by Scott Moon
“Why? And what is so important to you? Shapeshifters mind their own business.”
Kin barely contained his laughter, which he sensed would have been a mistake. The boy’s face was so earnest it made Kin need to laugh away awkwardness. “A lot of things are important.”
“I wish people would leave us alone and respect us more,” William said.
“William,” Kin said. “Iso is a decent guy. I like him, I really do. They are not all like that. Susso can be cruel and devious.”
“Says who? Did she do something to you?”
“Yes, she did.”
William glared at him, unbelieving.
“She took the form of Rebecca when I was lonely and vulnerable. It hurt. I saw satisfaction in her eyes when my pain showed.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have overreacted,” William said, but he seemed unsure.
“Is Iso or Susso pretending to be the Emperor?” Kin asked.
William avoided eye contact and said nothing, which answered half of Kin’s question. If Emperor Onderbock was the real article, then William would defend him. He was a boy who saved and was then protected by the Emperor. It was his nature to argue against anyone insulting or accusing his friends and guardians.
Right now, William looked embarrassed and guilty.
“You are not pretending to be Onderbock, are you?” Kin asked.
William’s gaze snapped up from the ground. “No way, Kin. I wouldn’t do that. You believe me, right?”
“Sure, William.”
“I could, though. Watch this.” William became Trak, then Eagle, then the Emperor.
“Change back,” Kin said. He didn’t like the implications of William’s show. To pretend to be someone, he had to have observed them closely. Kin assumed that the look of an Earth Fleet officer would be hard for someone who hadn't served in Earth Fleet or been raised in a military family, but not as hard as taking the shape of a specific officer. There was no mistaking Eagle’s swagger or the pattern of scars on his face.
William the Mazz Emperor stood taller than his natural height, regal in a cloak of red velvet and white spotted fur.
“William, don’t forget what happened when you became a Reaper. You nearly lost your humanity,” Kin said.
The boy was back in a flash. He jumped forward, and for an instant, Kin thought the boy would swing at him.
“Humanity? I am a shapeshifter, not a human. What is wrong with that?”
“Nothing. I don’t want you to lose yourself.”
“I can’t lose what I don’t have. Finding the Emperor in the sewers of the Iron Box might have been a lie, but the Iron Box wasn’t a lie. Growing up like I did wasn’t a lie. When have my people ever been treated as anything but spies or pleasure slaves?”
Kin didn’t have an answer. Several moments passed in silence.
“Iso told me that if I had stayed in Reaper form, I would have become a Reaper,” William said.
Kin shook his head. “That’s a lie, even if true. You don’t have the instincts or social knowledge to be one of them. You would be the runt of the litter. And you would have to torture people and feed on their fear.”
“Why do you think I changed back?” William said. “Iso says that shapeshifters who permanently adopt a form become stronger in that guise than those creatures born to it.”
“I don’t see how that matters, William. Be yourself. Your father would want that.”
William snorted.
“Let me show you something,” William said, then changed into the form of a man of the Ror-Rea with an injured wing. “Follow me.”
“Better,” Kin said. He compared the boy to other citizens of the Ror-Rea. “You look like Rickson with wings. That will draw attention.”
A moment later, the young shapeshifter took the face of a man ten or fifteen years older than Rickson.
“Now you look like me with a big nose. You are really off your game today,” Kin said.
“That is because you are confusing me. Stop giving me advice and follow me. I will show you a Winger who wasn’t always a Winger,” William said.
Men, women, and children worked and played everywhere in the camp. Some were serious and quick to scold the more festive members of their society. The Ror-Rea was in danger and few of them understood why. Kin stepped aside when warriors passed and bowed his head to any adult Winger regardless of rank or station. He thought the wings of the children were too small and weak to fly — a theory supported by how few of them went into the air.
“Do you see that man with the red hair and mismatched eyes?” William asked.
