One was a simple doll, a thing of cloth, with wool hair and button eyes, and a small pink bud of a mouth. The other? A small wooden flute.
“Kaylin—”
“I know I can’t bury them,” she told him without looking at his face. “I know we can’t dig them up. I can’t give them these things. They can’t touch them.”
“They’re dead,” he said almost harshly.
She nodded. “But I’m not. We’re not,” she added, still staring at the stone. She placed these odd gifts in front of it. The weeds would spring back soon, and they would be hidden from sight. Just as the grave now was.
“I wasn’t here,” she added softly and bitterly. “I should have been here, and I wasn’t.”
He said nothing. There was nothing he could say. But after a moment, with just a snort of something that might be disgust, he rearranged them, doll and flute, placing the one in the padded, mittenlike hands of the other. “Steffi wanted a doll. For Jade,” she added quietly. “And she wanted a flute for herself. This isn’t much of either.”
“Kaylin—”
“But I promised them. When we had money. We never had money,” she added. As if he didn’t know. “I should have been here.”
“You said that.”
“I should have helped you. I can’t believe you carried them both—”
“I couldn’t leave one behind,” he whispered. “I couldn’t choose just one of them.”
“They were already dead.”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes. The wind—and it was scant—made the dry stalks of weeds rustle as if they were leaves, and for a moment, she could almost feel the forest floor beneath her hands. She had planted some part of herself in that forest—but the better part of herself? It had been buried here, by Severn, while his hands blistered and bled. And it had been cold here. Cold then. The ground much harder than the ground she’d broken.
“Not even to save the world,” she whispered, bringing her hands to her face, to her mouth, to muffle the words.
She felt his arms enfold her then. She felt his chest against her back, his chin above her head. Felt his silence, like the space between heartbeats. “I keep wondering,” she continued, because she had to untangle the knot in her throat, “if someone could do for me what I did for the Lord of the Green. If they could give me the strength that I needed to bear it all.”
“Elianne.”
“And I know they can’t. Because I’m not Barrani. I’m not the High Lord. If there really are gods, Severn, I owe them. I’m never going to have to be the High Lord.”
He held her as he had not held her for years, and the years were dwindling, in this wild, untended graveyard of two. Her eyes were dry. She told herself her eyes were dry. Lying? She wasn’t good at it. Not, at least, to others.
“There’s no going back,” she continued. Harder to speak now. But just as necessary. She whispered two names. Steffi. Jade. She listened for their answer. And was relieved not to hear it, for the Barrani castelord would always hear the dead. And would understand how close he had come to truly freeing them.
And he would regret it. She knew he would regret it.
How could she not know it? She knew his name. She would never say it. Wasn’t even certain she could say it all. But she would know, and he would know.
This was the price that love demanded of those with power. Or duty. And Severn had paid it. She could tell, by the way his arms were locked, that he would always pay it; that it would never dim.
How had he lived with it, alone? She couldn’t. She could not be here without Severn.
The third name she whispered was his. She knew he heard it because his arms tightened, as if he could somehow contain her, or protect her. But she had not come here, in the end, for protection.
She had come here for peace.
She leaned back into the hollow of his collarbone; felt, instead, the links of armor beneath her neck. “You can’t protect me from myself,” she told him quietly.
He said nothing for a moment; the moment passed. “According to Marcus, no one can.” There was a bitter warmth in the words. “On the other hand, according to Marcus, if he hasn’t strangled you yet, he still retains the rights.”
She laughed, but it hurt. Everything hurt. She twisted around, dropping the empty satchel. It was awkward because Severn didn’t let go.
“Not for you,” he whispered. “Not because of you. Can you remember that?”
She nodded. “I can’t believe it, though.”
“Try.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You have nothing to be—”
“I have seven years,” she told him. “You came here for seven years, without me. You came here that night. And if it weren’t for the test of the tower, I would never have seen it. I couldn’t think about it. I was that selfish.”
“You loved them.”
“Yes. I loved them. But Severn—so did you.”
“Not enough,” he whispered.
She wanted to argue; she couldn’t. “What does enough mean? I’m alive,” she added. Meeting his gaze, although it was hard. “I hated that I was alive. I—” And closed her eyes. “I hate—that…I want to be alive.”
He held her.
“But I don’t—I can’t—hate you. I don’t know how.”
“You can remember,” he whispered into the mess of her hair. “If you need to, you can remember.”
She pushed herself away, kept him at arm’s length, even though her arms were shaking. “I would have forgotten instead,” she said bitterly, and because it was true. “And I would have been happy to forget.
“And you were right—it would have been wrong. I want to move forward,” she added quietly. “But I don’t know how. I just don’t know how to go back.”
“They didn’t blame you.”
