Ember shifted yet again, nearly falling off the chestnut limb in her haste to re-orient.
A dulled sense of smell was drowned by an incredible scheme of colors, brilliant shades that held no human name.
Light and quick, she had no trouble darting away when Kitt dove at her. She landed on a sycamore here, a tag alder there, unable to help a nervous titter each time Kitt caught up with her. He was fast, and seemed to know where she would land almost as soon as she did.
She settled with an infuriated squawk on a fallen silk tree.
Another sparrow answered. SQUAWK!
She fluttered around to find Kitt behind her.
And a hoard of other chick-sparrows, watching her as they might watch an unwanted jay-bird. Ember fluffed her feathers, dread washing over her.
Did he expect her to withstand being mobbed? Chick-sparrows were relatively small, but terribly vicious if they felt they were being threatened. Like they did now. By her.
In a blink, Kitt flew toward her, and a great noise of chirping and beating wings burgeoned into the air.
Ember shifted, forcing her body to change with so much haste that vertigo gripped her, and she doubled over, clenching her throat against her rising breakfast.
She panted, reciting her mantra with every breath: Reasoning, intellect, planning...
"It gets better, you know."
Ember tried, and failed, not to twitch like a bird at the sudden voice. The man who had spoken to her appeared a bit older than Kitt, with fine black hair that covered stomach and chest before creeping up to hide half his face in a thick beard. Even with the beard and his face turned away from her, she could still see his smile.
"Deon," Kitt exclaimed from behind her. "Glad to see you're back."
Kitt, his deer-hide skirt back on, strode to meet his friend, and gripped his shoulder with a grin.
Saying nothing, Ember reached for her dress and pulled it on.
"And I'm glad to see you walking about again. If it weren't for the stitches, I'd think nothing had ever happened," Deon said, his teeth stark against the black of his beard.
Deon was right; Kitt was far more energetic today than he had been the day before, which had only made Ember feel more tired than she already was from staying up half the night guarding camp.
"Did you find anything?" Kitt asked in a lowered voice.
Weariness forgotten, Ember reached for her spear and stood, watching as Deon's smile slid into a frown.
"No. The trail was days old, as you told us. We lost it on the river. They're being careful, probably hiding under spells."
"They know we're still alive," Kitt said, his face grim. "They'll likely keep searching, if they don't get lost in the mountains. We'll have to be extra careful. Only leave camp in groups of three. Someone will always have to scout."
Deon nodded, then glanced warily at Ember before continuing. "I've another message. Seabird wants to see you. He looked troubled."
Kitt's mouth twisted, and he snapped, "When does he not?" He looked away with a quick release of breath. "Alright," he said apologetically, with a look that Deon didn't meet. "I'll come, once I'm finished here."
Deon raised a brow and gave Ember a curious look before dipping his head in acknowledgment. "I will let Seabird know," he said to Kitt, and then, to her, "You're lucky to have the best teacher in camp." He winked.
Heat rushed up Ember's neck.
"My thanks," Kitt said with a small smile.
Without so much as an introduction, Kitt let Deon walk away.
Ember tried to smooth her bristling feathers before remembering she didn't have any. Planning and intellect, she continued her mantra sternly, as she had done hundreds of times before. Reasoning and problem-solving. Human. Introducing strangers when they meet. Civility. Ember took a calming breath and forced her scowl to disappear.
"Are you part of a council, then?" she asked Kitt. Satisfied, she watched as he turned, the surprise in his face quickly hidden by suspicion and a scornful twitch of his lip.
"No." He walked toward her, hardly a limp in his step. "You need to learn how to suppress the nausea," he said, as though continuing with a conversation they had had earlier.
Ember quirked an eyebrow. Easier said than done. "Of course," she replied tartly. Then, as casually as possible, "Did you know Ryscford is thinking of moving camp further north?"
Kitt halted, his face tight and bloodless, gaze sharpened on her.
