The truth?  The truth was that maybe a shifter couldn't change after being injured like that.  And that some shifters could only change at certain times.

But he felt to tell her that would be cruel.  He doubted her rabbit had been anything but a rabbit.  "I know I would," he said with a smile.

Albenu rutted in him like an animal and it was glorious.  The man had no regard for him at all, was just using him as a thing to fuck, and this was treatment Knai had never enjoyed.  Even the men he tempted to bed from other provinces all knew who he was and held him, touched him, fucked him with a certain restraint.  They cared.  They wanted to please him.

Albenu could not have given less of a shit about pleasing him.  He'd barely touched Knai's cock at all.  No, Knai was there for their pleasure and nothing else.

He welcomed Valor into his mouth readily, opening his throat so that every brutal thrust from Albenu forced him to swallow more of Valor.  He jostled between them, speared by two cocks and utterly at their mercy.

Albenu grunted, his thrusts coming faster and more desperate.  "You found an eager one this time, my lord."

"Oh yes," Kassian said, reclining back and content to go along with the jest.  "A long, hard sword just for your use."

Ruben glared at Charik's grip on his arm.  The grabbing and the carrying was going to have to stop.  He had a go at pulling his arm free.

"Because I don't trust them to do it right."

Razi's face darkened.  "It's usually not so difficult.  You saw me.  I'm far larger than any animal panther, and most shifters have similar tells.  Strange colors and the like.  And most can speak in some way, and we can shift out, as well."

None of which made a difference.  It wasn't telling shifters apart that was the problem.  Many hunters wanted shifter pelts and feathers, precisely because they were so unique.

That was...progress he supposed.  And it would go faster with multiple people working on it.  But how accurate would this naga's servant's be?

"I'm going to oversee the work," he said, sliding past the naga.

"Then," he said, turning to lead her away from the weapons stall, "you've fought half your battle.  Now you need only worry about the other half."

It took Kassian a few seconds longer, but he got the joke.

"What?"  He grinned down at Vahni as the thief had a fit of laughter.  "Something I say strike you as funny?"

"A fair amount," he said.  "Enough that I encounter them sometimes out in the wilds.  Most of us avoid cities for obvious reasons."

"I'll remember," he said, and meant it.  Having a decent thief as a contact could be useful.

"And I suppose I should offer you the use of my sword should you ever need it."

He jutted out an elbow to try and force distance between their bodies.  "Let go of me."

It came out angrier than he'd intended, and he nearly winced.  The frustration must be getting to him.  He couldn't use it as a weapon against other people.

She would find that Razi did not take offense easily.  Ignorance, he had excessive patience for, and anyway he didn't mind talking about himself.  He just rarely had a chance to do so.

"Most of us--shifters--we think of ourselves as neither.  I suppose as an orc or an elf would perceive themselves.  Certainly not human, but also not animal."

"Nn, you have the right of it."

And if he were being honest, he'd far more readily trust even another shifter over a human.  Shifters were as capable as any intelligent thing of deplorable action and thought, but they still had one foot on the instinct side of the fence and that at least put them a cut above humans in Razi's mind.

Ruben was going to put the naga's head through a wall.  He ground his teeth together than tried again, still speaking slowly and clearly.  "No.  I need drawings that are exact replications of the...the pictures on the wall."

Pictographs was probably too big a word, he realized.

Razi returned her smile readily.  This was a good day.  A battle, a feast, and now fellowship.

"At least out here, you know what the dangers are.  A roc won't smile at you then try to stick a knife in your back."

He scoffed, dwelling with gratitude for a moment upon this landscape, this countryside, and how far from him the nearest city was.

Haven took a breath to launch into an explanation, but he caught himself just in time.  Best to keep it brief for Hazel's sake.  No one but another mage wanted to hear an hour long rumination on magical technique.

"It's a form of sympathetic magic.  I can't read the energies here--some form of glamour, perhaps.  It defies mortal ken.  But I can use sympathy to translate any knowable elements into a form we can understand them--"

None of which was a helpful explanation, he realized.  He tried again.  "Aha, sorry.  I'm going to burn a shape into the sheet, or the wood.  The shape might tell us what happened here."

Raven's face broke into a smile.  "Birds are remarkable!"

He pressed a hand to his chest.  "My brothers and I are named after birds.  My name is Raven!  What bird is it you were looking for?"

"Could I...could I have been a shifter like you?  And I've lost my ability to shift somehow?"

"Aye," Kassian said.  Didn't even have to think about it, strange as that was.  He...wasn't sure he knew how to be a friend to someone.  Been on his own too long.

"We're friends."  And he held out his hand for Vahni to clasp.

Raven rather doubted that.  Still, he was partial to birds, being named after one and all, and that in turn made him partial to this guy in front of him.

"What are you, some manner of falconer?"