Shapeshifters

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  Kel shook her head. “If I took away your love for your mate, your respect for life, your fear for your own life, and your desire for peace, maybe you would kill Nacola Shardae. Not because you would ever rationally do it, but because you would have no reason not to when she next baited you.”

  I frowned. “So you’re saying these six … were essentially innocent?” said Danica.

  Kel nodded. “By falcon law they would be guilty—guilty of succumbing to another’s magic if nothing else, and beyond that, guilty of disapproving of the actions of their royal house. But by your laws, they’re innocent.”

  “And five of them are dead now,” Danica sighed.

  Every one of us was thinking the same thing, but Kel was the first with the courage to say, “We need to give Syfka what she is looking for, and send her away from these lands. If I had imagined for a moment that she would go this far to find me, I would have—”

  Rei interrupted. “You can’t be the one she’s looking for.”

  Kel turned toward him, eyes wide. “Is there someone else you know of …” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Selfish, idiot hopes.”

  “You can’t be important enough to—”

  “Yes, I am,” Kel answered bitterly. She took a deep breath and said to me, “You should know. The Empress Cjarsa and her heir, Araceli, command a group known as the Mercy. Before I fled, I was part of that group—specifically, one of Empress Cjarsa’s four personal guards. The only people who outranked us were the four members of the royal house. I, along with my working partner and one of Araceli’s guards, discovered something the Empress wanted to be kept secret. Araceli wanted me executed just for knowing, but Cjarsa protected me.”

  She looked away and took a deep breath before she continued her story.

  “The Mercy works in pairs. My working partner was like a very close, dear sister. We had known each other since we were seven. She decided that the rest of the Empress’s people should know ….” She shook her head. “The Empress called it treason. When one of the Mercy falters, her partner delivers the punishment. I refused to bring her in to the Empress. I fled so I would not have to torture to death the woman I cherished most in the world.”

  Kel continued, “In the Empress’s eyes, I am the worst kind of traitor. She had given me her trust and her protection, and I betrayed her to protect someone who had turned against her.”

  “You can’t be the one she’s looking for, believe me,” Rei implored. “You said so yourself, the Mercy deals with the Mercy’s faults. The Empress would not have sent Syfka for you. Turning yourself in would be useless.”

  As I watched the argument progress, rising in emotion on each side, I could not help feeling Rei’s desperation.

  Kel could have run when Syfka first appeared. She could have left Danica to die, and stayed hidden. Torture and death—that was what she once had fled. That was what she was willing to turn herself over to now—and I didn’t know of any way to help her. I could not protect her at the expense of the safety of my people, my queen and my child.

  Kel explained, “My partner—the one who would have been sent to bring me home—is only a step away from death, bound by her own magic in a madness that Cjarsa’s wrath forced her into. Even if she was not, do you think they would send any of the Mercy for me, knowing that I left when I refused to turn in another member?”

  Rei took a deep breath, trying to regain his composure, and then said very clearly, “If Syfka tries to take you, I will fight her.”

  Danica began to raise her voice in protest, but Kel was faster. “She’ll kill you!” the falcon nearly shouted. “And then she will take me anyway.”

  “I am your commander,” Rei pointed out. “I’m sworn to defend you.”

  “Not from my own people,” Kel argued. “Not when you can’t win. You are sworn to defend first your Tuuli Thea and her alistair—and you cannot do that if you are dead.”

  The argument was interrupted as Gerard, one of the Royal Flight who normally stayed in the Keep as part of Nacola’s personal guard, landed among us. “Sir, Syfka is here. She is demanding her falcon.”

  Kel took a breath and looked at Rei with a cool, sad gaze. “Don’t fight for me.” Then she knelt, taking Danica’s hand. “You are my queen, and I have been honored to serve you. If that makes me a traitor in the Empress’s eyes … I will accept that charge and trust myself to her mercy.”

