And there was a wall between her and it.
Old stone, smooth, cracked—maybe—by years of ivy growth. There were no windows here. There never had been. She’d always wondered why it had been called a watchtower.
From a painful remove she heard Severn speak of death, although he wasn’t aware of it. “The gatehouse is on the other side.”
No. No time. The gatehouse would be guarded. And even if it weren’t, if it were barred, it would be too late.
Too late for Catti.
She could feel the power twist in her like the muscles of a very traumatized abdominal wall. Funny, how all those stupid technical magical words never left an impression no matter how many damn classes she’d been forced to sit through. She had watched a full autopsy only once and still remembered every clinical word Red had used.
Nausea overwhelmed her, but it wasn’t the nausea of memory. She could taste blood.
She screamed. It came out in a roar that only a handful of Hawks would have recognized. They weren’t there. Severn was. Tiamaris was.
And the wall was. She threw her hands at it, balled fists striking stone. Again. A third time. Skin left the sides of her fists, followed by a dark smear of blood.
“Catti!” Kaylin screamed.
And the wall shattered.
Stone shards flew in every direction; dust rose in an ominous cloud, an airy shroud. She lunged through them all, and came out looking like a crazed sculptor’s interpretation of a spiny leaf-eater. She ran headlong into the pain, and because it was everything she could feel and see, she almost died.
But because it was everything, because she had once again totally lost it, she didn’t. She caught the sharp point of an edged spear with the flat of her crooked arm and snapped it off; it sheared a gash in leather, dislodging stubborn bits of what had once been the external wall.
The head snapped off in her hand, the gleam of metal dulled by dust. She reversed its unbalanced, awkward weight and threw it back along the jagged wood of the shaft it had left.
Heard it strike something, heard the grunt that accompanied the strike.
Heard, blessed by it, terrified by it, the thin wail of a child’s scream.
Catti. Catti. Catti.
And holding her down, surrounding her like priests out of a story that was too grim even for children, four robed men, all of a height, slender and perfect in build. The hoods hid their upper faces.
But the tapered edge of their perfect jaws were unmistakable: Barrani jaws.
They were Barrani.
But they weren’t. She’d seen Barrani for seven years. She’d lived with them—briefly—investigated them, patroled with them, and eaten their food; she’d listened to their language, learned to speak it, envied their beauty, their musicality, their utter certainty of grace, and their endless, immortal life. They had made her feel awkward, ugly and just a little stupid simply by existing, because their lives made them everything that she would never have the time to be.
But until today, she’d never met a dead Barrani.
And she yearned for the whole range of awkward that the living Barrani engendered, because corpses didn’t move without a lot of very, very illegal magical help.
Didn’t think.
And yet these corpses did. And one of them, eyes the gray of night storm, did worse: he smiled.
She leaped up, toward the four, toward Catti who was still alive. It was all that mattered, that she was still alive. Had Marcus been there, he would have been beyond furious with Kaylin. Anger, she had learned quickly, was no good in a fight—it was more of an enemy than your armed opponent, because it meant you were fighting on two fronts.
Fear had its uses, she’d been taught that too. But you had to be able to parcel it out, to use it. Not to be used by it.
Old lessons. Old, hard-learned, and utterly useless. She cried out in terror, in rage, in something so raw that there wasn’t a single emotional word that could describe it. Against one Barrani, she had no chance.
She knew it. And even if she had failed math, betting had been her only leisure pastime in the fiefs; she knew the odds against four.
And she’d take those odds.
But the other nine that closed in in a silent circle were more of a wall than the wall had been. She couldn’t get past them; the power that she’d used to draw down the walls didn’t leave her enough to destroy the Barrani. And she would have, and slowly, had she had the power.
They’d buy the time the others needed to kill Catti. The four already had blades out, curved blades, with flashing symbols, things that were also part of dark story, old legend. The pain in Kaylin’s thighs, so insignificant compared to the rest of her pain, was fading; the runes had been written.
