Praise for New York Times bestselling author MICHELLE SAGARA and The Chronicles of Elantra series

“No one provides an emotional payoff like Michelle Sagara. Combine that with a fast-paced police procedural, deadly magics, five very different races and a wickedly dry sense of humor—well, it doesn’t get any better than this.”

—Bestselling author Tanya Huff on The Chronicles of Elantra series

“Intense, fast-paced, intriguing, compelling and hard to put down…unforgettable.”

—In the Library Reviews on Cast in Shadow

“Readers will embrace this compelling, strong-willed heroine with her often sarcastic voice.”

—Publishers Weekly on Cast in Courtlight

“The impressively detailed setting and the book’s spirited heroine are sure to charm romance readers as well as fantasy fans who like some mystery with their magic.”

—Publishers Weekly on Cast in Secret

“Along with the exquisitely detailed worldbuilding, Sagara’s character development is mesmerizing. She expertly breathes life into a stubborn yet evolving heroine. A true master of her craft!”

—RT Book Reviews (4 ½ stars) on Cast in Fury

“With prose that is elegantly descriptive, Sagara answers some longstanding questions and adds another layer of mystery. Each visit to this amazing world, with its richness of place and character, is one to relish.”

—RT Book Reviews (4 ½ stars) on Cast in Silence

Cast In Silence
Michelle Sagara

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Author’s Note

One of the best things—for me—about writing fantasy is that a writer can enlarge issues that people face on a daily basis, by making the stakes higher; it’s not often that you can cause the end of the world in real life because of choices you’ve made. But the end-of-the-world feeling is a very real dread day to day. The consequences are always bigger, but the emotional response is rooted in a writer’s experience, and our experiences don’t actually include dark gods, primal chaos and perfect immortals. Except maybe when we’re sleeping.

Kaylin Neya started life on the page as a Private in the arm of Law enforcement known as The Hawks—her city’s version of a cop. But, as is so often the case, her known life started before that, and what there was of it was buried in the organizational nightmare I often refer to as my notes. Some of that past came to light in her first outing, Cast in Shadow, because a lot of her story makes no sense without it.

She doesn’t live in the past, although she will always be affected by it, and she’s managed to keep a lid on it—until now. Cast in Silence is about the missing six months of her life, between her life in the fief of Nightshade and her life as a Hawk. To say she’s ambivalent about those six months would be a bit of an understatement.

But to me, it echoes a lot of ambivalence about choices we made for various reasons when we were younger or less experienced. Or at least choices I did. If you’re returning to Kaylin and Elantra, I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I did writing it.

This is for Ayami, the sister-in-law who makes having a brother a blessing.

Cast In Silence

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Living with a writer is not easy. My children are probably used to it because it’s all they’ve ever known, but my husband, Thomas, had a sane and reasonable upbringing, and still manages to create the space in which I do write, day-in and day-out. He and Terry Pearson form my alpha reader team, and are brave enough to argue with me when reading a raw first draft (and I mean raw).

If living with a writer is not easy, it’s my suspicion that working with a writer is often just as fraught, so I am deeply grateful to Mary-Theresa Hussey, who has been the very model of patience and understanding, and who continues to provide a home for Elantra. And to Kathleen Oudit and the art staff for the fabulous job they continue to do when creating covers for these books. If writing a novel is a solitary endeavor, publishing a novel is teamwork, and I have been blessed with a great team.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER 1

“It’s eight o’clock in the morning. Please remember to fill out your reports and hand in your paperwork.” Had the cheerful and musical voice belonged to a person who could be easily strangled, it would have stopped in mid-sentence.

Sadly, it was the melodious voice of the streetside window which interrupted the bustling and vastly less perky office in which the branch of Law known as the Hawks was based. That window, which had been installed complete with a magical, time-telling voice in some misguided attempt at humor, had been adjusted in the past couple of weeks by Acting Sergeant Mallory, and no one who had to work where they could hear it—and were prevented by office regulations from destroying it—considered the adjustments to be an improvement.

Sergeant Marcus Kassan, the large and currently bristling Leontine behind the central desk in the Hawks’ Office raised his fist and flexed his fingers. Long claws, gleaming in the sun’s light, appeared from beneath his golden fur. He had not yet shattered the window—and given it was installed with the guidance of Imperial Mages, that would have been damn hard—but he looked like he was on the edge of finally doing it in. The betting pool had not yet been won, but at least three people were out money, Private Kaylin Neya being one. The office had discovered, however, that the windows couldn’t be scratched, and Kaylin had argued vociferously that this should have counted as a victory condition. She’d lost.

Then again, Leontines were generally all about the clawing, biting, rending, and ripping out of throats; they weren’t as good with smashing things.

Kaylin’s personal favorite was the new end-of-day message, wherein the cheerful voice of the window told the departing staff that they were to be in the office at 7:00 a.m., and they were to be shaved, where shaving was appropriate, and otherwise clean. She was less keen on the last bit, in which the Hawks were reminded to check the duty roster for last-minute adjustments.

“Why doesn’t he just have the mages shut it down?” she asked Caitlin, as Marcus drove new furrows into his desk.

“I think he considers it a reminder of the differences between Sergeant Mallory’s temporary tenure and his more permanent record,” Caitlin replied. The reply, like the question that engendered it, was very, very quiet. This didn’t guarantee that it couldn’t be overheard, but unless Marcus had it in for you, he was capable of a bit of selective deafness. If he hadn’t been, his office would be half manned for at least an entire duty cycle, and the half that was left alive would be too busy cleaning up to cause trouble.

“Neya!” Given Marcus’s current mood, the fact that there had been no bloodshed was pushing the goodwill of whatever gods watched over underslept and under-paid police. “You’re due out on beat in five minutes. Stop bothering Caitlin and hit the street.”

Kaylin’s beat was Elani Street and its surroundings, and her partner was—as it so frequently was, these days—Corporal Severn Handred. He was already kitted out and ready to go when she careened down the hall to the locker room. He raised an eyebrow, one bisected by a slender scar, while he watched her use the wall as a brake.

“What? I’m not late yet.”

“Not yet. It’s hard to be late when the window is nagging.”

She grimaced. “Marcus took his claws to it yesterday.”

“Don’t start.”

“I think that should count.”

“Is the window still in one piece? Then it doesn’t count.” Severn was at the top of the betting pool at the moment, and looked to be secure in his position, but they’d both grown up on some pretty mean streets, and “secure” meant something different to them.

This was probably why they got along so well with the Barrani Hawks. The Barrani were noted for their love of the political. Political, in the context of their race, usually involved assassination, both literally and figuratively, and smallish wars. They understood that anything they owned had to be held against all comers. Those who held less were perfectly willing to test the definition of “secure,” often to the breaking point.

Of course, unless one of those assassination attempts was lucky, the Barrani weren’t about to expire of old age; they didn’t. Age, that is. They had long memories, and they could easily hold a grudge for longer than Kaylin’s whole life; at least two of them did. On the other hand, they made immortality look like one long gripe fest, admittedly with killer clothing, so it was hard to begrudge them their eternity of suffering. Or of making everyone else they knew suffer. Kaylin, as a human, would eventually clock out, which would in theory earn her some peace.

She dressed quickly, straightening out the cloth and under-padding that had managed to crumple in the wrong places the way it always did, and then rearranged her hair so it was pulled tight and off her face. It wasn’t immortality that she envied the Barrani; it was their damn hair. It never got in the way of anything.

She made it out of the locker room with seconds to spare; Severn caught her by the shoulder and adjusted the stick that held her hair tightly in place so that it actually did the job.

Elani Street was, of course, Charlatan Central. It was also, unfortunately, where real magic could be found if you didn’t have access to the Imperial Mages, or worse, the mages of the Arcanum, which access pretty much described ninety-nine percent of the city of Elantra. Kaylin had never understood how it was that people capable of genuine enchantments were willing to hunker down with total frauds.

The end result, however, of some fraud was ire, and the end result of ire, if not checked, was directly the purview of the Hawks. It was more colloquially called murder. It didn’t happen in Elani often, because even if you were almost certain the so-called magic you’d purchased was a lump of rock, you couldn’t be as easily certain that the person who’d sold it to you was incapable of something more substantial.

There were, however, no murders on the books today. Or at least not murders that Kaylin knew about, and therefore not murders that she would be called in to investigate. She’d wanted a few weeks of quiet, and she’d had them. For some reason, it hadn’t improved her mood.

Severn noticed. Then again, it was hard not to notice. While he frequently walked streetside, Kaylin’s accidental mishaps with merchant boards now numbered four.

“Kaylin.” He stepped to her left, and took up patrol position merchant-side.

She couldn’t bring herself to say it was accidental, although she did try. But the boards that promised to find you your One True Love were a particular sore spot for Kaylin, in part because it was impossible to walk past the damn things at any time of day, and not see people waiting in the storefront, behind glass. Some had the brains to look ill-at-ease, but if they had the brains, they clearly lacked self-control; some just looked desperate and flaky.

All of them would be disappointed.

“You know they piss me off,” she muttered.

“On the wrong day, sunlight pisses you off.”

“Only in the morning.”

“Noon is not considered morning by most people. Tell me,” he added. “Because if you keep this up, Margot is going to file an incident report, and you’ll be in the hot seat.”

Margot was the name of the proprietor of this particular haven for the hopeless. She was a tall, statuesque redhead, with amber eyes that Kaylin would have bet an entire paycheck were magically augmented. Her voice, absent the actual drivel she used when speaking, was throaty, deep, and almost sinful just to hear.

Kaylin was certain that half of the people who offered Margot their custom secretly hoped that she would be their One True Love. Sadly, she was certain that Margot was also aware of this, and they’d exchanged heated words about the subject of her lovelorn customers in the past. Petty jealousy being what it was, however, Kaylin was liked by enough of the other merchants, mostly the less successful ones, that Margot’s attempt to have her summarily scheduled out of existence—or the existence of Elani Street—had so far failed to take.

“If I knew what was bothering me,” she finally admitted, “I would have warned you this morning.”

“Warned me?”

“That I’m in a foul mood.”

“Kaylin, the only person who might not notice that is Roshan, Marrin’s newest orphan. And I have my doubts.”

“I have no idea what’s wrong,” she continued, steadfastly ignoring that particular comment. “The foundling hall is running so smoothly right now you’d think someone rich had died and willed the foundlings all their money. Rennick’s play was a success, and the Swords have been cut to a tenth their previous riot-watch numbers. I’m not on report. Mallory is no longer our acting sergeant. Caitlin is finally back in the office after her leave.

“But—” she exhaled heavily “—there’s just…something. I have no idea what the problem is. And if you even suggest that it has something to do with the time of month, you’ll be picking up splinters of your teeth well into next year.”

He touched her, gently and briefly, on the shoulder. “You’ll let me know when you figure it out?”

“You’ll probably be the first person to know. Unless Marcus radically alters the duty roster.”

The day did not get better when their patrol took them to Evanton’s shop. Kaylin didn’t stop there when she was on duty, because rifling his kitchen took time, and sitting and drinking the scalding hot tea he prepared when she did visit took more of the same.

Like most merchants, Evanton’s shop had a sandwich board outside. The paint was faded, the wood slightly warped. His sign, however, did not offend her; she barely noticed it. She certainly didn’t trip over it in a way that would snap its hinges shut.

But she did notice the young man who came barreling out of the door toward her. Grethan. Once Tha’alani. Hell, still Tha’alani. But crippled, shut off from the gifts that made the Tha’alani possibly the most feared race in the city. He couldn’t read minds. The characteristic racial stalks of the Tha’alani, suspended at the height of his forehead, just beneath his dark, flat hair, still weaved frantically in the air in a little I’m-upset-help-me dance, and most people—most humans, she corrected herself—wouldn’t know he was incapable of actually putting them to use to invade their thoughts.

“Kaylin!” he said, speaking too loudly in a street that was sparsely populated.

The people that were in it looked up immediately. You could always count on curiosity to dim common sense, especially in Elani Street. Evanton was known to be one of the street’s genuine enchanters; he would have to be, given that he was also one of the few who still had a storefront and never offered love-potions or fortunes. Had he visible size or obvious power, he would probably have terrified most of the residents. He didn’t.

She spoke in a much lower voice. It was her way of giving a subtle hint; the less subtle hints usually got her a reprimand, and Grethan looked wide-eyed and wild enough that she didn’t think he deserved them. Yet. “Grethan? Has something happened to Evanton?”

He took a deep breath. “No. He told me you’d be coming, and he set me to watch.”

Had it been anyone other than Evanton, Kaylin would have asked how he’d known. Evanton, however, was not a man who casually explained little details like that to an apprentice, and if Grethan was valued because he was Evanton’s first promising apprentice in more years than Kaylin had been alive, he was still on the lower rungs of the ladder.

He was also, she thought, too damn smart to ask.

“You’re not busy, are you?” Grethan asked, hesitating at the door.

“Not too busy to speak with Evanton if he has something he needs to say,” she replied.

Severn, damn him, added, “She’s busy plotting the downfall of Margot.”

Grethan snorted. “You’re probably going to have to stand in line for that,” he told her, his stalks slowing their frantic dance. “But Evanton’s in a bit of a mood today, so you might not want to mention her by name.”

“I never want to mention her by name. You’ll note that it wasn’t me who did,” she replied, giving Severn a very distinct look.

“Evanton is also not the only one who’s in, as you put it, a bit of a mood,” Severn told Grethan. “Maybe the two of us should wait outside somewhere safe. Like, say, the docks.”

Evanton, contrary to Grethan’s report, was seated by the long bar he called a counter. It was a bar; some old tavern had sold it to Evanton years before Kaylin had met him. If you could see one square inch of its actual surface, it was a tidy day. Given that Evanton was working with beads, needles, leather patches and some herbs and powders, Kaylin didn’t immediately recognize it, it wasn’t a day for surface area.

He looked up as she approached, his lips compressed around a thin line of needles. Or pins. She couldn’t see the heads, and couldn’t, at this distance, tell the difference. He looked more bent and aged than usual—which, given he was the oldest living person she’d ever met if you didn’t count Barrani or Dragons, said something. Age never showed with Barrani or Dragons anyway.

“Grethan said you wanted to see me,” she said, carefully removing a pile of books from a stool a little ways into the shop. Books were the safest bet; you couldn’t break most of them if the precarious pile chose to topple, and you couldn’t crush them—much—by accidentally stepping on them.

He began to carefully poke pins into the top of his wrinkled apron. When he’d pushed the last of them home, he looked like a very bad version of a sympathetic magic doll, handled by someone who didn’t realize they were supposed to stick the pins in point first. “Wanted is not the right word,” he said curtly.

Kaylin, accustomed to his moods, shrugged. “I’m here anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because Grethan said—”

“I mean, why were you sent to Elani today?”

She frowned. “We weren’t sent. This is our beat, this rotation. For some reason, we’re expected to be able to handle the petty fraud and swindling that passes for business-as-normal in Charlatan Central.”

“We would be you and your Corporal?”

“He’s not my Corporal, and yes.”

Evanton nodded. He set aside the cloth in his lap, and put beads into about fifty different jars. He did all of this slowly. Kaylin, whose middle name was not exactly patience on the best of working days, sat and tried not to grind her teeth. She knew damn well he could talk and work at the same time; it was what he usually did.

“This does not strictly concern the Hawks,” he finally told her, as he rose. “Can I make you tea?” Evanton did not actually like tea; he did, however, seem to find comfort in the social custom of being old enough to make it and offer it.

“I’m on duty, Evanton.”

“Just answer the question, Private Neya.”

She sighed. “Yes,” she told him. “If you’ll talk while you’re doing it, you can make me tea. I don’t suppose you’ve found cups that have handles?”

The answer to the question was either no, or she’d annoyed him enough by asking that he’d failed to find them. He made tea, and she waited, seated at the side of a kitchen table that was—yes—cluttered with small piles of daily debris. Still, none of the debris moved or crawled, so it was more or less safe.

“Evanton’s brows gathered and his forehead furrowed as he sat across from her. This only deepened the lines that time had etched there. “Very well. This does not, as I mentioned, concern the Hawks. It does not, entirely, concern me yet.”

“But you told Grethan to watch for me if I happened to pass by.”

“I may have. He was hovering, and I dislike that when I’m working.”

Had he been in less of a mood, she would have pointed out that he usually disliked the absence of hoverers when he was working, because he liked to have people fetch and carry; not even his guests were exempt from those duties. She bit her tongue, however. It was slightly better than burning it.

“I was in the elemental garden this morning,” he added.

She stilled. When he didn’t elucidate, she said, “Isn’t that where you do some of your work?”

“I work there when I am not at all interested in interruption,” he replied. “That was not, however, the case this morning.”

All of Kaylin’s many growing questions shriveled and died. She even put her hands around the sides of the cup, because she felt a momentary chill.

Evanton sighed. He rose, and pulled the key ring from his left arm. It was a key ring only in the loose sense of the word, being larger around than any part of that arm. “Private,” he said gravely.

“I’m not sure I ever want to set foot in your garden again,” she told him, but she pushed herself away from her teacup.

“I’m sure you don’t,” was the terse reply. “Especially not today. But I’m tired. If you see it for yourself, you’ll spare me the effort of coming up with words.”

Because he was Evanton, and his home was a mess, the halls they now walked were narrow and cramped. Shelves butted against the walls, in mismatched colors and heights. “Is this one new?” Kaylin asked, in a tone of voice that clearly said, how could you cram another bookshelf into this space?

“I have an apprentice now,” Evanton replied. “And I’m not about to move my work so that he has someplace to shelve his.”

She winced. She’d had issues with Grethan in the past, but at the moment she felt sorry for him; having to deal with Evanton in this mood should have been enough to send him screaming for cover.

Then again, he was out somewhere with Severn.

Evanton reached the unremarkable door at the hall’s end. It looked, to Kaylin’s eye, more rickety and warped than the last time she’d seen it. He slid the key into the lock, but before he opened the door, he turned to Kaylin and said, “Don’t be surprised to find the garden somewhat changed since you last visited.”

Having offered warning, he pushed the door open.

It opened, as always, into a space that was larger in all ways than the building that girded it; it had, for one, no obvious ceiling, and no clearly visible walls. This garden, as Evanton called it, was older by far than the city of Elantra; it was older than the Dragons or the Barrani. According to Sanabalis, it had always been here in one guise or another, and while the world existed, it always would.

Evanton was its Keeper.

As jobs went, it certainly promised job security. Sadly, a bad mistake on the job also promised to end the world, or come so close what was left wouldn’t be in any shape to complain or fire him.

Kaylin blinked at the harshness of this particular daylight, and she followed Evanton in through the door—and into the gale.

On the first occasion Kaylin had come here, led by Evanton, it had been breezy, warm and quiet. He had assured her at that time that that state was the norm for his garden. Looking at his back, she saw his grubby working tunic had been replaced entirely by deep blue robes—and that these robes were now the new homes of trailing rivulets of water. The wind picked at his sodden hem and strands of his hair. Clearly the garden wasn’t giving him much respect.

Kaylin’s hair flew free as the stick Severn had carefully adjusted was yanked out by the wind; this lasted for at most half a minute before the strands were too heavy. They now clung to her face.

“Evanton!”

He didn’t turn at the sound of his name, and Kaylin shouted it again, putting more force behind it. When he still didn’t turn, she took a step toward him, and saw that the grass—or what had once been grass—was actually a few inches of mud. Her boots sank into it.

If the small and separate shrines that had been dedicated in corners of this place were still standing, the visibility was poor enough that she couldn’t see them.

She almost shouted his name again, but he turned just as she reached his back. “Follow,” he told her, cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting to be heard.

