“No.”
He showed no surprise at all at her answer. But he’d expected it; she knew enough of him by now to know that much. “Or you can find the bindings, and strengthen them.”
“I’ll—”
“And if we cannot find the child in time, you will surrender everything human about you, and the child’s death—all of the childrens’ deaths—will seem paltry and merciful in comparison to what you will then be capable of doing.
“Yes, I counseled Lord Grammayre to kill you. I will not lie. He chose not to heed my advice—and it was costly to the Lords of Law to receive it—not because he was certain he could protect you, and not, in the end, because he was certain that the threat you presented was over. He refused because he thought, even then, that you were a fledgling, that you had come to him in his Tower, wings broken, and that he might somehow make you whole.”
“But that’s not—that can’t be—” She was shaking. “Do you know why I first climbed up to the Hawklord’s Tower? What I tried to do?”
If he did, he was kind enough not to answer. And he was Tiamaris enough to ignore the interruption. “I thought him reckless, then. But the gift that you used to heal that child—there is not another like it. Not in anything save legend, and history old enough to be legend to the mortal races. Even now, I can still think of his action as reckless—but I better understand it, and what he did not do, I will not do until it is clear that there is no other choice.”
“And what if it’s too late?”
“I will die.” He brought his hands up to her face; they were both hard and warm. He could crush the whole of her head between them. “And now I too will take the greater risk, Kaylin Neya. Think of your Catti. Find the bridge that you built—and crossed—in order to save her life. Find only that.”
“And then?”
“We will cross it.” He paused, and the hesitation was profound. “I must call Severn,” he said at last.
“No!”
“I will call Severn, Kaylin, because the child is almost certainly in the fiefs, and your history together lies there as well.”
“Our history—”
“He has a part to play,” the Dragon said softly. “It is not yet finished. He knows you better than anyone, save perhaps Lord Grammayre. He knows what made you. He understands you.”
She didn’t want to answer that. Or to face it.
“But they took Catti from the upper city—they could be anywhere!”
“And the bracer,” Tiamaris continued, without pause, “went to Severn—he is its keeper. I believe that when we leave the foundling halls, it will return to his hand, and he will know.”
She swallowed.
“Our enemies are in the fiefs,” he told her, “because that is where the source of their power is. All of the ancient magics in Elantra, half-remembered and slumbering, are there. You are beginning to understand Severn, and I would pity you for it, but we do not have the time.
“Choose—Severn or Catti.”
She swallowed. “If he tries to hurt her—”
“I will kill him myself.”
The words should have been a comfort, because there was no lie in them, and not the least bit of doubt that he could.
“Severn,” she said thickly. Because she was almost close to tears, and she couldn’t speak any other way.
She wasn’t certain of what to expect when Severn met them in the vestibule of the foundling hall, Marrin barring his way, her fur on end.
Tiamaris had a grip on her arm that would leave bruises, but it wasn’t necessary, all breath—and all motion—went out of her when she met Severn’s eyes. They were dark, and lined with shadow, and his chin was lined with stubble that would get him hauled across the carpet had he been on dress duty. He wore chain mail beneath the surcoat of the Hawks; he was dressed for ground duty, girded by sword, and belted, as was his custom, by long loops of chain.
He met her eyes and flinched. It wasn’t what she expected. Couldn’t say what she had expected. But when she opened her mouth, he lifted a hand, staying his distance.
“I brought your gear,” he told her quietly, and she saw that he carried a satchel over his left shoulder.
“I’m not allowed to wear it.”
He met Tiamaris’s glance. “Your call.”
“Wear it.”
“You weren’t the Lord of Hawks, last I looked.”
“Nonetheless I will take responsibility for your disobedience.” He raised a Dragon brow in Severn’s direction. “You bribed the quartermaster?”
