The Shift of the Tide

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Jepp glanced at me. “Lie on the bed if you like. Kral has this thing about chairs.” She got that sly smile that meant his “thing” was sexual. Once I would have teased her about it, drawn out the details, but I didn’t want to open the door to questions about Marskal. With her scout’s instincts, Jepp already perceived far too much, and I wasn’t up for fending off her curiosity. Especially since I hadn’t decided what to do about his offer yet. Though I must be seriously considering it, since my thoughts kept returning to prurient images.

  “I’m too damp yet,” I replied. “This is fine.” Too fine, because I felt like I could stretch out and sleep.

  Two Dasnarian sailors hauled in a tub and filled it with hot water. Dasnarian-sized, it would be big enough for me to soak in. Jepp folded down a platform and set towels, soaps, and oils on it. Then came over to me once they left. “Let me help you in,” she said holding her hands down to me.

  I took them, knowing she’d give me grief if I refused, and my pride would take a worse hit if I staggered trying to stand. She helped me shimmy out of my gown and steadied me while I climbed over the high rim. I settled into the hot water with a sigh, my tired body relaxing, and tried to ignore my craving for sugar.

  “How badly were you hurt?” Jepp asked, eyeing me critically.

  “Enough to set me back,” I replied, closing my eyes to her.

  “Uh huh. Dunk your head and I’ll wash your hair for you.”

  “I’m not that bad off.”

  “I’ve gotten good at it.” She had that too-pleased tone in her voice. “Kral has a thing for me playing handmaiden.”

  “Kral has a lot of ‘things.’”

  “Yes. Yes, he does, Danu bless the man.” She set into scrubbing my hair, massaging my scalp with considerable skill. “Speaking of things, how long has the lieutenant had one for you?”

  “Shut up, Jepp.”

  “That long, huh? And are you reciprocating the thing?”

  “If I did, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

  “That’s a yes.”

  “That’s a ‘none of your business.’”

  “In-terr-est-ing.” She rinsed my hair, added more shampoo, and massaged some more. “Not like him, you know.”

  I didn’t want to know. But maybe I should. Moranu knew the man didn’t talk about himself much. “Isn’t it?”

  “Well, you know, like any of us, he gets around just fine. Village girls and such, but never anyone important.”

  “And I’m important?”

  She was quiet a moment. “Of course you are. For a lot of reasons, and you know that.”

  “Hmm,” I replied, then realized I sounded like Kiraka. “To answer your question, no, there’s nothing going on besides some mild flirtation, a few kisses. I’ve been busy not dying.”

  “Ah, now we get to it.” She did a final rinse of my hair, draped it outside the tub, and set to combing and oiling it. “Spill.”

  Kicking myself for letting that slip—a measure of how much the topic of Marskal flustered me, when this sort of conversation had never unsettled me before—I searched for a reply that would satisfy the ever-inquisitive Jepp. “It was a near thing, but I’m fine now.”

  “Zynda, honey, that’s a lie. You know I’ve always thought you were hot, but you’re much too skinny.”

  I cracked an eye open at her. “Is this tender care a ruse to ogle me?”

  She grinned cheerfully. “You know me. But I’m not allowed to act on it. I promised Kral exclusivity, Danu kill me now.”

  I laughed. I had missed her twisted humor and unrepentant verve for life. “That bad, huh?”

  “Actually…” she trailed off, thoughtful. “It’s not. I never thought I’d be the monogamous type, but it’s good. Different.” I felt her shrug. “It helps that he’s hung like a stallion and committed to making sure I don’t get restless.”

  When I finished laughing, she stroked my forehead. “Now, tell Auntie Jepp what happened.”

  So, I did. One thing about Jepp, for all her irreverence, she listened to reports well, filing away the information and not getting stuck in the gory details. She whistled low and long once I brought her up to speed, then helped me out of the tub, insisting on drying me.

  “I don’t know how you did it.” She looked me over, not with lust, but as if trying to see the secret in my flesh. “No wonder you don’t want to try shifting again.”

  “I have tried. I just … can’t.”

