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“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“Depends on your definition of ‘human,’” Troy said.
They looked human to me.
“Do they use names?” Owen said from his corner of the balcony. “If they use names, they are people.”
Troy frowned. “That’s a weird criterion.”
“If they name themselves, they have a language and a sense of self,” Owen said. “It means they recognize that each one of them is unique and unlike the others, so they must have a separate name. That means they know that life is valuable.”
Unexpected werebison wisdom.
“Where did they come from?” I muttered.
“Could there be a portal?” Owen asked.
“Yes, could it be a pocket realm?” Troy asked. “Maybe they existed in it for an extended period of time, separate from us?”
“Portals have a very specific power signature,” I explained. “This entire area is flooded with the magic from the forest. Right now, we’re ankle-deep in it.”
Troy glanced down.
“Nothing about this magic indicates a portal. It’s completely different.”
It felt like something else entirely, and I wasn’t ready to go there yet.
Not only were these shapeshifters different from us, but they also didn’t look at all like the people with the human tribute tapestries. That meant not just one group of enemies, but two. Possibly more.
“If I had to design a human adapted to shapeshifting, I would make something similar to them,” Troy said. “A ton of dense body mass to work with, a skull structure that makes muzzle formation a breeze, expanded lung capacity, and a large heart. Their noses are longer, and their ears are larger and pointed. Not only are they stronger than an average shapeshifter in human form, but their olfactory and auditory senses are likely better than ours. From a shapeshifter point of view, they are better adapted.”
Now there was a disturbing thought.
“I’ve recorded my findings.” Troy patted his notebook. “As soon as the tech hits, I’m going to take some pictures and send them and some blood and tissue samples down to Atlanta.”
“A second opinion?” I asked.
“The more eyes on this, the better.”
Doolittle would be fascinated by this. If we weren’t careful, he’d be up here within a day of those samples arriving to his lab.
“What about the collars?” I asked.
“Oh! Almost forgot.” Troy jumped up and brought the plastic cooler over to me. I opened it. Inside lay a golden collar.
I held my hand above it. Inert.
I took it out, holding it carefully by the edges. The metal felt cold under my fingertips. Two rows of rectangles, one inner, one outer, similar to antique expansion bracelets. I carefully stretched the collar. The segments slid apart under the pressure of my fingers, enough to accommodate the shift from a human neck to an animal one.
“It has gold in it,” Troy said. “It stings a bit.”
Silver was toxic to shapeshifters, but they had trouble with all noble metals. Gold was second on the toxicity level. Wearing it would irritate the skin. Curran once described it as having a constant mild burn. The shapeshifters wearing these would feel them every second of the day. A constant reminder, but of what? Was this a badge of honor or a slave collar? If it hurt them, why hadn’t they ripped them off?
There were thin glyphs etched into the inside of the collar. I turned it to get a better look.
“Company!” Troy barked.
At the tree line, a group of people walked out into the clearing.
The guard in the tower reached for the bell.
“Don’t touch that!” I yelled.
The boy dropped his hand, and I tossed the collar back into the cooler and took off running.
5
I got down from the third-floor balcony and to the top of the wall in under six seconds. It had to be some sort of a record.
Troy and Owen still beat me to it. Unlike them, I didn’t fancy dramatically jumping off the top floor balcony onto the street. I’d break my legs.
The teenage guard manning the tower handed me a pair of binoculars. I leveled them at the group waiting on the edge of the woods.
Ten people total. Eight looked like the woman in the sketch, tall and dressed in light brown tunics, cinched at the waist by belts. If you drew a horizontal line about two inches above their elbows, everything below it was relatively human skin, a kind of light ochre touched by the sun. The skin tone seemed uneven, but it could’ve been dirt.
Everything above the line was smeared in a thick coat of bluish clay: the top halves of their chests, their necks, their faces, and the first three inches of their hair starting at the scalp. The clay had dried, forming hairline cracks on their skin and stiffening their brown hair up and away from their faces.
The eight clay-covered people held spears, each exactly as tall as its owner and tipped by a spearhead made of some light-colored material. They looked like a group of hunters. The two people they clustered around definitely didn’t.
