Author's Note: Here's chapter 3. Chapter 4 is done and awaiting editing.

Chapter three is a bit too talky, but chapter four has wacky hijinks -- also torture, piratical accoutrements, and goblins -- and chapter five should be full of action.

"And I'll need…" Neana studied her list, "one hundred feet of rope, and a roll of heavy twine."

"Trevor, fetch the lady two spools of rope." The shopkeeper babbled. She was a babbler. It had gotten on Neana's nerves within the first five minutes, and that had been an hour ago. "Goodness! What a lot of rope! What do you plan to do with it all?"

"Tying stuff, I guess. Whatever. I didn't write this list."

"You have help coming, don't you, dear? Servants? I suspect that you'd barely be able to lift half of the order by yourself. Ropes, grappling hooks, tindertwigs, canvas, chalk, netting, tents, bags, sacks, and a gallon of lamp oil… I'm having to send Trevor running all over town to borrow stock."

"I'll be able to manage it," Neana replied.

"Oh, no, dear! We'll get Trevor to do it. I would never forgive myself if I let a tiny young lady like yourself struggle out the door with that huge load on your shoulders."

"I'm older than you are, you fat, ugly bag."

"What was that dear? Young ladies really shouldn't mumble so."

"I said that it'll be fine," Neana sighed. "When it's all together, just get it out the door. Some people will be along to help me carry it away."

The shopkeeper hesitated. "As to the… um… matter of payment?"

"Some people will be along shortly with very fat coinpurses to help me carry it away," she growled.

"Oh, very good, madam."

Neana breezed through the door, such as it was. Q'barrans had very odd notions of what constituted indoors and outdoors. The shop, which she had been assured was the largest dry goods store in Newthrone, was a rickety wooden skeleton of a building, with walls of billowy white canvas. Any building sturdier than that would be suffocating and unlivable in the jungle's stifling humidity. The doorflap fluttered in the breeze, lazily shooing away a cloud of mosquitoes. One of the biting insects landed on her cheek. She slapped it, and immediately regretted it: it popped, and her hand came back covered in sticky bug guts.

"Fucking Q'barra."

Q'barra was actually north of Cyre geographically, but you'd never know it from the climate. Hot, sullen winds from the Sea of Rage met the cooling waters of the Lhazaar Sea to whip up dour, brooding storm clouds and hurl them at Q'barra. The raging storms tended to hit Q'barra twice; passing over the country once, heading west to spend themselves against the Endworld Mountains, and then again, as their spent backwash slumped westward. When it wasn't wracked by storms, Q'barra spent its free time being a stagnant pool of swampwater and hateful lizard-folk. If the jungles hadn't been full of valuable dragonshards, no one but backwards political refugees would even bother with it.

A wandering vender offered her a taste of his wares: some kind of unidentified meat on a stick, stored hygienically in a greasy pan he wore hanging from straps around his shoulders. It looked like rat, in her veteran opinion.

She stared him down. "Fucking Q'barra."

Newthrone was like no city she had ever seen. Approximately half of the buildings were done up in old Imperial Galifaran style, all white marble columns and fat, ornamental balustrades and heavy peaked domes. That type of solid stone construction would have been considered antiquated even when Neana was a girl. Some of the buildings could have served as museum pieces– according to the incised lettering on its frontspiece, the building across from her was a museum – except that they looked too new. Most of them were still relatively shiny and clean, without any of the cracks or verdigris that you associated with old civil edifices. Some of them possessed creeper vines climbing up their white stone walls, because you could never get away from the damn jungle in Q'barra, but that was it for the ravages of time. The nation of Q'barra was less than a century old, and its original founders had tried to gloss over their country's raw frontier nature with a thick veneer of borrowed history. You got a sense that their buildings were trying too hard.

The other half of the city, sprinkled liberally in-between the fake historic landmarks, were of the same style as the shop she'd just left; somewhere between tent and log cabin. They were cheap, breezy, made with local supplies, and probably easy to rebuild after the inevitable coastal monsoon. They were jungle buildings. She noticed that the wood and canvas edifices seemed to have a lot more activity going on around them than the heavy stone ones. No surprise that the older buildings were unpopular in the spring: the windowless stone walls would act like an oven in the heavy jungle heat, and drive their owners out of doors until the sun set.

