Shifting Plains

by Jean Johnson

  The bonfire had long since died down to a bed of coals. Two elderly Shifterai men were still up, sitting in a pair of canvas-slung chairs and talking companionably, if quietly. Picking an unclaimed bench left behind at the end of the celebration, Kodan and Tava sat down on it. They were far enough away from both the men and the various geomes that their conversation would remain private, but were still in an open, public place.

  For a long moment, silence stretched between the two of them. Then, simultaneously, they both said, “I wanted to—”

  Both broke off, and Kodan gestured for her to go first. Tava looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap. “I wanted to . . . to apologize for being so brash, this evening. For challenging your authority so openly. I wasn’t trying to challenge it, but . . .”

  “Shh,” Kodan soothed her. “I figured it out within moments. You were being your clever self. You realized there would be doubts along those lines in the Family, and you wanted to make sure I reassured the others that I am qualified to lead them. Particularly when we do have two princesses, and one of them clearly superior to the other.” He reached for her fingers with his left hand, covering them with a little squeeze. “I wanted to apologize myself for seeming to ignore you afterward. After bringing down such a firm but fair judgment, I didn’t want anyone to see me favoring you right away once again, for fear they’d think I’d try to favor you during the selection process.”

  Tava frowned at that. She glanced at him, quirking her brow. “But you have no say in who is selected as the chief princess. The way you phrased things, it is the two Councils who decide whether or not each of us has learned enough about how to govern this Family to be entrusted with its leadership.”

  “You have thought of that, and I have thought of that, but that doesn’t guarantee everyone else has thought of that,” Kodan pointed out. “I . . . also wanted to apologize deeply for putting you on the spot like that. I shouldn’t have presumed that you want to be considered for the leadership of Family Tiger. The others will assume it simply because you’re a princess, but I shouldn’t have.”

  “Aside from the fact I don’t know what kind of a leader I’d make, because I’ve never been allowed to lead . . . I’m not offended,” Tava confessed. This, too, she had thought about while lying in bed. “I was startled, and uncomfortable, but no worse than anything else I’ve felt since you bargained with me to come here. I’m glad you did convince me to come.”

  The dim glow of the bonfire embers and the faint radiance from the stars couldn’t hide his pleased smile. Kodan gently squeezed her hand again. “I hope you stay longer than a month. In fact, I hope you choose to stay longer than a year. A lot longer . . . but that brings me to my next apology,” he added, letting his smile fade in exchange for a sober look. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I’m sorry.”

  Tava blinked at him. Their kiss, stolen behind the back door of the Lord’s geome, was one of her favorite memories of the past night. But if he’s regretting it . . . She looked down at the hand still covering hers and swallowed her disappointment. “Oh.”

  “Are you disappointed that I’m apologizing?” Kodan asked her.

  “Well, yes,” Tava admitted, glancing at him again. “I mean, I enjoyed it. I just thought that you, um . . . But if you didn’t enjoy it, then . . .”

  “My enjoyment isn’t the point . . . though I did enjoy it very much,” Kodan corrected her. His hand gently squeezed hers. “The point is, I shouldn’t have done it, and I’m apologizing for my unbecoming behavior.”

  “Oh! Right . . . the courtship customs. You’re forgiven,” Tava stated firmly. She looked around quickly to make sure they were still verbally private, even if they were in view of the two elderly Shifterai watching the dying embers of the bonfire. Glancing at Kodan, she offered him a shy smile. “Even if you should transgress custom quite a bit more . . . I’d still forgive you.”

  He gave her a mock-glare. “You’re tempting me into wanting to do things that would bring shame upon us both, if anyone found out. Things that shouldn’t take place outside the bounds of marriage . . . a marriage which is literally in your hands. Not that I’m asking you to reach for me right now. Not if lust is your only motivation.”

  Tava looked at him sharply. He met her gaze steadily.