All that was left was punctuation.
Her life is still in your hands. You can let her go, Tiamaris had said. It would be a more merciful death.
This close, words like ash in her mouth, she felt the bonds between her and Catti, held them tight. Daggers were in her hands, and she was already in motion; whatever held the magic didn’t need limbs.
But these Barrani were unlike the ones she’d trained with, drilled with, and patrolled with; they let the blades hit. One embedded itself in the center of Barrani chest; the other in an eye.
And neither of them made a damn difference.
The power that had destroyed the wall ebbed; she’d pay for it. She always had. But not now, she thought, willing it to be the truth, even if her body didn’t really believe it.
“Let her go!” she shouted, in Barrani.
No one answered but Catti.
No; that wasn’t true. The Hawks did.
She didn’t know how much time had passed, but she knew she was no longer alone; she wasn’t facing nine robed Barrani on her own. Tiamaris was by her side. “Kaylin.” She didn’t recognize his voice.
He turned, lifted Severn, and said something that she also didn’t recognize.
But Severn did. He nodded, tensed and was catapulted through the air above these silent Barrani as if he were an iron ball. His knees and his chin were tucked into his chest, his sword drawn and held tight to his body as well, as he traveled end over end like an acrobat.
The watchtower ceilings went up forever. Tiamaris had noticed it; Kaylin, who loved heights, had noticed nothing. Severn and the Dragon had just over a week of bearing the name and crest of her beloved Hawks between them; she had seven years. But they lived up to the crest.
Her mouth went dry as Severn landed, legs astride Catti’s slender, struggling body. His sword edge glistened with a lavender light; lavender and gold.
Terror had so many names, so many faces. She would have given in to all of them, but Tiamaris growled a warning and she had just enough time to get out of his way—because he suddenly needed a lot more room.
She discovered, then, that the word Dragon wasn’t just an honorific.
He should have been red.
It was a stupid thought.
But she could see herself in the sudden shift of what had looked like human skin as it broke, and broke again, like earth in the hands of the gods. Small mountains with jagged ridges erupted from Tiamaris’s skin, and there should have been blood, muscle, sinew—something more than this: the burnished, bright, shining scales of bronze; things that caught light, reflecting it, and with it, a distorted image of her own self.
She couldn’t see beyond him, he grew that fast.
She couldn’t see his head until his jaws opened and snapped to her left, leaving roughly a third of a Barrani on either side of his mouth. He had wings; she saw them flex, snapping in air. She’d heard big birds were dangerous, and she knew that Aerians could use their wings to bone-breaking effect in combat—but it wasn’t like this.
Before she could gain her bearings, four of the nine had fallen. But the other five were in motion, and they were wary. Slow—slower than any other Barrani she’d ever faced, they circled. On the other hand, any other Barrani she’d sparred with
would have been gone as far as their long, perfect legs would carry them. Even living forever, life was precious. Maybe more so, because there was so much more of it to lose.
She had single claws, one in each hand. She skirted the Dragon—she couldn’t think of him by name—and he let her pass; the smell of smoke wafted on the breeze of his anger, his roar.
Barrani spears caught his flank, and the roar shifted, but it didn’t still; it went on and on, as if it were an ancient, primal incantation. She would remember it forever.
But more, she would remember this: Severn.
Fighting.
What she almost couldn’t remember: to breathe. Severn was bleeding from several wounds; his armor was rent, and his forehead was glistening the red that the Dragon was missing; he wore no head-band; the blood was dripping down, toward lashes and eyes. His bladed-chain still hung in loops around his waist; he hadn’t space or time to unwind it, to set it spinning, to make it deadly. Instead, he relied on his sword.
And the Wolves, she thought, as she ran, leaping up the stairs that led to the four robed men, should be damn proud of him. Against four Barrani, he was still standing.
And Catti—Catti was still alive.
Severn had their attention. Kaylin reached out, grabbed the back of a hood’s cowl, the flesh that lay beneath it, and pulled. Her dagger cut air, and more: skin, flesh, windpipe.
