The Shifter (18 page)

TWENTY-ONE

E
veryone raced forward and grabbed a cot, dragging them away from the door like trapped pynvium miners digging themselves out of a cave-in. Wood thunked and scraped across the floor, clattering into a growing pile where the pain-filled apprentices had once whimpered. Danello found a sword lying just inside the door and beyond the reach of a pale, still hand. The sword wasn’t as thin as his rapier, but he looked like he knew how to use it well enough.

I looked away from the hand and searched for Tali. “Take the lead with Danello,” I said. “Show him the way out. I’ll follow behind.”

She nodded. “Okay, but stay close.”

The apprentices filed out behind them. Some knelt down and grabbed the fallen swords littering the hall outside the spire room. I stepped around the guard I’d shifted into, lying in the doorway between the spire room and the hall. Though some of the other guards groaned and twitched, he didn’t move. Part of me wanted to check and see if he was alive, but I was too scared to learn the answer.

A dozen more guards were in the hall, so the Luminary had probably sent most of the inside guards after us. I didn’t want to look at them either, but I had to know if Elder Vinnot was among the unconscious and the—

No, I wouldn’t say it. They were all just unconscious. I found Vinnot groaning at the top of the stairs. I smiled. Let him put
that
in his notebook. I resisted the urge to kick him as I passed, and started down after the others.

I followed the apprentices as they trailed after Danello and Tali. I scanned every hall, every intersection, every room we passed. No guards so far, but that couldn’t last long.

As we turned onto the second floor, nervous whispers raced back through the apprentices.

“Guards!”

“What are we gonna do?”

“Shhh, they’ll hear you.”

“Hold it,” one guard called, though I couldn’t see him or how many were with him over the herd of apprentices. “What are you doing here?”

“Leaving,” said Danello. I could picture the dangerously determined set to his chin, raised high like his sword probably was.

“Who are you?” Another voice, younger than the first guard.

“Dead apprentices,” said Tali. “Only we’re not dead, and we’re getting out of here.”

No answer from the guards. I stood on tiptoe but wasn’t tall enough to see over the heads.

“You can’t be apprentices….” Hesitant voices echoed his words. Several guards were up there at least. I looked around the intersection for anything I could stand on for a better view and found—

“Lanelle,” I gasped, face-to-face with her as she rounded the corner.

Eyes wide, Lanelle backed away, not limping at all. So she
had
been healed!

“Mestov, it’s me, Dima,” an apprentice called. “You have to let us go. Please.”

“Dima? Saints, they said you were dead!”

Now the guards were yelling questions, not just muttering them. It was clear they’d had no idea what had been going on upstairs.

“Stay away from me!” Lanelle said, not loud enough to rise above the guards, but loud enough to get Kione’s attention. He turned.

“You’re alive!” he gasped, looking just as shocked as I’d been.

Lanelle turned and ran down the hall, right toward—

Saints and sinners! This hall led to the Luminary’s wing! She was probably headed right for an Elder to save her job and betray us again.

I chased after her. Kione called her name and started following us.

“Lanelle!” he whisper-yelled. “Where are you going? We have to get out of here.”

He still didn’t realize what she must have done. I pictured her lying in her cot, the Luminary hovering over her, shaking her, demanding answers. I doubted she even hesitated to give them. Saints, I bet she’d even
offered
information about Tali and me to get herself healed.

“Why isn’t she stopping?” Kione asked.

I kept running, passing the windows overlooking the city. Smoke rose off the burning market square. I couldn’t make out any uniforms in the mob below, but League green and Baseeri blue were likely hacking their way through the crowd, just as they had at every riot before.

Kione pulled ahead of me, and I followed him and Lanelle into a rectangular room that was almost Sanctuary quiet, with thick green carpets. Double doors were set in the middle of the far wall. On either side of the doors, padded benches sat between statues. Kione was halfway down the hall, but Lanelle was nearing the doors at the end of it.

My steps halted. I knew this hall, though it had been years since I was last here. We were outside the Luminary’s office.

