Shapeshifters (60 page)

“I'll watch out for Betia while you're busy,” Velyo said.

I couldn't bring Betia to the meeting; I needed to be the heir to the Tuuli Thea, not just a woman with a friend.
However, I wasn't about to leave Betia with the alpha who had abused her.

“Thank you, but that
won't
be necessary.”

“Wyvern,” Velyo said, his voice dropping somewhat, “you are aware that you have no authority over my wolves?”

I stepped closer to Velyo, so that my words would be heard only by him. “She. Isn't. Yours. Anymore. Do you hear me?”

“And she's
yours
?” he hissed. “I am trying to look out for you, Wyvern. Even Betia knows she's going to bring you nothing but trouble.”

“She
saved my life,
” I said. “And she—” She had never done anything to hurt me, and I believed with all my heart that she never would.

I couldn't begin to put into words all that Betia had done for me. How could I explain how it felt to have a friend who didn't care that I was Princess Oliza Shardae Cobriana? How could I describe the way she had given me courage and helped me find the faith and hope I had lost after Urban had been attacked? There was no way to explain how much it meant to me that she had walked into my world and never cringed from it, that she had drawn me up to dance, challenged me,
accepted
me.

“Your face is as easy to read as hers.” Velyo sighed. His voice was almost pitying when he said, “You aren't one of my subjects. I don't care what your
preferences
are. But I know what it is to be a leader. You are the monarch of this land; you are your parents' only child. You need a king, Wyvern.”

“What does that—”

He put a finger against my lips. “You are not just a woman, and your heart is
not
free to be given away. You need
a king, or your parents' bloodline will die. Stop fooling yourself, and
send her away.
”

“Oliza?” Nicias touched my arm. “We need to go.”

I nodded woodenly.

Stop fooling yourself.

To Betia, Nicias suggested, “If you don't want to be alone in the market, you can wait with Hai and me in the library.”

She nodded, her eyes on me. Her resigned expression stayed in my mind as I hurried to my meeting.

I had to put the look in Betia's eyes, and my reaction to Velyo's words, from my mind. I couldn't afford to think about it right then.

My body tight and my face stony, I stepped into the conference room where Urban's attackers were supposed to be. I was going to need every bit of reserve I had to deal with these three calmly.

I had thought that I was prepared, but what I found in the conference room was almost as horrific as the attack itself. One of the “men” waiting for me couldn't have been more than sixteen years old. The oldest—who, I assumed from the similarity of their features, was the boy's brother—was probably near my age, and the third boy a year younger.

I had expected older men, perhaps soldiers—people with memories of war and loved ones lost. These three couldn't ever have seen a battle. Two of them were too young even to have lost a parent or sibling in the war.

These
were our vicious assailants?

A few days before, when Nicias had told me what my
mother had sentenced these boys to, I had felt it was too mild. Now, having seen them …

I thought about the child who had reached toward Urban at Festival, and how her mother had pulled her away. Who was really to blame here?

I looked at the youngest boy. He was pale, and though his expression was controlled, his fingers were trembling. “What is your name?”

“Shane, milady,” he said, in a voice so small I could barely hear it. “Shane Tenahe.”

“Brin Tenahe,” the eldest said when I looked at him. Unlike his brother, he stood and spoke confidently, as if utterly certain he had done no wrong.

“Luke Redine.” The third boy was soft-spoken but shared his friend's poise.

“I heard a rumor, on my way here, that you each confessed out of the nobleness of your innocent hearts. Looking at you, I almost wish it was true—but I don't think it is.”

“I did come forward because I heard that Lady Sive's alistair had been questioned,” Brin said.
I.
Had he confessed for himself, or for all three of them? “I would never allow my actions to harm the royal house.”

“
We
would never,” Luke said.

“Would never …” I trailed off, thinking of everything that had occurred since Urban had been attacked—all the violence, and guards in the marketplace. “I imagine none of you were alive during the war.”

“We've all heard about it,” Luke said.

