Flare Shifter

by Erin MacMichael

  Kea tightened her grip on his hand. “Weren’t there any happy moments, times when you weren’t sad or afraid?”

  Ryder took a breath and narrowed his gaze, blinking as he searched his memory. “I remember my father laughing once,” he reflected as a picture appeared in his mind of an old, broken-down barn and a sleek, streamlined silver machine. “We met this man who had been hiding one of the old pulsedrive autos and he asked my father to see if he could make it run. He worked for two days straight cleaning and reassembling parts before he finally got the engine to start rotating. It purred like a well-fed cat when it fell into sync with Algol’s rhythms. It was soooo cooooool!” His face lighted with awe as he thought back to the exquisite machine, how it hummed, how it felt, what his father’s voice sounded like laughing over the spinning engine. “I was so proud of him,” he added in a distant voice as he listened to the echoes of long-forgotten sounds.

  “At first the owner was overjoyed, but then he and my father argued about something before the man climbed into the vehicle and drove off down a deserted road toward the northeast. My father wouldn’t speak for days.” Ryder shifted his eyes to Kea as something else slipped into his memory. “I think he wanted the man to take me with him. It wasn’t very long after that when he—”

  Ryder’s throat closed around his words and he looked away. His left hand rose off of the arm of the chair behind Kea as he twisted the silver ring with his thumb in anxious agitation. Kea pressed his hand in sympathy, but kept her peace as he shook his head sharply and started again.

  “We came to a town about two days east of Tessin which had a large Drahkian garrison on the outskirts. I was scared and didn’t know why we stayed, but my father seemed to be looking for something, talking to people without letting me hear. Then one morning we went to a small goldsmith’s shop on the main road and he took me around back. The door was open, but we didn’t go in, and—he left me, Kea, he left me!” he spat out roughly. “Left me standing there. He put the book in my hands and just walked away without a word. Didn’t even look back.”

  He closed his eyes for several minutes to let the familiar anguish settle back down out of his chest. “That’s how I became a goldsmith’s apprentice,” he stated flatly. When he opened his eyes again, he found Kea watching him with tears running down her cheeks.

  “It’s ok,” he said quietly, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. “I’ve cried for him enough through the years. I’ve just never had to say it out loud to anyone.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “How old were you?”

  “Maybe eight or nine.”

  “I know it was hard on you—it still is.”

  “The hard part then was coming to terms with understanding that he wasn’t ever coming back for me. I watched for him for months. The grief nearly ate me alive.”

  “Was it bad with the goldsmith?”

  “No, not really,” he said, taking a breath to clear his head. “Tobar was a decent enough man, not exactly kind, but not cruel. He was middle-aged, had a bad foot, and was starting to lose his shifting. We never really talked much, even when I was older. As an apprentice, I just did what I was told and for the first few years, that meant doing all the grunge work, but he also taught me how to read, how to draw, improved the Mothertongue I already knew.”

  “What about the Drahks?” Kea interjected quizzically. “You said there was a whole garrison in the town?”

  “Yep. For a while I was terrified that they’d come and take me away. Tobar kept me back in the studio out of sight most of the time, but I’d peek from the shadows whenever one of them came into the shop to order something in their broken Mothertongue. It was weird, but I started to get used to their appearance as I watched Tobar deal with them individually, learning their names and temperaments. It took a lot of the knee-jerk terror out of seeing them. I also began to understand that they left some people off the target list, mostly craftsmen and merchants they found useful, including Tobar.”

  “Maybe that’s why your father left you with him,” Kea suggested gently.

  “Maybe,” Ryder admitted, dropping his eyes and fidgeting again with his ring.

  “Aaaand?” she prompted when he hadn’t spoken for a few minutes. “Smithing? The guild? How did you end up in Tessin?”

  With a sigh, he picked up the threads of his recounting since she apparently wasn’t going to let him off the hook just yet. “When I was older, Tobar started teaching me how to work with casting and different metals to make jewelry. I learned fast and my skills were really good, especially design. It gave me a focus, something to feel good about, something to put myself into, and I loved working with gold and silver. In my late teens, I agreed to stay on as a journeyman since Tobar needed the help and I really had nowhere else to go. I made this,” he said, reaching his left hand around her shoulder to point out the old silver ring, “during my first year, saved my wages for a couple of months to pay for the materials. It’s—”

  “Iiiit’s …” Kea prodded as his voice trailed off again.

  “It’s my way of remembering what we’ve all lost to the Drahks,” he finished as he closed his hand and laid it back down on the arm of his chair. Kea nodded solemnly and he hurried on with his story before she prodded him again. The sooner he was done with this, the better. “About twelve years ago an officer from the garrison came into the shop and told Tobar that all members of goldsmith, lapidary, or any kind of weaponsmith guilds had three days to pack up and report to the Guild Hall in Tessin for relocation to the capital. The governor had awarded control of all guilds to Lord Tiro who wanted his most profitable property where he could see it,” he explained tightly. “Tobar was getting on in years and was petrified of living in Tessin. I wasn’t too thrilled about the prospect of living close to the ruling families either, but I had no other way of making a living. I had long since made enough intricate pieces to qualify as a master, soooooo—”

  “You went to Tessin and Tobar—”

  “Disappeared. Before he left, he gave me all of his best tools, a small fortune in supplies, and enough money to start my own shop. I was stunned—it was the only true kindness he ever did for me. Loaded down with as much as I could carry, I started off for Tessin and on the road it occurred to me that no one in the capital knew what I looked like, so a middle-aged Ryder Dundalk showed up at the Guild Hall two days later to register.”

