Shifting Plains

by Jean Johnson

  “. . . Kodan?” she asked after her fingers were more or less clean.

  “Mmm . . . yes?” he muttered, carefully cradling the mess he had made in his webbed left hand. If he hadn’t automatically adjusted the length and thickness of the fur warming his flesh, he would have been sweating from the aftermath of his release.

  “What do you taste like?”

  He choked at her question, almost slopping the cooling liquid puddled in his hand. “Uh . . . salty? And musky?”

  “You haven’t tasted yourself?” she asked, wondering at the hesi tance in his voice.

  “Uh, yes, I have, but . . . I’ve tasted women far more often, and I like it much better.” For a moment, he was tempted to offer a taste of his seed, but they had gone far enough as it was. Still, he didn’t want to just end their midnight connection. Licking his lips, he told her what he would have done, if he could have. “If we were mated . . . I wouldn’t be out here. I would be in there with you. I would lick your fingers clean, and kiss your sweet mouth. I would stroke your skin, soothing the sweat roused by your pleasure . . . and I would wrap my arms around you, holding you close as we drifted into sleep together.”

  That sounded . . . nice. Surprisingly nice. The last man to hold her had been her father, and aside from an occasional hug in the privacy of their home, he hadn’t held her since she was a young girl. The thought of Kodan holding her was an alluring one.

  “Tava?” Kodan asked.

  “Yes?” she replied, pushing up on one elbow.

  “Don’t forget to close the shutter. I can smell the dew beginning to gather in the night air. I wouldn’t want you to get damp . . . the wrong kind of damp,” he couldn’t help adding.

  Blushing at his words, Tava sat up and swung the shutter back into place. She paused before closing it completely, whispering, “Good night, Kodan. Thank you . . . and, um, sleep well.”

  He grinned, resting his cheek against the corner of the wagon. “I believe I will. Good night.”

  Mindful of the mess cupped in his hand, he headed for the pond. The water would be very cold, but it would be enough to wash the seed from his skin and take most of the smell with it. A quick, wary glance showed the others still patrolling out beyond the edge of the half-dozing, half-grazing horses. Including Deian.

  I’ll have to thank Deian somehow for allowing me this opportunity. And for keeping it a secret. Not that I broke Shifterai law, not exactly . . . but I doubt I’ll have this kind of chance again, once we rejoin the Family. Father is right; the moment I become Lord of Tiger, everyone will be watching me, and watching whomever I choose to court.

  That thought was a little depressing, but the rest of him was too satisfied to care. Now she knows what pleasure is like, and that a man can desire her and not attack. She trusts me . . . and she wants to know what I taste like! Plus, they hadn’t been caught. All in all, he was rather pleased with himself.

  They were almost to the Family, and she still couldn’t stop blushing. Not that she was blushing quite so much by now, but every once in a while, she would look over at Kodan, who would be glancing her way, and when their eyes met . . . she blushed. To be fair, he blushed a little, too. He also smiled at her. A lot. He also engaged her in conversation, asking her more questions about her childhood, about the books she had read, and about the things she liked to do.

  Right now, they were traveling through herds of sheep, having passed the herds of cattle and horses at the outer edges of the large encampment. Kodan pointed at the tents they were approaching. “The geomes of Family Tiger are laid out in a specific pattern. The structures that the whole Family uses are set up in the center: the two Council geomes where problems are brought to the two factions for solving, decorated in either horizontal or vertical stripes; the ageome, the Lord’s tent with its paintings of tigers and nothing but tigers, where those problems the Councils cannot solve are brought and where lawbreakers are brought for Truth Stoning and sentencing.

  “Then there is the healer’s geome with its red and white walls, where the sick and injured are tended; the all-gold teaching geomes where the priesthood give our children and young adults their lessons; and the all-white, holy geome where one can go to worship Father Sky and Mother Earth. They’re all arranged around the great bonfire pits in the center.

