by Jean Johnson
But I’m not back home, Tava reminded herself, discreetly brushing her lips clean as she stood back up. Soukut didn’t say anything against it, just said a few more words on behalf of her deities, then led the younger woman through a door in the back of the geome. The large white geome wasn’t the only one that was all white; several smaller ones had been grouped together in a close-fitted circle, forming a sort of private courtyard. Most had their doors facing in, and each door was painted differently from the rest. In the center of the grass, someone had dug a broad fire pit, though at the moment it held only quietly smoldering cinders.
“This is the priests’ camp. Unless you choose to become a priestess, this is the only time you will be housed here,” Soukut told her. “But that is because you will need to stay here for ten days while you learn the basics of our ways, and we keep you here because you will need to be able to ask questions of any of us.
“As the hearth-priestess, it is my duty to oversee the teaching of all the children in the Family, so that they grow up knowing how to live their lives and tend their homes in accordance with our ways. For this reason, you will share my geome as if you were my daughter. The things you will need to learn are the things our children grow up learning over many years, as much by observing and doing and living them as by being taught, but you will need to learn all these things much faster,” Soukut warned her.
“So I was told,” Tava agreed.
“Good. Now that we have introduced you to Mother Earth and Father Sky, it is time for you to bathe, which is this blue door here—priests and priestesses share the same bathing geome, but elsewhere in the camp, you will use the blue geomes with the red-painted doors when you bathe. Red is for the women, and green is for the men,” the priestess instructed, heading for the blue-painted door. “Just like the refreshing tents. Use only the red ones. Come.”
The inside of the bathing geome was more like the warband one she was used to, in that its staves were on the inside and the floor was scattered with felt rugs, rather than a near-solid circle of felt. It also contained two bathing tubs, racks draped with toweling cloths, a couple broad benches laid with folded clothes and sandals, and a woman working at a strange contraption, half brazier and half metal barrel. She finished pouring a bucket of water into the large barrel at the top of the object, lowered the bucket, and prodded at the fire in the half-barrel-shaped brazier underneath, adding two more grass-log twists. The contraption had arms of a sort, metal pipes that stuck out from the sides of the water barrel, their ends terminating over the two bathing tubs to either side. One of the tubs was filled halfway with gently steaming water.
“The bath is ready and waiting. Welcome,” the dark blond middle-aged woman added to Tava, dusting off her hands. “I am Soulet, mage-priestess of Family Tiger—do not expect great feats of power from me, as you may have heard in the old tales. Mages like that only exist at the fringes of the continent. We are very rare, here in the heart of the Shattered Empire, so I must save my energies for when the Family truly needs me.”
“Oh, I know they’re rare,” Tava quickly reassured her. “I’ve only ever seen two use their magics in my whole life, and those were travelers headed up the River. My father spoke with both of them, and I listened as they talked about how the aether is broken this close to the old capital, and how magic runs in strange ways. One of them said he thought the men of the Plains had been turned into sort of magic-sponges and soaked it all up, beyond the normal proportions of mage-born to common folk, which is why the Valley people have so little of their own.”
Both priestesses exchanged bemused looks. Soukut held out her hands. “Come, take off the clothes of your old life. Loose dresses like that are no good for wandering the Plains. There are bushes that hide in the long grass, with twigs that will catch and rip your clothes, if they aren’t held close to the body like ours. Sawgrass can cut if there isn’t at least some give, which is why we wear gathered breikas instead of more fitted trousers, and we need to be free to run and to ride, which is why the chamsa is cut up to the hips on both sides.”
“The breikas are gathered by strings at the waist and ankle, which can be quickly untied by shapeshifters,” Soulet continued, helping Tava remove her pink dress, with its loose, gathered skirt and sleeves. She also helped remove the underdress, while her mother made enough space on one of the benches for Tava to sit and unlace her boots. Soulet tsked at the sight of Tava’s footwear. “We also do not lace our boots, again so that it is easier for our shapeshifters to remove. The chamsa is fastened by three buttons along the shoulder and one or two at the waist, also easily discarded. There are some differences, though. Men fasten their chamak along their left shoulder, and women fasten their chamsa on the right.”
“And ours are tailored to accommodate our curves, whereas most men have none,” Soukut added, taking Tava’s boots and socks. “Unless he has a cattle-gut, in which case you should chase him out of the geome and make him run around the camp a few dozen times a day, until he becomes fit and lean again. Do not hesitate to insist that your mate be fit and healthy—and make sure you take care of yourself, too.”
Stripped of even her underbriefs, Tava blinked at the older woman’s words. “That’s . . . very different from the Mornai way. Women are supposed to be quiet and demure and never yell at their husbands, let alone chase them out of the house.”
Both women snorted at that idea. Soukut helped Tava into the hot, waiting bath, and Soulet fetched a pot of softsoap scented with what Tava recognized as the spicy-sweet smell of rora flowers. She also fetched a knit scrubbing cloth, which she lathered and rubbed over Tava’s back for her.
