“What about you?” she asked.
“Me? I’m no fool, Amanda.”
“No, neither am I,” she said. She leaned toward him, suddenly intent. “I’ve been working toward this trial for months, from almost the first day I landed on the planet. Half a year, Rhodry, spent planning every detail, studying, preparing. I’ve scoured the records of every trial undertaken in the last twenty years, and most of the ones before that, and not one shifter candidate, not one, has ever been dropped beyond the Verge.”
Rhodry sat up again, suddenly focused on carving away the rest of the diamondback to save for tomorrow. “I told you, I wasn’t on your escort,” he said without looking at her.
“You were supposed to be, and I know what the Guild Hall’s like. They gossip like old ladies. You must have heard something.”
He pulled off the last of the meat and snapped the branch they’d used as a skewer in two, dropping the pieces into the fire. The smell of cooked snake sharpened as the fat-soaked sticks burned.
“Not until after it was done,” he said in a quiet voice, his eyes riveted on the fire.
“What?”
His eyes met hers briefly across the fire, and looked away again. “Nando and the others thought if they dropped you on the glacier’s edge, they’d be seeing your rescue flare before the first day was over, and the trial would be done. Or if by some chance you managed to stick it out and find your way back without help, that you’d never take vows. They figured you’d be so glad to get back in one piece, you’d never want to leave the city again.”
It was pretty much what she’d reasoned out for herself, and it still hurt. Something didn’t add up, though. “How could they have known I’d draw the black stone for north? The odds didn’t favor one over the others…” Her words faded away at his flat stare. “The stones,” she breathed. She could hardly believe it. Had kindly Orrin Brady been a part of this too? Was that why he’d tried to talk her out of going ahead, not once but twice?
As if he could read her thoughts, Rhodry said, “I didn’t hear any of this until you were gone, and I don’t know how they did it. I don’t think Brady was involved. For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’d have condoned such a thing.”
“And you, Rhodry? Would you have gone along with it?”
“No!” he insisted vehemently, his golden eyes as bright as the fire. “How do you think my dear cousin persuaded me to go with him out onto the glacier? That was no hunting trip. I would never have gone hunting with him, and he knows it. Des came to me with the news that Nando and the others were back, that they were bragging about what they’d done to you, and he said we had to find you, that it was a matter of clan honor.” He huffed a bitter laugh.
She frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I had only Serna’s word that any of it was true,” he insisted. “For all I knew, he’d made the whole thing up just to lure me out here.”
“Well,” she said mildly. “I guess I must have imagined it all then, huh?” She tossed down the rag she’d been using to wipe her hands and crawled out through the low cave entrance. It wasn’t exactly a dignified exit. It didn’t matter. She needed to get away from him, away from all of them.
Outside, she scrambled quickly to her feet, moving away until the faint glow of their fire was a wavering dab of orange light through the cave opening. She checked automatically for her belt knife. There were plenty of animals prowling the dark nights of Harp, and she had no intention of letting any of them prevent her from getting back to the Guild Hall and shoving her success right down their throats.
She leaned back, surprised by the warmth of the rock wall behind her, and stared up at the few stars. What would her life have been if she had never come down to the planet that day? Or if she’d left with all the others and gone back into space with Nakata and the fleet? She’d grown to hate living on that ship. Hated the sterile air, the narrow corridors, the hard surfaces everywhere. She’d wanted dirt beneath her feet, the wind on her face. The whisper of the trees.
“Amanda.”
She jumped. Damn shifter. She hadn’t heard him coming.
“Why?” she asked, without preamble. “I never asked for special treatment from anyone. If anything I had to work harder than any of you—being tested on things you all grew up knowing, passing physical trials designed for a shifter’s physiology. And even if I get through this, and gain Guild membership, I’m no threat to any of you. So why do you hate me?”
“Damn it, Amanda. I don’t hate you,” he snarled angrily.