CHAPTER 2

The garden’s size was, and had always been, somewhat elastic. Kaylin, who had previously walked a few yards to pay her respects at the elemental shrine of Water, with its deep, dark and utterly still pool, had also walked for miles and hours to reach the same damn shrine. She did not, therefore, react with any obvious surprise when Evanton’s trek through the gale took an hour. It might have taken less time if not for the mud, the wind and the driving rain.

But when Evanton called a halt to this grueling trek, it was obvious why: he had reached a door. Not an entire building, of which a door would be a part. That would have been too simple. No, it was a standing door, absent frame or wall. It did not, however, possess a doorward; Kaylin was spared the brief and magical discomfort of placing her palm against it before she was granted entry.

She was not, however, spared the effort of forcing the door open; the wind seemed to push from the other side, and it required all of her weight, shoulder against cold, wet surface, to move the damn thing—which didn’t even have hinges.

But when the door was open, the howl of the wind suddenly stopped, and Kaylin saw a glimpse of crackling fire in an old, stone hearth before Evanton unceremoniously shoved her out of the way. The door shut, and on this side, she could see both its hinges and its frame.

They seemed to be standing in a squat cottage of some type. Or they would have been, if cottages had been made of solid stone.

“Sorry,” Evanton said, pulling the hood of his dripping robe from his face. “But I can’t even hear myself think in all that noise.”

As his robes were still recognizably the same dark blue, Kaylin assumed they were still within the space he referred to as the garden. She pushed her hair out of her face; she would have to wait to pin it back, because the wind hadn’t returned the stick it had yanked out.

“We’ll try the tea again,” Evanton told her, peeling his sleeves off his arms. “This time, I might even condescend to drink some of it.”

When they were seated around a small—and miraculously uncluttered—table, two solid mugs between them, Kaylin said, “Water, earth and air.”

Evanton raised a white brow, and then nodded. “Yes. The elements of this particular storm.” He added, after a pause, “It’s good to know you’re still observant.”

“That’s generally considered my job.”

“Yes. Well. It’s generally considered the job of most of the residents of Elani Street to find true love, define fate and tell the future.”

Kaylin almost choked on her tea, and Evanton graced her with a wry, and somewhat bitter smile. “They do, however, construct elaborate fantasies for people with more money than brains, which takes some creativity.”

“You were eavesdropping,” she said, when she found her voice again.

“If you don’t want people to hear you, speak quietly, Private.”

“Yes, Evanton.” She shoved hair out of her eyes again, and he handed her a towel. It was the same color as his robe, and while she was curious about how it—and the mugs and the kettle—had arrived in this place, she didn’t ask. Had he been in a better mood, she would have. The towel, she accepted with gratitude; wiping her wet hands on anything she was currently wearing was just moving water around. She knew this because she’d tried a few times.

“How’s Grethan doing?”

Evanton raised a brow, but the severe lines of his face relaxed a bit. Which didn’t really change the multitude of wrinkles; it just rearranged them. “He’s doing well. Better than I’d expected, and I will thank you not to repeat that.”

“Well enough?”

“Well enough that I won’t let him get lost in the garden, if that’s your concern.”

She knew that he’d taken other apprentices, and she knew that they hadn’t worked out; he’d said as much. What she’d never explicitly asked was what happened to the ones that didn’t. Knowledge about this space was very hard to come by. Not even the Eternal Emperor could force his way in.

Which he probably hated.

She hesitated, and then nodded. The truth was, she liked this old man and always had. She trusted him. She didn’t enjoy today’s mood, but only an idiot would; she also expected it to pass. “So…what’s happened in the garden?”

“What do you think has happened?”

Grimacing, she said, “I recognize this. I have a Dragon as a teacher. You, however, aren’t responsible to the Eternal Emperor for my marks and comprehension, so you don’t get to play that game with me.”

He chuckled then, and to her surprise, he did take a sip of the tea. He didn’t appear to enjoy it, so stability of a kind was preserved in the universe. “It wasn’t that kind of question. Although to be fair, Grethan would now be cowering behind you if I’d asked him the same thing.”

Kaylin, who did enjoy the tea, relaxed a bit. Since her life didn’t depend on her answer, and since she’d been thinking of nothing else since she’d stepped through the damn door—with the single exception of the dammit reserved for loss of her hair stick—she said, “The elements here are alive. I’d say that at least three of them are upset. I can’t tell if it’s anger or panic,” she added. “Because I can’t really hear their voices.”

Evanton nodded.

“But the fire’s not there.”

“No. Fire has always been a bit unusual in that regard. The fire,” he added, pointing to the hearth, “is here, and a damn good thing, too. You might tell it a story or two—that seemed to work well the last time.”

“Evanton, did I mention I’m on duty?”

“At least once. Possibly twice. I admit I was slightly distracted, and I may not have been paying enough attention.”

“And if I believe that, you’ve got a love potion to sell me.”

“At a very, very good price, I might add.” He brought his mug to his mouth, and then lowered it again without taking a sip.

“Does this happen often?”

“No.”

“But it’s happened before.”

“Yes.”

When Evanton was monosyllabic, it was not a good sign. “Can I ask when?”

“You can ask.”

“Evanton—”

“You know far more about this garden than anyone who isn’t a Keeper, or who isn’t trying to learn how to be one, has a right to know.”

“And you’re not about to add to that.”

“Actually, I would very dearly love not to add to that, but I am, in fact, about to do just that. What you actually understand about the garden is not my problem. That you understand that this is significant, however, is.”

“Why me?”

“That would be the question,” he replied.

“I haven’t done anything recently. Honest.”

“No. You probably haven’t. But something is happening in the city, and the elements feel it. They’re not,” he added, “very happy about it, either.”

“No kidding. Why do you think it has anything to do with me?”

“Because,” he replied, lifting his hands, “if you take the time to observe some of the visual phenomena, it’s not entirely random. The elements are trying to talk.”

Given the lack of any obvious visibility in the driving sheets of rain, Kaylin thought this comment unfair. Given Evanton’s mood, Kaylin chose not to point this out. While she was struggling to stop herself from doing so, Evanton’s hands began to glow.

Out of the light that surrounded them, a single complicated image coalesced on the tabletop, between their cups. It was golden in color, and it wasn’t a picture. It was a word.

An old word. Kaylin’s eyes widened as she looked at it.

“Yes,” he said, as her glance strayed to her sleeves, or rather, to her arms. “It’s written in the same language as the marks you bear.”

Those marks ran the length of her arms, her inner thighs and most of her back; they now also trailed up her spine and into her hair. She had toyed with the idea of shaving her head to see exactly how far up they went, but she’d never gotten around to it. Her hair was her one vanity. Or at least, she thought ruefully, her one acknowledged vanity.

Something about the lines of the word were familiar, although Kaylin was pretty certain she’d never seen it before. She wasn’t in the office, and she had no mirror; she couldn’t exactly call up records to check.

“You know what this means,” Evanton said anyway.

She shook her head. “No, actually, I—” And then she stopped, as the niggling sense of familiarity coalesced. “Ravellon.”

He closed his eyes.

The silence lasted a few minutes, broken by the sound people made—or Kaylin did, at any rate—when drinking liquid that was just shy of scalding. Eventually, she set the cup down. “You recognize the name.”

“Yes. I would not have recognized it, however, from this rune.”

“You can read them?”

“I have never made them my study; I am old, yes, but not that old.”

She lifted her cup, watching him, and after a moment, he snorted. “I can, as you must know, read some of the Old Tongue. This, however, was not familiar to me.”

“You don’t know the history of Elantra?”

“I know the history of the city very well,” he replied. His voice was the type of curt that could make you bleed.

Since Kaylin had lived for most of her twenty-odd years in ignorance of this history, she shrugged.

“I know what once stood at the heart of the fiefs.” He lifted a veined and wrinkled hand in her direction. “And before you ask, no, I don’t have any idea what’s there now. It’s slightly farther afield than I’m generally prepared to go at my age. But yes, I know it was once called Ravellon by the Barrani.”

“And the Dragons,” Kaylin pointed out.

“At the moment, my interactions with the Eternal Emperor’s Court are exactly none. The one exception to my very firm rule, you already know, and no exception would have been made had I not been indisposed.”

While she technically served the Emperor’s law, the law was a distinct entity. That the Emperor held himself above those laws was a given; he didn’t, however, require Kaylin to do the same. Of course, if he contravened those laws and she spoke up, she’d be a pile of ash.

Evanton contravened those laws by simply existing, as far as Kaylin could tell. For practical reasons, reducing Evanton to a pile of smoldering ash was not in the Emperor’s cards, and if she’d had to bet, she’d bet that the Emperor wasn’t entirely happy about it, either. The elemental garden, with Evanton as its Keeper, was literally a different world—with unfortunate placement: it demonstrably existed within the boundaries of the Empire, and the Dragon Emperor claimed everything in the Empire as his personal hoard, the single exception being the fiefs.

Dragons were very, very precise about their hoards. Kaylin didn’t understand all the nuances of what, to her mind, boiled down to mine, mine, mine, but she was assured that they existed. By, of course, other Dragons.

The store, however, could not be moved. And if it ceased to exist, the elemental wilderness contained behind one rickety door at the end of a dim and incredibly cluttered hall, would break free and return to the world from which it had been extracted. Which would pretty much end most of the lives that Kaylin cared about, although to be fair, it would probably end the other ones, as well.

The Emperor, therefore, overlooked this thumbing-of-nose at his ownership and his authority.

Evanton’s reluctance to talk with Dragons made sense. Their reluctance to speak with him, she understood less well.

He opened his mouth, and snapped it shut again. He still had all his teeth. “Ravellon,” he said, after a long pause, “is a Barrani word.”

“I don’t think so,” she began.

“It’s not the Old Tongue, then. Can we agree on that?”

Since he probably knew more than she did, she nodded.

“But you recognized the rune as Ravellon. Why?”

“I don’t know. Don’t look at me like that, Evanton. I honestly don’t. I’m not even your student—why would I try to make your life more difficult?”

“Good point. I should apologize for my temper. I won’t, but I should. It has been a very, very trying day.”

“Why is it only the three elements? Why not all four?”

“Fire in the natural world is contained, for the most part. If we were living over a volcano, and the elements felt this kind of flux, fire would be in the mix, as well. We’re not, thank the gods.” He paused, and then said, “I don’t have to tell you that none of this should leave this garden, do I?”

“It probably doesn’t hurt.” Pause. “Can I tell Severn?”

“You may tell your Corporal, yes. He’s as quiet as the dead. Well, the dead with the decency to stay buried, at any rate.” He looked, now, at his hands. “Ravellon.” He shook his head, and then stared across the table at her.

“Don’t even think it,” she replied.

He did not, however, snap back. Instead, in a much quieter voice, he said, “The fief of Ravellon—if it’s even a fief at all—is impassible.”

She nodded.

“But, Kaylin—something is stirring in the fiefs. Something is twisting in the heart of the city.”

“Evanton—”

“Be prepared, girl. What you see in that rune is not the word itself, not as spoken. But it disturbs me. Ravellon, like Elantra, was meant to be a geographical marker, not a true name.”

“It’s not. A true name.”

“As you say.”

Severn took one look at Kaylin’s very wet and bedraggled face, and turned away.

“If you’re laughing, you’re dead,” she told him. The passage back through the garden had been about as much fun as the passage to the small stone building; her boots were in her hands. Evanton was willing to put up with the rivulets dripping from every square inch of her body; he was not, however, willing to put up with the mud she would have otherwise tracked down the hall.

“It pains me to agree with anyone today,” Evanton added, “but even so, I concur.” Crossing the threshold of the door had returned dry clothing to Evanton, but his hair and his beard were plastered to his face. “And now, you both have your patrol. I have work. Where did Grethan disappear to?” he added, in a tone of voice that made Kaylin cringe on behalf of the unfortunately absent apprentice.

“Billington decided to pay a visit to Margot,” Severn replied, in as neutral a voice as he ever used. “Grethan saw him pass by and decided to investigate.” He glanced at Kaylin, who glanced at her boots and her very wet surcoat.

“Figures,” she said, heading for the door. “Did he take his goons with him, or was it just the usual courtesy call?”

“Until there’s actually an incident,” Severn told her, following in her wake, “we can leave out the name-calling.” He nodded in Evanton’s direction.

“What? Evanton’s called them far worse.”

“I,” Evanton told her, “have no professional interest in Billington.”

“Hopefully, neither do we today,” she replied with a grimace. She pushed his door open, sat heavily on his steps and worked wet feet into equally wet boots. She could swear she heard squelching.

It was not as loud, however, as the sound of shattering glass. She swore under her breath, tying laces with speed that should have rubbed her fingers raw. Thank gods for calluses.

Severn was already down the street. So was half the neighborhood. They weren’t actually pressed around the broken shards of glass; they weren’t that stupid. But they were between Kaylin and Margot’s.

What Kaylin did not need on a day that included a testy Evanton and an insane elemental garden was the responsibility of protecting Margot, a woman she despised. What Kaylin needed didn’t seem to make much difference.

And if it came right down to it, Kaylin wasn’t exactly Billington’s biggest fan, either. He was a cut above Margot when it came to business on Elani, but that wasn’t saying much; he didn’t have her face, her figure or her sheer magnetism. And to date, he’d been unable to buy or hire it, although the constant stream of young women who worked for a week or two in his storefront always caused speculation when things were slow on the beat.

He charted stars, read palms, tea leaves and hands; he also specialized in reading bumps on the head that were conveniently hidden by hair in most cases. His biggest seller, ironically enough, was a cure for baldness, if you didn’t count aphrodisiacs. Kaylin was not a tax collector, and she’d therefore never had call to examine the books of either merchant, but she was willing to bet that Margot’s love potions outsold anything Billington tried to push.

Billington was a man who was keenly aware that there were only so many people to fleece, so his envy often got the better of him. Usually this happened when he’d been drinking, and at this time in the morning, most of the bars and taverns were closed for business.

Kaylin glanced at Severn, and froze. His hand had dropped, not to his clubs, which were regulation gear, but to his waist, around which his weapons of choice lay twined. He was closer to the store than she was, and even if he hadn’t been, he was taller than most of the milling crowd, and could see above their heads.

Kaylin, who’d never been, and would never be, as tall, made do. She tapped two people on the shoulder and told them, tersely, to get the hell out of the way. Her hands were around the haft of her beat stick; nothing she had seen had made her draw daggers. And drawing those daggers on a crowded street was an invitation to a hell of a lot of paperwork; her instinctive dread of reports usually kept her in line in all but real emergencies.

The people started to argue, took one look at her surcoat and her face and backed away. They backed into one or two other people, who started to speak, and then did the same. If this was the effect of being soaking wet in Elani Street, Kaylin thought buckets of water might actually come in useful for something other than dishes.

As they cleared, she saw that Billington had, indeed, brought goons. The window hadn’t shattered by accident, and in the back of the shop, well away from the shards of broken glass, she could see the dim outline of Margot’s clientele. Margot, however, was not cowering with them. She had turned a particular shade of red-purple that clashed in every way with her hair, but somehow suited it anyway.

That, and she wasn’t a fool; she had seen Kaylin trip over her sign, and she had seen Severn right it. She knew they were walking the beat, and she knew that Kaylin’s intense dislike of her business would mean at least someone was watching her like a proverbial Hawk.

Either that or, Kaylin thought grudgingly, she wasn’t a craven coward. It’s funny how hard it was to see anything good in someone you disliked so intensely.

But in this case, it was impossible to miss. Billington was there, and Kaylin couldn’t actually see his face, but she could count the backs of his goons. They were standing along a half circle behind him, and they were armed. None of this seemed to make a dent in Margot’s operatic, if genuine, rage.

Kaylin snorted and started to walk toward them; Severn’s hand caught her shoulder. She glanced back at him and frowned.

“Something’s up,” he said, his voice pitched low enough that she had to strain to hear it. “They broke the window. But Billington hasn’t raised his voice. He’s not drunk.”

She turned to look at the display of backs again; Billington’s was the broadest, and also, by about three inches, the shortest. Severn, however, was right. Margot’s voice could be heard clearly. It always could. But no one else seemed to be talking much, and that was unusual. They seemed, in fact, to be waiting.

Broken window—that would get attention. The possibility of unrest in Elani would get attention. Whose?

Theirs. The Hawks.

She tightened her grip on her stick; Severn, however, unwound his chain. The blades at either end, he now took in each hand. He did not, however, start the chain spinning. She wondered, not for the first time, and no doubt not for the last, what he had been like as a hunting Wolf. Who he had killed? Why?

But this was not the time to ask, if there ever was one.

She took a deep breath and waded through the last of the sparse crowd until she was three yards from the closest of the backs. Lifting one hand—and her voice, because no normal speaking voice would cut through Margot’s outrage—she said, “What seems to be the problem here?”

The man standing closest to Billington’s back turned.

The world shifted. It wasn’t a man. It was a stocky woman, with a scar across her upper lip, and a pierced left eyebrow. Her jaw was square, her hair cropped very short—but Kaylin recognized her anyway. The others turned, as well; Kaylin was aware of both their movement and Margot’s sudden silence.

One of the men said something to Billington and handed him a small bag. He also handed a similar one to Margot, whose hands grasped it reflexively. Even at this distance the sound of coins was distinct and clear.

“Apologies for the misunderstanding,” the woman said to Margot. It was a dismissal. Margot’s lovely eyes narrowed; Kaylin saw that much before the woman turned to her.

“Hello, Eli.”

Words deserted Kaylin. She shifted her stance slightly, and her knuckles whitened.

“You don’t recognize me? No hello for an old friend?”

“Hello, Morse,” Kaylin said. Morse. Here.

“So,” she said, as she met Kaylin’s widened eyes, “it’s true. You’re a Hawk. You got out.” Her smile was thin, and ugly. The scar didn’t help.

Kaylin nodded slowly. “Yeah. I got out.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“You’re not in Barren now.”

“No. But I’m running a bit of a mission for the fieflord. You want to try to arrest me?” She laughed. The laughter, like the smile, was ugly and sharply edged.

Kaylin’s hands shifted on the stick she carried. But she put it up. “No.” Drawing a deep breath—which was hard, because her throat and her chest seemed suddenly tight and immobile—she added, “Unless Margot wishes to press vandalism charges.”

Margot, however, had opened the bag that had been placed in her hands.

Morse shrugged and turned, almost bored, to look at Margot. “That should cover the cost of the window, and the inconvenience to your customers. Do you want to cause trouble for us?” The words shaded into threat, even blandly delivered.

“I will if you ever break another one of my windows,” was the curt reply.

“Fair enough,” Morse said, and turned back to Kaylin. “Well, Officer?”

Kaylin walked up to Margot, trying to remember her intense dislike of the woman. It was gone; it had crumbled. Margot wouldn’t cause trouble for Morse. No one with half a brain would. “Margot?”

“It was probably a misunderstanding of some sort,” the exotic charlatan replied. She took a second to cast a venomous glare at Billington who, with his lack of finesse and class, was standing in the street, openly counting his new money.

Kaylin was certain word of his ill-gotten gains would be spreading down the street and the bars and taverns would be opening conveniently early to take advantage of him. Couldn’t happen to a nicer man.

“Well, then,” Morse said cheerfully. “We’ll just be going.”

Kaylin said nothing for a long moment. Then she turned. “Morse.”

“I always wondered what had happened to you,” Morse told her. “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to confirm the rumors.” Her eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at Kaylin’s face.

It took Kaylin a moment to realize what Morse was looking at: her mark. Nightshade’s mark. It was so much a part of her by this point she could forget it was there. But Morse had never seen it.

“You haven’t changed much,” Morse told her, her expression replacing the harsh edges with growing distance. “Except for your cheek, you almost look the same.”

“Why did you come here, Morse?”

The woman shrugged. “I told you, I’m running an errand.”

“Is it legal?”