Neana was no great judge of architecture, but even she could read a story from the buildings of Newthrone. The colonists, fleeing the war, had come to the jungle and tried to rebuild their old way of life, far away from the killing and bloodshed. Flush with pioneering spirit they had copied the manners of a more peaceful time, clearing away trees and carting stone blocks from the nearby mountains to create a monument to their fractured empire. They named their city Newthrone, and their settlement New Galifor, recalling a more unified period of the continent's past. And then, very quickly, they discovered what the word "jungle" really meant. They discovered that airy fountains were breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and that stone balustrades were no good at keeping flies out. They found that the heat and the damp smothered the old and the weak during a bad summer, and that stinging insects could be more than a nuisance; they could be plague carriers. Hundreds of people must have died.

And so, over the decades, New Galifor had quietly and without fanfare divided itself into two camps. Some of the residents of Newthrone had learned their lesson: they lived with the jungle, not against it. They made allowances in their architecture for the heat and weather and insects. They dressed in airy, loose fabrics and wore strange, widebrimmed hats with a kind of fluttery silk veil attached to keep buzzing insects out of their faces. Other residents of Newthrone had stubbornly resisted making accommodations to their new country. They pretended that they were still back in the Five Nations, and dressed in the "civilized" finery popular in the cooler and more temperate nations to the west. Watching men and women with more money than sense suffering stoically in the summer heat, Neana felt a rare pang of shared sympathy; she was also roasting alive in her stupid dress uniform that Sam had insisted she wear.

"Madam?"

Neana turned. The shopkeeper had followed her outside. She was a member of the pragmatic camp: she was wearing an odd blue garment, like someone had taken one long bedsheet and had wrapped it around her several times to make a loose dress. She held her odd little hat hesitantly in both hands.

"Yes?" In her current mood, Neana had less than no desire to have a conversation.

"You're from Cyre, aren't you? From the boat?"

Neana looked down at her uniform, with its Cyran green trim and bell-and-hammer insignia and the Cyran Navy Star, awarded for valor in battle. "Yes?"

"Were you there? Did you see it happen?"

"Yes." Shut up shut up shut up shut up.

"Oh." The shopkeeper twisted her hat. "We've been getting a lot of stories in the papers. They say all kinds of things. Crazy things."

"Yes?" Neana put on her best 'continue this line of questioning and I will bite out your tongue' face, to no effect. She wished she had her sword and armor. No one tried to carry on painfully awkward conversations with someone wearing forty pounds of steel. Honestly, what was the point of even trying to cultivate an air of eerie sociopathy if no one else was going to respect it?

"I just wanted to know… if I could ask… what was it really like? What really happened?"

"There was a grey mist. Monsters came out of it," Neana said flatly. "They killed everyone."

"Oh."

"Everyone."

Neana would tell herself later that it was the shopkeeper's annoying curiosity that distracted her, that her own danger instincts were still as sharp as ever. As it was, she had only an instant's warning. Danger! She jerked her head up in time to see the crowd across the street erupt in startled irritation as a huge half-orc shoved people aside. Shoppers stumbled over baskets of fresh produce in their hurry to clear a path for the charging figure. The orc-man broke past the edge of the crowd and blinked stupidly in the bright afternoon sun; three hundred pounds of grey skin and flabby muscle wrapped in a crude vest and sailor's pants. Then he saw Neana and bared his cracked tusks in an ugly grin.

Neana reached for her sword, but it was back on the Mother Bear, along with her armor and her marine contingent, all of which could have come in handy right about now. Still, she was a wizard as well as a warrior; as long as she had her hands free and an alert mind, she was never defenseless. She raised both hands palm up and began to chant the words of power which would suck the living essence from the orc's body and leave him a withered husk. She was three syllables in when the half-orc reached her, wrapped his hairy arms around her, and lifted her up in the air. He squeezed, and all the air rushed out of her lungs.

"My father is alive!"

She gasped weakly.

"My birth-father! He's alive."

"Sam?"

"He's in Breland! He made it to Wroat and left a message for me with the Traveler cult there. They just delivered it today."

"Sam!"