It shouldn’t have worked. They should have been faster. She knew this on some level, even as she shoved herself over and past the man she had in theory just killed.
And she saw that two of the fighting Barrani were missing hands. They bled. That was good. But they didn’t seem to notice, and that was decidedly bad. Severn shouted something, but she couldn’t make out the words; the Dragon’s voice drowned them out, made them insignificant.
No. Not insignificant, never that.
She had thought Severn would kill Catti. She had thought—Severn gestured, then, and staggered as one of the Barrani daggers hit him. What his words hadn’t done, this did. She had time to duck, to hit the ground, to roll, and the shadow of robed arms passed over her. The arms of the Barrani without a throat.
Learning to roll to her feet had taken about three weeks of constant bruising, and Tain had enjoyed every damn minute of it, because none of the bruises were on him. If she survived, she’d thank him. Maybe even buy him a drink.
He always called her flat-footed, and “clumsy Kaylin” had been his nickname of choice until she’d hidden a mouldering sandwich in his desk for three weeks. Flat feet, on the other hand, were right beneath her as she bent at the knees and side-snapped, clipping the underside of that jaw, her boots squelching in blood. She kept her knee up, pivoted and kicked back, knocking the knife arm of one of the Barrani before Severn lost an eye. Motion was important. Balance, more so. Her daggers were working, and her hands were red, but they didn’t seem to have as much effect as the momentum of her weight behind the edge of her soles.
Catti was alive.
She could have done a little dance, and in fact, that was precisely what she was doing—but it was a Barrani dance, and they often ended in death. She kicked Barrani head when one of the priests—yes, that was the damn word for them—bent over Catti; he staggered back. His dagger had left a signature mark just above Catti’s navel, and it was one of three. It wasn’t deep, though.
They had been trying to kill Catti.
Severn, Severn, Severn.
She dropped her leading foot to one side of Catti, and felt Severn’s foot brush hers as he took up the position she’d left open at her back. From this vantage, Kaylin could see that the marks on exposed thighs and arms were glowing; they would forever be her definition of black, but they were still glowing.
Gods, she thought, not particular about which, if they survived, she’d pay attention in magic class. She’d even volunteer.
Her roundhouse was her slowest kick, but it was her highest; she brought her leg up, hit a forearm. It didn’t break, but it spun, causing the Barrani it was still attached to to spin with it. Severn was using his sword, and bits and pieces of Barrani bodies were piling up around them, but the parts they weren’t attached to anymore just kept on coming.
And then she saw bronze light, the great, triangular head of a dragon, and she smiled. Not even the fetid scent of death that clung to the smoky breath was enough to dim its vicious edge.
The Dragon snapped up two of the four, and as he tossed them aside, he spoke. Caught in the roar a throat that large would have to make, she heard command.
“Get the child out of here. Now.”
Severn still faced two; she was free to move. Free to do what, until this moment, had been her only desire. She hesitated, and Severn said, “Damn you, do it,” and this time, his lips close enough to her ear that the words blended and carried with the Dragon voice, she obeyed.
She bent, scooped Catti up in her arms and ran toward the Dragon. Catti should have been beyond terrified, but she wasn’t. Her arms were bound at the wrists, but she tried to reach up and throw them around Kaylin’s neck anyway.
Kaylin shook her head. Catti wasn’t the child she’d remembered first in the trance that had been their healing; she was heavy. She was twelve, the right age. The wrong age.
“Sorry,” she muttered, as she twisted the girl around and threw her over her shoulder like a sack. The weight unbalanced her; there was no way she could both fight and carry the girl.
But she didn’t have to. She brushed past the hard scales of the Dragon’s girth, and stopped only for a second because she could see where they had been torn up, cracked, or riven.
But he was a Hawk. Kaylin was a Hawk.
