Cast in Shadow

by Michelle Sagara

  Severn, by her side, shrugged. “Go home,” he advised her, “or file your own report. Most Wolves don’t mind a break from active duty.”

  “I’m not a Wolf.”

  “Obviously.”

  She stared at the bracer on her wrist, and then shrugged. “I don’t want your protection,” she told him quietly.

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to matter what you want.”

  “Never did, did it?”

  Utter silence. She turned and walked away, remembering too much. Her dead. The past.

  Severn didn’t follow this time.

  But Teela met her as she left the Halls, and Teela escorted her home. She felt as if she was thirteen again, and she didn’t like it.

  “What is it with you and Severn anyway?” Teela asked quietly, when she’d reached the door that led to Kaylin’s apartment.

  “History,” Kaylin said.

  “No shit.”

  Kaylin had always privately believed the only reason Teela and Tain—and the rest of the Barrani Hawks—chose to use Elantran was because mortal languages were more colorful. As in, she could swear a lot using them.

  “He’s from a place I never want to go back to,” Kaylin said, relenting a little. “Because I never had a choice about being there at all.” She shoved her key into the first lock and twisted it a little too viciously.

  “Suit yourself,” Teela replied. “But I’d say, if you asked me—”

  “I’m not asking, Teela. Maybe tomorrow.” Maybe never.

  Teela shrugged her long, elegant Barrani shrug.

  “I got taken off the beat,” Kaylin added, as she unlocked the second lock.

  “I know. It’s better that way. First, you can’t stand Barker, and you don’t have to talk to him. Second, you may get out of Festival squawking. Third, Lord Evarrim is high caste, and if he’s not above the law, he’s not exactly conversant with its finer details.” She was quiet for a minute, almost reflective. “You know that the laws governing the different races are sometimes based on…unusual context.”

  “I’m not a lawyer.”

  Teela didn’t even chuckle.

  “Teela—”

  “You really don’t want to be involved with Evarrim.”

  “He can’t be worse than Nightshade.”

  “Worse? No. Better? Hardly.”

  “He’s not outcaste.”

  “Kaylin, the word outcaste, when applied to humans, means something like ‘going to jail if you get caught.’ It doesn’t mean the same thing for the Barrani. Or the Dragons. No, don’t bother. I’m not going to explain the difference. I like my tongue in my mouth. Or in—”

  “Spare me.”

  Teela smiled, but it never reached her eyes. “Get some sleep.”

  Kaylin tried.

  Her stomach started a long conversation halfway through the first hour, and she ate some stale bread and dry cheese just to shut it up. But as she lay beneath the sill of the unshuttered window, she gazed up at the falling night sky, and she counted stars. The bracer on her wrist was heavy and cool, a companion of sorts. It kept her safe, or so the Hawklord said. Still…

  It had gone to Severn.

  Tiamaris had spoken of protection.

  And Kaylin had said nothing. It was a betrayal of the dead. The dead she hadn’t buried. The dead she hadn’t saved. She turned over, grabbing the pillow that had flattened with years of use. It was too late for laundry; too late for shopping.

  Just too damn late.

  Go away, Severn. Go back to the Wolves. Go back to the Wolf Lord. Stay away from my life.

  Spoken, silently, over and over again, as if it were a prayer.

  She was on time the next morning, but given that Teela was her companion, Clint only snickered when he saw her.

  “You look like crap,” he said cheerfully.

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s the dark circles under your eyes. That and the fact they’re barely open. Teela, you should show a little pity.”

  “I did. I didn’t let her see a mirror on the way out.”

  “You barely let her dress, by the looks of it. Kaylin, you do know your tunic’s inside out, right?”

  Kaylin hated morning people, especially in the morning. She said something rude, and Tanner laughed. “Get it out of your system,” he said, as she pushed past them. “Iron Jaw only likes swearing when he does it.”