Suddenly a guard stepped out from a side nook and grabbed Lanelle. She screamed and yanked back.

“Let go of her!” Kione hollered, charging at the guard. Before he reached him, another guard appeared and shoved Kione down.

“Let her go! I work here,” Kione said, trying unsuccessfully to yank himself free.

“Not in this wing you don’t.”

I turned to run before the guards saw me, but a wall of green slammed into me. Or maybe I slammed into it. Either way, I fell back and landed on my butt.

“Busy day today,” said the guard looming over me.

“It’ll calm down,” said the other. “Always does.”

The guard hauled me to my feet as easily as picking up a sleeping chicken. I kicked him in the shins, then stumbled forward in pain.

“Ow!” I cried, my toes stinging.

He chuckled.

Eyes watering, I lifted my foot and rubbed my bruised toes. Only then did I notice the silver greaves strapped around his shins. Shifting bruised toes into him probably wouldn’t even get his attention, much less distract him long enough for me to escape.

At least they’d caught Lanelle too.

Lanelle was slapping ineffectually at the guard holding fast to her arm. “I have to see the Luminary,” she said.

One side of the double doors opened, and a man dressed in a mountain of silk stepped out. All the strength left my knees, and only the guard’s grip on my arm kept me standing.

“What’s all the noise out here?” Zertanik said with a frown. That changed to a smile when he looked up and saw me. “Well, Merlaina, how nice to see you again.”

“Sir, sir!” Lanelle waved a hand at Zertanik. “This is the girl I told Elder Vinnot about. Tell the guards to let me go.”

Kione stopped struggling. “Lanelle, what are you doing?”

“I saw the apprentices in the main corridor. They’re getting away!”

A muffled voice came from inside the room.

“What’s that?” Zertanik said, leaning back into the office. He popped out a moment later and gestured at the guards. “Bring the girls in,” he said, stepping aside.

“What about him?” the guard holding Kione asked. Kione kept staring at Lanelle, a tortured look on his face.

“Holding room for now.” Zertanik grinned. “He might be useful later.”

“What’s going on?” I said, knowing it sounded stupid.

“One does have to admire your tenacity, dear. Please, come inside.”

They dragged me in behind Lanelle. I couldn’t take my eyes off Zertanik.

“This is the shifter?” asked the Luminary. You needed to hear a croc speak only once to know its voice forever.

I turned to that voice and blinked in the bright light from the room’s tall windows. Everything glittered as if painted with jewels—furniture, paintings, trinkets on the desk and tables—even the curtains sparkled. The Luminary had added a lot of art, like he’d robbed a museum.

“Yes,” Lanelle said. “And a lot more, I think.”

The Luminary stared at me. “You’re the girl from the spire room. The one with the seizures. You’re looking much better than the last time I saw you.”

“I heal fast.”

“So I hear.” He waved a hand at Lanelle. At the guard’s insistence, she sat on an overstuffed chair near a green-draped padded bench. “She told Vinnot a lot of interesting things.”

“Traitor,” I said before I could stop it. She glared at me and folded her arms across her chest.

Zertanik laughed. “Didn’t I say she was spirited? Now, Merlaina dear, please sit. We have business to discuss.” He settled himself onto a wide sofa, then extended a hand toward a carved chair with green tassels. The guard shoved me into it. A few seconds later, the door opened and shut, leaving me with the last three people I wanted to be alone with.

The Luminary turned to Lanelle and she straightened in her chair. “She does more than just shift, you say?” he asked. I glanced at him. Something in his tone sounded off, like he was nervous. “Vinnot didn’t mention that.”

“Um, well,” she stammered, sneaking looks at me as if reluctant to be the rat I knew she was. “Maybe he—”

“What did you tell him?” the Luminary snapped.

Lanelle jumped and grabbed the arms of her chair. “She threw raw pynvium chunks at us, and they flashed pain.”

