The enkai sat on a plain cot with her cat-ears flattened tight to her skull and her tail jerking against the mattress. Iron cuffs at the four corners of the frame held her wrists and ankles. When the door opened she pulled her lips back from her teeth.
"Who paid the Guild?" Jean stepped forward. His voice came back at him from the stones.
The enkai said nothing. She watched him with golden eyes and a thin sneer.
"Come now, silly girl, take a drink," Sophie said, leaning down to hold the pitcher to her lips. "Just tell us who paid the Guild, and we'll keep you safe."
The prisoner threw back her head and laughed.
"Safe? You?" She lunged against the chains. "The next person who passes you in the street will jostle your elbow. He'll even apologise. And it will only be when you're falling that you understand it was a blade, not an elbow."
Jean stepped closer, looming over her.
"What were you sent to take?"
She spat onto the flags between them.
"Papers. Flat things. Letters on them."
"Little one." Sophie went down to her heels, levelling her eyes with the prisoner's. "You're young. Far too young for this kind of contract. They used you. They set you up to fall. Give us a name, and we—"
"#№%@, @№%#!"
What came back from the cot was a string of consonants that brought a flush to the cheeks of Sophie, who had led more than one expedition of rough laborers. She had never expected to hear such language in this house.
The enkai thrashed, trying to shift into her wild form, but Kali's invisible binding held her flush to the cot. Her body twisted, the cuffs ringing on stone, while filth poured out of her in a tongue neither Jean nor Sophie understood. The meaning was not in question.
Jean straightened. Cold settled into his voice.
"The House of Silver Secrets has put a price on your head. Did you imagine they'd let you live after this?"
The cat stilled. Her tail stopped moving. Then she pitched forward and laughed until tears stood in her eyes.
"The House?" She wiped her cheek on her shoulder. "You really think it's those rats?"
Jean's brow drew down. Sophie took a step closer.
The enkai went still, staring past them with wide, unblinking eyes, filled with a blind and terrifying certainty.
"You don't even know who is behind this," she broke into a fanged grin. "Your demon whore won't keep you alive when it comes for you."
Sophie stood up.
"Putting on a brave face, girl. That's good." She held the pitcher out. "But you don't know what they've thrown you into. At least take a drink."
The cat exploded forward, as far as the chains would allow, and spat into Sophie's face. Saliva ran down her cheek.
The air in the cell prickled. The skin along Jean's arms crawled. The fine hairs at the back of his neck stood up. Kali stepped from the doorway and slid in behind her spouses. A sheath of green fire took her, fire that gave no heat but swallowed the lamplight, so that the corners of the room ran dark.
"Enough playing with the kitten." Her voice rolled through the cell in a low growl. "She has shed blood. She must pay. Let her redeem the debt first, and then we will listen to what she has to say. To answer questions, after all, one does not need to be alive."
A wave broke without warning across Jean and Sophie. It was like plunging into warm black water that filled the lungs, ran into every cell, and dissolved the line between what was them and what was asleep beneath, waiting for its hour.
Something gave way in Jean's chest. Years of restraint, of courtesy, of civilised handling of the world were washed away in a flood of primal fury. Power crowded into his body. The muscle thickened under his shirt until the seams burst and the fabric tore away in strips. Only the remnants of his trousers and his boots stayed. Blood thudded in his temples. The light at the edges of his vision went red.
At last, said a voice in his skull he had never heard before, but recognised at once as his own.
Sophie let out the breath of a woman who had been holding it for her entire life. Her shoulders dropped back. Her chin came up. Her hands closed.
She looked at the enkai, and there was no trace of her former softness. Only the predatory curiosity of a cat watching a wounded mouse. She pulled out a wide smile, showing way more teeth than a smile needed.
When she moved toward the cuffs her step had changed. Longer. Hips rolling. Her fingernails lengthened and sharpened, splitting through their own beds, claws pushing through.
The enkai's ears went flat. She shrank back, pressing herself into the mattress under the low rumble of this power, offering her scruff to the invisible paw of the pride's master.
"At last my spouses show their true nature," Kali said, with the pride of a mother watching her child take a first step.
Sophie reached the cuffs. The iron was thick, tempered, etched with binding-runes. The enkai had fought it through the night without leaving a mark. Sophie wrapped both hands round one bracket and pulled.
The metal screamed and gave. The runes flared, guttered, died. The iron straightened like soft wire. The prisoner watched it happen with terror and a kind of fascination.
"Now you use my power as it should be used," Kali approved.
"Look, my love. The kitten is frightened," Sophie crooned in a child's sing-song, crouching in front of the enkai. "Don't be afraid, kitten. We only want to play with you. Good kittens don't scratch."
Sophie brushed two fingers under the enkai's chin, and the cat pushed her cheek into the touch, and hated how easily it came.
"Who's a sweet little kitten?"
The enkai sprang and slashed at Sophie's face. Sophie caught the wrist with a speed that drove the breath from the cat's chest. In a single liquid movement she was behind the prisoner, the arm twisted up between her shoulder blades, the cat's face pressed into the cold stone.
"Bad kitten." Sophie stroked her hair, almost tender. "We'll have to teach you manners first."
The enkai felt heat coming off Sophie, and force, and her own resistance went thin somewhere under her ribs.