Cast in Honor

by Michelle Sagara

  “I didn’t understand,” she continued, refusing to meet Gilbert’s eyes. “When we came here, I didn’t understand what it meant. But I understand it now. I want to see them. I want to see my parents.”

  * * *

  Those ugly tears? They threatened to fall right now. In their wake, anger followed. Kaylin wasn’t remotely certain who she was angry at, either. She was angry at Kattea, yes. Kattea might—just might—have information that could save Elantra. If the Emperor knew of it, he’d order the Tha’alani to do what they were not willing to do otherwise: read her mind. Sift through her life. Pick out the useful bits.

  Kaylin wasn’t even certain she’d want to stop him.

  “If you let me see my parents, I’ll let you—I’ll let you read my mind.” She folded her arms, crossing them a little too tightly around her upper body, as if by doing so she could hold herself up.

  “Kattea,” Gilbert said again. “I told you—”

  “I don’t care, Gilbert.”

  “They won’t know you. You are not their child. The parents who raised you are dead, and you cannot go back to them. Nor can you bring them back. If you save these people, they will not be your parents in future. It is not the way time works. It will only cause pain. To you.”

  And it was pain that they didn’t have time for. Kaylin opened her mouth, and Ybelline’s palms cupped her cheek. Both of her cheeks.

  Do not resent her.

  How can you not? If I were her—

  Would you not wish to see your mother, even now?

  I don’t remember my mother.

  That is not an answer, Kaylin.

  It wasn’t.

  Do not judge her. Not one of us do, or will. She is frightened.

  And when had that mattered in Kaylin’s life? Oh, it was an ugly, ugly thought. In answer, the Tha’alaan joined her. They did not deny the ugliness; they embraced it as if—as if it were natural, normal. As if it were something they were certain would pass, because ugly thoughts, just like graceful ones, were part of life.

  If you think it will break her, deny her; if you think it will help us, accede. Do not judge the desire. If I were her, I would have it. Even if the world were ending around me. If the last thing I could see were the parents who loved me—I would find them.

  Kaylin realized that this was why Ybelline had come to stand beside her. Severn had, as he so often did, fallen silent, moving away from the conversation and the personal elements it contained until he was almost invisible.

  Would she want to see her mother?

  Yes. But not if it threatened the entire city.

  And Kaylin was an adult. The loss of her mother wasn’t new; it was a fact of her life. Kattea’s loss was fresh, and the consequences of that loss, fresh, as well.

  “...Here’s what we’ll do,” she heard herself say.

  Kattea turned instantly.

  “We don’t have the time to see your mother. I’m sorry—but we don’t. I can’t explain, to your mother and father, that you are their child from the future.”

  Kattea nodded. Kaylin realized the younger girl would agree to anything that would give her a glimpse of her parents, and she despised her own resentment. “So I can’t guarantee that we can see your mother.

  “But I can guarantee that we can see your father. I work at the Halls of Law. If he’s a Sword, so does he. It’s going to look odd—me bringing a lost child to the office—but I can do that. That’s the best I can do,” she added. “On very short notice.”

  Kattea appeared to be holding her breath, but her eyes still worked; they flicked to—and away—from Gilbert. “Yes.”

  “Yes, that’ll do?”

  “Yes. I won’t—I won’t tell him who I am. I won’t talk at all. I just—”

  She needs to see him, Ybelline repeated. If she does, she will have an incentive that her own life cannot, at the moment, provide. You, of all people, should understand this.

  Of course she did.

  Chapter 22

  Ybelline Rabon’Alani accompanied them to the Halls of Law. Scoros offered; Kaylin, attached to Ybelline, and therefore aware of the Tha’alaan, heard him. Draalzyn also offered, and his offer made more sense: he was accustomed to the Halls of Law, and he had an actual desk within the missing-persons division of the Imperial Hawks.

  But Draalzyn looked like a grizzled veteran of innumerable battles. Of all of the people in this room, he was the one who most terrified Kattea.

