Shifting Plains

by Jean Johnson

  “If you want it back after a year and a day have passed . . . we will find you and send it to you, and we will have nothing more to do with you. We wouldn’t want to, if you’d be so closed-minded as to refuse to see for yourself whether or not we speak the truth.” Pressing the unblemished Stone back into her hand, he folded his arms across his chest. Waiting for her to make up her mind.

  My mother didn’t lie. She was raped by the Shifterai—I’m living proof! But this man isn’t lying . . . my heart wants to say he is lying, but the Stone says he isn’t. I know the Stone works. There was too much doubt clouding her head. Turning to his brother, she held out the disc. “You swear that these things are the truth. That you’ll let me go at any point I demand it. And swear to the truth of all the rest. Then I’ll consider the offer.”

  “I am not going to swear to pay five times your dowry,” Kenyen countered, though he took the Stone from her. “That is Kodan’s bargain, and Kodan’s burden. But I will swear, affirm, and avow that we will let you go at any point, as my brother has said. And give you escort at least as far as one of the border kingdoms around the Plains of your choice. And do all the rest that he says about your own goods—he doesn’t always think along the same paths that the rest of us take, but my brother is scrupulous when it comes to upholding the letter of whatever contract he makes.”

  Displaying both sides, he tossed the white disc to the next-nearest shapeshifter, who stated simply, “Kodan is one who speaks the truth,” before passing the enchanted slab of rock to the next one, who also agreed the bargain would be true.

  The younger brother’s choice of words pricked at Tava’s sense of honor, and strangely, her sense of humor. No longer quite so terrified of enduring her mother’s fate, though she was still uneasy inside, she acknowledged silently that this Kodan of Family Tiger was clever with his words. Clever enough that he’d managed to get the Alders of Five Springs to pay them, sort of, for killing bandits they had already slain.

  Except they’re not really getting a huge payment, save for that one-fifth thing of the trade goods they’ve bartered, if they all swear this barter is true. Which, if he holds to the letter of his words, won’t include my personal wealth . . . I think. Goddess . . . everything I know, versus what they’re telling me . . . I’m confused!

  When the Truth Stone came back to Kodan, he lifted his brows. “Well? Do we have a bargain?”

  “I . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say yes. There was still a knot of fear tied around her thoughts, bands of doubt and confusion. The presence of all these men—whether or not they were Truth-sworn not to harm her—pressed in on her senses. Crowded her. Expecting an answer. “. . . I need to think!”

  The words came out of her harsher than she’d intended. Tava cringed reflexively, expecting their rage at her unfeminine outburst. What she got instead were a couple of rolled eyes, and a grunt from the warleader’s father.

  “Women,” he muttered. “They’re the same in any land . . . Lead us to your home, young maiden. You can think as we walk, and think as we pack.”

  Kodan held out one of his hands. Tava reached for it, expecting to be handed the Truth Stone, only to realize he hadn’t offered that hand. Too late, she found their fingers clasped, though not twined as before. A gentle tug urged her into walking beside him. But it was hard to think when he touched her; all she could think about were the men surrounding her and the man touching her. The man determined to take her with him. She shivered as she walked, and not just from the slowly drying folds of her damp gown.

  As they approached the path that turned off from the road and led to her home, Tava caught him sniffing deeply. “What are you doing?”

  “Smelling the way to your home. It’s off to the right, isn’t it?” he asked, gesturing at the dirt lane angling off through the trees.

  Tava recalled the other three shifters sniffing her, then being dismissed from the Aldehall. “That’s why you sent away those other three. When you threatened the Alders with defending my property.”

  Kodan grinned. “That’s right.”

  “That’s because my brother likes you,” Kenyen teased from the warlord’s other side.

  He received an elbow to the ribs. “Keep your tongue in your head!” Kodan ordered sharply. “Or find you’ll have to regrow it. This woman is frightened of us, you son of Family Ass!”