“I didn’t bother to speak with the quartermaster,” Severn replied, his broad shrug causing a cascade of sound that was only barely muffled by the satchel. “He had business to attend to—the reserves are taking up most of his time. And frankly, there aren’t many Hawks her size. It wasn’t hard to find her kit. We’re going to Nightshade?” he added, eyes on Tiamaris.
“That depends,” Tiamaris replied evenly. He turned to Kaylin.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
Marrin, still standing between Severn and Kaylin, looked back. Her lips were pulled up over exposed, yellowed fangs. Give Severn this much, Kaylin thought; he wasn’t even tense.
“I can find Catti,” Kaylin told her, in the harsh, resonant tones of the Leontine. She reached up and brushed Tiamaris’s hand away; he let her go. “I can bring her back. Marrin, she’s part of my pride as well.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“You can’t,” Kaylin continued, with far more certainty than she felt, given Marrin’s state. “Because I can’t stay, and no one else will protect the children the way you can. They need you here, until this is over. They’ve only got you.” It was a low blow. But she’d learned, in the ranks of the Hawks, to use the weapon at hand as quickly and efficiently as possible once the need for a weapon had been established.
Marrin didn’t hesitate. She stepped out of the way and let Severn pass. But as he did, she added—with the first sign of humor she’d managed to show—“Please, no more fighting in the foundling hall.”
Kaylin laughed. Hysteria did that.
Severn didn’t. He handed Kaylin the satchel. “Put the armor on,” he added, before she could say a word. “All of it.”
She was aware of Severn’s presence as they left the foundling halls; couldn’t help but be aware of him. He walked to her left, and Tiamaris, to her right. The sun’s light had slanted; they’d wasted time in talk, and the shadows had begun to lengthen against the ground. What there was of it, that is, that wasn’t occupied.
Severn and Tiamaris wore full Hawk uniforms. She wondered if they’d bother to take the time to ditch them when they reached the fork point of Old Nester at the bridge across the Ablayne. So far, they hadn’t gone into the fiefs as Hawks—as servants of any of the Lords of Law. But she looked up as the thought crossed her mind, and she saw that Aerians were in the skies.
Caitlin, never prone to exaggeration, had given in to understatement. It was as if the Southern Welt had been emptied in its entirety, and sunlight glinted off the armor that some of the Aerians were strong enough to bear in full flight. They certainly didn’t fly without their colors, and they were circling the fiefs in wide arcs that brought them just above the peaks of buildings.
“The Wolves are out,” Severn told her quietly.
“The Wolflord called a hunt?”
“He hasn’t emptied the hall,” was the calm reply, “and he hasn’t called in his reserves. But yes, he’s called a hunt.”
“On what?”
“The Imperial mages were able to pick up something in the mess left in the foundling hall. They’ve set up a trace, of sorts. They worked the night to do it, but they’ve enchanted small crystals that are attracted to—” he paused and frowned. “You didn’t do well in basic magic, did you?”
“Does everyone read my transcripts?”
A smile tugged at the corner of his lips, changing the shape of the scars she was familiar with. She was numb;
told herself she was numb. But it wasn’t true; she was comforted to see even this hint of levity.
She didn’t understand herself, and she didn’t have time to try—praise whatever gods for small mercies.
“But if they could do that, then I don’t need—”
“They won’t find her,” Tiamaris said quietly.
Severn actually bristled. “You’ve barely served as Hawk,” he said curtly. “You’ve never served as Wolf. When the Wolves hunt—”
“They have to know what they’re hunting. And the magic—” he said this with more disdain than two syllables of fact should have been able to contain “—that the Imperial Order can concoct on such short notice is seldom considered…efficient.”
The crowds, thinning with every step they took, parted at last by the banks of the Ablayne, and they made their way to the bridge. Hawks’ crests glinted as if light were pride, and she knew that Tiamaris and Severn had both made the decision to wear their uniform. She knew it was foolish; they were going into the fiefs, and they wanted as little interference as possible.