“It doesn’t matter. I do now. I did, for the Barrani castelord, what I couldn’t do for myself. I did, for the Lord of the West March, what I never even thought to do for you. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Kaylin, Elianne, whoever you are—”
But she knew the answer. She pulled away from him, and this time he let her go; go to the stone and the doll and the flute; go to the silence of her dead. And it was silent, and blessed silence, and she knew it for that because she had seen Samaran’s father in the darkness of the High Halls, and she had heard his plea, had heard the burden he had laid upon his son.
“We won, didn’t we?” she asked him, both of her hands against the hard surface of this faceless rock, that seemed the perfect marker for what lay beneath it.
“Elianne—”
“That’s not my name.”
“Kaylin, then.”
She shook her head quietly, and turned, and saw him through tears. “Don’t come here again,” she said softly.
“I can’t promise that.”
“Don’t come here without me.”
He nodded, and he caught her cheeks in his hands, and held her face. His eyes were brown; just brown. His face was white enough that his scars were almost invisible.
And when she had had enough of his eyes, when the sky was a little too pink, she whispered, at last, another name. Her lips moved over the syllables, but they made no sound at all. She reached up and caught his hands and pressed them into her skin, aware of each knuckle.
Aware, as his eyes widened, that he had heard her clearly, that in some part of his mind and memory, the name she had chosen for herself—the third name, with its cutting edge and its softness—now lay.
But she felt no fear at all as she exposed it, and none at all when he spoke, his lips motionless, the syllables that would define her.
Ellariayn.
Severn.
This is…your name.
Yes.
But you—
You can’t lie to me here. And I don’t think I can lie to you. Ask me. Ask me whatever you have to.
He was sil
ent.
Call me, she whispered. And I’ll hear you. Wherever I am, I’ll hear you. Whatever I’m doing, I’ll hear you. I’ll answer.
But he was still Severn; if she’d changed, he hadn’t. He asked her nothing. Instead, he gathered her in his arms, and this time she went, and the coming of night—and it was coming—could not move her from this spot, this rock, this grave or these offerings.
These were hers. For now, they were hers.
And maybe he had changed, because night was descending in the streets of the fief, and he did not warn her, did not tell her to move, did not speak of practicalities or waiting death.
He spoke her name instead. All of her names.
And when his lips stopped moving, she reached up and touched them with the tips of her fingers, her healer’s hands moving like moths near the heart of flame.
Cast in Secret
by Michelle Sagara
www.LUNA-Books.com
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER 1
Private Kaylin Neya studied the duty roster, and given how little she studied anything that wasn’t somehow involved with a corpse, this said something.
The official roster was like a dartboard, except that people threw pencils at it instead. Sometimes they hit a bull’s-eye anyway. Lined up in columns by day, and color-coded for the more moronic—or hungover—by district, it told the various members of the branch of law enforcement known as the Hawks where, exactly, they were meant to either find trouble or stay out of it. Kaylin could easily make out her name, although some clod with lousy aim had managed to make a giant hole in it.
If it was true that the roster could never make everyone happy, it was somehow also true that it could make everyone unhappy. Sergeant Marcus Kassan, in charge of assigning duties on a monthly basis, had a strong sense of fairness; if someone was going to suffer, everyone might as well keep them company.
As the Hawks’ only Leontine officer—in fact, the only Leontine to be an officer of the Halls of Law—he presided over the men and women under his command with a hooded set of fangs in a face that was fur, large eyes and peaked ears—in that order. He also boasted a set of claws that made daggers superfluous and did a good job against swords, as well.
Kaylin had no pencil with which to puncture the paper, or she’d have thrown more at it than liberal curses.
Swearing at one’s assignment wasn’t unusual in the office; as far as office pastimes went, it was one that most of the Hawks indulged in. Kaylin’s partner, Corporal Severn Handred, looked easily over her shoulder, but waited until she turned to raise a dark brow in her general direction. That brow was bisected by a slender, white line, a scar that didn’t so much mar his face as hint at secret histories.
Secret, at least, to Kaylin; she hadn’t seen him take that one.
“What will you be missing?” he asked, when her impressive spate of cursing—in four official languages—had died down enough that he could be heard without shouting. Severn rarely raised his voice.
“Game,” she said curtly. “Ball,” she added.
“Playing?”
She grimaced. “Betting.” Which, for Kaylin, was synonymous with watching.
“Figures. Who were you betting on?”
She shrugged. “Sharks.”
“So you’ll save some money.”
This caused an entirely different spate of swearing, and she punctuated this by punching his shoulder, which he thoughtfully turned in her direction. “You’d be betting on the Tigers, I suppose?”
“Already have,” he replied. “Our shift?” He glanced at the window. It told the time. Literally. Mages had been allowed to go mad when they’d been asked to encourage punctuality, and it showed. The urge to tell the window to shut the hell up came and went several times a day.
