Cast in Shadow

by Michelle Sagara

  “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.

  When he opened his eyes, he caught her staring, and he offered her something that felt like the memory of a smile, as it couldn’t be caught by simple gaze. “Kaylin Neya.” He spoke the name as if she was no part of it.

  But she nodded anyway.

  “I apologize to you, and to your charge, but before we return Catti to the foundling hall, we must repair to the Halls of Law.” She nodded again, started toward the broken wall, and realized that there was a reason he hadn’t moved.

  “By the power invested in me,” he told her, almost gently, “I must refuse you entrance.”

  “But the Hawks will need to see—”

  “No,” he said quietly. “They won’t.” He waited there until he was certain that she would obey his command. And because he was injured, because she knew he should be carted off to the medical division—any of the three—as quickly as he could be made to walk there, she acquiesced.

  Only when they were back on the fief’s roads—themselves something like the memory of a real road—did she realize that he hadn’t actually said whose authority was invested in him.

  Before they had managed to make their way to the bridge that signaled safety—if you called home something other than the fief of Nightshade—shadows cut the ground. Not building shadow; they had a habit of moving about as slowly as the sun did on her way up or down.

  But these shadows made Kaylin look up in wordless delight—because they were cast by Aerians, the closest embodiment to the name of the Lord of Law she served. She would have known them anywhere, because that dance of momentary darkness cast against the earth had always been a yearning and a delight.

  Here, in the fief of Nightshade, they meant that much more.

  Only one of the Aerians landed, and he was old by Hawk standards: one of the reserves.

  “Private Neya?” He said, sparing more than a glance to either of her injured compatriots.

  She saluted him briskly—because of the three, she was the one who could, without pain. And then, as she saw the wind-born creases around his eyes turn down in the wrong expression, she added, “I’m not on duty.”

  “You are on report,” was the reproachful reply. “But in this case, there is some small chance that Lord Grammayre will overlook your interference.” He turned to Severn, and his wings folded in a stiff arch above his head. They shook slightly; he’d been in the air longer than was wise.

  “That is the missing child?”

  “Yes. Catti of the foundling halls.”

  “The god of flight grant you warm winds,” the older Aerian replied softly. It was a stiff, conservative phrase, but it was said with so much meaning, Kaylin didn’t mind. “Corporal Handred?”

  Severn nodded.

  “Handred?” Kaylin said, brows rising.

  “It was my father’s name.”

  “But you told me you didn’t know who—” She stopped speaking as the other word caught up with her. “Corporal?”

  He shrugged.

  “You didn’t feel the need to mention it.”

  “The Hawks seem pretty informal.”

  “I want to talk to Marcus.”

  “Wait until you’re off report. I hear, with the Leontine, that there is actually a rank below private.”

  “Yeah. Corpse.”

  He laughed. The old Aerian rose to the sound of it, shaking his graying head. But his wings were white, and they were strong enough; stronger, perhaps, than they had been when all search had been in vain.

  Clint flew when he saw them coming. Straight up, Aerian style, the equivalent of a victory salute. It caught the eyes of half the city—full, polished armor in this kind of sun usually did—but as Aerians had more or less been small, fleet clouds for the past day and a half, it wasn’t as remarkable as it should have been.

  When she reached the stairs, Catti was cradled—and sleeping—in Severn’s arms. He, too, was bleeding, but he had insisted he was strong enough to bear her weight, and something about the bitter way he spoke those words made Kaylin let him, as if the burden was a gift.

  And it was.

  Clint was groundside, and he didn’t even bother with the formality of the pole-arm. “Severn,” he said, “you look like shit.”

  “You don’t,” Severn answered. His tone was all shrug, but he didn’t otherwise lift shoulder, because he didn’t want to disturb Catti.

  “Aristo brought word,” Tanner added. “Hawklord’s waiting, and Iron Jaw’s his new shadow.”

  “Is he happy?” Kaylin asked hopefully.

  “Is he ever?”

  “Um, I’m not wearing my crest. Both of you—you’ll remember that, right?”

  Tanner laughed.

  “Marcus might be all right,” Clint added. “I mean, at least you’re not late.” More in the words than humor; he reached out and gently touched the top of Catti’s head. Not enough to wake her, just enough to make her presence real. Clint had always been tactile. His smile was weary, genuine and gone in an instant. “I should tell you something else.”

  Because she wasn’t late, she waited.

  “The Arcanum has paid a visit.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Clint—”

  “And the representative hasn’t left. Yet.”

  There was more. But it wasn’t, apparently, for her. “Tiamaris.” If he was surprised at how Tiamaris was dressed—and the scales could pass muster as very antiquated armor if you hadn’t actually watched it grow—it didn’t show.

  The Dragon nodded briefly. “As expected,” he said.

  “What?”

  He lifted half a singed brow in Kaylin’s direction. “You really were a poor student, weren’t you?”

  “This is about magic?”

  He snorted. The smell of something she wanted to call brimstone—and couldn’t, because she had no idea what brimstone actually smelled like—tickled her nose hairs. “I read some of your transcripts,” he said. “But even I have my limits.”