Kin moved close enough to see the Ror-Rea warrior with one red eye and one black eye. “Are you telling me he is a shapeshifter?”
“He was. The Omega needed a spy that could fight among the Wingers and Yaso-tru-des volunteered. His Winger name is Wyman,” William said.
“I have seen him in battle. He fought on the Bleeding Grounds,” Kin said, weighing the implications. “Who is the Omega?”
William turned white, and since he was a shapeshifter, that meant he turned white as snow. “What do you mean?”
“You said the Omega needed a Winger. Who is the Omega?”
“You must have heard me wrong. The Omega is not a person. It is a title among my people — secret. Like a holy secret.”
“Hmm.” Kin followed the boy, who was verbally and physically retreating now. “I won’t say anything, William. I need to know everything that is happening here. A lot of people could die if I make a mistake.”
“It is not just about you. Did you ever think of that?” William said.
“Nice try, boy, but I have been distracted by people more clever than you,” Kin said. He took a step toward the red- and black-eyed Winger. “Maybe I should just ask Yaso.”
“Don’t. I will tell you what I can, but that isn’t much. The current Omega is our leader. He says I could take his place someday.”
“Really? How does that work?” Kin asked. He realized that William was trying not to look at a Winger who was missing both wings and had a bandage covering one eye.
“Tell me everything or I will confront the Omega myself,” Kin said. Focusing his attention on something far behind the maimed Winger, he made a list of observations. The stranger watched William with unpleasant intensity, although like Kin, he concealed his intentions. Each movement brought him incrementally closer by an indirect route.
“You will never find him,” William said.
“Stop it, William. You know that I am looking at him right now.”
“That is Susso.” The words were too loud, amplified by desperation.
Kin resisted the urge to draw a weapon. Sooner or later, the wingless Winger would know he’d been spotted. Maybe it wasn’t the Omega, but it was someone in the shapeshifter society interested in Kin’s conversation with the son of Orlan. “If you say so. Either way, I spotted her or him or whatever right away. I have come too far to play games. Your father wasn’t my friend, but I owe him my life at least once. Please don’t make us enemies.”
The boy sat down heavily and assumed his true form, human, but also strange and slightly lupine. His eyes were too bright and fierce. It was an unconscious posture that startled Kin with its genuineness. Seconds later, William was just a human boy — miserable and confused. “When he came for me on the Box, there were Iron Death Gangsters who thought he was just there to rob them. They saw me as property, you see?” He looked up.
Kin didn’t move. All of his attention was on the boy despite a gut feeling the wingless-Winger was moving close and was more dangerous than the Burning One.
William laughed bitterly. “That was their mistake. They lined up with knives and clubs up front — like they always did in a street fight. The man with the shotgun was Patterdave. He hung back, ready for the cops when they came. Have you ever seen an IDG?”
Kin shook his head.
“They have tattoos for every cop they’ve killed or girl they’ve raped or cop they’ve raped.
All of them take muscle-building synthetics and pierce their bodies with all kinds of metal jewelry. Patterdave had gold bracelets he turned into something like earrings, except they went between the bones of his forearm. His eyes leaked narco-hallucinogens like all the others.”
Silence.
Wingers and Crater Town people bartered for goods not far away. Kin glanced around and saw the wingless-Winger sitting on a rock nearby, studying him like a commanding officer about to issue punishment.
“Orlan killed him first,” Kin said.
William smiled. “No. He was angrier than he looked. I understand that now. I was curled in the corner, watching him pop his knuckles and roll his shoulders to get ready for the fight. There didn’t seem to be a reason to wake all the way up from my drug stupor. He glowed like a demon to me. Then he punched the first man with a knife so hard that his neck went limp and his body sagged straight to the floor. By the time Patterdave aimed the shotgun, two more of the Iron Death Gangsters were dead or unconscious.”
Kin imagined Orlan ripping the shotgun out of Petterdave’s hands and beating him with it as the others scrambled toward the door to escape.