“Have you?” I challenged. “The stories of forest floors so soaked with blood that the trees began to die? The stories of black smoke from the pyres, and the stench of burning bodies so constant that the living stopped even noticing it? The
stories of
children
killed, of …” So many horrors. “We
have
all heard the stories, but
I
have never been tempted to relive them. You were the first ones in twenty years to pick up a weapon and nearly kill someone who wasn't even your enemy anymore.”

I had almost dismissed the younger brother as a child, almost as much a victim as Urban, but he was the one who stepped forward to defend their actions.

“The war never ended,” Shane said. His voice wavered a little, but not just from nerves. “Some people say it did, but it didn't. The only thing different now is that people turn a blind eye. We used to live in Wyvern's Court, but we had to move back to the Hawk's Keep because our sister grew old enough to draw serpiente attention and it did not feel safe for us to stay.”

“Shane—”

He shook his head when both of the older boys tried to interrupt him. “My pair bond still lives here,” he continued. I forced myself to reevaluate my first impression. He was young, but avian boys were raised with an intense emphasis on responsibility and the protection of their families and pair bonds. “I understand that the serpiente have different customs, but why does that give them the right to abuse her? Why does the fact that it is ‘their way' mean I cannot take my lady for a moonlight walk without our being propositioned by strangers? Do you know what that is like? I am her alistair, and I am told that I must tolerate her constant
fear.

“She is fourteen, and she cannot walk through the marketplace alone after dusk unmolested. I fear what would happen to her if she dared step onto the southern hills. There is one small area of this court that is unpolluted by serpiente—the
northern hills—and I will be
grounded
before I allow a dancer to skulk about in the shadows there.

“Now, if I have spoken too frankly, if I have offended my lady Shardae—my lady
Cobriana Shardae, Arami
—then I will accept the consequences. I am tired of being silent, and
accepting.
”

Was this the world we had worked so hard to make? This fury had not been bred by war; it had been created in the cradle of Wyvern's Court.

I looked at the older boys.

“I have no pair bond,” Luke said, “but I too have family, and friends, and have heard similar complaints.”

“Are you telling me that there have been physical assaults by serpiente in Wyvern's Court, and the royal family has not responded?”

“There does not need to be physical violence for people to be harmed,” Brin said. “In accordance with our Tuuli Thea's wise sentence, we have been coming here for almost a month now, and we have not ignored everything we have been told. I am aware that most serpiente probably consider their actions casual flirting, that they may have no idea that their ‘friendly' jests can ruin reputations, relationships and lives. They don't understand that the pretty girl they just stole a kiss from, such as my brother's pair bond, has possibly never
been
kissed, has never had someone grab her that way and isn't blushing because she is coy but because she is terrified. They're like … real birds of prey, snatching mice. Maybe they aren't malicious, maybe they don't mean any harm, but that doesn't help the mice any.”

I resisted the impulse to rub my temples. At least I knew they had not confessed falsely.

I considered and threw out a dozen possible responses.

Finally I sighed. “I understand your grievances. I know that Wyvern's Court is still a work in progress. But violence is not the answer.”

“We committed a crime,” Brin said. “I know that. Violence might not be an answer, but at least it made people recognize that there was a problem.”

I took deep a breath and let it out slowly.

“I have another meeting to attend,” I said softly. “Gentlemen …” Could they be used to help find … Their meetings with Valene had to help, somehow … or … or nothing. I had no ideas. “I'll speak to you again another day.”

I drifted from the conference room to the library with my head aching and a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I paused in the doorway to watch Hai, Nicias and Betia for a moment. Nicias looked amused, and Betia was smiling brightly. Hai was wearing her customary detached expression.

Hai noticed me first; she looked up and said, “We were discussing looking into the future.”

“You were?”

“And the ethics of looking into someone else's past, or future.” She shrugged. “Nicias moralizes like a serpent. Betia listens well, though she doesn't talk much. Or at all.”

I wondered what Betia might have said on the subject, or whether there was more wisdom in remaining silent while the two falcons debated.

Betia stood and hugged me in greeting; I leaned against her, desperate for some kind of support. Suddenly a pang went through me.
Stop fooling yourself.

I've never seen you act that way around a man, Oliza,
Urban had said.

The truth was that I had never ever been tempted, just as I had never felt torn about performing the
rrasatoth
dances because there had never been anyone I wanted to perform
for.
Until that day in Obsidian.