  “I would want you to reach for me. Not for my body, not for my status, not for my shapes. I want you to know your own mind when it comes to your future, and for you to know your heart.” Moving his hand, he twined his fingers with hers. “If you continue to learn as well as you have, and to think just as fast . . . in a year’s time, you will most likely become Atava, Princess of Family Tiger. If you choose to stay with us at the end of our bartered year. But I would still want you. Not the princess, not the shapeshifter, not the leader everyone would expect you to become. Just you: Tava. Even if I must now call you Atava in public, I would leap to you if you were just Tava, and you wanted me to.”

  His quiet admission touched her. Leaning against him, Tava rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m glad you found me when you did, and I’m very glad you brought me here. The more I learn of the true Shifterai, the more I want to stay here. But as much as I feel like I finally belong somewhere . . . a good part of that is you. I may have lost my physical home down in the Valley . . . but I still feel it inside whenever I’m with you. My sense of home. Some of it comes from your people—”

  “—Our people,” he corrected her, freeing his hand so that he could wrap his arm around her shoulders.

  “Some of it comes from our people,” Tava agreed, daring to slip her own arm around his waist. “But more of it comes from you. The men of the Shifting Plains might be more . . . mm . . . relaxed, I suppose, when it comes to how they behave in public, compared to the men of the Valley, but even so, very few of them like all the same things that I do. They don’t think like you and I do—your brother giving me that lambskin blanket, for one.”

  “I’ll admit I wasn’t happy to see him giving you that,” Kodan admitted, tilting his head so that he could rest his cheek on her hair.

  “Do you want me to give it back?” Tava asked. “I don’t think I’ve encouraged his attention . . .”

  “No, you can keep it. Kenyen is impulsive, and he likes you. It’s very easy to like you,” Kodan added. “He just needs to find the right woman for himself. Someone other than you.”

  Smiling, Tava dared to tease, “Feeling a little possessive of me?” “A little. But my brother is more interested in being a warrior than a scholar. He wouldn’t share your love of books, like I do,” he said.

  “That reminds me. You owe me a new book to read. You promised when we first came here that you’d lend me a new book,” she reminded him.

  Kodan craned his neck, peering at her. “I gave you two of my books, woman!”

  “Yes, but you gave them to me. You said you would loan me a book when we got here—and you gave me those two books several days later, not as soon as we arrived,” she added tartly.

  Chuckling, he tucked her closer at his side. “I see you will make a great law-sayer someday . . . I couldn’t lend you a book since you were being instructed in other things and wouldn’t have had time to read it. I didn’t want to torment you with something you couldn’t immediately enjoy.”

  “Like doing the things men and maidens shouldn’t do outside of marriage,” Tava sighed.

  “All it would take is for you to hold out your hand,” he murmured, “and I would gladly leap the largest fire for you.”

  The combination of his words and the sight of the still smoldering bonfire pit made Tava wince. “The smallest fire, if you please. I still remember what my mother went through. What all those women went through, being treated like that.”

  Kodan hugged her. “We’ll go looking for them, next year. I myself want to make sure such filth aren’t still around. We can afford to spare a few warbands from seeking income and trade. I’ll put Deian in charge; he’s traded off being warlord with me over th
e years.”

  “The position of warlord is offered to all suitable men at least twice, so that they may know what responsibility feels like and how to apply their lessons in strategy to real situations,” Tava recited dutifully. Sighing, she added, “Part of me wants to go right now to look for them. To confront my fears that this Family Mongrel is still around and still torturing women and abusing children. But . . . I wouldn’t know where to start, other than in the mountains to the south, and winter will be here soon.”

  “It’s something best started in the spring,” Kodan agreed. “My intent is to take your book to the City to show to Her Majesty and the Councils. They might ask the heads of the other Families to lend a warband or two of their own, enough to blanket the southern border. With enough shifters searching, even if this Family Mongrel is long gone, we should find traces of where they used to hide . . . and with enough shifters searching, if they do still exist, we’ll be able to crush them and rescue their captives. I would like to look for them as much as you, but winter is coming, and winter on the Plains is not to be treated lightly.”

