Shifting Plains

by Jean Johnson

  The other Alders nodded, their beards waggling and bobbing in agreement.

  “You are fortunate, in that I already have one with me,” the warleader reassured the Alders. Fishing it out of the pouch strung on his belt, he wrapped his fingers around the marble disc. “To prove it works . . . my name is Tronnen, and I am the Aldeman of Five Springs.”

  Uncurling his fingers, he displayed the blackened marks of his fingers marring the otherwise pure-white, polished stone. The blemishes faded after a moment, and the Shifterai gripped the disc again. “I am Kodan Sin Siin, warlord of South Paw Warband, Family Tiger, Clan Cat.”

  A shift of his fingers showed the Stone was still white, supporting the truth of his claim. Tronnen nodded, accepting proof of the disc’s accuracy. “Your Truth Stone is adequate for the task. Now, as to the payment . . .”

  “The payment will be this woman, the daughter of Varamon Vel Tith, plus the contents of her father’s home, stables, barns, outbuild ings, any carts, any animals, and any other belongings she and her father can have claimed . . . and the full cost of the fair and reasonable sale of her father’s property, to be paid in coin and goods by either a specific villager, or the village as a whole, for the right to keep that land as a part of Five Springs and its future prosperity,” Kodan stated, causing an instant stir among the Alders. He raised his voice, though his tone remained calm. “In other words, her fully accounted dowry, as the sole inheritor of her family’s property.”

  “The daughter of Varamon Vel Tith and her full, rightful dowry . . . shall be traded to the Shifterai in exchange for the eradication . . . of the bandits responsible for the slaughter of Varamon Vel Tith,” Tava repeated, scratching the words on one of the scrap pieces of parchment. Only I will not remain traded to the Shifterai . . . and I’ll probably lose most of everything I own, in the need to run away as fast as I can . . . which means with as few belongings as I can manage. Which will make it difficult for me to make my living until I can do so as a scribe, but at least I can hunt and forage as I travel. Most Mornai women cannot say the same.

  On the other bank, if I leave them the majority of my worldly goods . . . maybe these beasts won’t chase me down. It was a slim hope, and one she couldn’t count on happening. Not after what had happened to her mother.

  “Your proposal has a slight problem,” Aldeman Tronnen said as his fellow Alders settled down. “This girl is not Varamon’s true heir, but an orphan that has been taking shelter in his home. Now that he is gone, she has only the clothes on her back to her name. Varamon died without a true heir, and as such, all of his belongings revert to the village of Five Springs.”

  Tava quickly glanced around the Aldehall. None of the Alders protested their leader’s claim. Most were men who had been friends with her father, the ones who had been kind to her over the years. Some of those men frowned, visibly uncomfortable at staying silent, but they stayed silent regardless. The riches implied in her father’s belongings, the coin and goods that would have to be exchanged for the sale price of her father’s lands, the thought of all that wealth leaving Five Springs and going into outlander hands did not please them, either.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the warleader stretch out his hand. The priest’s book was placed into it. Raising his other hand, Truth Stone clenched in his fingers, Kodan spoke. “This is the book of names and lineages for the village of Five Springs, fetched straight from the hands of your own Mornai priest. It has not been tampered with in any way since the priest handed it over.”

  A flex of his fingers showed the whiteness of the disc.

  “I read now the lineages written within its pages, and it lists a Tava Ell Var as the River-baptised daughter of Varamon Vel Tith. By the laws of the Mornai, any person that is washed in the waters of the Morning River and acknowledged as their own kin by the head of a particular household automatically becomes a member of that household, as surely as if they had been legitimately born to it. By your own laws, Tava Ell Var is the true and rightful heir of Varamon Vel Tith. Varamon was originally born in the city of . . . Kelsing’s Landing,” he read from the book, “but having subsequently moved to Five Springs to purchase his own land and establish his own household, was the head of that household while he lived here in Five Springs.”

  Displaying the Stone, the warleader turned and presented the disc to Tava.

  “State your name and lineage, woman, so that the truth of your identity may be seen and confirmed.”

