Harvest Moon

by Mercedes Lackey, Michelle Sagara

  Kaylin didn’t want to look; she couldn’t look away. Mute, silent, she watched as the mage began to gesture. The gestures were open-palmed and slow.

  Teela sidled over to where she stood. Bending close enough that her hair brushed the side of Kaylin’s face, she said, “Have you seen much magic before?”

  Swallowing, Kaylin shook her head.

  “Do you know what he’s doing?”

  She shook her head again. No. But even as she did, she felt her arms and her legs begin to tingle, and her eyes widened as she stared at the mage’s back. She wore—she always wore—long sleeves. If she’d been alone, she would have opened the wrist-cuffs and peeled the sleeves back to her elbows so she could look at the marks that adorned all of the skin on her inner arms. She wasn’t.

  But the tingling grew worse as the mage continued to move; it passed from something on the edge of pleasant to something on the edge of painful when he began to speak. She drew breath because she had to breathe, and the pain got worse, as if breathing at all had reminded it she was here.

  And then, as her hair began to stand on end—she would have sworn it was standing on end—she saw the girl’s corpse begin to glow. She cursed under her breath.

  “Kaylin?” Teela whispered, voice tickling her ear. She was way too damn close, and Kaylin wanted to elbow her—sharply—out of the way. But the magic was worse than the fact that a Barrani was standing over her shoulder.

  “What—what is he doing to her?” She managed to force the words between her teeth.

  “He’s a mage. An Imperial mage, meaning he works for the Eternal Emperor, however indirectly.” She paused, and then added, “Magic can’t bring the dead back to life, if that’s what’s bothering you. It can’t cause them more pain, they’re already dead. Nothing will ever hurt them again.”

  She heard the words as if at a great distance—and as if they came from someone else’s mouth, because she could never have imagined they could have come from a Barrani. Her arms and legs ached, and her borrowed shirt felt as if it were rubbing the skin off the back of her neck. She couldn’t tell them that, of course. She never talked about the marks.

  So she concentrated, instead, on the mage, and the ravaged, small body beneath his hands. For a long moment, nothing changed. The girl was still dead, the gaping wounds no longer bleeding. Her eyes had been closed by whoever had brought her here, or maybe Red himself, because he seemed kind enough to actually care about the dead.

  The mage turned to Red, sweat beading his forehead. “Records—there is no evidence of any trace of magic within or upon the corpse. In the considered opinion of Ceridath Morlanne, the cause of death was not magical in nature, although it is possible that the physical injuries were caused indirectly by magical devices.”

  Kaylin sucked in air so sharply it should have cut her mouth.

  “Hold a moment.” Teela spoke in a crisp, clear voice that was aimed over Kaylin’s head at the mage. “Do not drop the scan.” She’d never looked friendly, but at this moment, she sounded much more like the Barrani that Kaylin expected: the implied or I will kill you hung, unsaid, in the air.

  Turning to Kaylin, she said, “Tell me what you see.” The tone of voice had softened, but not by much. It didn’t matter. From out of the closed eyelids of the dead girl, rising as if they were made of golden smoke, were the shapes and forms of something that reminded Kaylin very much of the hidden marks that adorned her skin.

  “Kaylin,” Teela said again, her voice sharper and harder.

  Kaylin shook herself and pointed. “No, describe it.”

  “I must object,” the mage said coldly. “Is the Corporal accusing me of lying?”

  Red was staring at Teela. It was, however, Tain who answered. “Not yet,” he said in a voice as cold as the mage’s. “Although, if there’s anything you’d like to say in your own defense, now would perhaps be advisable.” As the mage lifted his chin, Tain reached out and touched the surface of the mirror. “Lord Grammayre, code three. Red?”

  The coroner nodded slowly, and there was a sharp snap of sound that came from the doors. “Ceridath?”

  The mage was furious, and the fury began to unfold in a series of very polite, very layered threats. Kaylin listened with half an ear, but there weren’t any interesting or useful words there, and she still had Teela standing over her shoulder like a very bad nightmare.