"Isn't it wonderful? I'm so happy!"

"You're choking me, Sam."

"Oh. Sorry." The half-orc put her down gently. "I forget my own size, sometimes." The half-orc – Sam – turned to the shopkeeper, who was trying to decide whether to flee in terror from the hulking dock rat, or just be absolutely appalled that he was mangling one of her customers in front of her respectable establishment. "Hello, Ma'am. Is our order ready yet?"

"I… no… That is to say, no." She was gripping her hat so hard the brim began to rip. "I had to send the boy down to the warehouse to fetch some extra tindertwigs. Will you be… are you…?"

"Picking it up? Oh, yes'm. As soon as you gets it all together and the rest of my friends show up."

"Friends?" She was about to faint. "More… like you?"

"Oh, yes ma'am. They'll be along any minute now, don't you worry. Listen; in the mean time, is there anywhere nearby where the lieutenant and me could go get something to drink? I'm mighty parched."

"There's a tea house around the corner." She pursed her lips. "Or were you looking for a tavern? Or a, ah… pub?"

"Tea sounds just lovely, Ma'am." Sam tapped her gnarled orc fingers to her brow, tipping an imaginary hat.

The tea house turned out to be an open air tent affair, with waist-high made of paper stretched over a wooden frame. The tables were simple and low to the ground, with odd, blocky legs. To Neana's amazement, the tea server – a short, gnomish fellow with twinkling eyes and a kettle half as large as he was – climbed the table leg like a stair step and poured her tea. Neana warily took a sip.

"Hey, this isn't bad. What is this?"The gnome smiled and gave an odd half-bow. "Jasmine. A tisane, in the Rierdran style."

Sam sipped demurely at her cup. Thick orcish fingers looked ludicrous gripping the fragile porcelain. "It's all the rage in Sharn, they say. All the nobles are on a waiting list to take tea with the Rierdran ambassador. They say he tells the most enchanting stories."

"Just so," the gnome said. He climbed down from their table with surprising dignity.

Neana cocked an eyebrow as soon as he was out of earshot. "Since when are you knowledgeable about foreign ambassadors?"

"I get around," Sam said. "When you're a professional eavesdropper, you hear a lot of silly gossip."

"Professional eavesdropper? Is that what you were doing while I was wandering around town for hours trying to buy supplies? That silly list you gave me was an arm long."

"That I was, among other things," Sam smiled. She liked to have her secrets teased out of her, a mannerism that had stopped being endearing long ago. "Is anyone looking at me right now?"

"No."

"You might want to shut your eyes, then," she said. Neana closed her eyes and counted to five; she knew what came next. When she opened them, Sam was no longer disguised as a half-orc dockhand. Instead she wore the face she usually put on when away from the ship, that of a tall, skinny half-elf woman with copper hair and green eyes. Other than the obvious racial characteristics, the face was recognizably similar to the androgynous changeling one that, she had assured Neana, was her true form. It was, Neana gathered, something like a game that Sam played; she liked to imagine what she might have looked like if she had been born as another race. "Anybody notice that?"

"No one is staring."

"Good. When you're a changeling, it doesn't pay to advertise."

"Hey, how did your clothes change? I thought you couldn't do clothes."

"You like it?" Sam leaned back in her chair. "Siffith." In an instant, the simple coat and breeches she was wearing changed to a full-length brocaded silk gown. "Siffith." Now she was garbed head to toe in black and dark green clothes which seemed to soak up the light. She even had a short black veil drawn across her face, so only her eyes were exposed. "Siffith." And back to the simple clothes again.

"Okay, now people are staring. What was that?"

"Last season's salary," Sam said ruefully. "You know that trick you do with your armor? Where you can put it on just by snapping your fingers?"

"That's a spell, Sam. Channeled through the armor. It's part of my battle-mage training."

"Whatever. Well, I got armor envy, so I made a personal requisition for a set of shiftweave outfits from Cannith quartermasters. Now I can change disguises in the blink of an eye. You like?"

Neana shrugged. "It suits you."

"Thanks." Sam sipped calmly at her tea.

"So… your father?"

