[Lauchenoiria]

King Shapur XIV of Zargothrax was high on painkillers following his hospital stay. Not that it mattered much; he acted in exactly the same way when he was perfectly sober. His 22-year-old son, the Crown Prince Bahman, rubbed his temple as he looked at his father rolling around on the floor playing with twelve cats he had adopted thanks to a “vision from God”. Bahman rather thought that “God” in this case meant “even stronger painkillers”, but he would never say that to his father. Not that his father would pay attention in any case.
 
“Father, we must do something about the flooding in the Jonoob region,” he tried again. “We are looking at over a hundred thousand displaced people, with several villages just completely disappearing. People are struggling to get food and shelter, and we already have thousands of dead.”
 
“What’s that, Azar? You need to use the litter box? Go on, my boy, go on!” the King said to a cat that had miaowed loudly over the top of Bahman.
 
“Father!” Bahman shouted, slamming his hand on a table.
 
“We cannot move yet,” the King snapped, turning to Bahman. “The gods will not look kindly on premature actions.”
 
“Father, I am not talking about your apocalypse, I am speaking of the severe flooding in the south of the country!” Bahman hissed, attempting to keep his compsure.
 
“Hm? Oh, that. Do as you wish, I have important work to do in the lab,” the King said, brushing past his eldest son and heading back down to the basement where he’d ended up in hospital in the first place.
 
“Your Highness, have you broached the topic again?” a figure sidled up to Bahman who was rubbing his temples as his father departed. The Crown Prince jumped, turning to the King’s Chief Advisor, Javed Hashemi. Not that his father ever spoke to Javed; indeed, spent much more time with Javed than his father ever had. The older man, however, still made him a little bit uneasy.
 
“He just snapped at me about the apocalypse again,” Bahman sighed.
 
“This won’t do,” Javed muttered to himself.
 
Bahman found Javed creepy. The man would appear out of nowhere, at the oddest times. People said that they’d see him in the kitchens and then not a minute later he was on the other side of the palace grounds. While Bahman put these stories down to superstition, he couldn’t deny that there was something uncanny about the advisor. Especially since Javed seemed determined to talk the King into abdicating.
 
“Look, I have no desire to become King right now,” Bahman told the advisor. “You need to drop this, okay?”
 
“Of course, Your Highness,” Javed said, and then vanished into the shadows again. Bahman was certain that he would try again in a few days. The Prince did not know what the advisor was plotting, but he was sure he was plotting something.
 
“Brother!” yelled a figure running up to him. It was his eleven-year-old sister, Princess Leila.
 
“What do you want, Leila?” he asked sharply. She was in trouble for breaking decorum and yelling in the presence of the media. She had already been punished for it, despite her tears and the fact she was indeed sneezing constantly since the cat adoption.
 
“Have you considered – achoo! – the boarding school thing again?” she asked.
 
Leila was determined to get herself sent away to boarding school and away from the cats she was so allergic to. He did have to admit that she was not exaggerating her discomfort. This was her with allergy medication. Nevertheless, there were no boarding schools for female students in Zargothrax, given most of them ended their education at Leila’s age. And there was no way either he or their father would allow her to go abroad.
 
“I have more important things to do, Leila,” he said irritably. “Go and play with your younger brothers,” he waved her away. She scowled and stomped off, arms folded. Bahman shook his head and headed back to the meeting chambers to discuss the flooding situation with some sensible people for a change.

[Xiomera]

Port Salad, Salad Land
June 26th

The Cosmic Paragon bobbed gently in the harbor. The Thraxian ship had been scouring the nearby lands of Neria for the latest batch of cargo that King Shapur had needed for his "experiments". It was on its way back home, but had stopped in Salad Land for a quick overnight rest and replenishment of supplies.

The Saladian inspections of docking vessels tended to be cursory, especially when the harbormaster received a "gift" in exchange for the docking privileges. This was how the cargo in question would be unnoticed by anyone before it was far too late.

In the wee hours of the night, one of the crates in the cargo hold would topple from the top of a hastily assembled stack of crates. The crash that it made escaped the notice of the night watchman on the ship because he was quite soundly asleep. Dark shapes began to emerge from the crate, slowly making their way to the deck of the ship and then over the side. As they landed on the pier below, they escaped the notice of the Saladian guards of the port because they were all quite drunk. The dark shapes made their way out of the port, into the nearby city.

---

On the seaside promenade that was the main attraction of Port Salad, a couple made their way down the street. They were the only people out at this late hour, having been on a romantic date. As they arrived at the front of the young woman's house, she consented to let her date give her a hug. Suddenly, she reared back and slapped him across the face. "Pinching me bottom, huh? Don't get fresh."

"But I didn't!" he protested.

His date suddenly jumped. "Ouch! Ow!" she shouted, turning around and frantically slapping at her dress. The young man with her at first thought she was going a bit mad, but then he jumped as well and let out a screech.

---

In his rooms above his shop, a shopkeeper on the promenade enjoyed the sort of deep sleep earned by a day of hard work. Suddenly, he bolted upright in his bed, shouting in pain.

---

The Salad Land Police Service office rarely received calls this late. But this night, calls suddenly began pouring in. People reporting something had gotten into their homes. Something bitey and scaly.

---

As night turned slowly into dawn, a frazzled Katherine Rudhall arrived at the dock. The Police Commissioner, a squad in tow, button-holed the harbormaster. "We've tracked the little bastards down to that ship," she snapped. "How in the hell did this cargo escape your notice?"

The harbormaster shrugged. "Busy day?" he tried.

Rudhall gave him a look that could have melted glass. "What did you find in the ship?" she demanded, turning to one of her officers.