  “There are…runes…” Kaylin finally said. “They’re gold, and sort of smoky, not solid. They’re floating right above her eyes, Teela.”

  “Not for me, they’re not. Red, Tain?”

  Tain shook his head. Red, however, said, “I can’t see anything out of the ordinary for a morgue.”

  Ceridath now turned to Kaylin. “Are you claiming,” he said with obvious disbelief, “to be a mage?”

  She shook her head.

  “Have you had any experience in the Imperial Halls, any tutoring whatsoever?”

  “No.”

  “Red,” the mage said, “I have no idea when the Hawks began to employ children, but this one is clearly lying.”

  The coroner looked exceptionally uncomfortable. “Kaylin, if this is a game of some sort, stop playing it now. It’s already going to cause more trouble than you can imagine with the Imperial Order, and we rely on the Imperial Order for most of the magical work the Halls require.”

  “I don’t think she’s playing a game,” Teela said. “But if she is, she’ll have the Hawklord to deal with. Or the Sergeant. I wouldn’t personally have called it a code three, Tain.”

  He shrugged and then grinned. “I was bored.”

  “Let this be a lesson to you,” Teela told Kaylin under her breath. “There’s nothing more dangerous and unpredictable than a bored immortal—we’ve had several centuries to perfect the art.”

  “What’s a code three?”

  “No one can enter or leave this room except the Hawklord and anyone he chooses to bring with him.”

  “That’s bad?”

  “You try keeping an angry mage contained in a room he doesn’t want to stay in. It gets ugly real fast.”

  “You’ve tried?”

  “I’ve got several centuries on you. Yeah, I’ve tried.”

  “Did it work?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “What do you think he’s going to do?”

  “Him? Probably nothing.” She glanced at Kaylin’s empty hands. “We’re going to need to get you some kind of dagger. That grasping at empty air is going to get old really fast. If things start to look tricky, stand behind me. Directly behind me,” she added. “Not somewhere near the wall.”

  The mage now drew himself up to his full height; his cheeks were red. “Reginald,” he said in a cold, clear voice. “The Imperial Order will hear about this blatant lack of respect for one of its senior members.”

  Teela whistled under her breath. “Pretend you didn’t hear that name.”

  “It’s not up to me,” was the cold reply. “It’s up to Lord Grammayre.”

  “Very well. I will play out this charade with as much patience as a busy mage can muster. But I think the scans of the other two corpses are now on permanent hold.”

  Kaylin wasn’t sure what to expect. To her eyes, both Tain and Teela looked…bored. They certainly didn’t seem to consider the robed man a threat. She knew better than to trust them, but…Red and Caitlin weren’t afraid of them. It would take a much greater depth of suspicion than Kaylin had ever possessed to be suspicious of Caitlin, because even in the fiefs, people like Caitlin existed.

  The door opened. In its frame stood the man who ruled the Hawks. His gaze narrowed the minute it touched Kaylin, who resisted the urge to hide behind Teela.

  “Lord Grammayre,” Ceridath began.

  The Hawklord lifted one hand. “Ceridath,” he said. His voice was as smooth as the surface of the mirror, and he offered the mage a very unusual bow. This seemed to mollify the mage somewhat.

  “Red, you summoned me?”

  �
��I did,” Tain said before Red could speak.

  “I…see. There was of a course a very good reason for the summons.”

  Tain nodded, unfazed by the sudden ice in the Hawklord’s voice. “The Imperial mage—on record—stated uncategorically that there was no magic to be found on the first of the corpses he examined.”

  “That was not the unexpected result,” the Hawklord replied. “Since none of the other victims have shown any signs of magical abuse.”

  Tain nodded. “We have, however, done the scans under the auspices of a single mage.”

  “Corporal, Ceridath is not the only mage who has been part of the investigation of this particular ring.”

  “No, indeed. He is one of three.”

  “Corporal—”

  “Your Corporal is accusing me of falsifying my reports. Of, essentially, lying,” Ceridath said.