“I live in Barren. You haven’t been gone so long that you don’t remember the definition of law, there.”

“You’re not there now,” Kaylin said, shading the words differently this time.

Morse hesitated, the way she sometimes did when she was about to say something serious. “I am. In any way that counts. You’re not.” She looked as if she would say more, but one of the men with her approached them, and the moment, which was so thin it might cut, broke. “Yeah, legal. Unless running messages breaks Imperial Law these days.”

“Depends on what’s in the message.”

“Judge for yourself, Eli.” Morse shoved a hand into her shirt, and came up with a flattened, squished piece of paper. Or two. “It’s for you. Obb,” she added, “get your butt out of the damn glass. We’re heading back. We’re late.”

Kaylin took the letter and stared at it. Then she glanced at Severn, whose hands were still on his blades. She flinched at his expression, but she didn’t—quite—look away. She managed a shrug.

“I’ll come by later for the reply,” Morse told her.

Don’t bother, Kaylin almost said. But she couldn’t force the words out of her mouth. What came out, instead, was “Later.”

Morse nodded, and walked away; the others trailed after her like a badly behaved shadow. Only when they’d turned a corner a few blocks down the street did Severn relax enough to approach her.

“Kaylin?”

She looked at him, and then shook her head. Bent down to pick up a small slab of glass.

“Leave it,” he told her, catching her wrist. “Margot can clean it up. She’s got the money for it at the moment, and it’ll employ someone for a few hours. If she fails to clean it up, you can charge her with littering.”

She nodded, stood and looked down the street. Morse. Here.

“I knew her,” she told Severn, without once looking up at his face, “when I lived in Barren.”

He was silent. He didn’t ask her when that was; he wasn’t an idiot, he could figure it out. What he said, instead, was “Did you meet the fieflord of Barren while you were there?”

She nodded, almost numb.

CHAPTER 3

For the rest of the day—admittedly one shortened by two hours in the elemental garden—Kaylin didn’t bump into another offensive sandwich board. Severn assumed the street-side stretch of their patrol. He didn’t speak, and as Kaylin didn’t have much she wanted to say, the rest of their round was pretty damn quiet. By the end of it, she was mostly dry.

So was the letter she was carrying. She wanted to read it. At the same time, she wanted to burn it or toss it into the nearest garbage heap. Elani was fairly tidy, on the other hand, so the garbage heaps were not that close to their patrol route.

Morse, she thought. She glanced once at Severn, and remembered walking different streets, with an entirely different goal, beside Morse. Morse who could talk you deaf or cut you without blinking. She hadn’t been so scarred, back then. She hadn’t looked as old.

But she’d always looked as dangerous.

“Dinner?” Severn asked, as they headed back to the Halls.

“Will it come as much of a surprise if I say I’m not hungry?”

“Actually, it would.”

She grimaced, dredging a small smile out of somewhere. Where, given her mood, she honestly couldn’t say.

“Did you figure out what was bothering you?”

“Probably not. On the other hand, whatever it was couldn’t be as bad as what’s bothering me now.” She hesitated. Glanced at him as they reached the steps that lead into the building. “Severn—”

“We can talk over dinner. We can not talk over dinner, as well. You did a pretty good job of that on patrol.” His smile was slight, and it was shadowed, but he offered it anyway. “I told you, the past is the past. I don’t care to know what you don’t care to tell me.”

She nodded. She knew he meant it. But he didn’t know what she knew. She’d tried to tell him, but only once. Now, she had no desire to even try. Telling him about the past was one thing; telling him about the past when it had crept, unwelcome and unexpected, into the present was another.

What had she expected?

When she’d crossed the bridge over the Ablayne, when she’d stepped foot on the cobbled and patrolled streets of the Emperor’s city, she had never truly expected to stay here. She hadn’t come to escape.

“Kaylin?”

“Sorry, did you say something?”

He grimaced. “Not much. Lockers. We can file a non-report in the morning.”

She nodded and fell into step beside him; they’d managed to make it to the Aerie without any conscious awareness, on her part, of passing through the doors. She remembered the first time she’d come in through the front doors. She remembered the first time she’d arrived at the Halls of Law. They weren’t the same.

For a moment, the Halls of Law looked so insubstantial she could almost see the street through the stonework. But the streets she saw weren’t the streets of Nightshade; they weren’t the streets of the city whose laws she had vowed to give her life enforcing. They were darker, grayer, devoid of even the hope she’d felt in Nightshade at Severn’s side.

Barren.

“Okay,” Severn told her. “Stay here a minute.”

She shook her head and dredged up what she hoped was a smile. Judging from his grimace, it was a pretty pathetic one. “I’ll go get changed,” she told his retreating back.

She walked into the locker room, found her locker and leaned her forehead against its door for a minute.

“Hey.”

She jumped back from the locker door, wondering whether or not she’d fallen asleep standing up. Having done it on one or two occasions, she didn’t wonder if it were possible, but it was never anything like good sleep, and it usually ended abruptly with the unpleasant sensation of falling, and the even less pleasant sensation of landing.

“Teela?”

Teela grinned. Barrani didn’t smile or laugh much as a general rule, and when they did, it was usually at someone else’s expense. “You look like crap,” she told Kaylin. “Come on, get changed. We’re not going out if you’re dressed like that. Iron Jaw would have our hides pinned to the dartboard by morning. If he waited that long.”

Kaylin’s body started to obey; she stripped off her tabard and her armor, taking care to set Morse’s letter on the inside of her locker. But her brain caught up, and she stopped, tunic halfway over her upper body. “What do you mean, we’re going out?”

“Severn seems to think you need a drink.”

“I’m not going to get a drink if I go out with you!”

Teela’s shrug was lazy. “Tain’s been bored all day.”

“Oh, no, you don’t. I am not going out drinking with Tain. Not when he’s bored.”

Teela, stripping off her own gear, laughed. “We’re not going to cause too much trouble. Your Corporal is going with us.”

“You’ve gone drinking with officers and you’ve managed to wreck half a tavern!”

She shrugged, her lazy smile spreading across her full lips. “They weren’t conscious for most of it.”

“Teela—”

“And I’m guessing your Corporal can hold his drinks a tad better. Which, all things considered, would be a pity.”

“Teela, don’t even think it.”

“Last I heard, thinking wasn’t illegal. Come on, Kaylin. I’ve never gone drinking with Severn.”

“Obviously not, if this was his idea. I’m going to kill him.”

“Can you kill him after I’m finished?”

“No.”

Teela laughed as someone started hammering on the door. That would be Tain, Kaylin thought. “You get it,” she told Teela, as she belted her tunic. “I’ve had a bad enough day already.”

It had been several months since Kaylin had gone drinking with Teela and Tain. Several months, in fact, since she had appeared at work, slightly gray-faced, with dark circles under her eyes and a headache that she was certain at the time not even beheading would cure.

Teela had shrugged her way out of her regulation gear. Since Teela was tall and almost preternaturally beautiful—a characteristic she shared with all of her race—she would look stunning in sack-cloth; the change of clothing did not actually make that much of a difference. The same could be said of Tain, although Tain had a chipped tooth. That single flaw had made him the first of the Barrani that Kaylin could easily distinguish; they all looked very similar when she had first joined the Hawks.

Severn, however, wore black and gray, and he looked very different. He had set aside his obvious weapons, although he still wore his chains; they were wrapped around his waist like a fashion statement. It was not exactly cold in Elantra at this time of year, but Kaylin wore the usual long-sleeved shirt. The marks on her arms made her self-conscious, and she could live more easily with sweat.

They approached the front doors. Clint was on guard duty. When he saw Kaylin beside Teela, he grimaced. “Teela—”

“We’re off-duty,” she told him cheerfully.

He rolled his eyes. Kaylin privately thought he’d lost his mind if he expected responsibility from that quarter.

Severn, however, smiled at Clint. “I’ll stop them from trashing the tavern.”

Clint grimaced. “You’ve clearly never gone drinking with Teela and Tain.”

Severn’s idea of drinking was not Teela’s idea of drinking; he led them to the Spotted Pig. Kaylin glanced at Teela; she was betting they had about fifteen minutes before Teela decided to go somewhere else. Only on a very lucky day would her “go someplace else” not involve dragging Kaylin with her when she stormed out.

Barrani clientele was always a mixed blessing, because about a quarter of the time, something ugly happened. The definition of ugly was a real-life lesson in cultural paradigms, because nothing had ever happened that Teela did not find amusing.

The fact that neither Teela nor Tain said a word when they entered the quiet and rather unpretentious environs of the Spotted Pig was a bit suspicious. Given they were Barrani, suspicion was only natural; Kaylin took a seat—at a table—beside Severn. Teela and Tain occupied the bench across from them. They seldom ate much when they went anywhere; human food was not generally to their taste, although Kaylin, having eaten with the Barrani in no less a place than the High Court, didn’t really see why.

They ordered food and wine; the wine arrived before the food, and it arrived in mugs that were better suited to ale.

Kaylin looked at Severn.

“What exactly is going on here?”

“We’re having a bite to eat, and something to drink. Maybe,” Tain added, glancing around the quiet room. “I can’t imagine—”

Teela stepped on his foot. Kaylin couldn’t actually see this, of course, but she could hear it, and frankly, very little else would cut Tain off.

“Severn.”

“Oh, leave him alone, kitling.”

Kaylin’s eyes narrowed. It had been years—with a few exceptions—since anyone but Marcus had called her by that name. And most of those years had gone into living down the rank of Office Mascot. She stared at Teela, who smiled her slow, lazy, catlike grin. “What’s this about, Teela?”

“You tell me. Severn said you met an old acquaintance on your rounds in Elani.”

“No one you’d know.”

Tain, who had been mostly silent, started to drink. “This isn’t terrible,” he told Teela, mock surprise in every word.

She cuffed the side of his head, although her fingers trailed sensuously through the length of his hair afterward, which ruined the gesture, in Kaylin’s opinion. “Kitling,” she said, resting her elbows on the scarred, old wood, “we were told not to ask you many questions.”

“And you listened about as well as you normally do.”

Teela shrugged. “It’s habit. When you first wandered into the office, Marcus made clear to everyone there—particularly the Barrani—that you were not to be too heavily discouraged. Or damaged,” she added.

“Too bad he didn’t make that clearer to the drillmaster.”

“If you’d blocked the way you said you could, he wouldn’t have broken your arm. And you didn’t, that I recall, lie about your abilities again after that. Don’t make that face. It healed quickly enough,” Teela pointed out. “You came to the Hawks as a fledgling. You’ve made this job your life.”

Kaylin tensed slightly, waiting for the rest. But she was surprised at where the conversation now went. She shouldn’t have been; she’d seen Teela drive, after all, and she knew what Teela’s steering was like. Unpredictable was probably the kindest thing she could call it.

“I came to the Hawks from the High Halls. It wasn’t considered upward mobility,” she added with a grimace, “and it wasn’t exactly peaceful.”

“You didn’t break any laws before you joined.”

“How would you know? You spent a couple of days in the High Halls, under the watchful eye of the Lord of the West March. I spent my life there. I underwent the test of Name. I lived in the Court.” She lifted her mug and drank wine as if it were water—and she was parched. “The Caste Laws apply in the High Court.”

“Teela—”

“Hush. Hear me out.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Teela glanced at Severn. Kaylin, who had always been curious about Teela’s life—about all of the Barrani Hawks, if it came to that—didn’t. But it took effort.

“Caste Law applies in the High Court,” Tain said. He waved at the barkeep, his mug empty. “Fief Law applies in the fiefs. The two are not entirely dissimilar.”

“They’re completely different.”

“No, they’re not.”

“You’ve never lived in the fiefs.”

“And you,” he said pointedly, “have never lived in the High Halls without the title Lord.”

She considered this quietly. Teela nudged her drink, and Kaylin said, “I’m not going to finish it, if you want it.” This earned her a brief grimace and a kick under the table.

“You’ve met my cousin,” Teela said, picking up the reins of the conversation again.

“As far as I can tell, half the High Court is related to you.”

“Not half.”

“Which cousin?” Kaylin asked. She wasn’t being disingenuous; she honestly had no idea.

“Evarrim.”

“Ugh.” Evarrim was an Arcanist. Arcanists, as far as Kaylin was concerned, were slightly lower on the decency scale than drug dealers. She didn’t understand why the Emperor tolerated them; he had his own mages, after all, and at least half of the Wolves’ hunts had been former Arcanists.

Tain waved the bartender over again.

“His mother was blessed with five children over the course of her marriage. Evarrim is the last one left standing. It was noted, of course.”

“What—he killed the others?” Kaylin grimaced. She’d meant it as a joke, but it had fallen flat even before Teela nodded.

“Teela—”

“If Evarrim hadn’t been the sole survivor, one of the others would have. He was canny enough, and powerful enough, to beat them at their own game. I played Court games,” she said quietly. “I also survived. Do you understand?”

After a moment of silence, Kaylin nodded.

“But even survival can become boring after a while.”

“You joined the Hawks because you were bored?”

Tain said, “No.”

“Then—then why?”

“Because she did not trust me,” he replied, “not to dare the Tower and take the test of Name.”

Kaylin stared at them both, and then turned to Severn. “If this is your idea of cheering me up, you need better ideas.”

He shrugged, but did grimace. “With the Barrani, you take whatever they offer.”

“No, with the Barrani, you don’t ask.” But she took a swig of the wine, and glanced at Tain.

“What she was trying to say,” he told Kaylin, “is that it doesn’t matter. What she did in pursuit of survival would probably give you ulcers, and she isn’t about to recount it all—it would take two months.”

“Three,” Teela drawled.

Tain rolled his very attractive eyes. Although he was serious—which seldom happened—those eyes were a shade of deep green; what he said was fact, not dirty secret. “What we did in the High Courts, we don’t do in the Imperial City. We uphold the Emperor’s law. We generally find it amusing,” he added, with a nod in Teela’s direction. “It’s certainly less formal; it’s usually less dangerous.” He said the last with a tinge of regret. “The laws that defined our lives there, and that define Teela’s life when she is called to Court, aren’t the same.

“Although we have better drink,” he added.

It was true. Kaylin looked up as food joined drink on the pocked table. It was some sort of cubed chicken with rice, potatoes and—ugh—little peas.

“I do not understand your people’s obsession with potatoes,” Teela said, her nose wrinkling in mild—for Teela—distaste. It wasn’t the first time she’d said it, and no doubt it wouldn’t be the last, but it was oddly comforting.

“The High Court is no longer my home. And the fiefs,” she added pointedly, “are no longer yours. Understood?”

“You think I’d go back there? Do I look stupid?”

“Generally,” Tain said helpfully. “Look, if they try to blackmail you, ignore it.” At Kaylin’s sudden tightening of expression, he rolled his eyes. “It’s completely obvious that’s what you’re afraid of. You can read it in your face a mile off. And you’re probably right,” he added with a shrug. “They’ll try, if they know where you are.”

They did, and that fact had bothered Kaylin almost as much as seeing Morse again. They had known where she would be, and with enough notice that they could find Billington, pay him to stir up a bit of trouble, break a window and time both things so that they’d catch her attention. If someone in the office was feeding information to the fieflord of Barren, it was more than simple trouble. If someone wasn’t feeding information to Barren, it was worse: it meant Barren had some way of looking into the Halls of Law that no one had yet noticed. Neither of these things were good.

But she hadn’t gone back to the office to talk with Marcus; she hadn’t even tried to point it out. It was what she damn well should have done. But had she, she’d have to answer questions. She wasn’t quite up to that, tonight.

“You can laugh in their face if it helps. I generally find breaking things attached to them more helpful, but you’ve been known to be squeamish, on occasion. On the other hand—”

“Shut up, Tain.”

“—you’ve also been known to—”

Teela elbowed him, hard. He did stop talking, but he turned a blue-eyed and murderous glare on his partner; her own eyes had shaded dark, but she was smiling.

“All right,” Severn whispered. “You win. This was ill-advised.”

And that did make Kaylin feel a bit better.

They did not, as it turned out, end up dead drunk. An attempt to insult the barkeeper fell so totally flat Kaylin wondered if he was deaf. On the other hand, neither Teela nor Tain had worked themselves into that dangerous state the Barrani called boredom. They were, Kaylin realized, genuinely worried about her.

And given that they were Barrani, they might continue to do so when they knew what she’d done. If they ever knew.

“I was in Barren for six months,” she told them. She hadn’t intended to say it; it had just fallen out of her mouth. She set her cup aside.

“You were in Nightshade,” Teela pointed out, “for thirteen years.”

“Barren was different,” she said quietly.

“Why?”

“It was—it was just different.”

“Find out what they want, Kaylin,” Tain told her quietly. “Or we will.” He nodded in Teela’s direction.

“You can’t just walk into Barren and demand answers.”

“We can try. I’ve never been into the fiefs,” he added, “but Teela used to head there when she was bored.”

“She went to Barren when she was bored?” Kaylin could have sounded more appalled if she’d really worked at it—but not by much.

“Not just Barren,” Teela added, grinning broadly. The grin faded. “But the fiefs aren’t what they were when I was young. Find out what they want. Do not do anything stupid.”

Kaylin hesitated, and then reached into the folds of her tunic. When she withdrew her hand, it held the letter that Morse had given her. Funny, how it didn’t burn; it should have. “I wanted to keep this to myself,” she told them all: Severn, who hadn’t spoken a word, Teela, Tain. She especially did not want to talk to Marcus or Caitlin. She didn’t want to hear a word that someone out of department, like, say, Mallory, had to say. She just didn’t want to see the looks on their faces.

Teela shrugged. “Yes, that was obvious. And clearly your Corporal is willing to let you do that—but we’re not.”

Kaylin set the letter on the table, and picked up her mug. “You didn’t leave Tain behind,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“You came to the Hawks—you brought him with you. You didn’t leave him behind in the High Courts.”

Teela was silent for a moment, and the silence wasn’t punctuated by her slow grin. It was almost human. “No,” Teela said at last, “I didn’t. This person you met in Elani was a friend?”

“Maybe. A lot can change in seven years.”

“Remember that.”

Kaylin nodded, swallowing wine and something more bitter as she did. She picked up the letter, unfolded the paper and cringed before she’d read the first word. It was Barren’s handwriting. Maybe some things never changed.

Elianne,

I’ve been following your progress as I can—I admit it’s surprised me. You didn’t fall from the Tower, although the Hawklord’s still in it. You landed on your feet; he probably has no idea why you made your way out of the fiefs in the first place.

I know you didn’t like working for me; no one does. Doesn’t matter. You like working for the Hawklord, and I’m fine with that—everyone has to eat. But you probably want to keep on working across the river.

Working for the Law has its drawbacks. I don’t care what you are or what you’ve done—but the Law does. You know that.

The way I look at it, girl, you owe your life to me. You wouldn’t be where you are if I hadn’t sent you. And you probably can’t stay where you are, if they know why. I’ve got the information, and I can make your life very, very difficult without ever crossing a bridge.

But I’m not a malicious man. I’m a fieflord, and I aim to stay that way.

You’re going to help me, if the rumors are true. I’ll be generous. You’ve got three days before a small packet crosses the bridge in the hands of one of your old friends. In three days time, you can head it off at the bridge; if she sees you, she’ll bring you home, and the package will travel with you.

—Barren

She lifted the mug, drained it, choked enough to bring tears to her eyes. Then she handed the letter to Severn, in silence. Her hands were shaking.

He took it and set it down without reading it. “Kaylin—”

She picked it up again, and shoved it into his hands. This time, she met and held his gaze. “I tried to tell you,” she whispered.

“Yes. And I told you I didn’t care.”

“Care now. Just read the gods-cursed thing.”

A brief pause. Severn’s brief pause, in which she could imagine almost any thought, any concern and any anger. He ended it with a nod, and he turned his attention to the letter—but she felt it anyway. It didn’t take him long to read it, and when he’d finished, he set it down in the exact same place on the table.

