Shapeshifters (3 page)

I
WAS A CHILD, UNVERSED YET IN POLITICS.
The first thing that interested me in the court was a representative from the shm'Ahnmik, a group not allied with my mother, the Tuuli Thea. He was a falcon boy only a few years older than me, twelve to my eight. I was too young to know that my playmate made my mother very nervous, or that he was in the Keep for any reason different from the other children's. Too young to know that he represented an empire older and stronger than our own, without whose support we would never be able to keep our heads above water when fighting the serpiente.

I was just a child, with no responsibilities, no understanding of politics, war or pain. So I
remember the falcon very fondly, as my last memory of childhood.

One of my tutors stepped out to speak with my mother in the hallway. “Milady Shardae, have you seen Andreios?” I looked up, hearing the name of my friend despite the tutor's attempt at discretion. “I'm worried that he's gone out to the field … to look for his father.”

I was too young to understand death, but I understood that my friend was upset and so I had to find him.

I stood to sneak out before my mother returned. I had known Rei all eight years of my life, since he was three years old and I was newly born. He would listen to me more than anyone else. The falcon tried to stop me from leaving, but he had no authority over me and I refused to listen to reason.

My first breath of death hit me as I flew over the field. Yes, I knew of the war, but I had never seen the carnage up close, smelled the blood before … and in the middle of it all, my friend Rei, hunched protectively over his father's body, crying.

I landed at his side.

I hardly had a chance to speak before the serpent appeared. Rei pushed me behind him; they scuffled, and I saw the fangs slice into my friend's skin. Someone else attacked me from behind, but
when I fought back, I was struggling with something as harmless as a wool blanket.

I realized suddenly that I was dreaming a scene I relived in my mind almost every night. I had been knocked out; Rei had saved my life. His brush with death had changed him, forcing him to grow up faster. After that day he had made a point of training. He had joined the avian army when he was thirteen and the Royal Flight when he was fifteen, and he had been the captain of that group for three years now.

Despite knowing I was asleep, I could not wake. Lucid dreams had been a curse of mine for years.

I walked the battlegrounds in my mind, through the woods and fields that I had been drawn to ever since Rei's father died. Pain, bloodshed, war. They had stained me that day.

I walked from the dream of Andreios to one of my alistair, the man who had been promised as my protector when we were both barely more than infants. Vasili had frightened me a little when I was a girl; he had seemed so cold and strong. The blood I saw in my dreams, he saw every day as a soldier. Yet I learned to understand him, and then I learned to love him—just in time to lose him, like I had lost so many others.

I pushed the phantom away and found myself face to face with the garnet eyes of Zane
Cobriana, the creature whose kind was responsible for every loss we suffered, every tear I held inside. My breath halted in my lungs; my blood turned to ice. I felt my throat constrict as I tried to scream—

“Danica, are you all right?”

I opened my eyes to find Rei searching the room for whatever had frightened me. His thick black hair had been hastily pulled back from his face as if he had been roused from sleep. He was not supposed to be on duty until this afternoon, but I was grateful he had been the one to hear me shout.

“Yes,” I said, but the trembling in my voice belied my answer.

“Dream?” he asked. Rei was the only one to whom I confided my nightmares.

I nodded, sitting up. Morning was here, and if Rei was, too, then there was something important to be done.

Rei cleared his throat. “Your mother wants you to meet her downstairs, as soon as you are ready.”

He left me to change, which I did quickly. My mother did not summon me for meaningless trifles.

I stepped outside my room to find the Hawk's Keep swarming with avian soldiers. In addition to Andreios, there were five other
guards next to my door alone. Out on the field, I understood this kind of caution. Inside the Keep, it was unheard of.

“My mother isn't hurt?” I asked with alarm, my mind latching on to the worst possible reason for this concern.

“She's safe,” Rei answered, though he didn't sound as if he was completely certain. “The rest of the flight is with her.”

