Sons of Destiny Prequel Series 003 - The Shifter (40 page)

All four Mongrels blinked. Zellan frowned at Kenyen, his hand loosening a bit more over Luelyn's mouth. Wisely, the young girl didn't bite him or try to escape. "The
cheese
?" he asked. "What do you mean, the power is in the cheese?
What
cheese?"

"Greenvein, of course." Behind his primary audience's back, he could see Reina narrowing her eyes in thought. So did Tunric.

"I've
had
greenvein, boy," he growled. Reaching up, he tugged on the braid at the top of his scalp, reshaping the locks free so that he could pull down the flap of skin guarding his double-stroked Banished mark. "Do you see
unmarked
skin, here?"

"Did you ever eat greenvein while that particular scar was wounded?" Kenyen countered calmly.

Tunric scoffed at that. "You expect me to
believe
this? That eating
cheese
will remove a bluesteel scar from my head?"

With a brief shake of his head, Kenyen shrunk his hair down to stubble, unweaving the braid that had been holding his bangs out of the way ever since encountering the Mongrel holding on to little Luelyn Ys Rei. He tipped his head and smirked. "Do you see a bluesteel scar on mine?"

Mouth sagging, the man pretending to be Tunric Tel Vem stared at Kenyen's head. In the near-silence following the younger shifter's claim, broken only by Solyn's faint humming, they all heard a knock at the front door of the house. Whoever it was knocked again. Heart skipping a beat, Kenyen managed another tight smile.

"
I'll
get that. This is now my house, too, after all. All of you, stay
quiet
, so I can get whoever it is to go away. Come along,
dearest
," he growled, flexing the muscles around Solyn's throat. She gurgled as if he had actually tightened his grip. "Say one wrong word, make one wrong look, and I'll eat your little sister alive, feet first. She looks
tasty
, doesn't she?"

Solyn hastily put a bit more magic behind her humming as Luelyn started to cry for real. Since she was still blanketing the others, Tunric merely nodded, letting them move. Shuffling at his side, she righted herself as her husband's arm shifted to her shoulders, holding her close. A second shake of his head regrew and re-braided his hair into curly, Traver-style locks.

He nudged the door to the parlor almost completely shut as they entered the front hall. But when she drew in a breath to speak, Kenyen quickly lifted a finger to her lips, silencing her, then tapped it against his ear. That ear briefly grew long and large like a horse's before returning to normal again, silent warning that the Mongrels behind them were no doubt doing the same so as to eavesdrop on them. Releasing Solyn, he opened the front door just as whoever it was knocked again.

Manolo Zel Jav, middle-aged Shifterai of the South Paw Warband, Family Tiger, politely lowered his hand, smiled, and asked, "I've been told you sell the best cheese in the land?"

Kenyen quickly flung his finger to his own lips, silencing his friend before Manolo could say
which
kind of cheese. Manolo narrowed his dark brown eyes, giving both of them a wary look. Considering Kenyen still looked like the absent Traver, he couldn't blame his friend for being cautious.

"Yes, we do. Or at least, we like to think so," he stated calmly. A glance showed three others in view: Ashallan Nur Am, the lead princess of their expedition; Anaika Ell Tu, the other princess from Family Lion; and Bellar Sil Quen. The shifter whose brother had been exiled from the Plains, and who had warned him to keep the members of Kenyen's expedition away from the back of the cave, where the remains of the original, true Tunric Tel Vem had been hidden.

There were also two members of the local holding in sight, mainly his nosy aunt-in-law and one of the younger cousins, each poking their head out their front door in curiosity at the visitors. Ignoring them, Kenyen quickly unbuttoned his tunic, pulling aside the front panel. It wasn't easy, speaking and drawing on his flesh in dark-hued scales, but he did his best.

"We have several types of cheeses for sale, at this holding. Soft ones, fresh ones, hard ones, crumbly ones... do you have a particular type in mind?" he asked, while on his chest he painstakingly wrote,
Four Mongrels, three hostages,
and the words,
Side doors, upper windows. Go.

