The Shift of the Tide

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “I didn’t mean to imply that,” he said quietly, brow further furrowed.

  I saved him groping for more of an apology. “Don’t be concerned. I’m not at all offended. I don’t mind staying at an inn while you see your family. As long as there’s a fireplace,” I amended. “And maybe some fur blankets.”

  “No, no.” He shook his head, the color high on his cheekbones not from the cold, but…embarrassment? Not my stalwart mossback. “I’m doing this badly. I’d like to visit them because I’d like you to come with me. To meet my family.”

  Oh. Oh. My own face flushed, which made no sense. I laughed, to cover it. “But will they want to meet me?”

  A strange expression contorted his mouth before he smoothed it to impassivity. I’d hurt him, carelessly, and laughed while doing it. Would I ever get better at this?

  “That’s not the point,” he said in a neutral tone. “I love you and I love them. It’s perfectly natural for me to want the people I love to know each other.”

  I swallowed back my sigh. And the urge to explain—yet again—that I was no good at this and that I wouldn’t be around long enough for them to know anyway. But what could it hurt to pretend? Marskal had been good to me. Better than I’d been to him. Truth be told—and look at his influence on me, that I should be doing all this honest introspection—I’d been happier and more at peace with him than ever before in my life. Considering how difficult these last days had been, that was particularly noteworthy. I owed him more than my life.

  I could pretend to be his—whatever the mossbacks called it—for an evening. How hard could it be?

  So I gave him an enthusiastic smile, made even easier when he lit up to see it. “Sure, I’d love to meet them. And I can help with avoiding the fort.”

  He looked dubious. “I think it’s better to keep the staymachs away, other than the ones with us.” He offered his finger to the bird who’d taken refuge inside the warmth of his leather cloak, stroking its coyly offered neck. Spoiled little thing. Marskal clearly had a talent for charming all the denizens of Annfwn.

  “I won’t use staymachs.” I let my smile curve into mysterious when he looked puzzled. “You’ll see. But be quiet. We don’t need to be absolutely silent, but avoid speaking unless absolutely necessary.”

  I pulled a shroud of deflection around us, and we trotted past the patrols, lookouts, then the fort itself—neatly avoiding them all without setting up an alert. When we’d passed out of earshot, Marskal raised his brows in question and I nodded that we could speak.

  “That is how the Tala snuck up on Ordnung so easily!” The words virtually exploded out of him. “It’s been killing me all this time that none of the Hawks’ scouts or Ordnung’s guard spotted anything. You can turn invisible.”

  “Not exactly invisible.” I had to correct him, though his astonished enthusiasm made me laugh. Sharing Tala secrets turned out to be fun, too. “It’s more of a distortion. Especially if someone doesn’t know to look for you. I made us seem like more snow and forest, the horse’s hooves sounding like normal creature movements in the woods. Another Tala could spot us easily, but…”

  “But mossbacks are dense like that,” he finished, shaking his head ruefully, but his canny eyes showed that his thoughts were working. “Could you teach a mossback what to look for—carefully selected scouts, maybe?”

  I considered it with some amusement. “Probably. But aren’t we supposed to be all friendly allies now—why would we be sneaking Tala past your Hawks?”

  He grinned. “Force of habit there, I suppose. Though…” He stared into the distance, thinking, then turned his gaze back to me. “Could that be similar to the magic Deyrr used to sneak up on our ships, when the high priestess attacked Ursula?”

  “Oh.” I turned that over with some surprise. “That hadn’t occurred to me.”

  “That’s been bothering me, too,” he confessed, with a wry grimace. “A spectacular failure on my part.”

  I hadn’t thought about that, how Marskal would have taken his failure to protect Ursula personally. “Aren’t you the one telling me I can’t be responsible for everyone?”

  He tipped his head in acknowledgement. “Ah, but that was literally my job. If not for Tala healing, my high queen would have died.” His expression had gone bleak, an aching insight into the valiant heart behind his usual remote façade.

  I should’ve said something comforting, but he was the one good at that. “People die,” I said, knowing while I said it that it wasn’t the right thing. “We can do everything right and they still die. That’s the way of the world.”

