“What are you doing?” she asked. Then she frowned. “How did that mangy cat get in here?”
Solanda growled softly in the back of her throat. She was not mangy. And the woman had never called her that before.
“I told you that you were supposed to be in here by yourself to think about what you did today. Things could have been much worse. Fortunately, she was in good mood. You know what those people can do? Why it’s said they can cut the skin off a person with the flick of —”
Solanda yowled, and the woman stepped back, a hand over her heart. Esmerelda sat up, worry on her small face.
“Are you okay, Goldie?”
Solanda licked her right paw as if she had twisted it. She was not going to let that woman tell this little girl about Fey atrocities — even if they were true.
“Come on, Goldie,” Esmerelda’s mother said. “There’s some beef for you in the kitchen.”
Usually that would have gotten Solanda off the bed. But she could sneak down after everyone was asleep and take what she needed. Right now, she wanted to stay beside Esmerelda.
“Goldie,” the woman said.
Esmerelda, good child that she was, bit her lower lip and said nothing. She didn’t beg for the company that she obviously wanted.
“Goldie!” her mother sounded exasperated now. Then she shook her head. “Why do we put up with this animal?”
Neither Solanda nor Esmerelda answered.
Finally Esmerelda’s mother sighed. “All right, she can stay. But I do expect you to sleep in that dress tonight and to think about how you could have hurt us all. That rip should be a reminder of the danger your misbehavior put us in. Nye isn’t the place it used to be, child. Do something wrong, and those Fey will harm all of us.”
Then she pulled the door closed, and Solanda heard the boards creak as she made her way down the stairs.
Esmerelda’s fingers played with the rip. Solanda looked at it, then crossed the bed, took the skirt in her teeth and pulled. The rip grew. Esmerelda giggled, then covered her mouth. Solanda pulled harder. If the little girl had to sleep in these clothes, she might as well be comfortable.
Esmerelda ripped the pantaloons too, along the dirt line, giggling as she did so. “Mommy will think I did it when I was running,” she said. “You’re so smart, Goldie.”
Of course she was. Solanda preened and allowed herself to be petted one more time.
Then Esmerelda looked at the door, her smile fading. “Sometimes I think Mommy doesn’t want me. She wants somebody else. Somebody perfect.”
Too bad she didn’t realize that the child she had was better than perfect. Solanda sighed softly. Some people had more than they deserved.
***
The idea came to her in the middle of the night, in that hot and stuffy room. She could take Esmerelda away, and Esmerelda’s parents wouldn’t even know it had happened. But it would take the cooperation of the Fey Domestics.
Fey magic was divided into two parts: warrior and domestic. Warrior magic was designed for warfare. Some Fey magic turned its practitioner into a weapon, like the Foot Soldiers who had fingernails that could slice better than a blade. Domestic magic could not be used to fight any war. Domestics lost their magic if they killed. Their magics were healing magics or home-bound magics, such as spells that made chairs more inviting or fires warmer.
The next morning, after making certain that Esmerelda got breakfast, Solanda slipped out the cat door. She went to the Domicile that the Fey Domestics had set up just outside of town. The Domicile had been built especially for the Domestics, and covered with various protection and healing spells. It was a traditional U-shaped building — with hearth and home magics in one length of the U, the healing wards in the other, and the middle section as a meeting place in between.
Solanda usually didn’t seek out the Domestics. They always wanted to experiment with her — have her try on a new cloak covered with some sort of rain protection or have her taste a new food to see if it had an effect on her Shifting. The last time she had been in a Domicile had been when she had broken a paw jumping from a tree in one of the last Nye battles. The Domestics had mended the bone, and had given her a smelly ointment she had to apply in cat form. She had thought the stench alone would kill her.
As she mounted the steps to the center part of the building, she shook off her paws. Here she would not Shift to Fey form. The Domestics weren’t as obsessed with power as Rugar was, so she didn’t have to use her height as a reminder of the strength of her magic.
She pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The air was cool and welcoming. It smelled of a sea breeze. Bits of magic floated in the air. Spinner’s magic. They were working on their looms. She could hear the hum just down the corridor.
