Shapers of Worlds

Call to Arms-1

Call to Arms

By Tanya Huff

“Mirian! There’s an Imperial Courier waiting for you in the market square!”

Mirian held out a hand to keep Dusty from toppling over, so fast was his change from fur to skin. “On a horse?” Not everyone in Harar—Orin’s largest settlement—was Pack, but this was the old country, and the population skewed to fur. Convincing a horse not bred in Orin to enter Harar was next to impossible.

“No, on foot.” His lips were drawn so far off his teeth, Mirian barely understood him. “She wants you. Why does the Empire want you?”

“I expect it’s not the entire Empire.” When Dusty continued snarling, she sighed. “So, tell her where I am.”

“Can’t. Otto wants you to come to her. Suspicious, power-tripping, mangy . . .”

“Dusty.” Mirian was Alpha of her own small pack, but they lived in Harar at the Pack Leader’s sufferance. Otto, new enough to the position of Pack Leader the scars on his shoulder were pink, was still testing his authority. Still checking to make sure Mirian would continue to follow the rules. To be fair, she didn’t blame him. Rolling up onto her feet, she brushed dirt off her hands. “Tell him I’m on my way, but I need to clean up a bit first.”

“Because you won’t come running when the Empire snaps its fingers!”

“Because I’ve been gardening. And I haven’t lost all the manners my mother worked so hard to instill. Go.”

His ears were back in protest when he changed, but he turned and headed back toward the centre of the settlement.

Mirian watched him run. Other than the gleaming silver fur that marked the torture he’d endured as a child, he was, like everything else in her world, multiple shades of grey. He’d grown into a teenager in the nine years since she’d taken him and the rest of her pack out of the Empire. In skin, he was taller than the others his age, arms and legs and torso given length by the castration he’d suffered under Leopold's knife. His face still held boyish curves and probably always would. In fur, he was large without bulk, and faster than everyone he’d ever raced against. In time, Mirian could see him becoming the Pack Leader’s top runner—once he worked his way through his current teenage rebellion.

“Provided I don’t strangle him before he manages it,” she muttered. She shifted the dirt on her skin back to the ground, and stepped up onto the wind.

Tucked out of sight in the alley by the cheese shop, Dusty glared at the courier who stood by the well talking to Otto. The Empire of memory smelled of blood and death. The courier smelled of sweat and long days on the road without a chance to change or bathe in anything but cold water. She was tall and athletic, probably ex-military. As Dusty understood it, a lot of couriers were, and that would explain the rifle leaning against her pack. She didn’t look dangerous, but Dusty was well aware looks meant nothing. He didn’t look dangerous. But he was.

“Hey!”

Jerked out of his thoughts, Dusty started as Alver waved a hand in front of his nose.

“I called you like six times.” The young mage crossed his arms, half a dozen white flecks drifting across the dark brown of his eyes. “What’s up? Does she smell so fascinating you think you can ignore me?”

Dusty shouldered him hard enough to nearly knock him over and changed. “That’s an Imperial Courier!”

“Well, that explains the uniform.” Alver threw a kilt at his head. “Here. Unless you planned on waving your bare ass at her.”

“The Empire slaughtered most of my family, then hacked off my father’s leg, locked him into a silver collar, and threw me in a cell with him as he bled to death.” He yanked the kilt straps through the double buckles and waved a hand below his waist. “And this.”

Sean Reiter thought the emperor had him castrated so he could be raised as a pet. “Or because he was a sadistic, insane, murdering son of a syphilitic hog,” Sean had amended dryly. “Could be either. Probably both.”

Alver frowned. “Well, yeah, but she didn’t do it.”

“She’s Empire!”

“So?” Alver bounced his shoulder off Dusty’s. “And stop growling at me. If she tries anything Imperial, I’m sure the Pack Leader will let you rip her throat out.”

“Mirian won’t.” Mirian didn’t understand.

“If she gives you so much as a dirty look, Mirian will turn her inside-out. You know that.” Alver shrugged. “She’s your mom, or as good as. And she’s your Alpha.”

“I’m nearly sixteen . . .”

“So am I, and my mom still licks my ears. What can you do? I mean, someday I’ll have to . . .”

Dusty raised a hand to cut him off, face turned into the breeze. “Mirian’s coming.”

He expected Mirian to ride the wind into the market square, bring a gust strong enough to throw the Imperial—and maybe Otto—back on their heels, but she walked in like a normal person, Tomas in skin, fully dressed, at her side.

From what Dusty could see of her expression, the Imperial Courier had also been expecting a more mage-like entrance. Not a medium-sized twenty-seven-year-old in a faded green dress. Her hair was up, and she’d even put on shoes, although most of Harar didn’t bother in the summer.

“It’s like she’s playing dress-up,” Alver murmured. “Pretending she’s not a throwback to the kind of ancient mage who could destroy the world. Lulling them into a false sense of security. Also,” he added after a moment, “that dress is at least five years out of style.”

“No one cares about the dress,” Dusty growled.

Alver sighed. “Obviously.”

The courier recovered quickly. She stepped past Otto and tipped her head to Mirian. A sort of bow, Dusty realized, not submission. “Your Wisdom. If we could speak privately?”

“No.” Otto inserted himself between the two women. “Anything the Empire has to say will be said publicly.”

Tomas’s lips lifted off his teeth.

Leaning against the corner of the cheese shop, Alver shook his head. “Tomas needs to be careful with those almost-challenges or Mirian’s going to lose her Beta.”

“Tomas can take him.” Tomas had been part of the Scout Pack in the Aydori army.

