But I’m not a malicious man. I’m a fief lord, 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 fief lord.”
“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 fief lord.”
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 fief lord. 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 t
hat 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.