  They didn’t make Kattea choose. They chose. Ybelline smiled at Kattea.

  Kattea managed to smile back. It was very, very hard to be terrified of Ybelline. The small dragon remained on Kattea’s shoulder for the time being, and they left the long house in single file. Walking out of the Tha’alani quarter was never fast, but the children were held back by their minders, and only the very young let their resentment of this be known. Loudly.

  Gilbert trailed behind Kattea, looking confused. Confusion appeared to be most of his natural state, but there was something in it that worried Kaylin; she couldn’t say why. Since “why” was effectively her job—as well as “how”—she mulled it over as she walked. Sadly, thoughts of this kind led to walking the way patrolling Hawks did. Ybelline was fine; Kattea was straining. Gilbert was falling behind.

  “What was your father’s name?”

  “Corporal Krevel.”

  Kaylin glanced at her partner. “I’ll talk to Jared,” Severn said. Jared was the equivalent of Caitlin; he served the Swords, not the Hawks, but he was nothing like Caitlin in personality—then again, almost no one was. He kept the Swords running, and he kept the Sergeant of his particular office more or less calm. The important fact, however, was that it was in his office that the duty rosters were posted.

  * * *

  When Clint caught sight of Kaylin, she almost lost her nerve, his expression shifted so suddenly. Tanner, by his side, mirrored his expression.

  “Where have you been?” Clint demanded.

  Kattea slid behind Severn and peered out from behind his back. Severn, Kaylin noted, was not on the receiving end of what looked like outrage.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Ironjaw’s been trying to get hold of you, is what,” Tanner replied.

  “I can’t—”

  “There’s been a problem on the Winding Path.”

  “I wasn’t there. I was in the Tha’alani district.”

  They both stopped, as if only now recognizing the Tha’alani castelord. They shared a glance. “This is not going to be the day for polite, diplomatic visits,” Clint told her. His tone did not match his words; it was a touch too warm. “If you need a favor from anyone in command in the Halls of Law, now is the wrong time to ask for it.”

  Ybelline nodded, her expression grave.

  Kaylin forgot about Kattea’s father and Jared and pretty much anything that wasn’t Angry Marcus and Emergency. If Kattea had not caught her elbow, she would have sprinted up the stairs and down the halls that led to red-eyed Leontine. But Kattea did grab her arm.

  “They’re with me,” Kaylin said, nodding in the direction of Ybelline, Gilbert and Kattea.

  “They don’t want to be, today.”

  “Teela said she’d informed the office about the reasons for my absence.”

  The two duty Hawks exchanged another glance.

  “Teela’s part of the problem.” Clint was grim. “Teela, Tain, Lord Sanabalis and—”

  “Bellusdeo.”

  “Lord Bellusdeo, yes.”

  * * *

  Against their better judgment, Clint and Tanner let the entire party pass into the Halls. Kaylin sprinted into the office, stopped at Caitlin’s desk, introduced Kattea and Gilbert in a breathless rush and then abandoned them both; it took less than two mi
nutes. Two long, endless minutes, while fear sank roots in every thought she was capable of having.

  Teela, Tain and Bellusdeo.

  She wasn’t even concerned that the Emperor would reduce a useless private in the Imperial Hawks to ash—a very real possibility. Teela and Tain had gone to the Arcanum. Sanabalis and Bellusdeo had gone to the Winding Path. They weren’t in the same place.

  Something in the future would destroy the Tha’alani quarter. What if it had already started?

  * * *

  She came to a skidding halt in front of what remained of Marcus’s desk. It looked as if someone had taken a very large ax to the desktop. The papers that generally littered the desk in various piles had been removed. Or rather, they’d been cleaned up; one or two had clearly fallen beneath desks and hadn’t yet been retrieved.

