Arya woke up to the sound of drums.
Not celebration drums. Warning drums.
She sat up fast on her sleeping mat, tail flicking instinctively before she pulled it back under control. Old habit. She'd spent four years at a human college in Mysore — four years of no tail, no climbing walls, no jumping forty feet off a rooftop just because it felt good — and she still sometimes forgot.
Her grandmother was already at the window, standing completely still, listening.
"Pati," Arya said. "What is it?"
Her grandmother — Nalini, seventy-three years old, four feet eleven inches tall, fur the color of old silver — didn't turn around.
"Council is calling," she said. "Something has come from outside."
"What kind of something?"
Nalini finally turned. Her eyes were very calm. That was the scary part. Nalini was only calm when things were very bad.
"Government papers," she said. "A dam."
