She couldn’t tell him.
She couldn’t tell any of the Aerian Hawks who had come in force to the foundling halls. She could see one of them fly through the wreckage of Catti’s window, and she knew, then, who had called them in on her. Marrin.
But if Marrin understood, she would have been helping.
Shaking, Kaylin fell silent, the whole of the fight deserting her.
“Consider yourself on report,” Clint said, his voice shifting slowly into the voice she knew. He let her go, and she fell a dozen feet before he caught her again, this time in a more familiar position.
“Deal with your history, Hawk,” he said, in as severely parental a voice as she’d ever heard him use. “Don’t let it destroy you.”
“I thought the Hawklord was going to do that,” she said, turning her face into his chest.
“Probably.” He would have shaken her; she could tell by the tone of his familiar voice. But it was hard to do while in flight. “Kaylin—”
“He’ll kill them all,” she said bitterly.
“Tell it to the Hawklord.” And he took her to the Halls of Law, skipping the entrance that he no longer guarded, passing beyond the maze of halls, the inner sanctums, the offices with their gaping occupants. He flew instead to the dome of the Hawklord’s Tower, and she saw that it was open, like a giant Dragon eye whose inner membrane has finally fallen.
But he didn’t set her down until he landed, and he landed in the circle at the heart of the Tower’s center.
The man known formally as the Lord of the Hawks was waiting, and his eyes were as dark a blue as any Aerian eyes she had ever seen.
“Kaylin Neya,” he said coldly, “I am very disappointed in you.”
Clint put her down in the circle, and then leaped up, taking to air. They exchanged words in Aerian, but the wind took them; Kaylin’s Aerian wasn’t quite good enough—it had too much of the streets in it. She couldn’t understand what passed between them.
But she heard the word “magic” and “mage,” and that was enough. The Hawks would be all over the foundling halls in a matter of minutes. And Severn? He’d probably be first among them.
She couldn’t step out of the circle. She didn’t even try; the wards on the floor had come, sizzling, to life, and she knew what they meant. The very first time she had entered this Tower, they had done the same. She’d been stupider then. She’d tried. Her forearms bore the diffuse scar of that single attempt.
But the circle was not a dome; she could stand.
And she couldn’t. Her arms and legs were shaking too much. She bowed her head. It was almost a gesture of respect; it was arguably a gesture of penitence.
“Not enough,” a familiar, cold voice said. She might have been thirteen again. She certainly felt it. “Kaylin Neya, you have publicly embarrassed the Hawks. You tried to kill an officer of the Lords of Law in full view of half the city.”
That was an exaggeration. She didn’t point it out.
“Worse, you started that attempt in the foundling halls. While the foundling halls and their funding has always been a source of resentment for you, they are not universally ignored by the high castes—killing people in front of orphaned children crosses several lines, all of them in the wrong direction. And you did both of these while wearing the uniform of the Hawks.”
“Not the beat uniform.”
Clearly, he wasn’t making the distinction. “I have been patient,” he told her, in a tone that clearly indicated his patience was at an end. “You will explain yourself, now. If the explanation is somehow satisfactory, you might be given the privilege of continuing to wear the mark of the Hawk. I will certainly be called upon to explain your actions to the Lords of Law, and Kaylin—it is not a comfortable position to be in. It will weaken the Hawks.”
She nodded. It was all she could do. Honesty—I didn’t even think of the Hawks—was so far from the best policy she tried to put as much distance between herself and it as she could. Found it wasn’t as hard as she wanted to believe it had become.
“I have been tolerant. Your first attempt to greet Severn was recorded, but it was not…acted upon. It was, I admit, a weakness, and I regret it now.
“You have been given leeway. You’ve been allowed the privacy of your past. What the Tha’alani took from you on the occasion of our first meeting was only what was relevant to that meeting. You’ve lost the right to that past now. It will be either public knowledge, or my knowledge, or you will never leave this Tower.”
He didn’t add “alive,” but he had never been one to state the obvious, unless pressed. Which she didn’t.
“You have served the Hawks well in your years here. I am therefore reluctant to call in the Tha’alani.”
She blanched.
“You have earned that much. But not more. What were you doing?”
She glanced at the mirror, and then away; she knew that he knew exactly what she had been doing. “I was trying to save them,” she said bitterly.
It was not the answer he had been expecting; she saw that by the slight rise of his wings. They were already half-extended; it was as threatening a posture as an Aerian of his rank adopted. And his wings? They were pale and beautiful. He was pale. Beautiful in a way that was entirely different from the earthy ebony, the friendly affection, that was Clint.
“You were trying to save who, Kaylin?”
“The children,” she said bitterly. “My children. The foundlings.”
“By killing Severn in front of the population of Old Nestor?”
“By killing Severn,” she agreed.
“Tell me.”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“At the beginning,” he said, his wings flexing.
“I don’t know where it began.”
“When did you first meet Severn?”
“I don’t know.” She closed her eyes. It was easier, that way. Because nothing else about this conversation was going to be easy. If conversation was the right word; she suspected interrogation was more appropriate. “When I was five.”
“Five?”