"They definitely came from that Thraxian ship, ma'am. They didn't want us to go look in the cargo hold, but we, um, persuaded them. They've got dozens of crates of these things down there. At least one of them broke and the cargo in question escaped into the city. We are trying to track them all down, but, well, they're quick and bitey."

Rudhall turned to her squad. "Impound that ship at once," she ordered, pointing to the Cosmic Paragon. "On charges of violating our ban on dangerous animals. To wit, quick and bitey lizards."

[Lauchenoiria]

Princess Leila waited until her brother had been in a meeting for at least twenty minutes before she snuck out. She slipped into a servants’ staircase and made her way to the loose stone she’d hidden her disguise in, changing with the quickness of frequent practice. Then, dressed as a common boy, she slipped out of the Palace into the surrounding city.

Castle Zargo now spread far beyond the ancient city walls, of course, but the Palace was still situated at the exact centre. The capital was rather small for its status, being built around a desert oasis and still surrounded by a considerable quantity of sand. Once she made it away from the wealthier districts, the sand spread everywhere, over the unpaved roads, onto the people, into the meagre food. On her disguised excursions, she rarely ventured this far out, but she would never find what she sought in the heavily-policed upper-class districts.

The Princess made her way to the Peasants’ Temple on the outskirts of the city, sneaking inside just as the service was beginning. In the local calendar used in Zargothrax, this was the first day of a new month – and therefore the day when local couples would have their engagements blessed by a priest. This was not in any of the religious texts, and the nobility did not perform such a ritual. It was a peasant tradition. It was also the reason Leila was here.

After people had said prayers, the men wishing to announce their engagement lined up. They were not who Leila was interested in. As they made their announcements, Leila watched each of the women who went up to join them. Girls, really. Older than her – but some of them were her sister’s age. Leila suppressed her disgust and kept watching, looking at their faces to see who was happy, indifferent, angry, scared. Fear was what she sought, and find it she did.

There was a girl, no older than her sister, who was shaking and had to practically be dragged in front of the priest. She had clearly been crying. Leila kept watching her for the rest of the service. When it was over, she followed the girl from a distance, looking out for who was also following. She trailed the girl all the way to her home – a single room dwelling which looked like it would topple over at any second – and hid outside while her father screamed at her, itching to get involved but knowing it would be a bad idea.

“Why are you following that girl?” came a voice, accent foreign, behind Leila. She jumped, turning around. “If you mean her harm, leave now.”

This must be who Leila sought. She scanned the woman head-to-toe, noting the slightly paler skin, the patch of sunburn on her neck, and the better-quality clothing than one would expect from an adult woman hanging out in the peasant district. The fact that this was an adult woman alone confirmed it, more or less.

“Looking for you,” Leila said, pulling off her hat and allowing her hair to fall out. “Or, well, someone like you anyway.”

“Ah,” the woman smiled, her frosty expression turning to pleased surprise. “Come, come, we mustn’t speak in the open like this.”

The woman led her into another dwelling, abandoned, roof half-collapsed. Leila checked her knife was still in its concealed location, just in case, and then followed. The woman sat down on top of a blanket next to a portable stovetop.

“Just to be clear,” the woman asked her, “who do you think I am?”

Princess Leila, eleven years old, looked the woman directly in the eyes and answered: “A Kerlian.”

[Lauchenoiria]

Royal Residence, Castle Zargo, Zargothrax
Midnight

Javed Hashemi moved silently along the corridor as the household slumbered. A cat slinked into view, pausing to look at Javed inquisitively. In response, he gave the cat a glare that made the cat freeze. The cat’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. It marked Javed as a threat, a danger that it and the other feline residents ought to be wary of. Then the cat turned tail and fled off to places unknown.

Javed continued, unperturbed by the encounter with the feline. He made his way up to the top floor of the residence, walking to the end of a corridor long disused. A cobweb in the corner fluttered slightly as he passed, its creator long since eaten by a cat. The King’s advisor stopped in front of a wooden door at the end of the corridor, and taking out an old-fashioned metal key he unlocked it, slipping inside.

The cat he had encountered returned to the King’s bedroom, where its compatriots were mostly sleeping. It nudged one of the other cats awake and flicked its tail in some kind of message. The information spread silently throughout the pile of felines, until they all woke up and, as one, climbed on top of the King sleeping in his bed, meowing loudly in unison to wake him up.

“I see,” the King said groggily as he opened his eyes to watch the felines. “Yes, I foresaw this. It will be okay. All variables are accounted for, my dears. I will not allow her to get away with this.”

*

Princess Leila sat up in her bed watching the live feed of the CCTV camera in her father’s bedroom. She had not managed to hack such a thing herself, but she had help. Now, she spent much time spying on her father and his feline friends. Usually he just played with them, or babbled about science, but this one was more confusing.

Her father often spoke to the cats as if in conversation, but this was the first time she had seen anything to suggest the cats themselves were intending to communicate. The way they’d all woken in unison was odd. But perhaps there was a logical explanation. Maybe a mouse had gotten into the room. Or they’d smelled something else they disliked, the perfume of a passing servant perhaps. Or maybe they were hungry.

Leila rewound the video, watching from the moment the first cat returned. It was Khordad, the third of the cats. They were named after the months of the year in the Zoroastrian calendar, for some reason that the King had chosen not to disclose. It irked her eldest brother no end, given that he shared the name with one of the cats now. Bahman (human) was getting rather fed up of his father paying more attention to Bahman (cat) than him.

