Sergeant Mallory, true to his word, was still in the office when Kaylin and Severn finally reached the Halls of Law. It had been a damn long day, and seeing Mallory at Marcus’s desk, while Marcus was living in a bloody cage, was hard. Harder than it should have been, given she was expecting it.
“You’re late,” Mallory said, when he was certain she would hear him. He did not like to raise his voice; Kaylin was almost at the desk when he spoke.
“We’re keeping Mr. Rennick’s hours,” she said briskly. “At the request of the Dragon Court.”
“Yes, yes.” He held out a hand and looked slightly surprised when she took three folded sheets out of her breast pocket and placed them in his open palm. He opened the folded papers, clapped the desk light on, and began to read. The desk light was new. Marcus didn’t stay late to read paperwork.
It took him more than fifteen minutes to read the report; he actually picked up a pencil and corrected a few words. Kaylin managed to keep her hands at her sides and, although it was harder, also kept her mouth closed.
“Very well,” Mallory said. “Corporal Handred?”
Severn’s paper was much more neatly folded, and his handwriting was impeccable. He handed his report to Mallory, and Mallory set it aside without opening it. “The day went well?” he asked, speaking to Severn. Only to Severn.
“Given the nature of Mr. Rennick’s assignment, as well as one could expect.”
“I note that no report has been tendered for the previous day’s work.”
“An oversight,” Severn replied smoothly.
“Correct it.”
“Sir.”
“This is an important assignment,” Mallory continued. “If you had not been requested specifically, I would have replaced you. Relations with the Imperial Court must be handled with care and diplomacy. Private Neya,” he added dourly, “appears to have failed many of the classes involving etiquette.” He glanced at a very modest pile of paperwork. “In fact, she appears to have failed most of the classes she was required to enroll in as a prerequisite for joining the Hawks.”
Kaylin did not like where this was going. And given it was Mallory, it wasn’t likely to change course. Severn gave her one sharp glance and then turned his attention to Mallory—or to a point just beyond his left shoulder.
“As Private Neya’s academic record has been referred to by Lord Sanabalis, among others, I believe it is time to correct this deficiency in her education. Private Neya?” Mallory said.
“Sir.”
“You will be re-enrolled in the courses you failed. You will pass them. If you were not considered necessary in your current assignment, I would suspend you—with pay, of course—until you achieved sufficient understanding to satisfy your teachers.” He looked at her. “You will commence classes when the current assignment is at an end. Do I make myself clear?”
“Sir.”
“Good.” He sat back in his chair. “Dismissed.”
The walk back to her apartment would have been quiet and somber had Severn gone to his own apartments. As it was, it was very, very vocal—and also multilingual.
“Just to be clear, I don’t need an escort.”
“Not here, no. But, just to be clearer, you do require some escort in the Leontine Quarter, and I believe you said you had an appointment there.”
She frowned. Looked at the night sky. The sun had long since set, and not even the dark hue of purple twilight now interrupted the reign of moons. “Not for another couple of hours,” she told him.
“I can go home and come back, or we can wait together. Up to you.”
She shrugged. “Might as well wait,” she said glumly. “Although I want to point out that I did go to the Quarter without the benefit of a male escort the last time I went to see this woman.”
“If you’re right—and your instincts have always been good—the child is somehow involved. What you could get away with before the baby was born is probably very different from what you can get away with now. Think. If there’s trouble, someone may well be waiting for you.”
He was right, and she knew it.
“But if I take you, you’ll have to wait in the streets again.”
“I wouldn’t be absolutely certain of that. From what you told me, there is no Pridlea. If there is no Pridlea, no offense can be taken.”
She nodded slowly.
“What are you thinking, Kaylin?”
“I’m thinking about what you just said.”
“Ah. And?”
“I’m wondering if part of the reason there’s no Pridlea is exactly that—there are other males involved somehow, and they need a place to meet.”
He raised a brow. “Interesting thought.”
“Interesting good or interesting bad?”
“Interesting in that it hadn’t occurred to me.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘good,’” Kaylin said.
He smiled.
“I don’t suppose you’d care to wear my uniform and sit behind a school desk?”
He laughed at that. “You expected this from Mallory, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“I wasn’t thinking about Mallory at all.”
“Except in the usual colorful way.”
“Except that way, yes—but I can find a hundred reasons to swear in any language—I don’t need him for that. At least he didn’t pull me from the Palace.”
“He couldn’t. I would be very surprised if he hadn’t already tried. But Rennick’s work will probably take a few weeks, and Marcus has five days. Don’t worry about classes.”
“I wasn’t. I don’t swear like that when I’m worried.”
“Fine. Don’t get enraged at the idea.”
She snorted. Shoved her hands into her pouch and pulled out the very old-fashioned key. Cursed liberally until she managed, in the moonlight, to fit it into the lock. “Come on upstairs,” she told him, as the door creaked open. “There’s no food, though.”
“Imagine my shock.”