The mixture of linen and wool scratched a little, but Tava didn’t mind; she could tell it was scrubbing away the grime of her travels. The prospect of getting clean felt too good to stop in the face of such a mild discomfort. Laborious though it was to heat enough water, Tava was used to bathing at least twice a week. Taking over the scrubbing, she worked on her arms as Soukut continued.
“I suppose we ought to start with the history of the Shifterai,” the older priestess allowed. “One hundred eighty-one years ago, the Aian Empire was destroyed in the Shattering. We don’t know the exact cause, other than that it blew up the capital city, flattened most of the surrounding countryside, and changed the bodies of those that survived. Forty-nine of every fifty men suddenly discovered they could change the shape of their bodies, lengthening their arms, growing feathers instead of beards, so on and so forth. This was the reverse of the usual one in fifty people having some gift for magic, but while one in fifty men couldn’t shift their shape, one in fifty women could.”
Tava jerked in shock, slipping against the tin of the tub. Water sloshed with the abrupt movement, and the scrubbing cloth floated free of her unnerved fingers.
“The Gods alone know why,” Soulet continued, fishing out the rag and dipping it into the softsoap pot to re-lather the material. “It would have made things a lot easier on our beginnings if one in fifty women couldn’t shift their shape, just like the men. But as things stood, the men with this new magic vastly outnumbered the women who could match it . . . and in the struggle to survive, with broken orchards, blasted crops, and crumbled homes, with no form of government left to impose law and order . . . the men turned into bandits and brigands.”
“The strength of their fists and the sharpness of their claws made the new laws,” Soukut stated. “For thirty-seven years, the men pil laged, stole, fought, raped, looted, and conquered anything and anyone they could get their paws on. Not all of the men wanted to live like that . . . but enough of them thought that warbands were the only way they could survive.”
Tava was still stuck back on that other piece of news. “The women . . . the ones who could shift their shape . . . ?”
“We’re getting to that,” Soukut soothed her, patting Tava on the nearest soapy shoulder before swishing her fingers through the water to clean them. “Naturally, our ancestresses didn’t care for th
e idea of constantly living in fear of being captured and hauled off as a prize, to be taken against our will and forced to bear and raise children who would know nothing but constant war with their brethren. The kinder of the men didn’t like it either, particularly the ones who loved their wives. And since it was a war, many of them retreated to the few defensible structures they could find, some of the surviving noble estates, and the great crater that was once the capital, and is now the Shifting City.”
“For ten . . . no, twelve years, starting with the . . . nineteenth year after the Shattering,” Soulet lectured, “the people who had moved back to the City built a defensive wall around the buildings they struggled to build at the bottom of the crater, farmed what they could in the fields around the crater’s edge, and defended themselves against marauders . . . and it was into this defensive refuge of civilization that a shapeshifter woman named Menai came, leading a group of women she had liberated from some of the marauding warbands. There were also some of the non-shifting men who had been treated little better than slaves by their shifter counterparts and several outlanders who had been kidnapped and enslaved by the warbands, who were ranging farther and farther afield, looking for fresh sources of food and wealth to plunder.”
“An outlander man, Tikal, had helped her with the refugees’ escape. It was he who taught everyone how to make powerful bows and arrows, and learned the secrets of making bluesteel, and together, they told everyone they would declare war on the warbands,” the older priestess said, continuing the tale while her daughter helped Tava to stand so they could help scrub her legs. “This made some of the people living in the fortified City upset, because they were small in number compared to the warbands. But Tikal and Menai built a fortress up at the top of the crater. And by the thirty-fifth year after the Shattering, the fortress was complete, and they had taught so many others and led so many raids, that all the warband leaders, the fiercest and the cruelest of all the banditry-minded men, were very angry, and very ready to join together and attack.
“Menai had planned for this, however,” Soukut continued. “She first got them to chase her and her warriors this way and that across the Plains, leading them hither and yon, always staying just far enough ahead to avoid a pitched battle, until it was the height of late summer.”
“It was a very hot and dry summer, too. All the land had baked as bright and yellow as gold, and just as hard,” her daughter stated, helping Tava to balance as she scrubbed first one ankle and foot, then the other. “The grass crunched underfoot, turning to dust with each step, and any cloud that dared scuttle across the sky dried up within an hour and vanished. Menai led the combined warbands like a leaf blown at the head of a great, beige cloud, swirling into her fortress of stone not far from the crater’s edge. They followed her right up to its walls, too. And just as they were about to attack, she finally spoke to them, saying—”
“—Let me, Daughter; I love this part,” Soukut interjected, holding up her hands. “She said, ‘You men who race upon the ground and fly through the sky and swim through waters of the world, you race and swim and fly only to hurt every person you meet. You are nothing. You are not men. You are beasts! You are uncivilized and undeserving of the benefits that come with civilization. If you had any wits, you would be cooperating with everyone you met and gain the greatest wealth and prestige . . . but all you can do is scrabble in the dirt like worms and steal—and you break what you steal and grow mad that it breaks, and you blame everyone but the person who broke it. That person is you.
