Chapter Twenty-One: Arrangement (Patreon)

The option of going to a place of Kalanthia’s recommendation, I don’t really spend much time thinking over. I don’t know anything about this guardian; I don’t know whether I would be able to ‘bribe’ him, nor if whatever rules he had for his patronage would be palatable. Nor, in fact, whether the defence he could mount over his territory would be worth the hassle. Plus the afore-mentioned problem of still being within the nunda’s reach, should she wish to hunt me down. So no, either I stay here with Kalanthia and her cub, or I keep going and try to find a place of my own.

The final consideration to add to the balance is if I did go off on my own, how would I do it? It turns out telepathy isn’t as clear-cut as spoken words, and impressions of images can accompany the thoughts. Although Kalanthia didn’t outright say it, I got the sense that the Energy geyser she talked about is in the base of the valley, on an island at the centre of the great lake that stretches most of the way between a river mouth on one side and where it escapes the valley on the other side.

In short, if I continue following the river, I will get into areas with greater and greater Energy density. Excellent, might be the thought here: I want to grow in strength and increasing the amount of Energy I absorb is a great way of doing that. Sure, except for the fact that every other Rex, Rover, and Ratatouille will be thinking the same thing. Kalanthia’s warning about not going too far too fast resonates with what I had already been thinking. So, if I wanted to keep going, I’d have to move away from the river, thereby potentially causing myself a problem down the line.

Thought through like that, it seems like my best option is to stay here, at least until I’m strong enough to get significantly closer to the Energy geyser than I could now. If I can guarantee my safety from the current residents, of course. So, in hopes of doing that, I turn to Kalanthia.

She’s recovered from whatever she did to give me that blessing. Given how tired she looked afterwards, I wonder whether that phrase ‘has bestowed on you a small part of her mighty will’ actually means she genuinely and permanently gave me a part of herself. If so, no wonder she’s tired, and that partially makes up for the fact that I’ve lost half my vision for the foreseeable future. Pun not intended. Still, she looks recovered now, or less tired at least. She’s watching her cub play with her flicking tail, but as soon as I shift, her head flicks towards me in a fraction of a second.

Those golden predator’s eyes fix on me sending primal fear down my spine.

“Um,” I start, a lot weaker than I intended to sound. Come on, Markus, I tell myself. If she wanted to kill you, you wouldn’t stand a chance anyway, so just go for it. “You talked about me possibly staying here… How would that arrangement work?”

In what sense?

That’s a good question, I admit, and I don’t really know the answer. Taking a moment to think, I try to work out my confusion and form it into words.

“You’re clearly a powerful predator,” I say, finally settling on bluntness for the sake of clarity. “I’d imagine there’s little to threaten you around here; why would you require a pact of mutual defence? How could I defend you?”

Hmm, a good question, human, she says finally, her mind voice sounding...amused? First of all, do not fatally underestimate yourself and overestimate me: I am more powerful than you, yes, but I still have my weaknesses. It may so happen that one of my weaknesses can be covered by one of your strengths. OK, that makes a little sense, but I’m still not convinced. Additionally, I might be powerful – my cub is not. That…is a lot more plausible.

“But when you’re with your cub, she will be protected by your power,” I point out. Maybe it seems foolish to essentially argue against my own interests, but I want to truly suss out her motivations – and the limits they would pose to me if I chose to stay here.

I cannot always be with her. For all my power, I must still drink; I must still eat. And taking her with me would put her in more danger.

“I see,” I say slowly. “So in effect you want a babysitter for your cub while you fulfill your own needs.”

I do not want you to sit on my baby, she retorts, a snarl that I can hear faintly in her chest heard even in her mental voice. I flinch a little at the sound, but remind myself that she hasn’t killed me yet or even made an attempt to do so.

“It’s a term my people use: it means someone who stays near a baby, either awake or asleep, to guard and look after them in their parent’s absence.”

Oh, she responds, seemingly appeased. I have not encountered this term before. In that case, yes, I would like a person to ‘sit on my baby’. I don’t bother to try to correct her. We both know what she means, now at least.

That adds a different spin on things: not only does it give me more idea of her motivations, but it reassures me that she’s not necessarily planning on eating me at a later date. If she wants a guard for her cub, that’s an understandable reason to keep me around. There’s just one problem...but I might actually already have a solution, depending on her.

“You say you have to go hunt – do you necessarily have to be the one hunting, or do you just need the food?” She eyes me for a moment, and let me say that that is a very different experience from a giant leopard – nunda, whatever – whose eye is not that much smaller than my hand, compared to just your run of the mill manager or union member. Even the militant unions.

I require sustenance. Where it comes from is not really important.

