by Jean Johnson
Solyn gave him a puzzled look. "Wait... didn't Traver tell you anything when he gave you the ring? I know he gave it to you. I saw it... and why did you put it there, of all places?"
He blushed at the mention of it. "Uh, no. He didn't. He just handed it to me as covertly as he could—and I wore it there because he was wearing it there. We weren't in a position to exchange more than a word or two—he did tell me you expected me to wear it, but that was all he had the time to say, so I couldn't exactly ask him why it was being worn there. In fact, I thought you knew I was supposed to wear it there."
"Well, I had no clue where he'd put it!" Solyn retorted, embarrassed by mention of the ring's location on the underside of his manhood. "I thought he put it inside his mouth or something."
Kenyen wrinkled his nose at that. "Wouldn't that bang it against his teeth, maybe chip them, or at the least make noise whenever he chewed or talked? At least where it is now, it's not interfering with anything. Um, yet," he added, blushing with the thought of it possibly getting in the way for certain activities. He diverted the conversation away from that train of thought, though. "Is there something special about his ring? Or yours?"
"Of course it's special," she told him, covering the band with her other hand. "It's an enchanted pair of rings. So long as we stay within common speaking distance of each other, if anyone lurks within hearing range of us, my ring will warn me of it. It also tells me when they're not there... and right now, nobody is there. Which means we're free to speak. It won't last, since we do have to go back, but we're free to speak. For now. You can... you know, look like yourself for a while."
Debating the risks, Kenyen relaxed his features again. Under her curious gaze, he did what he had been longing to do since morning: rub his face until the muscles stopped trying to spasm.
Solyn watched. "Does that hurt when you do that? Change your shape?"
He shook his head. "No. Well, not normally. You can stretch and squish, pull and twist, and if you do it right, it doesn't hurt. It just feels... stretchy."
"Stretchy?" she repeated, dubious.
"You'd have to be a shapeshifter to understand it," he said, dismissing her confusion. "Here's another question. What made you think it was wise of you to confront a possible shapeshifter on your own? I could have been a member of Family Mongrel. These are dangerous men, and from what I've read, they wouldn't think twice about hurting you."
"Pliss." A bubble of fire appeared above her upturned palm, burning without visible fuel source. It cast gold-hot light on both of them for the few seconds she held it there. Dismissing it, she lifted her brows in silent emphasis.
Kenyen sneezed. "Ah, right," he muttered, pinching his nose. "You're a mage. Well, I hope you'd be fast enough with a counterspell, but I'd feel a lot better if you didn't let yourself be cornered by any of them."
He was definitely not Traver. Frowning, Solyn studied him. "How odd, that you sneeze every time someone does magic around you. None of my books mentioned that as a side effect of magic."
Sniffing to clear his sinuses, Kenyen shrugged. "I'd say one in ten or twelve shifters gets this way around mages. Most don't always sneeze, though our nose tickles like it wants to. But then mages are pretty rare on the Plains. Most of our magics seemed to have soaked into our flesh, making us shifters."
"Hm. Well, maybe an allergy posset might help," she offered, mulling over the possibilities. "It's not well known that I'm a mage—other than just enough to be my mother's apprentice. Everyone knows that Healing magics are a bit different from other magics, focused toward nurturing life and health rather than altering other aspects of reality. They all think I take after my mother, and I've encouraged that view, but aside from a few spells and of course all the herb-based remedies, I actually can't do most of what she does. Nor can she do most of what I can do."
Nose no longer itching, Kenyen lifted his chin. "You know, if you ever came to the Plains, my people would pay you well for your spells."
That made her roll her eyes. "You really aren't Traver. I do know a few things. I can defend myself, certainly. But what I've learned is only what I've puzzled out of books. What I need is to head to one of the cities, maybe even the capital, and learn from a real mage. I've heard there's a mage academy there. My father's offered several times to send me, but..."
"But, what?" Kenyen asked. There was a stool at the back of the racks, used to reach the top shelves. He pulled it over and sat on it, tired of standing. "Why don't you go? What are these Mongrel curs after, that you feel you have to stay and help protect it?"