“Twenty-one pieces, if I remember right,” said Zertanik. He actually seemed to be enjoying himself.

Lanelle glanced at him, confused, then back to the Luminary. “I guess so. I think that’s when she emptied them.”

“Emptied them?” This time the Luminary sat up straight in his chair. I wished I could melt into mine and disappear. “What did she do—exactly? Don’t skip any details.”

Lanelle reached into her pocket and pulled out an all-too-familiar pynvium chunk. “She flashed this at me, and after she ran away with that boy, I sensed it right next to me. I was able to put enough pain into it again to call for help. I
know
it was full before she did that.”

Zertanik laughed and applauded me. “You are a delight, my dear. I had no idea you had such talents. What luck! She could be of tremendous value to us,” he said to the Luminary.

He didn’t seem so sure but appeared even more agitated. “If she can really do it.”

“She did! I saw her,” insisted Lanelle.

The Luminary snorted. Lanelle snapped her mouth shut. She obviously wanted to say something but was too scared to speak.

So was I.

“Your guards’ hazy recollections confirm it as well,” Zertanik said. “Think of what this means. We’ll never find another like her.”

The Luminary pursed his lips and stared at me, tapping a long finger slowly against the arm of his chair. Finally he turned to Lanelle.

“Thank you—that will be all,” he said.

“Sir?” She didn’t move. “What about my promotion?”

“Talk to Vinnot,” he sneered. I had a feeling Vinnot wouldn’t be sailing away with them when the Luminary and Zertanik made their escape. “You’re his problem, not mine.”

Lanelle jumped to her feet, her cheeks flushed. “But I worked in that awful room for days! She almost killed me! Vinnot promised me my fourth cord for information about her!”

I seethed, but I couldn’t do anything but glare at her. How could she? Any last bits of guilt I had over hurting her vanished. The traitor.

“Anything you
think
you deserve is between you and Vinnot.” He pointed to the door. “Now go. Or do I need to call the guard and have you removed from the League?”

Even Lanelle couldn’t miss the threat. She shot me one last hateful look, then stormed out of the room.

“Now then, Merlaina,” the Luminary said, turning his sharp blue eyes on me. “Let’s talk about emptying pynvium.”

TWENTY-TWO

I
gripped the arms of my chair. They couldn’t prove I’d done it. Lanelle wasn’t credible; I could say she lied about the pynvium. Better yet, I didn’t even
have
to answer. “You know the apprentices got out. Everyone in Geveg knows you lied to them by now.”

“No, they don’t,” said Zertanik, getting up and pouring himself something from a blue crystal decanter. “As soon as the guards spotted you on the roof, I sent Jeatar to watch the exits. He’s no doubt corralled your wayward apprentices.”

That fiend. That liar. Jeatar had actually seemed nice, and now he had Tali and the others. My hot anger chilled.

“You can’t just hide Takers away in a tower and think no one will notice.”

“We have been doing so, dear, and no one has.” Zertanik lifted the bottle toward the Luminary. “Drink?”

The Luminary shook his head.

No one offered me anything, not even bad excuses. “People
do
know. Did you think I was dumb enough to come in here without telling people about this?” I clenched my fists, wishing I hadn’t been dumb enough to do
just
that.

He chuckled. “Dumb, no. Shortsighted, yes, oh truly, yes.”

It was all for nothing. I’d done such horrible things, and none of it had mattered. Tears started, and much as I wanted to, I couldn’t hold them back.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, dear.” Zertanik paused and picked through a plate of fruit and pastries, acting as if this was his office. Did he think he owned everything and could buy anyone, just like he’d bought me? The Luminary didn’t even seem to care that Zertanik was taking charge of—I sniffled. What
was
going on here? Healers
never
got along with pain merchants. They thought pain merchants were beneath them, and from everything I knew, they were right.

So why was
this
Luminary taking orders from a pain merchant?

The Luminary sat in silence, watching me. One hand kept tapping on the arm of his chair, but the other was clenching it. He was
definitely
nervous, and I’d bet it was about more than just Vinnot not telling him what Lanelle had said.