"Who told you? Or is it something you learned by eavesdropping again?" Another twitch of contempt, and a new gleam of anger as carmine pricked his cheeks.
"The latter," Ember admitted. "He grows worried of the camp's safety."
"Hiding deeper in the mountains will not be safer for the camp. Clans are scattered everywhere, moving with the seasons—" he stopped, realizing who he was arguing with.
"But the camp isn't safe here," Ember pressed. "You have no walls, hardly any weapons. The spells won't keep the patrols out forever—"
Kitt scowled and took a step toward her. "We would have no problem with patrols if you," he jabbed a finger toward her chest, "had killed that wizard. But you left him out there, so he could search for us and bring other wizards to help."
She couldn't keep the anger from her tone. "Killing wizards won't stop them from coming, and it certainly won't make wizards think any better of shifters."
Fire lit the moss of Kitt's eyes, and his lips pulled back in a snarl. "I don't give a damn what the wizards think."
Murder in his eyes again. Arundel's look.
"Is that why you wish for us to stay here, then? So you can find and kill wizards? We should go deeper into the mountains, find a place with solid walls, or build—"
"Enough!" Livid, red-faced, Kitt ran a hand over his stubbly face before bringing his arms down to his sides. Methodical. Controlled. His shoulders and torso were tense, as still as the face of the mountain. A cougar ready to pounce.
Ember crossed her arms, barely holding back a tongue-full of scathing words.
"Don't presume to know me, wizard-shifter," he said in a low voice. "We all have reasons for our actions. Even you." His eyes bored into her. "You always push for the truth. You dig and dig, but you run from what you find."
Her first instinct was to deny it. Her pulse throbbed in her throat as she forced herself to hold Kitt's gaze, to see his dislike and distrust. To see that he held something away from her, like most people did, and to feel a curiosity, more than she ever had before, of what it was he protected so fiercely.
So she would stay. And she wouldn't run.
The tension in his shoulders eased minutely. "I'm going to meet with our wizard leader. You need to practice shifting quickly. As quickly as you can. Suppress the nausea," he reminded her. The anger was already pulling away from his face, though she could still see it in the way he moved, his limbs rigid as he stomped away.
Likely to cause a fight with Seabird. She longed to watch, but made herself think of a shape instead. And another, and another.
Swirling, whirling with each shape, she swayed against the ground as a snake, hopped as a rabbit, dug into the humus as a badger, before giving up all activities. Otter, deer, cougar, wolf, bear—
Going from small to big stretched her body to the point of exhaustion. She dropped back in human form, on all fours and heaving up what remained of breakfast.
Reasoning and intellect, she reminded herself through the dizzy haze of her mind. She wiped her mouth and crawled away from the smelly, wet heap of vomit. Planning...
She would do it again, only this time there wouldn't be any breakfast left to lose.
chapter Twenty-six
Even here, riding high on the rays of the setting sun, she could make out smoke from the shifter camp. She should be glad that wizards couldn't fly and see for themselves. From the ground, the smoke would be less visible because of the dense vegetation and the immense slopes that hid them.
Ember pressed her tail feathers down, sinking into th
e forested gap between mountains where the camp sprawled, half-hidden in glamours, along the river.
She was weary, not only from the morning she had spent tending the small vegetable garden, or from taking on ten different animal forms in half a minute—which had resulted in vomiting, but only once, and briefly—but from the constant searching she had done with any spare time. Deon and others had searched already, yes, but she had searched for days longer, and in all directions of both the burned village and the old tree where she and Kitt had hid. She searched to spy, in hopes that at some point the wizards would have to speak to each other about their plans. Patrols didn't just wander around looking for shifters. They had missions, given to them by Arundel or another member of the Council.
She wanted answers to her questions. Were they looking for her? Had Arundel and Salena sent out more patrols upon discovering that their daughter was missing?
A thought struck her. Arundel might believe she was stolen by shifters. Revenge by those whom he hurt.