Solyn bit her lip, indecisive. She looked at the hair in her hand. "You won't tell them?"
"My word of honor as a son of Family Tiger, I will not tell them," he promised. The knotted hair tightened.
Solyn lifted her gaze to the wheels of cheese around them. "They're after this. Well, sort of."
* * *
Six
Confused, Kenyen peered at the waxed rounds on the shelves around them, then peered at her. He looked between the two of them again, confused. "... They're after moldy cheese?"
"Do you know how bluesteel is made?" Solyn asked him. "Your people craft it all the time."
"I know there's a special process which turns regular steel into bluesteel," Kenyen admitted. "It's some sort of liquid in which they quench the hot blades during the forging process. And that we trade with the people of this kingdom for the special ingredients to make that liquid. Beyond that, I don't know. Most people don't, unless they apprentice themselves to the blacksmiths in the Shifting City."
"It's moldy tea," Solyn stated flatly. That made him blink. She gestured at the cave around them. "Specifically, moldy tea that's been improperly preserved and stored in a cave not much different from this one. You can't drink the stuff; it'll turn your insides inside out for a couple of hours if you do. But quench a blade in the brew every time you heat and cool the metal, two dozen or more times, and it picks up something from the tea that makes permanent scars."
"Quench it fifty or more times, and it makes it impossible for a shifter to shift shape when being touched by it, too," Kenyen muttered. That much, he knew. "It also starts to interfere with magic, though not to as great an extent. But what does moldy tea have to do with moldy cheese? Is this the same kind of mold?"
She shook her head quickly, her braid bouncing across her back. "No, this is greenvein cheese. Unlike the bluesteel tea, it's quite edible. Even those who have trouble digesting cheese, such as the real Traver, find this one less likely to upset their stomach. But it's an acquired taste. Very tangy and sharp. Not everyone likes it."
Kenyen still didn't know what cheese, moldy or otherwise, had to do with bluesteel. "Why would the Mongrel shifters want to get their hands on a special kind of cheese? Didn't you say anyone could store cheese in this cave, if they wanted to flavor it this way? And, by extension, come in here and pick up a wheel if they really wanted to? There aren't any doors on this place."
"By itself the cheese does nothing. But quench a blade in it, repeatedly, and..." She shrugged. "My mother was curious to know if anything else might alter the properties of steel, besides the bluesteel mold. She tried this and that, all manner of steeps and brews, and for love of her, my father indulged her. Nothing made any changes other than the moldy tea, for a long time."
"But one day, while crafting a small knife, my father jokingly cut a slice of greenvein cheese with the red-hot blade, 'pre-melting it' as he called it. He did this a few times for a snack, then realized when the blade had cooled that it had changed color slightly. It became greensteel."
"Greensteel?" Kenyen asked, amused by the name. "Why not redsteel, or yellowsteel?"
Solyn rolled her eyes. "Because that's the color it turned? It had a greenish cast to it, so they named it greensteel. He finished forging the blade that way, deepening the color, then my mother claimed the knife so she could do some experiments with it. When she did... she discovered that anything cut by it, the cut would he
al whole and well. Even if she scored a new cut across an old scar, the section that was injured by the knife would reknit itself whole."
"Gods, that has to be the best Healer's..." He trailed off as the implications hit him. Kenyen paled. "Oh, no. That could be enough magic to remove a bluesteel scar. Or rather, a bluesteel brand," he muttered, one hand lifting to rub his own unmarked brow. "That's what they're after. The book said they repeatedly swore they'd find a way to get back onto the Plains and take revenge against the women who Banished them, but so long as they bore their permanent scars..."
"... Book? What book?" Solyn asked as he trailed off, confused. She leaned against the nearest shelf as she asked the question; standing for so long after the hard work of flavoring and pressing all that new cheese was tiring. She flexed each knee under her skirt, making sure her circulation was still good.
