She saw the hair on his face stand on end. She saw his eyes shade into red. “Continue.”
She wondered, idly, how long the cage could hold him if he didn’t want to be in the cage, and decided not to press her luck. “A Leontine used magic. He tried to kill Severn and me.”
“He didn’t try very hard.”
Kaylin grimaced. The implied threat was a familiar one and she lifted her throat, exposing it to the claws that were flexing just out of reach.
“I thought—” she said.
“You didn’t think.”
“I thought that if we examined the traces of magic around the area in which it was used, we could find the signature of the mage.”
“You knew who the mage was.”
“Yes, but—”
“Kaylin, please, tell me Sanabalis is not here to exhume a body.”
She knelt by the cage and pressed her face as far as it would fit between the bars. “Marcus, we know magic must have been used on your friend—on the Leontine you killed. I wanted to prove that the source of that magic was the same as the magic used in an attempt to kill us. It makes sense. It’s what you taught me to do.”
His eyes lost some of the red, but by no means all. “I asked you,” he said, “to stay out of it.”
“Marcus—they were going to try you and find you guilty of murder. I don’t know what Leontine penalties for murder are, but you’re not guilty. Not of that. I’m a Hawk. You’re an innocent man. You can’t ask that of me. Ever.
“I don’t know why you’re staying behind these bars. I don’t know why you didn’t speak up. But Kayala, the rest of your wives—”
“It is because of my wives that I did not speak.” The snarl in his voice had so much edge Kaylin was half-surprised she wasn’t bleeding. “Tell me,” he said when his voice was under his control again. “What did Sanabalis do when he entered the Quarter?”
“Nothing until his carriage got stuck in foot traffic.”
“And when it did?”
“He…he got out and…he spoke. In a Dragon voice, but not in Dragon. I think…he was telling the crowd a story. But I didn’t understand his words,” she added. “Severn couldn’t place the language either.”
He looked at her. The red receded further, but gold didn’t take its place, not entirely; there was a gray to the eyes that she had glimpsed once or twice before. She didn’t understand what it meant.
Anger was easy.
“You don’t understand, kitling.”
“No, I don’t.”
“They will kill Sarabe. They will kill Sarabe and her sister. They will kill any Leontines who had the misfortune to be born with the taint. Sarabe is my wife. If you had for once in your life obeyed me, I would die. But Kayala is canny.
“I cannot surrender my wife to the Elders. I cannot surrender her to the First Son. I will die anyway, but now, so will she.”
“Marcus—”
“And so will the child,” he said.
“No.”
“Kaylin—”
“No. I promised his mother that I would protect him. I invoked that right.”
“You invoked?”
“The right of the Pridlea.”
“Kaylin, you are not her wife.”
“No—but I birthed him. I licked his lids clean of birth fluid. I held him. If it weren’t for me—” She swallowed, remembered the salty tang, the texture of fine hair against her tongue. “By Leontine custom, I am one of his mothers. And I won’t let anyone kill him. Marcus, he’s a baby.”
“Even if it were in my hands,” he said, “I do not think I could grant what you would demand.”
“It’s in your hands.”
“No, Kaylin, it’s not. It is now, in its entirety, in the hands of Lord Sanabalis.”
“He won’t kill a baby.”
Marcus was silent.
“Marcus, I won’t let him kill a baby.”
“It is a caste matter.”
“Not if it’s in his hands, it’s not.”
At that, large brows rose slightly, and then Marcus chuckled. It was bitter, but there was genuine amusement in it. “You don’t understand what he did,” Marcus said. “You don’t understand why he did it.”
“You mean the story?”
“I mean the story.”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters, Kaylin. Ask him.”
“I will. He means to visit the Pridlea after we finish here.”
“Ah.”
She hesitated and then said, “The baby is there, Marcus.”
His eyes widened. “What?”
“When whoever it was…attacked us…he burned his house down. We escaped—but we had nowhere else to go.”
“We?”
“I took Marai there,” she told him. “It seemed like the sanest place she could be.”
“You…took…Marai…” He growled. “You had best hope that they keep me in this cage, kitling.”
“Yes, sir.” She rose from her crouch. “Marcus—you don’t believe—”
“What I believe is not at issue here,” he replied.
Kaylin nodded, squared her shoulders and turned toward Sanabalis and Adar. She took a step, and Severn was by her side in that instant.
“Be careful, Kaylin,” he whispered. But he didn’t touch her and he didn’t stand in her way.
“Lord Sanabalis,” she said, tendering him a very respectful bow.
He turned his head in her direction, and one of his silver brows rose. She’d managed to surprise him by being careful. She had also, judging from the sudden shift in his expression, made him suspicious.
She was truly tired of being careful in this particular way. Being careful seemed to mean—be something other than yourself. It was hard to do that for Mallory, but the alternative—losing the Hawk—was worse. Just.
It was harder to do that with Sanabalis.
But again, the possible alternative was worse.