She gave him a weary look, knowing he could see her clearly even in the near darkness. Just one more shifter adaptation that she’d had to do without.
“Not now, you don’t,” she said. “You did, though. And you didn’t even know me. It’s the same thing as Cristobal’s supporters hating you because of something your grandfather did before you were ever born. What is it about me—?”
“I never hated you. That was the problem.”
Her brow wrinkled in confusion. “I don’t understand.” He’d never hated her?
He stared at her, as if fighting the urge to explain. She wanted to thump his chest and demand he tell her, but that would only undo all of her hard work. And the stubborn ass probably wouldn’t tell her anyway.
“It’s not you,” he said finally.
And she knew that wasn’t what he’d wanted to say.
“It was never you,” he continued. “It’s what you represent.”
“What?” she demanded in exasperation.
He was quiet for a few minutes. She could barely make out his features, only the spark of his eyes picking up the low starlight. Eventually, he said, “I’ve never been in space. You have. You know about other human hybrids, people modified for other environments. You’ve probably even seen some of them.”
She nodded, curious now about what he was going to say. “A few. They’re everywhere.”
“And in most of those places, they’re considered sub-human, aren’t they? Useful, sure. Exotic, certainly. And not quite human anymore, even though without them and their modifications, most humans would still be trapped on Earth or cocooned in metal cylinders flying through space.”
Embarrassment pricked her conscience for her fellow humans, and she didn’t want to answer because what he said was true. He was waiting for her response, so she nodded reluctantly. “You’re right. I have seen it. And I know that’s not the case here on Harp. Hell, you guys run the whole damn planet.”
“And that’s my point,” he told her. “Shifters were never meant to rule Harp. We were bred to be soldiers and hunters to keep the colony safe and fed, with just enough indigenous DNA so that the planet would recognize us as its own. Do you know what those long-ago scientists did when they realized what they’d created with the first generation of shifters? They killed them. And I’m not talking about embryos, either. These were children who’d just begun to manifest a shifter’s natural, aggressive tendencies.”
“That’s impossible,” she said, stunned. “There isn’t any record—”
“There are records in the Guild Hall. Information that no one outside the Guild is permitted to see, things that every shifter is taught when he joins the Guild. Notes and diaries of the original scientists discussing those first nascent shifters in great clinical detail, how they were too smart, too aggressive. Our creators never intended to produce an entire breed of alpha males. When that’s what they got, they made changes. Then, the second generation turned out to be even more dominant than the first, and it was too late to try again. Equipment was breaking down, human egg stocks were degenerating. Even if they’d had the time, they couldn’t have started over again. And the struggle just to survive had become too great to throw away what they had.
“So they let us live. Not because they wanted to, but because the alternative was death for the entire colony.”
She was appalled by his revelation. No wonder Cristobal had insisted the original rec
ords had been lost. “What does that have to do with me?” she asked. “I’m no threat to shifter dominance or—”
“Your very existence is a threat. You must see that. Norms outnumber us more than a hundred to one on the planet—”
“I’m not a norm!” she insisted. “I’m a freak who hears voices in her head. I wasn’t even born here!”
“That makes it worse. You have to understand—” He gave a frustrated sigh. “What makes the shifters unique,” he said slowly, “what lets us rule this fucking planet is our ability to commune with the forest. What if you’re not the only non-shifter who can do that? What if you’re the first of many? You don’t only have to fail, Amanda, you have to fail spectacularly so that no norm will ever try again.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said in disgust. “If norms were going to line up to join the Guild, don’t you think they’d have done it before now? And if that’s the kind of thinking going on in the Guild, then I’m worried for the planet because it’s being run by a bunch of furry idiots with dicks.”
She saw the flash of his teeth when he smiled at her choice of words. She hadn’t meant it to be funny, and she wanted to slug him for being so stupid. He seemed to sense her intent and sobered abruptly.
