“We don’t have time for this. We don’t have the luxury to endure and ignore your little tantrums. Catti is still missing. Marrin is…enraged. And terrified. We needed you on this case,” he added, spitting as the last word drew to a hiss of a close. “And we don’t have you.
“If we find her body, I’ll mirror you.”
She closed her eyes, then. Begging never worked, with Leon-tines. She came close anyway.
“I’ve put Teela and Tain on the case,” he added. “And I believe that Severn will also join them.”
“But—but you said he’s on report—”
“My initial information suggests that he wasn’t trying to kill you. If he acted in his own defense, he will likely be on duty by the time his interview is over.” He watched her, daring her to argue.
And she had enough of a grip that she didn’t.
“The Dragon is doing research now. There is one question that he asked of me, and I will pass it on. If you choose to answer, your answer will be funnelled through me.”
“I’ll answer,” she said quietly.
“He wants to know if you healed this child recently.”
“Didn’t he ask Marrin?”
“He asked,” Marcus replied, with a mirthless smile. “But she was reluctant to reply, even given the seriousness of her situation.” He hesitated, and then added, “You understand what this means?”
She was dumb.
“She considers you her kitling, Kaylin. You are as much her kin as Catti, and she will not surrender the one for the other. No Pridelea would. She did however tell him he could ask you. If she considers you kin, she also considers you adult. Which, given the ferocity of your attack, is a high compliment.”
“But she—she called the Hawks—”
“No,” he said quietly. “The Hawklord sent them, and at speed. She would have let you rampage.”
“Yes,” Kaylin replied, lifting her chin without hesitation. And then, to be clear, she added, “I healed Catti.”
“Was there anything unusual about this healing?”
Kaylin swallowed. The bracer on her wrist was heavy and cold. She nodded after a moment.
“How?”
“She was dying,” Kaylin whispered. “Not—not of illness, not of the plague, not of infection. She was—she had—fallen. She…hurt her back.”
“It was broken?”
Kaylin nodded.
Marcus clicked his massive jaws. “And you healed her?”
“I healed her. I had to heal her,” she added. “And it was…hard. It was harder than any healing I’ve ever done.”
“Was it different?”
“Yes. I had to—” She stopped speaking.
“Yes?”
Intuition informed her next question. “Tiamaris thinks they took her because of the healing.”
“He is not inclined to share anything he hoards. He’s a Dragon. And in this case, his hoard is information. Had I asked, he wouldn’t have answered, and he didn’t volunteer the reply.” His smile shifted; it was still all teeth, and there was an edge to it that made Kaylin think about taking a few steps back. Like, say, thirty of them, as fast as she possibly could. “But he is not as clever as he thinks he is.”
“That would probably be impossible.”
“Either that, or knowing you’re on report, he wishes you to have the information, and he expects that you’ll be able to wheedle it out of me, as he is forbidden to offer it in any other way.”
“Can I?”
The Leontine’s growl grew louder. “You press your luck,” he said. “I lied. He didn’t ask a single question, he asked a number of questions. They all lead to the one that you asked me, and Dragon scent is strong. If I had to bet—and that is a phrase I’ll thank you never to attribute to me—then yes, I would say he believes that it is entirely because of the healing that Catti was taken.”
“How would they know?”
“I don’t know. And at the moment, your source of information is limited.”
She nodded and began to walk to the doors, but he stopped her, claws on her left shoulder. “Had you not been wearing the bracer, you may well have destroyed half the foundling hall. Don’t remove it.”
“I won’t.”
“Where are you going, Kaylin?”
“To do civvy things,” she replied, keeping the sweet sarcasm out of the words.
“Remember that you are forbidden Severn’s company, if you need the reminder.”
She almost swore. Almost. Instead she said, “Severn won’t have the answers I want.”
“You can’t find the girl on your own. Don’t try.”
“Marcus, don’t ask that.”