  “Beyond them in eight spokes stretch the private geomes, and the milking stalls—those are the tents with domed roofs but no walls, the ones spaced between the spokes of the camp,” Kodan told her, pointing at the canvas roofs in question. “Each one is painted with the animal shapes its owner can take, and here and there will be the red and green refreshing tents. The geomes that are all blue are bathing halls—you will use the one’s with the red-painted doors, not the green ones, just like the refreshing tents. Close to the center of the camp along each spoke are the eight maidens’ geomes. You will know those because they are painted to look like a grove of birch trees.

  “Farther out are the eight earth-priestess geomes, at about the midpoint in each spoke; those are painted with rolling hills. At the very ends are spots reserved for the eight warband geomes, which have a diamond painted around the pertinent body part identifying it,” he said. “This is why we had to swing to the right a little, since we’re aiming for the South Paw site. That’s the right hind foot of the Tiger, with the Tailtip warband on the southwest spoke in between it and the West Paw, which is the left hind foot of the Tiger. Most everyone who fights in the South Paw Warband lives in the South Paw spoke.

  “Continuing sun-wise, we have the Left Flank, North Paw, Sharp-tooth, East Paw, and Right Flank,” Kodan continued, gesturing in a broad circle as he explained. “The herds stretch out in similar spokes, as you have seen, with the long-grass eaters at the very ends, and the short-grass eaters closest to camp. When we travel as a Family, we use the larger geomes for communal sleeping each night and eat at communal meals, since it’s less work to put up and take down when you have miles to go. But once we reach a suitable spot for pasture . . . which is . . . ?”

  “Wherever you have plenty of water,” Tava supplied at his prodding.

  “Wherever we have plenty of water, yes,” he agreed. “Once we’re at a pasturing site with plenty of water, we spread out and set up all our individual tents. You’ll notice that all of the personal tents are painted, usually with the animal shapes that the man who owns it can make.”

  Tava eyed the trampled, short-cropped grass. “How long do you stay in one area?”

  “Depending on the size of the Family herds at the time, the water reserves, the growth of the grass in our absence, and the time of year, we can stay in one spot anywhere from one to six weeks.”

  “How do you tell which animals belong to which person?” Tava asked, peering next at the sheep they were passing. Children tended them, with the bigger animals being tended by the older youths. Tava craned her neck to look back at the fringes of the herds. Here and there, adults sat on horses, watching for strays and guarding the camp’s borders. But none of them seemed concerned about keeping particular groups of animals together, merely types. “They don’t seem to be separated in any particular way.”

  “Those that have ears, have those ears pierced by a thin steel wire, which is strung with a bone bead. That bead is carved with the owner’s name, Family, and Clan. Those that do not—like your ducks—will have the bead on a band around their leg. And those that are milked, they know to come to the milking stalls. Otherwise, they are tended as a group. Unless it’s their season, in which case we keep very careful track of them to ensure we know what the breeding lines will be—well, all of them but the goats. You can’t stop goats from breeding in any season, or at least trying to breed,” Kodan admitted, shrugging. He glanced at Tava and smiled slyly. “Much like men and maids, if they’re interested in each other.”

  “You don’t brand your animals?” Tava asked, trying hard not to blush. The closer they got to all those geomes, the more attention their caravan was drawing. “We nev
er had many goats and only the one gelding, so we never bothered, but I know the richer Alders in the village brand their most valuable beasts.”

  Kodan shook his head. “We’re not barbarians. We may raise them for their milk and their meat, but a tiny earring hole is less painful for the animals to endure than burning a mark into their hide.”

  She spotted something on the necks of some of the sheep. “What about the ones with the collars?”

  “Those are special sheep. They belong to Clan Snake . . . um . . . Family Copperhead. We put the collars on them to make them easier to spot at a distance, to remind everyone—particularly the children—that these are not Family Tiger animals. If they are injured through our carelessness, we have to pay five times their value to their rightful owners in Family Copperhead, instead of the usual twice their value.”

