Cast in Silence

by Michelle Sagara

  “But Tiamaris knew—”

  “He knows what to watch for, Kaylin. All of the Dragons in the Empire do. So, too, the Barrani, although their knowledge is less expansive. It has been a very long time since a storm has escaped the heart of the fiefs.”

  “How far can they reach?” She looked around the room. At Sanabalis. At Tiamaris.

  “Until now? No farther than the interior border of the fiefs. What was built in the fiefs was built upon the foundations of a magic not one of the living now fully apprehend. The Towers. The Castles. The High Halls is the only structure to our knowledge that retains some of that power but exists outside of the fiefs.” He turned back to them, then. “We do not understand the nature of those who created us. We do not understand the nature of those who would re-create us.

  “But we understand that it is our death.”

  After a long pause, she said, “What would a storm do to the High Halls?”

  He raised a pale brow, and then nodded. “You do understand.”

  She frowned. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “I’m wondering,” she finally said, “what changes the undying would suffer, if they’d suffer it at all.”

  “The undying.”

  She nodded slowly. “The undying surrender names. They attempt to live without them.”

  “You’ve seen the undying.”

  “Yes. It’s not much of a life. But—without names—”

  “They can still be affected. Or at least that is my belief. I admit that we have not experimented with the undying and the fiefs. Perhaps,” he told her, “you should ask the Barrani.”

  She nodded. “I will.”

  Kaylin had no time to hit the market, and anyway, at this time of day everything would be bruised, stale or broken. There were, thankfully, no messages waiting her in the mirror when she finally made it home, other than the usual, which was offered by her reflection. She was so damn tired, she didn’t even notice that Severn was sitting in her chair, having helpfully cleared it of dirty laundry, until she saw his reflection, as well. “I did give you keys?”

  “More or less.”

  “I didn’t ask for them back?”

  He raised a dark brow and then chuckled. “What does tomorrow look like?”

  She stretched, trying to ease the knots of tension out of the back of her neck, where they were threatening to give her a headache that would last for weeks. “Tomorrow morning I have to go to the High Halls.”

  He nodded slowly. He didn’t even ask.

  “After which, I return, with Tiamaris, to Barren.” Watching his expression in the mirror, she paused. “What happened?”

  “I am to accompany you when you return to Barren,” he replied.

  “But—”

  “I have been seconded, for the duration of my investigation, by the Wolves.”

  CHAPTER 13

  To no one’s surprise, Severn showed up in the morning, where morning was defined by a sky night hadn’t quite finished with, and no one, of course, was Kaylin. On the other hand, he brought breakfast, and he was vastly less cranky than Kaylin herself as she crawled out of bed. The aftereffects of the fight in Capstone made themselves known as she swung her legs off the mattress.

  She counted any fight a win which didn’t leave her in the infirmary, and didn’t require her to replace clothing. She reached, automatically, for the clothing she normally wore on duty, and then remembered where duty would take her today. That caused a spate of swearing, because duty involved two things: the High Halls and the fief of Barren. Which had precisely nothing—except for the dangers of shadow creatures and the deaths they caused—in common. And in general, someone else dressed you for your own funeral.

  She looked at the contents of her chair, and then, grudgingly, at the contents of her small standing closet. She pulled out the dress that she had bought for use with the midwives—which seldom saw much wear—and then frowned; it was going to be next to useless in Barren. If it wasn’t actively harmful.

  After a few moments of indecision—none of which were silent—she finally gave up; she dressed for Barren. For, in fact, fighting in Barren. Severn said, after a pause, “Try to get a cloak of some sort.”

  “Why? It’s not cold and they get caught in every damn thing.”

  “Because if it’s fine enough, you can cover up the clothing that isn’t.”

  She didn’t ask Severn if he intended to accompany her to the Halls; no point. Instead, they both ate quietly, while the sky visibly paled through the one window Kaylin’s apartment boasted.