  Accepting the enchanted marble, Tava felt ambivalent about it. On the one hand, this man was going out of his way to prove her claim to her property, irrefutably securing her inheritance . . . yet on the other hand, he was doing so in order to claim it as the reward for slaying bandits that were already dead. Taking it from her as surely as Aldeman Tronnen wanted to himself. The Aldeman moved as she hesitated, stepping over to one of the village Alders and murmuring in the other man’s ear.

  Warlord Kodan stiffened, his brown eyes narrowing. The Alder stood, and Koden spoke quickly, curtly.

  “—Do not follow through on that plan, Alders. I have already sent some of my men to find and secure the girl’s property. You would not like their response, should you challenge their orders to protect the contents of her home and its fields. You are farmers and fishermen, after all,” he added, returning his gaze to Aldeman Tronnen. “Not fighters.”

  He’s thought of everything, Tava realized as the Alder sank slowly back onto his bench. This warlord is cleverer than I thought. Clever enough, he might think to keep a close eye on me until we’re well onto the Plains. The only thing in my favor is that they don’t know I’m a shapeshifter, too, she thought . . . then remembered how those three men had sniffed at her.

  One of the Shifterai in this warband had seen her fighting. Whichever one it was, he might have caught enough of her scent to remember it even now. Unfortunately, she had been upwind of that shifter herself and hadn’t caught the warrior’s scent in the brief time she had been in his proximity, whoever it was. Any of these two-legged beasts could be able to identify her.

  If I try to stay, the Alders might play along . . . but they’ll strip everything away from me in their fury, once the Shifterai have gone. Beatings will be the best of my problems within the village. That’s assuming the Shifterai leave without a fight, which I doubt . . . and he is right. We’re farmers and fishermen, not fighters.

  I have no feasible choice but to play along, for now.

  Gripping the Stone, Tava spoke firmly. “I am Tava Ell Var. Varamon Vel Tith bathed me in the River when I was born, accepting me as his own daughter and making me his sole, rightful heir.”

  A flip of the Stone flashed the pure white on both sides. Aldeman Tronnen strode up to her desk, dropping his hands roughly on its surface. His voice was a growl as he glared at her. “I will beat you black and blue for this insolence.”

  Several voices growled in ragged, unpleasant unison. The Aldeman jerked back from the writing desk, staring warily at the Shifterai in the Aldehall.

  “Lay your hand on her,” the Shifterai who had fetched the priest’s book growled, “harm one hair on her head, and your village will be stripped of ten times the value of her chattel and land.”

  “Count yourselves lucky that we are willing to barter fairly with you,” another added, flexing his muscles. “You do not threaten a woman in the presence of the Shifterai.”

  That is a very odd thing for a Shifterai to say, Tava thought, confused. She warily eyed the collar-draped men who were shifting closer to her—not quite crowding her table, but definitely crowding the Aldeman. Intimidating him. Tronnen fell back a step, then another, as Kodan moved between him and her.

  “This woman, all of her rightful belongings, her beasts, and a fair trade in coin and goods for the value of her land, in exchange for the deaths of the bandits who slew her father,” the warlord repeated. “You can refuse to sign this fair and reasonable, mutually agreed-upon contract . . . but if you do, we shall take her
and her belongings anyway, plus what we think is the dowry price of her land, culled in goods salvaged from the length and breadth of your village . . . and then we will leave you to hunt down the solution to your bandit problems yourselves.

  “These are the only two options available to you,” the broad-collared, smooth-chinned Shifterai told the bearded Aldeman. Tava couldn’t see his face, and he didn’t speak loudly, but she could hear the implacable edge of steel in the warleader’s tone. “Choose wisely.”

  The two men stared at each other for a long moment, until the Aldeman finally moved. Stepping around the Shifterai warlord, he braced his hands on the edge of the writing desk. Brown eyes bored into green with a mixture of disgust and dislike. Unlike the previous moment when he had leaned on her table, the village leader didn’t raise his voice.

  “. . . Like mother, like daughter,” Aldeman Tronnen told her, raking his gaze over her damp clothes, dismissing her worth in a glance. “The River flows and washes all of last year’s debris away.” Pulling back, he gave Warlord Kodan an equally dismissive look. “Twenty crownai for the land, and not a scepterai more.”

