Shifter Planet

by D. B. Reynolds

  The central hall was a sprawling and disorganized two-story structure, its ancient wood stained a dark, reddish brown from centuries of weather and use. It had been patched and modified over the years to add windows and a covered porch that stretched nearly the full width of the building. The core of it was still original construction, a testament to the determination of those original colonists to remain on Harp for generations to come.

  As she crossed the clearing and climbed the stairs to the old-fashioned screened door, she mopped her face with the sleeve of her tunic and caught a whiff of herself. She grinned. Nice and stinky, just like she’d planned. And shifters had such sensitive noses.

  Rhodry came out of his room at the Guild Hall barefoot, wearing a loose-fitting pair of drawstring pants. He was leading a long-distance hunt today, and wanted an early start. One of the Green’s worst predators, a long-haired primate known as a pongo, had been attacking the lumber camps throughout the forest. Pongos were big—as much as six feet tall when standing upright, and two hundred pounds of muscle. They were like banshees on steroids, but they usually traveled alone, and their favorite food was actually banshee meat. This pongo had killed a human, however, and that made him fair game for a hunt.

  With the hunt’s departure only minutes away, there was little reason for him to get dressed. He’d be going cat as soon as he reached the trees. Shifters were fairly casual about nudity—clothes were destroyed by the shift, and one could never guarantee there’d be something handy when changing back to human form. Many of the shifters living in the permanent residential areas of the Guild didn’t even bother with pants, but Rhodry had been raised among the mountain clans in a house full of female relatives. He’d been taught early on that one did not run naked among polite company. Although calling the Guild Hall polite company might be stretching it a bit. Especially when he saw what was happening below.

  Shifters lined the balconies. Some were sitting along the sturdy, wide railings in cat form, their tails switching with irritation. Others stood as humans. And they were all staring at the same thing—Amanda strolling over to the sign-up table for this year’s Guild trials.

  Rhodry stared along with the rest of them, not quite believing. He’d heard the same rumors everyone else had, rumors that only confirmed what she’d stubbornly insisted that day in her hospital room. She planned to try for Guild membership. He’d seen her many times out among the trees, walking along muttering to herself, taking notes on every little thing she came across, drawing pictures in that leather notebook she carried with her everywhere she went. Every shifter in the city had watched her at one time or another these last three months, always sitting high above her, hidden in the thick canopies where she couldn’t see them. And if he had watched more than most, it was only because Cristobal had put her safety in his hands all those months ago.

  She never acknowledged her watchers, and seemed unaware of them. That fact alone said she wasn’t qualified for Guild membership, that they could sit up in the trees and watch her, and she didn’t even know they were there.

  Of course, it was possible that she did know they were watching and had decided to ignore them. That’s what he would have done in her situation. Never let an enemy know you’re aware of him. The shifters weren’t her enemies. Not precisely. But if she could hear the trees as well as any shifter, and that was still a very big if in his mind, then she would definitely have known she was being observed from the treetops.

  Rhodry had trouble wrapping his mind around that possibility. He had to admire her determination, though. Hell, he even had to admit that he’d been impressed with the way she’d handled that pair of Wyeth badgers back at the start of all this, when Tonio had made the mistake of shifting right in front of her. He’d never told her that, but it didn’t seem to matter. That one event had set off a chain reaction in her thinking that had culminated in her ridiculous belief that she could qualify to become a member of the Guild. The other Earthers who’d remained behind on Harp kept to the city and spent most of their time in the science compound, but not her.

  She was out in the Green every damned day, learning the forests as well as she could, he supposed, given her obvious limitations. The Guild wouldn’t permit her to travel any farther than a quarter mile into the Green, not until she’d passed at least the initial exams. That didn’t stop her from doing it, of course. It seemed to be in her nature to push boundaries. Shifters were set to watch her and had frequently stopped her from going any farther than she was allowed. On the other hand, he knew for a fact that she evaded her watchers sometimes and went where she pleased. Because he’d watched her more than anyone else, and while she’d given her assigned guards the slip, she’d never managed to evade him.

  And it wasn’t as if the restrictions only applied to her. Every norm on Harp, and even the teenage shifters applying for Guild membership, were subject to the same limitations. Although he acknowledged that young shifters were given much greater flexibility. As long as there were at least three or four of them in a group, they were permitted, from about thirteen years of age onward, to enjoy almost free run of the trees.

  It was different for them. They were a part of the Green, a part of Harp down to their very DNA. More importantly, they’d been listening to the voice of the trees before they’d even left their mothers’ wombs, and were equipped from birth with the fur and claws that made them shifters. Even if Amanda could hear the trees, she couldn’t hope to match a shifter’s advantages.

  Raised voices drew his attention back to the scene down below. The shifter running the sign-up was arguing with Amanda, and she was arguing right back, quoting paragraph and line of Harp law at him—a law that gave every resident of Harp the right to enter the Guild trials. And she was a resident. She’d seen to that by moving into town. If she’d stayed out in the science compound with the others, an argument could have been made that she wasn’t really a resident, since the compound was fleet territory and not under the sovereignty of the Ardrigh. That was now a moot point since she’d rented those two rooms and moved in.