She laughed in spite of herself, feeling at ease with Severn. Everything else had been turned upside down—but he was what he’d always been. She’d hated him for it for almost half her life. She could honestly say she loved him for it now.
He took the time to dress a little more carefully. Which is to say, he unwound the chain of his only weapon. It looked like a very, very heavy belt—one that happened to have daggers at either end.
It wasn’t.
“Where did you get that anyway?” Kaylin asked.
“It was a gift.”
“For what?”
“From the Wolves.”
“Which means you can’t say,” she said.
“Pretty much. It’s not usually the first question people ask me about the weapon.”
“What do they normally ask?”
“‘Where did you learn how to use that?’” Severn responded dryly.
“Fair enough. But you’re not going to answer that one either.”
“No. You’re a Hawk—if I answer that question you’ll be able to figure out the rest if you’re nosy enough.” He finished, straightened out his shirt. He’d taken off his surcoat, and carefully spread it flat across the unmade bed. He didn’t remove his hauberk, but Kaylin didn’t expect him to. Chain slowed claws, and if it came to a fight, anything that slowed Leontine claws was a good thing. “Are you ready?”
She nodded. She hadn’t taken nearly as much care as Severn had, but she’d almost dressed for midwife work. Looking at his armor, she grimaced—hers was in desperate need of cleaning, and if the nights were cooler at this time of year, they were still too damn humid.
“Why are you smiling?” Severn asked.
“Just remembering the first chain mail I ever owned. Well, that I was given by the Quartermaster. I was so damn excited, so unbearably proud of it—I tried to sleep in it the first night. I didn’t want to wake up and have it all be a dream.”
He laughed, but the laughter
trailed into a soft smile. “You really love this life, don’t you?”
“It’s better than begging or stealing,” she said with a shrug. But something in his gaze forced her to add, “Yes. I love it. It’s not perfect. It’s not what I daydreamed about when I was a child in the fiefs. But I made it, Severn. I made it happen. I worked damn hard for it.”
As she spoke, she gathered up cloths and bandages and shoved them messily into her pack. “It was home. Even with the Barrani, and a Leontine for a superior, it was home. Damn Marcus anyway.”
“You forgot the unguents.”
“They don’t do anything useful anyway. The herbs do—when they’re fresh enough—but I remembered those.”
“Why carry the unguents at all?”
“It makes nervous parents-to-be feel better if they think we’re doing something. And since they’re usually out of their minds to begin with, any little thing helps. It’s almost like a ceremony,” she added. “We even boil water.”
“I believe you boil water in case you require it to clean—”
“Don’t go there.” She tied the leather straps as tightly as she could. “I’m squeamish. I’m also ready.”
“Have you thought about what you’re going to ask?”
“Not really. I have about a hundred questions, but I’m not sure what a good opener is. I’ll let her lead the discussion.”
He nodded and opened the door. When she walked through it, he closed it behind them both and locked up.
They’d had no locks in the fiefs.
The Leontine Quarter was not like the Tha’alani Quarter. There were no walls, no gatehouse and no visible guards—but then again, they weren’t really needed. People—even drunk people in the dead of night—paid a lot of attention to where they were throwing up in this part of town. The buildings should have given it away, but at the edge of the Leontine Quarter, they didn’t. The buildings there were old and in some disrepair, and the aged often took up residence, the furry version of squatters. The Leontines had come to the city sometime after its founding, and after the fires. They had been granted dispensation to live in the city itself by the Eternal Emperor. If the other residents had something to say, they kept it to themselves, because no matter how stupid they were, ticking off a dragon was a step further down the intellect rung than anyone breathing could go. At least if they wanted to keep on breathing.
The buildings in the Quarter proper looked different, and if you happened to get lost, those squat, clay rectangles were a clear indication that getting lost anywhere else was a good idea. People had a visceral fear of large things with fangs and fur. There was no vandalism in the Quarter—at least that the Law heard about. There were no interracial incidents. There just weren’t many humans.
There were always exceptions to any rule, however, and as usual, it was the merchants who made them. Merchants would cross the boundaries with their wagons, their loud voices, their portable stalls. They sold meat, of course—although there were Leontine butchers, from all accounts—but they also sold carpets, cloth, baubles and spices. Salt was very popular, and Leontines didn’t produce it. They did however barter for it.
Kaylin had never been certain what they bartered, because she usually had just enough coin in hand to feed her for the next meal or two. Figuring out how other people spent money—if it wasn’t shoved under her nose—was part of the day’s business that she left to others.
There were, however, no merchants here today. At this time of night, there wasn’t much in the way of foot traffic. Kaylin wasn’t the world’s best navigator unless she planned the route out in advance, and that planning reminded her of things in life she had no desire to remember. Severn, on the other hand, knew the city better than he knew the back of his hand.
In fact, watching him covertly as they entered the Quarter—and it was, of course, Severn who pointed out the almost invisible boundary—she thought he might know it better. After all, how often did people really look at the backs of their own hands? She didn’t. She couldn’t really remember, in this night made of streets and her own worry, what the backs of her hands looked like.