  I expected a caustic comment about my Tala-born insensitivity, but he only pursed his lips, then nodded. “Fatalistic,” he commented, “but inescapable.” Then he flashed me a grin. “But don’t hold it against me if I go down fighting to stop it as much as possible.”

  Catching his humor, I laughed. “Well, you wouldn’t be the man I—” I caught myself, aghast at what I’d almost said. A flip remark and I’d have let him think our time together could last beyond this short sequence. “My mossback,” I finished, blowing him a sultry kiss in the hopes that he didn’t catch the slip.

  He barely noticed even that, deep in thought. “And these sleeper spies—what if they have similar abilities? We have to start thinking ahead. Kral is correct that we’ve been on the defensive for too long. If we’re going to win this war, we need to do more than react.” His attention focused on the path ahead. “Riders approaching. It would be convenient if you could—”

  “Already done,” I replied. I’d never dropped the distortion, as it was one of those tricks that was just as easy, if not easier, to simply leave in place than take down and put up again.

  “It doesn’t drain you?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No—it takes some concentration and a bit of energy to put it in place, but then I can leave it indefinitely.”

  “Interesting,” he commented, then didn’t say more because we went quiet to pass the group of Ordnung guards heading up the hill. Marskal watched them with a bemused smile, no doubt picturing Ursula’s annoyance at their obliviousness to our presence. Then we stayed quiet, passing more and more people as the path wound down to the main highway below the castle. Full winter evening dark had fallen, sparkling crystalline chill, and Ordnung’s white towers reared against the night with dramatic and cold ferocity. Ursula’s flag flew beside the one for the Thirteen Kingdoms, showing the High Queen had returned to be in residence. The windows blazed with light to match the torches on the battlements, chasing away every shadow.

  Ordnung had always struck me as a sterile, uncomfortable place. A massive fortress rather than a home. But with my new perspective, I saw the ways in which it echoed Annfwn’s white cliffs. Had Uorsin somehow intuited something of how Annfwn looked? Or perhaps Salena had coached him in the design, in the early days of their marriage when he was still flush with triumph of the war she’d won for him. Either way—his or hers—the implicit longing for a place neither would ever see made my heart hurt, as if I’d suffer the same loss.

  It shouldn’t because I would see Annfwn again.

  “What’s that?” Marskal asked, making me wonder if I’d muttered that aloud. I shook my head, smiling to show I was fine, and pushed my hood back. I needed the cold air to clear my head. We passed the castle gates and entered the township proper, bustling with activity still. Marskal nodded at me and I dropped the distortion. Time to be seen again.

  Almost immediately a young boy bolted up, automatically grabbing for the reins the staymach horse didn’t have. “Uncle Marskal!” he shouted, hopping from foot to foot instead. “You’re home!”

  “I am, indeed, young Robbie,” Marskal replied gravely. “Would you tell your grandmother that—”

  “I’ll tell everyone!” Robbie shouted, turned, and bolted off at top speed.

  Marskal gave me a chagrined smile. “My second oldest sister’s fifth child. He hit the ground running at birth and has never pa
used since.”

  Five children. I marveled at it. And Marskal had said he was one of six siblings, five of them here in the township, with two to seven children each. And the boy was telling all of them.

  “How many people will I be meeting?” I tried to sound casual, but it must have come out plaintive enough that he reached over, offering his hand. More to reassure him that I wouldn’t bolt like his impetuous nephew, I took it, the horses snugging together so our knees bumped.

  “Don’t worry about remembering names,” he said. “And thank you for doing this. I know you’re indulging me.”

  Was that a bad thing? I wasn’t at all sure. I smiled easily. “It will be fun.”

  He laughed, throwing his head back to release the hearty sound. “Ah, the lies my lady tells. If I didn’t know her so well, I might believe her.”

  I yanked my hand away, turning up my nose like a court lady at Ordnung. “I can’t imagine what you mean. And you ducked the question—how many?”

  He scratched his chin, mentally counting. “Possibly… thirty-five? I can’t remember when Alisa’s baby was due. Might be thirty-six now.”

  Attempting to maintain a languid pose, I nodded. “All in one… house?”