Of course. “Then why the sudden jump in security?” And, before he could answer, “And who in the world is guarding the outside?”

“There are about two dozen soldiers ringing the courtyard, and another few dozen in the surrounding land,” one of the other guards assured me.

“They're good fighters. As for your other question,” Rei answered, “we seem to have a visitor, which is why your mother requested your presence in the first place.”

I had become used to having one or two guards at my sides, occasionally more if I was farther from the Keep on one of the fields. Having this many was unnerving, even though the Royal Flight were trained to work smoothly. They kept out of my way and out of each other's, but the press of their bodies in the hall was oppressive in itself. What kind of visitor required so many members of the royal guard to be in the loftiest
halls of the Hawk's Keep? No one so much as got inside unnoticed. To get all the way to my chamber would be impossible.

My alarm jumped again when I realized that the guards who had preceded me had changed shape to descend to the ground floor. As a deterrent to flightless enemies, there were no stairs from the ground to the first floor. Aside from criminals and traitors, even the lowliest sparrow commoner was met in the second-floor reception hall.

“Who
is
this visitor?” I inquired softly. “Zane Cobriana himself?”

Rei did not joke back with me. He waited for me to shift into my second form, hastening what was usually a leisurely, pleasant process so that the hawk who emerged was more than a little ruffled.

My mother was standing with her back to us as we entered the enclosed courtyard. The visitor was seated cross-legged on the ground nearby, with her eyes closed as if she was taking a nap. Four of our guards surrounded her, showing just how afraid we were to have her near our queen.

Even from across the courtyard I could recognize the black hair and fair skin. As I went closer I saw her silky black dress with the white emblem sewn onto the low neckline between her breasts. On her left hand she wore an onyx signet ring.

Either she heard our quiet approach, or she sensed us some other way, for the visitor opened her eyes just then. Suddenly my cool, golden gaze was met directly by her hot flame, the color reminiscent of pure polished rubies. I looked away quickly, a shudder twisting its way up my spine.

“She's here in peace,” my mother assured me immediately, but I could hear the “or so she said” in her voice even though she didn't speak it aloud. “Irene, may I introduce my heir and daughter, Danica Shardae? Shardae, this is Irene Cobriana, younger sister to Zane.”

My skin chilled just hearing the name, but I answered the introduction politely.
What is this creature doing here?
I was willing to comfort Gregory Cobriana on the field, but he had been dying. Seeing Irene, alive and well and dangerous, I felt less charitable.

No doubt the guards had searched her and taken away what weapons they could—probably none, if this ruse was meant to gain our trust. But everyone knew you couldn't disarm a Cobriana unless you took its life. Their scarlet eyes alone were a weapon, not to mention their poison, which could kill in less than a minute if they struck in full serpent form, and which would kill more slowly but more painfully if they did so in a less pure form.

Irene Cobriana spoke first, for which I was grateful. If I had opened my mouth, I probably
could have caused a war with what I had said, if it had not been too late already.

“We want peace,” Irene said softly, not rising. In case she tried to stand, the guards were prepared to kill her instantly. “We're tired of the fighting, and the killing.”

Someone grumbled; I thought it might be Rei. My mother directed a frosty glare at someone behind me.

Irene also looked up at whoever had made the sound, and her voice rose with anger as she argued, “I have lost my father to this war. Two uncles. Three brothers. A few years ago, I lost a sister and a niece at the same time when some avian soldier put a knife into her belly and killed both her and the child she was carrying. My mother is a good woman, but she is only Naga, and the people will not follow someone who is only Cobriana by name. They need their Diente. And Zane is the last true heir to that title.” Her voice quieted again.

“Excuse me if we don't completely trust you, Irene,” my mother said simply. “But your kind has not been known to uphold its word in the past.”

