Flare Shifter

by Erin MacMichael

  The cloaked man walked swiftly down the dark passage while Ryder scrambled to keep up, barely able to see where he was going. After several sharp turns, they descended a short set of steps where the truthsayer halted in front of a wooden door. “This leads to an alley which will take you back out to the street. You’d better change into your guild appearance first.”

  Ryder shifted his body and clothing to reflect his aging mask and held out his hand to the truthsayer, a gesture very rarely offered by Algolians. “Thank you—” he said solemnly as he paused and waited for the man to give him his name.

  The truthsayer regarded him mutely in the dim light and slowly extended his hand. “Kynn Solcroft.”

  Ryder grasped Kynn’s hand for several heartbeats while a wordless understanding passed between them. Pulling away, Kynn opened the door with the stealth of a thief and listened before he nodded and motioned for Ryder to step down past him into the alley.

  “Your fears are very real, Ryder Dundalk,” he whispered. “Think about what I said. Do something about it when the next flare comes.” His shimmering eyes disappeared back into the darkness as he noiselessly closed the door.

  Without looking back, Ryder headed for the street, checked to make sure there was no one approaching, and set off at a brisk pace to put the chilling specter of the Assassins Hall behind him as quickly as possible.

  Ryder closed the door and sank back heavily against it, transforming himself into his natural state. Kea was curled up in his chair and as she raised her eyes, it looked like she had already been crying, but the moment she saw his expression, her body shuddered with dread and fear. “Oh, no—” she choked. “They’re dead, aren’t they?” Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over her face as she broke down into sobs.

  Crossing the room, Ryder knelt down in front of the chair and pulled her to his chest, holding her close as she cried. The suffocating heartache from what he’d seen and experienced over the last couple of hours weighed heavily in his body and he felt like he could drop and sleep for days. During the long walk home from the Assassins Hall, he’d struggled with his own mortification and grief, dreading the moment he’d have to face Kea, wondering how in creation he was going to keep her from seeing the horrible way her mother and brother had died.

  Kea stirred against his chest, sniffing to clear her head so she could speak. “What happened?” she asked hoarsely. “I need to know. Was it Ataan?”

  “No—it was Tiro.”

  “Tiro?” she echoed, clearly startled by his words.

  “Ataan must have sold them after the raid on Cullin,” he explained, waiting for her to draw the next logical conclusion.

  “You mean, to the Assassins Guild?” she blurted, pulling her head back to look at him with open dismay. “No! Stani would never—”

  “He didn’t,” Ryder cut in quickly, bleeding inside for a man who had been murdered because he couldn’t or wouldn’t kill.

  Kea shook her head disbelievingly, staring at him with pain in her eyes. “But … how do you know that?”

  “I just left the Assassins Hall,” he declared raggedly.

  “You left—Ryder, you went into that awful place?” she cried in alarm.

  He closed his eyes and nodded. “Don’t ask me anything else.”

  She lifted her hands and laid them on the sides of his face, shaking him firmly until he opened his eyes. “What did you see, Ryder?”

  “They’re dead, Kea,” he whispered. “Just leave it at that, please.” He fought desperately to keep his thoughts away from the grisly execution, but his exhausted mind couldn’t manage to hold them back. The moment he failed, she jerked violently in his arms.

  “Oh god—” Her face crumpled with shock and anguish as she was overcome with grief.

  Ryder pulled her head onto his shoulder with one hand while he cradled her body with his arms, squeezing her tightly while she shook with wracking sobs. “I’m sorry,” he breathed into her hair, feeling tears start again for the umpteenth time since he left the Assassins Hall. “I’m so sorry.”

  He pushed up off the floor, clutching her in his arms, and settled back down into his chair with Kea sprawled across his chest and lap, letting her cry her heart out against him.

  It was a long time before either of them felt like speaking again. “I don’t know which is worse,” she began with a hitch in her voice. “Wondering if they’re dead, or knowing.”

