The Shifter (7 page)

“I don’t know.”

“Liar!”

Fancy Man Two groaned and sat up, his face pale and sweaty from the pain. “Did you see what that ’Veg did to me?”

“Quiet, Morell. I said she was dangerous.” Fancy Man One smiled, but I couldn’t tell if it meant humor or disdain.

“You’re an ass, Jeatar.”

Fancy Man One laughed, but at least now I had both their names. In the bedtime stories Mama used to read us, names gave you power over things. I could sure use a little of that.

“We have no interest in your sister,” Jeatar said. “Just you.”

My hot anger chilled. If they didn’t have Tali, then who did?

“Now come along quietly before the patrol arrives and they find out what you can do. I’m sure both the Governor-General and the League would be very interested.”

It could have been an empty threat, but it didn’t seem wise to test Morell, even if he was having a hard time getting to his feet.

Despite my trembling, I elbowed Saint Saea in her cold marble gut. It was stupid, but somehow this felt like it was all her fault.

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SIX

W
e left the Sanctuary and turned right, toward one of the richer neighborhoods. The closer we got, the more dark-haired people we passed, and more than a few shot a glare my way. Jeatar kept a hand on my upper arm, gripping it tight, but not enough to hurt, while Morell limped close by without touching me. Was this what had happened to Tali? Had they grabbed her on the way home from the gardens and threatened her with exposing me? A scream quivered in my throat, but Morell looked like he might welcome a reason to shut me up with a smack or two.

“Where are you taking me?” I glanced around, but no one would meet my eyes.

“My employer is interested in meeting you.”

“Is he with the Duke or the League?”

Jeatar frowned and shot me an odd look but didn’t answer.

“Does
he
have my sister?”

Jeatar sighed, and for a second I thought I saw pity there. “We have nothing to do with your sister. We simply have a job opportunity you might be interested in.”

If they didn’t have Tali, then I didn’t need to keep gulping down my fear and playing along. Besides, this looked less like a job offer and more like a kidnapping. I stopped walking, tugging him to a halt. “So what’s the job?”

“Sorry, but I’m under strict instructions to bring you in first.”

“What if I don’t want to go?”

“Then we’ll throw a sack over your head and drag you,” Morell snarled into my ear. He was sweating heavily now, and the silk around his collar was dark and damp.

I kicked him, jerking my arm out of Jeatar’s grasp. Morell swung a fist at my head. I stumbled back, slipping on the wet street and landing on my butt. A few folks turned; one even laughed.

“Help!” I called. The ones who’d looked over glanced away fast. I scrambled to my feet, legs sliding every which way like a newborn lamb’s.

Jeatar picked me up, pinning my arms to my sides. He shook me once, hard, and my head snapped back. “Settle down,” he whispered harshly. “I’m sorry, but it’s my job to bring you in, and it will reflect poorly on me if I don’t. You’re not in any danger, but it’s important that we not discuss the details in public.”

For all his reassurances, there was only one job I knew of that started with a kidnapping, but I’d be useless healing soldiers in Verlatta. It would, however, get me closer to Tali if they
did
have her.

Jeatar continued. “I’d apologize for my colleague, but he’s not my responsibility.”

Apologies? Trackers were never polite, never protective, and they didn’t whisper reassurances, scary as those reassurances were. Maybe this wasn’t about Tali, or the League, or anything I’d considered since I’d first seen him.

“You’re not a tracker, are you?” I said low so Morell wouldn’t hear.

Something flickered in his blue eyes, but I couldn’t quite catch it. “No,
Merlaina
, I’m not.”

I hesitated over the odd way he said my “name,” as if he knew it wasn’t mine. “Where are you taking me?”

“Would you like to eat today?”

I blinked. It was an obvious distraction, but a good one.

“Maybe find out something about your sister?”

“Yes.”

He smiled, and it almost looked trustworthy. “Then come with me and hear what my employer has to say. That’s all I’m asking.”

“Except you’re not asking at all.”

Two merchants deep in conversation nearly bumped into us. They looked up, mouths open, the beginnings of “pardon me” already coming out, then snapped them shut and hurried past, peeking back over their shoulders at Jeatar.

They recognized him! Who did he work for? The Governor-General maybe?

“Coming, Merlaina?”

Could I trust him? Did I even have a choice? If I said no, he’d drag me there. But if I could find out something about where Tali might be, it was worth the risk.

I swallowed and nodded. We walked, his hand on me like a clamp, his manner as cool as a lake stone. I hadn’t been this scared since the war, though my guts said I was in more danger now.

