“But you’ve—”
“Yes, we’ve been intimate on many occasions, but his heart belongs to another. It belongs to a woman he thinks he can’t have.”
“I see,” Tatiana said, although she obviously didn’t.
“That woman is Jilly Coppercom, one of the women Joe Crazy Dog is trying to find.”
Tatiana returned to her seat and said nothing for a long moment.
“Tell me what just happened,” she finally said.
Galfreya wasn’t given the chance. A figure appeared on the conference table directly in front of her—a small red-haired woman, sitting on her haunches. Swanson rose so quickly his chair fell behind him. Two throwing knives appeared from under his jacket, one in each hand. By the door, the guards lifted their crossbows, aiming at the woman. It took Galfreya a moment to recognize her as Christiana.
Christy Riddell’s shadow. Geordie’s sister.
Christiana pointed a finger at the guards without ever taking her gaze from Galfreya.
“Don’t even think you can use those on me,” she said, her voice conversational and pleasant. She pointed with her other hand at Swanson. “Nor you—the big boy with his knives. The first person to try is going to find out just how hard it is to walk around with his weapons up his ass.” Then she smiled at Galfreya. “See how calm and reasonable I’m being? Did I come in here kicking ass? No. But I warned you what would happen if you screwed around with Geordie, and unless you’ve got a damn good explanation for what just happened to him, you’re going to find out that there’s a lot more to a shadow than some bit of darkness you can roll up into a corner and forget about.”
“Your Majesty?” one of the guards by the door asked Tatiana, looking for direction.
“Do you know this woman?” Tatiana said.
Galfreya nodded. “Unfortunately, yes.”
“Then stand down,” she told her guards.
Galfreya wasn’t so certain that was the best idea. Not with that dark look in Christiana’s eyes.
Christy’s shadow turned a little and studied the queen from over her shoulder.
“Now I see where your people get their fashion sense,” she said. “How old are you? A thousand? Two thousand? And you’re dressing like a teenager?”
Tatiana regarded her coldly. “You do understand that I have but to say the word, and you’ll be dead.”
“Well, you could give it a try,” Christiana said, as though she were Joe’s sister, not Geordie’s, “and we’ll see how it works out for you.”
“I will not have yet another—”
But Christina turned her back on the queen and focused her dark gaze on Galfreya.
“I’m still waiting for an explanation,” she said. “I know something just took out Geordie and there was the stink of fairy in the air when it happened.”
As soon as the words were spoken, Galfreya realized their truth. There had been the sense of a fairy present at the moment of Geordie’s—she found it too hard to consider the word death—disappearance from the world. But whether it had been a Seelie elf, or some Unseelie bogan, she couldn’t tell from her fleeting memory of the moment.
“Would someone please tell me what’s going on here?” Tatiana demanded.
Christiana shook her head without looking in the queen’s direction.
“Uh-uh,” she said. “This is between me and your little skater seer.”
“We’re in the middle of a crisis here,” Galfreya told her.
“You betcha. And if you don’t start coming up with some answers—”
Before she could finish, Galfreya opened a view into the between, and the thunder of drums and hooves pounding on the dirt filled the air. Christiana stared at the gathering cerva clans, her face expressionless.
Galfreya was unable to resist a dig: “Didn’t you even see them on your way here?”
“Didn’t come that way,” Christiana said after a moment. She turned to Tatiana and added, “What did you do to them?”
“What did we do?”
That damned shadow girl just lifted an eyebrow.
“I know the cousins,” she said. “Sure, you’ll get the odd hothead, determined to right all the old wrongs, and everybody agrees, but it never really comes to much of anything. Getting cousins to agree to something is just about as hard as getting fairy to dress their age. But this . . . “ She pointed to the ever-growing herd of buffalo soldiers. “To get that many of them riled up, all at the same time, you had to really piss them off.”
Galfreya let the view into the between close, but didn’t respond. Around the table, the others remained silent as well, waiting for Tatiana to speak or not.
Christiana gave the queen a considering look before turning back to Galfreya.
“So, does this have anything to do with what happened to Geordie?” she asked.
“What makes you ask that?”
“Just answer the question.”
Galfreya let her gaze go to the queen for guidance and Tatiana shrugged.
“We don’t know for sure,” Galfreya said. “Part of what’s happening here is tied up in a problem we’ve had with a gang of bogans. So far, we know that they’ve been hunting cerva and kidnapped a pair of human women—one of them being Geordie’s friend Jilly.”
“And now they’ve got him.”
“We don’t know that. The first I realized something had happened to him was a few moments before you arrived.”
“And now we must ask you to leave,” Tatiana said. “We have business to conduct that concerns only us.”
Christiana shook her head. “Hold on a minute here. You’re still not telling me what happened to Geordie.”
“He’s gone,” Galfreya said. “And that’s all we know. He’s either . . . dead or disappeared into some world that we can’t access.”
Christiana gave a slow nod. “And you have to deal with these cerva before you can try to find out.”
