Wisdom's Kiss Read Online Free PDF

Escoffier, the only animal ever to be awarded the Medal of Lax for service to empire. His life story, much altered and embellished, may yet be found in fairy tales, and his visage observed in the black-cat emblem of the Imperial Department of Revenue. Born in a granary in Montagne, the mongrel was adopted while still a kitten by Benevolence, the elderly queen mother, in yet another example of that kingdom's peculiar eschewal of pedigree. His name derived from a famed chef, as the cat's appetite and tastes were legendary, and visitors to the royal seat learned to disguise their shock at the spectacle of queen and cat dining together at every banquet. Escoffier accompanied his mistress on her travels throughout the empire. He appeared to be unsettlingly cognizant of human speech, and his tendency to appear at occasions of portent—often without his mistress—led more than one unnerved observer to declare him bewitched. This accusation Benevolence contested most heartily, fearing for her pet's life, and in several royal proclamations declared that he was only a cat, and a lazy one, to boot.
A Life Unforeseen
T HE S TORY OF F ORTITUDE OF B ACIO , C OMMONLY K NOWN AS T RUDY, AS T OLD TO H ER D AUGHTER
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    POOR TRUDY was caught by surprise while attempting again to retrieve Soots.
    The old fowl insisted on nesting under the gorse bush across from the inn; that her chicks remained unscathed after two weeks so encamped was strong testament to the hen's pugnacity, if not her sense.
    Still, it did not require the gift of sight to see that one hen could not protect a dozen chicks from all the predators in Bacio or from the interminable spring rains. So Trudy—diligent, solicitous Trudy—found herself once more rooting through the thorns, avoiding as best she could Soots's glare and beak and muttered fowl curses.
    "Just come out," Trudy sighed. "If you go back to the hen-house, you'll have food and water and no foxes ... Oh, baron's brains, I'm talking to a chicken!"
    How Tips would laugh at this, if he were here! He'd laugh, but in a kind way, and wriggle through the gorse with no thought to his own discomfort. If he were here now, he and Trudy would be laughing together, just as they used to. Just as they would again, someday...
    Trudy glanced about with a start. How long had she been staring into space, dreaming of a boy an empire away? Fortunately no one from the Duke's Arms had seen her, for every man and woman was occupied in tending the guests, human and equine, that had inundated the inn since the flooding began. Several local farmers, their fields too wet to plant, had been taken on as hostlers. Their female kin toiled in the kitchen and laundry, though the young women between them hadn't the sense of Soots, and with such featherbrains to manage, Trudy had even less chance to finish her own work. Which, by the way, she should be doing right now rather than tending a family of vagabond poultry. Tending it badly.
    She stood, brushing dead leaves from her skirt, and could not help glancing west toward Tips's mill. Not that it was
his
mill; the solicitor had made that clear, as had Tips's brothers and Tips himself. But it would be his someday. How could it not, what with Hans and Jens both childless—not that there was any mystery to that one, nor grief either ... Tips had to end up with it. Gristmilling was in his blood, much as he'd washed his hands of the flour. However good a soldier he was, he'd be just as good a miller when the time came.
    Still musing on Tips's future, and hers, Trudy turned east. No matter how many carts of quarry waste they spread, the sodden road was less highway than riverbed. The mud...
    Without warning, Trudy staggered backward. Something was coming. Something bad—something very, very sick indeed—was coming down the mountain.
    Buckled to her knees, gagging into the mud, she struggled to remain calm. Think, think! How should she respond? What would her mother do? And