  “Yes,” he said very seriously. “We walled up the windows so we could stack bunk beds against the walls. That way we can fit in four to six people per room.”

  My jaw dropped in horror. I could still stay at an inn. Or, I had my furry cloak. I could sneak out and—

  Marskal’s gasp of laughter caught me mid-thought and I whipped my head around to find him pointing at me, eyes leaking tears he was laughing so hard, albeit nearly silently. “The… look on… your face,” he panted out.

  I curled my lip in a snarl. “You are not funny. And I was so nice to you in Annfwn! Oh, help the poor mossback fit in. It will all be so strange to him… But do you return the favor? No.”

  He attempted to sober himself, nodding somberly. “You’re absolutely right. It was totally unfair of me to—” A strange snorting sound escaped him as the laughter overtook him again.

  “You’re impossible,” I informed him. Where had my stoic and quiet mossback gone? “And you’re not paying attention. We’re leaving the township behind.”

  “I know where I’m going,” he replied easily, as if he hadn’t been choking with laughter a moment before. We turned down a lane, passing into more open country again. “See up ahead? That’s my parents’ home. Only they and one sister and her husband live there—though they are the ones with seven kids. Mom and Dad help with that brood.”

  I blinked at the enormous sprawling house at the end of the lane, spilling with light, the double front doors wide open. People were going in and out, including three children who sent up a shout and dashed toward us.

  “The rest live in various houses around the property,” Marskal continued, watching me carefully now. “There’s a lot of land.”

  “I thought your cowardly grandfather gave up your lands.”

  A grin broke across his face. “You were listening.”

  I waved a hand at him. “I was bored.”

  “Her Majesty gave the land back to us,” he said, a look of pride and nostalgia on his face. “We were lucky in that it hadn’t been broken up much. This close to the castle, the farm and barns were mainly used to supply Ordnung, run by staff. Everyone is still in the process of fixing it up again, some living in houses on the land and in town, both.” He gave me a slight smile, wistfulness in it. “I have a cottage of my own, on a very pretty piece of land. We can sleep there tonight. I’d love for you to see it. I think you’ll like it.”

  “Does it have windows?” I asked, adding extra asperity, because the way he talked about the place made my heart twist uncomfortably.

  “It does.” His smile widened. “And I’m fairly handy as a carpenter. I’ll add more windows, and skylights and balconies. Whatever you need to feel comfortable.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Well, obviously no—but if we come back here.”

  This had gone far enough. “Marskal,” I said, hating the forbidding sound in my own voice. “I don’t want to be unkind to you, but this simply can’t—”

  My timing was terrible. As it seemed to be lately. The pack of three children reached us, jumping up and down and breathlessly telling their uncle several different pieces of news at once. He dismounted to walk with them, picking up the smallest and notching her onto his hip, casting me a wry smile as he showed her how to pet the bird that had hopped back up to his shoulder, and trusting me to guide the horses in.

  We walked them nearly up to the front doors, people and light pouring out and down the steps. So many children, all belonging to one family. Most of the people fortunately swarmed Marskal first, but a young man with a wide smile and Marskal’s eyes came to help me unstrap the packs. “I think we can make room in the stables for these,” he said, though he sounded dubious. “We weren’t expecting Uncle Marskal tonight.”

  “He wanted it to be a surprise,” I replied. “But no need.” With a thought I gave the staymach horses, and my bird one, free rein to choose their forms. I left Marskal’s bird as it was, since it seemed to be a big hit amongst the youngsters. They all morphed into snowy owls—a good choice for foraging on a cold winter night.

  I turned back to find the young man blinking at me, and all of Marskal’s rowdy family gone silent. Then they sent up a clamor of noise, throwing questions at both of us. Marskal held up his hands, calling for peace from the assault—though he was laughing—and came to me, taking my hand and leading me forward, up to an older couple. The man looked like Marskal might in a few decades.

  “Mom, Dad,” Marskal said, “this is Zynda. She’s a Tala sorceress and shapeshifter, and much of this is unfamiliar to her,” he added, raising his voice so they all could hear, “so I expect everyone, even Shanna, to be helpful and pleasant.” He gave the girl who’d climbed up to his hip and now held the bird a stern look, but she only giggled.