  “Why do you have . . . ?” Tava broke off as he nodded quickly, anticipating and acknowledging her next question.

  “I’m getting to that. Right now, Family Copperhead is having a Farm year. They’re tilling the fields and harvesting the crops for Clan Snake this season. As you can see, a Family has a lot of herd animals . . . and they must be pastured in different places throughout the three herding seasons, or they’ll not only eat the grass to bare earth; they’ll wander into the fields and eat the crops before they can grow, trampling everything to dust. Every winter, the Herding Council consults the records of the breeding lines and arranges for the herds of the Families about to start a Farm year to be shared among the other Families.

  “Usually that’s within their own Clan, but sometimes they hand them out to other Clans and Families, particularly if the lines are getting too closely bred for their health,” Kodan continued. “Any calf, kid, lamb, or foal dropped by a female stays with that particular female’s herd, and thus with that particular Family. It increases wealth and fosters ties with the other Clans and Families.”

  Tava mulled that over. “It also shares the burden of extra animals to feed, doesn’t it? Preventing overgrazing?”

  “Correct. We have sheep from Family Copperhead, Clan Snake,” Kodan said, “and one of the five cattle herds from Family Lion—they have almost two thousand people, and it’s said the Queen will debate this winter whether they should be broken up into two Families, one to remain Family Lion, the other to take on a new name, or asked to send some of their kin to the smaller Families. Not just in Clan Cat, but in some of the other Clans as well.

  “You’ll learn a lot more about Clans and Families from the priesthood in your history lessons over the next ten days—all of your questions will be answered,” he gently teased. “But as we are coming up on the site for the warband geome, I will have to focus on other things. Since I am the warband leader, it is up to me to blow the an-tak and officially let everyone know we are safely home.”

  “An-tak?” Tava couldn’t help but ask.

  Kodan grinned and freed a hand from the reins long enough to point. “If you lean a little to your right, you should see a wrought iron stand in the clearing up ahead and a big, curving ram’s horn hanging from it. As soon as we stop, I’ll hand you the reins, dismount, and blow three sets of signals. The first one—you’ll also learn these from the priests—is to say that South Paw Warband has returned. The second says that no one in the warband died while we were gone.”

  “Happy news for their waiting family members to hear,” Tava murmured, thinking of how she had discovered her own father’s absence only when their gelding had returned without him.

  “Exactly. And the third . . . if I can remember all the notes right, since I haven’t heard them in a long while . . . is that we have brought a newcomer to the Family. That way, everyone will know you are coming to stay among us and aren’t merely a guest traveling across the Plains to somewhere else,” Kodan explained. “There are also calls for when traders come, and calls to announce a birth or a death, to call for help in an emergency—all the outriders and the older, more responsible children carry a small horn with them, so they can signal for help if they need it.”

  “That’s assuming I am going to stay. I might just leave at the end of the year. Or sooner, if I don’t like it here,” Tava reminded him, though she knew her resolve on that point was weakening.

  Kodan gave her a pointed look of his own. “This is your home, Tava. You already fit in with us far more than you ever did with the Mornai . . . and you will see how much you truly belong with us, as you learn more. The priesthood will tell you these things, because you need to know how our culture was formed and why we’re so very different from what your mother’s book said.”

  “Speaking of which, where is my mother’s book?” she asked. “I asked Manolo if he knew which wagon it had been packed into, but he didn’t know. Nor did the others.”

  “I have it. I’ve been reading it in the evenings, after you retired. I hope you don’t mind,” Kodan added, guiding the mares so that they pulled the wagon up alongside the one in front of it. “They might be long gone, but these Mongrel shifters might also still exist. From what I’ve managed to figure out so far from the things your mother related, they seemed to have lurked in the southernmost reaches of the Plains. That’s Clan Dog territory, not Clan Cat, so I can’t be completely sure, but it also looked like they were on the very fringes of the Plains and often took refuge in the hills bordering the edge of the Correda Mountains, possibly to hide from being discovered.

