by Jean Johnson
“Stop that!” Jerking her hand free, Tava frowned and concentrated.
Her hand from wrist to fingertip rippled and swelled into a stripe-furred, claw-tipped paw. Shifting it back again, she checked the cuts, which were still bloody, but no longer actually bleeding. A second shift to cat paw and back smoothed out the gaping edges. Lifting her hand, she wriggled her reddened but undamaged fingers.
“As you can see, I am quite capable of healing myself. I don’t need the Healer-priest—and I don’t need the lot of you hovering around me! I can make arrows by myself, and I don’t need your help! ” Twisting to include Torei in her pointed glare, she fluttered her unbloodied hand at them. “Go away!”
Exchanging wary looks—and a few pointed glares of their own—the trio of men got up and moved away. Picking up the stick with its lump of birch tar, she held it over the flames in the brazier to soften it, and carefully glued the second arrowhead into place. Not until she finished did she realize her fingers had smeared blood on the shaft, staining the pale wood in slowly browning blotches. Sighing heavily, Tava set her arrow-making supplies on the bench where she had been sitting and headed off to find one of the wrought iron washstands these Shifterai favored over the bowl and pitcher arrangement used by the Mornai.
She didn’t get more than three body lengths from the brazier and bench before yet another single Shifterai male trotted up to her side.
“Are you going to fetch something? Would you like me to carry it for you?” the smiling, dark blond male asked solicitously.
“No. Thank you,” she added, clinging to a scrap of politeness. I suppose it’s a sign of just how far I’ve come, that I don’t flinch at the thought of being so openly nearly rude to these men, Tava thought, bemused. Then she winced as another man broke off what he was doing, coming over to join the queue of potential suitors wanting her attention. Or maybe I’m just too annoyed to care . . .
I am way too annoyed to care!
Glaring at Kenyen, Tava unleashed her anger on the latest of her suitor-pests. “And another thing—I do not need an escort to the refreshing tent! I am quite capable of farting on my own!”
His wasn’t the only face that flushed at her blunt assertion, though some of those whose cheeks flushed also suffered from shaking shoulders and hastily raised hands. Not everyone was amused, however. Some of the nearer members of Family Tiger were startled by her language. One of the older women dropped the stack of pottery bowls and metal cooking utensils she was carrying. Two of the bowls cracked, and the implements clattered noisily, tumbling across the trampled ground.
“What do I have to do to get it through to you that I am not interested in you like that? Any of you?” she added, swinging around to include the other half dozen of her too-earnest suitors.
Kenyen touched her arm. Tava rounded on him, fist lifting in aggravated warning, but he merely released her and held up his hands, his normally lighthearted expression sober. “There is one thing you can do to discourage our interest in you.”
“What?” she demanded.
He flashed her a grin. “All you have to do is choose one of—”
“—What’s with all the shouting? I could hear you from halfway across the—aaaah!” Tripping over the fallen utensils, Rahala stumbled and dropped to the ground. Part of the broken pottery crunched further under her, making her cry out again.
As much as she disliked the other woman, Tava didn’t want to see her injured. She started forward, intending to help Rahala up, but several of her would-be suitors got there first. Once on her feet, it was obvious the other woman hadn’t survived her fall unscathed. Blood smeared her breikas, and a hesitant exploration extracted a sharp shard of pottery from her flesh.
Teeth clenched, Rahala accepted the arms offered to support her. “—I’ll be fine! Just help me to my geome—whoever dropped this mess, clean it up! This isn’t Family Pigsty!”
The woman who had dropped the bowls and utensils flushed with shame. Strangely enough, it was Rahala’s own acerbic words which quelled Tava’s temper. Mostly out of shame that she could have acted like that herself. Unfortunately, she still had the problem of her would-be suitors to deal with.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kodan and Deian approaching. Kodan looked at the tableau of the limping Rahala, supported on either side by two men, the woman picking up the broken pottery and scattered spoons, his brother, Tava, and the other men, all clumped together in the clearing in front of the South Paw maidens’ geome.
He slowed to a stop and lifted his brow. “Is there something I should know about?”