“Why am I here?” I asked. And what in Saea’s name was going on?

Apparently unsatisfied with the food choices, Zertanik returned to his chair with just his drink. He wasn’t nervous at all. “We have a business proposition for you.”

My mouth went dry, and the echo of the fisherman’s screams rang in my memory’s ear. I’d had enough of his business propositions. “Forget it.”

“
We
haven’t decided anything,” the Luminary spat. For a moment, his forced calm slipped even further. What was he afraid of? Not me, surely. Zertanik? Had the Luminary also made a deal he was now regretting? “This doesn’t change the plan, Zertanik.”

“Of course it does.” Zertanik flapped a dismissive hand at him. “Merlaina dear, it’s all very simple really. If you prove you really can do this, I’d like to hire you to empty pynvium. I’ll pay you well for it.”

That was all? They didn’t want me to empty it over an advancing army or anything? There had to be more to his request. No one paid ten oppas for a single hen. “Why?”

“So I can sell it.”

The Luminary huffed. “So
we
can sell it.”

“Back on my side again, are you?” He laughed, then smiled at me again. “Imagine what Verlatta would pay for pynvium right about now.”

Everything they had. Just like we would have when the Duke had us surrounded and we couldn’t get supplies.

“You’d be
helping
them, dear. Providing desperately needed items at a time when they need them most.”

Trading on misery, on pain. Like offering a fisherman to a rich couple with a dying child.

“What about the apprentices?” I asked. I didn’t mention Tali and the others by name, just in case he didn’t know how much he had that was mine.

“A simple exchange. Your services for the lives of the apprentices. All of them, not just those you tried to sneak away when no one was looking.”

He had to be lying. Once the apprentices started talking, Geveg would tear the League apart to get to the Luminary. He’d never agree to let them go.

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “The Luminary hurt the apprentices for a reason. He’s not going to just walk away after all that effort.”

The Luminary jumped up and went right for the blue crystal decanter. “You stupid, ignorant ’Veg,” he mumbled. He took a deep breath and turned to face me. “The apprentices were
Vinnot’s
pet project, not mine. You can ask
him
why the Duke is so interested in stuffing Takers full of pain. I couldn’t care less.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Obviously.” He turned to Zertanik. “This is pointless, and we’re wasting time. We have enough—let’s just leave now.”

“Don’t be hasty.”

“We don’t need her.”

“But I want her.”

The Luminary slammed his glass down and went to the door. He opened it and spoke to the guards outside, but I couldn’t hear anything they said. I could, however, see the angry looks he cast my way. Preparing to leave anyway, or planning his next move if I said no?

Zertanik cleared his throat. “Dear, we have no interest in the apprentices. Just you.”

I shivered. I’d heard
that
before, but Zertanik made it sound a lot creepier than Jeatar had.

“Ideally, you’ll leave with us,” Zertanik continued. “And once we’re all safely away and you’ve done as we requested, the apprentices will be released. We simply require assurances.”

“Assurances for what?”

“That you won’t agree to our terms, then renege on the deal.” He smiled. “You
do
have a reputation for that.”

I frowned. “I hardly consider refusing to shift into a bound and gagged man
reneging
.”

Zertanik shrugged and sipped his drink. “We’ll need you for only a few months; then you’re free to go. You’ll be well paid. I really don’t understand why you’re resisting this offer. By winter, you’ll be back with enough money to buy a villa on the aristocrats’ isles. You’ll never worry about food again. You and your sister will never worry about
anything
again.”

Saints help me, it was tempting. Even if he was an opportunistic slug, Zertanik
had
done what he’d promised with the pynvium chunks. I doubted he wanted me to empty pynvium for the good of anyone but himself, but more pynvium right now was a good thing, and if he could get it to those who needed it…

“What would I have to empty?”

Zertanik beamed and jumped out of his chair. He went to the green-draped bench in the back and yanked off the fabric like a peddler at the fair. “We’ll melt
this
down into smaller, portable bricks and sell them throughout the region.”