  “Clan Dog might not have known of their existence as a whole . . . but someone might have known of them as an individual, and if they did, and did not report them, I want to know why. Because they were not Shifterai,” he asserted, halting the wagon a few lengths from the stand bearing the large, spiraling horn. He set the brake with his foot, most of his attention still on her. “I can’t be sure, but she describes several of the men as having ‘strange marks’ on their foreheads . . . which is the one thing we do brand. When a Shifterai is such a law-breaker that his punishment is to be banished, we mark his forehead with a brand made of bluesteel, which means the scar will never shift shape along with the rest of him, and he will always be recognized as a criminal on the Plains.

  “If these men were Shifterai criminals, then it’s all the more imperative that we find out if they’re still around. No one should go through what your mother endured, and I want to make absolutely sure they’re completely gone. One way or another.”

  Passing her the reins, Kodan stepped over her knees, jumping down from the wagon bench. A few strides got him to the horn, and a deep breath allowed him to blow on the spiral instrument. The notes the ram horn produced vibrated through Tava’s chest, echoing out across the prairie. Some of the Valley-raised horses whickered and shied from the abrupt, loud sounds, but the mares hitched to the trader’s wagon merely flicked their ears.

  The mix of staccato and long notes ended, and he switched to a two-pitch, happy-sounding trumpeting. The third blast added a third note somewhere in the mix, higher than the first two, which he squeaked at first. Kodan played through it anyway, then released the horn with a sigh of relief, hanging it back on the iron stand by its braided leather strap. Coming back to the wagon, he smiled up at Tava.

  “There! Now everyone will know we’ve brought someone new home with us. And you are home, Tava,” he promised, touching her skirt-covered leg.

  NINE

  “Hey, no flirting,” one of the others said, coming up behind Kodan. Deian clapped his hand on the taller shifter’s shoulder and dropped his voice. “She’s now officially with the Family, so you need to take her up to the center to present to the priestesses. Do you want me to start the tally of her goods and animals, or have Manolo do it?”

  “I think Manolo will want to greet his children after being absent so long, so if you’d be willing . . . ?” Kodan asked.

  Deian nodded, then leaned in close, gripping Kodan’s shoulder to hold him still for a moment more. “As for last night,” he murmured in Kodan’s ear, “I’ll expect your help in learning
a thirteenth shape, in exchange for my silence. I will learn a new one. I know I can. I just haven’t found the right shape for my next beast.”

  Kodan glanced up at Tava, who was craning her neck, looking at all the approaching members of Family Tiger. “I will help . . . if you’ll let Tava watch.”

  “If I’ll let . . . ? Why should she watch?” Deian asked, quirking one of his brows.

  “Because she doesn’t know how we train our shapeshifters,” Kodan replied. “Because it isn’t something the priesthood would think to teach her, nor could they teach her . . . and because she has a curiosity as boundless as the arms of Father Sky.”

  Hearing his quip, Tava blushed. Kodan smiled at her in reassurance. Sighing, Deian tossed up his hands.

  “Fine! Indulge her every whim! Just get her to the center. Her ten days begin as soon as she is lodged with the priestesses, so the sooner she gets to them, the sooner I can get your help in learning a new shape . . . and the sooner you can get back to courting her,” the shorter man teased pointedly, clapping Kodan one more time on the shoulder before moving away.

  “He has a point. The sooner you get into your ten days, the sooner you’ll have most of your questions answered. Come,” Kodan urged, holding up both of his hands to help her down from the wagon bench. “Deian will take care of your things, at least until I can come back to watch over them. You won’t need most of it for now, anyway.”

  Letting him take her hand in his once she was safely on the ground, Tava asked one of the questions his words stirred. She wanted to ask Kodan how the Shifterai trained their shapechangers, wanted to know how that differed from the undoubtedly haphazard way she had discovered such things, but she was still wary of revealing that she, too, could shift her shape. So instead, she asked something safer.