“It wasn’t a request. I want you as a Hawk, Kaylin—but if you remain here, it is as a Hawk.” He paused. “Lord Grammayre must have been satisfied with whatever it was you offered him. He’s my superior, and I’ll accept that.”
Which would be a change. A huge change. It was getting harder not to talk.
“And because he is satisfied, he will face down the Lords of Law, and short of Imperial writ ordering otherwise, he will see you returned to your place in my pride. When you do,” he added, and this time, he took care to keep the depth of his growl out of his carefully modulated words, “you need to resolve your past with Severn.”
“I could have done that this afternoon.”
His growl returned in force. “In front of Marrin’s kits?”
“No,” she said, and she hung her head. “I’ll never do that again.”
She held the posture for as long as she could. It took effort, because she already had a destination in mind, and she’d spent a lot of daylight hours in the company of the Hawklord; she couldn’t afford to lose more of them.
But she stripped her surcoat off before she left the office, and handed it to Marcus. He bunched it into a ball and threw it over his shoulder. Since this was what she usually did with it at home, there wasn’t a lot to complain about.
She went home, and found a mirror message waiting for her. The color of its triband pulse was neutral; she couldn’t tell who’d sent it, and she almost failed to look. But she didn’t.
“Kaylin Neya,” a familiar voice said. She scanned the mirror’s surface, but there was no accompanying image. I guess Tiamaris didn’t trust Marcus to be as perceptive as he is, she thought wryly.
“Marcus will not tell you this because he doesn’t fully apprehend your danger. But you are in danger, if you did what I think you did. I cannot remain here. The mirror I use is not a mirror that can be used—or recorded—by the Lords of Law.
“The child, Catti, is a gift to our enemy. If we do not find her, you will be in more danger than you have been in with any other death. Do not remove the bracer. Whatever else you choose to do on your leave, do not do that.”
“Okay,” she told him, although she knew he wouldn’t hear it; the mirror wasn’t open to conversation at this point. She sat on her bed, pulled off her boots, wrinkled her nose. And then she reached for the dress she had taken from the castle of Nightshade, and with a shudder that had nothing to do with sweat, she peeled off the rest of her Hawk uniform, and she pulled the dress over her head. The softness of cool silk was its own shock.
Daggers didn’t exactly accessorize the dress well, but she put them on anyway. Then she cleared the mirror and looked at her face. Flinched. There was a livid bruise beneath her right eye, and her lip was swollen. She couldn’t help but notice these, even though she was searching for something else.
The mark of Nightshade lay against her cheek, and if her face had been bruised in the fight, nothing had disturbed the intricate scar.
She pulled her hair back, shoved it unceremoniously out of her face, and went hunting through the sediment of laundry for something that looked like a cloak. She found one—well, it had a hood—and donned it. The two, dress and cape, looked incongruous.
It pained her to acknowledge that Marcus and the Hawklord were right, but she did—there were no
witnesses. She needed to somehow lay her past to rest, and killing Severn was out of the question.
But she wasn’t thirteen anymore. She knew where Severn had gone when he had disappeared that night. She knew where he must have gone. And she knew that something he had learned from the fieflord had sent him back to murder their family—their children.
Nightshade was of the Barrani high caste, outcaste or no. Teela had implied as much, although she’d’ve cut out her tongue before she said it. And Kaylin knew—from years spent tagging along after the twins—that the Barrani were famous liars. The more powerful and significant they were, the more deadly the lies.
He had lied to Severn.
He must have lied to Severn. And Severn had been eighteen.
If Kaylin couldn’t vent her fury on Severn, she could always find another target. A deadly target. She straightened her shoulders and looked in the mirror again, this time seeing past the mask of bruises that time would dismiss.
No thirteen-year-old, here. No child.
But her fists clenched.
No Catti, either.
She gathered some small amount of coin, her daggers, and no sign at all that she had ever been a Hawk.
The mirror flashed.
She answered it, because she had to walk past it anyway, on her way to the door.