  He took a moment to marvel at the shortsightedness of the founders, that they’d written the law so that anyone could join the Guild, when the Guild had clearly been created to serve shifters alone. Not that he could blame the founders precisely. In all this time no norm had ever applied for the Guild. And why would they? Harpers knew this planet, knew how dangerous it was. They sure as hell knew better than to think they could take it on with their fragile bodies and deaf minds. That’s what shifters had been created for.

  The shifters around him grew still as Orrin Brady stepped up to the sign-up table. Orrin was one of the Guild’s trial judges. The judges were older Guild members who were past their prime, but still strong and with the experience and respect necessary to resolve disputes among the fractious shifters.

  “Interesting, don’t you think, de Mendoza?” Fionn’s voice announced his unwanted presence just over his left shoulder.

  “Not really.”

  Fionn laughed. “I take it you don’t approve?”

  He turned his head and looked directly at Fionn. “It’s not a matter of me approving or not. I worry for her safety. She may make it through the written exam. She probably will, given what I’ve seen of her. But what about the rest? She could die out there.”

  “I don’t know,” Fionn commented thoughtfully. “Amanda’s rather extraordinary.”

  “You support what she’s doing then?”

  “I didn’t say that. Simply that she’s extraordinary. She’ll do better than you think.”

  He gritted his teeth at the familiarity in Fionn’s voice when he spoke of Amanda. He wondered if she’d succumbed, along with half the female population of the city, to the prince’s charm; and then reminded himself that he had no say in whether she did or not. He’d made his decision; he had a simple plan. He was going to serve for as long as Cristobal insisted, and then go back to his life in the mountains. Amanda was a complication he didn’t
need.

  Now if only he could convince his body of that, his life would be much easier.

  A loud protest down below alerted him to the fact that Orrin had decided in her favor. She was signing her name to the register, just like the young shifters who jostled in line around her. He frowned as one of them shoved her roughly and then immediately apologized as if it had all been an accident. She simply regarded the boy like a badly behaved kitten, not at all intimidated by his size—which was already far greater than hers—or the number of his fellows crowded behind him. She had balls. He would give her that, too. Balls and determination. He fought a smile at the thought.

  Ignoring the young shifters, she turned back to Orrin, said something Rhodry couldn’t hear, then picked up her registration packet and spun away from the table with a triumphant grin. She glanced up as she went, spying him and Fionn standing together on the balcony. Her grin widened, and she winked.

  Fionn laughed and clapped his hands together in applause. Rhodry could only try to keep his teeth from grinding together any louder than necessary.

  The crowd broke up quickly after that, though there was plenty of muttering going on. He moved away from the railing, intending to go downstairs and out to the Green to get the hunt started, when Fionn put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Message from the Ardrigh, de Mendoza,” he said cheerfully. “He wants you at dinner tonight. No excuses.”

  “Why tonight?”

  Fionn raised his eyebrows speculatively, and Rhodry knew he was debating whether or not to answer the question. After all, if the Ardrigh requested his presence at dinner, he’d be there regardless of the reason. Fionn shrugged negligently.

  “Desmond Serna’s in town. He’s a cousin of yours, isn’t he?”

  He nodded, barely managing to keep his expression blank. “Distant cousin on my mother’s side,” he confirmed. And about as trustworthy as a banshee. He wondered what business Serna could have in the city this time of year.

  “He escorted his mother to the palace,” Fionn said, answering the unvoiced question. “I figured you’d be happy to have a fellow clansman around for a bit.”

  Not that clansman. “I’ll be there, of course.” He caught sight of his shifter patrol moving out the front door and nodded in their direction. “I’ve got a hunt to lead. I’ll see you later.”

  As he loped down the stairs and out to the Green, he couldn’t help but wonder what his cousin Desmond’s true purpose was in coming to the city, and why Cristobal, who’d been so set on sending his cousin Aidan away, had instead invited his staunchest enemy to dinner.

  Chapter Eleven

  The shifters flowed silently through the trees, their long, sleek forms gliding from tree to tree and limb to limb, causing barely a ripple in the canopy of the forest. The red-furred pongo raced ahead of them, its eerie high-pitched squeals echoing back through the forest, both angry and frightened. It was intelligent for an animal, capable of calculation and viciousness in equal measure. Its normal prey were the banshee packs which so tormented the human residents of Harp, but this time the pongo had found the isolated human encampments too easy to resist. One logger was dead, two others injured. One of those injured was a boy who was barely more than a child, out with his father for the first time.

  The shifters felt a certain empathy for the pongo, and an admiration for its hunting and tracking skills. But empathy was meaningless in the face of human survival. Shifters had been bred for this purpose, to keep the colonists safe by hunting the most dangerous predators on the planet. And in doing so, they’d become the greatest predators of all.

  Rhodry took the lead as always, signaling the others with commands that were no more than snarls, using the song of the trees themselves to communicate. Every animal indigenous to the planet could tap into that song, but only shifters—with their shared human DNA—could use the information as a tactical tool. The pongo was in sight now, powerful arms swinging its massive frame through the trees with an effortless grace. But even as Rhodry caught sight of the animal, it changed its tactics.