Manolo blinked. So did Ashallan. She narrowed her eyes and dismounted from her horse. A ripple of flesh left her clothes in a puddle on the ground. Launching upward in hawk form, she flew off to the side of the house. Off to one side, Hylin gasped; to the other, the cousin gaped.

Bellan swung out of his saddle, catching the reins for Ashallan's horse, then hastily grabbed at Anaika's. The other princess had dismounted as well, but she didn't take the form of a hawk. Instead, she shifted into the shape of a lioness and headed for the other side of the building. Plains-bred as they were, none of the horses snorted as she slunk off, ears pricked forward and tail lashing in hunt-mode.

Recovering from the shock, Manolo smiled ingratiatingly and said, "Oh, we've heard of several delightful cheeses. There's one called 'golden delight'... and 'mautzoa'... and 'greenvein.' Do you have any of these?"

"Ah, we don't have mautzoa on hand," Solyn offered. "We could make some by the end of the day, though. It's a fresh cheese. Perhaps if you came back later?"

"Yes, we haven't even broken our fast yet," Kenyen said. "We could also fetch you some greenvein by then."

"I suppose we could wait—could we wait with you, perhaps?" Manolo asked.

"I'm afraid not. The youngest of the family has developed a fever," Kenyen lied smoothly, rebuttoning his tunic. "We don't want it to spread to the rest of the holding."

"Oh, well, we wouldn't want that, no," the older shifter agreed mildly. He questioned Kenyen with his gaze, glancing to either side. Kenyen shook his head subtly.

"Feel free to make use of the benches," he offered politely. "Or even draw water from the well. When we have eaten, we will come back out and discuss quantities and prices and start making the mautzoa for you."

"Cora bless you," Manolo said, though he lifted his gaze toward the rising sun, rather than to the peaks of the mountains around them.

"Goddess bless you," he returned politely. His fellow Shifterai bowed and moved off to the side. Kenyen nudged Solyn inside ahead of him and shut the front door. Pasting on a smile, he grabbed Solyn again and nudged open the inner door, dragging her back into the sitting room. "Good news! We have customers waiting to buy some greenvein cheese. I can easily head down to the storage cave and bring up several
extra
rounds."

Zellan stood, setting the little girl on her feet. "Wrong.
You
will stay here. I know the cave in question, so
I'll
fetch the cheeses. Here, Tunric, you hold the little bitch-pup."

Something slithered out of the kitchen. It paused on the threshold next to the hearth, lifted its head toward the stairwell, then darted forward. Kenyen, recognizing the grass viper and his silent signal, grabbed Solyn and ducked down. The serpent struck the foot of the shifter holding Reina on the settee just as a tawny shape leaped down from the stairs, striking Tunric in the chest.

Pushing his wife away, he rolled into Zellan's legs, knocking down the shapeshifter. As much as he feared for Solyn's safety, he had to trust she could protect herself with her magics. Her little sister had no such protection. Pain lashed up his side as the older shifter reacted, lashing out with claws. The piercing shriek of a hawk and the pain-filled cries of the Mongrel holding his father-in-law mixed with the frightened screams of his young sister-in-law.

A hard kick toppled the older shifter, and a wrenching twist allowed him to grab and fling Luelyn through the door into the front hall. The throw was awkward, considering he was rolling across the floor. One shoulder seam of his tunic ripped from growing his arms to the right length and muscle mass for the job, but it did get Luelyn out of the way. Righting himself with another twist, he shifted everything back to proportion. That stemmed the worst of the bleeding from the gashes in his side.

The feel of Solyn casting a spell, or maybe it was one of her mother's, triggered a hearty sneeze in him. Doubling over with the explosion, Kenyen felt Zellan's second vicious, clawed swipe catch in his braid, instead of his throat. Sidestepping, he ducked his head low, pulling the older shifter down by his own hair, and heaved up under the man's abdomen with double-strength legs. More stitches popped and gave way, since the trousers were more fitted than the gathered style favored on the Plains, but there wasn't time for him to shift out of the garments. Fingers warped into talons, skin hardened into thick, protective scales, he gouged and stabbed at his opponent.