Perhaps she could retrace Khordad’s steps. Leila went into the master page of the palace CCTV, following Khordad’s movements in reverse until she came across the footage of the cat’s encounter with Javed. She froze herself, watching him on the screen until her concentration was broken by yet another sneezing fit. Nothing she said had convinced her family to allow her to live literally anywhere else as of yet, unfortunately.

“That creeper,” Leila whispered aloud to herself. Much like her brother, she did not think much of Javed. Unlike the others, though, Leila did not attribute his improbable movements to supernatural activity. He clearly used the same secret passageways she did to come and go around the palace. She’d seen traces of his movements inside them before. This explained everything.

Leila had snuck out again during the day to acquire some (now illegal) “cat repellent” spray from a black marketeer, and she had covered herself in it while within one of the passageways. Javed must have passed through the same area and got its scent on him. Then Khordad came back reeking and disturbed the other cats, so they decided to complain to the nearest human, and her father interpreted it as something weird again.

She sighed in relief as she worked through the logic of the evening. None of it meant anything at all. She was just becoming paranoid. She needed some sleep.

[Lauchenoiria]

Princess Leila, age 11, of Zargothrax was once again dressed as a common boy and wandering the streets of Castle Zargo without permission. With the new cat law, however, the city gave her no more relief than the palace.

She had never liked the city. Castle Zargo was built in stages, around her family’s ancestral home which had been demolished and rebuilt quite possibly ten times throughout history. The city became the capital when her family took control of the country. Zargo was the family name, though she had no idea of its root. They’d renamed the country after themselves. Her father was not the first of the line to have delusions of further grandeur than he was entitled to.

“I want out of this country sooner rather than later,” she demanded as she opened the door to the small dwelling that was her destination. She slammed it behind her, sneezing as she did so.

“Patience,” the woman sitting by the door said. “First, you must fulfil your end of the bargain.”

“I’m doing so!” the Princess said. “You got the video of the weird cat conversation. What more do you want? Everyone knows Father’s insane already! Surely you've got enough by now?”

“I want to know what is in the room that Chief Advisor Hashemi is hiding,” the woman replied.

“Oh no. There’s no way I can get there,” Leila shook her head. “That creep always knows where everyone is. He’d stop me.”

“Find a way,” the woman ordered. “Or we no longer have a deal.”

The 11-year-old snarled as the woman stood up, sweeping past her and out into the street where Leila had entered moments before. Leila, in response, kicked the chair the woman had vacated, shattering the rotting wood into pieces. It did not help her feel any better.

*

The Secret Room

Javed Hashemi stood in the room, staring out of the dusty, cobweb-covered window.  The bound figure behind him struggled against the ropes and shackles that kept him firmly attached to the chair on which he sat.

“Must we go through this routine each time?” Hashemi said finally. “You and I both know that you are not going anywhere.”

In response, the chains rattled once more and then halted. No words left the man’s mouth – they could not, as he was firmly gagged. The man looked up at Hashemi with a look of pure hatred in his eyes.

“Now, do not worry my friend,” Hashemi reassured his captive. “It will not be much longer before this idiot King crosses the line that should not be crossed. We are edging closer to our goal with every passing day, and there is little else that could stand in our way.”

In response, the captive snorted in derision.

“There is no need for that, friend,” the King’s Advisor soothed. “All is going according to plan. Things will be as they once were. Now, if you will excuse me, I have work to be getting on with. I shall return soon. We are so close, my friend. So close.”

[Lauchenoiria]

Chief Advisor Javed Hashemi was quite pleased with the cat wedding idea. It was excellent; it would keep the King happy and busy, and far away from more important things. Truly, he could not have engineered a better distraction. Things were about to come to a head, and Hashemi simply could not risk Shapur doing something foolish and getting in the way. The useless Crown Prince was also nicely distracted, trying to coax his sister into returning to Zargothrax from Salad Land.

Frankly, Hashemi thought Leila was the most sensible member of the Royal Family. She had managed to escape her father and get a good job. He did not quite understand the people on the internet up in arms about ‘child labour’. Most Thraxian commoners got their first job at the age of twelve, only a year older than Leila was now. Okay, granted, catching lizards was hardly a good job. But for an eleven-year-old, a job requiring any skill, no matter how bizarre, was an achievement.

Leila being out of the way too suited Hashemi. She was too clever, and too suspicious of him. He’d spotted her trying to follow him several times, and once he’d started looking, he had found evidence that she used the same passageways as him. She was good, too; he would never have been able to sense her presence there if it wasn’t for the residual scent of the cat-repelling perfume she wore. Plus, she had her own black-market contact for the perfume: none of the servants had a clue.

His initial plan, with Bahman, would never have worked. Bahman was far too weak to do anything of consequence. This was fortunate: his secondary plan was much better. Bahman’s weakness could easily be turned into Hashemi’s strength. If he’d interfered with his father too much, it could have ruined all of Hashemi’s careful plan. It had been decades; to be brought low by a twenty-year-old child would be embarrassing. How fortunate that he was no challenge at all.

Cosmic Infinity. He chuckled to himself. The name of Shapur’s religion was taken from a little-known 1960s comic book from some inconsequential corner of the Daryan Empire, that nobody in Zargothrax had ever heard of. The name had become the entire basis for the cult, formed piece by piece, with no aim other than the creation of something bizarre and confusing that could be turned to his own ends. He had been little older than Bahman when this plan had begun. Now he was in his seventies, and finally about to see results.

It amused Hashemi that Shapur truly believed the tenets of Cosmic Infinity. There were others, too; but they were inconsequential. Shapur was truly perfect; gullible as can be, and all too willing to swallow whatever nonsense the mysterious unidentified leader of Cosmic Infinity spouted. How shocked would Shapur be, to find out how close he was to the mysterious individual he practically worshipped? Well, he was not going to find out. The Saladian war had been a fantastic piece of providence. All of it was, really.