"He's alive!" She squealed. Then, perhaps remembering that Neana's wasn't, she toned it down. "My birth-father is alive. He was out of the country at the time, selling his wares in Breland, along with the rest of his company. He's perfectly fine." She smiled in relief. "I'm just so – listen, I know what happened to your parents, so if this is bothering you I'll shut up, but I'm positively vibrating."

"No, I'm fine." The tea was really very good. "It's been forty years, Sam. The pain fades." Very good. Exquisite, really. "So… is your mother okay?"

"My mother?"

"Your mom?" Neana hesitated. "I know you don't really talk about her… I always assumed that you just weren't close."

"Oh. I thought I had told you." Sam set her cup down. "My father is my mother."

"What?"

"He's my birth-father, see? He gave birth to me." As if it were something perfectly natural: "Because he was pregnant."

"What?!"

"Oh, this is always weird to discuss with non-shapeshifters. Look: I'm a changeling, right? We can put on any face we want, just by thinking about it. We can physically alter our bodies to take on the characteristics of just about anything with two arms, two legs, and a head."

"He did what?" Neana's teacup was rattling a drum solo against the saucer.

"Just go along with me. Now… my people, you understand; we are not family friendly folk. If you think other races distrust changelings, you should see us around one another. We're born liars, and innately deceitful, and we know it. We also find it difficult to stay around the same people for any length of time; when your greatest natural talent is identity theft, then your greatest weakness if people growing too familiar with you. We don't form strong ties, we don't put down roots, and we don't have extended families. I'm considered a freak by my people's standards, because I joined the army and I go by my true name and face."

"Sam…"

"Hey, I enjoy being a freak. But you have to understand, there aren't many changelings like me. We don't form long-lasting ties, as a rule. But there are two exceptions. One is the Traveler Cult. We aren't overtly religious, but legend says that the Traveler created changelings to be his people, and we respect that. I'm not even sure if the gods really exist –"

"They exist," Neana said firmly.

"Yeah," Sam avoided looking her in the eyes. "We've had that talk. You know I respect your faith, even if I don't share it. Anyway, even if I don't exactly believe, I'd rather err on the side of not pissing off a god, you know? So even I visit a Traveler shrine from time to time. Most changelings feel similar; we honor our god, but after our own fashion. Where the congregations of the Sovereign Host and the Silver Flame tithe gold to their gods, and where you…" Sam tapered off.

"Dedicate the deaths of my enemies to the Lady of Rage?"

"Yeah. That. Well, changelings tithe secrets to the priests of the Traveler Cult. We know the value of good information, and we pass it on. That's why the Church of the Traveler is one of the most powerful intelligence networks ever created; even the dang gnomes are jealous of us. And when a changeling is down on their luck, or in danger, or desperate, they always know that they can go to a Traveler shrine, where they'll… well, probably they'll get help, even if it's just the name of a really good undertaker. Anyway, that's how I found out about my Dad. I went down to the docks and asked around, under the table, until I found where they hid the Traveler's shrine. The minister there was very helpful."

"Your father gave birth!"

"See, I'm working my way up to that. Be patient. Anyway, aside from the church, and a couple of weird changeling communes I've heard rumor of down in Talenta, the only other time changelings congregate in groups is to form companies. Corporations. It's a little bit like a family, but mostly it's a business proposition. A small group of shapeshifters can accomplish amazing things if they work together. There are changeling acting troupes in Sharn and Fairhaven, there are, heh, all-changeling brothels scattered here and there which make a fortune – you know, I actually considered going into that line of work once – and there are probably quite a few international businesses that you would be surprised to learn are secretly run by changelings. Well, that's what my father did, and probably still does, if enough of his company survived the disaster. I hope they did."

"You father gave—"

"I'm getting there! Anyway, it was a family-owned export company based out of Metrol: the ir'Fioran Trading Concern. The Fiorans were a huge, mixed human clan from east Cyre, where old, landowning money married into new, manufacturing money and spat out the kind of shady smuggling-hiding-behind-legitimate-shipping business that Metrol was founded on. Only it was all a lie; there never were any ir'Fiorans, only a fake family tree and a cute backstory cobbled together to fool clients and investors. An aristocratic name greases a lot of wheels, and besides: the lineages for Cyran nobility are such a morass that no one ever noticed that a whole semi-legitimate family line just popped up out of nowhere. The dozen or so ir'Fiorans were actually only five changelings – six, after I was born – playing the parts of family members. They would take turns, trading parts and inventing new relatives whenever it was convenient to maintain the façade. I used to join in too, when I was a kid; sometimes I was cousin Janice, or young master Rand or little baby Riki. One time I even got to pretend to be a Halfling butler, because I was the only one that could fit in the uniform. It was a heap of fun. Other girls played dress-up, I played masquerade."