  The Shifterai leader twisted, craning his neck to look back at her. “Is that what the land is worth?”

  “It is worth five times that, being up on the second embankment, with a wellspring that has never run foul, and never run dry,” Tava stated coldly, hiding her anger at being reminded of her impending fate. If she couldn’t escape. But she wasn’t her mother. She had resources, skills, and knowledge that Ellet Sou Tred hadn’t possessed. Gripping the Truth Stone still clutched in her hand, she added, “It never floods but once every fifty or sixty years, and the house was built high and dry to withstand even that. Even the barn is raised above the fifty-year waterline . . . though it does need a new roof.”

  Lifting the disc, she displayed the honesty of its unblemished sides. Tronnen narrowed his eyes, but did not refute her words. Instead, he countered the cost of her estimate.

  “We don’t have a hundred gold coins in Five Springs. As it is, we’d be hard-pressed to come up with twenty crownai . . . or beggar ourselves, scraping up the thronai and scepterai.”

  One of the older Shifterai moved closer, muttering something in his leader’s ear. Kodan nodded. “Twenty crownai in solid gold and silver, and the rest in trade goods. In specific, we want a long-wagon and a team of six horses, with the wagon bed piled with straight lumber cut both from soft- and hardwood, at least half of it in hardwood and as long as can be carried. We also want a team of six horses hitched to a short-wagon full of iron and other ingots, and six barrels filled with birch-tar sticks . . .”

  THREE

  Tava scribbled the amount of the goods on the scrap parchment in front of her, even as the Alders started protesting. There were deposits of iron, copper, and other ores nearby, down in the mountainous kingdom of Correda, but metal was still expensive for such a small village to acquire. Twelve horses were also a steep price to pay, never mind the two wagons requested. Tronnen held up his hands, calming his fellow Mornai, then gestured at the white-bearded man who had the greatest stake in gaining Tava’s property, deferring to Alder Bludod.

  Bludod frowned, thinking, then counteroffered all the ingots one horse could pull, and two horses and a long-wagon of straight lumber . . . though he’d be willing to give up a four-horse harness, if the Shifterai provided the remaining two horses.

  Kodan demanded four and four, plus a wagon piled with food supplies, albeit one to be pulled by their own horses. The bartering began in earnest, Bludod frowning and consulting with his fellow Alders to see what he could get out of his neighbors without making the counteroffer too expensive overall. Given this was early autumn, in the brief pause between the early and late harvests, foodstuff was considered the barter of choice, not horses or metal.

  It took a little while, but with Alder Bludod’s approval, Aldeman Tronnen agreed to the final tally of the worth of Varamon’s land: fifteen crownai, forty thronai, sixty scepterai for the cash portion; a four-horse team and a long-wagon stacked chest-high with lumber; and a second long-wagon with a four-horse harness and two horses to fill it, two to be provided by the Shifterai themselves; the second wagon bed to be filled all across the bottom in a single layer of metal ingots, half of which had to be iron, the rest copper, tin, brass, and such, and filled the rest of the way to the rails with oilcloth bags, four barrels of birch-tar sticks, and sealed clay pots filled with the sorts of dried fruits, herbs, and spices that grew all along the Valley and up into the nearby mountains, but not on the Plains.

  The total value, Tava estimated, was probably close to seventy crownai, maybe seventy-five. It was not the hundred the land was worth in her opinion, but it was a reasonable deal. To have made it a truly fair one . . . the goods would have to belong to her, not to the men bartering for her so-called dowry. The Goddess knew she had no intention of staying long enough to be claimed by one of these brutish Shifterai, however.

  Waiting impatiently as the village priest began his painfully slow reading of the final version of the contract she had scribed, Tava tried to plot out in her mind where these Shifterai would go next. Being forced into the subservient, polite mould of a Mornai woman had long ago meant learning not just how to keep her thoughts to herself, but how to think strategically. Forethought and subtlety were the only weapons a Mornai woman could successfully wield.