“You’re right. I am an idiot with a dick who should have known better. My own mother is the strongest, most capable person I’ve ever known, and she’d be ashamed to know I had any part in what they did to you.”
Amanda listened, her face turned away to the darkness so he wouldn’t see the furious tears filling her eyes. She didn’t even know why she was so angry, except that it was all so pointless. All she’d wanted was the freedom to roam the Green at will. Who could possibly be hurt by that?
“I am sorry, acushla,” he said softly. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, pulling her back against his chest when she would have elbowed him away. “Truly I am.”
He was so warm, so big and strong, and she was so tired of carrying all the worry alone. His arms tightened, holding her close, and she let him. Just for this moment, she wanted to let him be the strong one, let him worry that some vicious beast was about to pounce on them and make all of the Guild shifters’ dreams come true.
“Promise me something,” he said.
“What?” Her voice was thick with suspicion.
“Don’t ever tell my mother what happened with you. She’ll skin me alive and make a nice rug for the hearth.”
Amanda laughed, knowing that was what he wanted, and unable to stop it. She straightened, feeling his arms resist for a second before letting her go. She turned and punched his chest lightly, careful to avoid hurting him. “You’re an ass, de Mendoza.”
“I am.”
“I like you anyway,” she said with a sigh. She rubbed her arms against the cold. “We should get back inside before some beastie undoes all my hard work saving your idiot life. I wouldn’t want to lose you now.”
“No,” he murmured. “Not now.” He dropped an arm over her shoulders, and they walked together back to the cave.
Chapter Thirty
Amanda’s first thought on rolling out of the warm sleeping bag the next morning was that tonight she’d be sleeping on the soft ground of the Green. The night had been deeply cold, just as Rhodry had predicted. The fire had kept the cave fairly warm, and exhaustion had done the rest.
He murmured restlessly, and she tucked the covers back around him hoping he’d sleep longer. He’d fallen hard asleep the night before. Yesterday had probably been too much, walking as far as he did. On the other hand, the more exercise he got the faster the rockweed would be worked out of his system so he could reclaim his ability to shift. He still hadn’t said anything about it, though Amanda knew it weighed on him that he couldn’t take his animal form. And that weight grew heavier with each day that passed.
She pulled on her boots, which was much easier with both knife sheaths empty. She’d given Rhodry her spare blades, and kept the belt knife and the short bow for herself. He’d tried to talk her out of the bow. Unsuccessfully, of course. She wasn’t even sure if he’d been serious about it, or if he’d just been jerking her chain. It was hard to tell sometimes.
She picked up the arrow quiver and shook it unhappily. Her supply of arrows was growing thin. That was something else she’d have to work on once they got back to the trees. Dropping to all fours, she threw the quiver and bow out ahead of her and crawled through the cave opening.
The skies were clear and the wind completely still, with the dawn air retaining a cold bite that sent a shiver down her spine. She could appreciate the freshness of the morning, despite the cold, especially this close to the Green. With no wind off the glacier, the fragrance of the distant forest drifted in very faintly, full of the deep, earthy scent of the trees and everything that dwelled beneath them. She drew a full breath and exhaled on a long sigh. It was the smell of home and it filled her with longing.
Telling herself the sooner they got started the better, she hurried around the rock to take care of her morning needs, her mind full of the pleasures waiting for her at the end of this day’s journey. She pulled her pants back up, rearranged her clothes, and was just turning to go back to the cave when a throaty cough sounded over the stones, carrying clearly in the crisp air. She froze in place, even as her heart sped up with fear. Stripping away her hood to hear better, she slowly turned, searching for the source of the sound with eyes and ears both. She couldn’t see much from where she was. The rocks were too tall and too tightly clustered, and they blocked her view back toward the glacier.
She scrambled up the rocks, jamming her fingers into tiny crevices, not caring about the blood and skin she left behind. The top of the rock pile was precarious and uneven, perhaps twenty feet high. Leaping sure-footedly from stone to stone, she climbed rapidly until she reached the highest point.