“He was clever enough not to say anything at all.”

“Three days,” she replied.

“Are you two going to share that?” Teela asked, holding a hand out across the table.

“No.” Kaylin picked up the letter and folded it. “Teela, Tain—I’m almost grateful for tonight. But I don’t want you involved with Barren.”

The silence that followed this statement was exactly the wrong type of silence, coming as it did from Teela. When she broke it, her tone could have frozen water. Or blood. “And we’re somehow at more risk than a human Corporal?”

Severn’s brow rose, but he was smart enough not to answer.

“Severn trusts me enough that he’ll let me do what I feel I have to do,” was Kaylin’s very—very—careful reply. “You both think of me as if I’m still a thirteen-year-old mascot, trailing around under Marcus’s claws.”

“And that’s inaccurate how?”

“My point. You don’t trust me.”

“I trusted you,” Teela pointed out, each word sharp and staccato, “with the life of the Lord of the West March.”

“Yes—but he was as good as dead. You had nothing to lose.”

Severn caught Kaylin’s wrist. She met his stare dead-on, and after a moment, she grimaced. Without another word, she handed the letter to Teela, whose hand had conveniently not moved an inch.

“Honestly, Kaylin,” Teela said, taking it, “you make the biggest fuss about the littlest things. It’s such a human trait.”

“We don’t consider them little.”

“Because you’ve only got a handful of years in which to attempt to truly screw things up. Try living a millennia or more. It’ll give you perspective.”

“I bet when you were young, you had to personally dig your own wells just to get water, too,” Kaylin said, under her breath.

Teela, who appeared to be reading the letter, said, “I heard that.” She looked up, handed the letter to Tain, and said, “So, why exactly did Barren send you out of his fief?”

She looked across the table; she could not look at Severn. But even not looking at him, she felt his presence as strongly as she had ever felt his absence. “He sent me,” she said quietly, “to kill the Hawklord.”

CHAPTER 4

Teela’s brows rose; the rest of her face seemed frozen. “He sent a thirteen-year-old human child to assassinate the Hawklord?”

Kaylin nodded. She felt curiously numb, now that the words had left her mouth. She didn’t even feel the panicky need to claw them back, to make a joke of them. What did it matter, in the end? She could do whatever Barren wanted her to do, but if she did, she’d lose the Hawk anyway. If she didn’t?

She’d lose it, as well.

“Why?”

“Why?”

Teela frowned. “Pay attention, kitling. Why did he send a child to kill the Hawklord?”

“I don’t know. I think he was trying to make a point.”

Teela shrugged. She didn’t seem disappointed in Kaylin at all—but then again, she was Barrani. It wasn’t the good opinion or the approval of the Barrani Kaylin was afraid of losing. Hells, given the Barrani she might even rise a notch or two in their estimation. “This is what you’re afraid of? He sends in so-called proof of that, people will be laughing for months.”

Kaylin, however, did not seem to find this as vastly humorous as Teela. Or Tain, judging by his smirk.

Severn covered the back of one of her hands with his. He asked no questions, and he made no comment; he didn’t even seem particularly surprised.

“Since you obviously failed to follow his orders—”

“I didn’t.”

“The Hawklord, last I saw, was still breathing.”

“I didn’t fail to follow his orders,” was the quiet reply. “I just failed to succeed.”

Tain chuckled. It was the only sound at the table. Even Teela, not normally the most sensitive of the Hawks—which, given she was Barrani, was an understatement—was somber. “You tried to kill the Hawklord.”

Kaylin nodded. The lines of her face felt too frozen for expression; she wasn’t even sure what she looked like.

“If the Hawklord already knows—and I can’t imagine he doesn’t, unless you were truly, truly terrible—you’ve little enough to fear.”

Kaylin shook her head. “What I did in the fiefs, he won’t or can’t touch. What I did in the Tower? It counts. Marcus doesn’t know.” She lowered her face into her palms. Took a deep breath before she raised it. “I don’t want him to know,” she told them both.

Teela glanced at Tain.

“Don’t even think it.”

“Think what?” Tain asked. Barrani did a horrible mimicry of innocent.

“Barren’s a fieflord.”

“He’s human, isn’t he?” Teela asked, with her usual disdain for enemies who were merely mortal.

“I’m not sure that counts in the fiefs. Not when you’re the fieflord.”

Severn touched her shoulder, and she turned to look at him. “How much different is Barren from Nightshade?”

“The fief or the Lord?”

“Either.”

“The fief is—” Kaylin hesitated. “I’m not sure we would have noted the differences when we were kids. The people still live a really miserable life, the ferals still hunt. Barren doesn’t have public cages or hangings—he doesn’t need ’em. If you piss him off, he throws you to the ferals.”

“The ferals aren’t that dependable.”

Kaylin grimaced. “No. I don’t know if he knows when they’re coming or not. He’ll wait it out with his victim until he hears the howls. He cuts them,” she added, staring at the tabletop as she spoke. “And then he makes them run.

“If they can survive until morning, they’re more or less free to go.”

“Happen often?”

“Pretty much never.” She started to rise, to shed the bench and its confinement, and his hand tightened.

“Severn—I don’t want to talk about Barren. I’ll talk about anything—and I mean anything—else.”

He met her gaze and held it, and she found it hard to look away. After a moment, she sat, heavily. He hadn’t forced her back down; her legs had given way. They waited in silence.

Kaylin surrendered. “There’s a bit more foot-traffic coming over from the right side of the bridge. Barren’s got storehouses and brothels on the riverside. But his own place? It’s not at the heart of the fief. He lives near the edge.”

“Which edge, Kaylin?”

She shook her head. “Inner.”

“You’ve been there.” It wasn’t a question.

She looked away again. “Yeah. I’ve been there. It’s not like Nightshade’s Castle.”

“It’s an old building, though?”

“I don’t know if it’s any older than the rest of the buildings there. There is a building that’s kind of like the Castle, but it’s older and more decrepit. I don’t think anyone lives there.” She paused, and then added, “I don’t think anyone who tries survives.”

“But Barren doesn’t.”

“No.”

“You’re going to meet him.”

“No. I’m probably going to meet Morse. I don’t know where she’ll take me, or what she’ll tell me to do.” She looked across the table at Teela and Tain. She wanted to either drink a lot more, or have drunk a lot less. “I don’t want Marcus to know,” she whispered. “He thinks I’m a kit. He thinks I was a—a child—when the Hawklord dumped me on his division.”

“Kitling,” Teela said, almost gently, “you were.”

“He thinks I was a good child, turned thief because I had no other way of living in the streets of Nightshade.”

“But you know better?”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not. I’m treating you like a self-absorbed and ignorant human. Patronizing is different.” Teela lifted her mug. “Look. What humans do when they’re desperate is just an expression of fear. What they do when they feel safe is a better indication of whether or not you can trust them.”

“I thought the Barrani were allergic to trust.”

Teela shrugged. “It’s a figure of speech. What you’ve done, feeling safe? Volunteer with the midwives. The foundling hall. You’ve been, in Marcus’s estimation, a better officer than most of his Barrani. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. You did what you did—”

Kaylin let her talk. It did not, however, make her feel any better; the words felt hollow, built on a foundation that was shaky at best. Not as she remembered Elianne, who’d fled Nightshade after the deaths of Steffi and Jade. Fled Nightshade and ended up…elsewhere.

“Kaylin?”

Severn’s voice pulled her back from the sharp bite of memory: her first night in Barren. She tried to school her expression, to force it into casual, neutral lines. It would change nothing. He knew what she was thinking.

She had taken a name for herself, not once, but twice: when she had first met the Hawklord, and when she had seen the Barrani pool of life. The one had been a lie that had slowly enfolded her, becoming a truth she desperately wanted to own; the other?

She had given it to Severn.

He knew what she was thinking. But as he could, he now gave her room.

It never went away. The regret. The guilt. Sometimes it ebbed for long enough that she could believe she was beyond it, but that was wishful thinking, another way of lying to herself. She didn’t want to share this with Teela and Tain. Sharing bar brawls and near-death, yes. But this?

“Come on,” Severn told her quietly. “Let me take you home.”

“I can find home on my own.”

He waited.

Teela snorted and rose. “This,” she said coolly, “is as much fun as the High Court.”

“Less,” Tain added. “No danger.”

“Pardon me for boring you both,” she snapped.

“We might. I have a question for you,” Teela said, as she rose. “You left Nightshade, and you entered Barren, yes?”

Kaylin nodded. It was brusque, and invited no further questions—but that was too subtle for Teela when she was determined.

“Did you notice nothing at all about the transition?”

“Transition?”

“You left Nightshade.”

“I enter Nightshade and leave it now. I don’t notice it either way.”

“Now, you’re not of Nightshade.” Teela glanced at Tain, who shrugged.

“It was a straight run along the border nearest the river,” Kaylin told them both. “I wasn’t close to the—the other border.”

“No. If you’d run in that direction, you’d never have met the Hawklord. And,” Teela added, “our lives would generally be less interesting for the lack.” She nodded to Severn. “Tain and I have a little drinking to do. See that she gets home.”

He didn’t even bridle at the casual order.

“I’m not angry anymore,” Kaylin told Severn as they walked along the river’s side. Her gaze traveled across its banks, and into the shallows of night. Night in the fiefs was death unless you were armed and trained. She could walk there now without much fear, and that was something she’d never even dreamed of as a child.

Severn said nothing.

“I know why you did—what you did.”

He nodded. “But?”

She frowned. “It’s Barren,” she said quietly.

“The fief or the Lord?”

“I’m not sure you can ever separate a fief from its fieflord. But…the fief. The first night. The first day. I don’t think about it much anymore.” She kicked a loose stone with her right foot, and found that it wasn’t as loose as it had looked. The pain was almost a relief, it was so mundane.

“But then?”

“I wanted to kill you.” She stopped walking and turned to face him. What he saw in her expression made him look away. “I wanted to be able to kill you. I thought, if I did, it would end the nightmares. It would somehow let Steffi and Jade rest in peace.”

In the muted streetlights, she could see his face; it was shadowed, and it was stiff. She searched around for another stone to kick, because it was better than looking at what was—and wasn’t—there. “It was the only thing I could think about, when I could think at all.” She lifted her hands, found they were almost fists, and lowered them again.

He watched her. He said nothing.

But he didn’t turn, didn’t walk away. She would have. She knew she would have. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t,” he said, his first word. He lifted a hand, palm out. “Don’t apologize to me. What you did, what we did, is in the past. Leave it there, Kaylin.”

“I did. I thought I did,” she added bitterly. She lifted Barren’s missive and waved it in the air. “But it’s here. Again.”

“Ignore it. Walk away. Don’t walk back.”

She knew, then, that’s what Severn would do.

And what could she say that wasn’t pathetic? I don’t want Marcus to know.

“Marcus will understand, Kaylin. Trust him to do that much. Given a choice, he would never, ever have you walk back into Barren.”

“I do trust him,” she said quietly. “I want him to keep on trusting me.”

He nodded, as if he’d never really expected her to say anything else. Maybe he hadn’t. “Take me with you.”

“No.”

“He didn’t tell you to go alone. Take me with you.”

“No. Because—” she stopped. Looked at his face, at the lines that had hardened in his expression. Closed her own. “Severn—I don’t want you to know, either.”

And then, before he could answer, she did what she had often done—she turned and she ran.

There was no light in her apartment that wasn’t supplied by moon; it was cheap, and all she did here at night was sleep anyway. She checked the mirror, but it was dull and silent. No messages. No other emergencies. Tonight, for a change, one would almost have been welcome.

Her hair fell as she pulled out the new stick that bound it; she struggled out of her tunic and dumped it on the chair that served as a closet. It’s not your fault, she told him in bitter silence, because he couldn’t hear her. I didn’t know why. I didn’t stay to find out. She believed it, now; those deaths weren’t his fault. But she had run to Barren, numb and terrified, and when the terror had finally lapsed, the guilt had almost destroyed her.

It was a slow, slow destruction, and she ached from it, from the memories of it; they were almost physical. What she’d told him was true: she had only wanted one thing. To kill him. To be able to kill him. She’d been thirteen; it wasn’t hard to be focused, to let desire consume everything, overshadowing all but the need to eat, and the need to sleep.

She grimaced. It wasn’t hard to be that focused now. But she no longer wanted to kill him. The years with the Hawks, with the foundling hall, and eventually, with the midwives, had given her other things to want, other things to live for. The first time she’d set eyes on Severn in the Hawklord’s tower had been the first time she’d thought about killing him in months. Maybe a year.

And what had she done then?

Cringing her way out of her leggings, and struggling with laces in the dark, she closed her eyes. She’d tried, of course. In front of the Hawklord, in his Tower, as if all the intervening years had never happened. She’d managed to pull back, but it wasn’t the last time she’d tried, and the last time?

In front of the foundlings. In front of Marrin.

Lying back in bed, she reached for her sheet and the blankets that were too hot for this time of year. She hated to leave any part of her body exposed when she slept, even though it made her sweat. It was stupid, but a small corner of her mind still believed that they would protect her from the shadowy, childhood monsters that lurked at the foot of the bed, waiting their opportunity.

It was stupid.

She could honestly say she loved Severn. She could say, as well, that she trusted him with her life. She could almost say that she would trust him—now—with the lives that meant at least as much to her, although that one was touch and go.

But Jade and Steffi still haunted her. And waiting just behind them now, Barren. The one truth couldn’t obliterate the other, no matter how much she believed it already had.

Lord Sanabalis of the Dragon Court was familiar enough with Private Neya—who might, one day, rise in the ranks if she could manage to be consistently on time—that he did not schedule his lessons at the beginning of a normal day. The beginning of Kaylin’s day was, to be polite, staggered.

It was with some suspicion, then, that he noted the door to the West Room had been palm-keyed. Private Neya stood in the door’s frame as it opened, looking as if she had failed to sleep or eat. She was, however, on time.

She walked to the large, conference table and took the seat closest to Lord Sanabalis; she didn’t even grimace at the candle that he had placed in its usual position, which in Kaylin’s case, would be just out of range of her fists.

He waited for her to speak.

Normally, speech was not an issue; getting her to stop, especially if she felt aggrieved by the exercises, was. She remained, however, silent; she did not appear to notice that the candle was awaiting her attention.

He began the lesson by reminding her of the import of the candle flame. She was, of course, to light it, and that simple task had so far eluded her, although she had once managed to melt the entire thing.

She offered none of the usual resistance; she even nodded in the right places. But he had some suspicion that this was rote, and when he inserted a word or two that was, strictly speaking, out of place, she failed to notice.

She didn’t, however, fail to notice the fire that singed the stray strands of her hair, and she cursed—loudly, and in Leontine—and fell back over her chair, rolling to her feet near the door. “What the hell was that for?”

“I wanted to see just how much attention you were paying.”

“To what?”

“Exactly. Private, my time is of significant value, at least according to the bureaucrats who charge the Hawks for these lessons. I expect, when you are in class—which would be anywhere that I happen to be delivering a lesson—you will be awake and aware. Is that clear?”

She got to her feet. “You’ve spent too much time around Marcus,” she told him, rubbing her elbows where they’d hit carpet a little too hard.

“I’ve spent too much time around students,” he replied. His eyes were mostly gold; he wasn’t actually on the edge of angry. “At my age, I should be living in graceful retirement.”

She took her chair again, after righting it, and sat down.

He hit the table with the flat of both his palms. The table was hardwood, and even axes had problems denting it. But the whole damn thing moved about three inches.

“Sanabalis—”

“I had hoped that on our first day back in class we would at least be able to pick up where we left off. It appears that I was, as is often the case with students, wildly optimistic. What, exactly, is troubling you?”

“Nothing,” she said, sharply and a little too quickly. That brought the orange highlights to his draconian eyes. She swallowed, trying to decide whether getting out of the chair would annoy him more than staying put.

“You are making Lord Tiamaris look like a model student,” he told her, in a clipped and slightly chilly tone of voice.

That was a new one. Tiamaris was the youngest member of the Dragon Court, and as far as Kaylin could tell, he was about as stiff, formal, and tradition-bound as its older members. A flicker of curiosity wedged itself into the grim worry that had been the start of the day. “He was this frustrating?”

For some reason, the question lessened the intensity of the orange streaks in Dragon irises. Dragons were never going to be something Kaylin understood.

“He was possibly—just possibly—worse.” But Sanabalis’s shoulders slid into their normal curved bend. “He seldom came to my rooms this distracted.”

“Sorry.”

He raised a white brow. “I had hoped to have this session well underway before I interrupted it with matters that might prove even more of a distraction. I see I was entirely too hopeful. Yesterday, during your normal rounds, you visited Evanton on Elani Street.”

She nodded. She didn’t ask why he asked because she had a very strong suspicion she didn’t actually want the answer. Some days, the universe gave you everything you didn’t want.

“Apparently you were called into the…store.”

Kaylin nodded again. She knew, now, where this was going. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Evanton wanted to speak to me for a bit.”

“For well in excess of an hour.”

She grimaced. “I wasn’t exactly counting minutes, Sanabalis.”

“No. I imagine that’s not one of your accomplishments. I will, however, point out that you were on duty at that time.”

“And?”

“And you failed to file a report.”

Honestly, the day could hardly get any worse.

“Sanabalis—”

He raised a hand. “A report, however, is not entirely necessary. I was making an attempt to be humorous,” he added gravely. “But your presence, and the length of your visit, was noted.

“As,” he added, in a softer tone, “was the state of your clothing when you left the premises—carrying your boots.”

“They were wet.”

“And, apparently, muddy.” His eyes were a clear gold, which was made brighter when he lowered his inner membranes. “Kaylin, what happened? It is seldom that someone the Keeper apparently considers safe enough to allow into his domain emerges in that condition. I was personally asked by the Emperor, in case you think this is idle curiosity, to inquire.”

Which was his way of saying she couldn’t weasel out of an answer.

“The elements are, apparently, upset,” she finally said. “Which is where the water and the mud came from. The wind helped,” she added. “For a value of help that made me look like a sodden cat.”

He became very still, and she wished—not for the first time—that she had locks on her mouth, and that someone who had more wisdom kept the keys. “Sanabalis, please. I am not supposed to talk about this.”

“I highly doubt,” the Dragon Lord replied, “that Evanton expects you to keep silent in the face of Imperial dictate.”

“You clearly don’t know Evanton.” She glanced at the table, and then at the Dragon sitting behind it. “You should,” she told him, surrendering. “I think you’d get along just fine. If you didn’t kill each other on sight on a bad day.” She rose. “The elemental garden wasn’t much of a garden; it was a storm, but worse.

“But Evanton said—and I do not argue with him when he’s in a mood—that the elements do this when they’re trying to communicate.”

Sanabalis raised a brow. She actually liked that expression on most days. Today was not one of them. “You’re not going to like it,” she told him, in a quieter voice.

“I’d guessed that.”

“And I was going to tell you.”

The brow rose farther; it hadn’t actually come down.

“Well, before other things came up.”

“I’m sure they were vitally important,” he said, in a very dry tone. Since he could breathe fire, that type of dry usually showed up when he was just on the edge of annoyance. She’d never, thank the gods, seen him angry.

“Something is happening somewhere close by.” She hesitated again. “The elements were trying to write a—a word. Evanton showed me what it was. I couldn’t see a damn thing in the storm. I could barely see my own feet.”

“You recognized the word.” It wasn’t a question.

“I didn’t—” She glanced at the slightly copper tint to his eyes. “It’s not as simple as that. I didn’t recognize it because I’d seen it before, if that’s what you mean. I— It felt familiar.”

“Was it in a living language?”

He was such a smart old bastard. “No.”