She wondered if everyone who was polite and deferential and well mannered had to struggle so hard to be all those things, or if it came naturally to them. If it did, she envied them.
And if it didn’t, she respected them now more than she would have thought possible when she’d first been allowed to tag along after the Hawks.
“Kaylin?”
“I want you to explain something to me.”
“Ah. And that would be?”
“The story. The story you told the Leontines.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t understand what’s happening here, and I don’t understand what might happen here. I need to know,” she said.
Adar stood, his hands by his sides, his eyes slightly orange. He said nothing, however.
“Adar?”
“She is yours,” Adar replied. “And what you feel it wise for her to know, I will not gainsay.” Formal words. It took Kaylin a moment to realize that he was speaking in High Barrani.
“It is a caste matter,” Sanabalis told Adar.
Adar nodded.
“And it is acceptable to you?”
“If you feel it wise, Eldest.”
“Wisdom and Kaylin are seldom in the same court, and if they are, they are never on the same side.”
Adar’s albino brows rose.
“But I thank you for your indulgence. She is my student, and if no other students before her are remembered, I am certain she will be. But as are all students, she is troublesome.
“Very well, Kaylin. I told them a story, yes—but it is not like the stories you heard as a child. There are no stories in your language that come close.
“It is the story of their birth,” he continued, his fingers playing with his beard. “No, it is more than that. It is their birth in the Old Tongue.”
“I don’t understand. Kayala told me—”
“The Leontines were created by the Old Ones,” he told her. “As we were, but they were created later.”
“But they’re mortal.”
“Yes.”
<
br /> “And the Aerians?”
“Kaylin.”
“Sorry.”
“They were not created in the same way that the Barrani or the Dragons were. We came, it is said, from the bones of the earth. We were carved, and we were given words.”
“Names.”
“Yes.”
“But the Leontines—”
“They need no names to live,” he replied. “They are as you see them. But they were not always as you see them now. Life is not…stone. It is not clay. I am not young,” he added softly. “And I remember, although it is dim and distant, the stories of the Old Ones.
“Not all among them sought to create life, or to wake it. Living creatures, living things—they are not one thing or another—they are shaped by forces that are outside of the words that the Old Ones spoke. There is, in them, some element of the darkness—some element of chaos.”
“Sanabalis—” she said. Severn stepped on her foot. “Lord Sanabalis. I’ve seen the darkness. I’ve seen what it created. Some of it,” she added. “They are not that.”
“No. But without some touch of that, as you call it, they would not live at all. It is what makes living unpredictable, fascinating and yes, dangerous.
“The Leontines are cousins to the great cats that prowl the plains. The Old Ones—no, just one of them—spoke to them. He told them the story you heard, but it was longer and vastly more complicated. I cannot tell the whole of it if I were to take a year. I could not sustain that effort,” he said. “But their creator desired new life, and companions, and he chose, instead of stone, to sculpt things that were already alive. To take their forms and change them. To waken in them some of his own intelligence.
“He did this,” Sanabalis said, “and the Leontines woke into the world. And he was pleased with his effort. But it was not a stable effort, not in the way the Dragons or the Barrani were when they first woke. What he had touched and shaped was not entirely a thing of his own making.”
“Sanabalis—”
“He understood the risk. And of course, in time, the cost of it became clear. The Leontines were susceptible, in ways that the Dragons and the Barrani will never be, to other words, other stories, and the shaping of other hands. They will never be wholly one thing or another. Mortal time is brief,” Sanabalis added. “To the Old Ones. Even to the first born, the Dragons and the Barrani and the others that I will never name.”
“He came back and found them changed.”
“It was not so simple as that,” Sanabalis replied, “although that is the legend that the Leontines tell each other. No, they came at the side of the Dark Host, and they carried the power of the shadows. Had they remained mere animals, they would have been changed, but they would always be lesser creatures, capable of cunning in the way that lesser creatures are.
“But they were transformed. They were not mere animals—they were vessels, and the power they could contain was vast.”
“Vaster than Dragon power?”
He raised a brow and frowned at the same time. You had to love Dragon arrogance. “Sorry,” she said.
“Had the entire race been susceptible to the power and the change,” Sanabalis continued, when he seemed certain this particular interruption was over, “there would be no Leontines now.”
“So only some of them.”
“Yes, only some.”
“And those would be the ones who are born to the red-furred Leontines.”
He raised a brow. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Kaylin, it’s life. There is no clear or logical reason for it.”
“And why not the women?”
“Pardon?”
“Why not the women? Why only the males?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Please do not use this as an excuse to expound upon the virtues of your gender,” he added drily.
Something he’d said tugged at her for a moment before she paid attention. “You said they were susceptible.”
He nodded.
“But that means they aren’t dangerous in and of themselves, right? They have to be exposed or changed somehow?”
He nodded. “But it is more subtle than that, and less. I told them the heart of their story,” he said quietly, “to remind them.”