“Yes,” Tava stated, making up her mind. She moved away from Kenyen and the others, placing the nearby brazier between her and the Lord of Family Tiger. “I want to make it perfectly clear to everyone here that there is only one man I am interested in as a suitor . . . and that man is you, Kodan Sin Siin.”
Looking straight at him, the tripod-held brazier between them, she lifted her hand.
Kodan glanced quickly at Rahala, wanting to see her reaction. He would have bet half his wealth that her pinched expression came more from her anger at this little scene than from the pain of her wound . . . but she was a witness to it. Looking back at Tava, he eyed the wrought iron tripod between them, the peak of which came up to the middle of his chest. It wouldn’t be the easiest obstacle to clear, but there was a fire crackling softly in the metal pan hanging from the tripod.
A quick shift to make stronger leg muscles was all that was needed to allow him to leap over the obstacle in his path. Landing with a thud, barely conscious of having sprinted and jumped, Kodan caught Tava’s outstretched hand. Tugging her close, he did what he had been longing to do for days, and what he should not have done just three days ago, before it was legal for him to do so.
One moment, he was on the ground across from her; the next, he seemed to float over the brazier with impressive ease. The moment after that, his lips were on hers, thrilling her with their firm, fervent warmth. A shout rose up from most of the people witnessing it, but he didn’t stop kissing her. Tava clung to him, learning quickly how to tilt her head and nibble, returning each caress of his tongue and lips.
The clearing of a voice broke them apart. Deian folded his arms across his chest and gave both of them an amused, patient look. “. . . I take it our plan to practice shifting another shape is about to be set aside?”
“Ugh—take me back to my geome!” Rahala ordered Medred and his cousin, beckoning the bachelors over to her side of the brazier. “Kodan . . . Akodan,” she acknowledged with gritted teeth, “I’m sure it will be no surprise to you that I have decided I will not apprentice to you. As soon as we reach the City, I plan on entering the Princess Challenge. At the rate I am learning shapes, I shall probably surpass Her Majesty’s twelve pure forms . . . and will become her new apprentice before winter is over. Take good care of Family Tiger, once I’m gone. I’ll have a kingdom to run.”
A curt gesture from one hand directed her escort to help her away from the newly mated pair. The sight of her hobbling away, supported on either side, made Tava frown in puzzlement. Before she could more than wonder why Rahala hadn’t shifted her wound away, Kodan recaptured her attention.
“I believe there are some belongings of yours that need to be relocated, yes?” he asked her. “After that, we can help both of you strive for a new shape. Deian, you wanted to try for an eagle form, correct?”
“I wouldn’t want to interrupt your chance to celebrate your newly wedded bliss,” his friend demurred.
Kodan gave the other shifter a sardonic look. “I’m Lord of Family Tiger. Everyone will want to interrupt my newly wedded bliss.” Turning, Tava tucked against his side, he caught sight of his brother’s grinning face. “. . . What?”
“It’s about time, that’s what,” Kenyen said. He winked at Tava. “I was afraid I’d actually have to seduce you, just to get you to make up your mind about him. Now, can I have my sheepskin lap blanket back?”
; Kodan whapped him on the shoulder. “No, you cannot! That was a first-gift, Kenyen!”
“Yes, he can,” Tava countered, resting her hand on Kodan’s chest. Her husband’s chest. It wasn’t the baptised-in-the-River wedding she was used to seeing, but she knew the Gods didn’t care which kingdom’s customs were used, so long as the couple’s intent was pure and there were witnesses to the marriage rite used. She smiled at Kodan. “After all, yours is the only fur I’ll ever need.”
The warmth in his gaze was broken only by the approaching argument of a middle-aged woman hauling a youngish boy of about eleven or twelve into view, pulling him by the collar of his woolen chamak. “Lord Kodan, I want you to punish this miscreant immediately! I caught him with his sticky fingers on my honey buns, trying to make off with three of them while I was off at the refreshing tent!”
“I was just brushing the flies off them, I swear!” the boy protested.
“Liar!” the woman snapped, shaking him a little.
