“Well, who else am I going to talk to? The grass, the rain, the stars—Moranu?”
I startled at that, making Marskal twitch, so I waved a hand to tell him to stand down.
“Your lover is most protective. Handsome, too—as best as I can recall such things.”
Now chit-chat and gossip? “He’s not my lover.”
“Pity. Perhaps you should change that. Second chances and all. Might as well indulge yourself now as lovemaking will be something forever lost to you as a dragon.”
“Does that mean you’ll help me?” I almost didn’t dare hope.
“You survived, didn’t you? I hardly dared hope you might. You didn’t seem to have it in you. But I’m happy to be proven wrong. Perhaps you will find it in you to become the dragon.”
Even her faint praise filled me with pride. Not such an immature weakling after all.
“How many forms do you have?” she asked.
I tensed. Not only because I didn’t dare give her my usual coy answer, but because if she asked me to demonstrate… I wanted to weep. If only she’d asked this of me a week ago.
“Show me,” she demanded.
Steeling myself, I reached past the pain, past the fear. Reached for just one of those other forms I’d once taken so blithely, with such easy joy.
Nothing. My flesh remained a lump of clay. I’d become a mossback.
“You can’t, can you?” The impatience in her tone stiffened my spine. “Why are you here if you can’t shift? You do understand that becoming a dragon requires, oh, I don’t know, shapeshifting?”
“I thought I should come find out what you require of me,” I thought at her, reaching for excuses. “Tasks to work on for you while I recover my abilities.”
“If you recover them.”
I had to. I was a shapeshifter. I didn’t know how to be anything else. Even if I failed to take Final Form, I couldn’t live my life trapped in this weathering skin.
She gave an irritable huff of steam. “Perhaps you are correct that you could be spending this time profitably. What do you offer me?”
What could a dragon want? My thoughts wheeled, breaking apart and reassembling. Part of me yearned for nectar, but I tamped it down. I could eat after. Marskal probably had enough food for seven hungry shapeshifters in that pack of his. It made me smile to think of it. And centered me.
“You want to make it up with Dafne? Help her find N’andana. Help her with the map-sticks.” Perhaps that would go some small way to making things up with Dafne, too.
Kiraka contemplated that. “Why does finding those forgotten lands matter so much?”
“She has her theories, from books, and calculations. She thinks it will help thwart the gelyneinioes, who we call Deyrr. Isn’t that what you want?
“There is nothing there. If N’andana could have stopped the gelyneinioes, we would have.”
“Let her try. She’s smart about this sort of thing. Isn’t that part of why she’s your daughter, born to be joined with you?”
“There are many reasons for that.”
“But you do want to reassure her that you’re not dangerous. You can do that by helping her, by helping us.”
Kiraka’s thoughts hissed, burning brighter, like coals when turned over. “She wants you to consult with these travelers of yours? See whatever it is they’ve discovered about this new incarnation of the gelyneinioes, these Practitioners of Deyrr. This is important work, yes. But not my gift. I shall think on that. You will go now?”
“Yes. We plan to sail in the morning and—”
“Too slow. You should fly.”
That stung, but I was spared a tart, possibly impolitic reply, when she continued.
“I’ll give you a ride. Climb on. Your stalwart protector, too, if you must.” She sounded wryly amused, for my consternation or at herself, I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t spare a thought for it anyway, the way my mind fluttered from thing to thing.
“Now?”
“Of course now. I’m anxious to please my Daughter. Climb on. I’m aging as you dither and Deyrr grows in power.”
I blew out a breath. Turned to look at Marskal, who waited without expression, a neutral stance that somehow conveyed perfect readiness. “Care to fly on dragonback?”
Even his stoic composure cracked, astonishment transforming him into slack-jawed incredulity, as he looked from me to the dragon. “On her?” His voice even squeaked and he swallowed it down. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. How strange my life had become. “She’s willing to help—and she’ll take us to see Jepp and Kral, to save time. To make it up to us. To Dafne.” He’d gone so pale—no, actually green—that I put a hand on his arm. “You don’t have to. I’ll go and be back in a few hours.”
His jaw firmed. “I’m not leaving you. I’ll go.”