My breath stopped. The
Slab
. Bigger than the rumored hay bale, and so rich and dark blue, it looked like a giant sapphire. My eyes widened as the real implication hit me. They weren’t stealing Takers, they were stealing the
Slab
. The Duke counted on pain-filled Slabs to forge into weapons. He’d
never
allow them to take it.

My guts twisted, and I looked at the room again, all the furniture, the paintings, the crystal and gold. The kinds of things you stole once you took someone’s home, killed their family. They were both just looters and thieves. I looked at the Luminary.
We have enough
…. I’d bet Geveg didn’t have any pynvium because Zertanik and the Luminary were also stealing
that
.

Zertanik tossed the drape over a chair and smiled at me. “This would be the first one, but we can travel from city to city, offering your services for a, well, not a very reasonable price, but one people will pay. And it will still be less than what new pynvium would cost.”

“I see.” They were insane. They had no idea how flashing worked. Saints, even
I
wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, but flashing something that huge would probably kill me. Even if I
could
find a way to flash it and survive, you didn’t steal from the Duke and get away with it. You didn’t cause riots and force him to pull troops away from a fight he’d rather have just to cover your tracks when you fled. Didn’t they know how stupid a plan this was?

“The Duke will know you took it. He’ll come after you.”

“Oh no, he won’t,” said Zertanik. “You see, there’ll be a terrible accident and we’ll both be killed in the riots. Simply tragic. The looters will overpower the guards and come right inside. Bodies burned beyond recognition. Only a few notable pieces of jewelry and League rank insignias to identify us.”

The Duke would blame Geveg for their deaths. He’d send soldiers. He’d lock down the city, lock up its people, interrogate everyone who might know something about the stolen pynvium and the deaths. When no one talked, he’d get mad, take his anger out on us.

I stood and walked slowly toward the Slab. Zertanik continued to smile, and the Luminary watched me, as untrusting of me as I was of him. I reached out and put both palms flat against the cool metal. That was all I felt. No call and draw, no special tingle asking for pain. Nothing like real Healers felt when they touched pure pynvium.

A hard, cold lump sat in my stomach. I was just as much a weapon as this Slab would be. But I still had a choice about what
I’d
be molded into.

I looked up, and familiar brown eyes stared back at me from a painting on the wall. Grannyma, the last Gevegian Luminary, who was taken from us when the Duke’s soldiers took the League. I could hear her advice even now.

Better to take the lash than whip the horse
.

I chuckled, my eyes tearing. Grannyma was always right, always fighting. Even on that final day when we surrendered, and the Duke’s men dragged her from the Healers’ League and took her away. They never even sent back her body, like they had Mama’s. Saints, I missed them both.

“You’ll let the apprentices go if I do this?” I said. My voice trembled, but my hands were still.

“Of course, of course.” Zertanik was on his feet again, practically dancing, and waiting for my answer. The Luminary didn’t move.

The fisherman’s voice drifted back.
My family has a year to get back on their feet. We could sure use that right now
. How long did a Slab last? Thousands of heals? This one was full, but if I emptied it, could I give Geveg a year? Give them time to demand a Luminary like Grannyma had been, who would protect them rather than use them?

Maybe, but I was tired of maybes.

I wasn’t a Healer, but I
could
trade my life for theirs, and do it without hurting anyone who didn’t deserve it. I looked at the painting again. I knew what Grannyma would do. What Mama and Papa
had
done. I had to save the ones I loved.

I’m sorry, Tali
. I didn’t want to leave her, but if they had me, they had no reason to hurt her. And if they were gone, there’d be no one to hurt the rest. I was only sorry Vinnot wasn’t here.

“I accept your offer,” I said, smiling at Zertanik. “I’d be delighted to flash this for you.”

He beamed and actually rubbed his palms together.

I closed my eyes, pressed my hands against the Slab, and pictured three dandelions blowing in the wind.