Draka

When I woke, the Need was gone.

I couldn’t have spent more than a minute or two on the forest floor. When I came back and forced myself to my feet the sun and the shadows were just where I’d last seen them, though the glade was brighter now that the Heart was gone. There was a strange silence about the place, and it took me a moment to figure out what it was. No birds. All the birds had taken off.

When I moved, my body felt wrong. Not by much. It wasn’t larger or anything like that, as far as I could tell; rather, it felt too small. It was like I didn’t quite fit in my skin. Yet I felt light on my feet, alert and full of energy in a way that I usually only experienced after a long nap on my hoard. And when I looked around, it wasn’t just that the glade was brighter because the Heart was gone; everything outside was brighter as well, the colors more vivid. Not by a huge amount, but it was enough to be noticeable, and I looked around in wonder.

Slowly the birds returned, their songs clearer and more distinct than I’d ever heard them. It all felt incredibly tranquil, and I felt at peace in a way that I hadn’t in many weeks. My bloodlust was gone. My fears and worries about losing Herald or anyone else seemed completely ridiculous. No one could take them from me, because they weren’t mine to lose. They were my friends, even my family, now, but they didn’t belong to me. How could I ever have thought that?

It lasted for a few minutes. A few wonderful minutes of peace and beauty that slowly faded away. The intensity bled out of the world, and the sense of peace was replaced with my normal sense of the present. But I didn’t regret their passing. The anger, the desire to destroy, that didn’t return. Nor did the Need. It felt sated, somehow. And while I got used to the feeling of not quite fitting in my skin, I still felt like I was somehow more than I had been.

It couldn’t compare to the peace that I’d felt, but I had a sense of nearly complete contentment as I took to the sky and headed south.

I wanted to check on my people. Not because I thought they needed a reminder of who they belonged to, or because I feared for their safety, but because I genuinely wanted to see how they were doing. It had been two weeks now since I took them in, and I hadn’t really talked to any of them. The exception was when I left a few days ago, and that had been mostly them declaring their loyalty to me. I wanted a conversation, and I was feeling magnanimous.

I did what I always did, coming in low and landing a thousand feet or so north of the gate so that I could approach stealthily on foot. My caution was unwarranted, though. I watched the nascent hamlet from the trees, and everything seemed calm and peaceful. Skins dried on racks, meat smoked over a fire in the old fireplace. Some people sat in a circle by the single, proper building they’d finished, a log longhouse. I was impressed that they’d built something like that, out here, in only two weeks, but they had advancements and a couple of generations’ know-how to draw on. They were talking, sewing and weaving baskets, while others did… something, preparing a fair-sized plot of land for a garden where they’d cleared some land. Not too far off I could hear children laughing among the trees.

Satisfied that there were no outsiders around causing trouble or who might freak out, I simply strolled into the camp.

The people preparing soil for planting were the first to see me, and a murmur went through the half-dozen men and women as they stopped what they were doing and stood, lowering their heads respectfully. Jekrie was with them, so I gave them a “How ya going?" and asked him to follow. The rest stood and stared at me, but that was no surprise. They’d just have to get used to it.

To give them all some exposure to my terrifying self, I went and laid down near the big, smokey fire where they were preserving meat. The little crafting group froze as I came near, Jekrie stood silent, and it became clear that if I didn't speak, no one would.

I waved at the closest log bench. “Go on, sit!”

Jekrie practically fell onto the bench in his rush to obey me. I sighed. This might get annoying.

“Relax. I’m here to look in on how you’re all doing, nothing else. And it looks like things are going well! Didn’t see that gardening patch last time.”

“Yes, great lady! We’re settling in well, thank you, great lady! The hunting is good and the forage is plentiful, and no monsters spotted as of yet. We had some visitors two days back, but they gave us no trouble and moved on in the morning.”

“All right, good. Good.” I nodded towards the garden. “What are you growing?”

“Some hardy roots and greens, great lady, that might have time to grow in before second harvest ends.”

“Yeah? No herbs or anything?”

He hesitated. “This is all we have seeds for, great lady.”

“Ah, right. Makes sense. You had to leave in a rush.”

“Yes, great lady.”

“All right… say you could go back to Piter’s Clearing. Do you think there are seeds and such there that you can use?”

I was delighted to see a careful hope fill his eyes. “If the trolls ain’t eaten them, great lady. And there is much we might be able to salvage, if only—”

“Would you move back there, if you could?”

Jekrie raised his hands in a fervent denial. “No, great lady! Never! We’re yours so long as you’ll have us, and anyway the north is too dangerous for us now, few as we are!”

