Sons of Destiny Prequel Series 003 - The Shifter (13 page)

Equally grateful to leave, and even more embarrassed, Kenyen escorted his false betrothed away from the gathering field located halfway down the valley. Tarquin was one of them, a member of Family Mongrel. Someone who had taken over the life of the real Tarquin Tun Nev, and no doubt allowed the real one to be murdered. To hear such a cur mocking true Shifterai ways had not sat well with him.

On the Plains, the sanctity of maidens was absolute. If a man wanted physical intimacy, he arranged to meet with an earth-priestess. As widows, they could have gone back into the maiden's
geome
, the communal dome-tent where all maidens lived until wed. Instead, some of them chose to take up the holy calling of tending to the pleasure needs of the men in a particular Family. Each young man learned how to please a woman properly, thanks to their teaching. And each man learned to respect the compassionate generosity of each duly ordained earth-priestess.

Outlander women, the kind when met while traveling outkingdom... some of them could be approached, but it was always best to be polite and avoid such things unless a Shifterai was sure about two things. One, that the local culture didn't forbid it, and two, that at least one of them had a contraceptive charm. Because of the peculiarities of their kind, it was thought best not to beget any shapeshifter sons, or even a rare shapeshifter daughter, on an unsuspecting woman.

To kiss a maiden is anathema,
Kenyen acknowledged.
Maybe not an outkingdom maiden, but the hesitation and shame are still there. But to kiss someone else's betrothed is an outright betrayal. To enjoy it makes me depraved as well as a criminal. Except I had little choice. If I heard her right, if his name is Tarquin, then he's one of the shifters the real Traver warned me about. By now, he undoubtedly knows I'm a face-shifter, too.

"Traver?... Traver!"

Pulling himself out of his guilty thoughts, Kenyen looked back at Solyn. "Yes? What?"

"You missed the path," she pointed out, literally pointing back at the right one.

Sighing, Kenyen moved back to join her. A glance all around showed they were more or less alone. Not very, since it was the start of the harvest season and anyone working the various terraces could have glanced their way, but as close as they would get to being alone. The guilt wouldn't go away though. She was a sweet young woman who didn't deserve to be treated like that. "I'm sorry if I offended you, kissing you like that."

Solyn blushed.
There
was the Traver she knew, awkward and uncomfortable with man-woman things around her. On these narrow, sloping paths, pony-drawn wagons didn't work so well, which was why the main road through the valley had fields and yards for traders to park their carts. A glance around showed how they
seemed
to be out of earshot, but her ring hadn't reacted. Apparently someone could still hear them, though she couldn't see who.

"
You
didn't offend," she pointed out, climbing the shallow stone steps to the next winding stretch. "Tarquin did that. Actually, I'm more wondering who you've kissed before, to kiss so well!"

He blushed. "I just... thought of a way to kiss you that matched you. Sweet and gentle, and, um..."

That made her laugh. "Since when have you ever thought of me as gentle? I can still arm wrestle with you, you know."

He smirked, clearly not believing her. Not that she believed it, either, not if she used just her muscles, but Solyn didn't mind augmenting her efforts with a little magic. To her surprise, he impulsively caught her fingers in his, lacing them together. It made walking on the narrow paths a little awkward, but the contact felt surprisingly nice. It also made her awkwardly aware of how much the effects of his kiss still lingered. Every nerve was now more aware of his presence, reminding her of the unexpected pleasure they had shared.

Zellan startled him. The older shifter rose into existence inside the goat barn, where Kenyen, still shaped to look like Traver, son of Ysal and Tenaria, was patiently grooming the family holding's milk goats. He jumped a little and the nanny goat bawled, startled by the scrape of the currying brush. Soothing her with a few pats, Kenyen eyed the other man warily. "Yes?"

"You're not doing a bad job," Zellan praised him quietly. "But you can do better. Tonight, when Brother Moon is two fists above the horizon—shortly before midnight—you will come out here and wait for me. You
can
fly at night, yes?"

"I can," Kenyen admitted, keeping himself calm by stroking the brush over the goat's surprisingly silky hide. "Why should I?"

"It's a gathering night. The others want to meet you and critique your progress."

"I was hoping to go see my 'brother' tonight," Kenyen countered, unsure if he was ready to meet a whole bunch of criminal shifters. "I have more questions to ask."

Thankfully, Zellan didn't object. "Then meet me here when Brother Moon rises. Make sure no one knows you're gone."

A ripple of flesh, and the shifter shrunk down, resuming the shape of one of the small hedge birds that flitted about the terraced hills, pecking at insects and seeds alike. Kenyen didn't know the local name for the kind, but he did study what he could of the shifted Zellan before he flew off.
I won't be able to assume I'm alone at
any
point, unless I can find a deep cave to hide in. With my luck, it'll be a cave stacked with yet more dead bodies.

An unpleasant thought. It didn't give him nearly as much apprehension as the thought of this gathering thing Zellan mentioned.
Is it one of the bonfire nights that Traver recalled seeing? Or is it going to be my funeral, as they gather around me to tear me to pieces, having uncovered my true reason for being here?

... No, they don't know. They might suspect, but they can't know for sure. Whatever they want, they're desperate enough to use a stranger to get it.
Nudging that goat aside, he coaxed another one near with a bit of straw, then began grooming it as well.
I'd better think of several different ways I could react to anything they might throw at me. And think of a list of questions for Traver. I'll also want to figure out just how difficult it might be to break him free. Because if I can do that without getting caught or tracked, one of us could run to Teshal to tell the others what's really happening up here.

The alternative was him taking all night to fly out and try to find the town himself, but that risked not making it back in time to avoid his absence being discovered.
Not to mention being exhausted the next day. What a tangled mess this is...
A stray thought as he finished grooming the goat made Kenyen chuckle.
If only I could find a big enough currying comb to brush it all out.