  Marcus had grown about three inches in every dimension, he was bristling so badly. Kaylin didn’t need to meet his eyes to know that they were red. She did need to be able to understand Leontine to catch his first words—which she would have heard even if she’d taken the time to plug both ears.

  She exposed her throat instantly.

  The office was almost silent, which was what generally happened in the presence of an enraged Leontine. Kaylin’s fists clenched; she managed not to close her eyes. Or move anything but her chin.

  Marcus’s claws were fully extended when he reached for her throat.

  Kattea screamed.

  Marcus hunched and wheeled in the direction of that scream, snarling. Kaylin knew better than to grab Marcus when he was in this state, but she shouted—in Leontine—to get his attention.

  He spun again, inhaled, exhaled and forced himself to speak Elantran. “Where...have...you...been?”

  “Teela told you—”

  “Teela told us that you were convalescing in a house on the Winding Path.”

  Kaylin nodded. “I was.”

  He growled. He turned and barked the word Records in the direction of his desk. Which no longer had a mirror on it. Caitlin’s quiet voice repeated his command, and as she hadn’t trashed her desk in worried fury, her mirror shivered to life.

  Gilbert, however, shouted “No!”

  Under other circumstances, a man with three eyes shouting in the office might have gone south, but Ybelline took the opportunity to intervene. She stepped in front of Gilbert before Marcus reached him, raising a hand in front of the Sergeant’s face.

  Marcus came to a full stop before any part of his body connected with that hand. His breath was a growl—but he couldn’t, at the moment, help that. “Private. Explain yourself. Now.” He turned to face her.

  Kaylin risked her life. She answered with a question. “What happened on the Winding Path?”

  “I was about to make that clear. Who is this man—and what is he?”

  “His name is Gilbert. It was his home I was convalescing in. If something’s happened to it, he wasn’t there—he’s been with me the entire morning. Marcus—what happened?”

  Ybelline said, to Caitlin, “It is best that the mirror network not be utilized at the moment.”

  Caitlin, noting Kattea, nodded; she did not look well pleased, which surprised Kaylin.

  “Tell us why, Castelord,” Marcus said. His voice was much quieter, which was actually a bad sign in Leontines.

  “There is some sort of magical difficulty in the city, and it is being in part driven by—and expressed through—the mirror network. I believe—Gilbert would be the expert, not I—that use of the mirrors increases the danger.”

  Caitlin blanched.

  So did Kaylin. “There’s no way to shut down the mirrors—not instantly, and not without at least using them once. Mirrors get used by almost everyone. Even people who can’t afford a private mirror use the public ones in the markets.”

  “Private.”

  “I don’t know, Marcus. Ybelline does. We’ve had mirrors malfunction before—you remember, the mirror greeted everyone by name in that cheery, cheery—”

  He growled. “You’re certain?” It was Kaylin he asked.

  She swallowed. Remembered how Ybelline had said they died. Nodded.

  “Fine. Perenne!”

  “Sir!” Perenne appeared from around a pillar—the one advantage to a junior desk was its distance from Marcus.

  “Run upstairs to the Hawklord. Tell him what Private Neya just said.” He turned to her. Of course. “You had better be right.”

  * * *

  Marcus’s eyes dimmed to a reddish-orange; his fur settled into more or less normal height, except around the ears and possibly the back of his neck. Kaylin couldn’t see that, and didn’t try. He barked commands, and the office once again returned to a semblance of normal—but it was a shadowed normal; anxiety fluttered beneath the surface of every spoken word.

  “Castelord,” Marcus said, bowing.

  She smiled and inclined her chin, as if she hadn’t, minutes before, been confronted with raging, animalistic Leontine. She did not step entirely out of his way. Kattea came out from behind her. She was shaking, but she wasn’t cowering. Which was good, given Marcus’s state of mind.

  “I’m Kattea Krevel,” she told him.

  “Marcus Hassan,” Marcus replied. “Sergeant Marcus Hassan. We need to inform the Emperor—” He stopped. Growled. “Shojii!”