The fact that mages had been allowed to perform the spell or series of spells seemed almost a direct criticism of Kaylin, who wasn’t exactly punctual on the best of days.
“Private Neya and Corporal Handred, report to the Quartermaster before active duty.” Some sweet young voice had been used to capture the words. Kaylin seriously wanted to meet the person behind it. And was pretty sure the person behind it seriously didn’t want to meet her.
“Quartermaster?” Severn said, with the barest hint of a sympathetic grimace.
Kaylin said, “Can I break the window first?”
“Won’t help. He’s probably responsible for having the glass replaced, and you’re in enough trouble with him as is.”
It was true. She had barely managed to crawl up the ladder from thing-scraped-off-the-bottom-of-a-shoe-after-a-dog-fight in the unspoken ranks the Quartermaster gave the Hawks; she was now merely in the person-I-can’t-see category, which was a distinct improvement, although it usually meant she was the last to get kitted out. The Quartermaster was officious enough, however, to make last and late two entirely different domains—if only, in Kaylin’s case, by seconds.
“It was just a stupid dress,” she muttered. “One dress, and I’m in the doghouse.”
“I doubt it. You know how much he loves those dogs.”
“Yeah. A lot more than he likes the rest of us.”
“It was an expensive dress, Kaylin.”
“I didn’t choose it!”
“No. But you did give it back with a few bloodstains, a dozen knife tears, and about a pound less fabric.”
“It’s not like it could have been used by anyone else—”
“Not in that condition, no. And,” he added, lifting a hand, “I’m not the Quartermaster, I didn’t have to haggle with the Seamstresses Guild, and I don’t really care.”
“Yeah, but his life doesn’t depend on me, so he doesn’t have to listen to me whine.”
Severn chuckled. “No. Your career depends on him, however. Good job, Kaylin.”
They walked down the long hall that led to Marcus’s desk, which just happened to be situated so that it crossed almost any indoor path a Hawk could take in the line of duty. He liked to keep an eye on things. Or a claw across the throat, as the Leontine saying went.
As the Hawks’ sergeant, assignments came from him, and reports—which involved the paperwork he so hated—went to him. Caitlin, his assistant, and for all purposes, his second in command, was the one who would actually read the submissions, and she wisely chose to pass on only those that she felt were important. The rest, she fudged.
And since the Festival season was, as of two days past, officially over, most of those reports involved a lot of cleanup, a lot of official fines—which helped the coffers of the Halls of Law immensely—and a lot of petty bickering, which would be referred to the unofficial courts in the various racial enclaves for mediation.
Ceding that bickering to the racial courts, rather than the Imperial Courts, took more paperwork. But the Emperor was short on time and very, very short on patience, so only cases of real import—or those that involved the Elantran nobility—ever went to him directly. Given that he was Immortal, being a dragon and all, this struck Kaylin as unfair. After all, he had forever.
“Lord Kaylin,” Marcus said, as they approached his desk. The title, granted her by the Lord of the Barrani High Court, caused a round of snickers and an unfortunate echo in the office that set Kaylin’s teeth on edge. The deep sarcasm that only a Leontine throat could produce didn’t help much. “So good of you to join
us.”
She snapped him a salute—which, given his rank didn’t demand it, was only meant to annoy—and stood at attention in front of his desk. Severn’s short sigh, she ignored; he offered Marcus neither of these gestures.
“There’s been a slight change in your beat today.”
The official roster changed at the blink of an eye. A Leontine eye, with its golden iris. “You’re to go to Elani Street,” he told them.
“What, mage central?”
“Or Charlatan central, if you prefer,” Marcus snapped back. Elani Street was both. There was the real stuff, if you weren’t naive and you knew what to look for, and then there was love potion number nine, and tell your fortune, and meet the right mate, all of which booths—usually with much finer names—saw a steady stream of traffic, day in and day out.
Kaylin was always torn between contempt for the people who had such blind dreams and contempt for the people who could exploit them so callously. Elani Street was not her favorite street, mostly because she couldn’t decide which of the two she wanted to strangle more.
She flipped an invisible coin. It landed, after a moment in the mental ether, on the side of people who made money, rather than people who lost it.
“Who’s fleecing people this time?” Kaylin muttered. “It’s only two days past Festival—you’d think people would be tired enough to give it a rest. Or,” she added darkly, “in jail.”
“Many are both,” Marcus replied, and something in his tone made her give up her sullen and almost perfect stance to lean slightly into the desk. Slightly was safe; he still hadn’t cleared half the paperwork the Festival produced annually, and knocking any of the less than meticulous piles over was—well, the furrows in the desk didn’t get there by magic.
“What’s happened?”
“There’s been a disturbance,” he replied. “I believe you know the shop. Evanton’s. You may have given him some business over the years.”