  Marcus, on the other hand, was being harried by Caitlin to finish filing the monthly report that the Lords of Law demanded, so most of the swearing in the office that morning was his by default. You couldn’t outswear a pissed off Leontine—for one, the volume made it difficult to do with dignity.

  Kaylin slid across the floor to the desk that was, in theory, hers. It wasn’t cordoned off by four walls and a door; it hovered at the edge of the paper-pushers, which suited her junior status. She had no idea what she was supposed to be doing, but given Marcus’s mood, she didn’t ask.

  And Marcus didn’t provide the answer.

  The whole of the day turned around the sudden flare of the inbound mirror. She looked up when it went off—but then again, so did the rest of the office.

  “Caitlin, who is it?”

  Caitlin frowned. The mirror was on the wall nearest her desk, because she was in theory its custodian. The frown deepened slightly as she glanced around the office. “It’s…Marrin.”

  Kaylin sighed and got up from her desk. “What is it this time?” She asked, fingering her bracer’s studs without really thinking about what she was doing.

  Marrin flared into view.

  Her fur was on end, her eyes were wide, even wild, and her claws were at full extension. She said something in Leontine, and she spoke so quickly, Kaylin missed half of it. The unimportant half.

  “What?” she shouted, as she ran toward the mirror.

  Marrin spoke again, and again her angry hiss of a Leontine cry rang out in the office; it was louder.

  Marcus looked up. He reached the mirror before Kaylin did, no mean feat given their respective starting distances. But his fur was also on end, and his claws—his claws were also at their full extension.

  She’d seen this before, but seldom; he was responding to a female Leontine in distress. She didn’t want to be the dead person that had caused the distress. Because that’s what he was going to be, given Marcus’s demeanor, and unpleasantly dead, at that.

  She would have let him handle the situation, but she had recognized the only thing in Marrin’s Leontine that was urgent: Catti.

  “Marcus,” she said, just as urgent, her voice as low as she could pitch it, her demeanor submissive. She barely noticed that the various office workers were slowly shoving paperwork into the safest receptacles and edging away from their desks.

  He turned, spinning so suddenly, Kaylin was afraid she was about to be disembowelled. But she didn’t flee, and she didn’t show obvious fear. Not of Marcus. He’d taught her that, and she’d learned quickly.

  His fur slowly flattened, and if his claws didn’t retract, he spoke to her in Elantran. “Catti is missing,” he said.

  She swallowed. “Missing?” She turned to the mirror. Marrin was still at the full height of her distress, and her eyes literally glittered with suppressed rage. Given that this was suppressed, Kaylin never wanted to see the foundling hall’s mother unleash.

  “Marrin, I need you to speak to me in Elantran. I need you to speak quickly. What happened?”

  And although Marrin looked no different, her vocal chords struggled with the unnatural sound of human vowels, human consonants. “Dock came, five minutes ago.”

  “He reported?”

  She nodded.

  “Catti didn’t run.” It wasn’t a question.

  “If she did, she blew out her window—on the second floor—and blasted half her room to cinders first.”

  “She’s not—”

  “She wasn’t in the room when it happened, no.”

  “Is there—”

  “There�
�s blood,” Marrin said, the growl overtaking the syllables. She had to struggle to hold it back. “Not a lot of it. It’s hers.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  She felt a hand on her shoulder, and she snarled. Marcus, however, flexed his claws. She spun to face him, and the claws pressed fabric into her skin.

  “Not alone,” he told her.

  “I have to go now.”

  “Take someone with you.”

  “No.”

  “Kaylin—”

  “No. This is mine, Marcus. It’s mine. I need to—” She said something in Leontine. “They trust me.” It was the phrase, slightly changed, that he had taught her in his attempt to impress upon her the importance of the Hawk’s Oath.

  And he accepted the whole of its meaning. “Go, then,” he said. “But Kaylin, if mages are involved, you call the Hawks. Understood?”

  She nodded.

  “Fail,” he said, as she bolted for the doors, “and you’ll be on report for so long, you’ll feel like you’re on the other side of the Law.”