“There were two others with guns he didn’t see. One of them shot him in the thigh. That was when I woke up and looked at the giant man claiming to be my father. He stared down at the wound, then at the man holding the pistol in two shaking hands, and did something he later told me was called a strip and retaliate.”
Kin remembered the move. Orlan had swept the pistol away as he turned his body just enough to avoid being shot. At the same time, his other hand chopped the IDG in the throat, crushing his larynx — or knocking his head off since it was Orlan doing the technique. Grimly, he laughed at the thought of his old sometimes-rival, sometimes-friend, oftentimes-enemy beating the hell out of slave-driving gangsters.
The Omega moved close and studied him as though he were an alien life form, causing Kin to realize he was nearly hypnotized by William’s story. He wanted to kick himself and scream at the boy, then punch himself for underestimating both the boy and the creature he called the Omega. Exhausted, he sank to the ground and sat with his feet stretched out in front of him as he watched two figures walk away. The Winger without wings was taller and leaned down to whisper in the younger shapeshifter’s ear.
Kin wanted to confront the Omega, but understood he needed to be both strategic and tactical in his approach. If the son of Orlan, a half shapeshifter boy, could trick him so completely, what could the leader of their society do?
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Losing Clavender
CLAVENDER knew of the Omega plot and William and Iso’s artful deception. No emotion touched her face, and she seemed distracted. Kin let the two shapeshifters live another day so he could focus on helping the Sun Princess of the Ror-Rea. It was big talk for a man who doubted his ability to find and approach any of the shapeshifters.
“You look as tired as I feel,” Clavender said.
“I will stand guard while you sleep,” Kin said.
“Do you have time for that?” She smiled and patted his forearm with her delicate fingers. “You make all of my failures more painful. If I could convince myself that all of your people were treacherous and greedy, then I would not feel such terrible remorse when I fail them. Perhaps I have lived too long away from my people.”
Kin thought of something to say but struggled to find the right questions and the right way to ask them.
“All wormholes are one,” she said. “I told you the truth. What do you think that means?”
Kin thought about it. “They can’t be closed.”
She smiled sadly. “Not completely. There is more to the puzzle. Another axiom is that they are not mine to control. I manipulate them, true, but the connectivity of the universe is at once mindless and possesses a mind of its own. Crashdown has spent most of its existence inside of a wormhole. Not even the wisest of my people understand when or why this came to be.”
“Does your father understand that you are being used for something greater than your skills allow?” Kin asked.
She shrugged, which was a human gesture that had greater effect among the people of the Ror-Rea. “If I died, no one would ask me to do anything.”
Kin grabbed her hands.
She gently twisted free and pointed at the sky that was the surface of Crashdown. “Do you see it?”
He looked where she pointed. The wormhole stretched over the entire planet like an energy shield. The comparison made Kin shudder. Shielding technology killed more people in development than just going into battle without it would have.
“All wormholes are one,” Kin said.
“Stand over me while I rest,” she said.
Kin stood guard as though it was the most important mission he’d ever been assigned. Looking down on her serene but exhausted face, he thought she dreamed of better times. Time passed too quickly, and she was called upon to care for her people. He followed and realized that here in the Ror-Rea, she was more than just a healer and wormhole guardian. The common folk looked to her with awe and respect. She walked among them without pretense or arrogance.
Kin reluctantly left her side to attend to the people of Crater Town. Most appeared tired and afraid of what was to come without understanding if they had made the right choice. He reassured old and young, watching for shapeshifters among them and feeling guilty for his paranoia.
“You are distracted,” Gabby Toines said.
Kin nodded. “There is something I need to do.”
She walked away without saying goodbye. He felt guilt for leaving the friends he had made on Crashdown even as he felt greater guilt for stalling. The battle ahead of him couldn’t be avoided and could only end with his death. It was what he had been made for.