Seeing her restless movements, the Shifterai held out his hand. She gave it a bemused look, until he patted his knee. Blushing, she hesitated, then accepted the proffered seat, sneaking him a wary, curious look. Kenyen didn't take advantage of her closeness. Instead, he answered her question.
"Most of what I do is travel as a member of one of the warbands from Family Tiger, Clan Cat. Last year, we rescued a maiden from potential abuse by a group of Mornai villagers. She and my elder brother, Akodan, fell in love. It wasn't easy, because she didn't trust us at first," Kenyen told Solyn. "Her village was kind of isolated, and all she knew about the Shifterai was what her mother had told to the village scribe. He recorded her mother Ellet's words in a book, which my sister-in-law brought onto the Plains with her.
"In that book... it detailed the horrible abuses Ellet had suffered at the hands of a group of Banished shifters who called themselves members of Family Mongrel—that isn't an official Shifterai Family—which is sort of like one of your valley holding groups, only bigger—nor is it affiliated with any Shifterai Clan, which is like a holding of a holding," he told her. "In truth, we didn't even know that Banished criminals had banded together, nor that they were skirting the southern edges of the Plains.
"Winters on the north side of these mountains are much worse than on the south side, so your people don't have very many settlements that close to the Shifting Plains. Our people are usually busy tending their herds down on the Plains themselves, and thus we don't go up into the foothills all that often... so for years, nobody knew they were there," Kenyen explained.
Solyn nodded slowly. "I can see how that could come to be, when you put it that way."
"Well, that's what we were doing when I stumbled across Traver. I came with a group of fellow shifters into the mountains, led by a trio of Princesses of the People, to officially track them down and make sure they weren't tormenting women, still," he explained. "In a cave which appeared to have been used by shapeshifters, we found a long-dead body and a hidden message claiming that he—the body—was the real Tunric Tel Vem, but we weren't sure of the location, so we split up to try and find the right place."
She nodded in comprehension. The shift in her weight on his thigh made Kenyen put his arm around her back, steadying her. Solyn didn't object to the support, so he left it there. This much, he knew was allowable in both of their cultures.
Seated on his knee as she was, Solyn found herself once more drawn to the shapeshifter in Traver's clothes. More so, despite knowing he was an impostor. He wasn't Traver, which meant she wasn't abruptly, puzzlingly attracted to someone she'd never been attracted to before. She was drawn to someone new. Having him look like himself helped clarify the difference in her mind... and looking as handsome as he did didn't hurt. Technically Tarquin was the better-looking man, but she suspected that was as much from shifting himself near-perfect features.
But tentative thoughts of twining with this near-stranger weren't helping their situation. She redirected her attention back to the past, to the cause of their current mess. "Mother loaned her knife to a fellow Healer a few valleys away, while she and Father worked on crafting more. The Healer and her family were slaughtered by what looked like wild animals, but there was no sign of animals having forced their way inside."
"The knife was found next to their bodies, badly damaged; Mother suspected a combination of magic and something acidic, because the other Healer was an alchemist and had jars of acidic and alkaline solutions in her herb-room. The investigators could just make out my father's maker's mark, which is how we heard about it. The damage had also ruined the blade's properties, so they didn't know the real significance of the knife, just that it had been found at the scene.
"We knew why the knife was there, and what it used to be. Mother figured the other Healer must have realized what her attackers were after and had done something to destroy it. Everyone who knew about the greensteel knife in all the valleys around us kept silent after that, for fear my family would be next," Solyn told him. "I'm trusting you a lot in telling you this. I want you to swear to me on this hair that you won't... oh. Perfect."
The hand she lifted was empty. Somewhere in their discussion, she had forgotten to keep hold on his enchanted hair. Disgusted with herself, Solyn lowered her arm back to her lap.