Marrin’s face filled her view. “Kaylin,” she said. The growl was gone. Not even Marrin could sustain the killing frenzy for more than hours at a time, although Kaylin was certain that when her strength returned, the rage would return as well. How could it not? Catti was still missing.
“Marrin,” Kaylin said quietly.
“Have the Hawks—”
Kaylin didn’t bother to tell the Leontine she had been suspended. “No.”
The breath that escaped cut Kaylin in a way that rage couldn’t.
“I’m going to look for her,” Kaylin continued softly. “And I swear to you, Marrin, that this time, I’ll find her before—before—”
“Good.”
The mirror’s light guttered. Kaylin leaned her head against the silvered glass, knowing it would have to be cleaned. And then she made her way to the door. She took care to lock both locks behind her; she wasn’t certain when she was going to be back, and if this wasn’t exactly the fiefs, she still knew how to be cautious.
When it suited her.
CHAPTER 13
The keep of Castle Nightshade stood apart from the fief it dominated in the distance, like a justifiably arrogant aristocrat—the ones Kaylin was never sent to interview when the Lords of Law were reluctantly summoned. Before its walls, cages dangled from their respective chains; they were empty. If someone had offended the fieflord recently, he—or she—was already dead, and their bodies no longer on display.
People met her gaze, and one or two, made bold by numbers, even held it. But the mark that was almost an embarrassment in the Outer city afforded her legitimacy in the fief; no one dared to raise a hand against her. It would have been useful, when she’d been younger.
But she had the idea it would have been expensive as well. How expensive had yet to be determined, and she was here to do just that. Inasmuch as any Barrani could be, Teela was her friend—but the fact that Teela wasn’t telling her everything was a certainty. Then again, if she wasn’t actively lying, it meant a lot—the Barrani probably lied more easily than they breathed.
The gates that had swallowed her whole on her first visit were waiting; they were lowered. Kaylin wondered if they had ever been raised, but she didn’t ask; instead, she approached them.
As she did, Barrani slid out of the shadows; there seemed to be small guardhouses built to either side of the gate, although she hadn’t seen them on her first visit. Then, she had been almost panicked, and she had let confusion be her guide.
She was done with confusion, for now.
One of the two Barrani guards met her gaze and held it. He was perfect, his face unscarred, his weapons—two swords, which only the Barrani in the fiefs seemed to favor—silent in their sheaths.
She didn’t bow as she approached them. Nor did she hold out her hands, palms up, to show she was unarmed—which wouldn’t have meant much if they were at all competent. She simply walked.
To her surprise, the guards bowed. If there was reluctance or stiffness in the motion, she thought it was due to lack of familiarity with the gesture. As guards of a fieflord, that high caste social nicety couldn’t be called on often.
Certainly not by a motherless foundling or the orphans she’d built into a brief, necessary family.
“Kaylin Neya,” one of the two men said. They were both men. The Barrani women seemed to stay on the right side of the law, at least as far as the fiefs were concerned. They probably had the choice.
She said, without preamble, and in possibly the best Barrani she’d ever forced herself to use, “I’ve come to see Lord Nightshade.”
“He has been waiting for you,” the guard replied, standing to one side. Like a mirror image, the other guard did the same.
She had the strong feeling she could have spoken in the worst Barrani she’d tried in years, and his answer would have been the same. Which was sort of a pity, because it left nothing standing between her and the lowered portcullis.
“It never goes up, does it?” she asked, without much hope.
Neither guard deigned to answer, and she squared her shoulders, lowered her chin, and walked forward.
This time, she didn’t pass out.
The room that she entered was the room that she’d last seen, but this time she had a chance to notice it; it didn’t contain an angry Hawk and an equally angry Dragon. In fact, to her surprise, it also contained no Barrani guards. If the fieflord could feel threatened in his keep, it wasn’t by someone like her. She wasn’t sure whether or not to feel insulted. Settled on an emphatic not.