Galfreya almost laughed. The shadow girl spoke of the problem at hand as though it were simply a matter of adjusting the bass and treble controls on a stereo system.
“Yes, that’s about it,” she said, rather than trying to explain the sheer volume of complications that were involved.
“So what’s your plan?”
“As I’ve already told you,” Tatiana broke in, “this is our concern, not yours.”
Christiana glanced at the queen and cocked her eyebrow again.
“You don’t think I could help?” she asked.
“I don’t see how anyone could help us at this point,” Tatiana told her.
Christiana smiled. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. Minisino’s the new war chief of the buffalo cerva, right?”
Tatiana gave her a slow nod.
“Well, he and I go way back. Stop treating me like some lower life form and maybe I’ll talk to him for you.”
“And then what?”
“Then you’ll help me deal with whoever hurt my brother Geordie.”
Tatiana studied her for a long moment before giving a royal nod.
“Help us with the cerva,” she said, “and we will do all in our power to help you in return.”
“Fair enough.”
“You really think you can just talk to Minisino?” Galfreya asked.
Christiana smiled. “I might not have to.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, there’s something you all seem to be forgetting here.”
Rabedy
Long after Odawa had left him on the cliff top, Rabedy remained behind, staring down at the monstrous gathering of buffalo soldiers. Just looking at them started him trembling until he had to sit down on one of the slabs of granite at the edge of the drop-off, he was shaking so bad. He drew up his knees and wrapped his arms around his legs. He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t.
This was horrible, horrible, horrible.
He’d known bad things were going to happen when Big Dan first had the gang take up with Odawa. He’d just known. But he cou
ld never have guessed it would be this bad.
And who was left to deal with it? Not Big Dan. Not any of the gang. Not Odawa, for sure.
There was just him.
And what was he supposed to do? Go down and wave his ears and tail at the buffalo and say, look at me, I’m part animal, just like you. Listen to me.
They’d stomp him under those hooves of theirs like he was a bug, and that would be the end of him.
He sighed.
Well, it wasn’t as though there was anybody who would miss him. Too bogan for most fairy, not bogan enough for his own clans.
He tried to pick out individuals in the mass of stomping brown figures below, but it was impossible. They were too far away and moving too much. From this vantage point there was only the carpet of brown.
Would any of them listen to him?
What could he even say if they did?
There was no excuse for what the gang had done. No explanation that would justify killing those cerva, and certainly nothing that would bring them back.
It was hopeless.
Hopeless, hopeless.
Unless . . .
It suddenly occurred to him that there were an awful lot of buffalo gathering down there in the valley below him. And if some of those warrior cerva were spirits, called up from their graves, or the ground where they had fallen . . .
He stood up.
Maybe there was someone he could talk to. Somebody who might listen. Somebody who would agree that the responsibility for the recent deaths lay not with all fairy, but only with one gang of bogans.
He needed to go, and he needed to go quickly. Much more quickly than two short bogan legs could take him. As quick as salmon swimming through the air. Oh, where was that damned blind green-bree when he was needed?
He lifted a hand to his flopping dog ears.
Four legs were quicker than two. But he was too stupid and useless and just couldn’t master the change . . .
Odawa made it sound so easy. He said it wasn’t changing into something you weren’t, so much as remembering something you’d never been, which made absolutely no sense at all. How could you remember something you hadn’t known in the first place?
“Figure that out,” the blind green-bree had said, “and you’ll have the trick of it. The change is in your blood. It remembers, even if you don’t.” And when someone—Rabedy thought it had been Luren—asked how that was supposed to be possible, Odawa added, “Anything’s possible . . . if you want it badly enough.”
Rabedy considered that.
If you want it badly enough.
He hadn’t wanted to go hunting cerva. He’d wanted to be able to change, yes. That he’d wanted badly. But clouding that desire was the sure knowledge that the new shape would be used for killing. Big Dan had made that plain, right from the start.
Maybe that was what had stopped him partway, turning him into a bogan with a dog’s ears and tail.
It was different now. Now he wanted to help. Now he wanted to do whatever he could to make up for the wrongs in which he’d played a part. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t wanted to do it. He hadn’t spoken up loudly enough to stop it. He hadn’t really spoken up at all. He’d just gone along with the others, following Big Dan’s lead.
He needed to make up for that.
And that, he realized, he wanted more than anything he’d ever wanted before.
He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the thundering sounds of the buffalo in the valley below. When that didn’t work, he used the sound. Breathed in time to it. Twinned his pulse to the rhythm of drums and hooves. Concentrated. Focused.
If you want it badly enough.
He didn’t want this. He needed it.
The change is in your blood. It remembers, even if you don’t.
Yes. It wasn’t something strange and different. It was something he’d always known, even if he hadn’t realized he’d known it.
It was . . .
The change is in your blood.
He could do this. He could. He wasn’t some useless bogan. He was . . . he was . . .
When it happened, it was almost anticlimactic.