I squeezed his arm, my turn to be comforting. “She promises not to drop us in the ocean.”
“I never promised any such thing.” Kiraka put out a leg and snaked her neck down. “It will be up to you to hold on.”
~ 12 ~
We surged into the morning sky, the sun still fairly low for as long as the climb up the volcano had felt. Marskal perched behind me, one-arm wrapped around my waist in a death grip, the other no doubt free to draw his sword. We sat where Kiraka’s broad shoulders narrowed into her neck, forward of her powerful wings. I held one thick spine—as she’d suggested, more helpfully than I’d expected—and we both squeezed tight with our thighs.
Marskal muttered a low litany, something I couldn’t quite make out over the roar of the air. We flew high, much higher than I’d ever gone, even as a falcon. The air sang cold on my skin and it would have been unbearable if riding Kiraka hadn’t been like straddling a furnace.
Her powerful wings pumped behind us, accelerating to amazing speed. I bent closer to her neck to get my face out of the wind. That helped so I lay to one side of her dorsal ridges, tugging Marskal to follow. He obliged, laying his body over mine and pressing his head into the nook of my shoulder. My hair whipped in the wind—probably nice not to have that lashing him in the face. I reaped the lion’s share of benefit, as his warm body made a shell over me.
Below us, the ocean and islands spread out like one of Dafne’s maps. I felt the change in Kiraka’s muscles, recognizing her preparation for the dive, and turned to give Marskal warning. His face was right there, so I kissed him, hard and impulsively, loving that I’d surprised him.
“Hold on!” I shouted.
He frowned and opened his mouth—and the bottom dropped out from under us. Kiraka dove at such speed that we lifted from contact with her. I held on with all my might, my jubilant scream blending with Marskal’s long shout. From experience, I could predict what would happen next. A small dot on the ocean below grew in size. The Hákyrling.
“Big stop!” I yelled as loud as I could. Marskal nodded, capitulating and reaching around me to fasten his free hand over mine on the dorsal scale. Just in time. Kiraka flexed her wings and caught the air with a massive whoompf, like a ship’s sails bellying with the wind. My head snapped into Marskal’s forehead and he grunted. But we managed to stay on, with my stomach even catching up, now that we spiraled down in lazy circles.
A few of Ove’s crows rose up to meet us, and I realized that alarm calls clanged up from below, sailors scrambling over the rigging. Kiraka tracked the flight of one of the crows.
“Don’t eat it,” I told her. “They already think you might be attacking.”
“As if they can hurt me,” she grumbled, but obeyed. Sure enough, a volley of arrows whizzed through the air, Kiraka neatly dodging them with shapeshifter speed.
“We need to let them know we’re friendly,” I shouted to Marskal, who nodded, a grim set to his mouth. The arrows might not pierce Kiraka’s scaled hide, but they’d surely kill us easily.
“Suggestions?” he shouted back, a thread of sarcasm in it, I was sure.
Moranu take it, if I could, I’d shapes
hift and fly down myself. But I couldn’t, and the crushing sorrow of that made my stomach and heart constrict, the cold sweat on my brow chill even at these lower altitudes. Focus. We needed a way to signal Jepp, like Marskal and Ursula transmitted information, but…
“The Hawks’ signals—is there one to tell her it’s you and to stand down?”
Marskal put his mouth against my ear. “Yes, but no way for her to see it from this far up.”
“Leave that to me. What is it?”
He lifted his hand from the dorsal spine, flexing and folding it in a series of movements. Another set of arrows whistled past. Too close. “Again,” I demanded anyway. I needed to make sure I had it exactly.
Unquestioning, he obliged. I nodded, then focused my magic. It flowed as easily as ever, unconnected to that impenetrable wall around the thought of shifting. I shaped it into a visible blue light. Picturing Jepp, I sent the bubble of magic to her and waited. One. Two. Three.
The arrows stopped. Orders rang out below, but with a different tenor. Standing down. I sat up, Marskal straightening with me. “How in Moranu did you do that?” he asked, turning his head as Kiraka circled, keeping his eye on the Hákyrling.