  Knowing it was trapped, surrounded by shifters, the pongo stopped trying to outrace its tormentors and turned to fight. It charged without warning, racing through the trees with amazing speed, bellowing its challenge and heading straight for Rhodry.

  Rhodry bared his teeth in answer, his own razor-edged yowl ripping through the trees and setting the forest to trembling around them. He didn’t wait for the pongo to reach him, but launched himself through the air, landing on the charging primate and digging in with his claws, swinging around to sink his fangs deep into the back of the animal’s neck. Destabilized by the awkward weight, the pongo lost its footing and fell through the branches, Rhodry still clinging to its back. They slammed against branch after branch, blood flowing from a hundred cuts before they finally landed hard on a wide, main tree limb.

  Using its arms to push off the thick tree limb, the pongo made a last, desperate leap. Back bowing with a mighty effort that lifted the nearly five hundred pounds of their combined weight into flight, the creature launched them both into the air once more. Pongo and shifter fell heavily through the canopy, forty feet or more, crashing through trees and vines until they hit the forest floor with a thunderous noise, sending ripples of sound and movement through the forest, shaking the surrounding trees and silencing the Green for miles around as every animal in the vicinity froze in terror.

  Sound faded and dust settled, leaves drifting slowly down to land on the bloody mass of fur and fang. The pongo breathed its last breath with an agonized groan, collapsing into the pungent loam of the deep forest. Rhodry waited to be certain the pongo was truly dead, but finally relaxed his hold, his jaw aching as he opened it wide enough to free his fangs from the creature’s neck.

  Breathing heavily, still in his cat form, he stood on all four legs, every inch of him bloody and aching. He was alive, which made him the victor. But he’d lost nearly as much blood as his prey. No bones were broken, other than a rib or two, but those would heal. Shifters healed far faster than regular humans, a side benefit of the shift itself.

  The greater danger for Rhodry was blood loss from the numerous deep wounds inflicted by both the pongo and the tree limbs as they’d crashed in a virtual free fall to the forest floor. It occurred to him that this would be a most opportune moment for his enemies to attack, and he wondered if any of his fellow hunters would stand with him if it came to that.

  Even those who distrusted him for being a de Mendoza—those who still seemed to be waiting for the inevitable day when he would step out of line and betray the Ardrigh—even they followed him willingly enough into the hunt. Because he was the best damn hunter in the Guild, and everyone knew it. He granted that one of his own cousins might be able to best him, though it was a near thing. But one thing he knew for certain, and that was that none of those who called the city’s Guild Hall home could hold a candle to him in the Green.

  But the hunt was over now, and he was wounded and vulnerable. He lifted his head and opened his eyes, and found himself surrounded by his fellow shifters, some of them bloodied by the chase, all of them exhausted by the long hunt. His mouth opened in a fang-toothed snarl of victory, a reminder to them all who had won this encounter. And they grinned back at him. Rhodry permitted himself to relax, at least a little. They might hate him for who his grandfather was, might very well politick against him behind his back. But they were united in the hunt, and today had been a very good day.

  Unfortunately, tonight was going to be a very bad night.

  Rhodry concealed a wince as he reached for his water glass. His ribs were still sore from the pongo hunt, and one or two of the deeper wounds had required bandaging. He should have been soaking in one of the natural hot springs that fed into the palace, instead of sitting here having dinner with people he disliked. He could picture it now. Steam billowing around him, the heat soaking into his muscles as Amanda massaged his shoulders. Her blond hair piled on top of her head, tempti
ng tendrils trailing over her breasts.

  He blinked in surprise, wondering where that image had come from, and hoping none of his fellow dinner guests had noticed his lapse. He drank deeply, thinking it was far more entertaining to imagine being in a tub with Amanda than to wonder what plot Desmond Serna and his mother, Isabella, were hatching now. It certainly wasn’t chance that had brought the two of them to the Ardrigh’s palace, and it sure as hell wasn’t because either one of them had a burning desire to reunite with him.

  He had a fairly good idea of what it was about, however.

  Desmond Serna was a shifter, and the de Mendoza heir if something should happen to Rhodry before he produced a son of his own. There were plenty of clansmen who thought he was already the better clan chief, regardless of Brian de Mendoza’s wishes, and not a few of those would have been willing to hurry Des’s inheritance along by getting rid of Rhodry for him. It was enough to make a shifter aware that he had enemies, including dear cousin Desmond.

  And yet here he was, forced to sit and watch with carefully concealed disgust as Des’s mother, Isabella Serna, let loose with a girlish giggle that set his teeth on edge. He saw with relief that the staff had begun clearing away the remnants of dinner, preparatory to the final dessert course. There would be a brief lull while coffee was brewed and the various cognacs were presented on the sideboard, which was Isabella’s opportunity to broach whatever it was that had brought mother and son to the capital.

  Cristobal leaned back, as if stretching after dinner. It had the effect of drawing him away from Isabella’s grasping hand, and Rhodry had to admire his tact. The Ardrigh knew as well as anyone that serious matters were about to be discussed, and he was separating himself symbolically from either party.