“Was it similar, in style, to the marks on your arms?”

“Not—” she glanced at her sleeves “—not exactly.”

“Kaylin, do not force me to strangle you.”

“I’m trying to answer the question—”

“You are trying to answer the question without actually saying all of what you know. If you are going to do that, learn from your Corporal. It is actively painful to watch you flail, and the attempt is—I assume unintentionally—insulting. Because you are young and demonstrably ignorant, I am exercising patience, but my patience, while vast, does have limits.”

She tried not to grind her teeth. “It’s not a rune I recognize. I don’t think it’s written on me, but I admit I haven’t actually looked at the back of my neck in records recently. But it felt familiar anyway.” He said nothing. He didn’t move a muscle. Not even the corner of his mouth twitched.

“It felt like…Ravellon.”

Sometimes, he pretended to be old. It was only very, very rarely that he actually looked it. He did, now.

“The Keeper was aware of this?”

“No. And he looked about as happy at the mention of the word as you do now.”

The Dragon Lord rose. “I believe,” he told her quietly, “that we have now concluded the lessons for the day. I believe that I understand why you were so distracted.”

He didn’t. She had no intention of enlightening him.

“I will have to speak with your Sergeant, and with the Hawklord, before I leave. You will not speak to anyone else about this without Imperial permission.”

“The Hawklord?”

“I have just said that I will speak with the Hawklord.” He walked to the door, opened it, and then turned back, his robes swirling like liquid at his feet. “But I believe you should check your duty roster carefully in the next few days.”

“Sanabalis—”

“And it is just possible that I may be able to barter for a delay in your etiquette lessons, although the time is coming when they will be sorely needed.”

CHAPTER 5

The lesson had ended early.

It was too much to hope that this meant an hour and a half of downtime, but Kaylin sat, slightly slumped in one of the heavy but uncomfortable chairs by the table, staring at an unlit candle anyway. One of the advantages of this particular set of classes was that she got paid for attending them. Well, that and she got to live. She folded her elbows across the table and stared at her blurry reflection.

Ravellon.

She had never really thought much about what lay at the heart of the fiefs. Growing up in Nightshade, there had been Nightshade and the rest of the world, and only one part of the world had captured her thought and attention: the city across the bridge. Of course, in her daydreams, she’d been somehow rich and pretty and free from fear or insecurity because she knew she belonged on the right side of the river boundary.

That kind of transformation had, no surprise, failed to happen. But the transformation that had happened, over seven long years, had the advantage of being—until yesterday—real.

Idiot. Think.

What, in the heart of the fiefs, could upset the elements? She knew what upset the Dragons, of course: the only living Outcaste Dragon Lord. Kaylin had faced him twice; the first time, he had retreated; the second time? He had broken her arm. She hadn’t seen what had happened after she’d fallen.

But if he were dead, she thought the word Ravellon would have no power to disturb Sanabalis. Given how often Kaylin had tried—admittedly when she’d reached the edge of screaming frustration, and was trying very hard not to pick up one of the heavy-duty chairs and crush the damn candle that would not light—the fact that he was disturbed was contagious. It unsettled her.

She stared at the candle.

When the door opened at her back, she straightened her shoulders slightly, but didn’t lift her head off her hands to see who was standing in it. If they wanted her, they’d let her know.

Marcus growled, and she vacated her chair so quickly it was a wonder her feet didn’t leave the ground. “Sanabalis left—” she began. He growled again, and she shut up, quickly.

“What have you been doing this time?”

“Not lighting a candle?” And pushing her luck. His eyes were almost the same orange Sanabalis’s had been, although Kaylin was certain it wasn’t because of anything she’d done. Yet.

“Kitling.”

She grimaced. “Evanton told me something when we dropped by his place yesterday.”

“And you told Sanabalis.” No honorific for him from Marcus today. Apparently bad moods spread like plagues.

“You know the Emperor has Evanton’s shop under constant surveillance,” she continued, in her own defense. “Someone probably reported it to the Emperor, or the Imperial Service, and the Emperor told Sanabalis to ask me.” Seeing his expression she added, “I’m not an idiot. I am not standing between Evanton and the Emperor. What the Emperor wants, he gets.” Besides which, technically, the Emperor paid her.

Marcus covered his eyes, briefly, with his hands. His claws, Kaylin noted, were extended; she wondered how much damage he’d done to his desk. “Sanabalis said something to you?”

“Yes.”

She winced; that would be a lot of damage. A tone that cold could freeze blood. She wanted it to be someone else’s. “W-what did he say?”

“I am not at liberty to discuss it.”

This was code for “Ask Caitlin.” Kaylin nodded. “Is he still here?”

“Speaking with the Hawklord.”

“Oh.” She waited, and after a moment, he growled again.

“They’re waiting for you in the Hawklord’s tower. I was sent to find you.” She nodded and headed for the door. Which he was still standing in. “Kitling, try to stay out of trouble.”

“I always try.”

“Try harder.”

The office was not dead silent, which meant that Marcus hadn’t gone fur ball while speaking with Sanabalis. But it wasn’t exactly a bustle of conversation and gossip, either, and Kaylin felt every eye—with the exception of Joey and Timar’s, because they were engaged in a heated debate about something that was probably more interesting when you couldn’t actually hear the words—follow her as she made her way to the stairs.

She was a little bit tired of winning money for other people, and that wasn’t about to change anytime soon; she could practically hear bets being placed behind her back. Ignoring this was hard; it was almost like ignoring decent food. But not even Kaylin kept the Hawklord waiting because of office betting, which he generally overlooked or ignored if it wasn’t shoved under his nose by a weasel like Mallory.

She mounted the stairs slowly, remembering the first time she’d come to the Tower.

She had watched it for days. She’d timed the opening and closing of the dome, and the infrequent aerial activities of the Aerian officers. It was easy to see the Hawklord leaving the Halls of Law; he didn’t use the halls or the front stairs. The dome opened. He flew. But he didn’t seem to fly on schedule.

That was why she watched. She told herself that. She even believed it. The part of her that saw the Aerians and thought them—yes—beautiful? It stayed silent. But it had been there. It was still there now—but not even the Aerians tried to fly up these stairs. They couldn’t fully extend their wings here. When they came to the Tower by ground, they climbed like the rest of the wingless, gravity-bound Hawks.

She remembered, as she climbed, the way she’d watched the Aerians in flight. The way they seemed to rise above life and its ugly concerns, and soar on thermals, weapons gleaming sharply and sporadically as they caught sunlight. There were, as far as she knew, no Aerians in Nightshade or Barren. If there had been, their wings would have been clipped adornments, no more; nothing but small birds flew in that sky.

Small birds, she thought, remembering the Outcaste Dragon Lord, and Dragons. Of the two, she had a strong preference for the birds. But her preference in Nightshade mattered about as much as it always had. And in Barren?

She hadn’t cared. Not about birds. Not about Dragons. Not about anything, really. Strange that it was Barren, in the end, that had brought her here. Here, where the stairs were familiar, and the routine, familiar, as well. Where she had enough to eat—on most days—and a roof over her head. She had a family in the Hawks, and in their fanged Sergeant. She had a job that she could actually take pride in.

She’d had no stairs, the first time. And no invitation, either, if you could consider Marcus’s curt and growly command an invitation. But then again, if you timed things right, the dome had no hand-wards to pass through, and no hand-wards to set off an alarm.

Today, however, she was out of luck. The doors were closed. Gritting her teeth, she lifted her palm and placed it firmly against the magical ward. She felt the usual brief explosion beneath her hand; it left no mark, but it was very, very unpleasant. The Hawks had told her, in her early days here, that most people didn’t even notice the magical effect of the doorwards. It had taken her two weeks to believe that they weren’t having a good laugh at her expense.

The doors rolled open.

The Hawklord and Lord Sanabalis stood in the center of the chamber; they were both watching the doors. Sanabalis’s eyes were an unfortunate shade of bronze. She couldn’t quite see the color of the Hawklord’s.

“Private Neya,” the Hawklord said, inclining his head. His wings, she noted, were mostly folded at his back. Which probably meant they were an ounce of irritation from spreading. This was an indication that good behavior was required.

She saluted sharply, and then stood at attention. For some reason, this seemed to irk Sanabalis; the Hawklord, however, accepted it as his due.

“Lord Sanabalis has voiced some concerns over an incident that occurred during your patrol yesterday.”

“Sir,” she replied.

“I would like to know if you feel his concern is unfounded.”

She always hated the trick questions. Which would be any question which clearly had a right answer—one that wasn’t immediately obvious to her. On the other hand, not answering was not an option. She glanced at Sanabalis, which was helpful only in the sense that it was clear that her answer was bound to annoy one of them.

“No, sir.”

He held her gaze for a few seconds too long. “Unfortunate,” he finally said. This was said in the tone of voice that was generally followed with a dismissal. He did not, however, dismiss her. Instead, as if she weren’t in the room, he turned back to Sanabalis.

“Your point is taken,” the Hawklord said. “However, at present, Private Neya is not the ideal candidate for your investigation. I would suggest,” he added, in a tone of voice that made clear to Kaylin that this was not the first time in their discussion he had done so, “that you approach the Wolflord.”

“If you feel that it is wise to partner Private Neya with a Wolf,” Sanabalis replied.

Kaylin, standing at attention, wanted to turn and crawl out of the doors.

“Out of the question.”

Or the windows. It would probably be less painful, in the end.

Forty minutes—and a lot of verbal fencing—later, Sanabalis left. Dragons were heavy, and as Sanabalis was not perhaps entirely satisfied with the conclusion of the discussion, he didn’t bother to pick up his feet; she could feel his passage across the floor. She was not, however, dismissed; the Hawklord stood in perfect silence until the Tower doors closed—loudly—on the retreating Dragon Lord.

Only then did Lord Grammayre relax. If that was the right word for it.

“He wants me to go to the fiefs, doesn’t he?” Since that much was obvious, the Hawklord failed to reply. The question would be filed under “wasting his time,” which was never the smartest thing to do.

In spite of herself, Kaylin continued. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been sent to the fiefs.” But she remembered the first time, because it was also the first time she’d laid eyes on Severn in seven years. In this Tower, in the presence of this man.

His wings now did unfold, until they were at half height, but full extension.

“For the moment, I would prefer that you do not enter the fiefs.” His gaze grazed her cheek and Nightshade’s mark.

She frowned. “Why?”

And he raised a pale, graying brow. “I spoke, briefly, with Corporal Handred this morning. He seemed to suspect that a request of this nature would be forthcoming, and he seemed to feel it exceptionally unwise.”

She didn’t ask him why. But she understood now why the conversation with Sanabalis had gone the way it had. She was torn between anger at Severn and a bitter gratitude and, as usual, couldn’t decide on the spot which to choose. But she had nothing, in the end, to hide from the Hawklord.

He seemed to expect her to say something.

“Marcus looked pissed off,” was what she managed.

“I imagine that Sergeant Kassan is not greatly pleased.” He walked over to the long, oval mirror that stood a few feet from the wall. As mirrors went, it was definitely more cramped than the mirrors in the rooms the Hawks used for real work, but it was taller and wider than any reflective surface in the office downstairs. He lifted a hand and touched its surface.

Records could generally be called up by voice; hand activation was rare, and only partly because it left fingerprints which some poor sod then had to clean up.

But Kaylin had some idea of why he used touch, here. Some of the records were keyed not to voice, which was relatively easy to mimic, but to physical artifacts and aura, which were not. The reflective surface stirred and rippled, distorting the view it held of the domed Tower and the man who ruled the Hawks in the Emperor’s name.

When the image reformed, it was still the same view of the Tower, but it contained, instead of the reflection of the Hawklord, a reflection of Kaylin Neya.

Kaylin at thirteen.

She wore dark clothing, a wide strip of cloth across her forehead and another across her lower jaw; her arms carried yards of thin, strong chain links, looped as if they were rope. Metal pitons dangled from the ends; she could hear them hit one another so clearly she might still have been wearing them.

“What do you see?” he asked her softly. “When you look at this girl?”

She stopped herself from cringing, which was hard, and from squinting, which was easy; the latter could be accomplished by simply stepping toward the mirror itself. “Someone stupid enough to climb the Tower walls,” she finally said, making the effort to keep her voice even. This close to the mirror, she examined the girl as if she were a stranger. “You’ve never showed me this before.”

“No.”

She wasn’t much taller now than she’d been then. She wasn’t as scrawny. But what struck her, looking at herself, were the eyes. “She—she doesn’t look like she has a lot to live for.”

He nodded quietly.

“You never told me why,” Kaylin said, as the Hawklord touched the mirror again, and the image broke and vanished, her younger self trapped in permanent, private records, and hidden from all external view.

The Hawklord said nothing. But it was a quiet nothing, and it radiated no irritation or disapproval.

“Why didn’t you send me—send me away?”

“One day, Kaylin, if the answer is not obvious, I will tell you. But not today. Lord Sanabalis has offered to attempt—and attempt is the correct word—to delay your etiquette lessons. I am not entirely certain, however, that he will succeed.”

She grimaced.

“And I do not feel that a delay of any kind is in your best interests.”

She felt her brows rise, and tried to pull them down.

“The Emperor is aware of you,” he continued, “as you well know. It is only a matter of time before you are called to Council. The matter of time,” he added softly, “is unfortunately not dependent on those lessons; it is coming. Ravellon.” He shook his head, and his wings did rise. “What you did in Nightshade was necessary. What you did for the Leontines saved Sergeant Kassan, and possibly his wife.

“But what you saw there means that I will not be able to keep you from Court, and if the Keeper is correct, you will be needed. Sanabalis has spoken on your behalf in Court before, but you are progressing beyond his understanding—and the Arkon does not leave the palace. Sooner or later—and I think sooner likely—you will be asked to report to the Dragon Court’s council.

“Without those lessons, it will not, I feel, go well. Even with Lord Sanabalis’s intervention.”

“Will you be able to keep me out of the fiefs?”

After a long pause, the Hawklord said, “Dismissed.”

She met Marcus, who was on the way up, when she was on the way down. His eyes had not lost their orange tint, but he didn’t ask her what had been discussed; instead he told her to go wait downstairs—quietly, if she even understood what that meant—and he headed up past her.

When she reached the office, she was surprised to see Sanabalis seated to one side of Marcus’s desk. She was not surprised, on the other hand, to see that Marcus was a few weeks closer to needing a new desk. As buying a new desk for Marcus generally meant she was allowed to haggle as fiercely as she wanted, she didn’t mind the latter so much.

But Sanabalis inclined his head toward the second, empty, chair. She stood beside it. His eyes were almost the exact same shade Marcus’s had been. “Lord Grammayre feels that, for some reason, it is inadvisable for you to enter the fiefs at this time.”

Since that had been about forty minutes’ worth of their discussion, he wasn’t telling Kaylin anything she hadn’t already heard. He did, on the other hand, say it more quietly.

“Is it true?”

She hesitated. She knew that the Emperor knew about her past. She would not be surprised if Sanabalis did. But the rest of the office didn’t know, and she didn’t particularly feel like sharing. Ever. She met the eyes of her teacher.

“I don’t know.”

This didn’t appear to irritate him. On the other hand, his eyes didn’t shift color.

“Very well,” he said instead. “It appears that I will have to fall back somewhat on contingencies.”

The afternoon was spent patrolling with Severn. Marcus, in a foul mood, played switch-the-shifts-around; it was a game that was bound to give him someone to growl at. It was also a great unifier on the force: everyone complained. Everyone hated it. Marcus tended to spread a foul mood as far as it would go; he’d had a lot of practice, so it was pretty damn far.

The switch in shifts put Kaylin squarely in the market district, where trouble—if it came—would be in the form of petty thieves and annoyed merchants. It was about as far away from magic as she could geographically get in the city, although the market, like Elani, had its share of fraud.

She’d taken the time to check the schedule, and she knew that Teela and Tain were out on the streets, as well; it would keep them out of trouble. In particular, it would keep them out of her trouble. She tried not to dwell on Morse and Barren.

She mostly succeeded because she was hungry, and because Severn didn’t ask her any questions. He didn’t speak much at all.

But when they arrived back at the Halls at the end of the day, Kaylin ran into Sanabalis’s contingency plan. Almost literally.

Lord Tiamaris of the Dragon Court was standing just around the corner, near Caitlin’s desk. He was wearing the Hawks’ tunic.

He nodded to Severn; Severn had taken the corner at a slow walk.

“Private,” he added, turning to Kaylin.

She said nothing for a long minute, looking across Caitlin’s desk. Caitlin winced. “Lord Tiamaris was sent,” Caitlin told her quietly, “by the Eternal Emperor.” Which meant no help would be forthcoming from any quarter.

Tiamaris nodded; he did not look terribly pleased about it, either.

“Why are you here?” Kaylin asked, coming to the immediate point.

“I think you’ll find, if you check your duty roster, that I am to accompany you on your patrols for the next several days.”

Severn stiffened, but said nothing.

She glanced across the office at Marcus, who was not looking at her.

“I don’t suppose those patrols are bordering the fiefs?”

“Not bordering, no.”

She cursed Sanabalis roundly in all of the languages in which it was possible. Tiamaris made no comment, which for Tiamaris meant about the same thing.

Morning, never Kaylin’s friend, landed through the window in her face. She rose, started to reflexively close the shutters, and then groaned and opened them wider instead. This hurt her eyes, but her eyes could just suffer; she had a winning streak of on-time days she didn’t want to break. Money was, of course, riding on it. Although the betting did concern her, she’d been allowed in. It had taken some whining. But whining about money was beginning to come naturally.

Tiamaris was waiting for her when she reached the office. He was seated primly in one of Marcus’s chairs. Marcus was seated, far less primly, across from him, his increasingly untidy desk the bastion between them. The Hawks’ Sergeant was never going to be friendly to Tiamaris. Tiamaris, himself not Mr. Personality, seemed to take this in stride.

Kaylin understood why Marcus was so frosty; Tiamaris had voted, in Court Council, to have her killed outright. But that had been years ago, and it had occurred well before Tiamaris had actually met her; if she was willing to let bygones be bygones, Marcus should be able to do the same. She was not, however, foolhardy enough to tell Marcus this. Not today.

She approached his desk as if she were a timid tax collector who had the misfortune to leave her burly guards outside. He glanced at her as if she were the same thing. “Reporting for duty,” she told him.

He grimaced, gritted his teeth, and waited for the window’s mellifluous hourly phrase. She could hear his claws grinding desktop as the window told the office what the hour was, and demanded that they be polite, friendly, and collegial at the start of this busy, busy day.

Tiamaris raised a dark brow. “That,” he told them both, “could be irritating.”

“Enraging,” Kaylin replied quietly.

“I assume it’s magically protected?”

She nodded.

He shook his head. “You must have angered someone, Private Neya.”

“It’s a long list.”

“Don’t,” Marcus told her curtly, “add me to it, Private.”

She stood at attention.

“Given what happened the last time you went into the fiefs,” he told her grimly, “I am on record as opposing this investigation.”

“Sir.”

He said nothing for a long moment. Then he stood, scraping his chair across the floorboards loudly enough to break most conversations. “Your partner for the duration of this investigation will be Lord Tiamaris of the Dragon Court.” She nodded.

“You will investigate the borders of Nightshade, with special attention to the interior.” He was in a mood. His Elantran was strained enough that his words had a distinctly—and angrily—Leontine cast to them. “If anything is out of the ordinary—” he also spit this word out in outrage “—you are to take note and report it immediately. The report will come to this office.”

“Sir.”

“Dismissed.”

She glanced at Tiamaris, who hadn’t moved.