  “Sir!”

  “Tell the Swordlord and Wolflord what’s happened.”

  “The Hawklord—”

  “Now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Marcus turned back to Kattea. “Krevel. Krevel. Corporal Krevel? Are you related?”

  Kaylin froze. Kattea didn’t. “Yes. I’m his—his cousin.”

  “And this man is a friend of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  Marcus sniffed the air. Leontine sense of smell was acute, no surprises there.

  “Marcus—the Winding Path?”

  “We’re not certain what happened,” he said. “Something big. Half of the street—the middle half—is no longer visible.”

  “What do you mean, not visible?”

  “Exactly what I said. There’s a very large gap—a circular gap—where the middle part of the street used to stand.”

  “That’s not invisible.”

  “People don’t fall off the street into what looks like a pit. They keep walking. They vanish. They don’t appear on the other side. We’ve cordoned off either end of the spherical space—but it’s growing. The Swords are mobilized; the Aerians have been sent to patrol.” He cursed in Leontine. “The sky above the sphere operates the way the area on the ground does—but it’s harder to see.”

  Kaylin stopped breathing for one long moment.

  “Yes,” he said, although she hadn’t spoken. “That’s not theoretical.”

  Kattea, listening, said, “That’s how it started.”

  Marcus frowned. He wasn’t as tall as the Barrani, but when he looked down at Kattea, he seemed to be doing it from a much greater height. “Private?”

  Kaylin exhaled. “We should head up to the Hawklord’s Tower,” she replied, “so I don’t have to repeat myself.”

  * * *

  The aperture to the Tower was open when they arrived, as were the doors. Kaylin was grateful; the door wards of the Hawklord’s Tower were, with the exception of the Imperial Library, the worst magical door wards in existence.

  Lord Grammayre’s eyes were almost black, they were so dark. That left no room for worse, which meant they didn’t change shade when Gilbert walked in behind Kaylin. Kattea was in front of him, Ybelline behind; Marcus was leading the way and Severn pulled up the rear.

  “Teela and Tain headed out to the Arcanum. At least that’s where they said they were going.”

  “They mirrored from th
e Arcanum.”

  “Then—”

  “They went, in haste, to the Winding Path. Teela said the man to whom she wished to speak had been resident in the Arcanum; he left, in colloquial words, a lot of corpses. Among those corpses was one that was not quite dead. They mirrored to request that backup be sent to meet them on the Winding Path at the scene of the investigation.” Marcus growled.

  Lord Grammayre bowed to Ybelline.

  “But they—”

  “They wanted you.”

  “Oh.”

  “You went to Evanton’s.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the Tha’alani quarter was on the way?”

  “...No.”

  The Hawklord lifted and lengthened his wings, as if testing them. They were, had always been, beautiful. And they could also be deadly. “The Arkon sent word. We will not be able to respond in the usual way, but the Aerians have agreed to serve as emergency messengers until this crisis has passed.” He exhaled. “Gilbert lived in the house across the street from the murders?”

  Kaylin nodded and began to speak.

  * * *

  She managed to make it through half of the story—at least as she perceived it—before the Hawklord stopped her and looked up, to the open aperture. Shadow darkened the floor—the skies were not exactly clear. But the shadows caused by this cloud didn’t pass, and in the end—

  In the end, they resolved themselves into a familiar, draconic form. Kaylin thought—for just a moment—that the gold meant Clint had been mistaken about Bellusdeo, because the Dragon was gold.

  But it wasn’t Bellusdeo.

  She had never watched a Dragon shift form in midair before. This Dragon, however, obviously considered the interior of the Tower too small for a safe landing—at least for the people currently beneath him. He shifted, golden scales blurring and reconfiguring as he descended; his wings shifted shape and size before they at last folded—literally—into his back.

  The Dragon was the Arkon.

  “You’re not supposed to be flying,” Kaylin told him, because surprise had loosened her jaw. And her brain, clearly.