Like someone up there wanted Hashemi to succeed.

[Lauchenoiria]

A week after the agreement between King Shapur and the Marquis de Salad, invitations were sent out to world leaders and important figures, inviting them to a very atypical royal wedding. The matter of which world leaders were invited was also rather atypical. No, it was not based on who was allies with Salad Land or Zargothrax. It was based on which world leaders had cats.

Empress Athena of Opthelia was on the invite list, alongside Empress Calhualyana of Xiomera. In what would certainly cause conflict if both accepted, so was Yauhmi, the former monarch of Huenya and sworn enemy of the Xiomeran Empress. As were their cats. Yes, their cats.

In fact, the invitations were addressed to their cats. 

It was clear the father of the bride had written the invitations, though the wedding would be held in Salad Land, home of the groom. The Thraxian King had been dancing around the palace since the wedding was announced. It was a sharp turn away from the state of war between the two nations. Whatever happened next, it was going to be very furry.

[Lauchenoiria]

“Skinny! No, not there!” Princess Leila shouted, shooing the hairless cat away from her sock drawer. Skinny, as she’d called the cat (in English; it was funnier that way), meowed in mild distaste and instead curled up on top of a pile of history textbooks Leila had liberated from the palace library while the men were distracted.

The cat was a long story. King Shapur’s cat laws did not discriminate; they applied equally to all cats regardless of fur colour, or texture, or length. Including hairless cats. The general public, however, were far less accepting. Leila had stumbled upon a group of young boys bullying an underweight hairless cat while she was making her way home from one of her meetings with her Kerlian contact. Fearing for the boys – not the cat – she quickly intervened before the authorities could see them breaking the cat laws.

And then the hairless cat had followed her home, up through the secret passage. She’d woken up to find Skinny sitting on the end of her bed. At first, she’d tried to chase the cat away; after all, she was not the world’s biggest cat fan. But Skinny was persistent, and Leila realised that his hairlessness meant he did not trigger her allergies. Her father had no objections (in fact, he was ecstatic), so Skinny now lived with Leila, and followed her around everywhere she went.

This was for the best; because the other palace cats were afraid of Skinny, who’d been a street cat before Leila’s intervention. Which meant they kept far away from Leila, just as she liked it. Really, it felt like some kind of divine blessing.

Her latest task from her Kerlian contact, however, was not. The Kerlian was getting impatient with Leila’s lack of progress on the Chief Advisor Hashemi situation. They still had not managed to figure out what he was up to; though they had ascertained a few surprising facts over the course of their investigation. Firstly, was that Hashemi was somehow embroiled in the Cosmic Infinity cult. That had come as a surprise. But they still did not know what his end goal was, nor what he was keeping in the attic.

It was that last piece of information that Leila had been tasked with acquiring. She sighed as she exited her room, climbing up the stairs; Skinny in tow. She knew where the room was, and how to get to it, but it was always guarded by cats. Not her father’s cats; no, they were not happy about whatever was in the room. If her father’s cats got close, the attic cats would chase them away quickly and without prejudice. Perhaps Leila was anthropomorphising the cats’ behaviours, but it sure seemed like the attic cats were guarding a secret that the King and his cats were not permitted to know.

This was, in a way, true. Hashemi had indeed trained some cats to keep those belonging to the King away from the attic room. It was quite simple, in fact; though if animal rights activists had discovered his training techniques they may well have stormed the palace in a war that would have rivalled the Thraxian-Saladian War (now known by many names among indecisive users of social media, including “the Lizard War”, “the Cat War”, “the Catflict”, “the Housecat, the Wizard and the War(drobe)” among more) in crazy.

The Kerlian had not sent Leila to the attic unprepared, however. As she hid in the secret passageway, an onlooker would have had to do a double-take at the sight of an eleven-year-old in a tiny hazmat suit, wearing an air filter mask, and holding what appeared to be a water pistol. It was not, in fact, a water pistol; but it was not far off. It had been a water pistol, once upon a time, but it had since been modified so that instead of water, it shot cat treats some considerable distance.

There is nothing normal in Zargothrax.

The cat-treat-gun (name TBC) was to be a distraction, and a weapon if needs be. She would lure the guard-cats away, and then she would investigate the room while Skinny stood guard (this was honestly a good plan. As previously stated, the other palace cats were terrified of Skinny, and the attic cats were no exception).

Leila fired a cat treat down the corridor, feeling rather silly. But it worked, as suddenly five cats appeared from nowhere and shot towards the treat, faster than it had flown from the treat-gun. Understanding that five cats would get through one treat very quickly, she shot almost the full barrel of cat treats past where they were running, and then quickly turned the other way and ran to the room, Skinny hot on her heels.

It was locked, of course. But the Kerlian had given Leila something she called a skeleton key; which worked rather well with the ancient lock on the wooden attic door. It clicked, and Leila quickly slipped inside, only to stop short and stare straight ahead in utter shock and disbelief. She opened and closed her mouth around ten times before she managed to get the single word past her lips.

“Grandfather!?”

[Lauchenoiria]

Last Saturday

After realising that her grandfather was still alive, Princess Leila had turned tail and run away in shock. She knew the gravity of the discovery, and had suddenly been overcome by fear that Hashemi would know that she knew, and come for her. So, she’d run straight out of the palace, Skinny beside her, and gone to her Kerlian contact’s property, where she swiftly threw up violently into a bucket.

