The Shifter by Janice Hardy

didn’t even have to dodge crocodiles to get it.
    I nodded, and the mother started sobbing again. I placed my hands on the child and tried not to think about the fisherman’s chances. It was hard once I felt how injured she was. How injured he’d feel once I healed her and shifted all that pain to him. It wasn’t real injury anymore, but could so much pain kill?
    “You’re sure?” I asked the fisherman. “This is”—I glanced at the parents—“bad.”
    “I’m sure.”
    I turned to Zertanik. “Do you have another cot or table?”
    He flicked a hand at Jeatar, who slipped out and returned with a cheap vendor table like the shopkeeps used at the market.
    “Put it next to her,” I instructed, “with me in between. I’ll need to do this at the same time.” Though they didn’t deserve the sparing, the fisherman did, and I didn’t want to say the child was so injured that I didn’t think I could hold her pain long enough to shift it. Some things folks were better off not knowing.
    I put one hand on each, gritted my teeth, and drew . Agony raced into my arm, cut across my chest and down my other arm, faster than I’d drawn , like it wanted out before something caught it. Bright specks flashed around my eyes, shifting to red, pale at first, then darkening, tinting the room. Then the pain poured into the fisherman, and nothing I tried would stop it.
    Struggling to stay on my feet, I blocked out his screams and thought of Tali.

    Jeatar set a damp cloth on my forehead while Morell mopped up my puke in the front hall. I’d almost gotten his shoes in my rush for the door, but that didn’t make me feel any better. Jeatar had carried me to the couch after I’d emptied my stomach, and even lying down, I felt the room wobble.
    “Feeling better?” he asked, real concern on his face. Morell glared at me, but he looked better, so there had to be a little pynvium somewhere if they were able to heal him.
    “Some.” The fisherman had finally stopped screaming. I’d tried to keep some of his pain, but it had poured through me fast as the Cyden River and I couldn’t dam it. Closest I’d ever come to feeling death, and the poor man had to live with it now. Please, Saint Saea, let him live . “What’s going to happen to him?”
    “Zertanik made arrangements to get him home. He’ll be taken care of.”
    “He can’t hold that much pain for long. Even if you only have a few pynvium items left, take some of it from him, please. It was so much worse than we thought. He can’t take it.” My stomach rolled again.
    “Easy.” He put a steadying hand on my shoulder, but I spotted doubt in his eyes. He masked it quick. “In a day or two the pynvium shipments will arrive and we’ll buy the pain from him.”
    “How can you be sure the shipments are even going to get here?” He couldn’t promise anything with Verlatta under siege.
    Jeatar glanced at Zertanik’s door. “He pays very close attention to those things. Don’t worry, the fisherman will be fine.”
    He wouldn’t be fine. Who could be fine with all that pain? Enough to kill a child, maybe enough to kill a man. I closed my eyes, but that made it easier to see his agony. I opened them again. This was all for Tali. I could stand it if I remembered that. “He’ll ask his sources about Tali?”
    “I’ll make sure he does, I promise.”
    “When will you know something?”
    “There’s not a lot of information coming out of the League right now. Might take me a day or two to hear something.”
    Would the fisherman still be alive then? What had I done?
    The door opened and the Duke’s rich couple walked out, the sleeping little girl clutched in her mother’s arms. The father reached into his pocket, then dropped a handful of coins on my chest. I flinched, but they didn’t burn. They should have after what I’d done to earn them.
    Ten oppas.
    I sat up and they slid down into my lap. “You said fifty.”
    “You didn’t help her for us—you did it for