  LEAVING DANICA SAFELY BEHIND, I returned to the courtyard to greet our villainous falcon with Kel, Rei and the rest of the Royal Flight to back me. Rei had agreed not to fight, but he had insisted that if they needed to turn one of their own over to the falcons, they would all be there to witness.

  The instant Kel had reached the courtyard, she had closed her eyes and her figure had rippled. Erica had faded away, replaced by a woman a few years older, with dusky blond hair, deep blue-violet eyes and the Demi wings of a peregrine falcon.

  Syfka landed and returned to her half form with her usual hauteur, rustling her falcon wings as if she was shaking off some miasma from the Keep. The skin between her brows tensed as she scanned the guards and noticed Kel behind me. She seemed to deliberate for a moment and then said, “With such a welcome, you would think I came to take a royal hawk away, not a traitor.”

  “She is no traitor to us,” Rei answered, voice softly dangerous.

  Kel put a hand on his arm, urging him to hold his peace, as she stepped forward. “Lady falcon, I would be careful who you call a traitor. The Empress is a just woman. I doubt she would be pleased to know the lengths to which you went to find me.”

  Syfka tossed her head. “I doubt she will care,” she replied. “And as you are no longer among her favored, you will have neither the chance to tell her about it nor the power to level an accusation.”

  “Are you sure?” Kel asked. “Lady aplomado, you of all people know how precious children are to the royal house. My crimes may seem trivial, if the white lady learns you deliberately—”

  “Enough,” Syfka snapped. “The child you accuse me of harming is even more of a mongrel than the one your partner bore, and it will suffer the same fate.”

  I saw Syfka raise her arms in an ineffective defense as Kel lashed out not with steel but with magic. Syfka stumbled, dropping to one knee as indigo bands appeared across her arms and around her throat.

  Kel snarled, “Do you think I will stand here and allow you to malign that child? Did you think I would allow you to threaten my king and queen’s daughter?”

  Syfka had been caught off guard, but now she peeled Kel’s magic from her skin. Kel winced as each band shattered, but she let no sound of pain escape from her lips.

  “You dare attack—”

  “I am already accused of treason,” Kel whispered, her breath scarce after whatever Syfka had done to remove the magic. “The sentence is death, and not an easy one. I am prepared for that. I will answer to my Empress when I return to the island, but until then I will not grovel to you at the expense of my Tuuli Thea and her alistair.”

  The royal falcon’s expression shifted from enraged to amused. “You are too willing to be a martyr, Kel.”

  “I am, as always, what my Empress made of me.”

  She said the words as if by rote.

  When Syfka answered, her voice was cutting. “Then know this: Cjarsa never cared that you left her city. She has not spoken of you since your foolish rebellion. She has forgotten you already.”

  Kel recoiled, looking more stricken than she had when she had agreed to turn herself over.

  Syfka continued, “Did you think a stolen form was capable of hiding you from my eyes? I recognized you the moment I saw you—I simply did not care. You are not the falcon I was sent to retrieve. The Empress has more important matters to deal with. If you are what Cjarsa made of you, then you are nothing anymore.

  “Stay here if you like. Stay in this backward land, never again to set eyes upon the white city, never again to hear the magic sing. Stay with your rat snakes a
nd sparrows, always remembering you are not one of them, can never truly be one of them. Stay with your Diente and Tuuli Thea until fate catches up to them and the bloodshed begins again. Live among strangers and die alone.”

  She spat the words like a curse, and Kel reacted to them as such, crumpling to the ground as Syfka finished her speech. “Should you return to the city, I will see that you are turned over to my Empress’s Mercy and treated as any outsider would be. And of course you know that any child you bear with these savages would be put to death for its mixed blood.”

  Kel nodded.

  Finally, Syfka looked at me coldly. “I leave this criminal with you, but be assured, someone will come for the one I have sought. The white lady will not give up just because I have lost my patience for this search.”

  The falcon’s wings nearly struck me in the face as she departed. She shrieked as she took to the skies, and I heard Kel gasp. When I looked back at the exiled woman, I saw new marks across her shoulders, as if something had clawed through her shirt to draw blood from her skin.