“Five and something. I don’t remember the exact day.” But she remembered what had happened. Maybe opening her eyes was wiser; it gave her the anchor of the present, even if the present held the promise of very little future. “He was ten years old,” she added. “At least we thought he was. I know when I was born. He doesn’t. Know when he was.”
“I understood that. Continue.”
“I was five, and something.”
“So your memories, without extraction, will not be reliable.”
She swallowed. “These ones are.”
“Oh?”
“I almost tripped over a feral.”
His wings folded slowly; his arms crossed his chest. But his expression was marred by no new lines.
“I was out on my own. My mother was sick. She was dying. I didn’t know it then, but she knew. She…had asked me to go outside. To play. Told me when to come home.” She hesitated.
“You weren’t punctual as a child, either?”
“Not really.” As a child, she hadn’t known what the word meant. Not that her mother had used it. “I knew it was getting dark, though. And I—” She shook her head. “I was playing with sticks and rings.”
“In the streets of the fief?”
She nodded quietly.
“The feral?”
“Only one,” she whispered. “And I would have died, there. I froze. But Severn was there, somehow, at the lip of the alley that led to our place. And he had food. He threw it—really threw it—and it must have hurt like hell; it was meat. What passes for meat, in the fiefs. The feral hesitated, and this strange, tall boy grabbed my hand and dragged me all the way down the alley.” She could feel his hand in hers; could feel how large it was, how warm, and how steady. She had thought, then, that he hadn’t been afraid. “He knew my name. I asked him his. He told me. He wanted to speak to my mother, and that was the only time his hand tightened, th
e only time I was uncomfortable. But I wasn’t afraid of him.
“I don’t know what they talked about, Severn and my mother. He made me wait in the kitchen. But when he came to get me, his anger was gone. I think—now—she must have told him she was dying.
“Severn lived close to us. He liked my mother. I don’t remember why. But he started to run errands for her, and he would take me with him. He would go shopping for her when she wasn’t well enough to shop. Happened a lot, but I still didn’t understand. I was selfish,” she told him. “He was older, he knew so much, he was willing to talk to me, and I was just a kid,” Kaylin added, remembering. These memories weren’t so harsh. They would—without the rest—be almost happy. She couldn’t afford that. “But when she got…paler, he stopped taking me with him so much. I was afraid I’d annoyed him, but he was always happy to see me. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t go with him, not then. I do now. He probably stole more than he bought. He usually came by with too much. She hated that,” she added softly, seeing her mother with adult eyes, instead of the unquestioning allegiance of a child’s. Seeing, as well, other truths. “But because of me, she didn’t question him too harshly.
“I adored him,” she added, bitterly. “I looked up to him. He was ten. And he understood death. He knew that my mother wasn’t going to last the winter. He never told me. He just helped us, and waited.”
“What happened, then?”
“When she died, I had no place to go. I couldn’t afford the room she had rented. I couldn’t afford to bury her—not like you bury people in the outer city. The dead don’t care—that’s what we say in the fiefs. The living can still starve. My mother told me that a lot in her last few weeks.
“She just didn’t wake up one morning. I didn’t know a doctor. But I knew—I knew she wouldn’t wake up. I tried,” she added, remembering the slack, cold skin of her mother’s face. “I tried really hard to wake her.”
“Did you find anyone to help you?”
“You really don’t understand the fiefs,” she told him, but without heat. She had become resigned to this over the years; it was something that was so natural it was like the weather. “I just…stayed there. With her. Until Severn came. He always came,” she added, “in the winter. Every day. I don’t know why. I didn’t know what to do, and Severn did; he told me to walk, with him, and I went. We never came back. I was still five. He was still ten.
“He taught me how to live like he lived. He taught me how to look harmless and pathetic, and he took me to the edge of the fief. I used to beg along Old Nestor, just across the Ablayne. I used to look at the Outer city people, with their warm coats, and their new boots, and their money. I used to hate them,” she added, dispassionately. “But I’d take their money anyway. He taught me how to take it when they weren’t in the mood to give, too. We worked as a team.
“He didn’t like it,” she added. “No more than my mother had. But it was the fiefs…stealing was better than starving.” She brought her hands together, as if she were praying. It was the only way she could stop them from shaking. “I’m not proud of it,” she told him, staring at her fingers. “But I’m not ashamed of it either. It made me who I am.”
The hard part was coming now. She almost couldn’t say it. And the Hawklord knew. His silence was cool, but when she finally glanced up at his face, it was different. He was waiting, now. Would wait.
“When I was eight,” she said, her throat tightening, “I still adored Severn. He was thirteen by then. I thought he was a man. I thought he could do anything. It was winter—everything desperate happened in the winter.”
“Winter in the fiefs is harsh,” the Hawklord said quietly. Not, of course, to tell her anything she didn’t know. But the reminder that he understood was steadying.
“We were looking for food,” she continued, staring at the subtle gleam of the circle’s edge. “Or money. I had outgrown my clothing, mostly. We had a room to live in, but not much else. But on that day, we found Steffi instead.”
“Steffi?”