  Amos was waiting for her. He didn’t bother to speak; he sent her running up the steps, and he followed her, leaving the gates untended. His hair, white to start with, looked like half of what age had left him had been torn out. His eyes were red; had he been a Leontine, he’d be out in the streets questioning people. Which would essentially be the same as killing them.

  “I kept her here,” he said, as Kaylin struggled with the front doors. She knew he meant Marrin.

  “Good job,” she managed to get out, as the doors gave. “I don’t envy it.” And then she was running.

  Marrin wasn’t waiting for her in the hall, which was the worst sign possible. Kaylin hesitated for a moment, and then she tore up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time. She was out of breath before she started, and her thighs felt the stretch, but she ignored them.

  She had to see the room for herself. Because she knew that’s where Marrin was, trying to pick up the scent.

  But when she hit the open doors to Catti’s room, they were circled by the foundling hall orphans, and she had to skid to a stop not to crash into them, or through them.

  Dock was wild-eyed. “Kaylin!” he cried, as if she were a minor deity.

  She caught him by the shoulders. “Tell me what happened,” she said. It took both time and effort, and she paid that price.

  “I was in my room.” She didn’t ask him why. He was at an age where he saw a whole lot of his room. “I heard a noise,” he told her. “It sounded like—like something breaking. And then I heard Catti scream.” He had a candle-stick in his hands, and Kaylin realized that it was meant to be a weapon, his only one. She would have given him a lecture, but there wasn’t any point. She couldn’t do anything to make him feel worse, and she hadn’t the heart to bawl him out for his attempt to go to Catti’s rescue.

  In the fiefs, they’d used small clubs, when they could find them—and a candlestick was as good a club as any, if markedly more expensive.

  “What happened?”

  “I ran to her room. The noise was coming from the room—and—and there was fire. Beneath the door. I couldn’t open the door—it was stuck.” There were no locks on the doors in the foundling hall rooms. Not that Kaylin was aware of.

  “I ran to get Marrin,” he said. “I ran—”

  “You did the right thing,” she told him.

  “Marrin broke the door.” He flinched. “But Catti—”

  “I’ll see the room now, if you’ll let me pass.”

  He looked up at her in surprise, and then he nodded. He shoved another boy to one side and they made room to let her pass. “Marrin’s mad,” he added softly.

  Kaylin could see that for herself, but it took a moment.

  She saw the room first. The windows had been shattered; the glass was across the floor. The room was indeed blackened, as if fire had been released in a sudden white-hot burst. The bedding was still smouldering. But it wasn’t any of these things that was significant.

  On the floor, in a circle that stretched from window to door—it was, after all, a foundling room, and not a large one—were symbols that she half-recognized. Swirling, circular symbols. She blanched.

  Marrin stood in the center of the circle.

  “Here,” she growled, as Kaylin entered the room. “The scent ends here.” She spoke in Leontine, and Kaylin didn’t ask for anything else.

  But she shook her head. If Marrin was raging, Kaylin was something else entirely. She wandered into the room, bending to examine the circle, as she’d been taught. She didn’t touch it. But she should have ordered Marrin out of the room; should have ordered her not to touch anything either. Should, in fact, have done as ordered and called the Hawks.

  She couldn’t. She could barely think. “Not here,” she whispered, over and over again. “Not here, too. Not here.”

  Marrin’s anger lost its edge as she approached Kaylin.

  “Where is Catti?” she said, no accusation in the words. “Kaylin?”

  Kaylin shook her head. No; she just shook. Her hands were opening and closing in bunched fists of their own accord; the bracer was warm and tight.

  “Not here, too.”

  The fiefs came back, in force. This small room? It could have been hers. But it wouldn’t have been only hers. It would have been a room she shared with Steffi and Jade and Severn.

  Oh, the names—she hadn’t thought them, couldn’t bear to think them—for years. She struggled through it, working as hard as she had ever worked. The Tha’alani might as well have been attached, like lamprey, to the thoughts, sucking them out while she struggled against the invasion. They wouldn’t leave her.