Five

Traver looked all right. A little dirtier, but he'd been given enough slack in the chains to use a chamberpot. A pair of waterskins and the remnants of food in the bowl he hugged to his chest proved he was at least being fed. With Cullerog and Zellan right there, Kenyen couldn't do much. He did crouch to examine the younger man's face in the light of the oil lamp illuminating the space and sighed roughly.

"He's starting to get pale," Kenyen pointed out. He did his best to sound gruff, almost disgusted, rather than concerned for Traver's condition. "He might even get sickly looking if he stays cooped up down here. I can't imitate someone who looks like they're wasting away, particularly when he's supposed to be a dirt grubber. Make sure you march him around outside in the sunlight for at least an hour a day."

"Are you giving
me
orders, boy?" Cullerog growled.

Zellan snorted. "You
should
be good enough to keep his face going, no matter what the real one looks like."

"I am. But a
good
shifter knows that a living shape isn't a static image. Living creatures grow and change, and that includes my fellow human, here." Rising, Kenyen faced the other two, his gaze shifting back and forth. "I'll also bet it took
you
a few days of studying your replacement targets before you could keep it up. I had only one night—emphasis on
night
. I didn't get as much of a chance to study him in daylight as I'd have liked, since I had to guide both mounts. Forgive me for trying to get it
right
."

Cullerog grunted. "I'll give it some thought. Ask your questions, boy, then be on your way."

Nodding, Kenyen turned back to Traver and crouched. He hadn't been able to bring a list, since he wore nothing more than a coat of fur from waist to knees, but he did have a few things memorized. With his back to the others, he risked a slight wink, then spoke. "I discovered today that you've never kissed your girl. What a shame. I had to do it in your place."

Traver glanced quickly at the others, then scowled at Kenyen. "You leave her alone!"

"I can't. She's expecting such things from her betrothed.
Wanting
them, even," Kenyen taunted. At least, his tone of voice was taunting. He rolled his eyes briefly and continued. "But she did say something that made me curious. She wanted to know who else 'I' have kissed, to be so
good
at it. So, who
have
you been kissing?"

Traver blushed. "A gentleman doesn't—"

"—It's going to come up," Kenyen countered. "She'll start asking around, and if you don't cooperate, and she finds out I'm not the real you... then
you
become expendable."

His flat warning made Traver swallow. "Uh... right. Killia Lis Pel. We kissed a little bit behind her holding's cattle barn a couple months ago—but she's now twining with Lunnor Bel Nath, from farther down the valley, about three holdings down."

"What does she look like?" Kenyen interrogated him.

Behind him, Cullerog grunted again and started climbing the ladder. Zellan sighed and settled against the shelves holding bags of grain and baskets of vegetables on the far wall. Kenyen wished Zellan would go away as well, but he didn't expect that much trust this early in the game. Paying attention, Kenyen focused on memorizing each of the answers Traver gave, as well as on the expressions Traver used and the way he sounded when he spoke.

The food was good. Most of it was wild game, caught and cleaned earlier, seasoned with local herbs and skewered onto planks that faced the fire. The way they treated the woman scuttling from plank to plank, tending it, wasn't good. They kicked her as she passed, made crude comments about her figure, and at least two of the fifteen or so members of Family Mongrel abused her in ways that made it hard for Kenyen to hide his blush.

Zellan had told him on their arrival that this was by no means all the shapeshifters in the Correda Mountains. Not everyone made it to every meeting, though many gathered in one of two locations. One was somewhere to the east, closer to the Morning River Valley and the land of the Mornai who lived along its banks. The other took place in this cave-sheltered clearing, hidden in a steep ravine a modest distance from the Nespah Valley. The high, shallow arch of the cave concentrated the light and reflected the heat of the chest-high flames in the bonfire pit, providing a warm, well-lit venue for this gathering.

Most of the shifters had left their clothes at home. The few men attending the gathering who did bother with modesty shifts used scales instead of feathers or fur; Kenyen was one of them. Traver's covert handing of the ring to him suggested it was something he didn't want anyone to know about. Until Kenyen could get Solyn alone—truly alone, with no chance of eavesdropping by Zellan or another shifter—he couldn't say for sure. Prudence told him to hide its existence beneath reptile-style modesty.

One discrepancy was noticeable. Whenever the shifters around him relaxed into what Kenyen presumed was their natural, normal shapes, all of the older ones displayed Banished brands on their foreheads. But only a couple of the dozen or so younger ones—around Kenyen's age but not younger—bore the burn scars. That meant the younger ones were sons born to the Mongrels after their Banishment from the Plains. Kenyen's sister-in-law hadn't been the only child in the Mongrel's camp, just as her mother Ellet hadn't been the only woman being held captive back then. He tried not to think of the implications of that.

Someone had brought a keg of plum wine, and someone else produced a couple skins of fermented mare's milk. Kenyen sipped a little bit from the skins simply to blend in as they were passed around, but it wasn't as good as the kind made back home on the Plains. Aware of the scrutiny of the others, he mirrored the actions of the others for the most part, eating the meat, drinking the beverages, laughing at the crude jokes.

The only thing he didn't do was touch the woman, who was simply called "bitch," a nickname accompanied by barking noises and crude laughter. He tried not to think about that, either, so that his disgust wouldn't be seen. As much as he wanted to stop all of this, the important thing was blending in, gathering information, and not getting caught.

The white-haired shifter from earlier, whom the others called Ankah, finally stood and raised his hands. The others quieted down, giving him a modicum of respect. Dipping his head slightly in acknowledgment, he spoke.