The walls of her throat closed. She bowed her head, trying to force her eyes to stay open. To stay dry. Her hands were moving in an open and close rhythm that spoke of heartbeat. “She was a year younger than I was.” Every word was surrendered slowly; each was anchored in emotion, and if she wasn’t careful, emotion would come with them until it was all that was left.
And what emotion?
She hit the floor hard with the flat of her palm. “She was really pretty. Not like me. Her hair was very pale, and it was long; her eyes were blue. Her skin was blue, too—but that was the cold. When she warmed up she was like a little, perfect doll. I thought of her that way,” she added, dispassionate, as if bitterness could be buried, or amputated. “As if she were mine. Because I found her in the snow.
“Severn didn’t want to keep her. But I did. I begged him. I pleaded with him. I even threatened him,” she added, a thin wail that sounded like laughter adorning the words. “I told him I wouldn’t go home without her.
“And in the end, he was angry with me. But he let me keep her. He brought her back to our place.”
She bowed her head.
“Kaylin. Kaylin.”
She looked up to meet his eyes, and saw instead that his wings were extended. Had the circle not been shining, she would have leaped from its confines to run straight into his arms. She had done that before. More than once. But she’d been younger, then. “You wanted to know,” she whispered.
He said nothing.
“He was good with her, in the end. He treated her almost the same way he treated me. Steffi was…a bit high-strung. She was afraid of Severn for weeks. But she trusted me. And in the end, because I trusted Severn, she let her guard down. He would go foraging for us. She wasn’t well,” she added, as if it mattered. “For three weeks, she coughed all the time, and she was hot. I thought she would die.
“I wish she had, now.”
CHAPTER 12
Lord Grammayre gestured, and the circle guttered inches from Kaylin’s splayed fingertips. “Kaylin,” he said quietly, offering her, wordless, the freedom he had threatened to take from her.
But she was there, now, in a place she had promised herself she would never revisit. There was no way out. There never had been. “No,” she told him. “I chose this.”
Lord Grammayre was not, had never been, friendly. Not jolly, not affectionate. Had he, she would never have learned to trust him. He was not, however, without kindness—had he been, she would also have been unable to trust. “I think I understand,” he told her quietly. “It is not an excuse for your behavior, but I—”
“No,” she said, more firmly.
His wings didn’t shift. But his arms fell to his side.
“Are you recording this?”
“The mirror records.”
“Good.” She took a harsh breath. “Because I never want to have to say it again. Steffi was the third member of our family. Of what I thought of as our family. I told you she was cute—and she knew it—and that she was only a year younger than I was, something Severn always felt the need to remind me. But I thought of her as a baby sister, as the sister I had always wanted, and had never been lucky enough to have. She called me big sister, too. She wore my clothing when my back was turned. She ate my favorite foods. Sometimes I wanted to strangle her. But I never wanted her to leave. I loved her,” she added softly, as if the words had never been said before.
“She was with us for almost a year before we found Jade.”
“Jade?”
“I didn’t name her.”
“She was another girl?”
“Another girl,” Kaylin nodded. “As different from Steffi as a girl could be. Jade was two years younger than I was, maybe two and a half. And she was scarred, from forehead to cheek. She was darker than Steffi, and her hair was a mess of curls, no matter what we tried to do with it. She didn’t talk much.”
“You found her in the winter?”
“In the
winter,” Kaylin nodded. “And at night.”
His brow rose.
“The ferals were out, then. We were watching them from the window in the room; the table was against the wall, and we could stand on it, press our faces against the glass. There was glass there—I think Severn stole it. I never asked.
“But I saw her, wandering in the streets below our window. She was furtive, like she was afraid of something—I know the walk. And there was reason; there was a man on her tail. With a knife. I called Severn—Steffi and I liked to look out, but it wasn’t something he did often—and he joined us, just watching. Then he sighed and looked at me, and I must have—I must have looked at him in the way I did when I thought he could do anything.
“So he rolled his eyes and told Steffi to stay indoors. He told her not to answer the door, if anyone came, and told her to hide, and then sneak out, if anyone got in. Me, he handed a large club. We went out after that strange, small girl. We should have died. It was night, and we knew better. But…” She shrugged, almost helpless. “The ferals were out.”
“And this…Jade?”
“She was their meal. Or would have been, if Severn hadn’t found her in time. I remember it. He was standing in the moonlight, in the open street. He had a long knife, and a club. He was—I think—afraid, but none of it showed. I didn’t think he was afraid, at the time—my impression is all hindsight. He shouted at Jade, and Jade almost ran, but I was there too, and I was quieter. I told her to stay between Severn and me; I told her not to scream, not near the ferals. I can still smell their breath.”
“But?”
“He cut the leader. He kicked. The leader drew back, and had no one else been out, it would have gone badly. But someone else was out—the man who had been hunting Jade. They ate that someone else instead.
“Jade wouldn’t talk about it. We didn’t press her. We caught her by the arms and we ran. The man was stupid. Maybe he was drunk. He screamed a lot, and it drew the rest of the feral pack. We made it back home to Steffi. She was just waiting for us, all white. She’d been watching from the window. She’d ignored every word Severn had told her. I would have, too.