long, and she sat breathing heavily on a nearby rock looking back at what had, until very recently, been her home. However, Kira would not look back with her. The only thing that now concerned him was what lay ahead.