  Her dead.

  Her failure.

  “Kaylin—what—”

  And that voice. She spun, in a crouch, as Severn entered the doorway.

  Severn, here.

  Not here. Not here.

  He saw it coming a moment too late, and he went flying out of the door as she launched herself at him, daggers suddenly welded to her palms. She was screaming something, but the words were so raw they might not have existed had she not known what they were, what they had to be.

  She had never, ever faced him.

  She had never made him pay.

  And she would not let him touch these children, this retreat, this small protectorate that had given some meaning to her life.

  She roared, Leontine in her fury, and the children must have fled, because they were nowhere in sight. She didn’t want them to be; she didn’t want Severn to see them. To learn their names.

  She would kill him first. She had to kill him first.

  She knew what would follow if she failed.

  He was ready for her the second time, although she gave him no opportunity to draw his chain, to arm it; he had his club instead, and it was a poor weapon. She had seen him fight. She had watched him on purpose.

  And he had seen her fight, or so he thought. She was about to show him how wrong he was.

  She charged, daggers out, and shifted at the last moment, launching herself into the air, her feet coming down against his chest. Clint had taught her that; it was an Aerian maneuver. And if she lacked the plummet that gave it most of its strength, it had its effect; Severn staggered back, down the wide stairs, fighting for balance.

  He didn’t speak. He didn’t try to talk to her. He defended himself.

  “Fight!” She roared, years of anger in her voice.

  He backed away, and she followed.

  Drew blood when they closed.

  Drew blood again, as he stumbled back, out the doors.

  She saw Amos; she flew past him, as if she had wings. He was pale, his mouth open.

  She had to kill Severn. She had to. Because it would start again, here, and that would kill her. But it would kill more than her, and she had taken oaths, profound and private, that it would never happen again.

  The stairs to the foundling hall evaporated beneath her feet; the gate
s passed her by; she was in motion, and Severn was in motion as well. Wouldn’t be, had she had time to remove the bracer.

  He’d be dead.

  But she didn’t have time. She tried only once, and he almost broke her wrist with a quick snap-kick that numbed her hand, causing her to drop one of her two daggers.

  She didn’t even notice the pain; she spun on a foot, roundhouse feinting before she caught him full in the shoulder; the dagger left her hand as he jerked back.

  She had to stop him. She was screaming now, incoherent with the need. But he understood it, and he was the only one who had to.

  He had to go on the offensive now, and she felt a vicious satisfaction as he swung the club. He feinted low, and missed her jaw as she vaulted back. It was an acrobat’s jump. Teela had taught her that because Teela always thought it important to know how to get out of the way at the right time.

  She heard shouting, saw people fleeing as Severn tossed the club aside and pulled his sword. The dagger was still embedded in his shoulder, and blood was seeping from beneath its pommel. He was slower than he should have been, but it was a flesh wound, and he’d probably taken worse.

  She leaped up, then. The sword passed beneath her as she kicked. He fell to the ground, and she passed just above him, and outside of the awkward arc of his sword. He cut her tunic. She laughed.

  “You’re slow!” she shouted.

  “And you talk too much,” he said. He was beside her, bleeding, his sword swinging at the level of her shoulders. She bent back; it flew above her, inches from her bent torso. She could see it catch light and shadow, and she continued her backward bend, catching the cobbled stone in her hands and flipping away from him, end over end. She stopped at a safe distance, and then she reversed the motion; she’d left a dagger behind in the street, but she had others. She started to run, tensed and leaped up, twisting in the air, her feet already pointed and aimed.

  But the leap carried her high.

  High indeed, too high. She felt hands under her armpits, and heard a familiar voice in her ear. “Don’t try it,” Clint said, all affection and all amusement stripped from the depths of his voice. “Or I’ll be forced to drop you.”

  He carried her skyward, making more of the threat with each passing second.