  Kel’s head was down, her face buried in her hands, and her shoulders trembled as if she was weeping. The Royal Flight retreated, giving her privacy. Rei looked shocked, as if he did not know whether to leave her alone or kneel beside her.

  Before either of us had made the decision, the sound changed, and I realized that Kel was not crying. She was laughing, a brittle, hysterical kind of laugh of one who has had a narrow escape.

  “Kel …”

  Rei knelt beside her, and finally she lifted her head.

  “I should be dead—for what I did, for what I said to her.” Her voice held shocked wonder. “I should have been dragged back to Ahnmik. Never … Why would she leave me here?”

  Rei answered, “Because she is a falcon, and cannot imagine anyone being happy, exiled from the city.”

  Kel nodded slowly and reached up to brush her hair from her face. Suddenly she froze and haltingly explained, “I tried to take my natural form, to face her. But I couldn’t.” She shook her head, grasping a dusky blond strand of hair in her fist. “Once I had beautiful pale blue streaks like Syfka’s … but not now. I’ve lost that. My skin’s too dark, too. I can’t remember how it was. I don’t know if my face is right; I can’t remember Kel, not exactly. I’ve been Erica too long. Are my eyes right?”

  “They’re violet,” Andreios answered. “Dark, blue-violet.”

  “At least I still have that.” She lifted her head, suddenly defiant. “And I have my freedom. That is all I ever wanted.” Then she turned to look at me, with a bit of a smile. “That and to serve a royal house I respected and trusted.”

  After the tumultuous scene I had witnessed, I barely had the energy to deal with the supposed traitor whose actions had revealed Kel to us in the first place. Especially if she was innocent, as Kel had claimed.

  “Andreios, if Kel can assure us that Syfka’s influence is gone from her, you may release the woman your flight is holding. She should be harmless now.”

  The crow nodded, but he looked preoccupied. He took Kel’s arm to help her stand, and she leaned against him for a few moments before she took her own feet.

  The immediate trauma was over, but I still felt as if I was falling. Syfka had promised that someone would come. Would we lose even more to that search?

  We had already lost too much.

  “Sir, is Danica well enough to receive visitors?” Rei asked.

  He had hardly finished speaking before Danica hurried down the stairs and joined us. Gerard shadowed her in avian form, shifting a discrete distance behind her.

  She brushed tousled hair back from her face, then held out a hand to Kel.

  “It’s so good to see that you remain with us, Kel,” she said. “Dare I hope this means I have seen the last of your people?”

  Rei tensed, but Kel answered, “I wasn’t the falcon they were looking for ….” She shook her head. “Someone else will come. Maybe not soon, but someday.”

  Rei cleared his throat. “Milady, I …” He dropped his gaze. “With your permission, I would like to resign from the Royal Flight.”

  I was as shocked by the unexpected request as Danica looked. She answered instantly, “Permission not granted. Why, Andreios?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve failed you more than once. You have nearly fallen to assassins, and you and your child were both just almost killed. Further, I lost objectivity regarding Kel, and would have endangered you further. I should have told you about the falcon. I should have—”

  Danica interrupted him. “Rei, I know you. I have known you all my life.” He looked away, but she took his hands and forced his gaze back to her. “You are the best captain the Royal Flight has ever had. You couldn’t have done anything differently regarding Syfka, and though you posed your objections vehemently, I don’t believe you would have endangered us even if we had not spoken against them. May I also point out that I am not dead?”

  “Milady, please,” he answered. “I am good at tactics; I served you through war and could defend you there. More often now you face deception and disguised enemies, and that is not the art I know.”

  “And who knows better than you?” Danica argued. “You aren’t making sense.”

  “If you are willing to accept a falcon into your ranks, Kel would be a worthy leader. She is the best fighter we have. And, while this might not seem like a glowing endorsement, her former position on Ahnmik has given her more experience dealing with problems by means less direct than battle. If you have any questions about her loyalty—”

  “I don’t,” Danica answered.