  A hand smacked into the back of his black hair. “Be respectful yourself,” the father of the two said, “or I’ll tell your mother what both of you just said.”

  Wide-eyed, Tava glanced back and forth between the three men, before flicking her gaze to the others walking behind them. Some were amused, some looked bored, and others were busy watching the sides of the trail as they turned toward her home. As much as Mornai women weren’t allowed any public outbursts by custom, it was also rare for Mornai men to chastise one another in public. Such things were discouraged because it could be seen as undermining their all-important authority.

  Yet these Shifterai discipline one another in front of me . . . and they do it like rowdy young boys who haven’t yet become sober young men . . . Her mother’s book did mention of the men of Family Mongrel fighting among themselves, but not in a friendly way. Their way was the way of the fist, of might making right. But the elbow and the hand had been applied more with exasperation than with true anger, as far as she could tell. Light baps, not hard bashings.

  Unsure what to think, Tava approached her home with trepidation. It was the last time she’d look upon her home, and she studied the stilt-raised structures unhappily. The woodshed lay off to the south by the apple orchard and the birch trees composing most of the local forest; the fowl house sat to the north at the edge of the pasture. Between the two stood the house and the barn, both raised up on the stout stone pillars that most Mornai houses boasted. Even the fowl house was raised, with only the refreshing hut not built up on stilts.

  The ducks had waddled off to the stream that wended through the pasture, where some previous owner had dug an artificial pond for them to float upon. The chickens were scratching and pecking in the dirt under the barn, looking for bugs to eat. She could see the gelding grazing contentedly not far from the pond and the dark shapes of the ducks rippling its waters, but the quartet of goats that her father . . . that she owned weren’t in sight. Alarmed, she hurried forward, tugging to free her hand. Thankfully the warlord released it, though he followed closely as she headed for the barn.

  A soft bleat reached her ears, which she instinctively sharpened; as soon as she did, she also heard the faint, familiar hissss hissss hissss of milk hitting the pail. Hurrying up the ramp, she found one of the three missing Shifterai seated on the milking stool, milking one of the three nanny goats. The other two, also munching on the fresh, thick hay he must have laid in their manger, looked like they had already been milked. Beside them, the one kid her father had chosen to keep, a young nanny goat, nibbled on the stray stalks of rye and alfalfa that had fallen to the barn floor. The other two, born billy goats, had been turned into smoked and jerked meat, and their hides turned into parchment not long ago.

  Running his fingers along the nanny goat’s udder, the shapeshifter gave her teats a few more downward squeezes, then untied her halter and left her to eat. Rising from the stool, the middle-aged man picked up the metal bucket, fetched a second one also filled with goat-milk, and gave her a questioning look. “What do you want done with these?”

  At a loss for words, Tava stared at him. Milking her goats was not something she would have imagined these outlanders would willingly do. Seeing Kodan stop next to her, she tried to gather her scattered wits. Normally, she would set the milk aside to await either cooking it in her breakfast porridge or turning it into cheese, but the latter wasn’t exactly an option, given how soon she would have to leave. That meant either drinking or cooking it.

  That made her realize she had . . . twelve, fifteen Shifterai to feed? I’ve never cooked for so many! I don’t think I have that many pl
ates and bowls in the whole of the house, let alone cups . . .

  “Take it to the house for now,” Kodan instructed him as she stayed silent in her indecision. He touched her elbow. “Tava, have you had anything to eat yet?”

  That brought her back to her long, overnight vigil, watching her father’s pyre burn. Numbly, she shook her head. Father’s gone. I have to leave my home . . . and I’m being blackmailed into going with these Shifterai, or take only what I and Tender can carry. I have no one and nothing anymore.

  It was too many fears, too many emotions, too many surprises and changes, all too close to one another, all at once. She struggled to contain it, lungs tightening with grief, but it was too much. Too much. Vision blurring with tears, Tava covered her face with her hands, wanting to hide that she wept, but too overwrought to stop herself from shuddering with each breath.