She could remember his, though. And she watched him walk these streets as if every square inch of the city was known to him. Not—quite—as if he owned it, but he was at home here. Wherever here was. He carried home with him.
Or maybe he didn’t need a home.
Kaylin did. Hers was with the Hawks, and at the Foundling Hall, and in the rush and crazy bustle of the midwives guild. Marcus had given her so much of her life, losing him was like starting over. She wasn’t good at that. She also had no desire at all to begin again anywhere else.
She sighed. She could only watch Severn for so long; the streets demanded some part of her attention. The Leontines didn’t navigate by street name, which made finding anything they described almost an arcane art. But she’d managed to find the home the first time she’d come—at a very fast jog—to the Quarter, and she remembered where she was going. More or less.
“I don’t know a lot about the Leontine Quarter,” Severn said quietly, as she slowed. “I’ve only been here a handful of times, and it was tense each time. They are not very unlike the Tha’alani.”
“People aren’t afraid of them in the same way, and it makes more sense to be afraid of people who seem to look like you. In this day and age, people aren’t afraid of being eaten, but they are always afraid of being caught out.”
He nodded. “That house?”
She nodded in turn. It was very similar to Kayala’s home on the exterior. In the dark, Kaylin would have said they looked the same.
But in this dark, there were differences.
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“Yes, I did. She said her name was Arlan. Sarabe, however, says that isn’t her name, and of the two, I’m inclined to trust Sarabe.” She shrugged. “It was just a name. She could have called herself ‘dog-eater’ for all I cared. I was here to help deliver a baby. The birth—it shouldn’t have been hard, but it was. I wasn’t sure why. She didn’t have small hips, and there was only one cub. But I don’t know Leontine physiology all that well—and if you do, don’t share. She was exhausted and weak. I assumed it was because of the labor.
“I didn’t think I’d see her again. I’ve delivered a lot of babies to women I’ve never met before or since. It’s not my job to ask them questions, it’s only my job to save their lives.”
Severn nodded again. “Fair enough.”
“Do you want to wait for me here?”
“If it’s required, yes. But I’d like to test that first.” He looked at her again. “There were no men here when you came?”
“To a Leontine birthing? None at all. They like living.”
He chuckled at that.
“Not that she could or would have hurt anyone, but that’s by no means always the case. Especially not to listen to Marcus.” The smile that had crossed her lips faded into a momentary grimace of pain.
Kaylin approached the hanging that separated inside from outside at this time of year. This time, like last time, the night had obscured the colors of the fur that were woven into it; she had literally no idea what it looked like. The last time she’d been here, she hadn’t cared.
There was a brass bell to one side of it, and she touched its still rim nervously. The last thing she wanted to do at this time of night was ring it. But she had a feeling she wouldn’t have to.
Nor was she wrong. As she stood in front of it, weighing her options, the hangings moved. A familiar face peered out from behind the curtain, eyes shining faintly in the light of the twin moons. Here, the streets were moonlit or dark; the magestones that lit the rest of the city were absent. If the Leontines were taxed—and until this moment it hadn’t occurred to Kaylin to wonder—that money did not go toward brightly lit nightscapes. Then again, the Leontines had exceptional night vision. Came with the fur and fangs, as Marcus—d
amn it—would say.
But this time, Kaylin knew the color of the Leontine fur was both distinctive and dangerous—for her.
“I’m here,” she told the woman softly.
“Alone?”
“No.”
Silence. It was awkward, but it didn’t last. “You were to come alone—”
“At the moment,” Severn said, keeping a respectful distance—which in the case of a Leontine was entirely too far away, “I don’t consider it safe for her. Do you?” He also walked toward the hanging, from which the woman had failed to emerge.
She cringed and seemed to grow…smaller. “You heard,” she said to Kaylin.
“I practically live with your sister’s husband,” Kaylin replied. There was no birthing emergency to hush her voice or lend her the strength to be gentle. “There’s no way I wouldn’t have found out.”
“Come in,” the woman said, after another pause. “Both of you. We can’t talk here.”
Pointing out that the streets were empty didn’t seem to be required. Kaylin nodded and stepped through the curtain that divided the world into inside and outside.
CHAPTER 9
Kaylin stepped into the hall and Severn followed her; the Leontine woman said nothing as he entered. Kaylin barely noticed. What she noticed, instead, was the lack of light. Moonlight didn’t breach walls, and there were no lamps. She took a hesitant step forward, and then another, but there was no way her eyes were going to acclimatize here.
It hadn’t been this dark the last time she’d visited. She frowned. “I came through a different door last time,” she said, letting the last couple of words rise in question.
No answer.
“Severn—”
Metal against metal, in the darkness; Severn considered it dangerous enough to draw his blade. Kaylin turned suddenly to the side, flattening herself against the wall in one easy pivot. Her hands fell to her daggers, and they left their sheaths, scraping scabbard as the blades cleared them. She swore; she had to get to Elani street to get these damn things enchanted.
“Back out,” Severn said softly.