The ceilings were lower than the ceilings of the almost mythic Long Halls—at a paltry twelve feet—and there were gilded candelabras on gleaming, tall tables that rested against the stone walls to either side of the entrance. The floor was a pale shade of smoky green, and her boots sounded a lot louder as the heels slapped against it.
All in all, the room resembled the front hall of many a fine manor—or at least, of the few she’d been given permission to enter in her duties as a Hawk. Her background in the fiefs left her an unsuitable candidate for the “delicate negotiations” demanded of the Hawks when dealing with personages of importance and influence—mostly money. Money didn’t frighten her, and it didn’t impress her; unfortunately, on the wrong days, it started resentment simmering. And her face was rather expressive.
In fact the only intimidating thing in this room was the fieflord himself. Unfortunately, he was the only thing that needed to be intimidating. He wore a lot of black. And a smile.
“Kaylin,” he said, lifting a hand and inclining his head in a perfect nod.
“Lord Nightshade.”
“I offered you the hospitality of my home when last you visited, but you were not in a position to truly appreciate it. Let me offer it again.”
“I’m still not in a position to appreciate it,” she replied. She lifted her hands, pulling the hood of her heavy cape back from her face.
He was at her side before she could see him move. At her side, and towering over her, although his expression was smooth and cool, flavored with the condescension that all of the Barrani showed the lesser races. Which, of course, meant every race that wasn’t either Barrani or Dragon. At the moment, she wasn’t entirely certain about the Dragon part, either.
He removed the cloak from her shoulders, and she deliberately avoided noticing the flicker of disgust it evoked. The cloak’s fabric was a rough weave, which suited her, and it wasn’t a particularly attractive color—because those cost money, and she didn’t spend all that much time looking at herself anyway.
He took the cloak carefully and set it to one side. Which side, she wasn’t certain, because he didn’t leave it
hanging on the wall.
“I want that back when I leave,” she told him, in as firm a voice as she could muster.
“Are you so certain?”
“Completely certain. It’s useful when—”
“Ah, I was unclear. I meant, that you will be leaving.”
Her hand fell to a dagger. She had to struggle not to say something offensive, because she wanted information. That, and her life.
“If you must draw weapon, draw it here. It is the only room in the castle in which it is unquestionably safe to do so.” He spoke without apparent concern, but she had enough experience with Barrani not to trust his nonchalance. She let her hand drop away.
“I didn’t come here to fight,” she told him.
His smile was a thin edge of perfect lip. “No?”
“No. I came here to talk.”
“Human speech is often colorful, and often augmented by pathetic attempts at violence.”
“I also didn’t come here to be insulted.”
To her surprise, he laughed, and she had to admit that even Clint’s voice didn’t have the depth of velvet Nightshade’s did. “No indeed, and you remind me of what I seldom offer in the fief—my hospitality. It is deplorably lacking. Come, Kaylin Neya.” He offered her an arm.
She stared at it. Hoped that she didn’t look like she was staring at a dead snake. A minute passed, and then another; it redefined the word awkward for Kaylin. She realized, as she continued to stare, that he had forever, and he was going to hold his arm out in front of her like a challenge for about that long. So she took it, sliding her fingers across the crook of his elbow; it was a reach.
He led her past the…vestibule, or whatever it was called when it was this damn big, and toward a familiar wall. She flinched, and he stopped walking. “Do you not wish to enter the Long Halls?” he asked her softly.
“Does it matter?” was her bitter answer.
“For today, Kaylin, as you are my guest, I will tender you an answer seldom heard in my keep. Yes, your will in this matters, as you so quaintly put it.” Before she could speak, he lifted a hand, and brought it an inch away from her slightly open mouth. “Before you make that choice, however, you must understand that beyond that wall, beyond the sentinels who wait, there is a certainty of safety. Not in those halls, nor beyond them, can anything attack me within the keep without first paying a price.”