  “Go on in,” Clint told them all. “But Kaylin?”

  She had already made her way close to his beloved flight feathers. “Yes?”

  “Mirror Marrin.”

  “She’ll be here before I’ve finished the first sentence, Clint.”

  “She should know.”

  “Before I’ve finished the first word. She wasn’t looking so…calm. And Tiamaris says that Catti needs to be examined before she can go home.”

  He cringed, the parent in him warring with the Hawk. The right one won; he said nothing else.

  CHAPTER 16

  The vaulted ceilings that were the commons for the Aerie were empty. If the Aerian reserves had been recalled, they had chosen other heights to grace with their weary presence. It was the first time that the central hall had seemed so empty.

  “Kaylin,” Severn said quietly. It was a question, and she shook herself, looking away from the empty heights. Catti was heavy, and blessed burden or no, she was still a burden.

  Kaylin led the way to the doors that bordered the Hall of the Hawks. They were guarded, but not by Teela or Tain; not in fact by Hawks she recognized. These must also be reserves, although they weren’t Aerian. They were, by the look of it, underslept humans—something she identified with heartily.

  She answered their tired questions, assured them that the crisis
—most of it—was over, and waited while they stepped aside to let them all pass. It seemed to take forever, but now that Catti was safe, she wasn’t in a great hurry to actually face the Hawklord.

  “Tiamaris?”

  The Dragon looked down at her. He walked stiffly, and his stride was shorter than usual; she half expected to see a trail of blood in his wake. But she didn’t touch him; didn’t try. Her arms were too shaky, and besides, he’d made pretty clear that it was a strict no-go.

  “Kaylin?”

  “Why are you even here?”

  He grimaced. “I cannot understand,” he replied, “why you made such a poor student. You have an inexhaustible ability to ask questions.”

  She thought this was going to be the whole of his answer, but after a pause, in which three closed doors went slowly by, he said, “I was the only suitable candidate. I deal well with the mortal races.”

  At any other time she would have snickered. “The—your—”

  “Transformation?”

  “That.”

  “Yes?”

  She hesitated. She understood what the word outcaste meant as it applied to her own race: it meant you were either in jail, were about to be or were incredibly unlucky with lawyers. It meant pretty much the same—as far as she could tell, social niceties aside—for the Leontines and the Aerians as well. If you managed to somehow pay whatever you owed the courts, you weren’t really considered outcaste anymore.

  But for the Barrani, it obviously meant something different. Kaylin had always had a sneaking suspicion that this was because Barrani, at heart, were all sons of bitches, and those who were officially outcaste were outcaste merely because they had enough personal power to actually survive being openly rebellious. Nothing she had experienced in Nightshade had done much to change that opinion, although for obvious reasons, she’d never voiced it.

  But Dragons? Her mouth, as it so often did, ran ahead of her brain. “Are you outcaste?”

  He actually stopped dead, and swivelled his neck to look—to really look—down on her.

  “Kaylin,” Severn said quietly, when Tiamaris failed to answer, “you really need to learn how to pay attention to things that don’t have wings.”

  “Dragons have wings,” she said, half-defensive.

  “Not in company that’s supposed to survive them, they don’t. Look, Kaylin, even a Wolf cub knows that there are no outcaste Dragons.”

  “And I was taught this when?”

  “Obviously,” he replied, with just a little heat, “you weren’t. I’m not sure whether this is a failing of the Hawks or your own particular ability to not pay attention, but if I was betting my own money on it, I know which way I’d go.”

  “Straight to some particularly hot corner of—”

  “Children.” Tiamaris raised a hand, his voice dry and inflected with something that might have been humor. “You did well today. Better, I think, than any of us would have guessed. Severn, however, is correct. There are no outcaste Dragons.”

  “But the Dragons have a castelord…they obviously have a caste system—”

  “And the laws for dealing with the outcaste are determined in part by the ruling castelord of each race. Very good, Kaylin…you did manage to absorb that much in class. In the case of Dragons, that is the Emperor himself, and his decision has always been quite clear—there are no outcaste Dragons. I trust that my meaning is clear?”

  She nodded.

  “You’ve seen a Dragon, unleashed. Would you gainsay him?”

  “No. And I wouldn’t disagree with him, either.”

  Gold eyes rolled in mock disdain.

  She winced. “I have to get it out of my system now. Because Arcanists? From anything I’ve heard—or seen, and I admit that’s maybe two—they don’t know what humor is. And if they’ve been around the Hawklord and Marcus for a while, neither will they.”

  “It isn’t the Arcanum you have to be cautious around,” he told her softly, as they approached the final doors. “Do not speak unless you are spoken to.”

  From the tone of Clint’s voice, Kaylin had expected the office to be empty in the particular way it was when Marcus was in a mood. She almost tripped over her feet when she saw the exact opposite, and Severn almost tripped over her when she came up unexpectedly short. He offered her a friendly curse, and she actually apologized; she’d carried children before, and she privately thought of them as great, big blinders. He still held Catti, and his arms were probably locked and numb.