“Just a little thing—I sent Jepp an image of your hands giving the signal.”
“Just a little thing.” He had an odd look on his face. Not revolted, though. Still getting used to the idea. But also… proud of me? “You can do magic.”
I shrugged that off. “Some.”
He narrowed his gaze on me. “You know I have to kill you now. No one can know the Hawks’ secret signals.”
A week ago that suspicious tone would have put my back up. Now I knew better. Knew him and his dry, subtle humor better. And I could repay him in kind. “You said you wanted to take a swim, right?”
“Yes. Why do—”
Kiraka tilted, dumping us in the ocean.
“You might have warned me,” Marskal groused as we swam for the ship in waters much cooler than nearer the islands. Despite his complaints, he handled the exercise as athletically as he did everything—with plenty of breath left over to natter at me.
“I can predict her intentions only moments before she does something,” I replied, trying not to pant. Swimming as a dolphin, fish or mermaid was much easier.
Marskal, of course, noticed. “Loop your arms around my neck and lay over my back.”
“I don’t want to drown you.”
He grinned, full of male confidence. “You couldn’t if you tried. Trust me. Save your strength.”
Because the Hákyrling looked impossibly far, I complied, my turn to lay over his back, holding onto his shoulders. The powerful muscles there flexed as he swam to the ship with mighty strokes. It made me imagine being under him and feeling that play of muscle while he stroked inside me. A distracting thought, but he had volunteered.
And I was not yet a dragon.
We reached the ship, a rope ladder thrown down for us. Marskal treaded water with apparent ease, helping me grab ahold and steadying it as I climbed. Hands reached down from above, helping me over the rail. Then Jepp had me in a fierce hug, her compact, vital body hard against me. She was laughing and cursing, rocking me from side to side, then pulled back and kissed me hard on the mouth.
A man’s big hand tugged her back. “None of that now.” Kral, fully outfitted in his shining black Dasnarian armor, though with the faceplate up, winked at me. “I have to watch her every second.”
Jepp made a face at him. “You liked the idea well enough when we invited—”
“Shut up, Jepp,” Kral cut her off pleasantly and she grinned at him, then snapped to attention, giving Marskal the Hawks’ salute.
“Lieutenant!”
A dripping Marskal shook his head at her with a wry smile. “You don’t report to me any longer, remember?”
Jepp dropped her fist with an abashed grin. “Old habits, don’t you know.” She looked between us. “So that’s how you knew the signal. I recognized your sparkly blue magic globe thingy, but couldn’t figure out the rest.” She eyed Marskal. “You’re going to have to kill her now, you know.”
He returned her sally with a very serious nod. “So I’ve already informed her.”
“Just make me a Hawk already then,” I told them.
Jepp got a speculative expression and Marskal looked me up and down as if guessing my weight. “We don’t have any Tala. A shapeshifter and sorceress could come in handy.”
“She’s a terrible soldier, though,” Jepp pointed out. “Never follows orders. Might as well conscript a cat.”
“True.” Marskal rubbed his chin. “Plus she’d never make it through the initiation.”
“Guess it’s death then,” Jepp agreed cheerfully, making to draw her big bladed knife. She’d tied a scarf to the end of it, crimson ends fluttering in the breeze that matched the rest of her silk and leather outfit. With her short hair, dark skin and the exotic clothing, she looked even more a pirate now than when we found her fleeing the Dasnarians on the stolen Hákyrling.
“Not on the deck,” Kral cautioned. “You’ll stain the wood.”
Jepp made a rueful moue and resheathed her blade. “I want to hear about why you’re here on Kiraka anyway. Unless there are more dragons now? Maybe you can strangle her in her sleep, Lieutenant.”
“Now there’s a thought.” Marskal’s normally quiet eyes gleamed as if the prospect appealed to him. As if I’d asked him to dash himself to frustration following me around.
“Are you two done?” I finally said, having wrung all the sea water out of my hair that I could. I added an accusing glare for Kral. “You three. I expected better of you, General Kral.”