“I’m not lying!” He squirmed in an effort to get free, but her grip was too sturdy.
Kodan groaned. He heard a giggle and glanced down at his bride. She smiled and patted his chest.
“You go do your Lord-of-the-Family things. We’ll have plenty of time later for other activities,” Tava promised.
Almost agreeing with her, Kodan narrowed his eyes in the next moment. “Oh, no, you don’t, apprentice. You’re going to help me adjudicate this dispute.”
Sighing, she studied the boy and the woman. Inspiration struck as the youth protested once more that he was innocent and not the liar his captor claimed. “Fine. I’ll go get my Truth Stone. That’ll be the quickest way to see whose version is the truth.”
“Ha! I’ll have you as a pot-scrubber for half a turn of Brother Moon!” the woman crowed as the boy in her grip froze.
“Alright, I did want to eat one of them,” he confessed grudgingly. “But there were flies buzzing around, too, and I didn’t want them to be spoiled! I’ll swear it on a Truth Stone!”
Someone else came riding up on a horse, calling out as he approached. “Lord Kodan! Lord Kodan! A rattlesnake startled some of the cattle on the northeast side and several have bolted. We need a half dozen riders to go after them!”
“Gods, it never ends,” Kodan muttered under his breath to Tava. “You handle the woman and the boy; fetch the Truth Stone and be reasonably fair. I’ll organize the round-up party and bring back the cattle. We’ll move your things and practice shifting new shapes after these problems—and no doubt several others—have been settled.”
FOURTEEN
She heard him coming before the door to his geome ever opened.
“. . . and if it is not a genuine emergency, as in fire, flood, invasion, or murder, I will be very upset at whoever causes the interruption. You are the next-ranked shifter, Deian. You keep the peace of the Family tonight. And yes, Kinedi, I will give her the new clothes. I will also give her the temporary pectoral the Family carvers made, and no, I don’t think she wants any sweets this late at night, Mother, but thank you for the offer. Supper was delicious, as always. Good night, everyone . . . Good night.”
The door swung open, and Kodan ducked through the opening. One arm was loaded with a bundle of lavender-dyed linen, no doubt a new set of chamsa and breikas to replace the ones lost in the fire a few days ago. The other arm pulled the door firmly shut, if not quite banging it. Flipping down the lever that locked it against outside intrusion, he straightened, sighing.
Tava bit her lower lip, but it was no good. She couldn’t prevent the smile that curved her lips. Carefully fitting a scrap of ribbon into the pages of the book on her lap, she watched him cross to one of the chests she had arranged along the right side of the geome as one entered.
“A new chamsa . . . and breikas,” Kodan confirmed, unfolding the garments and the webwork bundle of pale beads they had sheltered, displaying each item in turn, “and a bone pectoral, since that’s what the carvers had the most of on hand. Once we get to the City, the Family artisans will have access to metalworking and gem-cutting supplies and will make you a proper collar.”
“Every shifter gets at least one pectoral for free, usually carved from wood or bone, or painted ceramic beads,” Tava recited, remembering her lessons. “Anything fancier than that, and they have to pay for it themselves. The only exception to this is for a princess. Since she is a noble treasure for a Family to possess, it is considered only fitting that the entire Family should contribute to the material costs and crafting of her pectoral.”
He smiled and crossed to the broad bed, leaving her things piled on her book chest. “You remember well.”
“I’m a scribe. A trained memory is an asset. But having remembered that, and thinking of Family Lion having all those princesses,” Tava continued, shifting to set her book on the night table beside the bed, “I feel sorry for how much all those collars must have cost.”
Kodan chuckled. “Maybe that’s why Family Tiger has been so wealthy, not having had any of our own until now.”
“And now you have two,” Tava agreed.
“And now we have two,” he corrected, settling onto the edge of the bed next to her. “But I’d rather not think about the other one right now. I am sorry I took so long coming back from the final round of inspecting the camp for the night. Can you forgive me?”