Kenyen covered her fingers with his own. "I swear to you, I will not tell them. You know I'm still telling you the truth. I have no reason to lie, and every reason to be honest with you. As great as this greensteel thing is for helping wounds to heal whole and sound, Ellet's book spoke of the curs who tormented her, of how they boasted they would find a way to sneak back onto the Plains and 'put women in their place.' Given the horrible things they did to my sister-in-law's mother... and given what I saw last night when they invited me to one of their shapeshifting bonfires... that is something I will not help them to do. No true Shifterai would, knowing what I know about these curs."
Solyn studied him, taking in his sober gaze. His real face wasn't as familiar to her as Traver's face, but she could still read his expression: he was telling the truth. She nodded. "Alright. I'll accept your oath. Don't break it. I'm a lot meaner than I look."
He snorted at that. "Not from what Traver's told me."
As much as his words implied a compliment, it was still a backhanded compliment when he used it to dismiss her threat like that. Determined to be taken seriously by this near-stranger, Solyn pinched him through his tunic. He yelped and batted her hand away, twisting on the stool. She pinched him again, or tried to; he blocked more successfully. It didn't take long for their squirming little fight to end with him wrapping his arms around hers, pinning her hands in place with his greater strength. He didn't hurt her, nor use his muscles to crush her, but he did hold her still. Solyn didn't struggle to get free. Being held like this felt surprisingly good.
Chuckling, Kenyen rested his chin on her head, taking advantage of their positions to cuddle her. She was sweet, pretty, smart, and in his arms for the moment. "You do know I wouldn't have impersonated him if the circumstances hadn't kicked both of us between the legs... but I find myself wishing I was him, just a little, so I could've grown up knowing you better."
"I doubt Traver could've handled himself so well, had your positions been reversed." She sighed, admitting the truth to herself. "He's a good man, but he's still young. And he's not quite, um... well, he doesn't keep up with me, sometimes. He's content to be a farmer for the rest of his life. That's good and all, but I want more. I need more. I want to explore more than just the local valleys, and I need to master my magics, and go forth and do great things.
"Traver is meant to live in the Nespah Valley. I'm meant for something else. And you?" She sighed. "Well, you're not Traver. You're a lot more confident. A lot more... worldly, I suppose."
"Mm," Kenyen murmured, relaxing his grip enough so that he could cuddle her more comfortably. She shifted closer, leaning into his shoulder. That pleased him. They were in this situation together, so it was good she was willing to trust him. "Traveling can be fun. I've enjoyed going out with the warbands, exploring new lands, meeting new people.
"I had plans to enjoy this summer's warband expedition, before things got turned upside down." At her questioning look, Kenyen elaborated. "My brother stayed home with his wife, since she's now pregnant, so our friend Deian was going to lead the next warband expedition outkingdom, looking for trade or work. For the first time in a long time, I'd have been completely out from under his shadow.
"I don't always like being compared to my brother—near constantly, because he's a very strong multerai, a shifter-lord with fifteen shapes while I have only seven to my name—but I do like being useful. But my brother asked me to go on this trip instead, along with our friend Manolo, to be representatives of both his interests as Lord of Family Tiger and Atava's interests as the daughter of one of their victims. So his name keeps coming up every once in a while."
Solyn nodded. This Kenyen fellow didn't hold her like the real Traver would have, but the differences were an improvement. Part of it came from the scent of him: musky, warm male mingled with whey, salt, and the curing tang of the cheeses stacked around them. Part of it came from the way the arm around her back held her comfortably close, similar to the way he had held her during that kiss. Traver would've held her tentatively, or awkwardly, or loosely, or... or brotherly.
Solyn was well aware this wasn't her brotherly best friend holding her, and she suspected he was aware of it, too. Which did bring up another question. "So... what are we going to do?"
"Figure out a way to get Traver out of this mess alive. That's the first priority, since he's in the greatest, most immediate danger," Kenyen murmured, content to hold her. There was nothing untoward in his cuddling a maiden on his knee, especially an outkingdom one, but he admitted to himself it was a treat. The last time he had done anything like this had been almost half a year ago. It felt good, but thankfully wasn't too much a distraction to prevent him from thinking. "The second priority is to keep them from getting their hands on your family's secret.