“‘Well, you may be the masters of the air and the water and the earth, but you are not the masters of civilization! You are thieves, and thieves are always caught and punished! In fact, you have already been caught, though you don’t know it!’ . . . And of course, at this pronouncement, all the men in the warbands laughed at her and called out that she was a weak woman, and that they would beat her into submission,” Soukut related. “But Menai held up a burning torch and continued. ‘Yes, you have been caught . . . and you will be punished for your crimes. You have only two choices. You will choose to surrender, you will permit yourselves to be bound by a manacle of bluesteel, from which no shifter can shift free, and you will submit to the rule of the very same women you decry . . . or you will die.
“‘You say that there is nothing on the earth, in the water, or in the sky that you cannot conquer, nothing that you fear, and you shove your women aside, saying they are fit for nothing more than tending the hearth and bearing your sons. Well, you forget that the hearth is the home of the most powerful element of all, the power of fire ... and the entire ground you stand upon, for two full miles in any direction . . . has been seeded with fat and of oil, which your big, shapeshifted feet have trampled all over, spreading all across the ground. As I said . . . you can surrender and submit to our civilization ... or you can die. Choose wisely, but choose quickly. I will not give you a second chance.’”
“And it was at that point that Tikal’s archers appeared over the walls, most of them women, and all of them with oil-rags wrapped around the tips of their arrows,” Soulet told Tava, using one of the buckets to scoop up bathwater to carefully wet her hair. “And the young maidens appeared beside them, torches lit and ready for their mothers and their aunts and their sisters to light their arrows if it was needed . . . and behind the warbands, the men who were on Menai’s side also appeared, from tunnels dug in the ground. The non-shifters lit their own torches and readied their own arrows . . . and the shapeshifters among the defenders took to the skies, men and women both, ready to knock down any who thought to flee that way from the fiery wrath of Menai.”
“Most of the men in the warbands saw what their fate would be, a horrible death, and knelt down on the ground with their hands over their heads. Some of them lifted up into the sky, but Menai and Tikal had trained their own fighters well. Some were shot by bluesteel arrows and killed, and a few who had swift bird-shapes managed to fly fast enough to escape,” Soukut said, helping Tava lather her hair with more of the spicy-sweet softsoap. “Our ancestors learned later that they flew all the way to the Centa Plains, where they thought to restart their evil ways, but the people who lived there proved too tough for them, and the very evil ones died, and the not so evil ones gave up and submitted to the yoke of Centarai civilization. Which is why, every so often, a shapeshifter is born to the Horse People, and so they trade that shifter to us in exchange for one of our non-shifting men, making us cross-kin.”
“But that is a lesson for another time,” her daughter pointed out. “To get back to the war . . . Menai and Tikal had each man in the warband fitted with a bluesteel band fastened around his wrist. Bluesteel is the only thing that will prevent a shifter from shifting his or her shape, locking them into their natural form. Without the ability to shift, a criminal does not have the greater strength, speed, weaponry, and means of escape he—or she—would normally have. It is with bluesteel that we also mark our criminals when we banish them from the Plains, when their crimes are too great to make reparations, yet not so horrible that they absolutely must die.”
“Kodan told me of that, just today,” Tava admitted. “About the bluesteel brands. He thinks . . .” Her words trailed out as she thought about what she was about to say.
Soulet chuckled. “Yes, he thinks a lot, doesn’t he? It’s a good trait for a leader. Many more of our young men could be like him, and we would not suffer the least for it.”
Tava shook her head, but more to clear her thoughts than anything. If she told these women about her mother being captured and raped by shapeshifters, they might want to see her mother’s book, to read Ellet’s words for themselves . . . and if they did, they’d read the part where her mother confessed her need to flee to prevent her unborn child from being raised as a slave.
Kodan was right. I don’t know enough about Shifterai culture yet. I didn’t even know they had female shifters on the Plains, and yet they clearly do, if one in every fifty women is, or at least was, b
orn a shapeshifter. “Um . . . about those shapeshifting women . . .”
“We’re getting to that,” the elder of the two priestesses admonished, though she chuckled. “Once Menai and Tikal won, and their enemies submitted . . . there were a lot of women and men who wanted vengeance for how they themselves had been treated. Menai pointed out—wisely—that to treat these men as they had treated their victims was to be no better than such beasts. One of the strongest shifters to have surrendered then asked her questions about the civilization she claimed to lead . . . and though it took a couple of years to work out the details, they managed to put together a system of government wherein the power of the shapeshifters, with all their power and might, would be balanced with the women’s rights to demand a civilized way of life.”
“That would be the Council of Shifters and the Council of Sisters, right?” Tava asked.
“Correct!” both women praised, and laughed at their dual answer. Soulet continued for both of them.
“To overcome the wrongful thinking that women were nothing more than chattel, it was decided that women would have the greatest power over our burgeoning society. To honor the strength of our men, most of whom are shapeshifters, it was decreed that any woman who was born a shapeshifter would automatically be given the rank of a princess, and the old Imperial honorific of an A being attached in front of her name. Furthermore, that while any man could be a shifter, and anyone with ten shapes or more could become a multerai, honored as a powerful lord . . . the only way a man could gain the rank of Prince would be to marry a woman who was a princess. And it was decided that the power to ask for someone’s hand in marriage would lie solely with a female. Which is why you must never hold out your hand to a man, when you—”