Shapers of Worlds

by Edward Willett

  “Probably.”

  The courier took a visibly deep breath and began again. “I bring word from Lord Governor Marchand of the Imperial province of Bienotte. Over the last few years, the Krestonian Empire has raised the taxes paid by Bienotte again and again. The people of Bienotte struggle to survive. Lord Governor Marchand has had enough. He won’t watch his people starve. Will you help him throw the heavy yoke of the Empire off his people? Will you help lead them to independence?”

  Mirian cocked her head—and blinked eyes white from rim to rim. When Dusty was younger, he’d thought she could see the truth. He wasn’t entirely convinced she couldn’t. After a long moment, she smiled and said, “No.”

  “But he wants to free his people from the heavy yoke of the Empire! Lead them to independence!” Hands in the air, Dusty stomped across the common room and back, bare feet slapping against the floor. “You should be all over that!”

  Distracted by the silver lines of anger trailing in Dusty’s wake, it took Mirian a moment to ask, “Why?”

  “Why?” His lips drew back off his teeth. “Maybe because of Nine! And Bryan and Dillyn! Matt and Jace! Jared and Karl! Maybe because of Stephen! They killed him, even if it took him a couple of years to die! Maybe because of me and my dad and all the other Pack they murdered! Maybe because of that!”

  “Dusty, I understand that you feel . . .”

  “No, you don’t!” He took a deep breath. “You can’t! They have to pay for what they did.”

  Mirian tried to find the words that would push past Dusty’s anger. “This is a different government. Imperial Packs are treated as equals under the law . . .” She kept talking over his protest. “. . . and when they aren’t, because laws and prejudices don’t always walk in step, the wind brings the news and I deal with it. You know that.” It had happened less and less as the years passed. Mirian hoped it was because people defaulted to doing the right thing when not egged on by a corrupt government. Tomas insisted it was because she’d removed enough bigoted assholes their numbers had dropped below critical mass.

  “Then why won’t you help now?”

  She shook her head. “Governor Marchand doesn’t want me to help. He wants me to be his weapon. He wants me to attack the Empire for him.”

  “So?”

  “If the governor—or anyone else—wants independence from the Empire, they have achieve it themselves.”

  “That could take forever!” Anger tinted the air around his head and shoulders. “You heard the courier, they’re starving now!”

  “If Governor Marchand had asked for food . . .”

  “They asked for freedom. You need to free his people from the Empire!”

  “I do?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then they’d be mine.”

  “Mirian!”

  She waved a hand at the clutter. They’d already expanded twice, when first Matt, and then Karl, were married. “Where would I put them?” Beside her, Tomas’s tongue lolled out, and she buried a hand in his ruff. “Dusty, you have to . . .”

  “No, I don’t,” he snarled, changed, and charged out of the room. The screen door slammed behind him.

  In the next room, Karl and Julianna’s twins screamed their objection to the sudden noise, their distress pulsing through the house.

  Mirian sighed. “That went well.”

  Tomas’s nostrils flared as he glanced around the dining-room table. “Where’s Dusty?”

  “He’s gone up to the summer pastures with Alver’s family.” Mirian motioned him into his chair and pushed the platter of rare beef toward him, using her elbow to keep Dillyn from grabbing seconds before everyone had firsts. Her mother would be appalled at the chaos and even more appalled at her belief that the sturdy harvest table and mismatched chairs belonged in a dining room.

  “He’s that angry with you?”

  “He’ll get over it,” Nine growled before Mirian could answer. “The Empire can rot from within without our Alpha’s help.”

  Dusty pushed his shoulder up against Alver’s side and pushed a branch out of the way with his muzzle. Firelight reflecting on her glasses, the courier reached for another piece of wood, paused, frowned, and said, “You might as well come out. I know you’re there.”

  Alver, who had no sense of self-preservation at all, stepped into the circle of light before Dusty could stop him. “How?” he demanded.

  She smiled, although she didn’t relax. “You smell of sandalwood.”