“If I may, great lady…”

A voice came from the crafting circle, and I looked over as Tinir got to her feet. She walked over to me, hand clasped and head bowed.

“We’re in no place to ask for anything. I know this. But, great lady, do you mean to clear the trolls from our home?” She quickly corrected herself. “Our old homes, I mean.”

“I was thinking about it. I don’t like having them so close. And they hurt my people. I can’t just let that go unpunished.”

Tinir wrung her hands. “Of course, great lady. We would… it would be a great kindness, if you made it so that we could recover what we can.”

“I’ll take that into consideration.” I hadn’t decided how to go about getting rid of the trolls. My options at the moment were to try and pick them off, one by one, or to just ask my humans to help out. All I could offer was my gratitude and anything they could harvest from the trolls, but I was sure that they’d agree if asked.

“Did you want anything else?” Tinir was still fidgeting after my answer, and at my question she looked at me with eyes full of worry.

“Great lady, I… I know that we swore ourselves to you, and I regret naught, but the children…”

I really wasn’t sure where she was going with this, so I held her gaze until she finished her thought, her voice coming out in a tremor.

“Do you claim them?”

I stared at her in silence. I could only hope that I looked contemplative, because really I was completely dumbfounded. The thought hadn’t even occurred to me.

“You’re not slaves,” I said, slow and clear so that there was no room for misunderstanding. “This is not some inheritable sin or condition. I hope your children will want to serve me, but… Tinir, is it so terrible to belong to me?”

Jekrie looked at his wife. There was a silent plea in his eyes, and regret in hers as she looked back at him. Then she turned back to me and straightened her back. “I’ll not break my oath, but we’ve always been free. Losing that is… bitter.”

That, I could understand. Their forebears had fled north to avoid taxation, after all. Freedom and independence must be deeply ingrained in them.

The whole village was listening to me anxiously at that point, and some things clearly needed repeating.

“I will demand very little of you,” I promised. “Nothing unreasonable, and nothing for selfish reasons. I demand no tribute that is not affordable and freely given. The only thing I demand of you, absolutely and without compromise, is secrecy. Other than that, you're free.”

“And the children?”

“As long as they swear to keep my secrets, they can leave, if they want. If not…”

I left the rest unsaid. I didn't want to make any threats I couldn't go through with, but she quieted, her eyes flicking around me. Mercies’ sake, did she think I’d hurt kids? I was pretty sure even Instinct wouldn’t do that. It stung. She didn't actually know me, but still.

“In exchange I’ll do what I can to give you and yours a safe and happy life. Which is why I’m here, now. I’ve already heard that you lack seeds. Is there anything else you need urgently?”

One of the other women spoke up. “If it please, great lady, we lost many tools. We have some, but work is slow and hard from their lack, and some things we cannot do at all.”

“And Jemi’s anvil,” a man agreed, then hurriedly added, “great lady! If we had that… well, Jemi is gone. But my boy Foren here was his apprentice, of sorts.”

A broad shouldered teenage boy ducked his head at me.

“And we have few bows, and are running out of arrows,” Jekrie added.

“So what I’m hearing is that the sooner you can salvage your old home, the better. That makes things simple, if not easy. If there’s nothing else you need, then, I’ll go.”

The mood had relaxed a little, but ever since I walked into the village I had noticed people looking… not at, but around me strangely. They kept doing so as I got up, and when I looked at the ground beside me, following Tinir’s eyes, I saw why.

My shadow was dancing.

It was near noon. The fire beside me was nowhere near high enough to rival the sun, and my shadow should have been firmly planted underneath me. Instead it was a living thing, still attached but moving independent of me. Its neck stretched out towards one person or another, and its tail lashed in irritation as someone shuffled away from it. And I had no idea what was going on.

I couldn’t show my ignorance in front of my people, though. So I focused, and I brought the unruly thing under control. It obeyed, of course, but I got the impression that it did so reluctantly, flowing back in under me only because it was me demanding it, then sitting there, still and shapeless. If a shadow could sulk, that was what it was doing.

I considered setting it in place, and it relented, returning to its normal shape and following my movements naturally. But I got the impression that it rolled its eyes at me.

I’d stood there for a few seconds figuring everything out when I remembered the humans. They were all staring at me. Not sure what to do, I just said the first thing that popped into my head: “No worries. She just gets a little excited sometimes.”

As confused as any of them, I left as fast as I could.