She stilled, then stretched out her awareness and listened. The confirmation she sought was there in the trees they’d left behind, whispering to her of a fearsome creature from the darkward stalking the forest. Ice bear. They were deadly stalkers, their white coats making them hard to see, their eight-inch claws giving them the run of the trees despite their size. And they were fast, blindingly fast in the attack.
She had a moment’s regret, wishing they’d gone only a little farther yesterday. The Verge was on the border of the bear’s territory, just cold enough after a big storm for the creature to venture into for the hunt before retreating. So, was the bear hunting them? Or was she simply close enough to hear him hunting further north?
Either way, he was definitely hunting. That little cough she’d heard hadn’t been an accident. It was designed to terrify the target, to flush it out, and make it more susceptible when the bear finally made its move.
It had worked. She was terrified. She could see the bear now, and what she saw made her heart trip before resuming its frantic rhythm in her chest. He was standing just inside the tree line, and he was huge, the granddaddy of ice bears. This monster was at least twelve feet tall and carrying well over the usual two thousand pounds of muscle and fat beneath a long, dreadlocked coat that was filthy and knotted with dirt and brambles. He was down on all fours, swaying on the edge of the Verge, his big head moving from side to side as if reluctant to go further. But then his nose came up and her heart stopped. He began running, lumbering across the open space of the Verge, untroubled by the same rock field that had so hindered her and Rhodry. Platter-sized paws stepped light as feathers, gliding over the rocky litter, growing closer and more terrifying by the second as he moved in a purposeful line toward her position, her scent clearly in his nose.
She spun around, jumping over rocks until she was right above their cave. She dropped down to her belly and leaned over the precipice to shout down a warning to Rhodry, just as a belling roar of discovery rolled over her. She looked up in shock to see the bear in full charge and heading straight for her. She scrambled to her feet, screaming Rhodry’s name a
s she prepared to fight for her life.
Ignoring every instinct that told her to flee, she ran along the top of the rocks, leaping over boulders as fast as she dared, fighting for footing as she circled up one side of the horseshoe formation, angling for a bow shot. She heard Rhodry shout her name, saw him emerge head-first from the cave opening seconds later.
The bear’s massive head swung around instantly, its nose lifting to the scent of shifter, and without ever slowing its lightning-fast speed, the beast altered its charge toward this new, more dangerous foe.
She shouted wordlessly, bringing her bow up to draw and fire in a single smooth movement. Her fingers stung as the arrows flew, as she reached for the next arrow and the one after that, aiming for the back of the bear’s neck where its spinal cord met its vicious little brain. Her aim was true. Her arrows pierced the thick skin…and stuck there, unable to penetrate through the heavy layer of fat. The bear spun again, abandoning its efforts to reach Rhodry through the narrow cave opening, rearing up instead to meet her attack with a frenzied howl. She was ready. Her next arrows flew as true as the first, striking the beast just left of center mass where his five-chambered heart lay. Or so her studies had told her. She’d never faced an ice bear before, and could only hope the books were right. She loosed two more arrows, making a total of four lodged in the monster’s chest and three sticking out of its thick neck. They seemed to have little effect, not even slowing the giant down.
Rhodry was shouting something that she was too distracted to hear. The bear was close enough to smell now, rank and disgusting, her arrows sticking out of his hide like quills, bobbing madly with the force of the animal’s berserk rage. Tiny, nearly blind eyes glowed with fury, gleaming red orbs amid the dirty white of its fur, as it swung its head from side to side searching for her with its sensitive nose. She kept firing, afraid of revealing her location, even more afraid she would fail to put the creature down before it found her. She sent her last arrow flying with a hiss of a prayer, shuddering when those eyes focused suddenly and directly on her, pinning her in place with terror. The ice bear took a clumsy step forward and roared.
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