  “Ah.” She studied me thoughtfully. “Your trunk of things is right there. We’ve been dragging them all over hither and yon.”

  “I’d forgotten about them.” With some delight, I extracted a gown I’d brought from Annfwn, a lovely hand-embroidered silk that Anya had given me. Shapeshifters tend to be hard on clothes, and I had literally forgotten I’d left these here when I first swam away from the Hákyrling on an urgent errand to inform Ursula of Dafne’s abduction. Aha! And one of my other long pins. Happily, I twisted my damp hair—smelling of some Dasnarian spice—into a rope and fastened it there. The old habit grounded me. I was fine. I would be fully myself.

  “What can I do to help?” Jepp asked, unexpectedly gentle.

  “With what?”

  “Don’t fuck with me, shapeshifter.” Jepp’s gaze had gone flinty, no more gentleness. “I recognize a trauma case when I see one. I think you probably can shift, but you’re sabotaging yourself. You’ve lost your nerve.”

  “I have not,” I snapped. “You’re as bad as Marskal.”

  “Aha!” She nodded in satisfaction. “He’s noted it, too. Good.”

  “It’s not good. He’s driving me crazy with the hovering, making me eat all the time, going on about how fear of the pain is the hardest thing to get over and I don’t know what all.”

  Jepp just nodded again. “Perfect. He’s a good man. Ready for lunch?”

  “You’re just dropping the topic?” This had to be some trick of hers.

  She only smiled cheerfully and kissed my cheek. “Oh yes, honey. With the lieutenant on the job, I know you’ll be fine. He’s quiet, but tenacious as a mountain cat on the hunt.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “Just wonderful.”

  Jepp slid an arm around my waist and squeezed. “I know.”

  ~ 13 ~

  After a reasonably convivial meal—one where I ate all the fruit and honeyed breads available and no one commented—we gathered on deck. The barrier shimmered off to my left, a good distance away still, but so brightly full of magic that I couldn’t mistake it for anything else.

  I lifted my face into the breeze, sensing something strange, like the fetid odor of death though I didn’t actually smell anything but sea. It reminded me of that oddly mindless shark.

  “What is it?” Marskal asked quietly.

  “I don’t know. A wrongness.” I frowned at him. He’d cleaned up, too, though he hadn’t shaved, and wore borrowed Dasnarian clothing. With the shirt open at his collar, the laces hanging and loose sleeves billowing, he looked less the weary, hard-edged soldier. A tangle of chest hair showed through the opening and, tempted to touch it, I did, enjoying the catch of his breath when I tugged, and the way his eyes darkened. “I like you in this shirt.”

  “And you look even more lovely than usual in that Tala gown,” he returned.

  “I’ve been having a hard time deciding who I should warn not to break the other’s heart or I’d have to kill them,” Jepp announced, “so I’m just telling you both.”

  I let go of Marskal and smiled at her. “This from the woman who bedded most of the Vervaldr, and with delight for new meat because she’d run through the population of Ordnung already?”

  On the other side of her, Kral’s jaw clenched and he growled. Jepp turned her back to him, cocked a hip, and rolled her eyes. “So, you’ve heard the stories. But I never did Marskal.” She flashed her former lieutenant a winning smile. “Just so you know.”

  “Because I convinced you it would be bad for discipline,” Marskal retur
ned evenly.

  She shrugged that off. “Stick to that story, but it’s just as well, given how things have developed.”

  “Things, I might remind you,” I said lightly, “that are none of your business. But you needn’t worry. No hearts are or will be broken, as none are involved.”

  Jepp’s gaze flicked to Marskal, and back to me. “If you say so.”

  “I see something in the water.” Marskal was staring intently into the distance, holding onto the ship’s rail as he leaned out to get a better perspective. Trust him to be all business, which I needed to emulate. Jepp, as always, was a bad influence.

  I peered past him, the not-smell stronger now. “I don’t see what you’re looking at.”

  “We could climb to the crow’s nest,” Jepp said to Kral, though she sounded uncharacteristically subdued. “That way we wouldn’t have to sail as close.”