I held on to Betia a moment too long, knowing I wouldn't always be able to.

I forced myself to focus on the reason we were there. I had to.

“Hai, I'm sorry for what I said yesterday,” I began. “I have never thought less of you just because you can't fly, and I—”

“It would be hard for you to think less of me, cousin, since you think very little of me in the first place,” she said offhandedly, as if she found the whole subject silly. “I'm not a falcon to you. I don't deserve that respect in your mind. And I'm not a cobra, either, not kin to you, not in your heart.”

She was right. I
didn't
know how to think of her. I found it hard to think of her as family. I acknowledged our shared blood mostly out of a sense of responsibility to her, not out of any genuine affection. The way she drifted into and out of a room, often responding to friendly greetings or questions with an expression that conveyed something close to contempt, had alienated me from the first time we had met.

“I didn't realize you felt that way.” Having recognized my mistakes, I wanted to fix them. “I don't know you well, Hai, but—”

“I spoke a
fact
to you, Wyvern,” she interrupted, once again snuffing out what might have been some kind of connection before it could be formed. “It was not a plea for compassion. Were I given the choice, I would be in the white city, not here, and I would call Cjarsa my queen, not you. But I do not have a choice. You have come to ask me if I really can fix your wings, or if my offer was just the rambling of a
slightly delusional mind. There is no need for this false courtesy before you ask me favors.”

“Given how you seem to feel about me, why are you offering to help?”

She lifted her cobra eyes skyward. “My loyalty toward the Empress who raised me implies no hatred for you. I do not care what images of me you hold in your head. I will give you back your wings, if I can, because
I
of all people know what it is like to have the sky, your future, your place in life all torn from you by the shifting tides of Anhamirak's whims. Now, Wyvern, let us see if I can find your golden feathers.”

I looked at Nicias, who shrugged, as if to say,
Your decision.
I stepped closer to Hai, and she moved into the starting position of many serpiente dances.

I raised my hands and crossed my forearms, mirroring Hai, the backs of our hands just touching. Nicias stood behind Hai, as if prepared either to catch her or to push her out of the way.

“You really think you can do this?” I asked Hai.

“That, or we could burn down the library.”

“Excuse me?”

She gave me an innocent look. “Don't worry. You don't harm Wyvern's Court; your magic isn't that strong.”

“Hai, you aren't making any sense.”

She leaned back against Nicias, closing her eyes. “You have asked me for my help, and yet still you doubt? Every moment of every day, I touch a thousand different
a'she,
a thousand possible futures. I know that your magic is not strong enough to really burn.”

“If you know these things, can you tell me who hired the mercenaries?”

She looked up at me, her eyes like pools of blood. “Now
she asks. But no, I cannot see that. The only way I think I can find your wings is by using your control, that overriding control that will forever keep your magic a whisper instead of the whirlwind it could be. Precious control, which I do not have on my own. Relax, Wyvern. This will hurt.”

I was vaguely aware of Betia's warmth behind me when Hai's power first reached me, but then that faint contact, as well as any awareness of the library we were in, burned away.

If this is what her power feels like, no wonder she is mad.

I would have screamed if I could have found my voice, but it was gone, seared away from me. And then I felt Hai, and the power that was at the heart of this agony.

You burn,
she whispered in my mind, and in those words I felt longing and envy and fear, all rolled together.

Frozen.
When I reached for Hai, her power was like ice. It wrapped around me, seeping deep into my body, contorting muscle and bone.

The magic I had inherited from my parents accepted the falcon's magic like an old companion, and they fit together until I could feel my hawk form again. It had been broken and buried in pain, but now I knew I would be able to grow my wings.

If this could work for one of us … could it work for the other? I was not the only one there whose wings had been lost, the only one longing for the sky.

Hai—

No.

I had already reached for her. She recoiled, but it was too late.

My magic had welcomed hers, but hers—

Fractured—

Another power reached forward, something gentler, frightened but soothing: Nicias—

Someone screamed, maybe me. The sound echoed in my head until it became white noise and then hollow silence, stillness.

Like a feather skimming the surface of a sudden draft, I floated into another world.