  “I do?” He turned his head, sniffed the shoulder of his jacket, then half-turned to meet Dusty’s gaze. “You might have mentioned that. Now, are you coming out or not? This was your idea.” He mimicked Dusty’s voice. “I’ll tell my family I’m going to the summer pastures with you, and you tell your family Mirian asked you to stay in Harar to work on your mage-craft. We’ll catch up to the courier and go with her to help Governor Marchand defeat the Empire.”

  It had also been Dusty’s idea to watch the courier for a while before joining her, but Alver only listened to what he wanted to hear. And he didn’t want to hear that the scents he loved so much gave him away to anyone with a nose. Dusty huffed out a breath, tucked his tail close to keep it from being caught in the brambles, and walked out to stand by Alver’s side.

  “Well, hello.” Her smile broadened. “Aren’t you a big . . .” And her smile disappeared. “You’re not a dog, are you?”

  “Told you she was clever,” Alver muttered.

  Dusty stepped behind Alver, shrugged out of his pack, and changed. Skin or fur, Pack didn’t care and it never used to matter who saw his scars, but he’d been a child then and he wasn’t now. Yanking out his kilt, he cinched it around his waist before stepping back into sight. “I’m Dusty, this is Alver. He’s a mage. We’re coming with you to help fight the Empire.”

  “Are you?” The question was polite, if a little aloof. She hadn’t reached for the rifle leaning against the log beside her, so Dusty figured aloof was fine. After a long moment, she nodded. A strand of long, light-brown hair, loose from her braid, fell forward over her shoulder. “Nina,” she said, tucked the hair back behind her ear, and added, “Have a seat.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Alver drew up a hummock of earth and sat.

  The aloofness disappeared. Dusty figured Nina was about the same age as Alver’s mother, but her sudden enthusiasm made her look younger. “You’re an Earth Mage!”

  “Nope. We don’t do that divide and conquer stuff. I’m just a mage.”

  “Like Mirian Maylin!”

  “Yeah, I’m . . .”

  “No, you’re not.” Dusty crossed his ankles and dropped to the ground. “No one’s like Mirian. Mirian could rule the world if she wanted. She can do anything. She could leave home as we get to Beinotte and still beat us to the governor’s house.”

  Alver poked him. “I thought you were mad at her?”

  Oh yeah. He dug his fingers into the ground. She was fine allowing the Empire to . . . well, to be the Empire. Still . . . “Facts are facts.” He looked up to find Nina leaning slightly toward him, the force of her attention almost Pack-like.

  After a moment, she sat back. “You’re one of the Ghost Pack. The child she rescued.”

  “Oozes clever,” Alver muttered as Dusty snapped, “I’m not a child!”

  “No, you’re not. My apologies if I implied otherwise.” She raised both hands and left them raised until Dusty nodded, then she picked up a tin mug from a rock by the fire. Her hands engulfed it completely as she raised it to her mouth to drink.

  It smelled like the coffee Sean brought for Mirian from Aydori, where it was both hard to get and expensive. Probably cheap and common in the Empire because they’d just conquer and murder until they found a steady supply. He was impressed that Nina had managed to carry enough to get her to Harar and home.

  “I should send you back,” she said, once she’d swallowed and set the mug down.

  Alver snorted. “Like we’d go.”

  “Ther
e’s that,” she acknowledged.

  Later, lying across the fire from Nina, Dusty breathed in Alver’s familiar scent, laid his head on his paws, and dreamed of ripping the Empire into small bloody pieces.

  “Seriously? They really believe the Pack are all male and the Mage Pack are all female? That’s crack-brained.” Dusty could hear the frown in Alver’s voice.

  And the shrug in Nina’s. “No knows much about the packs in the Empire.”

  “Yeah, I’m surprised.” Alver was breathing a little heavily, keeping up to Nina’s quick, purposeful stride, and Dusty figured if he hadn’t been getting an assist from his earth-craft he’d have had to ask her to slow down. “Maybe because you had them declared abomination, then tortured and killed them. I mean, not you, but . . .”