Irene lowered her head, and I could tell she was trying to speak around her anger. “Gregory Cobriana died two nights ago,” she answered quietly. She looked at me as she said the words. “He was only
seventeen,
and now he is simply
dead. I came here, without weapons, with the hope that someone might listen. Zane wanted to come himself, but my mother argued that you would sooner put a knife in his back than listen to anything he had to say. And do you know what he replied? He said, ‘Let them. If they do, someone might finally be satisfied that they've won this war, and then maybe it will end.'”

I barely managed to hold my tongue in response to that claim. Zane Cobriana was what the serpiente called an Arami, the prince first in line to the throne. Now that his father was dead, he was all but king. It was hard for me to imagine the leader of the serpiente saying anything remotely tolerable, much less blatantly self-sacrificing.

Anyone who had spent enough time in the court had heard about the exploits of Zane Cobriana. In battle, it was said, he fought with single-minded fury, and a speed and grace no avian could match. He could catch the eye of his opponent, and that warrior would drag his knife across his own throat in a killing blow. He fought beside his people in battle and had never been wounded. Whispered rumor attributed his power to black magic and demons.

“And what exactly is … Zane … proposing?” my mother asked, hesitating for a fraction of a second before she spoke the name, as if worried the word alone would soil the Hawk's Keep.

“A truce,” Irene answered instantly. “Zane, my mother and I would like to meet with you, your heir, and whatever others you think necessary.”

“And just where is this meeting to take place?” my mother asked skeptically.

“Before the Mistari Disa,” Irene answered softly. She took a breath and then explained, “The serpiente have been fighting so long, their only reason for continuing now is to avenge the loss of so many of their kin to avian fighters. They don't trust the avians, and I think it would take quite a show of good faith from your people to convince ours that the Tuuli Thea is as honest in her desire to stop the fighting as their Naga and Arami are.”

I bit my tongue to keep from demanding just what kind of “show of good faith” Irene was suggesting. When she spoke, the Tuuli Thea said much the same. “I take it Zane sent you as a show of faith from your side,” my mother said. “What is he asking in return?”

Irene shook her head. “Only that you agree to meet with us on peaceful lands before the Mistari Disa. We would like to appeal to her for support of the peace talks, and whatever is involved in those.”

My mother looked at me. “Shardae?”

I started to object instantly … but then I remembered Gregory Cobriana's blood on my
hands. I remembered the battlefields, the reek and the wail of war. I remembered my own alistair, Vasili, who had once been promised as my husband. And my own brother, who had been no older than the enemy he had taken with him into death.

So my words when I answered my mother were soft, but not without emotion. “I do not trust them, Mother, but if there is any chance that they might be honest, that Zane Cobriana might want peace …” I took a breath, because the very thought that Zane would ever waste a breath for peace was unnerving. “Then I believe we should take it.” More quietly, I added, “You know that I would do anything within my power to stop this war.”

My mother nodded. “Andreios, your thoughts?”

The leader of the royal guard paused, looking at Irene. “I don't like it, but Mistari lands are neutral territory. Even a cobra would be mad to try to ambush us there; the Mistari would tear the serpents apart.”

“Very well, then.” The Tuuli Thea gestured for Irene to stand and held up a hand to silence the guards' protests. “Irene, please relay the message to your … prince that we would be willing to meet him.”

“Thank you, Nacola,” Irene said warmly, informally enough that I saw a guard wince. She
looked directly at me as she added, “Zane asked me to convey our willingness to meet any day, any time, as soon as is possible. Please speak a date, and I will tell my brother.”

Again, my mother conferred briefly with Andreios, and then she answered, “In a fortnight, on the first showing of the moon. It will take that long for us to organize our people.”

If the serpiente left the instant Irene returned to the palace and were willing to ride their horses to exhaustion, their party would probably make the deadline. The serpiente would not have time to plan a sneak attack before the meeting.

Irene curtsied, her face showing no annoyance at the rush my mother was pressing her people with. “Thank you, Nacola, Danica. My best wishes go with you both until then.”