The Kerlian had calmed down the eleven-year-old, who had been sobbing and speaking so fast that the Kerlian could not work out what she was talking about at all. The Kerlian had tucked Leila into a bed and waited for the girl to sleep it off. Meanwhile, she’d checked in with her own superiors, and patiently brewed a cup of tea.

By the time Leila woke up, the Kerlian herself was almost falling asleep, and she had taken to reading a pile of Lehvantian literature she’d acquired at a local bookstore now owned by a cat whose name translated roughly to “Fluffles” (and his female human).

“My grandfather is alive,” Leila said upon waking up.

The Kerlian blinked. “What?”

“My grandfather is alive.”

“What!?” she shot to her feet, dropping her book on the floor and almost tripping over her feet in her hurry to get directly in front of Leila. “Are you being serious? Your paternal grandfather?”

“My dad’s dad, yes. Chief Advisor Hashemi has him tied up and locked in the attic. I don’t understand. I mean, I kind of understand. I just don’t want to.”

“Holy shit,” the Kerlian said in English. Leila understood fine well.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “What do we do?”

“Um…” the Kerlian hesitated, chewing her lip. “I need to make some calls. Did Hashemi see you go into the attic?”

“No, but his cats did,” Leila replied.

“Despite what your father says, cats are not good spies. Nevertheless, there could have been hidden cameras, or perhaps the cameras have been planted on the cats. That would account for a number of discrepancies in this cat business,” the Kerlian thought aloud. “You shouldn’t go back. If he knows that you know, he’ll kill you. Um, shit, I’m not meant to…”

“I know,” Leila replied. “I know he’d… you don’t need to protect me. I know.”

“Okay,” the Kerlian said. “Okay, so this… this place should be safe, but we should move soon. Okay… look, I need to make calls. Stay here, and do not answer the door to anyone, okay?”

“Yes,” Leila nodded, sitting back down and letting Skinny jump onto her lap. “Yes.”

[Lauchenoiria]

“Seriously? Are you being serious right now?” Oliver Alberto of the Lauchenoirian Guardian said to his colleague, Yaotl, of the Thraxian international press corps. Yaotl, a Huenyan journalist, had just burst into the open-plan office shared by a number of foreign news outlets (it was one of the few air-conditioned buildings) in Castle Zargo and loudly blurted out something that made the entire foreign press corps turn to stare with mouths wide open.

Yaotl nodded. “Yup; we just published. Princess Leila has been missing since November and the royals didn’t bother to report it at all. She’s eleven. Eleven. I knew Shapur was crazy, but this is another level.”

“She’s the one who hates cats, right? Think Daddy engaged in a little filicide?” Karl Sorensen, a Zongongian tabloid journalist who nobody liked piped up.

“No, she was seen in the city before the disappearance, and the sources indicate she fled the palace at a time when Shapur was opening a new cat centre; he wasn’t home. And frankly, I doubt anyone would obey that order if he gave it,” Yaotl shrugged.

“Hashemi?” Alberto asked, and an uneasy silence fell over the room. Hashemi was not someone that one criticised while in Zargothrax. Even more so than the King, his opponents tended to disappear. The King was insane, yes, but people considered him the fun type of quirky, and he was mostly liked by the populace. Hashemi, on the other hand, was the shadowy figure that most people who were politically informed believed truly ran the country, cat laws aside.

“Well, she might have just run away,” Tristan Lamar, a Laeralian reporter, pointed out. “She is allergic to cats. I would not blame her; and if she ran of her own accord, reporting the disappearance would have just encouraged would-be kidnappers to seek her out. Perhaps the lack of reportage at the time was tactical.”

“I doubt Shapur would think of that,” Alberto replied. “Regardless; there has been a missing eleven-year-old princess for over a month. That is so unlikely as to be close to impossible in the modern world. And yet.”

“Well, the story’s out now,” Yaotl shrugged. “Only time will tell what the hell happened.”

*

Princess Leila had, in fact, run of her own accord. She and her Kerlian handler thought it prudent after her discovery in the attic. Hashemi was indeed a greater threat than her father, and now that she had discovered his secret, she needed to be whisked away somewhere safe. As for why her father had not reported her missing, well, that was a mystery that would remain unknown for the time being.

Leila and her Kerlian had decamped to a new location on the island of Samara – yes, the one now ruled by a cat. It was an odd place to be since the supposed independence; its own country and yet not, since nobody had actually planned for any kind of independence. It was easy to come and go, there were virtually no checks or screenings at all for anything. Smugglers were setting up home on the coasts, and nobody paid any attention to the pair, or the other Kerlians they later met up with.

The Kerlians had debated and theorised over what Hashemi was doing. They dug more deeply into the man, and discovered his links to Cosmic Infinity. They worked tirelessly, sometimes including Leila but more often working while the child slept. Slowly, a working theory started to form.

Hashemi wanted power, and had taken advantage of the Plague of ’96 to get rid of the brothers. Shapur either genuinely ended up brain damaged from the virus, or this was somehow deliberately engineered by Hashemi. Either way, Hashemi had then created the cult and led Shapur to it so that he had some element of religious control over the future King. And when this control was sufficiently solidified, Hashemi had somehow kidnapped and faked the death of the previous King to place his pawn on the throne.

This theory had several flaws. Firstly, if the brain damage was natural that was entirely too convenient, but if it was created then how? Furthermore, surely it would make more sense to assassinate King Navid than keep him prisoner in the attic. Then there were the cats, which surely weren’t part of any master plan; and the cat laws plus the Saladian War implied that Shapur was genuinely in power. Finally, there was the fact that this would be a hopelessly complex and insane plan, when there are easier ways to seize power of an absolute monarchy. Marriage, for example.