“I don’t know why—you’ve spent time with Harlan.” Kral pulled off his helm and ran a hand through sweat-dampened white-blond hair. A leaner, sharper version of his brother, Kral was all shark with none of Harlan’s gentler nature. Still, he’d given up the chance of being emperor of Dasnaria, though Jepp insisted it wasn’t out of love for her. Something had changed them both during their sojourn to the Imperial Palace. I didn’t really want to know what could put shadows like that in Jepp’s carefree, insouciant soul. Kral pointed his naked sword at Kiraka, casting her vast shadow over the sailing ship like a menacing thunderhead as she circled above. “Is that going to remain?”
“No, she was just waiting for us to get on board.” I sent a mental thank you to Kiraka, leaving out my irritation at her dumping us in the sea like that.
“I thought you might get hurt if I dropped you on the deck. That floating splinter couldn’t hold my weight,” she replied anyway, sounding miffed. “I was trying to be considerate of your frail human bodies.”
I might believe that if she hadn’t incinerated me. “I understand, and we’re fine. Would you please tell Dafne where we are?”
She didn’t reply, though I felt her banked-coal presence in my mind. Uncertain? Odd to feel the ancient bitch hesitate.
“Kiraka. If you wish to win Dafne’s confidence again, give her that message and then help her with her study of the maps.”
A long, smoke-filled pause. “I would never harm her, or the babe.” She sounded wistful.
“I told her as much, but she knew it anyway.”
“Hmm.” It wasn’t a thank you, but it might be as close as she came to it. “I shall think on what else you can do to earn the gift of learning dragon form.”
“I look forward to it,” I told her. She wheeled and flew up, a vanishing golden dot in the sky.
I lowered my gaze to find the three of them watching me. Jepp widened her eyes. “Apparently you plan to swim back? I didn’t know the mermaid form was good for that kind of distance.”
“A ride would be nice,” I replied, ducking her leading question. Jepp picked up on subtle clues far too easily. “In fact, it would be good to head back to Nahanau immediately and you can explain along the way. We came to get more detail on whatever you sent the cryptic message about.”
“I figur
ed that’s why you were here.” Jepp eyed me, then Marskal, speculation in her keen gaze.
“Her Majesty sent me along to assist,” Marskal explained. “As Zynda was recently injured,”
“You were?” Jepp lost all hint of playfulness, dark eyes spitting fire, body coiled to attack, eyes scanning for both aggressors and my health. “What happened? Who hurt you? They better be dead already.”
“Down, girl,” I said, wanting to kick Marskal. “It’s a long story and not important. I’m fine now. What have you discovered?”
“Let’s discuss all of this over a meal,” Marskal suggested, eyes daring me to protest.
“But you’re not obsessed,” I said lightly.
“Not with food,” he replied, letting that hang.
“Food is an excellent idea, regardless, as it’s well past midday. Captain’s dining cabin then,” Kral declared, giving orders that sent people running. Marskal bent his ear, no doubt telling him my current food preferences.
Jepp looked between us with bright interest, but slid an arm around my waist, hugging me close. “You need to see what we have to show you.”
“Do we have to see it—you can’t just tell us?”
Jepp, uncharacteristically somber, dipped her chin. “Yeah. You should see it. We’re keeping our distance, but we’ve been staying in the general area. Just in case. With this thing… well, we’ve suspended helping people cross the barrier for the time being.”
Meeting her gaze, Kral had a similarly dark expression. This couldn’t be good.
“Anyway,” Jepp added, “it’ll take only an hour to sail there and then we can head straight for Nahanau to take you back. Want to clean up and dry off? I still have some of your things that you left on board, so you can change, too. Kral will see to the lieutenant.”
“Fine,” I agreed, letting her lead me below. Exhaustion crept over me. That last swim had nearly done me in. Without Marskal to carry me… Ugh, I hated thinking about that.
Instead of leading me to the room we’d shared when Jepp, Dafne, and I had sailed together on the Hákyrling, she turned the other way, to the captain’s cabin. Of course, she’d share that with Kral now. A big space, it sat forward under the prow, a row of windows over the big bed that took up one end of the room. Jepp busied herself opening cabinets inset in the walls, so I gave into the tired, folded my knees and sat on the floor.
The Shift of the Tide Page 14