  She looked up at him, and down at Catti, and seeing the two of them together, she couldn’t think of a single thing to say that wouldn’t break something. But she wanted to go on looking, and he knew it; he nudged her with his knee, word-lessly telling her to pay attention to what was in front of them.

  What at first had seemed like a party—replete with foreign dignitaries in fine clothing, and a multitude of the races that made life in Elantra so exciting for an officer of the Lord of Laws—resolved itself into something a little more funereal. There was a whole lot of silence going around, like a quickly transmitted disease.

  It wasn’t made any better when Caitlin, looking harried but otherwise prim and proper at her desk, met Kaylin’s eyes and winced. The wince disappeared as she saw who Severn carried, but the stiffness didn’t. She got up, pushed her chair in, and made her way through the Hawks and the outsiders that had taken over the floor.

  She didn’t hug Kaylin, which was a distinct signal: things were formal. And Kaylin was so underdressed for formal she wished she had been late. It didn’t help that there was actually someone in the room who looked worse for a change, because they were clearly with her.

  “Kaylin,” Caitlin said brightly. “Severn. Please come in. Lord Evarrim from the Arcanum chose to pay a visit in your absence, and as you were absent, he decided to…wait.”

  “I’m on report,” Kaylin said, automatically. “He could have been waiting a long damn time.”

  “I believe Sargent Kassan made that quite clear. And in words that were vaguely less civil the tenth time. But as the Arcanum received a personal request to cooperate with the Lords of Law, from the Emperor Himself, Lord Evarrim resisted all attempts to be dislodged. He is not unattended,” she added, lowering her voice.

  No, Kaylin could see that. Teela and Tain, in spotless Hawk uniform, were almost under his armpits. They didn’t exactly brandish their staves, but they didn’t have to. She hadn’t seen them look this Barrani-like in years. Three years. Well, if you didn’t count the aborted attempt to visit the merchant.

  “She wasn’t talking about the Hawks,” Severn whispered, as if he could read her mind.

  No. She was talking about his four guards. “Maybe we could do this later?”

  But Marcus had already seen them, and if Marcus had, every other person in the room, all quietly minding their own business, had as well. Kaylin squared her shoulders. “Don’t let the Barrani touch Catti,” she told Severn, out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Way ahead of you.”

  She did turn to look at him then. As if seven years had never happened. It was almost too much. He met her gaze, and held it, and after a moment, he offered her a lopsided grin, something that never touched his eyes. It wasn’t an apology; they both knew it. There wasn’t one he could offer.

  But he hadn’t killed Catti.

  And he could have.

  All the whys she had refused to ask him, had refused to let him answer, gathered behind her lips; she closed her teeth on them, tried to swallow and blinked a few times.

  “Later,” he said. Not softly. But quietly.

  For the first time since she had set eyes on him in the Hawklord’s tower, she almost wanted that later. She touched Catti’s face, in much the same way Clint had touched her hair, but for different reasons. And then she turned to face Marcus Kassan.

  “Not in uniform, I see,” he said curtly.

  “No, sir.”

  “Don’t ‘sir’ me,” he snapped. He was in a mood. />
  “Yes—uh. Yes.”

  “Corporal.”

  Severn couldn’t snap a salute without dropping Catti. But he did straighten out. “Yes, sir.”

  “You were given strict orders with regards to the off-duty Hawk in your company.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did any of them include her presence?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Against my advice, you were taken off report.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Marcus snarled. Severn, new to the Hawks, didn’t perform the requisite obeisance of exposing his throat. But Kaylin knew him well enough; even if he’d been a Hawk for years, he probably wouldn’t. The fiefs were in him, and he’d lived them in a way that she could now admit she hadn’t.

  Because of him. He had been a lot weaker when he’d last carried her the way he was now holding Catti.

  “Sergeant,” Tiamaris said, in almost exactly the same tone he reserved for the word “children.” “I required the Corporal’s cooperation for work in the fief of Nightshade on behalf of the Lord Grammayre. Severn is subordinate to me, and I accept full responsibility for his presence here.”

  “And hers?”

  “She was a civilian in need of protection,” he replied, with such a perfect, deadpan expression Kaylin herself wasn’t certain that she didn’t believe it. And she knew better.

  “The child, then, is Catti of the foundling halls?”

  “Kaylin Neya identified her,” Tiamaris replied. “I had no reason to doubt her word.”

  “And she was found?”

  “In the fief of Nightshade.”

  “The fieflord—”

  “Was not present. He had nothing to do with her disappearance,” Tiamaris added.

  Kaylin hated these conversations. She didn’t see the point of people talking when everything they said was already obvious to everyone involved. At least paperwork had some vague point. Either that, or it was full of phrases and words that she hadn’t bothered to master, so it seemed to be more important.

  “Corporal,” Marcus growled. “Report.”

  Tiamaris lifted a hand. “I think that…unwise, Sergeant Kassan. It is, of course, your call.”