Crowchanger (Changers of Chandris) by A.C. Smyth

to sort those blasted savages out, then he’d do it with no half measures.
    “Master Jesely said they owned the island once.”
    Deygan winced at the sound of Jaevan’s soft voice and the holders’ heads all turned to his eldest son. Damn that Jesely! Deygan had hoped the boy had enough sense to keep his mouth shut, not spout some of the nonsense the Chesammos master had put into his head.
    “He said this was their island and we invaded and took it from them. He said they ruled here, except they didn’t have lords as we do. But everyone worked and then the Aerie made sure everyone had all they needed. That’s what Master Jesely said, anyway.” Jaevan’s voice trailed off uncertainly.
    Deygan made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. No one could claim that Jesely had told Jaevan lies, but Deygan didn’t like his version of the truth. The island had been occupied by the Chesammos alone at one time, but that was hundreds of years ago. The Irenthi had brought trade and roads and cities and, well, civilisation to the island that the Chesammos called Cha’andris in that barbarically twisted tongue of theirs. And things had changed. Opening trade routes brought prosperity, and prosperity brought the constant threat of invasion by states that cast covetous eyes at their linandra.
    “That’s as may be, Jaevan,” Deygan said in a voice soft but laced with warning. “But they need to accept how things are now. We give them food to eat, clothes to cover them, shelter for their people. How else would they survive, out in the desert where there is scarcely any food?”
    Jaevan opened his mouth as if to speak, but subsided at Deygan’s warning glare. Deygan knew what he had been about to say. That before the Irenthi invaded the Chesammos had farmed and cultivated the island, that those who worked in the desert were supported by those who did not, and that no man worked more than five years in the desert in his lifetime. How such a system had been made to work escaped Deygan’s understanding. There had to be order in the world and that meant lords and commoners, workers and overseers. This way of the Chesammos of making things ‘fair’ for all—that was nonsense for children and simpletons. No wonder the Irenthi had taken their island from them without a fight.
    Sheinna of Aquis, the only woman to head a house in her own right, cleared her throat. “They do not have enough to eat, Sire. Not all of them, and not all the time. Not in the poorer holdings like Aquis. Once food and clothing would come from those in the north of the island to help those in the south. Now the northern Chesammos struggle almost as much or have been displaced to the south. They do not have any to spare, or they simply have lost touch with their southern cousins and are unaware of them and their hardship.”
    “Hardship, you say? None of the people of Chandris live in hardship.” Deygan’s green eyes flashed their annoyance. “If they do, it is because they don’t work hard enough. The Chesammos have been encouraged to slack on their work by misguided handouts and these family networks of yours.”
    “With respect, Sire,” Garvan said in a quiet voice that made the others take notice, “the handouts, as you call them, are part of the old system. The way the Chesammos tell it, generations ago all changers were Chesammos. Other than the training of changers, the Aerie’s main function was to redistribute goods—a marketplace, as it were, for the Chesammos with different products to exchange what they had for what they had not.”
    Deygan made an irritated noise. Who did Garvan think he was, to give him a history lesson? Granted, his house should know about changing better than any, with their background. Generations ago, before the ruler of Chandris claimed the title of king, Garvan’s forefathers had been high holders of the island, displaced when the two elder sons of the house were found to be changers. They had bred clean of