  FOUR

  Dismayed by her strange, silent weeping, so different from the vocal wailing of Shifterai women, Kodan glanced quickly at the others. His brother looked disconcerted, Manolo looked confused, and Tedro, milk pails still dangling from his hands, looked distinctly uncomfortable. He himself felt an urge to comfort her, to take her in his arms and hold her. There was just one glaring problem.

  She was a maiden. A Shifterai maiden, not just by her sudden adoption, but by birthright. Worse, she was a maiden with a distorted view of what his people were like. Spotting his father on the ramp, Kodan beckoned Siinar over. Married and trustworthy, he was the best choice for handling her.

  “Take her to the house,” Kodan told his father. “Make sure she has something to drink and something to eat, if she can. Tava, this is Siinar, my father. Go with him, and he will take care of you.”

  Siinar cupped his arm around Tava’s shoulders, guiding the weeping young woman out of the barn. Shrugging, Tedro followed with the milk pails. A couple of the others had followed them to the barn, the others spreading out to check the other buildings. But there were enough within hearing distance for Kodan’s needs.

  “Alright, listen up. We’ll need cages to transport the ducks and chickens, and leashes for the goats, since there are too few to make a herd. Check also for containers, baskets, chests, and sacks, as well as ropes, thongs, and such. Four of you, sort yourselves out and go scout the village. Make sure the Alders are indeed packing the bartered wagons.”

  The nanny kid, young and curious, meandered over to Kodan and stretched out her neck, nibbling at his trouser leg. Gently pinching the small, floppy ear, Kodan discouraged the young goat from damaging his clothes. He did it a second time, pinching a little harder, until the goat learned her lesson and wandered back to her mother’s side.

  “Torei, you and Manolo look over that wagon parked next to the barn. Make sure it’s sound enough for traveling the Plains—I’ll take her things,” he added as Manolo glanced pointedly at the scribal satchel, which he had acquired at some point during their walk to put her quills, scraps of parchment, and ink jar into. Accepting the bag, Kodan slung it over his shoulder. “The priorities will be her personal belongings, her scribal effects, her animals, and her food.

  “After that will come her household goods, and the last on the list, wood and hay, whatever can be fitted on the wagons without too much strain. The sooner we pack and leave, the less we’ll have to deal with these uncivilized outlanders,” he half muttered to himself.

  The wry twist of Kenyen’s mouth told Kodan that his brother agreed with his assessment of these uncouth Valley men.

  After being offered a soft kerchief, sympathetic murmurs from the warlord’s father, and warm food that she hadn’t even had to cook for herself, Tava was left mostly alone. The Shifterai men bothered her only for the occasional polite inquiry into which of her personal goods she thought she would like immediate access to and which she didn’t think she would need for a while. Had she been more accepted by the village of Five Springs, it would have been her fellow Mornai women bustling around her home following her father’s cremation. Not a band of intimidating male strangers.

  The comforts were strange, because they were being offered to her by these Shifterai men. Men in general were stoic creatures of authority and discipline; they did not offer comforting touches on her shoulder, nor a freshly exchanged kerchief when the previous one grew too damp and crumpled. That was something women did in the River Kingdom.

  It was also rare for a man to cook, though her father had learned out of necessity, both as a bachelor and then more or less as a widower with a small child. Yet three of the Shifterai invaded the front room, where she sat numbly watching most of her life being packed up, and took over the half of it that was the kitchen. Together, they coordinated their efforts into making a simple yet satisfying midday meal of soup and porridge, before settling down to weave willow withes culled by the others from the nearby trees into makeshift baskets, in between plucking, drawing, and roasting a brace of wild geese brought in by one of the others.

  More than that, they first muttered among themselves; then the three Shifterai men scrubbed and filled all the pots she had with water, but for the porridge one, which had been thinned with the soup and given more grain to cook for supper, turning it into a sort of pottage stew. Greens were brought in from the vegetable garden, mixed with crushed berries and a bit of vinegar-wine, and redistributed with meat from the geese and the pottage as their supper.

