The Shifter Read online

  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.”

  A pinch of my guilt vanished. No wonder they thought their daughter’s life was worth more than a fisherman’s. Just like every other Baseeri aristocrat who’d thrown families out of their homes when the Duke’s occupation began, ensuring we’d behave ourselves and not interrupt his flow of precious pynvium. Hard to rebel when you were scrambling for food. I folded my arms across my chest. “Sorry, the answer is no.”

  Voices exploded. The father yelled, the mother wailed, Zertanik hollered over everybody. For a moment, he succeeded in forcing calm, and a small voice rang clear in the room.

  “Please? For me?” said the fisherman.

  So much sadness in his words I almost cried. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “I do. Please, miss, I lost my boat a few months back. I can’t get work no more and my wife is carrying our fourth child.” He tipped his head toward the parents. “They offered to pay our rent for a full year if I’d help them. My oldest boys have been scraping barnacles since they was six, so they can get work while I’m down. And they can fish, so we won’t go hungry.”

  Saints no, I didn’t want to do this again. “You could die.”

  He nodded. “I know. Either way my family has a year to get back on their feet. We could sure use that right now.”

  I looked at the dying child and her family. The enchanter and my fancy man. Jeatar looked hesitant, his unreadable eyes on the dying child; then he leaned over and whispered into Zertanik’s ear. The enchanter’s eyes flared wide for half a breath; then he nodded.

  “Dear, if you do this, I’ll ask my sources at the League about your sister. My contacts are very influential.”

  Five faces stared at me, all hopeful, but for different reasons.

  “Please, miss,” the fisherman said again in that soft voice.

  He was trying to save his family. They were trying to save their daughter. I needed to save Tali. This wasn’t so different from helping Danello and his family, was it?

  My guts still said no, but fifty oppas! And I didn’t even have to dodge crocodiles to get it.

  I nodded, and the mother started sobbing again. I placed my hands on the child and tried not to think about the fisherman’s chances. It was hard once I felt how injured she was. How injured he’d feel once I healed her and shifted all that pain to him. It wasn’t real injury anymore, but could so much pain kill?

  “You’re sure?” I asked the fisherman. “This is”—I glanced at the parents—“bad.”

  “I’m sure.”

  I turned to Zertanik. “Do you have another cot or table?”

  He flicked a hand at Jeatar, who slipped out and returned with a cheap vendor table like the shopkeeps used at the market.

  “Put it next to her,” I instructed, “with me in between. I’ll need to do this at the same time.” Though they didn’t deserve the sparing, the fisherman did, and I didn’t want to say the child was so injured that I didn’t think I could hold her pain long enough to shift it. Some things folks were better off not knowing.

  I put one hand on each, gritted my teeth, and drew. Agony raced into my arm, cut across my chest and down my other arm, faster than I’d drawn, like it wanted out before something caught it. Bright specks flashed around my eyes, shifting to red, pale at first, then darkening, tinting the room. Then the pain poured into the fisherman, and nothing I tried would stop it.

  Struggling to stay on my feet, I blocked out his screams and thought of Tali.

  Jeatar set a damp cloth on my forehead while Morell mopped up my puke in the front hall. I’d almost gotten his shoes in my rush for the door, but that didn’t make me feel any better. Jeatar had carried me to the couch after I’d emptied my stomach, and even lying down, I felt the room wobble.

  “Feeling better?” he asked, real concern on his face. Morell glared at me, but he looked better, so there had to be a little pynvium somewhere if they were able to heal him.

  “Some.” The fisherman had finally stopped screaming. I’d tried to keep some of his pain, but it had poured through me fast as the Cyden River and I couldn’t dam it. Closest I’d ever come to feeling death, and the poor man had to live with it now. Please, Saint Saea, let him live. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “Zertanik made arrangements to get him home. He’ll be taken care of.”

  “He can’t hold that much pain for long. Even if you only have a few pynvium items left, take some of it from him, please. It was so much worse than we thought. He can’t take it.” My stomach rolled again.

  “Easy.” He put a steadying hand on my shoulder, but I spotted doubt in his eyes. He masked it quick. “In a day or two the pynvium shipments will arrive and we’ll buy the pain from him.”

  “How can you be sure the shipments are even going to get here?” He couldn’t promise anything with Verlatta under siege.