A Baker entered, his fingers dusted with flour. They glowed. And she knew he had spelled the bread he’d been baking to remain fresh for as long as possible. It was a traveling spell, one most often used when troops were heading off to battle. She wondered if someone had requested it.
“I’m here to see Chadn.”
The Baker nodded, then slipped through a door that led to the Healing part of the Domicile. Solanda hopped onto a chair. Her mood rose and she cursed, jumping down. She didn’t need to be spelled, to wait, happy and contented, on a chair dusted with Domestic magic. Instead she paced the cool floor and wondered why she couldn’t smell the baking bread.
Finally Chadn entered the room. She was a young Shaman, although the toll of her power had already turned her hair white. Her face was wizened, her mouth a small oval amid wrinkles. Only her eyes were bright — sparkling black circles of light in a ruined face.
She had been assigned to stay with Rugar during the war and she was happy to be free of him. Shaman were the most independent Fey: their Vision as strong as those of the Leaders, but their magic Domestic so they could not rule a warrior people. They were the wise ones, the advisors, supposedly the strength behind the Black Throne. The Black King required a Shaman of his son, but did not use one himself. He had dismissed his own, years ago, for disobeying him. It was one of many areas where the Black King broke with tradition.
“Solanda,” Chadn said. “I had hoped to see you.”
Solanda jumped on an end table and was relieved that her mood did not change. She sat on her haunches and looked into Chadn’s face.
“I have a request,” she said. “It’s for a Nyeian child.”
“A child?” Chadn sounded surprised. “Not a Fey child?”
Solanda shook her head.
“I had Seen you with a Fey child.”
The Shaman’s Visions — and the Vision that leaders like the Black King had — allowed them glimpses into the future. Some said that the glimpses allowed the Visionary to change the future. Others believed that the glimpses led the Visionary to that future.
Solanda’s eyes narrowed. “I have not been with a Fey child.”
Chadn nodded. “It was on Blue Isle. The child was a Shifter, and you kept her from death.”
Solanda’s whiskers twitched. “I told Rugar I would not go to Blue Isle with him.”
“The future of our people lies with you, Solanda.”
“And a child?” Solanda raised her chin. “Are you sure it was a Fey child?”
“Not entirely,” Chadn said. “The child had blue eyes.”
Solanda gave a soft grunt of surprise. She had heard of blue-eyed people, but she had never seen one. “The child couldn’t be Nyeian?”
“She was Fey, and newborn. She had a birthmark on her chin. Only her eyes were strange, and perhaps that was because of the Shifting. I Saw you put your hands on her lips, and swear to protect her, raise her, and make her strong. Then I Saw her full grown, saying you had been the closest thing she had to a mother.”
Solanda laughed, although inside she felt cold. A Shifter only swore to protect a child who held the future of the Empire. A blue-eyed child that Shifted? The center of the Empire?
“Visions can be altered,” Solanda said. “I am not leaving Nye.”
“You may have no choice.”
“I’ll always have a choice,” Solanda said.
Chadn inclined her head toward Solanda as if giving in on that point. “What does the Nyeian child need?”
Solanda took a deep breath. “She is different from any other Nyeian I’ve seen. Strong, independent. She met Jewel yesterday and is being punished for it. I would like to remove the child from her family and bring her here, to be raised among us. She will be useful when she’s grown. She will be part of the second-generation, the Nyeians that rule Nye for the Fey.”
Chadn stared at her for a moment. “So take her. Shifters steal children.”
“This one’s mother will raise a fuss if she’s gone.”
“What mother wouldn’t?”
“She’ll come to us.”
“And you can’t prove to the Black King that we must keep the child.”
“Not yet, anyway,” Solanda said.
Chadn folded her hands over her stomach. “You want a Changeling.”
“Yes,” Solanda said.
“How old is the child?”
“Five.”
Chadn sighed. “Have you asked the child if she’s willing to leave?”
“Not yet. I wanted to know if I have help first.”
“You will keep the child at your side?”
Solanda frowned. That wasn’t a normal request. Shifters rarely kept children. They usually brought them to Domestics to raise. “Must I?”
“At five, it will be you she trusts.”