Across the room, Ysander had grabbed the fire tongs and was smacking his own former captor while the hawk had shifted, revealing Ashallan clad in feathers and striking with claws. Reina was flushed and wide-eyed, grappling with an overgrown serpent, her hands glowing with power.

Ashallan, the lioness, had changed forms yet again, this time into an amalgamation of woman and bearlike beast, dodging Tunric's own brutish claw swipes. Zaps of light burst from Solyn's jabbing finger, like miniature, concentrated sun rays without the clouds. The serpent holding her mother flinched and hissed with each smoldering strike.

Zellan slithered around Kenyen, readjusting mass and shape to try to gain leverage of his own. Out of the corner of his eye, Kenyen saw the Mongrel open his jaws beast-wide, huge fangs sprouting. He protected his shoulder with shell-like scales and tensed, building up enough muscles to throw the man at the nearest wall.

"What in Cora's sweet...?" a new, male voice exclaimed from the front entry.
"Omina dormud!"

Deep blue light washed through the house. Several bodies slumped insensate to the floor, without even the time to sneeze. Flesh reshaped, knocked out cold by the spell; some of that flesh still bled. Some of it stood on two legs and blinked. Both Solyn and her mother stared at the fallen bodies and hesitantly relaxed, their personal shields dissipating the energies of the mass-sleep spell swirling around them. Whirling to face the entrance, Solyn eyed the man staring at the mess in her family's sitting parlor.

"Oh, thank the Goddess..." she breathed, panting from the adrenaline of the fight. The man was clad in an ornately embroidered tunic. She recognized a few of the rune-symbols among those stitchings from her mage books, though she didn't know what they meant. "Please, tell me you're the Magister that Traver Ys Ten flew off to find?"

"I am," the mage stated. Behind him, several armored men bearing the blue and brown tabards of the King's Guard cautiously picked their way into the house. "With the ability to shield against my spell, that would make you... Solyn Ys Rei, budding young mage, correct? And the woman behind you would be the Healer Reina?" At Solyn's nod, he introduced himself with a little bow. "I am Magister Caros Nii Veth, and I am here to take all of these shapeshifters prisoner for interrogation."

"Oh, no! Not all of them," Solyn hastily interrupted, fluttering her hands in negation. She explained quickly as he lifted one brow. "Only
four
of them, if you please. The ones with the Banished scars on their heads. They're all the criminal shifters, the face-stealers, the ones who call themselves members of Family Mongrel. The rest are real Shifterai, from the Plains. They all came to Correda to track down the Mongrel shifters when they realized their outcast criminals were banding together to cause trouble for us. Oh, and the extra man by the hearth is my father. He's not any sort of a shifter."

"You mean
five
of them are Mongrels," Reina corrected her daughter. She eyed the bodies on the floor, three of which were naked, and flopped her hands. "I can only say for sure that the two women
aren't
our attackers, but rather our attempted saviors. I wouldn't think Tunric or his bastards would stoop to treating women that way if they actually were members of their group."

"No, Mother, I do mean
four
of them," Solyn corrected. Kenyen's form was the one she was sure of. Picking her way over the two bodies between them, she crouched by his half-clothed form. His side was a little bloodied, but a quick check showed the wounds were no longer seeping. "
This
one is Kenyen Sin Siin, Clan Cat, Family Tiger. He was asked by Traver in a rather hastily made arrangement to
pretend
to be Banished from the Plains... and to pretend to
be
Traver.

"The Mongrels guessed that Traver—the real one—knew something about them, and hunted him down when he tried to flee to get help." She looked up at the Magister, who was studying her with a shuttered but attentive expression, absorbing her words. "Kenyen found Traver on the way here, because
his
people had found a body they believed to be the
real
Tunric Tel Vem long dead in a cave somewhere to the north, with a message giving the identity and location of its former owner."

"They didn't have more than a few minutes together before
that
one... um... I think it was that one," Solyn said, pointing at one of the men nearest the door, "the one pretending to be the mine laborer, Zellan Fin Don, attacked Traver. It was all Kenyen could do to pretend to be a fellow criminal, and convince the Mongrels to let him pretend in turn to be Traver, to infiltrate
my
family for our greatest secret."