And Catti was one of the people the Hawks had been created to protect. No choices to be made there; she left through the door her power had made and stepped into the full, blinding light of the quarter-day sun.
Severn was two steps behind her; he almost shoved her out of the way. “Get to the gate-line!” He shouted, and she nodded, still carrying Catti. When she stumbled, he swore at her. In fief-tongue, the dialect that made every upper city dweller sneer.
He took Catti from her shoulder, and she let him, stopping only long enough to give the girl a look that was meant to comfort.
It melted, though.
The rock melted as well.
Behind them, in the watchtower, Tiamaris of the Dragon caste had at last unleashed the most feared of Dragon weapons: his fire.
Severn shed his shirt and passed it to Kaylin. It was, as far as shirts went, a bloody, horrible mess; it made her laundry piles look pristine by comparison. But she knew what it was for, and she quickly cut the thick ropes that bound Catti’s arms, massaging blood back into the girl’s wrists.
“Wear this,” she said softly, and pulled it over Catti’s head. It caught in her red thatch of hair, and it fell down her shoulders like an ungainly dress.
She cut the ankle ropes as well, and helped Catti to her feet. “We’re in the fiefs,” she told the foundling. “The fief of Nightshade.”
Catti’s dark eyes were both bruised and wide. “Was that a Dragon?” she whispered.
Kaylin nodded.
“Cool! You have a Dragon!”
“Catti, he’s not mine. He’s a—”
“Hawk,” Severn said quietly. “And while you’re wearing my shirt, so are you.”
She frowned at this stranger, and Kaylin was suddenly fiercely glad that Catti hadn’t seen them fight in the foundling hall. “What do you mean?”
“Look at your chest,” he said. And then, with a wry frown, added, “your waist.”
Across it, injured in the same way that the Dragon had been injured, its gold broken and red with drying blood, was the emblem of the hunting Hawk, on a field of gray-blue. Broken, it still had power; perhaps, to Kaylin’s eye, it had more power, because its flight had been tested, and it hadn’t faltered.
“It’s a Hawk,” Catti said, her words and tone subdued.
Severn had to bend
to bring his gaze level with Catti’s, and his expression was utterly serious. “Yes,” he said softly. “And most people—like Kaylin—have to earn the right to wear it. You were brave, Catti. You’ve earned the right to wear it for today. That makes you a Hawk, right now, and the Hawks don’t speak about things like this.”
She nodded.
Kaylin smiled, because she knew what the next question would be.
“Not even to Marrin?”
“Marrin is a special case,” Severn replied, relenting. He rose. “Lord Tiamaris,” he said, in a tone that Kaylin had never heard him use. Would have bet he couldn’t, even to the Wolflord himself.
She turned. Framed by jagged, listing rock, Tiamaris stood. Gone were wings, great jaw, long tail; gone bronze, glittering scale. He had hands again, and feet—bare feet, blackened by soot. He wasn’t wearing much. And not even Severn’s kit would have covered him, anyway.
“Catti,” she said softly, “stay with Severn.” She looked at Severn, and something in his expression made her look away. But he said nothing as she made her way back to Tiamaris.
He was…singed. Bleeding. His face was bruised, and his jaw looked like it had been slammed against the floor by, oh, a hundred of the fieflord’s best thugs. But his eyes were red, a brilliant red that had nothing at all to do with rubies.
“Tiamaris,” she said, reaching out with the flat of her palms.
“Don’t,” was his curt reply. He stepped back, and she would have followed him, but something in his voice still contained the resonant power of a different form.
“Lord Tiamaris,” Severn repeated, his voice clear and crisp beyond Kaylin’s turned back.
The Dragon’s inner membranes rose, lidding his eyes, muting their color. His outer membranes fell next, and his face twisted—literally—in something that might have been pain. Kaylin, realizing that she knew very, very little about Dragons, couldn’t tell—and she was smart enough not to ask. But she watched as bronze scales—large as small shields, worked their way out of his skin, flattening across a large but human-sized chest, and working their way down.