  “Nor would it be easy to find those caves in the mountains where they took shelter,” Tava agreed. “Between the winds and the snow . . . I was always grateful we lived on the west bank, sheltered by the edge of the Valley, whenever we’d hear word of how bad the winds would blow across to the east bank.”

  “We’ll be safely sheltered in the City by then,” Kodan promised.

  A comfortable silence settled between them. Tired from the long day, Tava closed her eyes. She snuggled a little closer, enjoying the warmth and scent of the man next to her. He cradled her close for a little bit, then yawned. Sighing, Kodan gently nudged her.

  “Come. You need to return to your bed,” he murmured, nudging her up onto her feet. “I need to retire to my own, too. We’ll both need our rest. We can stay here another five days at most, if we shift the long-grazers to the east. If Tailtip hasn’t returned by then, we’ll have to head for the City and hope they catch up before the first storms of late autumn.”

  “Is it normal for warbands to be out so late?” Tava asked, curious.

  “Sometimes. If they’ve been hired for a lengthy job, or a distant one, it can take a while for them to return,” Kodan said. “Mata is the one in charge of Tailtip this time. He’s my father’s age, with plenty of experience. He’ll be able to get his men safely home, whether that home is here, or all the way to the City. We’ll just have to wait and see whether they join us in time or not. You need to sleep. There are a few things I still need to oversee in the next few days, but I do owe Deian assistance in trying for a new shape, and you need to know how we Shifterai do it. Not to mention I’m interested to hear how you managed it.”

  “There wasn’t much to it,” Tava demurred. “We had a barn cat several years ago. One day when I was thirteen, I was watching her stretch after getting up from a nap, and imagined how nice it must feel to stretch like that. When I gave it a try myself . . . my body lengthened. It startled me, but it didn’t frighten me . . . so I tried it again.

  “I ran and told my father, showed him what I could do, and he cautioned me not to tell anyone else, since the Alders would think a display of magic in a girl was unnatural and might treat me cruelly instead of merely with indifference. But I did practice, mostly by imagining what it would feel like to be a particular animal, and by having my father on hand to tell me if I was getting it right. I think a mirror might have helped more,” Tava added lightly, “but the best I could do was either a still pond during the day or a windowpane at night.”

  “That’s actually not very different from the way we do it,” Kodan agreed as they walked among the tents of the South Paw section. “We help each other to learn new shapes by watching and making corrections. If the person helping is a multerai, sometimes we can sort of . . . lend our magic to the other person, by laying our hands on the other shifter and feeling the new shape ourselves. Only without actually shaping it, just sort of pushing that feeling into the other shapeshifter.

  “That’s what Deian wanted me to help him do, since it’s more effective when it involves two multerai. Once they learn the new shape—if they haven’t reached their limit on shapes they can learn—then they can usually manage it on their own. But we do reach a point of limitation,” he admitted. “I can take fifteen shapes, which is three more than Her Majesty, and which makes me the tenth or eleventh best shifter in all the Clans. But every time I try for a sixteenth shape . . . I lose the sense of it, and it eludes me.”

  “I don’t know yet if I’ve reached the limit of the shapes I can learn,” Tava admitted. “I couldn’t always practice new shapes, without the risk of being caught. And I had to find a new shape, and track it, and study it so that I could get a sense of what it was like to be that kind of animal. The hardest one was learning how to be an eel. Breathing water is very different from breathing air.”

  “I know. I learned how to be a trout just two years ago. It was part of a dare, since true water-breathers are so hard to emulate.” Knowing their parting was inevitable, he slowed his steps as they approached her waiting geome. Turning to face her, he cupped her cheeks, warming them in his palms. “Know your own mind, Tava. Particularly when it comes to me.”