“I think they remember the stories well enough.”
“They remember the way you remember,” he replied. “And I wanted to speak those words in that place because it reminds them of what they are.” He paused, and then added, “It cleanses them, if they have been touched by the wildness.”
“You thought they might.”
“I thought, indeed, that they might require it.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Kaylin, it was not an investigative spell. It was not, in any true sense of the word, a spell at all.”
“Could you tell that story again?”
“If it were necessary, yes.”
Her silence grew thoughtful, inasmuch as Kaylin was ever silent and thoughtful at the same time. “Could someone else tell them a different story?”
His silence was distant and his expression remote, as if he looked down at her now from a long way away. Well, above, if she was being technical. But give him this much: He answered the question. “Yes.”
“And that would affect them in a different way?”
“Yes.”
“Could this—this rogue mage—tell that other story?”
“That is the fear,” he replied. He turned to Adar. “And we will, with your permission, exhume the corpse.”
“Sanabalis—” She caught herself, as usual, just a second after her mouth had opened and dropped the wrong word. “Lord Sanabalis.”
Adar, however, bowed. “Will the rites of preservation interfere, Eldest?”
“No.”
“Then I will accede to your request. I will be a matter of hours,” he added, with genuine regret. “But it would explain much, and I admit I did not relish the idea of the trial.”
“Will you allow Marcus Kassan his freedom?”
“If you demand it.”
“No. I will not interfere further in your law.” Sanabalis bowed. “We do not have the hours at present to wait,” he added. “But we will return when our duties to the Emperor are complete.”
Adar bowed again.
“Lord Sanabalis,” Kaylin began.
“We will require our coach,” Sanabalis continued.
“Eldest.”
“Kaylin, take Severn and wait in the coach. You can manage that?”
She grimaced. “Yes, Sanabalis.”
“Good. Mr. Rennick, from all accounts, worked late and terrorized the kitchen staff for some three hours. As even my appearance does not have this effect on the kitchen staff, I am both curious and reluctant to further antagonize him by your absence.”
“The thing I don’t understand is how someone can create an entire race of people from telling a single story.”
Severn, his face in profile, said nothing. He’d said a lot of nothing while the coach made its way through the Leontine streets. Sanabalis didn’t see fit to disembark and clear a path, but someone must have at least said something, because the crowds were sparse, and Kaylin recognized the Leontine equivalent of merchants on either side.
“It is not necessary to understand it,” Sanabalis replied. “It is necessary to understand that it is true. The Old Language was almost a living thing, some part of the Old Ones that could interact with the world. It was not simply hello and good day,” he said. “You don’t understand the nature of Barrani names, but you accept the truth of their existence.”
She nodded.
“Why is this different?”
“I don’t know.” She hesitated. “Marcus, the mage, his magic—you think he’s—”
“Yes. Tainted.”
“Could you tell him your story? Would he even hear it?”
“I could begin,” he said gravely, “but I highly doubt that he would stand and listen. For
better or worse, he has chosen. And no, it is not a simple story. It is a living one. Living things are complicated.”
The other hundred questions Kaylin needed answers to she couldn’t ask—not without exposing Marai and her cub. She fell into the silence that Severn had made his own. She was almost happy to see the Imperial Palace as it bobbed into distant view.
“I will allow you to return to the Quarter with me, when Mr. Rennick no longer requires your supervision.”
“Are you going to tell the Emperor?”
“What do you think, Kaylin?”
It had been a stupid question. “You’re going to tell him.” She hesitated again, and then said, “One of Marcus’s wives is red-furred.”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing, Kaylin.”
“What are they going to do about it?”
“That is an entirely different question. If I were you, I would not interfere.”
“If you were me, you wouldn’t be able to just stand by.”
“True. It has been a long time since I suffered from the affliction known as youth.” His eyes were orange-tinted gold, and they met her gaze, without blinking, for a very long time.
As if she were a story in progress, and he could read her, and he wasn’t certain what the ending would be, or if he would like it.
CHAPTER 13
Richard Rennick met them at the door. Which is to say he flung it open, glared out into the hall and disappeared with a snort. He didn’t, however, slam the door in their faces, which Kaylin took to be an encouragement to enter.
“I will leave you to your duties,” Sanabalis said. “And I wish you joy of them.”
“You’ve seen him like this before?”
“It has been my privilege to converse with the Imperial Playwright on many occasions.”
“That would be a yes.”
“It would indeed. This is far from the worst he’s been, however. I imagine you might see the worst when he’s finished.”
“He gets worse when he’s finished work?”
“Ah, you mistake me. At the moment, he has the company of his perfect genius, and all accruing doubts of said genius. When he is finished, he will turn his work over to the merely mortal.”
“Pardon?”
“He’ll have to cast actors to speak his lines. At that point, he is frequently unfriendly, unhelpful and deeply sarcastic. There is no other race that does sarcasm quite as well as humans.”