  “It’s bad either way. I’ve spent most of my life wondering about my father. There’s no closure. Just a slow, constant bleed.”

  Kea let out a long, miserable sigh and sniffled. He stroked her hair and left her to her thoughts, sensing that she just needed to be held for a while as she worked through the fresh pain of losing her family.

  In the bleak silence of the room, Ryder brooded over his unsettling encounter with Kynn. The sound of the truthsayer’s voice next to his ear and the bone-deep fright of being discovered by those steely gray eyes replayed themselves over and over in his mind. He rubbed his tender left wrist against the cushioned arm of his chair to relieve the painful bruising and swelling from Kynn’s vise-like grip. His wrist would recover, but the mark the man had left on him ran deeper than his flesh.

  He had given him his life. Moreover, he had shown him what to do with it, and, most poignantly, what he should never let happen. Ryder glanced down at the small woman laying quietly on his chest and ran his hand lovingly over her arm and hips. She had changed him indelibly—reached in through the tiny cracks in his fortress and blown the dying spark of his spirit back to life. He knew he couldn’t live without the color and zest that was uniquely Kea, that she brought out in him, and to ever let the beasts get hold of her because of his own inability to act was unthinkable.

  He couldn’t begin to imagine the horrors Kynn and his family had suffered in the hands of a sadistic monster like Tiro, nor the countless people whose lives Kynn had ruined for the sake of his wife and child. The guilt he’d picked up when Kynn had nearly broken his wrist was black and bottomless. And all for what?

  For love. Love that had been caught and used and tortured by cruel creatures who didn’t have or value the ability to touch the very core of being alive.

  Kynn’s iridescent eyes watching him from the darkness rose up in his mind’s eye. He understood the man’s pain and the gravity of his words, and in an incendiary flash of clarity, Ryder knew what he had to do.

  “Kea,” he began, wrapping his arms around her warm body. “Kea, listen to me. I want you to go home.”

  The tiny woman stiffened under his hands and covered her face as she started to cry. Instantly regretting his words which she mistook for rejection, he hurried to reassure her. “Don’t cry, it’ll be alright. I just need you to be safe so I—”

  “Don’t send me away!” she pleaded pitifully, drawing her body up into a ball and crying even harder. Baffled and distressed, he picked up uncertainty and heartache directed toward him, but there was something else she was holding back which he couldn’t read and he remembered that she had been crying before he came in.

  “What’s going on? Kea, talk to me,” he insisted, lunging forward and pulling them both upright so he could search her face.

  She kept her head bent low with her eyes pressed tightly shut. “I ... I think I’m with child,” she managed to spit out as tears rolled down her face, “and now you want me to leave.”

  Completely sideswiped, Ryder gaped at the weeping woman on his lap as the ramifications of what she had just said came flooding in.

  “A baby?” he squeaked, his voice breaking with surprise. “By all that’s sacred, Kea, I never dreamed I’d be a father. Why are you crying? I don’t understand.”

  “We just got started, Ryder,” she answered shakily. “It’s so soon. I know how hard it’s been for you to let me into your life and I’m afraid that anything to do with a family will drive you away.”

  “Oh my god,” he whispered, grabbing her into a hug as he comprehended her misgiving
s. “I’m not that fragile,” he told her soothingly. On the contrary, he thought to himself, instead of feeling smothered by walls and fear over the prospect of having a child, the clarity and resolve he had just come to moments before suddenly became sharper and deeper.

  Loosening his arms, he sat back, taking her face between his hands. “Look at me,” he said softly and waited for her to open her eyes. “Kea, I love you. We’re getting out, both of us. You’re not going anywhere without me.”

  Her brows rose and a touch of hope lighted her eyes before she choked out a small smile.