CLAVENDER — glowing with more majesty than the Crashdown sunrise and the burning lights of the new wormhole — followed the warriors of the Ror-Rea into battle. She walked with dignity onto the obsidian ledge that overlooked the Reaper horde. Kin held his breath, hoping this was the shapeshifter imposter and that she would climb down rather than leap into flight.
“What do we do, Kin?” Rickson asked, sounding more like a soldier ready to fight and less like a shepherd boy with more enthusiasm than sense.
Clavender stretched her white wings until the tips pointed to each side like swords and diamonds sparkled across the under-wing. Muscles flexed in her slim legs as she leaped from the black rock. She plummeted out of Kin’s view. There had been no hesitation, no apparent fear. If Kin could fly, he would have launched farther and higher above the battle, but the Winger woman appeared — at least — to soar downward.
“Stay with me,” Kin said. What he had meant to say was stay back. The words assumed a life of their own. He sprinted for the ledge, shoving between Wingers who were jogging double-time toward the jump-off point with weapons drawn.
“Dax! Dax! Dax!” they chanted. Old, young, large, and small — many of them were new to the art of war. The High Lords of the Ror-Rea might plague their king with intrigue, but in the moments before battle, the warriors loved Dax.
Kin slid to a stop and looked down. A hundred meters into the fray stood Clavender, arms and wings raised to inspire the squadrons of her father’s army.
“Stay on my left. Watch your zone of responsibility and kill Reapers,” Kin said without looking at Rickson.
“This battle stuff is easy,” Rickson said as he climbed down right behind Kin. “Your stories made it sound a lot harder.”
“Don’t get cute,” Kin said. He scrambled over the rocks at the bottom of the descent and scanned the confusion of individual fights for Clavender. “She’s moving forward. We need to get to her quickly and bring her back.”
“Do you think that is her?”
“She flew off the ledge,” Kin said.
“Not very far.” Rickson drew his pistol with his right hand but still held his staff in his left.
Kin wanted to argue. He didn’t fee
l good about chasing the figure he thought — hoped — was Clavender. If it was her, then she was weak in body and spirit. His last conversation with the Ror-Rea princess had been fatalistic and dark. He understood that sacrificing himself might be the best thing, but nothing good could come from her suicide.
“This is a risk I am willing to take. I won’t blame you if you turn back, but I am glad you’re here, Rickson. You’ve done well.” With that, Kin began the methodical process of cutting his way toward Clavender, who still had not tried to leap into the air.
“I think that is the shapeshifter you call Susso,” Rickson said.
Kin continued to move forward. A Reaper leaped at him, paused to terrify him with jaws spread wide, and took several of Kin’s bullets in his saliva-spraying mouth. Rarely satisfied with injuring a Reaper, Kin blasted both of the monster’s knees, then put a round in the back of its head as he stepped over the twitching body. Close behind, Rickson pushed attackers back with his staff.
“I want to get closer and take a better look,” Kin said, raising his voice over the din of battle. “Clavender wasn’t in her right mind the last time I saw her.”
“I can tell from here that it is the shapeshifter. The way she keeps lifting her arms to her followers creeps me out. Just like when she had me in the forest,” Rickson said.
“I won’t risk leaving the real Clavender to die. If you are going back, do it now.”
“Right behind you, Kin,” Rickson said. A Reaper tackled him a second later.
Kin pivoted, aimed, fired. The Reaper twitched and jerked from the kill shots as Kin waited for Rickson to scramble to his feet.
“We’ve been lucky so far. Pay attention. These monsters want to kill you and eat your face.”
The Clavender they pursued moved to another pile of bodies — Reapers tangled with Wingers — and climbed to the top. Kin was almost certain this was a trick, a shapeshifter trap. He even thought he knew what Iso or Susso or whoever wanted, but he fought toward the image of his friend anyway.
His stomach soured. He ignored the growing dread and sense of dark things in the future.