Yet the Kerlians could not come up with anything better.

One morning, the morning that news of her disappearance broke, Leila came down the stairs in the morning to challenge the group of Kerlians arguing around a table. “Hi, I’m sorry, but why are you trying so hard to work this out? Aren’t you from Project Belle? Isn’t your job to get women and girls who want out of patriarchies back to Kerlile? What does it matter if Hashemi, my father, or my grandfather are in charge here? They’re all the same!”

The first Kerlian, her Kerlian, her contact, smiled and came over to Leila, ushering her into the kitchen for breakfast. “We’re simply determining how this affects our operations, my dear; we’ll get you out of here as soon as we’ve figured out what’s going on. After all, we don’t want to be crossing the border if there’s a civil war or anything. Now, what would you like for breakfast?”

And Leila shrugged, figured it made sense, and sat down to eat.

[Lauchenoiria]

The now-12-year-old Princess Leila was starting to realise there was something off about her Kerlian. They had been on Samara for some time now, and there seemed no plans to take her onwards to Kerlile. Indeed, her Kerlian was starting to get irritated with her when she brought it up.

"Soon!" she would snap, annoyed. But soon never materialised. Leila had stopped asking. It occurred to her, too late, that she herself was no ordinary little girl trying to escape the patriarchy. She was, unfortunately, of considerable value. Were they using her?

They did not, at least, mistreat her in any way; and they kept the millions of stray cats away from her. Only her hairless friend, Skinny, was allowed in her room. But the young princess was bored, and suspicious. She knew word of her disappearance was now out, so she had to hide. But if she didn't want to go back, and her Kerlian was lying to her, what could she do?

Well, being 12 years old, she did not think so far ahead. As soon as she realised something wasn't right, she fled once more. She did not know where she was going beyond "away". Skinny, of course, followed. And thus the pair, a small child and a hairless cat, set out into the great unknown of Samara Island.

[Lauchenoiria]

Princess Mina, third child and eldest daughter of King Shapur, was by far the most concerned in her family about her younger sister’s disappearance. Her father was not wholly unconcerned; however, his vision-granting god had apparently assured him that she was just fine, and that seemed to satisfy him. Mina, on the other hand, did not believe in his god, and therefore found no solace in her father’s alleged visions.

She had been attempting to investigate herself for months now, and had uncovered some disturbing pieces of information. Firstly, was that Leila had apparently been sneaking around the city disguised as a boy for months before her disappearance. A young boy was caught in the edge of a photograph of a market-day crowd whose face matched Leila’s on a facial recognition algorithm she had finally talked one of her father’s spies into providing her with access to.

The “boy” was also seen in the vicinity of several Zoroastrian temples in the poorer districts of the city in the company of a white woman – which was odd on so many levels. While Castle Zargo of course had white visitors, and even residents, they did not enter these districts often if at all. Mina had her suspicions about the identity of this woman – she knew fine well that Project Belle operated in her country fairly openly, since the government did not particularly care to stop them.

There her research had stalled. She had managed to get in touch with Project Belle through one of their legitimate front organisations. Naturally, this got passed back to the Kerlian government. At first, they did not want to assist Mina in any way, however, after looking through their own records, they decided it would not harm them to tell the 15-year-old princess that no woman of that description worked for them, and they were unaware of the location of her sister.

Was this true? Mina almost hoped not. Leila running off with Kerlians would at least explain a large percentage of the issues, and would result in her relative safety compared with some of the fates which could face a wayward girl in Zargothrax. Her sister, turned 12 in her absence, was much too naïve to get by alone – at least, as far as Mina knew. She was beginning to realise she had lost track of who her sister was since the Cat Laws began to be written by their father.

Mina had one more line of enquiry to follow. Leila had mentioned in passing on multiple occasions her suspicions of the many palace cats. At the time she had written it off as childish fantasy, akin to their father’s madness but more acceptable by manner of age. But without other leads, Mina had decided she would too follow some of the cats and see what they were up to.

Khordad was one of her father’s twelve feline disciples, or at least that was what they had come to be referred to as. Her father’s cats and Chief Advisor Hashemi’s cats did not get on with each other, tending to hiss when they passed in the corridors. The rest of the twelve stayed away from the upper floors, which Hashemi’s cats stalked. Khordad was different, and so Khordad was who Mina chose to follow.

Khordad appeared to be allowing the Princess to follow. Indeed, he paused before slipping behind a tapestry, allowing Mina to discover a secret passage she had never before seen. The cat led her through a network of dusty tunnels, up into the attic beyond even some of the old servants’ quarters. The cat paused, turned, meowed almost in warning, then shot out of the tunnel and hissed.

Before Mina could move forward, answering hisses and yowls started up, and there was the sound of cats running and snarling in the corridor outside. By the time Mina had poked her head out of the tunnel, there were no cats present. It appeared almost as if Khordad had led other cats away from the location.

Mina stood in front of an old wooden door. Hesitantly, she reached out to turn the handle. It was locked. Hmm. Mina pulled out they odd key she’d found in Leila’s room and inserted it. After some wiggling, the lock turned and she stepped into the room.

“Ahura Mazda!” she exclaimed. “Grandfather!?”

She stepped forward and pulled the gag off his mouth; a move which Leila had failed to do on her own turn at making this discovery.

“Little Mina,” he whispered. “Is that you?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” she asked.

“Always so blunt, little Mina,” he chuckled softly. “I am afraid that reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated, to wicked aim.”

“Did my father do this!?”