Maybe they were mercenaries. Lots had come at the end of the war, some for fighting and others offering paid protection to folks trying to escape. Some had stayed, protecting the Baseeri from those who’d fought even after the rest surrendered. But no one tried to fight anymore. It was too hard to rally folks when they were more worried about food than freedom.

“Are you mercenaries?”

He raised an eyebrow. No denials though. Morell kept glaring and limping, pale as milk now.

We turned down Hanks-Baron Street and stopped in front of a stone building with a high wall around it. The kind of wall you built when you wanted to protect what was inside. My guess was it was something other than the fruit trees sticking out over the top.

Jeatar opened the gate and extended his arm. “After you.”

He let go of me and for a heartbeat I considered running, but if this really was about a job and they could also help me find Tali, then I had to give them a chance. I glanced at Morell, who looked minutes away from passing out. Maybe I could sneak some pain back to use if I needed to make a fast getaway. I edged closer.

“I wouldn’t.” Jeatar frowned and nudged me inside a medium-sized room with shelves along two sides, like a shop.

Spices and a bitter metallic odor hit me—raw pynvium? Old, though. The smell stayed in my nose, but it didn’t coat the back of my mouth like ore right from the ground always had. Objects of various sizes lined the shelves: silverware, cubes, thin rods, balls, figurines, wind chimes. Most were painted, but some had that distinctive blue I’d so recently had waved in my face. Expensive trinkets full of someone’s pain, ready to be enchanted to trigger and flash.

My shiverfeet returned. “You’re pain merchants.” New ones too, or I would have recognized the shop.

“We work for a pain merchant, though I can’t say how much longer Morell will.”

Morell frowned but kept his mouth shut.

“Announce our guest before you run off to the on-duty Taker,” Jeatar told him, though it sounded more like an order than a request. “I don’t think it’s safe to leave you two alone.”

Morell limped over to a plain yet forbidding door in the back, tucked behind a slate-topped counter running almost the length of the wall.

“Why have you been following me?” I asked Jeatar.

“To make sure your abilities were authentic, which you so helpfully confirmed there in the Sanctuary. My employer will be pleased. He was already impressed after what the boys at the League and Rancher Heclar had to say.”

Saints! How could I have been so stupid? Denying it now would be just as foolish, and probably wouldn’t help me anyway.

“I’m sorry we scared you, Nya,” he continued, “but we had to be sure before we approached you.”

He’d talked to someone besides Heclar if he knew my real name. Had Heclar told him about Danello? He must have, but I couldn’t see Danello telling anyone about me. I sucked in a breath. Bahari? Maybe he’d talked out of revenge, for forcing him to take pain he didn’t want. But what did
Jeatar
want? Why keep my real name a secret?

The door opened and a man stepped out, so well-dressed he made the fancy men look like refugees. Mountainous in brocaded silk hemmed with small jewels, and black hair that curled without the slightest frizz. He smelled like a forge. Like Papa. An enchanter, sure as sugar. Though I couldn’t imagine this puffed and pressed man standing over the refining flames, enchanting white-hot pynvium as he shaped it into whatever would sell best.

“Is this our girl?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.” Jeatar stepped aside. A twitch of distaste flashed across his face. I guess even rich folks didn’t like their bosses sometimes.

“Merlaina, please come inside and sit down. You look exhausted.” The enchanter wrapped an arm thick as a tree trunk around my shoulders and led me through the door. Wealth dripped from beaded tapestries lining the walls and pooled in carpets thick as pudding. “Sit, sit. Jeatar, bring her some tea, would you?”

That same request-as-an-order tone.

I sat on a couch so soft I almost disappeared into it. “Why am I here?”

“I’d like to offer you a job.” He smiled. “I find myself in need of someone with your skills.”

“I’m not an assassin.”

His eyes went wide and he gaped at me for a moment, then laughed. “Quite the imagination, hasn’t she?” he said to Jeatar, who was returning with my tea. Again, the flicker. That quiet disapproval sent my nerves twitching more than Morell’s threats.

“Sugar?”

“Yes, please.”

He spooned it in and stirred. “No, dear, I don’t need you for anything so crass,” the enchanter continued, handing me my tea, then reaching for his own glass. “I need a Taker who can transcend the limits of pynvium.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It means to rise above—”

“I know what
transcend
means, but what good is a Taker who can’t get rid of her pain?”