No time, she thought. She couldn’t feel Catti. She couldn’t feel whatever it was that bound them. Her breath was shallow now, as if she’d just run a four-minute mile.
“Severn,” she said, without looking at him, aware even then that she had the whole of his attention. “I went to talk to the fieflord.”
He didn’t ask when. Didn’t need to.
“He told me what he told you.”
She wanted him to talk, then. Almost needed to hear his voice. Because if she did, she’d know.
“Kaylin,” Tiamaris said softly, warning in the word.
But she turned to Severn anyway, to look at the face she had seen, even miles away in Castle Nightshade. “Catti is important to me,” she said, her voice low. She was more vulnerable now than she had been in over seven years in his presence. “She’s more important to me than I am.”
He said nothing.
“I need to be able to trust you.”
When he continued to offer her silence, her hand rose; she held it stiffly in the air, as if it were a signal and not the first half of a slap.
“I trusted you,” she continued, and her voice almost broke. “And I needed to. Then, in the fiefs. But I didn’t know…after…that I’d need to trust you ever again.” Bleeding would have been easier, and less painful. She scraped herself raw, hating it. “And I do. Need to. But it doesn’t mean the same thing, here.”
“Kaylin—” His voice. Breaking, just as hers was breaking, more in her name than she’d managed to put into all of her words combined.
“There have to be things that are more important than my life. That’s what it means to me—being a Hawk. Being…being Kaylin Neya. When I took the oaths, I was ready to die. I wanted to die.”
His hand rose as well, but the gesture was so different from hers, so shorn of violence, it was painful too.
“I can find Catti because I healed her. Because I had to use some sort of power I’d never used before. It’s why she was taken.”
His whole expression turned to stone. Not ice; ice was colder and thinner. “Don’t—”
“I have to. I have to ask this. If you ever cared for me—”
His fingers touched her unmarked cheek.
“It almost killed me,” she whispered, acknowledging at last what she had only acknowledged before with blade and fury. “What you did. What happened that night. It did kill me. Maybe you had to do it—maybe you saved the City. Tiamaris thinks so, even if he’s never said it to me. And I—don’t care.
“Save her. Think of Catti. Please.”
She might have said more, but her arms suddenly started to burn. She couldn’t stop herself from crying out, and she only stayed on her feet because Severn was there, in front of her, his face her whole field of vision.
“They’re starting,” she whispered, as every one of the swirls and sigils upon her arm began to crawl with secret fire.
Biting her lip, pulling herself up, she began to run.
She couldn’t have said where, but the why—the why was clear. Somewhere in the fief of Nightshade, the killers had started to make their marks upon Catti.
CHAPTER 15
She outpaced Severn. Whole years of her life had been narrowly defined by the fact that she couldn’t even keep up. She heard him curse, but he didn’t call out, didn’t ask her to slow.
Movement cooled her arms. Fire, hidden beneath a layer of cloth and leather, banked as she ran, but it brought her no comfort at all—she knew, when it started again, it would start up her legs, and she couldn’t afford to stumble, or to slow. Catti didn’t have the time.
Hold on, she thought. No desperation in the words; just command. Or prayer. Or some mixture of the two. Kaylin, like most of the fieflings, had no professed religion. The gods were like the weather; sometimes good, sometimes bad, and either way, always beyond her.
People dived out of her way. They dived out of Severn’s—or maybe Tiamaris’s. The Dragon kept up, hardly breathing. She was certain, however, that she heard stone crack at least twice; these roads had been solid stone in a different age, and he was eroding some of the skeletal structure that survived. It was as if he was so focused on running, and only running, that he couldn’t be bothered to expend the concentration necessary to keep his step light.
Another time, and this would have surprised her. Or terrified her. But she had just enough of basic Hawk training—the one thing she’d been damn good at—to keep her aware of what was happening around her; she had nothing left to react with. Catti, she thought. Catti.
And something in her heard an answer.