“No; that honour goes to Jared Hashemi, liar and traitor,” he shook his head. “My dear, if I recall, you used to carry a smartphone with religious fervour. Perhaps, if you would not mind, you could film this before he returns and get it out?”

“Oh, I can livestream; the whole world will know you’re alive before Hashemi can so much as blink,” Mina shrugged, already getting out her phone and logging on to the same streaming platform that Samara’s @qita_qanun account had gained fame. “How’s your English? Videos in English go viral quicker.”

“I think I can manage,” he said in heavily accented English. “Would you mind?” he nodded towards the ropes.

“Sure,” Mina said. “We’re live by the way,” she said, pulling out a smartphone tripod from a pocket and placing it on top of a dusty cabinet so that Navid was fully visible. She stepped into the shot and began to untie him. “Hello everyone,” she began in English, “and welcome back to Mina’s Magic! Something different for you today – evidence of a treasonous plot! This is my grandfather, King Navid III of Zargothrax. And he is alive!”

[Lauchenoiria]

Chief Advisor Jared Hashemi was in a meeting of the King’s Council, sans King, when everyone’s phones began to ting. Irritated, he pulled it out, and almost dropped it onto the table when he saw the notifications.

“Chief Advisor?” one of the others in the room hesitantly piped up. “What is this?”

He looked at Mina’s livestream in horrified silence. Her introduction had since finished, and now Navid was speaking. He could only imagine, with the sound turned off, what he was saying. He decided and his head snapped up so that his eyes could pierce every member of the King’s Council.

“I will remind each and every one of you what you owe me,” he said calmly. “You all know where you would be without me.”

He paused to allow it to sink in. Indeed, each member of the council owed Hashemi either their fortune, their power, their freedom or their life – and most of them more than one of these. With Shapur a mostly-absent ruler, Hashemi had been able to hand-pick the council, and Prince Bahman had been too young and foolish to realise what was happening right in front of him. The Prince, thankfully, was not in attendance that day.

“Now,” Hashemi began as the assembled King’s Councillors all shrank back in horrified realisation. “I move that this is evidence that Shapur is no legitimate King.”

“So… Navid is King still?” Amir, the corrupt treasurer whom Hashemi had rescued from certain execution, once upon a time, asked.

“Of course not,” Hashemi replied, still calm. “Someone who is legally dead cannot be King.”

“But if Navid is dead then Shapur is King, and if Shapur is illegitimate that’s because Navid is still alive?” one of the others asked.

“You misunderstand me,” Hashemi said sharply. “One simply cannot allow this state of uncertainty to continue. Therefore, it will be necessary for the pre-appointed Regent to hold power until such a time as the matter is resolved.”

“You planned this all along,” accused Amir.

“Are you supporting the Pretender?” Hashemi asked, all wide-eyed innocence.

“I don’t even know which one you’re calling a Pretender!” Amir yelled, standing up. “This makes no sense at all; you’re as mad as he is!”

Hashemi did not respond with words, but instead gave a signal to one of the guards – all, naturally, on his direct payroll since Shapur and Bahman dropped the ball – who stepped forward coming up behind Amir. The councillor rolled his eyes, knowing he was about to be arrested, and began to open his mouth to object when the guard pulled a dagger and stabbed the unfortunate Amir in the heart. His eyes went wide as blood soaked his clothing and he fell back against the guard, sliding to the floor as the life went out of his eyes.

The other King’s Council members began to speak over one another when Hashemi cleared his throat in such a threatening manner that the room fell to silence.

“Detain the Pretenders,” he ordered the guard. “And their family. Secure the palace and contact the military. We are implementing Contingency Three immediately. I shall now be in charge for the foreseeable.”

[Lauchenoiria]

Zargothrax was in chaos. While Hashemi had his own men strewn throughout the country’s institutions, who were well aware of the meaning of “Contingency Three”, the vast majority of the military, police, Royal Guard and other organisations were not quite on board. Hashemi-loyal commanders detained and/or shot those loyal to the Royal Family; while royalist commanders detained and/or shot those loyal to Hashemi.

The beginnings of civil war spread like this across the nation’s security forces, but currently leaving the general civilian population untouched. Zargothrax’s neo-feudal system had some benefits here, in that none of the nobility knew how to turn the situation to their advantage just yet, and therefore they all bed down in their own lands with their own vassals, protective and defensive.

Much to Jared Hashemi’s consternation, the majority of the Royal Family had escaped. When his forces went to detain Shapur, they were set upon by a horde of murderous cats. Four men were killed by the claw, and somehow all the cats escaped unscathed, and in their wake lay an empty chamber; Shapur nowhere to be seen.

The younger pair of princes, Jahangir and Amir, had been on the other side of the country with a military detachment; having been sent to investigate an alleged “horde of demons” that their father had seen in a vision. The young “General” and the “Royal Wizard” had been sent to either banish the demons with magic or the sword. The commander of said detachment was a royalist, and therefore the princes were safe.

Mina and Navid had been gone by the time his forces reached the attic. There had been no sign of them leaving the palace, and yet a hunt of every corner produced neither the princess nor the elderly legally-dead king. Their whereabouts became as unknown as those of young Princess Leila, or those of Prince Golshan, who vanished in the commotion.

The only royal that Hashemi managed to capture was the eldest son of Shapur, Prince Bahman. The 23-year-old had been found studying archaic Thraxian laws with earplugs in and his phone turned off, oblivious to the chaos that had broken out around him. He was quickly delivered to the palace dungeons, screaming bloody murder about Hashemi and his supporters.

“Why!?” he asked when Hashemi came to visit him in the dungeon.