I had enough presence of mind to not just take the most direct route back to the city. That would have taken me near where the archer had shot at me, and there was no way to know whether they would still be there or not. By flying south along the mountains and then taking a sharp turn towards the coast, I hopefully eliminated any chance of running into the same person. The forest was huge, and it had been plain dumb luck that put them in that tree at that time. At least, that was what I hoped. And while twelve hours earlier I might have considered trying to bait them out so that I could fertilize the forest floor with their remains, now I was feeling far more pragmatic. If I passed close enough to them for them to take a shot at me, they would see me far earlier than I saw them. And last time I’d only seen them thanks to Herald’s warning. If there was a next time I might not be so lucky, and the next shot might get me in the wing, the gut, the chest, the neck… Hell, even if it didn’t get me somewhere lethal, the poison might take me down before I could get to Mak or Kira. No, it was much better to minimize the risk, and hope that we could find them in the city.

I still wanted to find them. There was still the risk that they had seen Herald on my back and might recognise her, and I hadn’t gone soft, all of a sudden. If I could get a believable promise out of them not to take it further, and an apology, then I might leave it there. If not…

They’d shot an arrow at me. They’d poisoned me. The fact that I was considering mercy at all was a very good sign.

I made my way into the city the usual way. Shifting and moving while Shifted was nearly effortless, and I sped along the narrow tunnels almost gleefully, easily making it into the storm drains without taking a single pause. My excitement was tempered a little when I realized that my sisters, though together, were nowhere near the inn. Without them there no one would know to let me in.

All right. Fine. I’d just go to them.

I followed my sense of where they were until I was within a few hundred feet of them, and unlikely to get any closer. A few minutes searching brought me to a drain in the shadow of some tall building, only a hundred or so feet farther away. The drain was narrow, but as full of… something as I was after eating the Heart it wasn’t too big of a challenge to stretch and thin myself to the point where I could fit through.

My first thought when I popped out was that I might have made a mistake. I was in a large public space, but I only knew that because of the sound of hundreds of voices, a constant susurrus in the blackness before me. I had exited in the shadow of some large, official-looking building, and I could only think of one place that I might be: the forum, probably the busiest part of the city besides the north and south docks. My sense of where my sisters were pointed into the blackness, but I had a pretty good idea about where they were.

I considered going back down, but that felt like an old, overly cautious way of thinking. To anyone looking, I was just a patch of deeper shadow. What did I have to worry about? As long as I didn’t get too tired to stay Shifted, no one would be any the wiser. And, perhaps I wouldn’t even need to worry about that?

I scanned the building I’d come up beside. It had columns, decorations, windows, even a balcony or two. In short, it had all kinds of things sticking out of or recessed into the walls, which made it perfect for anyone with the will and reach to try to climb it.

Getting to the roof didn’t even take me a minute.

I did what I always did on roofs. I found a nice, shadowy spot. Then I Shifted back, settled in, and just watched.

I’d been right, of course. I was indeed on the forum, and below me hundreds of people milled about, coming or going or standing around in groups. Some of the groups were just circles of people talking to each other, while others were clearly one or two people soapboxing to whatever small crowd gathered before them. And I’d been right in my guess about where my sisters were. Now that I could see normally, my sense of them pointed me clearly to the Palace, the center of government for the city.

It was a relaxing way to spend the hour or so that it took before I felt my sisters moving. From the sheer number of people it felt like half the city must have passed through the forum. The soapboxers came and went, and some people seemed to be there only for them, joining new crowds as they formed. Small groups of armed people who were clearly adventurers would sometimes pass through, go into one of the three large official buildings, or use the place to meet up. And once a tight knot of uniformed guards cleared a wide path through the throng, a single well dressed man approaching “my” building at a relaxed pace among them. Some important official, I assumed, probably one of the councilors.

I felt them moving, and soon a stream of people left the Palace. The session must have been over. When my sisters came out, dressed in their finest clothes, I expected them to come to me. I was a little miffed when they didn’t! What could be so important that they didn’t come and say “Hi”? They knew where I was. As distant as they were I could see them both looking my way every so often, even as they kept moving at a steady pace through the crowd. This was easier for Herald, of course, as she was a head taller than most, while Mak and I only had line of sight when the crowd happened to thin out. Despite that it was most often Mak that I saw with her face turned my way, while Herald kept her face pointed straight ahead, as though she was fixed on something.

It occurred to me that they might be following someone.

I had no idea who that might be. Or rather, I had a guess and a hope that it might be the Blossom or someone belonging to her, but I had no way of picking them out in the crowd. It made no difference. As Herald and Mak showed no sign of slowing and coming to me, I’d just follow them instead.