Ember shuddered after landing on a thick branch, her feathers quivering and fluffing before smoothing down again.
She shouldn't assume the worst. Besides, she hadn't found sign of Fletch, or any other wizard, and that was good, wasn't it?
She peered at the undergrowth beneath the canopy, which had darkened considerably once the sun had sunk behind the western mountain. She spotted her dress where she had left it, a bundle tucked beneath a thick root of a hickory tree, her spear nestled inside it.
With a quick flap and a skillful swoop, she landed next to it and shifted, forcing herself to begin re-orienting to her human form before the transformation completed, a method Kitt had taught her. She would solidify faster that way, and her senses would stabilize quicker because of it. It was a different way of shifting, a deeper exercise of her mental control than what she was used to. Less reactionary. More focused intent.
And it was becoming habitual, she thought with a grim smile as she pulled on her dress and knotted it above her left shoulder. With patrols potentially after her, and hateful shifters, she may have need of speedier shifting.
Darkness seeped into the camp, signaling the beginning of her guard duty. The spells glinted silver at night, and she made out several holes in the glamour along the perimeter of camp. She tried a one-handed spell first before digging into the more difficult two-handed spells, trying to remember the details from her spells-class that she had failed to remember for her practicum.
Ember smiled. Dev, no doubt, would have no issue with the glamours. She'd want to make the glamour into some sensual fortress, complete with fountain and rose-covered arcades.
Her smile faltered. Dev would never believe what Ember did now, hiding a camp with glamours. She wouldn't believe Ember was capable of it. She could just imagine Dev giving a half-smile as though Ember told a joke, and tilting her head at Ember like she did at Professor Nel's scrawny, three-legged lapdog.
Ember shuddered and shook her head to clear the webs of memory from her mind. She shouldn't care what Dev would say. It didn't matter anymore, now that she was part of the shifter camp. What did matter was that she was doing what she could to help, even if it was as silly as Glamour spells. The spells were one of the only defenses they had.
She squinted at her current Glamour, two silvery strands looped like an elegant necklace from a chestnut branch to that of a dogwood laden with white flowers, effulgent against the dark. She pressed her nose into the blossoms, pulling the sweet scent down into her belly. A warm, comforting scent that reminded her of Gregory. She plucked a flower off and tucked it behind her ear, humming as she searched along the perimeter for more holes.
Leaves rustled ahead.
Ember squatted behind a sunberry shrub and watched for movement. At first she saw nothing beyond the pale gleam of the perimeter's Glamour, but then she caught a glimpse of movement low to the ground.
A wolf. Or rather, many wolves, trotting silently away from camp. South. She watched, hardly daring to breath, as she made out one pair of ears after another. One of those pairs glinted along the edges, as though lined with earrings.
Jinni?
She led a group of seven, moving as naturally as a true-born wolf. They moved like shadows through the ferns and mayflowers, liquid dark against pale-limbed sycamores and fallen ash trees. In a few moments, they were gone.
Ember stood, longing to follow them.
A tall figure appeared where the wolves had come from and stopped just outside the perimeter, watching in the direction the wolves had gone.
"They go to hunt," said Seabird in an unhappy tone. He wore his leather jerkin decorated with strips of fox fur above baggy pants.
"You don't want them to hunt?"
"It's not the hunting, but where they go after the hunt," he said.
"Why don't you stop them? You're our leader." She turned back to her spell-work so as not to appear too interested.
"I cannot control them," Seabird said with a smile in his voice. He walked to where she stood, assessing the Glamour with black eyes. "As a leader, I'm here to protect the camp, not force people against their will."
Ember's eyebrows rose. "That's surprising to hear from someone who used to be on the Council."
Seabird hid his own surprise well. "So you know who I am. Good. But as I've told others, you should continue calling me by my false name."
"People still speak of you, back in Lach," she said as though she hadn't heard him. "They call you a martyr."