  Kral, who’d shed his armor in favor of light pants and shirt, shook his head. “Too many of us to fit and I’d rather keep an experienced lookout up there, despite your excellent long sight.”

  “Best in the Hawks,” Marskal commented quietly, and she gave him a brilliant smile.

  “We’re staying on this side of the barrier?” I asked, and Jepp sobered, frowning.

  “Yes. I have the Star, of course, so we could cross.” She patted the crimson leather over her breastbone. “But it’s not a good idea in this area.”

  “What happens?” Marskal wanted to know, his attention sharpening.

  “Inevitable attack, often within minutes,” Jepp replied, falling into her pattern of reporting to her former lieutenant. “Animals of all types. The fish-birds that Zynda will recall from her previous voyage, seabirds, ocean mammals, but not alive. Not exactly.”

  “Like the animated dead Illyria created at Ordnung?” Marskal showed no expression or revulsion. But then, he’d dealt with dispatching and burning them, many of them former friends. Speaking of having nerve, I had no idea how one came through that kind of horror unscathed.

  “Like, but not exactly,” Jepp explained. “They can be dealt with by dismembering them enough to make them harmless, but otherwise no.”

  But exactly like that mindless shark. A chill raised the small hairs on my arms.

  “Animals should be able to cross the barrier without magical assistance,” I inserted. That had ever been the case, even when the barrier surrounded only Annfwn. It worked to keep out people.

  Jepp gave me a shrewd look. “That’s partly how we know these are unnatural. These animals can’t cross, which is one of the things I wanted to ask you about, but hesitated to put in the missive. I lose track of which Tala secrets I’m not supposed to know.”

  I shook my head at her, frowning, not so much for her big mouth by for my mind not fastening on an answer. How did the shark cross, if it came from Deyrr? “It makes no sense.”

  “It doesn’t have to make sense,” Kral said, all practicality. “Suffice to say that your queen’s barrier is protecting us from creatures animated by the Temple of Deyrr, which is a good thing because we have bigger problems than that.”

  “What?” Marskal demanded.

  “This isn’t something I have words to describe,” Jepp retorted. “And why bother, when you can look?”

  She pointed and I followed the line of her finger, Marskal squinting beside me. The sun was lowering quickly to the horizon, running ahead of the early tropical twilight, and at first I didn’t see it through the glinting rays. Then, I did, and leaned forward, gripping the rail.

  “Moranu preserve us,” Marskal breathed beside me, and Jepp, on the other side of him, gave him an odd look.

  Black matter oozed through the water, like fingers of flowing lava, but matte dark. Shipmaster Jens kept the Hákyrling well back, running parallel to the bulk of the ichor. For there was more, stretching back in a solid mat to a jutting shadow of land on the horizon. The shimmer of the barrier danced through the land. Beyond, the landscape seemed even more decomposed and corrupt.

  “Can I borrow that glass of yours?” I asked Jepp and she nodded, handing it to me with a wry smile.

  “My spare, because I knew you’d ask.”

  “I’d love to fly over it, get a better look,” I said, holding the scope up to my eye and focusing it, remembering belatedly, with a stab of grief, that I couldn’t.

  “I won’t allow it,” Kral said. “The stuff has odd properties. We lost a man and one of Ove’s crows to it. No one else is going near on my watch.”

  “What is that land mass?” I asked, the feeling of foreboding growing stronger. “Is it part of Dasnaria?”

  “I’m surprised you recognize it. Kral replied. “A remote peninsula, but still Dasnaria.”

  “Dafne is way ahead of you,” I told him absently, scanning the barrier and the land on either side. “All those maps in her library. She’d already determined the barrier likely went through a piece of Dasnaria.”

  He grunted, in irritation or amusement. “That nyrri is clever.”

  I sent a magical tendril to assay it better, despite the bad taste it left behind, as I hadn’t been able to in dolphin form. I recognized that flavor, the sapping feel of it, twisted magic like the kind that High Priestess of Deyrr had wielded when she tried to steal the Star of Annfwn from us. She wanted it still. And was finding a way through the barrier to get it.

  “Population?” I asked.