“I believed you and your father would be useful puppets,” Hashemi replied calmly. “But you are much too interested; and your father is much too insane. Neither of you were open to influence, so I had to resort to more direct measures. I even started a whole cult to control your father, and all he did was make his own spinoff religion. Honestly, controlling royalty is much too difficult. A country is easier.”

Before Bahman could even parse what Hashemi had told him, the advisor had left him to his confinement once again.

[Lauchenoiria]

If Princess Mina had realised just how much work she would end up having to do following accidentally starting a civil war, she would have remained in her room, logging 18 hours of screen time a day. The fifteen-year-old royal was not used to work of any sort, especially being female. She hadn’t even had tutors since turning twelve; and while the Thraxian royals were old-fashioned, they still waited until a girl’s sixteenth birthday to marry her off, and Mina was not yet fifteen.

That was not something Mina would have to worry about; her grandfather appeared to be something of an egalitarian after his confinement. The eighty-one-year-old had not been known for his commitment to women’s rights in his original reign, but after Mina rescued him, he didn’t blink before giving her a leading role in his new war effort. She had become his right hand, without asking to, and she wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about it. There wasn’t time to think about it much, however, with a three-faction civil war to fight.

Navid’s forces were comprised of the units led by the Thraxian Army’s royalist-but-sane commanders. The faction, based on the island of Khasira, had also attracted many retired ex-soldiers who remembered Navid’s reign. While of middling popularity at the time, it had come to be remembered very fondly by everyone fed up with Shapur’s cat-infused madness. Therefore, much of the elders in Zargothrax had quickly sided with Navid. The third group attracted to this faction were Arabic speakers, who resided primarily in the northern islands and who remembered Navid’s efforts at linguistic parity in state communications.

Mina was one of two women present at strategic meetings in Navid’s camp, alongside a positively ancient village elder who commanded the respect of the peoples of Khasira’s mountains, who had insisted on her inclusion to lend their forces. This had been acceded to easily enough, for Mina’s rescue of Navid had immediately converted him into something of a feminist. And after the cat chaos, the kind of General siding with Navid tended to be a pragmatist – if you’re a woman who really wants to engage in traditionally male activities, the more the merrier.

The egalitarian pragmatism of Navid’s camp made the faction generally popular in their home bases and the areas they held, which they managed to obtain largely through support of the locals. This made their territory relatively stable, with a cooperative local populace and very minimal oppositition and resistance from within their claimed territory either on Khasira, or the parts of Sharquaksia and the mainland nearby. The land borders with Hashemi’s forces were much more contentious, though there was something of an unofficial ceasfire with Shapurian forces.

*

Shapur, meanwhile, had his people rebuilding his ancestors’ castle. The structure dated back in parts to the 1400s, and hadn’t been resided in since the late 1700s. The amount of individuals with experience in the construction of this style of architecture was, of course, small. Carpenters and architects were working with history nerds and cats to build to King Shapur’s specifications. Okay, the cats weren’t helping, but Shapur had recently decreed that workplaces needed to meet Feline Inclusion Quotas. This was definitely slowing down the work, but Shapur seemed oblivious.

Shapur had attracted the insane segments of the military. These were units whose commanders had allowed cats to be added to their forces. The veterans of the “Saladian war” were mostly counted in this group; as were the kind of officer who had taken the cat laws as an opportunity for sucking up for a promotion, and who lacked the experience to actually have earned such a promotion.

Shapur’s forces held the land they did primarily because they were the default option. Prior to the civil war, they were who had been in power. The kind of city to declare for Shapur was the kind of city where the word of the day was “apathy”. He was more popular among the female residents of his territory than the male; with women having taken advantage of his cat loophole to gain more independence.

The main exception to this was the tiny exclave on Sharquaksia. This was centred around lands owned by a weak local lord whose wife was a cat person. It was an open secret that she had dominated the man since marriage, and she had very much made him declare for Shapur. The only reason Hashemi’s forces hadn’t overtaken the area was because the land in the area was very harsh to wage war in. Daytime temperatures could reach 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), and fresh water was difficult to find. Hashemi’s troops had decided they had easier fish to fry.

*

This had not been Jared Hashemi’s plan. Openly seizing power had never been his preferred method; this land was one of the last vestiges of feudalism and ruling without a title was damned hard. He had intended to manipulate Shapur through the Cosmic Infinity cult. It had been a stroke of luck that Shapur sustained brain damage from the Thraxian Plague that killed his brothers, and that luck was the only reason Hashemi had ever dared dream of power.

The Hashemi family had long been favoured servants of the House of Zargo, but that’s all they were. Way back in 1738, when the House had conquered the rest of Zargothrax, there had been a Hashemi there. They had sworn to serve the House of Zargo, one after the other, and to keep them safe and protect them on their quest to cement control of the country.

The only reason Jared Hashemi had kept Navid alive was because he didn’t want to break his final promise to his own father.

Jared’s father had died during the Thraxian Plague. On his deathbed, he made Jared swear to uphold their family’s ancient oath – protect the members of House Zargo from the enemies who would kill them. Well, he hadn’t killed Navid, had he? If he had, then this whole situation would be much less complicated.

The cult itself hadn’t worked either. Oh, it worked for a time, but Shapur was much to insane to be curtailed by a cult leader. No, he’d gone and set up his own spinoff cult. He fancied himself a conduit to God; a translator for feline messiahs who could predict the future. Shapur didn’t rule, the voices in his head did. And Hashemi didn’t have any more power than he would’ve had if he’d never set up a cult in the first place.

No, Hashemi had taken advantage of the Plague, daring to imagine a future where his family wasn’t permanently second place. 

And all he got was this lousy civil war.