He lifted his hands to help her patch the Glamour. He couldn't see the strands as she could, so his spells overlapped other spells and sometimes left large gaps. "The Council had to believe me dead. Otherwise, they would've kept looking. They knew they would succeed in stopping the rebellion if they killed me."
"The man whose head you sent," Ember said, no longer hiding her curiosity. "Did you kill him?"
Seabird froze mid-spell, his face hard. Ember wondered, fleetingly, if she had gone too far. "He died on the battlefield like a true soldier. He fought bravely for what he believed in, as foolish as those beliefs were."
The tightness in his voice was familiar. She had heard so many others like him, and she knew the tone whether she was a mouse or a bird or a human. A heavy knot of shame, pride, and above all, love.
"He was your brother," she heard herself say. She held her breath when he looked at her, his gaze a reflection of the night sky.
"Sometimes we must make painful choices for the good of others. Sometimes," he added, "it is a matter of killing rather than being killed. Neither are easy."
Her throat cinched, and she went back to methodically casting Glamours. Her limbs trembled with the urge to shift into a bird and fly far away from this man who killed his own brother. But she remembered, all too clearly, Kitt's accusation. She wouldn't run away. She couldn't.
"How are you getting along in camp?" Seabird asked, the deep toll of his voice carrying the grief away. He turned back to his own meandering spell-work.
How could he move away from his grief so easily?
"Well," Ember lied. Truthfully, not a day went by that she didn't get reprimanded in the kitchen. Out of everyone there, Asenath was the only one who hadn't scolded her for a mistake.
Did Asenath know about Seabird's brother?
"And have you found your father?"
The question took her by surprise. She hadn't spared a thought about her real father in the last two days.
"No," she said, her tone edged in frustration. "No one seems to know anything about him."
Seabird nodded, grim. "We've lost so many over the years. And more during the attack on camp."
"Like the healer?" Ember put in, remembering Riggs speaking highly of his father. Had the man been killed, or had Arundel taken him to his dungeon? Ember repressed a shudder.
"He was a good man," Seabird said with a nod. "He did well raising Riggs and Kitt." He eyed her with sudden concern. "I hear Kitt is giving you lessons. Are they going well?"
Was anything going well? "I've just had one so far." She hesitated before saying, as casually as possible, "He told me you are considering moving camp further from Lach." She squinted at her current spell, simple and short, as though she didn't strain to hear his answer.
"And he informed me that you stabbed a wizard without killing him," he said in a tone as casual as her own.
In the darkness, she thought she saw a smile. She didn't bother hiding her scowl. This again. Kitt must have guessed she would lie, but he underestimated Seabird's ability to see through falsities. Was Kitt's open suspicion his way of sowing distrust of her in the camp? "Do I have to kill wizards to be accepted here?"
Seabird chuckled. "Kitt is reasonable in all else except matters of wizards and wizardry. Perhaps now that he is taking on a wizard as a student, he will change his attitude."
Ember repressed a snort of disbelief.
Seabird continued, solemn. "I don't like that all shifters have so much hate for wizards. But I can't blame them, not after seeing some of what they've been through."
But if the shifters hated the wizards, and the wizards hated the shifters, how was everyone supposed to get along?
"I should be off now," Seabird said. "It grows late."
A question pressed at her. "How did you get them to accept you?"
This time Ember could see the smile and the white teeth beneath. "Accept? I would say 'tolerate,'" he chuckled but his eyes were serious, and he looked at her as if he knew what she really asked. "It took patience, Ember. I had to convince them to see beyond differences. I showed my strengths. Acknowledged my weaknesses and used them to my advantage." He paused as a warm breath of air stirred the vegetation around them. "Know who you are, who you want to be. Strive to be that person, and they will come to see you with admiration and respect."
He left her alone in the woods, surrounded by shadows scented with dogwood blossoms and a gauzy curtain of spells that curved away in an endless maze of silver threads.
Who was she?
More importantly, who did she want to be?
Silverglen: A Young Adult Epic Fantasy Novel Page 15