  Lord Grammayre raised one hand to his forehead, where he pinched the bridge of his nose. “On what grounds, Corporal?” he demanded in a tone that made clear the answer had better be bloody good.

  The answer, sadly, was now shuffling slightly behind Teela in spite of her earlier intentions. She did not consider herself bloody good evidence of anything.

  “The latest addition to the Hawks,” Tain replied.

  Lord Grammayre turned to Kaylin and she froze on the spot. “Kaylin,” he said quietly, “come here immediately.” He glanced at the open door and it closed. He hadn’t spoken a word.

  “Grammayre, I warn you—” Ceridath began.

  The Hawklord ignored him. He waited for Kaylin, and Kaylin—with an unexpected shove between the shoulder blades, stumbled more or less in the right direction. When she reached him, he lifted his wings, stretching them, for a moment, to their full span. Flight feathers longer than her arm cut light and cast shadow as they began to fold—slowly—over her upturned face.

  She startled, and he reached out and caught her shoulders, but his grip was gentle and steadying as his wings came down around them both.

  “What,” he said quietly, in this privacy of wings and his voice, “did you see?”

  She told him.

  “You are certain?”

  “I don’t know—I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I don’t understand what it means—”

  “Nor is your understanding required. But this is very, very unfortunate news. Go to Teela when I release you. Stay behind her, should things become difficult.”

  It was almost exactly what Teela had said. “Wait.”

  His wings stopped moving. “Yes?”

  “The Barrani—do you trust them?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re certain they didn’t kill these children?”

  His eyes widened in surprise, and then they narrowed in something that looked unpleasantly like pity. “Yes, Kaylin. If I can be certain of nothing else about them, I’m certain of that.” He lifted his wings and folded them once again behind his back. “Ceridath,” he said. “If you have anything of import that you wish to tell us, now is the time.”

  Ceridath’s eyes widened enough they were almost entirely round. “You cannot be serious.”

  “I can. Mirror,” he added, “Magister Dreury of the Imperial Order of Mages.”

  The mirror went gray. It stayed gray for at least five minutes, and judging from the expression on Red’s face, the delay was unusual. But the Hawklord stood as if he could wait all day—or year. When the mirror at last lost the flat, impenetrable gray, it opened into what looked like a very, very rich man’s office. There were shelves in the background, and books lined every single one of them; there were glass cabinets that reflected a light whose source she couldn’t see.

  But in the centre of the mirror was a man who sat behind a large, almost shiny, desk. Unlike the desk of the Hawks’s Sergeant, this one had a visible surface; it was, in fact, all surface.

  “Lord Grammayre,” the man said, frowning. “My apologies for the delay.”

  The Hawklord inclined his head and waited while the man behind the desk surveyed the room. At least that’s what Kaylin assumed he was doing. “Ceridath,” he said, as if to confirm her suspicion.

  “Lord Dreury,” Ceridath replied, executing a much more human bow.

  “Is there some difficulty, Lord Grammayre?”

  “There is a possible misunderstanding,” the Hawklord replied. “And I require a member of the Imperial Order to attend us.”

  “You have one.”

  “Indeed. I would like a second opinion. I would further request that that second opinion come from a mage who does not normally work within the Halls of Law, and who is senior enough to make no mistakes—at all.”

  Lord Dreury’s frown deepened. He wasn’t a young man, so the frown only shifted the lines of his face, rather than adding any. He began to speak, but this time, Kaylin didn’t understand a word he was saying.

  Nor did she understand a single word of the Hawklord’s reply, but clearly the shift in language wasn’t a sign that either man was happy. She glanced at Teela, Tain, and Red—who all appeared to be able to follow what was actually being said. As did Lord Dreury.

  It wasn’t short. The syllables sounded soft and extended, but the tones in which they were spoken implied the exact opposite. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Teela’s back looked a lot less impressive than it had when anyone had been paying attention to her.