  “And you’ve been hiding under their noses ever since,” Kea said with astonishment.

  Ryder nodded. “I knew it was forbidden to shift without ‘orders,’ but—”

  “We all do it,” she declared. “It’s who we are.”

  He shook his head repeatedly. “I just couldn’t … risk being taken.” He groaned and let his head fall back against the chair, pulling his hand away from her to rub his face and eyes. “Oh god, Kea, it’s been so hard! If I had known what I was setting myself up for or the insanity I was walking into—” He rolled his head back and forth on the chair. “But I didn’t. I set up my shop through the guild, hired a staff of craftsmen, and built out my business over the years. My designs have even developed quite a reputation with the ruling houses. That ought to be a good thing, right?”

  “Of course,” she chimed in with a hint of admiration in her voice. “It’s a lot to be proud of.”

  “But it’s not, Kea. It just means more eyes on me. It’s like walking a greased tightrope living this close to them. I do everything I can to dance around them, but there’s no way to avoid the atrocity of who they are and what they do to all of us. It’s a terrible thing to be owned by creatures who see us as nothing more than food or property.” His eyes darkened as he stared at the ceiling while his left hand fidgeted restlessly.

  “I’ve seen far too many things I’d like to forget but can’t. I’ve stood by as people were arrested and hauled away for no reason, never to be seen again. I’ve even watched people murdered in front of my eyes. The day I first saw you, I listened to a man die in agony at the fe
et of a crowd of Drahks—I was terrified that I’d be next.” He shivered involuntarily as the lingering memory sifted through his mind and he heard Kea pull in a quick breath when she picked up an echo of the sounds from Tiro’s hallway.

  “People disappear all the time, like my last housekeeper. About four years ago, I lost my youngest apprentice who was out making a delivery, although that hasn’t happened again since Tiro took bloody retribution on the house that dared interfere with one of his possessions,” he said caustically.

  “Then we have the saurs,” he went on, his voice quavering with disbelief, “huge, vicious, bred for the sole purpose of terrorizing so their Drahkian masters can feed on the fear. What kind of ghoulish fairy tale is that, Kea? That sort of thing shouldn’t be real—it belongs in a book like that one over there,” he said, motioning toward his drawing table. “But the frosting on the cake comes with the flares. Were you here during the last one?”

  “No,” she replied in a hushed voice. “It was several days after when Cullin was raided.”

  “Well, you’re in for an extra special treat. The elite families board ships and leave, but the rest of the reptiles left on Mindaris all go crazy, completely out of their heads. You’ll hear them start up pretty soon when the storm comes in. It’s always a bloodbath. The only quasi-safe place to be is behind the walls, locked indoors.”

  Ryder closed his eyes and let out a long, gushing sigh, feeling like he had just run ten miles with a pack of ground runners nipping at his heels. When he finally cracked open his eyes again, he shifted his head so he could peer down at the tiny woman sitting mutely on his lap. “I can’t believe you got me to talk that much.”

  Kea placed her small hands on his chest, studying his face with new understanding. “It needed to come out. You’ve been completely isolated, struggling to survive in this brutal place for a long, long time.”

  “Yeah,” he acknowledged with a grim set to his features.

  “I don’t know if I could ever get used to living here in Tessin,” she remarked, shaking her head doubtfully. “It’s so much worse than out in the country. There’s only one garrison in all of Silverloch Province and it’s several hours away on foot from Cullin. We’ve heard the occasional call of a flying saur, especially during flares, but the whole area we farm up in the foothills by the lake hasn’t been raided since I was little.”

  “You’re kidding!” Ryder exclaimed. He stared at her for several heartbeats, openly astounded. “I can’t even imagine what it must be like to live like that. Even when I was growing up out east, raids were a fairly regular occurrence. By Algol’s flares, not to be hunted in the streets or have nightly curfew terror— You must have been frightened out of your head that night your building was bashed in by the saur.”

  “Scared—to—death!!” she declared. “I’ve never seen a saur that close before. I could smell the thing’s breath and it was looking right at me when I raised my head!”

  “It was inches behind you, Kea, when I turned and yelled at you.”

  Her shimmery eyes grew wide and her mouth dropped open.

  Ryder shook his head at her artless naiveté which he found tenderly endearing as well as alarmingly dangerous. “Afraid of the reptiles and yet you followed your mother and brother into this hell-hole, ran around the streets at all hours, and spied on me in the middle of the night when the fliers were out. Kea, you take unthinkable risks.”

  She raised her brows and frowned sadly, appearing somewhat abashed by his gentle rebuke.

  “What am I going to do with you? Come here,” he said softly, pulling her down onto his chest to surround her with his arms.