  Then I was swarmed, people taking my hands and even hugging me, giving welcome. I got asked if I was hungry half a dozen times, so it clearly ran in the family. Once again, Marskal came to my rescue, declaring that all of this could happen indoors, did they want me to freeze? He retrieved me to lead me inside, while everyone else fell into a hubbub of conversation about who was to do what next.

  “Why did you say I’m a shapeshifter?” I hissed at him.

  “Because you are,” he replied evenly. “Shanna, be careful with that bird. It’s a living creature, not a toy. And I want them to know who you are from the beginning. No secrets.” He slid me a look.

  “You mean what I am.”

  “They’re a lot to take in, I know.” He squeezed my hand. “Again, I really appreciate you doing this. We’ll just stay a bit, eat, and then we can go to my house and sleep.”

  He looked so happy, utterly relaxed, and for once not constantly scanning for danger, that I couldn’t begrudge him any of this. Aware that I’d be making a statement, I cupped his cheek and kissed him, rewarded by the pleased sparkle in his eye. “I’m good. Enjoy your family. Don’t be concerned about leaving. The Tala love to eat and talk all night, you know.”

  A woman with brown hair, brown eyes and a serious expression just like his came up, holding an infant wrapped in blankets. The child was red-faced and screaming, waving impotent fists in the air. “Uncle Marskal—your newest niece, Iris.” She gave me an apologetic smile. “I’d hoped to settle her down, but she’s in a mood tonight and nothing will appease her.”

  “Nothing?” Marskal asked, taking the baby, blankets and all, from his sister. “Ah, sweet Iris, let’s see what we can do to improve that cranky mood.” The little girl fell silent, her eyes going big as she stared at Marskal, wrapping her tiny hand around the finger he offered, as he carried her off into the other room.

  “We call him the baby whisperer,” the woman confided, brown eyes crinkled with affection. “I was desperately hoping he hadn�
��t lost his touch. I’m Alisa and I don’t expect you to remember that. Let me take your cloak, and do you want to take off your boots? It’s not a house rule—just if you’d be more comfortable. Oh! Look at all that black hair. It’s very nearly blue when the light hits it just right, matching your eyes. I’ve never seen such deep blue eyes. You’re so striking. Do all Tala look like you?”

  I caught my breath from her dizzying blast of questions, then laughed. She smiled with me, dimples in her round cheeks. “I know—I talk too much and too fast. Lars, my husband, is forever saying, ‘Lise, if you’ll pause to take a breath, I might answer one of your questions.’” She closed her mouth significantly and waited.

  “I will take off my boots,” I said, “and yes, I look like most Tala.”

  “Though more beautiful than most, I’ll bet.” She winked at me, dimpling more. “Marskal always did have an eye for the pretty ones.” She took my boots and set them by the fire to dry, then came back and took my hand. “We’re exceptionally pleased to meet you and welcome you here. I want to say it now, in case we forget to later. It’s so very special to us that he brought you to meet everyone.”

  I wasn’t at all sure what to say back, and I searched for an appropriate reply, but she twinkled at me, dropped my hand, and gestured to the kitchen. “You’re overwhelmed and I’m going on too long. Let’s get you something to eat and a quiet spot to sit in.”

  As good as her word, Alisa installed me in a big chair by the fire, with a plate of food and a mug of some sort of spiced, warmed wine. She also herded all the children away from me—Moranu bless her—telling them they could ask questions later. Marskal sat at a table, surrounded by children of all ages, still holding the now sleeping baby cradled in one arm, and shoveling food into his mouth with his free hand, in between answering questions. He moved so he could see me, raising an inquiring brow when I first sat, then nodding when I smiled at him.

  Alisa took my cleaned plate and refilled my mug of wine, leaving me to sit in peace when I said I’d prefer it. After a bit, however, Marskal’s mother came out of the kitchen area with her own mug of wine and took the chair opposite me. A glance at Marskal told me he’d observed and had half risen, but his father put a hand on his shoulder, saying something that had Marskal looking interested. I began to suspect a conspiracy.