  Jeatar glanced at Zertanik’s door. “He pays very close attention to those things. Don’t worry, the fisherman will be fine.”

  He wouldn’t be fine. Who could be fine with all that pain? Enough to kill a child, maybe enough to kill a man. I closed my eyes, but that made it easier to see his agony. I opened them again. This was all for Tali. I could stand it if I remembered that. “He’ll ask his sources about Tali?”

  “I’ll make sure he does, I promise.”

  “When will you know something?”

  “There’s not a lot of information coming out of the League right now. Might take me a day or two to hear something.”

  Would the fisherman still be alive then? What had I done?

  The door opened and the Duke’s rich couple walked out, the sleeping little girl clutched in her mother’s arms. The father reached into his pocket, then dropped a handful of coins on my chest. I flinched, but they didn’t burn. They should have after what I’d done to earn them.

  Ten oppas.

  I sat up and they slid down into my lap. “You said fifty.”

  “You didn’t help her for us—you did it for that man and for yourself. You’re lucky I gave you anything at all.” They stomped out of the building and slammed the door shut behind them.

  Jeatar frowned in disgust. “They should have paid you double,” he muttered.

  “I have to get out of here.” My shirt suddenly felt too small, keeping me from taking more than tiny, shallow breaths. I pocketed my coins quickly, not wanting to touch them longer than necessary. “Find me the instant you hear something about Tali.”

  “Where will you be?”

  I hesitated. I had no home anymore. Would he even keep his promise, or would he trick me like the Baseeri had? “I’ll find you. I’ll come back every day.”

  He glanced again at the door to the fancy rooms. “No, don’t come back here. Send in a note and I’ll meet you somewhere. You pick.”

  “I will. I need to go.”

  “You should rest longer.”

  “I can’t stay here.”

  Zertanik appeared as I started for the front door. “Well, dear, your attitude was certainly uncalled for. Those people offered a fair price for a service only you can provide, and you treated them most terribly. I hope that doesn’t happen next time.”

  Jeatar cleared his throat. “Sir, I don’t think we should—”

  “Nonsense, she’s a natural.”

  My heart banged against my chest. “I’m not doing this ever again.”

  “Think of all the money you could make.”

  “Yeah, ten whole oppas.” Papa used to say principles were a bargain at any price, and I’d sold mine for cheap.

  He frowned and smoothed his sleeves. “Well, they were a bit stingy there at the end when you refused to help. If you’d been more agr
eeable, I’m sure they would have paid more.”

  I grabbed the front door latch, but he snatched my arm and stopped me.

  “We have other clients willing to pay dearly for this service.”

  “No.”

  “You’d never go hungry again. You could get a place with your own washroom.”

  My old house flashed through my mind. A room of my own, two washrooms, rooms for eating and cooking and sitting by the fire reading. A yard out back, small but ours. Without Tali, without family? Meaningless.

  How had I been stupid enough to think this was real healing? Real healers didn’t hurt people. Ever. Blood rushed in my ears, but not loud enough to drown out the screams in my head. “I’m not doing this ever, ever again.”

  “Oh, I’m certain you will, my dear. Not a doubt in my mind.” He smiled like a man who knew things I didn’t.

  I yanked my hand away and pushed out the door, running as fast as my quivering legs would go.

  SEVEN

  I got as far as the bridge before I stumbled against a wall. The street swirled around me, and I sagged to the ground.

  Something cold touched my head. I looked up, and the usual afternoon rain tapped my forehead. Just a drizzle. Saint Saea’s crocodile tears.

  What if the fisherman couldn’t handle the pain until more pynvium arrived? What if he died? What if I’d murdered him? I couldn’t breathe.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. He had begged me to do it. He knew the risks, and he was willing to take them to save his family.

  You didn’t argue all that hard.

  I clamped my hands over my ears. I had argued. I said it was wrong. I said no. They didn’t listen. And he begged me!

  Was it worth it?

  To find Tali? Yes! I sniffled, wiped my nose on a damp sleeve. Jeatar insisted the new pynvium shipment was on its way. The fisherman would be fine once it got here. Everyone got what they wanted. No one was forced to do anything.

  Is having no choice the same as choosing?

  I shook the thought away. He begged me. They begged me.

  Cold washed over me, then hot, then blackness. Cold again, and hardness, rough against my hip and shoulder. I opened my eyes. The world had shifted sideways.