One moment he was a bogan, eyes shut, brow furrowed, as he concentrated. The next, his clothes became air and blew away on the breeze. He fell forward onto his hands, propelled by a sudden twist of his spine. Except his hands were paws. Fur covered his body. Everything smelled and felt and looked different, but so familiar.
He lifted his head, laughing, meaning to shout, “I did it!” It came out as a yelp and a bark and a joyous howl. He chased his tail for a moment, spinning in a wild circle, then remembered the why for this change and sped off into the forest, heading to the place where a gang of bogans had ambushed a deer, bringing her down with a flight of barb-tipped arrows.
South of the Kickaha Mountains, but already deep into the acres that made up the Kickaha rez, the dog that was Rabedy burst out from a shadowed forest in the between to pad across the meadow where Big Dan and his gang had killed the doe. He followed the slope of the meadow down to the bed of a creek and cast about for scent, his ears attuned to the approach of anything that didn’t belong here.
Belonged any less than he did, Rabedy corrected himself, then put that thought away. He wasn’t here to hurt anyone. He was here to make amends as best he could. Except he couldn’t help but be nervous, all the same, seeing how he was out here on his own in the green and the wild. But either the green-brees were too occupied with their own business to spy him here in their territories, or wearing a dog shape made him seem more like a greenbree himself, less like a bogan.
He found the bones first—already stripped clean by crows and foxes and other scavengers. Their scent was everywhere. But under it, the smell of the doe’s blood could still be found, an echo of scent clinging to the brush and stones. It grew stronger under the old beech tree where they’d butchered the carcass.
But the spirit of Walker’s daughter wasn’t here.
He hesitated for a long moment, knowing what he needed to do now, only nervous about attracting attention other than that of this one spirit to himself. But he had no choice.
He changed back into his bogan shape—it was so easy, once you knew the trick—and stood barefoot in his proper shape. There were no lingering bits of dog. His ears didn’t droop, but rose to their proper height. There was no tail slapping against his buttocks.
He wore no clothes either. He remembered Odawa explaining how they were drawn from one’s surroundings, molecule after molecule convinced to take another shape. Unable to master the change into animal shape, none of the bogans had really paid much attention to that part of the instruction, including Rabedy.
He was pretty sure he could puzzle it out now, but he couldn’t spare the time. He didn’t need clothes anyway, not for what he was here to do. He called out—across the meadow, up into the branches of the tree, down by the creek, anywhere a spirit might still be lingering. Over and over again, he made his apologies and explained why he was here.
When there was still no response after another few minutes of this, he became a dog once more. He exulted in the powerful muscles of this shape and sped off across the meadow and into the woods, heading for the crossroads where the fiddler and her corbae had stood up to Big Dan and taken the doe’s remains away from them.
There he went through the whole process again, with no better results.
That left only one other place she might be . . . if she hadn’t already travelled on to wherever it was the spirits of the green-bree went when they were done with this world. But he didn’t think she was gone yet. Spirits were never so quick to leave when their deaths were as unexpected and violent as hers had been. It was why there were ceremonies for the dead. To comfort those left behind, certainly, but also to allow the dead to let go and travel on.
The cerva would have had a ceremony for her. The question was where?
He started casting for scent once more and quickly found Walker’s. The thought of
coming face to face with the tall grim cerva was more than Rabedy could easily contemplate. He’d only ever seen Walker from a distance, and he’d like to keep it that way. But Walker’s trail would take him where he needed to go.
He gave a nervous look around himself, ears cocked, nostrils flared, before finally following the cerva’s scent into the between. The trail was old, but his dog’s nose was keen and he had no trouble staying with it. He went cautiously, every sense attuned to his surroundings so that he wouldn’t run into the cerva, or another green-bree, without having a chance to hide first.
Because it was an old trail, it took him some time to finally reach the shore of a lake where he was sure that the ceremony had taken place. Here, the faint traces of Walker’s trail disappeared into a maelstrom of cerva scents. Hundreds of different ones, but no one was here now. The beach was deserted. The water was dark where it lapped against the shore, though not as dark as the charred remains of a fire that lay halfway between the water and the rocks where he hid.
This was where the war against fairy must have been conceived, Rabedy decided. The leader of the buffalo clans would have realized that he could use this sorrowful occasion as a fulcrum to convince the others to follow his lead. Not immediately. Not here, at this ceremony. But soon after, while the sorrow and anger still ran hot in the blood of the cerva.
But what of the spirit herself?
Was she still here? Would she listen to him?
He stepped out from the rocks and padded across the granite slab to what was left of the ceremonial fire. The fur at his neck and along his spine began to prickle when he got close. He stopped and looked around. Lifting his muzzle, he searched for scents. He was still alone on the shore.
But when he turned back to the charred remains of the fire, a slender figure stood barefoot in the ashes. Her hair hung in long brown braids along either side of her narrow face, decorated with cowrie shells, feathers, and coloured beads. There were more beads woven into patterns around the throat and on the shoulders of her cotton dress. In her eyes burned a strange, unworldly light.
Though there was nothing threatening about her, Rabedy felt a sudden chill.