Smiling warmly, she said, “It’s one of the things I like about you, the fact that you honestly care about everyone in this Family. Our Family,” she added, mock-teasing him. It thrilled her to be able to do so, and pleased her when he smiled back. Reaching out, Tava patted the cover of the book she had been reading. “Besides, I had a good friend to cuddle up with while I waited for you.”
“Careful, you’ll make me jealous,” Kodan mock-warned her. Reaching for the book, he picked it up. The leather was dark with age, the embossing worn and slightly scuffed, but the title was still legible. “Legends of the Painted Warriors: Volume III. A book on the Painted Warriors of Mendhi?”
“Yes. My father inherited it from his father, and from his mother, and from . . . so on and so forth,” Tava dismissed. “It predates the Shattering of Aiar. Before the one you gave me, this one, and my copy of Father Fox’s Tales, were the only two books of adventure stories I owned. The rest of them are either books of information or of discussion. When I want to relax and fall asleep, I’ll open my copy of A Discourse of Proper Exchequery Practices Using Arithmantic Accounting . When I want to relax but stay awake . . . it’s either Legends or Father Fox’s, but I wasn’t in the mood for children’s fables.”
“May I?” Kodan asked, lifting the book in his hands.
Tava nodded, giving him permission to open it. Curling her legs, she sat forward to peer at the pages with him, abandoning the pile of pillows she had made against the modest headboard of the broad, rope-strung bed. He flipped slowly through the pages, randomly skimming the text and the occasional illustration.
Pausing at one, Kodan tapped the image of a man dressed in a short vest and a strange combination of abbreviated skirt and loin-cloth, his body covered in a dozen tattoos. Some were inked on his calves, others on his forearms; one had been drawn around his navel, just visible peeking above the waistband of his pleated skirt-thing, while another wrapped around his throat like an abstract collar. Flipping back to another illustration, Kodan tapped the stomach of a woman clad in a similar outfit, though her vest was fastened snugly across her chest. Her tattooes ranged from her calves and thighs to her biceps, one on her forehead, and another circling her belly button.
“I remember the old man who came at midsummer, the one with that west-bound caravan that Rah . . . Arahala was so interested in. He had various marks on his thighs, his biceps, and his hands, something on his cheek, and this one particular mark on his stomach,” Kodan said. He flicked ahead to another illustration, but that one didn’t show the stomach of the figure, so he tried another. Tapping the page, he nodded. “If these drawings are accurate, I
wonder why each one has this tattoo right here on their stomach? It’s a little bit different between men and women, but all the men have the same one, and all the women have the same.”
“I’ve read this book dozens of times, maybe hundreds, and it doesn’t ever say why they all share that similar mark,” Tava confessed. “It doesn’t actually contain anything on how the tattoos are made, just that certain styles of marks in certain locations have certain effects, acting like permanently inscribed spells. It’s a book of adventure tales, after all, not one containing instructions on how to re-create a Painted Warrior’s powers. For that, I suspect you’d need a Mendhi mage to tell you what to do.”
“I used to wonder what it would be like to be a mage,” Kodan admitted. “To be able to do more than shift my shape. To wave my hand and make things happen. After I grew up, I realized I prefer being a shapeshifter.” Leaning forward, he returned the tome to the night table, then swerved and kissed Tava lightly on the lips. Pulling back, he smiled at her. “Most of all, I prefer being right here, right now, with you. Barring fire, flood, invasion, or murder, nothing is going to interrupt us.”
“Nothing?” Tava teased, leaning back onto the pillows as he leaned forward, looming over her.
“Nothing, if it has any wisdom at all,” her husband promised. He started to kiss her again, then pulled back, wincing. “Ah . . . wait. I forgot to put a few more grass-logs on the fire. It’s growing rather cold outside, and we’re not going to be using the blankets just yet. Pardon the interruption,” Kodan apologized, backing off the bed.
“So long as it’s grass-logs and not dried dung, I’ll be happy,” Tava quipped. “The rora flowers do make it smell nicer, but nicer isn’t always enough.”
“I’ll put one of your first-gift wreaths on the fire anyway. The scent of burning grass isn’t that much better than dung,” he admitted.