It wasn’t a word. And it wasn’t a scream—it wasn’t strong enough for that. She had never heard Catti whimper; the little redhead with the defiant shove and the off-key voice had always been too strong a child.
But she was a child. And the fiefs weren’t her home.
We’re coming for you, Catti. We’re coming to bring you home. Hold on. Wait for me.
It went out of her in words, but the words weren’t spoken; they were like filaments, bright and airy, things seen like the palest of stars only out of the corner of the eye. She couldn’t look at where they went, but it didn’t matter; she knew.
She turned a corner. Hated the building that stood in her way, forcing her to alter her path. Felt something rise in the folds of that momentary hatred. Power. If she’d had the time, and the bracer, she would have donned it—but that would kill Catti. Instead, she tried to forget the reasons she’d been given the damn thing in the first place. She ran through the surge, ignoring it. Praying, although it was pointless.
Here, the pain that was sudden in ferocity, surprising even though she’d expected it, helped her. It was a full body slap, a vicious reminder of what she needed to do. It took everything she had not to stumble or fall, and she willingly gave her all, shortening her stride for a few lousy steps while her inner thighs burned.
It gave Severn time to catch up; time to touch her shoulder, but not time to speak. He wouldn’t, though; she turned to look at him, and he read everything he needed to read in the expression that contorted her face.
“Four Corners,” he said, and it made no sense. But he spoke to Tiamaris; the Dragon rumbled in reply, his voice a shadow of his roar, but something stronger and fuller than his normal speaking tones. How much did a Dragon hide, when he walked the streets of the city?
How much did she?
She kept running, she kept breathing. The breathing was harder. Even Severn was glistening with sweat, and he was a wolf—he was used to running the city streets. Used to running these ones, probably the only Wolf who was.
But the streets shortened; the stones gave way to holes, grooves that were dried mud or flattened straw. This was one of the older streets in the fief. She couldn’t remember its name, and didn’t try. Because she looked up and finally saw the building that she knew she had to enter.
It was surrounded b
y black gates. Rust showed through the patches of oddly glistening paint, and it took her a moment to realize that it wasn’t rust. She cursed.
“Watchtower,” Severn said, which was more of a curse in its way than hers. “The gates are around the other side,” he told Tiamaris.
“We don’t have time!” Kaylin shouted.
Tiamaris looked first at Severn, and then at Kaylin. His eyes glinted red now, a deep, crimson color, shorn of inner lid. She had never seen it before.
“Get out of the way,” he told her.
She obeyed him without thought, and half-wondered if he’d used some sort of voice-of-command magic. Whatever it was called. She really wished, for just that minute, that she had been a better student.
The Dragon Hawk reached out, gripped two of the thick iron bars in his hands, and tensed. Kaylin waited, because she thought he was going to bend them wide enough to allow passage.
She was wrong.
He tore them from their moorings, and with them, the whole fence face. Running here hadn’t winded him; this barely made him grunt. But he did; she saw the muscles in his hands stand out in relief, as if chiselled there. His expression was stone. Red stone.
She was grateful that the streets had already emptied in a terrified rush, because had anyone been standing near them, they would have been crushed by the fence as it slammed into the street just inches to their back, probably shattering the few stones that remained of an ancient road.
Not that it would have mattered much, in the end: this was the fiefs, and the rule of law wasn’t worth a rat’s ass.
She ran across the newly uprooted earth, and nearly tripped as she noticed the mooring points planted in the ground; they were ebony. Ebony meant magic. If she’d had a minute, she would have been beyond impressed with Tiamaris.
But the pain had reached its height, and although it was sustained, she knew what would happen when it finally peaked. Knew it wouldn’t take long at all, either.
She felt Catti’s terror, and for a moment, she was back in the foundling hall, in the healing trance—bound so thoroughly to the young girl’s life she couldn’t separate her feelings from the child’s: the terror was identical.