  “I love you,” he repeated, giving her face an insistent shake. “Until you came, I was trapped by my own pain, too terrified to live, and it never occurred to me to leave. I had nowhere to go, no reason to break out, but I do now—I have you. I can either give you up, bleed the rest of my life and still get caught, or we can make a run for it. If we both stay here, sooner or later they’ll find us, especially with a baby. We have a much better chance of surviving out in Cullin and that’s why I need you to get yourself home, now, tomorrow. I need to know you and our child are safe.”

  “But what about you? Why can’t we go together?”

  Ryder let out a frustrated breath and dropped his hands. “Because I’m too visible. If I’m going to join you, I’ll have to cover my tracks so Tiro doesn’t come hunting for me.”

  “What are you going to do?” When he refused to answer and stared at her tight-lipped, her face contorted with worry. “Ryder, I love you. I don’t want to lose you, too.”

  “Kea, I won’t ever abandon you or our child. Do you believe me? I’m … coming,” he enunciated clearly, willing her to understand the depth of his commitment. “If I don't show up, it's because I'm dead.”

  With a look of trepidation, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. He held her close, rubbing her back with his hands.

  “Just tell me how to find you,” he said in a low voice, “and watch for me after the flare.”

  The first breaker of radiation hit hard, without warning, late in the afternoon. It was going to be a storm of storms, but he was ready. Ryder spread his hands flat on the worktable and bent his head, allowing the blast to pass through. As soon as it subsided, he picked up his work and called out softly, “Alright everyone, pack it up and go home.”

  Within minutes, the studio had been vacated by all but one.

  “It’s alright, Tevan,” he assured the man distractedly without turning around. “I’ll lock up as soon as I’m finished.”

  The journeyman hesitated and then moved off toward the back exit. “Good-night, Master Dundalk,” came the genial farewell as the door latched shut behind him.

  Ryder dropped his tools and gazed dispassionately at the unfinished gold collar lying on the table in front of him, thinking how ironic it was that this was his last piece. He wondered when, or if, he would ever touch gold again. Opening a drawer beneath his bench, he lifted out a small velvet bag and clutched it in his hand for several long moments before rising from his stool.

  Pulling on his jacket and tucking the parcel carefully into a pocket, he tossed his keys onto the workbench and glanced around at the unswept studio. This had been his life for far too long; this, and a tiny apartment, meaningless, except for the memories of Kea. When he’d locked the door to the flat that morning and walked away, he instinctively knew it was for the last time, and since he had given the book from his father and all of his drawings to Kea to take with her at their difficult parting weeks ago, there was nothing left to go back for.

  Ryder walked into the front of the shop and watched out the big glass window as Gavin Clarendon closed up his store across the way. The last few artisans and clients hustled across the cobblestones, fleeing the businesses along the street before the tempest moved in. No one took notice of him standing alone in the darkened shop, but they would certainly notice this place tomorrow.

  The distant hum of warships lifting off vibrated the glass as another wave hit, stronger than the last, sweeping through Mindaris and pushing time sideways—natural sensations for Algolians, but sanity-leeching for reptilians. Tonight he would marshal those forces for his own needs. He stood and collected his focus and resolve, allowing the storm to energize his body, mind, and purpose. When he was fully primed, he stepped out into the empty street, leaving the door unlocked behind him, and headed for the northern gate.

  The iron doors were already locked, but Ryder slipped easily through the cracks into the Drahkian district. The rising sounds of animalistic wails and guttural yells this soon after the first surges were indications of the ravaging effect the storm was already having. There would be many deaths before the night was over and he fully intended that his would not to be one of them.

  Transforming himself into one of the Drahkian guards who had manhandled him at Tiro’s residence, Ryder set out at a fast clip down the first wide avenue, heading toward the center of Tessin. The streets of the district were in complete chaos. Servants and nobility poured out of townhouses and apartment buildings, jamming the sidewalks, and fell either into crazed fighting or frenzied mating without regard to hierarchy or gender. The noise was ear-piercing, the smells repulsive. The faint echo of weapon fire rang from several directions between the sporadic honk and squeal of careening vehicles.