  “Sparse. Mostly sheepherders.” Kral’s voice had an underlying tension.

  “What do you see, Zynda?” Jepp demanded, cutting through the niceties. “You know perfectly well I wanted you to look at this because you can see through the barrier and we can’t. Cursed thing is still mostly a big mirror to me, even with the Star—but it’s going right through that peninsula, yes?”

  I nodded reluctantly, handing her the spyglass. Then rubbed my eyes. “It is. And this … ooze in the water is coming from the rocks there.”

  “What is it?” Marskal asked, terse, reading something in me, as he seemed to be gaining the knack of doing.

  “Let’s postpone the analysis,” Kral said. “Have you seen enough? I’d like to put some distance between us and it—and you want to get back to Nahanau.”

  “Yes. Let’s get out of here.” And get the Star out of here. I nodded gratefully to Kral, who turned immediately to give the orders to come about. The sails snapped, ropes and timbers creaking as the ship responded to the sailors climbing the rigging. My temples throbbed and I rubbed them, closing my eyes against the too-bright sun.

  “Zynda.” Marskal put a hand on my back. “Come and sit down.”

  “No, I’m fine.” I opened my eyes to their concerned faces. “This isn’t a health thing—it’s reaction to that stuff out there.”

  “What is it?” Jepp asked, even her irrepressible attitude subdued.

  “I don’t know exactly. I understand now why you didn’t want to try to explain it.” Moranu knew I didn’t want to try. “The best I can say is that it’s an aspect of the death magic the Practitioners of Deyrr wield. It’s a waste product, what remains after they’ve digested life.”

  “You’re saying it’s literally shit.” Kral’s hand flexed on his sword.

  I laughed and he frowned at me. It felt good to laugh. Merriment was the antidote to death, to so much of what Deyrr hoped to do. There is also loving and being loved. Maybe that’s what Moranu meant. “Leave it to a Dasnarian to put something so crudely, if accurately,” I said.

  Needing the freedom, I pulled the pin from the coil and stuck it in my sleeve, shaking my hair out and scratching my fingers over my scalp. My skin itched, too. Marskal was right—I’d never gone this long without shifting, and the constraints of my human form made me restless. If I had to stay human forever, I might go insane. No wonder Salena had. Don’t think about it.

  “This is guessing,” I continued, “but I think the high priestess is fully aware of that land incursion through the barrier—might have been since the barrier moved and the magical s
torms occurred—and they’re exploiting it. Deyrr is using it as a kind of lever against the barrier, to attempt to dissolve it or punch a hole through. Your people there are lost to you,” I told Kral, levelly, and he accepted it in the same way, with a brusque nod. “The undead animals…” I hated to speak it aloud.

  “Just say it.” Marskal’s expression was set, tense, his jaw tight. I considered kissing him to soften those unhappy lines around his mouth. And to give myself the pleasure of something good and right.

  “I think they were humans once,” I said quietly. “Dasnarians, most likely, though they could be Nahanauns or…” I hated to give voice to it. “Well, no way to know now. We do know Deyrr’s magic is targeted at human beings, not animals, and we know the ones observed here aren’t real animals because they can’t cross the barrier. So they must be people forced into animal form in an attempt to trick the barrier.”

  “But shapeshifters in animal form could cross the barrier into Annfwn before,” Marskal said, searching my face as if he might find more truth there.

  “You and Ursula discovered far too many of our Tala secrets.” I had to smile, and—because I needed the contact, even if he didn’t—I stroked his cheek, lightly scraping my nails over his late-day stubble. I’d like to dig my claws into more than that. “That’s true. I think, therefore, that these must not be true shapeshifters, but people—maybe partblood mossbacks—forced into animal form via unnatural magic.”

  “To what purpose?” Kral demanded, but Jepp understood.

  “Scouts,” she said. “And spies. Testing our defenses. They’re experimenting, adjusting the magic until they can get someone through.”

  I nodded. “That’s my guess.”

  “It’s a good guess,” Kral breathed, sounding as close to horrified as I’d ever heard him. “It’s good strategy. If I wanted to invade a land behind a barrier, that’s what I’d want to do.”