  “Now, what started all this?” he asked with a heavy sigh as she nestled against him under his chin. “Ah, yes, the useless walking dead. Let’s see if we can think of something else which might give us a clue about where the Drahks took Ilánn and Stani. Tell me one more time about the day the soldiers captured them, but this time, give me as many details as you can remember.”

  Kea shifted her head as she focused on recounting the events as clearly as she could. “Alright, let me think. My aunt and I had been at the market in a town down in the valley all day and were walking back along the main unpaved road which runs along the base of the foothills. When we heard the distant sound of an engine approaching from behind us, we knew it could only be one thing, so we got off the road as fast as we could and ran up the slope into the trees to hide.

  “A few minutes later we caught sight of one of their large transport vehicles as it drove by, but it stopped a little way down the road and shut off the engine. At first we thought they had spotted us and would be coming up the slope after us, but several minutes passed and all we heard was the sound of boots on the hard-packed dirt and a few clipped Drahkian words. We couldn’t see much from where we were hidden and were too frightened to move any closer, but from what we could make out through the breaks in the trees, it looked like six or seven soldiers got out of the heavy, dirty vehicle. One of them went to the back and unloaded a low-slung, chunky, black-spotted saur. We could hear the beast snorting and stamping around before the Drahk next to it spoke a few words to make it quiet down. The party took off on foot down the road beyond the parked vehicle and then we understood what their target was. The side road leading up to Cullin was only a few hundred yards off.”

  Ryder grimaced, trying to make sense out of the thoughts and pictures he was picking up from her. “Their clothing was light. Could you tell what color it was?”

  “It looked like a light gray.”

  “Hmm, several houses wear gray. Any unusual colorings in their skin?” he asked, scanning the brief images of tall figures as they flitted through her mind.

  “They appeared to be a mixed group, some with mottled skin in browns and grays. There was one with light gray skin that seemed to be the one issuing orders. I’m sorry, those were only quick impressions. I really couldn’t see them very well.”

  “That’s alright. They look pretty typical for soldiers. A couple of the noble houses have very unusual colorings and I just asked on the off-chance that any of the men you saw had those characteristics. Ok, go on.”

  “After the party left, we thought we heard the voices and weeping of people in the vehicle who had already been captured from another town. We were deathly afraid for our families up in Cullin, but there was no way to get to them in time to warn them. I found out later that no one heard them coming up the road until the dogs set up a howl. Two men were shot down and three people were attacked by the saur as everyone fled out of their houses up the slopes to our hiding places, but the Drahks caught six people who didn’t make it—Mom and Stani, his friend Tanner Blake who is also about twenty-five, and Marna Weston with her two small children. My aunt and I heard their cries when they were brought back down the road and loaded into the middle of the vehicle with the others. The Drahks climbed in and turned the vehicle around off the side of the road and drove past us. I caught one fleeting glimpse through the grate of Stani’s terrified face as he held my mom and then they were gone.”

  “Ok, wait, go back,” Ryder said quickly. “I know you were watching your brother, but did you see the insignia on the vehicle?”

  She blinked and tried to refocus her impressions of the big, lumbering truck on the road. “Yes, I think so. There was something on the side of the front door. Can you see it?”

  “I can’t make it out,” he muttered with frustration, “but I know all the badges of the houses who sell Algolians off-planet. If I draw out the symbols of the ones who wear gray, do you think you would recognize what you saw?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Yes, I’m sure I would!”

  “Then we ought to be able to narrow down which house runs the garrison out in Silverloch.”

  Kea pushed herself up off of his chest to look at him, her face alight with surprise and hope. “And if we do that, I should be able to find out where they hold people, and then I—”

  Ryder pressed a fi
nger over her mouth to stop her mid-stream. “You’re not going anywhere near those beasts,” he said quietly. “I will.”

  Her expression twisted and her eyes took on the shadow of fear. He nodded grimly. “Uh-huh. Now you see.”

  She fell onto his chest and slid her arms around his ribcage, burying her face in his shirt. Ryder hugged her tightly and squeezed his eyes shut, cringing internally, knowing full-well what he had just taken on.

  As they sat and held each other, the first powerful blitz of the flare moved through the room, suspending all sense of time and pushing everything out of its way. As their ancestors had done for generations before them, they breathed deeply and allowed the stellar currents to move through their bodies unhindered, safe in their knowing that they would loosen and reform their cells again, cleansed and unharmed.

  At one point during the deluge, Ryder felt himself rise and carry Kea into the bedroom where the ripples in the storm took on a new shape and glow. Never before had the stellar winds felt quite so exhilarating, electrifying, and reaffirming.

  From somewhere in the outskirts of his perception came the shrieking sounds of reptiles.

  Ryder stood at the corner of a side street a block away from the wide back vehicle entrance to Lord Ataan’s mansion. For over two weeks he had worked diligently to finish the commission he had tucked in his jacket and then scoped out the house for several days, waiting for the most opportune time to make his move. From the traffic he had seen come and go, he was certain that Ataan’s ranking officers were housed at the primary residence, but he needed an excuse to make his delivery to Ataan’s garrison up near the landing fields.