“You misunderstand. I’m not concerned with getting rid of it, only shifting it.” He grinned and sipped delicately. “Although I have more mundane requests we can discuss later, my most pressing need is for a client whose daughter was injured in last night’s accident. The child is dying and the League can’t help.”

The twins’ pained faces flashed through my mind, and I shuddered. “Then I can’t do any better. Their Takers are trained Healers; I’m not.”

“I didn’t say they didn’t
want
to help. They
can’t
help. They’re out of pynvium.”

The glass slipped in my hand and tea spilled on my shirt. No pynvium? That was impossible! They had the huge Slab, big as a bale of hay. Something that big could hold the pain of hundreds….

“The ferry accident,” I whispered. “They used it all up? How could they use it all up?”

“They’re expecting more, but my clients can’t wait for a new shipment to arrive. Their little girl will be dead by then.”

Not just the child. How many had been injured last night? How many were injured every day? What would folks do if they knew healing was unavailable? Panic for sure, possibly even riot. Maybe worse than the food riots when the Duke’s soldiers had first captured the marsh farms and tried to starve us into surrender.

Bile stung my throat. Was that why Tali wasn’t on rounds? She’d been healing last night. What if she wasn’t able to dump the pain before the Slab filled up?

“Merlaina?” The enchanter rapped his knuckles on the table. “The girl?”

“You…you have to have some pynvium left, right? Why can’t your Takers help?”

He glanced at Jeatar and cleared his throat. “My pynvium shipment is also en route, delayed due to the Duke’s recent interest in Verlatta. I don’t have enough on hand for this kind of healing. Just a few scraps really, hardly good for anything but holding a few broken bones.”

The cold tea I’d spilled on my shirt seeped through to my skin, but I was already chilled. That explained their secrecy and why they had kidnapped me. If folks thought I could help, they’d be on me like barnacles on a boat. Still, Jeatar could have been less scary about it. As long as he hadn’t lied about getting information on Tali. “So they want me to heal their daughter and shift the pain to them until the League gets resupplied.”

He laughed and my weak calm vanished. “Oh, no, dear, not at all. They have
another
recipient for the pain in mind.” He stood and motioned me up. I set my glass down on a table worth a year’s earnings and followed.

We stepped into yet another room. A small, dark-haired girl lay on a table to one side, her limbs bent and bloody, her skin gray. Beside her, a silk-draped woman sobbed into the shoulder of a man dressed even finer than the enchanter. He looked up as we entered.

“That’s her?” A flash of disgust rose above his despair. “Did she agree?”

An untidy blond man stood behind them, clutching a worn fisherman’s cap in his hands. A weed in a vase of flowers.

Every street-honed instinct said I should run as fast as I could. Baseeri aristocrats didn’t associate with fishermen, not unless they wanted something they couldn’t easily take. This man had only one thing to give.

“Dear, this lovely family is willing to pay you thirty oppas to heal their daughter and shift her pain to that man there.”

Everything after “thirty oppas” was a little fuzzy. I could work six months straight and not earn that much. If I did this, I wouldn’t have to worry about looking for work while I searched for Tali.

I glanced at the fisherman. Faded cap, faded pants, faded shirt. Were they paying him or forcing him to do this? “I don’t know….”

“You told us she’d do this, Zertanik,” the father cried.

Zertanik the enchanter held out his hands, bobbing them like he was putting out a fire. “Give her a moment—we did spring this on her. Dear, the child is dying. This is no time for waffling.”

“She just wants more money. Fifty oppas.”

I bet they heard my gulp in Verlatta.
Fifty
oppas! With that much I could
hire
someone to look for Tali and have enough left over to last me months. Still…“I’m sorry, but this isn’t right. He won’t be able to work after I shift the pain.”

“He’s being well paid, dear,” Zertanik murmured.

Maybe, but it felt all wrong, like they were buying us the same as any other sack of goods. “I have no idea what that much pain will do to him.”

“But we
do
know what it will do to
her
” the mother wailed. The father hugged her, patting her back.

“You’d let our daughter die?” he said, glaring as if threats would convince me. The guilt was far more likely to.

For the love of Saint Saea, this wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t up to me who lived or died. I had my own family to take care of, and Tali was all I had left. “I’d do it if you two took some of her pain. Spread among three will be easier to bear until you can get a League Healer to heal it.”

The mother cried out again, this time sounding horrified. The father looked at me like I had asked him to eat a live mudsnapper. “Us? We have important obligations to the Duke, young lady. Obligations we can’t fulfill if we’re bedridden.”