  She glanced at the exposed body that lay on the table, and the conversation—or argument—faded into the background. Without thinking, she walked to the corpse of the young girl whose closed eyes had revealed golden words—words that Kaylin couldn’t read. Red noticed when she reached the body and moved toward her, although his gaze was still riveted on the mirror and the increasingly chilly voice of the man it contained.

  Kaylin reached for the sheet that had covered the girl’s body and face. She took care not to touch anything besides the blanket. Starting at the girl’s feet—at her shoeless feet, at the bruised ring around her right ankle—she set one edge of the blanket down, taking care to cover everything. The blanket was heavier than the ones Kaylin was used to, but she’d often had to do without.

  She knew what she was doing was stupid and pointless. Teela was right: the girl was dead. Nothing could be done to change that, and nothing worse could happen to her: she was beyond pain or fear.

  But pointless or no, she did it anyway: she pulled the blanket up the dead girl’s body, covering her torn and bloody clothing. Only when it reached her chin did she stop. She hesitated for a moment, and then tucked the edge of the blanket under the girl’s chin, as if she were sleeping, or ever would again.

  Red placed a hand on her shoulder, and she startled and turned, pulling away, her hands reaching for air again. He lifted his hand—both hands—in the air, palms toward her in an exaggerated gesture of surrender, before he drew away from Lord Grammayre and the mage.

  “You can’t leave yet,” he told her quietly. “But when you can—”

  “When’ll that be?”

  “Probably not more than a couple of hours.” He grimaced. “I don’t know what you did, but it’s going to be costly if you’re wrong.” Shaking his head, he added, “This isn’t the place for you. The morgue, I mean. In a couple of weeks, come back, I’ll show you what I do. But this’ll be hard, even for me. It’s not something you should have to see.”

  “Why?”

  He frowned. Reaching past her, he unfolded the blanket’s upper edge and pulled it over the girl’s face. “This doesn’t bother you?”

  “I’ve seen worse,” she replied, meaning it. She bit her lip and turned away, not from the corpse, but from his gaze. “Who killed them?”

  “We don’t know. But if what you said was true, we’ll be a lot closer to getting an answer.” He hesitated, and then said, “These aren’t the first victims.”

  “There are more?” It wasn’t the stupidest question she’d asked in her life, but it was close. She turned away. Turned back. “Are they all th
is young?”

  “Or younger, yes.”

  “But—but why? Why are they doing this?”

  “Because they want to and they can, for now.”

  “Why here?”

  He frowned. “Pardon?”

  “Why here, on this side of the river? I thought everything like this happened across the bridge. In the fiefs,” she added with bewildered bitterness.

  “Kaylin, people live on either side of the bridge. And people are people, no matter where they live, and no matter how much they have. Some are Caitlin—they give what they can, and they keep the rest of us in line. Some are…not.”

  “But—but on the other side of the river, no one cares.”

  “Really?”

  She stared at him.

  “No one cares? No one’s bothered? No one’s afraid?”

  “Of course people are afraid! We have no one there but the fieflord—and if the fieflord takes you or sells you, that’s it, that’s the only law! There are—there are supposed to be—laws here. There are supposed to be Hawks and Swords, and they’re supposed to keep people safe. People like her,” she added.

  He stared at her for a minute, and she thought if he could have opened the doors, he would have thrown her out. But when he spoke, his voice was calm and quiet. “Who do you think those Hawks and Swords are?” he asked softly. “Do you think they’re perfect, Kaylin? Do you think they have flawless days without a single error, ever? Do you think they have eyes in the back and the sides of their heads?

  “Do you think they’re not afraid?” He turned to the corpse. “This is the price of failure, yes. We don’t pay it. The most we can do—and what we always try to do—is to make sure it doesn’t happen again the same way. But we’re human—”

  Teela cleared her throat loudly.

  Red frowned. “We’re human,” he repeated. “We’re never going to be perfect. Best we can do is learn from our mistakes, and keep trying.”

  She stared at him.

  “Perhaps,” Lord Grammayre said in distinctly chilly and entirely comprehensible words, “this philosophical discussion about the nature of humanity and the purpose of the Hawks could wait for a more suitable time?”