  They want all the belongings from my home, and Tender, and the milk-goats—they might even want the chickens and the ducks. Who knows? Either way, it will take more than a day for me to pack everything. I know Tronnen is expecting them to be gone for a handful of days at the very least, searching for the bandits, but I know the bandits are already dead.

  In fact, I’d be surprised if this Kodan doesn’t plan to use this Truth Stone to reveal that fact to the Alders. After all, the terms of the contract are “. . . in exchange for the deaths of the bandits responsible for slaying Varamon Vel Tith of Five Springs village . . .” and the odds are, this Truth Stone could be my father’s Stone, liberated from the bandits’ loot. So they could just go away for a short while, pretending to hunt and kill the bandits, then come back. Somewhere in there, I might actually have the chance to escape . . . though if he’s as clever as he seems, I’ll have to be twice as clever to slip away unnoticed long enough for a big enough lead to escape completely.

  The only good part of this mess is how they’ll be a buffer between me and the Aldeman, preventing him and his fellow Alders from stealing my goods. Of course, she thought, wincing as the priest badly mangled one of the words he was reading aloud, sounding it out three times before he got it right, these Shifterai will just steal and keep my belongings for themselves. The only pleasure I can get from that fate is that they’ll keep my things away from the Alders’ greedy grasp.

  The River rises and falls every year, she reminded herself, bringing fresh mud even as it washes away the old . . . I just have to get my hands on some of the coins that are a part of this trade and figure out a way to carry it as I run. Father once spoke of reading about strange animals that had pouches as a part of their bodies, some sort of mage-constructed species left over from before Aiar was Shattered all those years ago.

  It shouldn’t be too difficult to shapeshift a pocket for storing a fistful of coins . . . though my clothes would be more problematic. I hope—ah, finally, they’re done. Pay attention, Tava, or you’ll not be alert enough when your opportunity for escape comes. Now is when they’ll announce they’re heading out, maybe leaving a couple of the warband behind to keep an eye on me and my property . . .

  “Start packing the wagons,” the warband leader instructed the Alders. “Bring them to the scribe’s farm as soon as they’re ready. We will secure her dowry immediately.”

  Aldeman Tronnen spluttered at that. “You will not pack her dowry immediately! You will go after those bandits first!”

  Palming the Truth Stone he had set on the table, Kodan smiled tightly at the vill
age leader. “We are not stupid. We will not leave and allow you time to steal away any of Scribe Tava’s goods, or worse, burn everything she owns to the ground. We will not bother to split our forces in half, either. The sooner her dowry is packed for travel, the sooner your problems will be solved, after all.

  “You have my word that we will not take a single scrap of that dowry or a single hair of this woman from the village of Five Springs until we have given you sufficient proof that the bandits that slew your previous scribe are indeed dead.” Displaying the Stone’s unblemished sides, he set it down on the table again with a soft clack of stone on wood. A flick of his hand indicated the scroll in the priest’s hands. “Sign the contract, and we will sign as well, making our bargain binding and legal. Refuse to sign . . . and we will go straight to our other option in this matter. The choice of which path we will take, Aldeman Tronnen, is now yours to make.”

  Aldeman Tronnen snatched up Tava’s quill and the contract and scribbled his mark on the parchment. Kodan followed it with his own. When he held out his hand, the Aldeman grimaced but clasped it, sealing their deal.

  “Take the whore, and all of her filthy goods!” Tronnen growled as soon as their hands parted. “She’s as worthless and deserving of her fate . . . as . . . her . . .”

  The mass of growls from the shapeshifters startled not only the Aldeman into falling silent, but it shocked Tava as well. She glanced at the angry men arrayed around her. Why . . . why would they be upset at him calling me a whore? They’re Shifterai! I’m nothing but a thing to them, something to add to their pile of warband spoils!

  Hand raised, forestalling anything other than that strange growling from his men, Kodan addressed the Aldeman in a soft, dangerous tone. “This woman is now a member of Family Tiger. Any insult you give to her is an insult you give to the rest of us. Since I doubt you are man enough to apologize when you are so clearly wrong about someone, I strongly suggest you silence your tongue from here on out . . . or find it silenced for you. Pack those wagons, and do not delay. Come.”