  Wanting to kiss her but knowing—despite her invitation—that he shouldn’t, Kodan contented himself with a gentle caress of her skin. It pleased him when she lifted her own fingers to his face. A twitch of his skin made sure his jaw was as smooth as if it had been shaved, permitting her fingertips to glide over his skin without being scratched.

  “Sleep well, Tava,” he finally whispered.

  A daring thought crossed her mind. She knew he could feel her face warming from it, but whispered it anyway. “I know I’d sleep very well if we—”

  He cut her off with his forefinger, silencing her suggestion. Shifting to her side, he nodded at the door, and swatted her lightly on her rump when she didn’t move. “Good night.”

  Disappointed but knowing he was right—and knowing that he respected her—Tava retreated to the maiden’s geome. The disarray of her bed reminded her that she had to restitch her mattress narrower in the morning. Doing her best to shake it down and tuck under the extra fabric, she lay down and covered herself with his foxfur gift.

  This time, it didn’t take her nearly as long to fall asleep.

  Tava bent her head once more over the thumbnail-sized arrowhead she was patiently gluing into its shaft. Unfortunately, the formerly gummy tip of her birch-tar stick had cooled and solidified again. Leaning forward, she extended the lump over the flames of the nearby brazier.

  “I could do that for you,” Medred offered.

  The Shifterai, whom she had first met the day before her arrival and adoption, extended his hand to take the stick from her. Annoyed, Tava swayed out of his reach, but that put her within reach of another would-be suitor.

  “She wants me to do it,” Tedro countered, reaching for the stick.

  “No, thank you. I can do this myself,” she asserted, dodging his hand as well. Hoping the resin had softened enough, she quickly brought it back to the arrow shaft, dabbing on the dark, tacky glue. Pressing it into place, she waited until it set, then double-checked to make sure the second scrap of sharpened metal would fit into its notch.

  Shifterai arrows were made with a primary arrowhead for the initial penetration and a second blade which was set about a thumb length back from the first and slightly rotated from the cutting plane of the first arrowhead, making it stick out something like a fin. They were made that way for two reasons: for one, to induce extra bleeding in whatever animal a hunter might hit, which would bring down the game animal that much faster; and for another, to make it that much harder for an attacking shifter to shift away the injury. Shifters could heal their injuries faster than normal, depending on their strength, but pain was still pain, a deterrent against unacceptable behavior.

  Soukut and her daughter had explained that it wasn’
t really necessary these days, since the men of the Shifting Plains were now civilized, but Shifterai women were taught to carry on the traditional modification made by their nation’s founding Queen and her Consort “just in case.” The only wound a shifter couldn’t heal was one caused by bluesteel, but the process to make the cobalt-hued metal was laborious and secretive. It was considered too expensive in terms of materials, magic, and labor to waste on common hunting arrows, though it was forged into manacles, brands, and blades.

  The hearth-priestess had also told her that her instruction in Shifterai ways would continue well past the original ten days, though it wouldn’t be nearly as intense. Tava’s current task was to practice making arrows of her own, rather than just borrow them from someone else’s quiver. Her skills with a single-headed target arrow had been deemed good enough. Soukut had told her to make hunting arrows, since there would likely be a chance to hunt game on the journey northwest, toward the City.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Medred told her. “You are a princess. You can choose to stay back and direct the fighting from a distance.”

  “At-t-tava is very b-brave,” Torei stammered. “She j-just might-t choose t-t-t-t . . . to fight!”

  Startled by his loud statement, the result of straining against his verbal ailment, Tava jumped just as she removed the second arrow blade to leave room for the birch-tar glue. The back of the blade caught on the end of the groove, and the edge of the metallic triangle sliced across her fingers. Hissing at the pain, she dropped the arrow on her lap and gingerly uncurled her fingers, gauging the seriousness of the cuts.

  Blood welled up freely from her first and middle fingers, though not as much from the third. Medred grabbed her hand without warning, jostling and pulling on the injury even more. “She’s injured! Someone get Yemii!”