On cue, Marcus looked at him. “Off the record,” he told the Dragon Lord, although it was highly unlikely to remain that way, “I will hold you personally responsible if Private Neya is returned to the infirmary on a stretcher again. I understand the concerns of the Dragon Caste Court, but whatever else she might be, she is not a Dragon, and the Caste Court’s laws and concerns, unless specifically made public, are not the concerns of the Halls of Law. Do I make myself clear?”

“As clear as good glass,” Tiamaris replied. He did rise, then.

Severn was waiting by the office doors. He held out one hand as she passed him, and she frowned.

“What?”

“Bracer,” he said quietly.

She glanced at her wrist, and shook her head. “If I remove it here,” she told him quietly, “Marcus will rip out someone’s throat. Or try. It always comes back to you; if I need to remove it, I’ll remove it by the Ablayne and toss it in.” The bracer was not an optional piece of equipment; it was mandatory. It confined Kaylin’s magic. She even did most of her lessons with Sanabalis wearing it, although when he was frustrated, he had her remove it and lay it on the table beside the offending, and unlit, candle.

Severn laughed, then. It was one of Kaylin’s favorite things to do with the bracer, when she was in a mood. Because it was ancient and because no one understood how it functioned—or at least that was the official story—no one knew why it chose a Keeper; it had chosen, not Kaylin, but Severn. When she tossed it in the river, it appeared—sometimes dripping—in Severn’s home. He told her it was making the carpets moldy.

“I don’t think we’re going to run into any trouble. Not in Nightshade.”

He said nothing, and she lifted her hand to the mark on her cheek. He glanced away, then turned and caught her wrist. “Stay in Nightshade, Kaylin.”

The only way she now lied to Severn was by omission. She said nothing until he let her wrist go. But when he did, she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “I’ll be careful,” she told him. “Please don’t threaten Tiamaris.”

He raised a brow.

“Oh, please, do if it will amuse you,” the slightly irritated Dragon Lord added. “I’m collecting threats today.” He paused. “But for the sake of variety, attempt to be either more dire—or more original—than one Dragon Lord, one Leontine, and one Aerian.”

Kaylin winced. “I’m not a child,” she told Tiamaris stiffly. “I don’t know why—”

“I do,” was his grim reply. “And while I would like to discuss the relative states of our respective maturity, I would like to do it from the safety of the other side of the Ablayne.”

“Safety?” Kaylin muttered as she lengthened her stride as far as it would go and still failed to match Tiamaris’s headlong walk.

“The Halls of Law have no purchase in the fiefs,” was his reply. “There, they only have an Outcaste Barrani, an Outcaste Dragon, and a handful of overly ambitious ferals.”

The sun had completely cleared the horizon when Tiamaris and Kaylin reached the bridge that crossed the Ablayne into Nightshade. Kaylin had never quite understood why the Emperor allowed the bridge, which was clearly in decent repair, to remain standing. While it was true that people did cross it, it was also true that some of those people went in the wrong direction, just as Kaylin and Tiamaris were now doing.

This was not the only bridge across the river, of course; it was not even the only bridge out of the fiefs that Kaylin had ever crossed. But it had defined many of her early dreams in the fief of Nightshade, and she always approached it as if it were a doorway between the present and the past. She did so now, but she was aware that Tiamaris, who had slowed enough to allow her forced jog to keep up, had had no such dreams.

“What are we looking for?” she asked Tiamaris.

He glanced at her, and then slowed to a walk, as if the weight of the bridge’s symbolism had finally reached his feet. “Borders,” he told her quietly. “I know that Evanton is known to you as something other than the Keeper, but his words—if you relayed them with any accuracy—are significant to the Eternal Emperor. They would be significant, as well, to any of the fieflords.”

“You want to talk to Nightshade.” She turned and after a pause, rested her elbows on the rails. Strands of dark hair curled gently around her cheeks as she bent over the river itself. It was never still; it reflected nothing.

He surprised her. “I want nothing from Nightshade, fief or Lord. I admit that I find the fieflord slightly…irritating. But he is not my Outcaste; he is Barrani.”

“You just don’t like his sword.”

One glance at Tiamaris told her that she’d failed to annoy him; his eyes were still a lambent gold. The lower membranes were, however, raised. “I don’t, as you quaintly put it, care for his sword, no. But he is Nightshade. And if the heart of the fiefs is contained at all, it is contained by the fiefs as they stand. What lies in Ravellon will not determine the shape—or strength—of Nightshade’s border while Lord Nightshade rules.

“And nothing you say, or do here, will change that fact. I am not here, nor was I sent here, to speak with Lord Nightshade.”

“Then what—”

“The Keeper’s message was, in its entirety, yours. I am here,” he told her, “to act as your guard should the need arise. That is my only function at the present time. If you feel it is wise or germane, you will travel to Lord Nightshade’s castle, and you will speak with him; if you feel it is neither, you will not. I will go where you go.”

“Yes,” she told him, after a long pause. “Nightshade. If for no other reason than that we’ll be nosing around his fief on the edge of a border neither of us particularly wants to see again.” She glanced at him, and then headed down the slope of the bridge. “You know he’d send word if the Outcaste Dragon came anywhere near Nightshade.”

“He has not historically proven himself to be entirely aware of the Outcaste,” was the slightly cool reply.

“He doesn’t have to be. It’s in his interests to have the two of you fight; it saves him both time and the effort of finding new men.”

When he glanced at her pointedly, she shrugged. “Well,” she said, kicking a small stone, “it makes sense to me.”

CHAPTER 6

Lord Nightshade was waiting for them.

This surprised neither Kaylin nor Tiamaris. The small mark on Kaylin’s cheek, which was regularly mistaken as a tattoo by anyone who wasn’t Barrani or hadn’t been racially warring with them for way too many years, was in fact his mark. Kaylin was still hazy on the details of what, exactly, it signified, but she understood two things about it: removing it would generally involve removing her head, and it acted as a conduit, in some ways, between Kaylin and the Lord of the fief of Nightshade.

She generally went out of her way not to think about the rest.

Lord Nightshade was not, of course, considerate enough to wait outside Castle Nightshade. This meant that both Kaylin and Tiamaris—the latter with somewhat chilly, if respectful, permission from the Barrani guards—were forced to enter the castle through its nefarious and much-cursed portal. The portal looked very much like a lowered portcullis. It wasn’t. It was a magical gate that led directly into the front foyer of the Castle, in which Nightshade greeted his guests.

Unfortunately for Kaylin, her sensitivity to magic made the passage extremely disorienting and difficult, and she usually ended up on the other side on her hands and knees, trying very hard not to throw up. Today was, sadly, no exception.

Tiamaris never seemed remotely fazed by the transition—but he was a Dragon; you could probably cut off one of his arms with a nail file and he wouldn’t do more than grimace. He was, however, accustomed to Kaylin’s vastly less-dignified entrance, and bent to offer her a hand when she at last lifted her head. She only did this when the room had stopped spinning.

Lord Nightshade was waiting at a polite distance. He nodded as she gained her feet. “Kaylin,” he said, inclining his head. “Lord Tiamaris.”

“Lord Nightshade.” The Dragon Lord extended the fieflord a precise bow. He didn’t hold it long, but it was in tone and texture a very correct one.

“I was expecting you,” Lord Nightshade told Kaylin softly, “a day ago.”

She grimaced. She certainly hadn’t expected to end up here, but her life was like that.

After a pause, Lord Nightshade turned and indicated, with the gesture of a hand, that they were to follow. Her knees still slightly wobbling, she did; it didn’t pay to lag behind Nightshade in this castle. The halls had a tendency to change direction—and orientation—for anyone who wasn’t their Lord. She glanced at Tiamaris. Their Lord, she added to herself, or a very stubborn Dragon.

It always surprised Kaylin that the Lord of Nightshade could value the quiet and graceful austerity of simple flowers, but they rested in tall, slender vases in small alcoves along the hall; light touched them, some of it glancing from windows recessed in the ceiling. While the outside of the Castle resembled some ancient keep, with arrow slits instead of windows, and manned walls instead of galleries, the inside was another story. A long, complicated one.

She expected Nightshade to lead them into one of the rooms in which he chose to entertain visitors; he often had food and wine waiting.

Today, however, he led them to a different room. She recognized it. She didn’t recognize the halls that led to it, but she’d long since given up expecting to be able to do so; this was Castle Nightshade, and all the observation in the world wouldn’t make it mundane enough to become familiar.

The room was adorned with mirrors.

Mirrors, in the Empire, were the heart of its communication system. Oh, they were also used for more mundane purposes of vanity, or at least personal grooming, but the lesser use was not significant here. Then again, it was probably never significant to the Barrani, who seemed to ooze grace and elegance no matter what they were wearing.

Teela had once tried on some of Kaylin’s clothing; it had been entirely disheartening. For one, it shouldn’t have fit. And it didn’t. But even shortened as it was by Teela’s much taller frame, it had looked instantly spectacular. Kaylin tried to imagine Nightshade standing in front of a mirror and straightening the fall of his robes, tunic or cloak. She gave up.

Tiamaris, however, used the reflective surfaces of the mirrors to raise a brow in Kaylin’s direction. She grimaced, and replied with a very slight shrug.

“You are aware that there is some difficulty in the fiefs,” Lord Nightshade said quietly.

They both looked at his reflection, meeting his gaze that way.

“We were aware,” Kaylin replied quietly, “that there was the possibility of difficulty.” When he raised a brow in her direction, she added, “We’re not living here. We don’t know.”

“But you are here,” he told her softly.

She nodded. “It was either come here or attempt to cross the borders into a different fief.” Drawing breath, she added, “Ravellon.”

His hand fell reflexively to the hilt of his sword and rested there. “Why do you speak that name?”

“It was spoken to me. Well, written.”

His expression didn’t change at all, but something about him stiffened; she felt something that was not exactly fear, but close. Seeing the lines of his face, she knew that Tiamaris wouldn’t notice it; it wasn’t obvious to anyone who did not, in the end, hold his name.

No, he told her softly. But from you, I can hide little if you choose to notice. You seldom so choose.

“Has there been trouble in Nightshade?” she asked, avoiding any answer to the hidden, the intimate, voice.

He hesitated. This hesitation, even Tiamaris could mark. “There have been no unusual occurrences in the fief,” he replied. “No increase in the number of ferals, and no…other…encroachments.”

Something about his answer was wrong.

“No deaths?”

“There have been,” he told her, with deliberate coolness, “the usual number of deaths. They are not zero, but they are not worthy of remark or note.”

For just a moment, her jaw clenched. So did her fists. On a day over seven years ago, two of those deaths had driven her from Nightshade. It was hard not to speak, but she swallowed the words, almost choking on them. Rage, when it blind-sided her, did that.

She almost missed the cold curve of his lips. He was smiling. It was a very Barrani smile. The rage drained from her, then. What was left was cold.

We are what we are, he told her.

It was true. She endeavored to be a professional. “What, exactly, have you noticed?”

“The difficulty is not within my fief,” he replied.

“You don’t exactly pay social calls to the other fiefs.” So much for professional.

He raised one brow. Tiamaris was silent, but it was the silence of sudden watchfulness. “Indeed,” Lord Night-shade finally said. The Dragon, on the other hand, didn’t relax much. “But Nightshade is bordered by three fiefs. Or perhaps more; we count the interior as one, and that may be erroneous.”

He lifted one hand and the images in the mirror—admittedly somewhat mundane for the Castle, given that two of them were Hawks—rippled and vanished in a moving silver swirl. When that swirl stilled, the surface of the mirrors no longer offered reflections. Instead, laid out like a very intricate map, she saw the boundaries of the fief of Nightshade.

It didn’t even feel like home.

To the south, the city in which Kaylin served the Dragon Emperor lay across the narrow bridge; the Ablayne ran along the whole of that boundary, and beyond. That much, she recognized. She waited for him to speak.

“To the east,” he said quietly, “Liatt.” He hesitated, and glanced at Tiamaris. She felt the way Nightshade considered hoarding words, hoarding information, but in the end, he chose to speak. He always chose his words with care; the decision was merely between those words and silence. “Liatt is ruled by a woman; in seeming she is as human as…Corporal Handred. She holds the Tower of Liatt, and it is from that Tower that she rules. To the west—”

“Wait.” Kaylin lifted a hand. “You’ve met her?”

“Oh, yes,” he said softly. “But as you say, the fieflords do not pay social visits.”

“When you say human in seeming—”

“She is mortal.”

Kaylin nodded, and apologized for the interruption, which caused Nightshade to raise a brow. This time, the smile that turned the corners of his lips up was not so cold, and not so cutting; it held no satisfaction. It did not, however, appreciably change the lines of his face.

“To the west,” he said softly, watching her face, “is Barren.”

She was silent for a full beat. “And Barren is ruled by?” she asked.

“Barren is purported to be ruled by a human male.”

“Purported? You’ve never met him?”

“I may, indeed, have had that privilege.”

“But you’re not certain?”

“No.”

“How can you be certain that you’ve met Liatt?”

“Liatt is Liatt,” he replied softly. “Just as I am Night-shade.”

Tiamaris cleared his throat. Dragons had a way of clearing the throat that made earthquakes seem mild; it wasn’t a roar, but it implied that a roar might follow severe inattentiveness. What followed a roar was generally considered death, even by the optimistic.

On the other hand, the Barrani and the Dragons had had centuries—at the very least—in which to thumb their figurative noses at each other’s subtle threats. Nightshade turned.

“Are you implying that the fieflord of Barren does not hold the fief?” the Dragon asked.

“He rules it,” was the quiet reply. “But it has long been my suspicion that he is merely clever, canny, and adept.”

“Merely?”

“He understands how to hold the territory he has claimed as his own. But it is a claim with no substance.” He turned to Kaylin, lifted a hand, and trailed the tips of his fingers down her cheek. The mark glowed faintly as he touched it. “I knew Liatt,” he told her softly, “because the fief knew Liatt. Barren’s name had no such resonance.” He let his hand fall away. “But my experience with the fief of either Liatt or Barren is small. Yours, however, might be more germane.”

Words deserted her for a moment. She glanced at Tiamaris; she couldn’t help it. If he was surprised by Nightshade’s words, the surprise didn’t show. She wondered if he was, or if he knew. He was part of the Dragon Court.

The mirrors rescued her; Nightshade gestured, and the view zoomed in, losing the boundaries of Liatt and Elantra.

“Lord Tiamaris understands,” Nightshade said softly.

Kaylin, frustrated, tried not to grind her teeth. Tiamaris had a head start of possibly a few centuries of experience and knowledge—but she resented being the person who had no clue.

Then learn, Nightshade told her.

“Hold that image,” Tiamaris said, above the quiet, private words.

The image froze.

“Kaylin, did Barren have more of a problem with ferals than Nightshade? Do you recall?”

She hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. “The fief had more of a problem with both ferals and the occasional other creature. It was why most of Barren’s men were stationed near the border. The interior border,” she added.

“You saw this?”

“No. I was told. I didn’t visit the fieflord at night. None of us did.” She drew a sharp, cutting breath. “I was thirteen, Tiamaris. It was for six months. I wasn’t—in any way—capable of becoming one of his lieutenants. Not then. What I have is rumor, and a bit of experience. It’s not a lot to judge a fief by.”

“But the ferals, at least?”

She nodded, thoughtful now. “Have you met the other fieflords?” she asked Nightshade.

“No. I have met only those whose borders touch mine. There is some blurring, although it is not extreme.” His smile was cool. “Why?”

“You said Liatt ruled from the Tower. The Tower?”

He nodded. “As I rule from the Castle.”

Tiamaris failed to hear the exchange. He had walked up to the mirror, and he now examined the image in some detail. “How long?” he asked Nightshade.

Nightshade did not pretend to misunderstand him. “The current fieflord of Barren has ruled for ten years. Perhaps nine. They are mortal years, in the reckoning of Elantra.”

“How?”

“I am not privy to even rumor. But the former fieflord—Illien—was not human. The fief lost its name along the border. I do not hear it.”

“But you hear Liatt?” Kaylin asked.

“When I touch the boundaries of my realm, I hear Liatt.”

“Would I?”

“You, perhaps. Lord Tiamaris would not.”

She didn’t ask him why, but she touched the mark upon her cheek almost reflexively.

“Was Illien alive?”

Nightshade said nothing.

“Ten years,” Tiamaris said softly. “I would have said that was impossible. Ten years of rule without—” He shook his head, drawing the words back before they were spoken. Kaylin successfully fought the urge to slap him. “The borders here—can you magnify them? They are not clear.”

“No, Lord Tiamaris, they are not. As I said—and as I imagine you suspect—the boundaries between fiefs are somewhat unstable. What the mirrors show you now is what I see. Do you understand?”

The Dragon Lord offered the fieflord a very graceful nod. “You honor us.”

“It is expedient for me to do so at this time. It is also,” Nightshade added, “no risk to me. What I see, you cannot see without my aid, and could you, you could do nothing with it while I lived.” His smile was slight and cool.

“But here—”

“Yes. I see more and less clearly than I would otherwise see if Barren was stable. But what you see along the blurred edge is accurate. The shadows of the interior have changed shape over even the past decade. They have been on the move—slowly—into the fief of Barren.”

Kaylin frowned.

“You’ve had word from the fieflord of Barren, have you not?” Nightshade asked her softly.

She glanced at Tiamaris, who didn’t seem to be surprised, and gave up. “Yes. But I didn’t understand why. And I still don’t understand why now.” The words sank into the silence that followed them. “It’s gotten worse,” she said, voice flat. “Recently.”

Lord Nightshade said, “It has, as you guess, recently become much more unstable.”

“Do you know why?”

“No. The interior is completely invisible to both my magic and my information network.”

“Do you think it has something to do with the Outcaste Dragon?”

“He was injured, when he retreated from our previous encounter,” Nightshade replied, his voice completely neutral. “The injuries he sustained were not insignificant, and unless he were capable of healing them quickly—” his tone made clear that he thought it highly unlikely “—it is doubtful, to me.”

She slid her hands to her hips, and then let them fall back to her sides. “Nightshade, please—”

“When the tainted Leontines ran into the heart of the fiefs,” he told her softly, “it is just possible that their need and their voices woke something that should not have been woken. This is conjecture, on my part, no more, and for that reason I am hesitant to offer it.”

She swallowed. “I-it can’t be them.” The shakiness of her words failed to convince even Kaylin, and she’d said them. She looked at Tiamaris.

The Dragon Lord said, quietly, “The Eternal Emperor and the Dragon Court have decreed that the child of the tainted is not to be killed. They will not destroy him when they receive word of Lord Nightshade’s conjecture, Kaylin. That much, your service has bought the infant.”

That much, Kaylin thought. She tried to ignore her fear, but fear was hard that way. Swallowing it, she turned back to the mirror. Wondering what might wake in the shadows and the darkness of something that had looked, at first glance, like the rest of the city.

“Tiamaris, what happens if Barren somehow falls?”

“Falls?”

“If the shadows—if the heart of the fief—somehow expands to fill it?”

“You’ve lived in Nightshade,” was his quiet reply. “Your life was informed, in some ways, by the presence of those shadows, whether you knew it or not. The Emperor will hold the city,” he continued, after a pause.

Lord Nightshade raised a brow, but did not comment.

“But it will know ferals, and possibly worse. The Imperial Palace is not what Castle Nightshade is.”

“The High Halls—”

“The Barrani High Halls,” Tiamaris said.

She winced.

“You see the difficulty.”

She did. But she plowed on, regardless. “Could the High Halls hold out against the—the shadows?”

“Almost certainly, given the change in rulership. But it will not happen while the Eternal Emperor still breathes. He will not surrender an inch of his established domain to the Barrani.”

Lord Nightshade nodded. “I can enter Barren,” he told her quietly. “But it is not, then, safe for Nightshade. Not now; there is already too much instability and too much weakness.”