  “Or, if you would prefer another, Gerard has always served well; he is the oldest of the Royal Flight, and—”

  “Rei,” Danica interrupted. “I will allow you a temporary leave of absence, so that you may consider this decision, but then I expect you to return to your duties. The falcons are powerful adversaries, and I have a feeling your faith in yourself has been somewhat shaken. But I remember the day you decided to join my guard; you told me your dream the instant you woke up, after fighting a serpent’s poison for days. You took that poison to save my life. You proved yourself that day, and I will not allow a crisis of faith to destroy you.”

  He looked away again, and his eyes met mine, pleading. I shook my head; this was Danica’s decision.

  “Leave granted,” Danica answered. “In the meantime, if she will serve, Kel may fill in for you. You,” she finished affectionately, “may come back as soon as your senses have returned.”

  “EXCUSE ME.”

  The cold voice behind us made me cringe for reasons that had nothing to do with falcons or Rei’s abdication. Danica turned with a smile, and I struggled to do the same.

  Despite how well the recent months had gone, Nacola Shardae still refused to believe that a serpiente man could possibly be the right mate for her only daughter. Because of that, she hated me as only a mother could.

  I couldn’t quite summon such a powerful emotion for such an emotionless woman, but all things considered, I did not know whether I would prefer to face the former Tuuli Thea or the falcon Empress herself. Unfortunately, I needed to tolerate Nacola for Danica’s sake, despite the way her golden eyes never quite met mine. She was discreet about it, but eventually one comes to notice these things.

  “Mother,” Danica greeted Nacola warmly.

  “You have a bad habit of allowing your guards to inform me of important events,” Nacola chastised. Her tone was carefully controlled, but it held a hint of the fear she must have felt.

  “I am sorry to have worried you; you have found us in the first calm moment since Syfka’s plans … delayed us.”

  I regretted that fact even more than Danica did. Immediately our disagreement surfaced in my mind, as I realized that Nacola would ask questions we had not yet resolved.

  Nacola just nodded. “You are queen; you had to see to your people first. The falcon problem has been worked out, I hope?”

  “For
this moment,” Danica said. “Kel, who you knew as Erica”—she nodded at the sparrow-falcon—“was not the falcon they sought.”

  Kel interjected politely, “The Empress is more than two thousand years old. She does not make decisions quickly, nor does she ever hurry. To her, a day, a month, or even a century may as well be an hour. If she is the one who pressed to have this falcon returned, then you may not see the falcons again for generations.”

  “If?” I queried.

  “To Empress Cjarsa, time is all but meaningless. Her heir, Araceli, is more driven. People speak of the Empress’s will, but often it is Araceli who gives the orders. If she is the one who seeks your falcon, you may still wait years, or her Mercy may arrive at the Keep tomorrow. And unlike Syfka, they will not be subtle with their methods, or leave until they have succeeded. The Mercy does what is necessary to fulfill their orders.” She stopped abruptly, swallowing hard, perhaps as she pushed back memories of her own time in that lofty group. “I’m sorry. I’m so exhausted, I’m having trouble holding a train of thought. Do you have any further questions, or might I be excused?”

  “We can speak more of this after you rest for a few hours,” I answered. And we would. Kel’s descriptions had soothed none of my worries; they had given me new ones instead. “I have a feeling Nacola wants to speak to her daughter now, anyway. Thank you, Kel.”

  “O’hena,” she answered. “You’re welcome, always.”

  Our conversation with Nacola was likely to be every bit as unsettling as Kel’s ominous words about the royal falcons.

  “Danica, you seem to have recovered well?” Nacola asked first, as we walked back toward a more private area.

  “I understand that Kel saved my life,” Danica replied. “I feel healthier than I have in years.”

  “And you, Zane?” Nacola asked, somewhat reluctantly.

  “Again, thanks to Erica—Kel,” I replied as we stepped into an empty sitting room.

  “For that, I am grateful.” The moment we were alone, Nacola prompted, “Gerard tells me that I am going to have a grandchild soon?”