Alver snorted. “That’s what I said.”

Dusty elbowed him to shut him up.

Over by the well, Mirian had given Otto a long, assessing look. Otto met it until Mirian’s lips twitched and she looked away. “Here is fine,” she said, gesturing for the courier to begin.

“As you wish, Your Wisdom.”

“Clever.” Alver nodded, as though his opinion meant something. “She’s acknowledging the decision was Mirian’s, not Otto’s.”

“Alver, shut up. I need to hear this.”

As though someone had heard him—and given the Mage-Pack scattered through the gathering crowd, Dusty wasn’t ruling it out—a breeze came up and the courier’s voice filled the market square.

“I BRING WORD FROM LORD GOVERNOR . . .” Eyes wide behind the lenses of her glasses, she stared around the square.

“Apologies,” called a voice from the crowd. “That was a little loud. I’ll dial it back.”

Tomas laughed and leaned in toward Mirian. Dusty couldn’t hear what he said, but Mirian laughed with him.

“Probably reminding her of that time she nearly deafened the lot of us.”

“We were seven,” Dusty snapped.

“But I remember. Look . . .” Alver waved at the courier, who was visibly pulling herself together. “She didn’t expect basic mage-craft. You know what that tells us? Mages are still thin on the ground in the Empire.”

“Comes from murdering them.”

“Probably.”

The courier took a visibly deep breath and began again. “I bring word from Lord Governor Marchand of the Imperial province of Bienotte. Over the last few years, the Krestonian Empire has raised the taxes paid by Bienotte again and again. The people of Bienotte struggle to survive. Lord Governor Marchand has had enough. He won’t watch his people starve. Will you help him throw the heavy yoke of the Empire off his people? Will you help lead them to independence?”

Mirian c****d her head—and blinked eyes white from rim to rim. When Dusty was younger, he’d thought she could see the truth. He wasn’t entirely convinced she couldn’t. After a long moment, she smiled and said, “No.”

“But he wants to free his people from the heavy yoke of the Empire! Lead them to independence!” Hands in the air, Dusty stomped across the common room and back, bare feet slapping against the floor. “You should be all over that!”

Distracted by the silver lines of anger trailing in Dusty’s wake, it took Mirian a moment to ask, “Why?”

“Why?” His lips drew back off his teeth. “Maybe because of Nine! And Bryan and Dillyn! Matt and Jace! Jared and Karl! Maybe because of Stephen! They killed him, even if it took him a couple of years to die! Maybe because of me and my dad and all the other Pack they murdered! Maybe because of that!”

“Dusty, I understand that you feel . . .”

“No, you don’t!” He took a deep breath. “You can’t! They have to pay for what they did.”

Mirian tried to find the words that would push past Dusty’s anger. “This is a different government. Imperial Packs are treated as equals under the law . . .” She kept talking over his protest. “. . . and when they aren’t, because laws and prejudices don’t always walk in step, the wind brings the news and I deal with it. You know that.” It had happened less and less as the years passed. Mirian hoped it was because people defaulted to doing the right thing when not egged on by a corrupt government. Tomas insisted it was because she’d removed enough bigoted assholes their numbers had dropped below critical mass.

“Then why won’t you help now?”

She shook her head. “Governor Marchand doesn’t want me to help. He wants me to be his weapon. He wants me to attack the Empire for him.”

“So?”

“If the governor—or anyone else—wants independence from the Empire, they have achieve it themselves.”

“That could take forever!” Anger tinted the air around his head and shoulders. “You heard the courier, they’re starving now!”

“If Governor Marchand had asked for food . . .”

“They asked for freedom. You need to free his people from the Empire!”

“I do?”

“Yes!”

“Then they’d be mine.”

“Mirian!”

She waved a hand at the clutter. They’d already expanded twice, when first Matt, and then Karl, were married. “Where would I put them?” Beside her, Tomas’s tongue lolled out, and she buried a hand in his ruff. “Dusty, you have to . . .”

“No, I don’t,” he snarled, changed, and charged out of the room. The screen door slammed behind him.

In the next room, Karl and Julianna’s twins screamed their objection to the sudden noise, their distress pulsing through the house.

Mirian sighed. “That went well.”

Tomas’s nostrils flared as he glanced around the dining-room table. “Where’s Dusty?”

“He’s gone up to the summer pastures with Alver’s family.” Mirian motioned him into his chair and pushed the platter of rare beef toward him, using her elbow to keep Dillyn from grabbing seconds before everyone had firsts. Her mother would be appalled at the chaos and even more appalled at her belief that the sturdy harvest table and mismatched chairs belonged in a dining room.

“He’s that angry with you?”

“He’ll get over it,” Nine growled before Mirian could answer. “The Empire can rot from within without our Alpha’s help.”

Dusty pushed his shoulder up against Alver’s side and pushed a branch out of the way with his muzzle. Firelight reflecting on her glasses, the courier reached for another piece of wood, paused, frowned, and said, “You might as well come out. I know you’re there.”

Alver, who had no sense of self-preservation at all, stepped into the circle of light before Dusty could stop him. “How?” he demanded.

She smiled, although she didn’t relax. “You smell of sandalwood.”

“I do?” He turned his head, sniffed the shoulder of his jacket, then half-turned to meet Dusty’s gaze. “You might have mentioned that. Now, are you coming out or not? This was your idea.” He mimicked Dusty’s voice. “I’ll tell my family I’m going to the summer pastures with you, and you tell your family Mirian asked you to stay in Harar to work on your mage-craft. We’ll catch up to the courier and go with her to help Governor Marchand defeat the Empire.”