She had lived most of her life under Nightshade’s rule. In no way could she call it either just or fair. But the shadows—in the fiefs, and under the High Halls—would be far, far worse, and she accepted this. Because, she thought bitterly, she lived on the outside, where his law and his casual cruelty had no purchase. For just a moment, the bitterness of that hypocrisy caused her throat to thicken. She swallowed it anyway. Time to move on.

“What borders Barren on the other side?”

“Understand that what I tell you is not fact in the way that Liatt is fact; the fief does not border me. But if information gathered in the fiefs in the usual way can be trusted, Candallar.”

“Will Candallar hold?”

Nightshade said nothing. It was not helpful.

Tiamaris bowed to Nightshade. “I must leave,” he told the fieflord.

Nor did the fieflord appear surprised by the abrupt announcement. “Will you allow the Private to remain for a few moments?”

“I cannot leave without her; the orders I were given were quite…explicit.”

This, too, did not appear to surprise Nightshade. Kaylin felt his amusement, but also his annoyance; they were almost perfectly balanced. His eyes, however, were the emerald green of Barrani calm, with perhaps a hint of blue to deepen the color. “Then escort her,” he told Tiamaris. “She will return.” He offered the briefest of bows to the Dragon Lord. “The information I can surrender in safety, I will. If anything changes along the borders, I will inform Private Neya; she may then inform the Emperor.”

Tiamaris nodded and turned to leave the room, but Lord Nightshade had not quite finished. “Kaylin.”

“Yes?”

“I will not surrender you to Barren.”

Tiamaris did not run back to the bridge. Dragon dignity was good for something. He did, however, walk quickly, and the difference in their relative strides meant that Kaylin’s dignity had to suffer; she had to jog to keep up. Only when they had crossed the bridge itself—with a distant crowd of witnesses who were too curious to clear the streets and too damn smart to approach—did he turn.

“We go to the palace,” he told her.

She nodded; she’d expected that much.

“You are not yet relieved of your duty for the day. Accompany me.”

She nodded again, not that he noticed. “Tiamaris—” she began, as he stepped into the street.

He failed to hear her, which was probably deliberate. Dragons didn’t flag a carriage down; they simply stood in the way and waited for it to stop. This was, in Kaylin’s experience, a risky proposition, but on the other hand, Dragons were built in such a way that if the risk played out poorly it didn’t exactly kill them.

“Tiamaris,” Kaylin said, as she climbed into the cab, “if you’re going to make a habit of this, station an Imperial carriage by the bridge.”

He ignored her advice.

“I mean it. We have enough trouble with the Swords as is—I don’t need to file a counterreport to explain a small riot or a large panic if we don’t luck out with a decent driver.”

When they reached the palace gates, guards met the cab. They didn’t lead it into the courtyard, but they did clear the path as Tiamaris emerged. His eyes were a shade of orange that looked a little too deep, and none of the Imperial guards could fail to understand what that meant, but just in case, he lowered his inner membranes, so the color was much more pronounced. If they noticed his tabard—or Kaylin’s—they failed to be offended by it.

She followed Tiamaris into the Great Hall, and then stopped as he lifted a hand. “Wait here,” he told her quietly. “I go in haste to the Emperor, but even in haste, your poor understanding of Court etiquette would not be excused.”

She started to argue because it was automatic, and snapped her jaw shut before the words left her mouth, settling in to wait. Waiting in these halls, with the stray glances of guards who were no doubt paid triple what she earned was a bit intimidating, but she didn’t have to wait there long; Sanabalis emerged from the doors at the far end.

“Private,” he said as he approached her, making clear what the tone—at least in front of the guards—would be, “please follow me.”

She hesitated, aware that any other guard here wouldn’t have.

“No,” he added, when he noticed she wasn’t immediately dogging his footsteps, “I am not leading you to either an execution or a meeting of the Imperial Court.”

Since they would probably amount to the same thing, Kaylin relaxed and trailed behind the Dragon who was, truth be told, her favorite teacher, not that this said much. He led her to the rooms he used to meet with individuals, and she paused by the large, leaded windows that looked out at the Halls of Law. They seemed distant and remote to her, and she didn’t like it.

“Lord Tiamaris has made a preliminary report,” Sanabalis told her, as he sat heavily in an armchair designed to take the weight of a Dragon. “Some research is now being done by the Arkon, which may give you the luxury of a small break. I suggest,” he added, gesturing at the food that had been laid out on the small round table in front of him, “that you use it.”

The Arkon was the palace’s version of a librarian. He was also the oldest Dragon at Court, and technically not called Lord, and his hoard was the library. Kaylin’s understanding of the Dragon term hoard wasn’t exact, but time had made clear that it meant “touch any of my stuff and die horribly.”

She nodded and took the chair opposite Sanabalis. She even picked up the large sandwiches that had been made for her. Sanabalis never seemed to eat, and he deflected most of her questions about Dragon cuisine. Then again, he deflected most of her questions about Dragons, period, which was annoying because he was one, and could in theory be authoritative.

“Do you understand the significance of what Lord Nightshade revealed?” he asked her, coming to the point while she chewed. His tone of voice made clear that he expected the answer to be no.

She grimaced, wiping crumbs from the corners of her lips. “There’s some strong connection between a fief and its Lord,” she finally said.

He nodded.

“Liatt, a fieflord, rules the way Nightshade does. Barren doesn’t.”

“Do you understand why?”

“No. I’m not a fieflord. It’s never been one of my life ambitions, even when I thought I’d live there forever.” Seeing the stiffening lines of his face, which weren’t all that significant, and the slight darkening of the gold of his eyes, which was, she added, “I can infer that there is a building in each fief that is similar to Castle Nightshade.”

The color didn’t exactly recede, but it didn’t darken to orange. Sanabalis was not, by any stretch of the definition, in a good mood.

“If there’s a building like that in Barren, Barren doesn’t own it. He’s not its Lord or its master.”

“Did you know this?”

“Sanabalis—I was thirteen.” She spread her hands, one of which was full of sandwich, in a gesture of self-defense. “I’d never been inside the Castle—how the hell was I supposed to know it was significant? It was where Nightshade lived; the only chance I was ever going to see it involved death by cage. In public.”

“And in Barren?”

“More of the same,” she said.

He said nothing for a long moment, and it was Kaylin who looked away. “Not the same,” she said, and the food turned to ash in her mouth. “But I didn’t know that Barren wasn’t like Nightshade. I didn’t know—” She stopped. Swallowed. “What I knew doesn’t matter.”

Sanabalis nodded, conceding the point. “Do you understand what alarmed Lord Tiamaris?”

She nodded. She did. “Barren is unstable,” she said quietly. “And whatever lies at the heart of the fiefs isn’t contained anymore. If we can’t stabilize Barren—somehow—that will spill across the Ablayne.”

“And into the Emperor’s city, yes.”

“But Barren’s held it—”

“For ten years. Much longer,” Sanabalis added softly, “than we would have suspected was possible. We don’t know what’s changed,” he added, a note of warning in the words, “but something has.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

He spread his hands across the knobs at the end of his armrests. “What am I going to do? At the moment, very little.”

She snorted. “Fine. What am I going to do?”

“A more salient question. You are going to accompany Lord Tiamaris to the fiefs to investigate the difficulty. Think of how you’re going to approach this,” he added, as he rose. “If you require entry into Barren—”

Kaylin lifted a hand. “I know how I’ll get in,” she told him curtly. Then, trying to smooth the edge out of her voice, she added, “I have no idea how to do it with Tiamaris tagging along.”

“Tiamaris,” Sanabalis replied, “is not optional.”

Sanabalis left her abruptly, but his departure wasn’t the usual mystery; a Dragon roared, the palace shook, and when the tremors had died down, he was already out the door. She thought the voice sounded familiar, but it was hard to tell; the roar had momentarily deafened Kaylin.

She ate in silence, although she did so from the ledge of the window, watching the flags atop the Halls of Law. If she had sneered at those Halls as a child—and she must have, being a fiefling, although she honestly didn’t remember it—she felt no similar disdain now; the Halls served a purpose. One only had to cross the Ablayne to see the effects of the districts beyond their reach. Yes, the law wasn’t perfect; yes, its officers and representatives made mistakes.

But the alternative was so much worse. She’d lived it; she knew.

She had avoided the fiefs for over seven years now, approaching them solely at the request of her superiors in one Hall or another. It wasn’t simply cowardice or distaste; it wasn’t a desire to separate herself from her roots or her past. She was afraid of what the fiefs contained.

But if she let that fear govern her, unspoken and unacknowledged as it so often was, the fiefs would come to her. They would eat away at Barren, and if Barren himself deserved it, the people who eked out a miserable living in his fief probably didn’t; they did—as Kaylin had done in Nightshade—what they needed to, to survive.

She couldn’t judge them; didn’t even want to. That wasn’t her job.

The door opened, and she turned slowly to see Tiamaris—and the Arkon. Sanabalis, slightly shorter, stood behind them.

The Arkon lifted a slender, wrinkled hand. “Private Neya,” he said.

She slid off the ledge, and offered him a full bow. If it wasn’t a good bow, he didn’t appear to notice. Neither did Sanabalis, but she could see that in his case, it took effort.

“I am prepared,” the Arkon told her, as he entered the room, surveyed the chairs, and took the one Sanabalis habitually occupied, “to discuss Ravellon.”

CHAPTER 7

Kaylin had once been warned not to ask the Arkon about Ravellon if she valued her life, or at least having all her limbs attached. She reminded herself that she hadn’t asked as she took the nearest chair that would support her weight. Given the room was a hospitality suite for a Dragon Lord, that would be any of them.

“Lord Tiamaris, if you will be seated?” the Arkon said, in a tone of voice that made Marcus’s commands seem polite and obsequious.

Tiamaris, in this, was Kaylin’s superior; he apologized instantly for his inattentiveness, and he took his seat in perfect silence.

“Private Neya, it has come to my attention that you spent some time in Barren recently.”

She opened her mouth. Tiamaris stepped lightly—for a Dragon—on her foot. “By recently, of course,” Tiamaris told her, “the Arkon refers to anything that happened during the course of my lifetime.”

“Oh.”

The Arkon raised a white brow. “Understand that our knowledge of the fiefs is…incomplete. What understanding we have is not entirely reliable. The fiefs are not hospitable to those who are not their masters.”

She nodded.

“Was our information accurate?”

“Yes. I was in Barren seven years ago.” She spoke quietly, and without her usual confidence. “I don’t know much about the fief that anyone who lives there every day wouldn’t know.” This was not entirely the truth, but it was enough of the truth, if you narrowed the definition of everyone slightly.

The Arkon didn’t appear unduly suspicious. “Did you ever have cause to meet with the fieflord there?”

Her silence was more pronounced. But Dragons lived forever, absent things that were actively hostile; time meant less to them. “Yes. Yes, I met Barren.”

“Good. What can you tell me about this fieflord?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Is he human?”

She nodded. “As human as I—as—”

His lips curved in a smile. “As human as most of the citizens of Elantra?”

“As that, yes. He was older than I was. He’s probably forty now, maybe a little older. Possibly a little younger. The fiefs tend to age people.”

“Where did he come from?”

“Come from?”

The Arkon glanced at Sanabalis. “I believe I asked the correct question?”

“Yes, Arkon.”

“I—I don’t know. He was the fieflord. I didn’t exactly ask.”

The Arkon frowned. “And he did not choose to enlighten you?” Even the Arkon could read the silence that followed his question. “Very well. The fief of Barren—as do all fiefs—border the heart of the fiefs themselves. We cannot pierce the shadows there,” he added. “By any means save entering them. The Aerians can fly over the edges, but in the center, flight falters.”

“How do you know?”

“How do you think we know?”

She swallowed and thought of Clint. But she didn’t ask more, mostly because she was afraid the answer would enrage her; she’d always loved the Aerian Hawks. “Why do you think they can’t fly over the heart of the fiefs?” It was a safer question, as comment seemed expected.

His brows rippled slightly, but he didn’t seem annoyed. “One of two possibilities exist. The first: that the heart is magically protected in some fashion, and in a way that defies the expedience of simple geography. It is not the explanation I favor,” he added. “The second is slightly more complex. How far did you proceed in your studies on magical theory?”

When she failed to produce an answer, the brows rose again, but this time, the expression he offered was less benign. “You have studied magical theory? Sanabalis?” Clearly, the shock of her second nonanswer caused him to forget the nicety of something as simple as a title.

“Her studies in magical theory were not considered mandatory for a member of the groundhawks.”

“It is hardly possible to have a conversation with someone who has no grounding in the basics. I might as well speak in my native tongue for all the good it will do.”

“Indeed,” Sanabalis replied.

“Alleviate the difficulty. You are teaching her, are you not?”

“Yes, Arkon.”

Kaylin wilted visibly. She’d long since realized that there were whole days that did not reward getting out of bed; she thought it a bit unfair that whole weeks could also be like that. “Pretend I’m ignorant,” she began.

“It hardly requires pretense,” the Arkon replied stiffly.

Reminding herself that she liked her limbs attached, she swallowed. “Explain it anyway?”

He was very slow to relent, but did. “I am not responsible for your inability to understand,” he told her. “And I therefore am not responsible for any questions that arise from your incomplete comprehension. Tiamaris may answer them in my absence.”

“Arkon,” Tiamaris replied.

“Very well. You have heard the world theory, yes?”

Sanabalis raised a brow. “I think it completely irrelevant to the Hawks and the Imperial Law. It is unlikely that she has been forced to study something considered that esoteric.”

“Very well. There is, in theory, more than one world.”

“More than one?”

The Arkon nodded.

“How many?”

Sanabalis winced. Clearly, this was not the right question.

“More than one. Right.”

“Each world has a magical potential.” She nodded.

“And each world has a magical field, if you will, a level of power that permeates the whole. If our own studies are anything to go by, that level of power can fluctuate from place to place. Do you understand the concept of power lines or power grids?”

She wanted to nod, but she didn’t. She could guess how amused the Arkon would be by a simple fib. She could also see that her silence had caused his eyes to shade into a dark bronze. Sometimes ignorance had its appeal.

“Sanabalis, I am entirely unamused.”

“Arkon.”

“Very well, Private Neya. Magical potential seems to form along lines; we are not certain why. Those lines can cross, and in some areas, they will form a grid, in some a knot. Those knots are areas in which magic, when it can be used at all, will be at its most potent. It will often also be at its most wild.”

“Wild?”

“Sanabalis can explain that later. My time is valuable.”

Hers, on the other hand, wasn’t, at least if you went by pay scale. But she absorbed the words, made as much sense as she could of them, and then braved a question. “The buildings in the fiefs—like the Castle—are they on those knots?”

He raised a brow. “Very good. This may be less painful than I anticipated. Yes. They are, as you put it, on potential knots. The magic that defines the boundaries of a fief seem to follow lines that extend from the central knot, and out. But there is some blurring of boundary, as has been discussed elsewhere.

“In the heart of the fiefs, in what was once called Ravellon by the Barrani, we believe potential exists such as exists nowhere else in our world.”

“What does this have to do with other worlds?”

Clearly, this was a bad question. “Nothing. But you bring me to my previous point. Our world has a very high magical potential. It is why we believe the Aerians are capable of flight. It is why they exist at all.”

“But—”

He raised a brow. She closed her mouth.

“In a different magical environment, the Aerians would, in theory, be incapable of sustaining their own weight in flight. They might have wings, but the wings would serve no function, except perhaps in a cultural way. There are sages who have made this study their life’s work. Perhaps you can find one of them to question.”

Kaylin bit her lip. She did not dislike the Arkon in the way she disliked the pretentious and snobby nobles who occasionally crossed her path—but even so, she didn’t like being all but called a moron. Instead of concentrating on her injured dignity, she concentrated on his words. Her eyes widened.

“You think that Ravellon is—”

He raised a brow.

“You think it exists in more than one world.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You didn’t think the first explanation was true, although it would make sense, you believe the second explanation. And the theoretical existence of other worlds ties into that explanation. You think that, near the heart of the fiefs, there is some other world that’s touching ours that wouldn’t support Aerian life.”

He raised both brows. “Sanabalis,” he told her tutor, “she shows serious potential as a student. Why has this not been explored?”

“For a human, she is much like Lord Tiamaris was in his youth.”

This clearly meant more to the Arkon than it did to Kaylin; the Arkon actually grimaced. “Very well. They are both rather young.” He spoke as if youth was a failing. “Yes, Private Neya. That is what I believe.”

“It is also,” Sanabalis finally said, “not relevant at the moment.”

“Do you think the shadows come from somewhere else? I mean, some world that isn’t ours?”

“No. The shadows, as you call them, are at the heart of our world. They are the scions of the Old Ones.”

“But the Old Ones are gone—” She stopped. Glanced at her arms, the marks covered as they always were by layers of cloth.

“It is possible that the magic that once sustained the Old Ones exists only in a very few places now. We do not understand what happened to them, and why they retreated—but no life as we know it would exist had they not.”

“But they created—”

“Yes?”

“The Barrani. The Dragons. Even the Leontines.” Although admittedly that was less widely known. “They created everything.”

“Not everything. But even if they did, it does not refute my argument. What the world is now, and what it would have been, is not the same. Do not look for a return of the Old Ones, for if they returned, it would not only be the forefathers of our races, but also the forefathers of the ferals, and the darker creatures which have no name.”

She was silent for a full minute before she trusted herself to speak again. “Ravellon,” she began.

He raised a brow, but nodded.

“It was supposed to be the heart of a city. There was supposed to be a library there that was bigger on the inside than—” her eyes widened slightly “—the outside. You think—”

“Yes?”

“That the library did exist. And that it existed in a space between worlds somehow.”

He said nothing.

“It was supposed to contain all of the knowledge about anything that had ever, or would ever, exist.”

“Yes. That was the legend.” He glanced out the window. “And for the sake of that legend, many have died.”

She nodded. “Knowledge is power,” she said softly, quoting someone, although she couldn’t remember who. Probably an Arcanist.

“Yes. But power is not entirely unaligned,” he replied. He rose. “And what once lay at the heart of Ravellon—and Ravellon is not a traditional fief name—may or may not now exist. What exists around it, however, in layers we cannot pierce magically or by mundane means, is shadow. We do not know if the shadows came searching for what we sought. We know only that they are now rooted there, and we cannot unseat them by any means we currently have in our possession.

“You’ve seen ferals, no doubt.”

She nodded.

“You’ve seen, by all accounts, worse.”

She nodded again, glancing at Sanabalis.

“It is for that reason, Private Neya, that we are prepared to allow you to investigate. You have experience with what you might find along those borders—or within Barren as it now stands—and you have, better yet, survived. You do not seem, to my admittedly inexperienced eye, to be insane. Nor, if your last involvement with the Courts was an indication, have you developed a love of power, and the casual indifference that comes with it.

“Therefore it is felt that you might approach—approach, mind—the borders.” He reached into his robes and pulled out a crystal. She grimaced. “You recognize this, no doubt. You are expected to carry it with you wherever you go in the fiefs. It will record what you see.”

“But I—”

“There is some magic involved, yes. I have heard that you have some sensitivity to magic, and it may cause you some discomfort. You will live with it. Come here.”

She cringed, but rose and held out her palm.

He placed the crystal firmly into that palm, and then caught her wrist. He spoke three words—three loud, thunderous, Dragon words—and all of her hair stood on end. She barely felt the stinging pain of the crystal’s edge against her palm, her ears hurt so much.

By the time the ringing had cleared, the Arkon was seated again, his hands folded in his lap; the crystal, with its sharp and unpleasant edges, was gone. “I am expected at the library,” he told her almost curtly. “And I will endeavor, for that reason, to be brief.

“What we know with any certainty about the fiefs is due to the investigations that Tiamaris, in part, undertook some time ago. He was not always the most careful or fastidious of investigators, no doubt a deficiency in either his teaching or his aptitude.”