"Anyway, I never did get the entire story out of him, but the long and the short of it is, there was a plot to secure some incriminating correspondence for blackmailing purposes, from a senior Thranish diplomat who was infatuated with Cousin Ailia, and when they drew straws to see who had to seduce him, my Dad drew the short one. We're pretty sure that was how I was conceived. My father was really upset about it; he had to stay practically the same shape for nine months. Pregnant changelings can barely shift at all."

"That's horrible," Neana said.

"Oh, I don't think so. He was a pretty loving father, all things considered, in his own odd way. He took good care of me growing up. And changeling kids aren't easy to raise, believe me. I was a handful."

"No, I meant… Ugh." Neana set down her cup. Tea splashed over the brim to fill the saucer. "That's just… strange. And kind of sickening."

"Why?" Sam was honestly perplexed.

"A man changing into a woman – let alone a man giving birth – is just unnatural."

"I go disguised as a man all the time," Sam said. As if to prove her point she wiped a hand along her face. As her fingers passed they left her jaw squarer, her lips thinner. Her shoulders widened and her clothes shifted and rustled as subtle curves melted away to be replaced by lean muscle. When it was done Neana sat facing a male half-elf that, nevertheless still resembled Sam, or at least how Sam usually preferred to appear.

Neana looked away. "That's different. It's a disguise. And when you're male – when you're man-shaped," she corrected, "it's just a shape. You don't… well, sometimes you act mannish, but you don't ever sleep with anyone."

"Well, no. Not anymore. That would be cheating. But I could, if I wanted to." Sam pointed at his lap. "The equipment works, is what I'm saying. If you ever want to give it a go." He waggled her eyebrows.

"I think I'm going to vomit."

Sam shrugged, sloughing off her masculinity. She was back to herself in seconds. "I'm just saying, these things aren't always so set in stone. Not for me, they aren't. Sometimes gender is optional."

Neana glared at her accusingly. "When we first… when we first, you told me that you were a woman."

"I am. I really am. You've seen what I really look like." Sensing skepticism, she went on the defensive. "You have, I promise. Even changelings have a true form. The face I wear around the ship is my real, natural one. I always make a point of that; I don't dance the face-dance while I'm on duty, and I don't lie about who I really am to the people I trust."

"All right, Sam. I believe you." Neana pushed her teacup away. All thoughts of finishing the drink had left her mind as soon as the mental image of a pregnant male changeling had entered it. "I guess I'm just more comfortable thinking of what you do as just an illusion. It's… unsettling… to think of the physical side."

Sam was toying with her spoon, flipping it end over end through her fingertips, a sure sign that she was nervous. "The thing about being a changeling is… everything is a choice. Everything. The most basic facts that you take for granted – sex, appearance, size, name – we have to choose. We need the choices to make us who we are, because we don't have anything else. I know it looks like we're all fakes and liars to the rest of you, but it's just because for us, the truth is something you create. The fact that it's flexible only makes it truer. In a way, I'm more of a woman than most human women because I had a choice in the matter. If I lied, who would ever know?"

Neana sighed. "It's a lot to take in, Sam. That's all I'm saying."

An awkward silence settled over the table. Sam continued to fiddle with her spoon, while Neana, who was a bad conversationalist at the best of times, summoned a tiny ball of glowing light and tried to balance it on the back of her hand: a sure sign that the half-elf was bored.

Suddenly, a voice rang out from across the street. "What's this? What's going on here?"

Both women looked up, startled. The ball of light evaporated. Neana's hand instinctively went to her missing sword, Sam's hand slipped inside her sleeve. Steel glinted between her fingers.

To be continued soon…

PS: Yes, changelings really can do that, according to the books.