  Ryder held his focus on his primary goal as he sprinted and spun around the bodies in the streets, keeping himself off the sidewalks as much as he could and away from the center of the road to avoid being hit by speeding cars. He narrowly avoided running headlong into a large party wildly copulating against an iron fence, only to find himself face to face with a snarling soldier blocking his path with crest splayed and claws flying.

  “Come on, you bastard, fight me!” the man growled in Drahkian as his claws raked through the air toward Ryder’s head. Shifting instantly into the small servant from the Assassins Hall, Ryder ducked neatly under the Drahk’s swinging arm and darted around him, racing on down the sidewalk before the man could attack again. “What the fuck??” the Drahk squawked in bewilderment before letting out a yowl and moving off toward another target.

  Ryder kept himself to an even pace, breathing easily while staying alert for any new hazard. It was strangely exhilarating to be able to change his form at will, free of the usual deadly constraints, knowing that none of the reptilians he encountered had any sense of who they were or what they did, nor would they retain any memory of the night’s events once the flare was over. Being the only person on the street who was in his right mind gave him a bizarre edge he hadn’t anticipated, allowing him to slip and slide around their violence as long as he stayed on top of his game.

  As he approached the end of a long avenue leading into the roundabout, the rapid blasts of disruptor discharge grew louder. Dropping to a walk, Ryder scanned the open area ahead and saw that several uniformed groups were barricaded behind overturned vehicles, shooting at anything that moved. To avoid being caught in the cross-fire, he detoured up a side street and wove his way around the central roundabout area, skirting several parties of combating soldiers while moving steadily northeastward toward the stockades.

  Demented screeching and the stomping of gigantic feet reached him long before he found the wide entrance to the acres of enclosed saur pens. The beasts were clearly out of their heads from the erratic energies and the noise became deafening as he stopped in front of the open gates to the stockades. This was no place to be small he decided, so he shifted back into the towering Drahkian guard and stalked up the ramp into the bowels of the cacophonous zoo.

  The pens rose high above his head as he walked down the main aisle. Torg keepers ran from cage to cage, gawking with confusion or inciting the creatures further with mindless, random caterwauls, but even in their addled state, they shied nervously away as he passed by. Ignoring their mindless ruckus, Ryder scoured each of their belts until he found what he was searching for—keys.

  “You, get over here!” he barked at the keyhol
der to get his attention, knowing his tone and attitude were more important than any specific words. He walked further on down the wide aisle inspecting the cages while the Torg scurried to comply, following close behind him. The saurs in this front section were the large-haunched, upright beasts like the one that had demolished Kea’s building. He stopped in front of the cage of a mottled brown animal that appeared to be smaller than the others, but which still stood twice the height of a Drahk. “That one,” he ordered, pointing insistently at the cage. The Torg ran over to the lock and fumbled with his heavy ring of keys. After numerous nervous tries, he finally found the proper fit and swung the door of the cage wide open.

  The saur’s eyes were dilated and wild as it craned its neck and bugled. Ryder squelched his instinctive fear of the beast and quickly forced himself into the mindset of an owner, a decidedly easier task while wearing the form of a gigantic Drahk which the animal had been trained to obey. Walking straight into the cage, he grabbed the heavy chain dangling from the collar around the saur’s neck and jerked it down forcibly, holding it taut.

  “You’re mine for the night,” he growled up into the reptile’s brown eyes. When the beast complained, he tugged it again and pulled backward. “Out!” he commanded, leading the huge creature into the wide aisle while the Torg backed away, waiting until the animal cleared the door before pushing it closed.

  Off to the right, a challenging cry pealed out from a ground-hugging beast being led by a Torg down at the far end of the aisle. The mottled saur twisted its head around and barked, lunging aggressively for the other animal, but Ryder jerked its head back sharply before it had a chance to gain momentum. “No! This way!” he yelled, moving swiftly toward the exit to redirect the saur’s attention while wrapping the chain around his hand for tighter control.