“Then how about I hunt for you? I get that you need to go drink water, but what if I could supply you with as many carcasses as you need? Then you could guard your cub.” She didn’t respond for a moment, clearly assessing me in some way.

Why would you offer such a thing? It it surely less effort to guard my cub for a time than to spend the whole day hunting for me. I can take down much bigger prey in significantly less time than it would take for you to accrue enough smaller prey.

“That’s true,” I admit, “except for the fact that I’ll probably be spending a lot of time hunting anyway as I need to grow stronger. I’d like to keep the hearts as well as some of the meat for myself, and I may need to harvest some of the skins or claws or bones or other inedible bits for various things I need to make, but the, uh, ‘lion’s share’ of the meat could be yours, if you want.” She says nothing for a long moment.

It is an interesting offer, she admits after a while. Perhaps we should make an arrangement based on mutual defence and non-aggression, and then try out your suggestion as an additional arrangement. If you cannot supply enough meat for me, your role will return to ‘sitting on my baby’ while I am hunting for myself. Does that seem fair?

“Yes, it does,” I agree. Actually, more than fair, really, especially as I’m talking with a non-human predator. “Though, I have one question.” She waits expectantly. “What exactly does a mutual defence and non-aggression pact mean to you?”

Perhaps a stupid question, but if I’ve learnt anything from years of constructing contracts – and by that, I mean writing down what the contract needs to say, and then sending it to lawyers to turn into incomprehensible legal-speech – it’s that anything not established at the start is game for unintentional misunderstanding and intentional misinterpretation. Not that I’m expecting this nunda to feel the need to jump through a technical loophole to do something to me, but I’d rather a misunderstanding doesn’t come around and bite me – quite literally.

Non-aggression: that neither of us should act in any way that intentionally harms the other, applying to physical, mental, or spiritual attacks. She took on a look that was distinctly amused. I will do my best to impress upon Lathani that you are not to be chewed or ambushed, but I cannot guarantee her good behaviour. Understandable, I admit, considering she’s a baby.

Not that I’ve ever had a puppy or kitten, but friends have had them; I remember one of my best friends at school coming in with long scratches on his hand. Apparently his kitten had dug her claws in a bit too hard during a game. Thinking of that happening with a leopard – or nunda – cub, even as cute and fluffy as this one is...yikes!

The nunda continues, her tone regaining its seriousness. Mutual defence: that should you encounter myself or my cub under attack, that you should come to our assistance to the extent of your capacity, though not with the expectation that you should die in our defence. She pauses for a moment, then looks at me with a cold, hard stare. And let me tell you, no one does that kind of stare better than a feline. That said, I cannot guarantee your safety were my cub to die under your supervision and you were to survive the attack.

“Noted,” I reply grimly. I shouldn’t really expect anything else: the whole reason she was suggesting this was to look after her cub. “So how do we ensure that we each stick to the agreement?” I ask a little tentatively: I don’t exactly want her to think that I’m not planning on following through, but at the same time I don’t want to find out at the worst moment that she wasn’t.

Have you never heard of a Vow? There’s puzzlement in her voice, as if this is common knowledge. And now she’s said the word, I realise I do actually know about Vows. The knowledge comes, of course, from that stone I absorbed.

Apparently such things as binding verbal agreements do exist in Nicholas’ world, enabled, naturally, by Energy. The Vow takes Energy to create, usually a fraction of the two individuals’ Energy store. The fraction is different depending on many factors, including the importance of the agreement to the two individuals, the power balance between them, and myriad others.

If the agreement is broken, either there’s a backlash of both amounts of Energy on the offending party, or the offended party absorbs the Energy stored by the bond in compensation – the choice is up to the offended party. I don’t know how the bond knows whether it’s broken or not, nor do I know how it stores it in the first place. Somehow, it just does.

Either way, although it’s not a foolproof solution, it’s a pretty good guarantee, as those go. Certainly more useful than some contracts which aren’t even worth the paper they’re written on – even when they are purely digital! That said, having automatic consequences which enact themselves in the case of a rupture avoids the necessity of courts, not a bad idea.

“OK, that sound like a good idea,” I agree.

I think carefully – is there anything else I’m missing? It’s hard to know what unknown circumstances aren’t covered by what we’ve already discussed because they’re just that – unknown. However, if nothing else, my experience has taught me that I can’t plan for everything, and that there’s always a loophole someone can exploit.

The fact is, the nunda feels that she needs me, and as long as that’s the case, I’ll be reasonably safe. And for her, it’s not like I’m much of a threat to her, though I could arguably be such to her cub. The threat of her vengeful retribution, however, will keep me in check around her precious offspring, something I’m sure she knows.

“So, how do we do this?” I ask, deciding that since my mind has been made up, I might as well get on with securing a home base.