  “I know what you mean. That’s one of the reasons why Lord Governor Marchand wants to break up the Empire.” She stepped over a fallen tree and pushed her glasses back up into place with her right index finger. “No one should have the kind of power it takes to lead their people down such a dark path.”

  “Mirian says a little power applied at the right place is more effective than calling out the army.”

  “Does she?”

  “Yeah, and she says . . .”

  Dusty broke into a run. He didn’t want to hear Alver and Nina discuss Mirian’s philosophy of power. Not when she had her head stuck so far up her own mage-craft she refused to help.

  “Wait.” Nina came to a sudden stop and turned until she could look up at the higher rock ledge where Alver balanced. “Are you saying your mage-craft is first level?”

  He shrugged. “I’m fifteen. What did you expect?”

  “I don’t . . .” She fell silent, frowned, and finally said, “I know nothing of mage-craft, I thought . . .” Another silence. A deeper frown. “You’re kids. I don’t know what I was thinking. I should take you back.”

  “Okay, first, you already established that you can’t take us anywhere we don’t want to go. One of us, maybe,” he allowed after a moment. “But not both of us. And second, Mirian only had first levels when she rescued the Ghost Pack.”

  Nina shook her head. “I suspect it was more complicated than that.”

  Alver glanced down, shifted a bit of loose rock out of his way, and jumped. “Mirian says it wasn’t.”

  Waiting at the bottom of the path, Dusty changed long enough to snarl, “Talk about something else!”

  Dusty didn’t change in front of Nina, always finding something he could put between them—Alver, if nothing else was available. He forgot that anyone who knew dogs could tell what had been done to him.

  “Was it the Empire?” she asked one night, pitching her voice to keep from waking Alver.

  He snorted and laid his head on his paws. Who else would it have been?

  “Then I can certainly understand why you want to help us be free of them.”

  If she could, why couldn’t Mirian?

  “You’d have to be trying to starve in the woods at this time of the year.”

  Crouched by the firepit, Nina nodded. “I restocked in Harar, but it helps to have a hunter with you.”

  “And a mage,” Alver pointed out as he showed Nina the berries in the fold of his shirt.

  Dusty spat a bit of rabbit fur out of his mouth. “Bloody balls, Alver, it’s not all about you!”

  “Language,” Alver chided around a mouthful of crushed fruit.

  On those rare occasions Nina laughed, she laughed with her whole body. Dusty liked that about her.

  “Where does your tail go?”

  Dusty looked over at Alver and they both snickered.

  “What?” Nina demanded. “Is it a Pack secret?”

  “Not a secret, it’s like the first question kids ask.” Dusty pitched his voice higher. “Where’s my tail gone?”

  Nina spread her hands. “Well?”

  “It just . . . goes.”

  Mirian stepped out of the chicken coop, wiping her hands on her apron—realizing as callouses caught that her mother would be appalled at the condition of her skin. “Servant’s hands,” she’d declare with a sniff and insist she soak in vinegar until the callouses were soft enough to buff away. Her mother’s opinion of her lack of servants was revisited in every letter received. “Tomas Hagen deserves better than a cook and a daily. It’s like you’ve forgotten everything I ever taught you!”

  Not everything, but she was working on it.

  “Mirian!” Amelie, Alver’s oldest sister, waved from the path, her pale hair almost-but-not-quite silver among the shades of grey. “Mother sent Jonas and me down to pick up a few things,” she said as Mirian drew closer, “so I thought I’d drop in and make sure Alver was behaving himself.”

  “Alver?”

  “Alver. Might be a mage someday if he grows out of thinking he knows everything al . . .” She trailed off. “He’s not here, is he?”

  “He isn’t.” A breeze lifted a loose strand of Mirian’s hair. “I assume Dusty isn’t with you.”

  “He isn’t.” She sighed. “It’s been almost three weeks. They could be anywhere. Can you find them?”

  “Oh, yes.” The breeze became a wind, although the leaves around them continued to droop in the summer heat. Mirian’s feet left the ground. “I can find them.”

  “You need more clothing.”