Solanda shrugged. “Then she shall stay with me.”
“And you will stay away from Blue Isle.” Chadn said that not as a question, but as a statement.
“Rugar will not let a Nyeian child in his war party.”
“So the child serves two purposes.” Chadn’s eyes narrowed. “Has she magic?”
“Of course not.” Solanda laughed. “There is not magic outside the Fey.”
Chadn frowned. “I am no longer certain of that.”
“Because you Saw a blue-eyed Shifter?”
“Because I Saw a great war, coming when we least expect it.”
“War is part of Fey life.” Solanda jumped off the table and headed for the door. “I’ll bring you news of the child tomorrow.”
“I’ll have Changeling stone ready,” Chadn said. “But realize before you act, that this is for life.”
“I already know that,” Solanda said. “I have chosen well.”
“I hope so,” Chadn said.
***
Solanda went to the docks and sat on a fence. She loved it here. The Infrin Sea formed the most natural harbor on Galinas, and there was always some sort of activity. Toward the north end of the harbor, the Nyeian builders made the great ships. Those ships traveled all over the known world, and now Fey Domestics helped unload cargo that would go all over the Empire.
Ships from Blue Isle had stopped coming to Nye when news reached them of the Fey takeover. She would never see an Islander, never learn more about them than she already had.
And that would be all right.
For there were some things she couldn’t discuss with Rugar’s Shaman. Like the prophecies that had been made by another Shaman at Solanda’s birth, prophecies that claimed her legacy would be in the children she saved.
Children — not child, like Chadn had seen. Solanda would influence the life of more than one.
The breeze was cooler here, carrying with it the smell of salt and a tinge of dead fish. That smell made her stomach rumble. She tried not to think of the things she ate in her cat form, things she would find disgusting when she was in Fey form. Right now, raw dead fish sounded extremely appetizing.
But she didn’t go in search of the source of the smell. She had some thinking to do. Prophecies and Visions made her nervous. She had no idea what to do with the information Chadn had given her. Because, at various points in her life, Solanda had been told by Visionaries that her future held contradictory things.
One Shaman had told her she had to avoid the Black Family for she would kill a Black Heir. Another Shaman had told her she would raise a Black Heir. And now Chadn had Seen her swear to protect a blue-eyed Shifter, a newborn who couldn’t survive on her own.
Solanda bowed her head. The prophecy she never mentioned, the one her parents had kept silent, had come the day of her birth and she had never forgotten it. The prophecy was a cold one: she would die before her time, far from home, for a crime she did not regret.
The Fey did not believe in crime. They were constantly at war, so the crimes that plagued other races — murder, theft — were absorbed into the wars themselves. The Fey only punished two crimes: treason and failure. Both of those crimes were considered crimes against the Empire. Failure was a large crime, encompassing the failure to follow an order, or the failure to defeat an enemy in a prolonged battle.
Treason was any crime against the Black Family and was such a heresy, that it wasn’t even discussed among rational Fey.
Both crimes bore the penalty of death.
It seemed to her that she would never commit crimes like that, that the prophecies had come because she was a Shifter, not because of her character. She wasn’t as flighty or as difficult as anyone said she was.
And besides, she had to take care of Esmerelda.
She wished she could be there the morning that Esmerelda’s parents discovered the Changeling. It would look like Esmerelda, even act like her — if stone could act like a living breathing creature. But it would only last a few days, and then it would cease to exist. They would think Esmerelda dead, when, in actuality, she was only gone.
Then, perhaps, that wretch of a mother would regret how she treated her daughter.
Esmerelda would live a life she couldn’t even imagine now. She wouldn’t have to wear six layers of clothes on the hottest day of the year, and she would learn how to live life to its fullest instead of remaining indoors and studying all the time.
Esmerelda would be the closest thing to Fey that a Nyeian could be — and for the first time in her young life, she would be happy. Solanda would see to that.
They would both be very happy.
***
Solanda returned to the house after dinner. Ultimately, she found she couldn’t resist the dead fish that were piled near one of the docks. She had eaten herself sick, and then had to clean every inch of her fur before she even attempted the walk home.