Sanabalis and Tiamaris now exchanged a silent glance. The Arkon did not appear to notice that he had casually insulted them both. “However, what we were told,” and this time he did pause to give Tiamaris a pointed glance, “was that the fiefs pass from one ruler to another when a new ruler takes over the central building. If this was, indeed, the case, then the fief of Illien would never have become the fief of Barren. Yet it did.

“You are tasked with finding out why.” He paused, and then added, “Anything of use you can discover about the nature of the fiefs will also prove valuable at this time.” He rose. “I must return to the library. I have left instructions, should I be unavailable, that you are to be granted entry—with or without Lord Tiamaris—should the need arise.

“Familiarize yourself with the rules of my library,” he added gravely. “At the moment, breach of those rules would have unfortunate consequences.”

Great. On the other hand, what she recalled was pretty straightforward: touch or break any of his stuff, and die horribly. Not much leeway there for accidental errors.

He walked to the door, and then paused there again. “There was some discussion about your role in this investigation, Private Neya. I spoke in favor of it, but I have misgivings. I am not,” he added, as she opened her mouth, “about to explain them again. The explanation would probably deafen you, because I am now old enough that I find certain complications difficult to discuss in anything but my native tongue—a tongue which, by Imperial decree, is to be used sparingly in public places.”

“Wait!”

He froze there, and she was reminded, by his glacial expression, that there were forms she was expected to observe. “Arkon,” she said quickly, bowing. This did not, judging by his expression, mollify him much. “What did the Outcaste find? He said he found—”

The Arkon frowned at about the same time Tiamaris stepped on her foot.

“He found shadow. Possibly the last resting place of the Old Ones. If the library existed at all, it was no longer his concern. Do not be arrogant, Private. Your marks—your existence—might afford you some protection, although what that entails, and what its boundaries are, none of us can say. But what he could not do in safety, you cannot do. Do you understand?”

She swallowed, remembering the great, black Dragon, his name so large and so intricate that she could not even begin to say it, although she could see it clearly. “Yes.”

“Good. Tiamaris, Sanabalis.” He nodded curtly, and this time, she didn’t call him back.

“Lord Sanabalis or Lord Tiamaris, however, may feel free to enlighten you.” He glanced at both of them. “I assume at least one of them was paying attention.”

Tiamaris’s grimace waited until the door had closed; Sanabalis’s expression, however, did not change.

“I think I like him,” Kaylin told them both, as she settled back into her chair. “What were his misgivings about me?”

The two remaining Dragons exchanged a glance. “The Outcaste,” Sanabalis said quietly, “went to Ravellon. What he found there changed him. He was not without power. He is not without power now.” They both hesitated. Kaylin marked it.

“Why did he want you two to talk about this? He could—”

“He dislikes caution in speech.” It was Tiamaris who replied. “And he dislikes politics. His definition of politics involves anything of consequence that occurs outside the boundaries of his library.”

“Oh.”

“There are matters that the Eternal Emperor does not consider suitable for public consumption. Public, in this particular instance, involves anyone who lives or breathes that is not Dragon and does not serve him.”

“Meaning me.”

“Meaning, indeed, you.”

“So…there’s something they’re worried about, and whatever it is, he can’t tell me because I’m not a Dragon.”

“No. There are many things that are discussed. A few of them have bearing—at least at this juncture—on our duties in the fiefs. But sorting out which of those things can be touched upon and which can’t requires the type of conversational care that the Arkon finds taxing. Left to his own devices, he would not emerge from his library at all, and his concerns would lead him to discuss certain historical issues which the canny—and you are that, at least—would then dissect.”

Kaylin made a face. “Just tell me what I need to know.”

Sanabalis chuckled. “It’s a pity you’re human. I believe you would find some sympathy in the Arkon, otherwise.” Fingers playing through his slender conceit of a white beard, he watched her in silence. After a moment, he said, “Tiamaris.”

She recognized the tone of voice; she might as well have been locked in the West Room with an unlit candle in front of her face. Tiamaris grimaced.

“He was always like this?” she asked him.

“Always,” the Dragon Hawk replied. “Understand that the Arkon and the Outcaste were, in as much as any two beings can be, friends. It is hard to surrender an ancient friendship, no matter how dire the circumstance. Even the Arkon is not immune to some trace of sentiment.”

Clearly the Dragon word sentiment didn’t really intersect the human one in any significant way. Kaylin managed to keep this thought to herself.

“It was the Arkon who noted the change in the Outcaste upon his return from the heart of the fiefs. He did not immediately make his concern clear.” There was another hesitation, and it was longer and more profound. “In the end, however, it was the Arkon who was left to confront the Outcaste, because it was the Arkon who possessed the only certain knowledge we, as a race, held.”

Kaylin frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” Sanabalis replied quietly. “And after a brief pause for comprehension, you will once again resume all appearance of ignorance. This will not, one assumes, be difficult.” She grimaced.

“The Arkon,” Tiamaris continued, as if Sanabalis hadn’t spoken, “has never said this explicitly, even when pressed. The Emperor has never commanded him to speak,” Tiamaris added. “Not even the respect the Arkon commands could stand in the face of his defiance of a direct order, and the Emperor does respect him greatly.” He glanced at their mutual teacher once more. Sanabalis nodded evenly.

“But we believe that they were brothers in all but blood, the Outcaste and the Arkon. We believe,” he added, lowering his voice, “that the Arkon knew the Outcaste’s name.”

Given the way the Barrani guarded theirs, and given the significance of the name itself, Kaylin understood why the Arkon had been loath to speak. If Dragons or Barrani had souls—and Kaylin had her doubts—they were entwined in the name; knowledge of the name was so profoundly intimate no human experience approached it.

But she frowned. “If—” And then she stopped.

The silence went on for a long time.

“Yes,” Sanabalis said heavily. “He attempted to use the name, to bespeak the Outcaste.”

This time, it was her silence that weighted the room. It passed for thought, but she didn’t need much time to think; she only needed the time to choose her words. Normally, she didn’t bother, but she had a strong feeling that was about to change, and like it or not, she would live with that.

“He didn’t answer,” she finally said. As word choices went, it wasn’t impressive.

But Sanabalis nodded anyway. “No.”

“Sanabalis—”

He waited, as if this were a test. Or as if all conversation from this moment on would be one. She really, really hated this type of lesson; it was all about failing, and interesting failure often didn’t count for part marks. She glanced at Tiamaris, and saw no help coming from that quarter, but he was as tense as she was. And why? It was only conversation.

“His name,” she said quietly.

“Yes?”

“His true name.”

Sanabalis nodded again.

“It was different.”

The Dragon Lord closed his eyes. “Yes,” he finally said. “We believe that something in the heart of the fiefs changed the very nature of his true name.”

“And when the Arkon spoke it—”

“He did not, and could not, hear it. Not as we hear the truth of our names when they’re spoken.”

She was silent, then, absorbing the words and letting them sink roots. “I don’t understand,” she finally said.

“No. No more do we.”

Hesitating, she glanced at the carpet. It was safest. “When I went to the Barrani High Court—”

“Speak carefully, Kaylin.”

“I’m trying.” And so much for the effort. “When I went to the High Court, I saw—I learned—how Barrani are named.”

“Yes.”

She glanced at him. Rock was more expressive.

“Look, Sanabalis—I was born mortal. I was born the usual way. We don’t have true names. We don’t even understand them.”

“No. You are not bound by them, either.”

“But—the Barrani don’t wake until they’re named.”

“No.”

“Do the Dragons?”

He failed, deliberately, to answer.

“From what I understand, the name is what they are, somehow. What you are.”

“That is also our understanding.”

“If his name changed, would he be—”

“He is not what he was, Kaylin.”

“Yes—but he remembered everything. He lied, based on that knowledge. He tried—”

“Yes.” Sanabalis lifted a hand. “He did those things.”

“So you can lose your name and still remember your whole life?”

Tiamaris cleared his throat. “Had you a true name,” he told her quietly, “the Arkon would not have been swayed.”

But she did. She had a name. She had no idea what it meant to have one, but she had taken one burning, glowing rune for herself from the waters of Life beneath the Barrani High Halls, and she still bore it. Severn knew it. Severn could call her.

But…he had never tried to use the name against her. She wondered if he even could.

“Wait.”

“Yes?”

“You have a name.” She spoke to Tiamaris.

“Indeed, Kaylin.”

“But—”

“If I am not accompanied by you, I am not to enter Barren,” he replied.

Her eyes narrowed. “You know something you’re not telling me.”

“It does not affect our mission.”

“And your mission,” Sanabalis said quietly, “starts now. Private,” he added, rising, “understand that you are now seconded—as a Hawk—to the Imperial Court. What we have discussed in these rooms is not to be discussed with anyone save a member of that Court. If your Sergeant chooses to demand a report, the report you file must first go through the Court. Lord Grammayre may ask about your progress. You will take Lord Tiamaris to these meetings, and you will let him do the talking. Is that clear?”

“As glass.”

“Good.” He didn’t smile. “Your life depends on it. You have not yet met the Emperor, but that will not save you if you cross the lines he has drawn. Understand this,” he told her quietly. “Because if you do, nothing I can do or say will affect his decision.

“You may, however, question Tiamaris at your leisure, as he is part of the Court and privy to Court matters. If you have any leisure time.” He gestured and the door opened. So much for economical use of power. “You have been given permission to remove your bracer. I suggest you wait until you’ve crossed the Ablayne.”

“Oh, I will,” she told him. Because that was where she usually threw the damn thing.

Tiamaris escorted her out of the Imperial Palace. They’d spent most of the day there, one way or the other, and Kaylin, glancing at the Halls of Law in the distance, grimaced. “Barren.”

“You don’t want to return.”

“No. Never.” She could afford to be that honest with Tiamaris.

“Kaylin—”

“But it just so happens we’re in luck.” She used irony here as if it were a blunt weapon. Against the force of Dragon humor, it pretty much had to be. “I met an old friend of mine on the way from Evanton’s shop.”

He raised a dark brow. “An old friend?”

She nodded. “She expected to see me. I sure as hells didn’t expect to see her. But she had a message for me. How much can we stall?”

“Stall?”

“How long can we hold off our investigation? A day? Two?”

“If there’s reason for it, but—”

“It had better be a damn good reason?” Tiamaris nodded.

“We can probably go there now,” she told him quietly. “It depends on how desperate we want Barren to think I am.”

“Desperate?”

“He’s sending a messenger with a letter for the Hawklord,” she told him, voice flat. “I can either fail to show or intercept the message before it crosses the bridge. If we go now, I have no doubt at all that we’ll be taken to Barren—but if I go now, he’ll know he has the upper hand.

“If I wait, he’ll be pretty damn certain he has it anyway—that’s Barren all over.”

“Does he?”

She swallowed. Glanced at the river that had been the dividing line of her life. “I don’t know,” she finally said.

“Then decide, Kaylin. You have the advantage of personal experience. I don’t.”

She nodded, grateful to him for at least that. If Barren thought he had the upper hand, he wasn’t likely to be careless; that level of laziness would never have kept the fiefs in his hands.

Finally, she exhaled. “We’ll take the risk. I’m not sure how I’m going to explain you, though. I don’t suppose you’d care to wait?”

“I would be delighted to wait,” he replied, in a tone of voice that was clearly the effect of serving, however briefly, with the Hawks. “I would not, however, survive it should it come to light.”

“Figures.” She shrugged and began to walk. “Let’s see what we’re up against.”

A Dragon brow rose over bronze eyes. “Please tell me,” he said, as he fell in step beside her, shortening his stride so he didn’t leave her behind, “that that is not the extent of your ability to plan.”

“I don’t generally make plans when I have no information.”

“Or at all?”

She shrugged. “I don’t see the point of planning everything when things could change in an eye blink. Let’s see what Barren’s got. We can plan then.”

“It is a small wonder to me,” Tiamaris replied, although he didn’t stop moving, “that you’ve survived to be the insignificant age you currently are.”

“Stand in line.”

CHAPTER 8

The Ablayne moved through the city in what was almost a circle. Kaylin, who had never been outside of the city, thought nothing of it; Tiamaris, who had, explained why. She tried to listen. But as she passed the bridge that connected her to Nightshade, and the part of her past that she wasn’t ashamed of, his words joined the buzz of the street’s crowds.

Although the merchant market was not located on the banks of the Ablayne, enterprising independents—who were often forced to move damn quickly, by tolls, Swords, and legitimate merchants—often set up small stalls near the river. Why, she never quite understood, but there was traffic.

She didn’t walk quickly and Tiamaris, while a Dragon Lord, wasn’t stupid. He stopped at the midpoint between the two bridges.

“Kaylin.”

She glanced at him.

“The Imperial Court knows what the Emperor knows,” he told her quietly. She nodded.

“There is nothing to hide, not from me.”

“It’s not about hiding,” she told him, although she wasn’t certain she wasn’t lying. “Barren,” she said, swallowing, “is different. Look, it doesn’t matter. We’re going.” She started to walk, and she walked quickly. This wasn’t her beat; she didn’t have to fall into the steady, quiet walk that could take hours.

“What concerns you, now?”

She almost said nothing. But he was going where she was going; he had some right to know. “I don’t know what he wants from me. I don’t know what he knows about me. He implied he knows a lot, but that was always what he did. Imply knowledge, let people assume you know everything, and then pick up what you didn’t know from what they let slip.” She paused and then added, “He knows why I went to the Hawklord’s tower. He knows I’m not dead. He doesn’t know what happened.

“But there are only two conclusions he can draw. The first, that I tried to carry out his orders. The second, that I turned on him immediately.”

“The latter is the concern.”

“Let’s just say he’s a fieflord. You don’t get to keep your title—if it’s even that—if people can turn on you without consequences.”

“And you’re afraid of him?” Tiamaris’s brows rose. Both of them. He placed one hand on her shoulder. “You were thirteen years old when you left Barren. By the reckoning of your kind, you were barely out of childhood. You are not that child, now.” He glanced at her wrist, and she grimaced.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “I almost forgot.” Opening the bracer and tossing it into the nearest trash heap or stretch of moving water was one of life’s little luxuries; today, it just didn’t seem to matter. She pressed the gems along the inside of the wrist in sequence, and waited for the familiar click of freedom. When it came, she pulled the bracer free, exposing, for just a moment, the blue-black lines, swirls, and dots of the marks that encompassed over half her body.

“I had these marks, then,” she told him softly, pulling her arm back and tossing the bracer in a wide, glinting arc that ended with an audible splash. “I thought they would kill me.”

“They may, yet,” was his reply. From his expression, she thought it was meant to be comforting. Dragons had pretty damn strange ideas of what passed for comfort. He began to walk; it was clear he knew the way to Barren.

“How many other fiefs did you visit?” Kaylin asked him.

“Pardon?”

“You entered Castle Nightshade, before you met me.”

“Ah.”

“Did you go to Barren?”

“No. I went, however, to Illien in its time. The borders are largely the same. Or,” he added, “they were.”

“And the others?”

“Some of the others.”

“Why?”

This particular nothing stretched out for a while. Which meant he wasn’t going to answer. She obligingly changed topics as the bridge across the Ablayne came into view. It was a narrower bridge than the one that crossed from Nightshade.

Standing on the other side of the narrow bridge, lounging against the rails, was a figure she recognized.

Morse.

Morse smiled. The scar that marred the line of her upper lip stretched as she did, whitening. Morse’s smile could scare a much larger man into silence. Kaylin had seen it happen. “You’re tricked out,” she said, nodding at the surcoat.

“You’re not.”

“Not more than usual.” Morse ran her fingers through the short brush of her dark hair. The ring that pierced her left eyebrow glinted in the sun, which was near its height. “Had some word that you might be by,” she added, still lounging.

Kaylin shrugged. “I bet. I’m here.”

“And not that happy about it?” Morse rose, then. “Happens. Who’s your friend?”

“A Hawk,” Kaylin replied. It was always touch and go, with Morse, unless the seven years had changed her a lot.

“No kidding.” The smile deserted her face. “We don’t need groundhawks on this side of the border, if you take my meaning.”

“Fine. Tell Barren that.” Kaylin folded her arms across her chest.

Morse was silent for a long moment, and Kaylin watched the ring that pierced her brow. It was—it had been—a decent indicator of Morse’s moods, which could turn on a half-copper without warning. If it dipped or it rose too rapidly, you were on shaky ground. If it stayed steady, regardless of the words or the threat, you probably had a few more guaranteed minutes of life.

It was steady, now.

Kaylin? Not so much.

And if Kaylin had learned to read Morse seven years ago, Morse had also learned to read Kaylin. “Eli,” she said quietly, the word completely neutral. “He should never have sent you across the river.”

Kaylin said nothing. Nothing much to say. But she didn’t correct Morse’s use of her name, because to Morse, she was Elianne. Not more, not less.

“Why did he?” Kaylin heard herself ask. She almost bit off her own tongue, because she realized it was the only thing she could do that would stop it from flapping.

Morse shrugged, and turned her glance toward the sluggishly moving waters of the Ablayne; it had been a dry season, so far. “Ask him,” she finally said.

“I don’t care what he thinks,” Kaylin replied. The part of her that was shouting shut up was seven years too old. “I want to know why you let him.” The part of her that was seven years too old didn’t matter. “Let him? Have you forgotten who’s the fieflord and who’s the grunt here?”

That should have shut Kaylin up. It should have. But an anger that she hadn’t felt in years was burning her mouth, and the only way not to be consumed by it was to open that damn mouth and let it out.

“I was thirteen, Morse. I was stupid.” How old had she been before she finally realized that it was just a setup, just a way of killing her at a distance? Fourteen? Fifteen? Twenty?

“You were one of his best, even then.”

“Doesn’t say much about the rest of his recruits, does it?” Kaylin spit to the left. It was the Barren equivalent of Leontine cursing. She did not, however, aim at Morse; that was the Barren equivalent of telling the Emperor to shove off. “I wasn’t good enough to do what he ordered me to do. I could’ve spent another decade, and I would never be that good. He couldn’t have expected me to succeed.” Her voice rose in the stillness. She tried to throttle it back. But her hands were shaking.

You thought you didn’t care, she told herself in bitter fury. You thought it was all in the past. It was done. You could walk away. And she had. She’d walked. Now she was walking back. Funny, how the fires you didn’t put out the first time were there to burn your sorry butt when you returned.

“You thought you could.” Neutral. The ring hadn’t budged.

Kaylin, however, was past caring. Stung, she said, “Yes, I thought I could. You told me I could, and I believed it.”

“You wanted to believe it,” Morse said, and for the first time, the brow ring did shift—it went down. “You always did. You always wanted some damn thing to believe in. ‘Am I good enough, yet? Am I ready? Will I ever be ready?’” The mimicry was harsh.

And it was deserved. Kaylin, white, stood on the rise of the narrow bridge, looking down at Morse and trying to remember how to breathe.

“If he wanted me dead,” she said, when she’d remembered as much as she was going to be capable of, “why didn’t he just tell you to kill me?”

Morse was utterly silent.

It was the wrong type of silence. “Morse?”

The world was shifting beneath Kaylin’s feet. It wasn’t just the boundaries of Barren, it wasn’t the shadows of the past. The past never truly died anyway; you just boxed it up and put it in storage, hoping it wouldn’t come back to bite you later. But it did, and sometimes you bled.

“You weren’t the only one who was young and stupid,” Morse finally said. “Seven years, Eli. A lot can change in seven years.” She shoved her hands into pockets, and away from the hilts of her very prominent daggers, as if that was all that kept her from drawing them. “You coming, or what?” She turned and stepped off the bridge. Morse hadn’t been big on symbolism; a dagger was a dagger, a fist was a fist and a corpse was a corpse, although admittedly she took some joy in creating them in the right situation.

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