  Dusty looked down at his bare chest and legs. On any warm day, men dressed only in kilts walked barefoot on the streets of Harar. If Pack wanted access to fur, they didn’t want to waste half the day getting there.

  “And shoes,” Nina continued. “Only the truly destitute go barefoot.

  “Alver?”

  Alver patted himself down as though there might be shoes hidden under his clothes. “Nope. No extras.”

  “Fine.” Behind the coverage of a juniper, he dropped his kilt and changed. He could feel Nina’s steady gaze on him as he emerged, mouth full of fabric. After he spat the kilt at Alver’s feet, he sat and met her gaze.

  “It might work,” she allowed after a moment. “You’re big, but we’re too far from Pack territory for anyone to assume you’re not a dog.”

  “He does tricks,” Alver said brightly.

  Dusty growled.

  “Or not.”

  Cities smelled horrible.

  Alver was enjoying himself, pointing and peppering Nina with questions she patiently answered. Dusty fought the urge to nip him. They didn’t have a collar and he wouldn’t have worn it if they did, so he stayed close to Nina’s side. She kept them on backstreets as long as she could, where the thin children wanted to ride him . . .

  “But he’s so big and fluffy!”

  . . . and a man who smelled of sour wine followed the three of them for blocks making larger and larger offers until Nina turned and quietly told him the dog was not for sale. Dusty couldn’t see her expression—he was watching the man, hoping for an excuse to take him down—but it was definitely effective, eliciting a mumbled apology and a fast retreat.

  Unfortunately, although Nina had explained they’d enter at the rear of the government building, they had to cross a main street to get there. Dusty had never seen so many horses in one place. And none of them were the sturdy mountain ponies who grew up surrounded by Pack.

  “This isn’t going to be good.” Alver glanced both ways. He lifted his head into the wind, frowned, and sighed. “Oh, so much less than good. However, if we have to cross, we need to move quickly.”

  “We have to cross.”

  “All right then. Dusty, go! Wait for us on the other side.”

  At the first break in traffic, he leapt forward. Wind, funnelled down the street by the five- and six-story buildings, ruffled his fur. Was that what Alver had meant by less than good? And why had they made the streets so wide?

  Two, three, four horses let it be known they’d scented a predator.

  He could feel the impact of iron-shod hooves against the cobblestones as they fought to be free of their traces.

  S
houting, a collision, a scream . . .

  Across the street and tucked around a corner in a shadow at the base of a building, he waited.

  And waited.

  He’d begun to worry, had stood and taken a step back out into the open, when his companions finally joined him.

  Alver sagged against the building. “Well, that could have gone worse.”

  “How?” Nina demanded. “It’s chaos out there. People were hurt! What happened?”

  “What happened?” Alver stared at her for a long moment, white flecks drifting across his eyes. Then he sighed. “The Pack are apex predators.”

  “That’s . . .”

  “Apex,” he repeated. “Bears will back away from a fight with Pack. Be thankful Dusty moved so fast only a few horses scented him.”

  The noise suggested more than a few horses were involved in the chaos, although everyone knew a fear reaction from one herd animal would set off the rest. So would the scent of blood. And Dusty could definitely smell blood.

  Nina stared down at him as though she were seeing him for the first time. As though she could finally see the help they were offering. “We could use that reaction against mounted Imperial troops.” She reached out as if to stroke Dusty’s head, then let her hand fall back to her side. “You okay?”

  Dusty pushed up against Alver’s leg. He’d been held and tortured by the Empire but Imperial horses had never harmed him, and yet, it was horses who were bleeding.

  The government building was old, with thick stone walls, and wonderfully cool inside. It was also the largest building Dusty had ever seen—not counting the Imperial Palace where he’d only seen a cell, the tiled room where the knives were used, and the ruins Mirian had left it in. Nina ushered them into a small room and said, “Wait here. I need to inform Lord Governor Marchand I’ve returned.”

  The scents in the room were old, and no one but a female rat scavenging for her young had been there for days, so once Nina left, Dusty changed. By the time she returned, he’d changed twice more and Alver had begun to speculate about the tiny sheep on the wallpaper.