  It was a good meal, if sparsely seasoned. Yet the approach of night made Tava nervous. They had said she would be safe . . . but they were men, and they outnumbered her by too many. Worse, as the sun colored the sky to the west, the warleader’s father took down the washing tub from the rafters by unnaturally stretching his body thin and tall enough to bare his belly between the waistband of his trousers and the hem of his thigh-length tunic. Carrying it into the back room, which had been divided long ago by a pair of wooden screens into a sort of room for herself and a sort of room for her father, he directed the other three that had stayed in the house all day to take the pots of heated water into the bedchamber.

  Tava stared at the doorway, listening to the sounds of water splashing into the large wooden tub. Uncomprehending, she stared at the older man as he reappeared. Why are they preparing a bath back there?

  Crossing to her where she sat at her father’s scribing table, he curled his fingers. “Come. It is time for you to retire.”

  They do want to get me alone, she thought for one uncomfortable, fearful moment. He must have seen her fear, or perhaps smelled it, for he lowered his hand, giving her a patient look.

  “It is customary on the Plains for our unmarried women to retire to the maiden’s geome at sunset, which means your sleeping quarters will have to do,” he explained, though it wasn’t much of an explanation, since Tava had no clue what a geome was. “It is now sunset, and thus time for you to retire. Since you have spent all day in muddied clothes, I have laid out a fresh set for you to wear tomorrow, and what I think is your nightdress, as well as changed the linens. These . . . Mornai fashions,” he said, pausing to wrinkle his nose, eyeing her loosely cut brown dress dubiously, “don’t differ much from day to night, as far as I can tell. But I thought you would like to bathe and sleep in fresh linens.

  “From the rate at which my son is overseeing the packing, it is probable that we will leave by mid-morning, tomorrow. There won’t be many opportunities to stop and bathe in leisure until we are well onto the Plains, probably not until we rejoin Family Tiger.” He lifted the corner of his mouth in a wry smile. “Normally we would not leave someone who is grieving the loss of a loved one alone, but there are no women to attend you, and only women are allowed into the maiden’s geome after dark. But you may rest assured that we will guard the house all night long, both here in this front room and around the outside, as well as the other buildings. No one will disturb your slumber, once you retire for the night.”

  Bemused by the thought that she would be alone, Tava rose from her father’s desk and hesitantly entered the back room. Th
e moment she stepped fully into the room, the warlord’s father pulled the door shut behind her, firmly enough to make the latch clank into place. For a moment she felt trapped, then flushed with embarrassment, realizing that the latch-string could only be pulled through into her side of the house. He wasn’t locking her in here, so much as giving her privacy.

  In fact, when she returned her attention to the rest of the room, she realized either he or one of the others had not only closed the shutters, but draped sheets over them, ensuring that no one would be able to peek through the cracks. He had also lit the oil-soaked wicks of two of her father’s four precious glass lamps, giving her plenty of light to see the tub sitting next to her father’s bed . . . which had been stripped bare of everything, even the feather mattress. Not even the straw-stuffed tick remained on the wooden platform; only a length of toweling linen and one of her pots of softsoap lay on the planks, waiting to be used.

  An unscented soap, she realized, recognizing the clay pot by its shape. If I have no strong scent about me . . . maybe I’ll have a better chance of escaping.

  Not completely sure she would be left alone, or even for how long, Tava dithered several minutes, pacing between the steaming tub, the door, and the two windows, one on her father’s half of the room, the other on hers. She could see the Shifterai had spoken true; a folded set of clothes had been laid on the stool at the foot of her bed, and a plain linen nightdress laid on her pillow.

  The encroaching chill in the air made up her mind for her. Tava hurried out of her clothes and into the still-warm water. With the door leading to the front half of the cottage shut, the heat of the fire could only radiate through the river stones separating the two chambers, which was worth only so much now that autumn was on its way. It was a luxury to have not only enough warm water in the tub to soak in, but two extra kettles besides for rinse water.