  When Kaylin was mostly finished, Severn said, “Review what we know about the undying.”

  Kaylin stretched, frowning. Records access would be useful here. Unfortunately, she didn’t really have it.

  “I first encountered the undying in Nightshade,” she said quietly. “When Catti was kidnapped from the foundling halls. Tiamaris was with me,” she added, “and he did the Dragon thing.” Severn knew all of this, but didn’t interrupt her. She frowned. “They didn’t look classically dead. No rotting, no decay.”

  “You knew they weren’t alive.”

  “They weren’t—they weren’t right. Yes, I sort of knew.”

  He nodded. “You understand why this is relevant?”

  “The Barrani don’t particularly like talking about it. And I’m going to try to talk to Barrani who aren’t Hawks.”

  “You could try talking to Teela.”

  She nodded. “I could.” Paused. “But if she considered it a really bad idea for me to ask anyone else, she’d do her damn best to make sure I couldn’t go to the High Halls. I’d go—the Emperor’s Court is fine with it—but if I had to get the Imperial Court to pull rank on her, she’d forgive me sometime in ten decades. If that.”

  He nodded. “Stop thinking about Teela,” he added, because Kaylin was. “The undying.”

  “Their bodies are alive. In some way, they have will. They can think. They can react. But…” She frowned again. “The second time was in the streets of Nightshade.”

  He waited.

  “We were with Lord Nightshade and his guards—his Barrani guards, not his cheap, human wannabe-Barrani. The undying met us in the streets. They attacked.” She said a few Leontine words and rose. “Should we go to the office? We can access records, there.”

  “If you want.” Which, for Severn, usually meant no.

  “You think Marcus isn’t going to be happy.”

  “That you’re heading to the High Halls with no escort?”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “I’ve been removed from the force for the duration of my investigation.”

  “That’s not going to matter to Marcus—” She stopped. Cursed. Marcus took territorial to a whole new level. He’d probably forgive Severn in a decade or two. “Your point. He’d probably send Teela, if he could find her.” She grimaced. “Your point again. I just ate breakfast. I am not getting into a carriage with Teela.” Teela was the worst driver that nature had ever produced. Like bad drivers anywhere, she was under the mistaken impression that she was the best driver that nature had ever produced. Kaylin stood and began to pace in a tight circle.

  “They looked like Barrani. They fought like them, but…slower, somehow. They didn’t stop, though. They didn’t stop when they lost limbs. Fire made a difference, but they fought while burning, as well.”

  He nodded.

  “We did kill them. They did die. But—they didn’t seem to care one way or the other. Look—they have to be capable of thought. They can speak. The first time, when we rescued Catti, they were about to perform some sort of ceremony. They’re not mindless, they’re not completely empty vessels.” She hesitated, and then said, “It’s something to do with their names.”

  He made no comment.

  “The second time…” She frowned. “The second time doesn’t really exist. The Lord of the Green, in the High Halls, was—almost—undying. He had attempted to divest himself of his true
name.”

  “Which wouldn’t kill him.”

  “No. But—the Barrani don’t wake up without a name. As babies,” she added, “they don’t really…come to life…until they’re given their true name.” She shook her head. “I don’t really understand it. I know Nightshade’s true name. I can use it. But when I do, he’s aware of every damn syllable. He’s aware of where I am when I say it, and he probably knows exactly what I’m thinking at the time.” She touched the mark on her cheek, and let her hand drop away; it was cool.

  “If I were strong enough, if my will were even stronger than his, I could use that name against him. I could bend him to my will.”

  “But he wouldn’t be undying.”

  “No.” She grinned. “He would, on the other hand, be really, really pissed off.” The smile faded. “The Lord of the Green attempted to give his name away, to shed it entirely, so that it could never be used against him, or his people. Given the thing that knew his name, and given the power behind it, it’s understandable. It’s a form of suicide that even I can sympathize with.”

  She frowned, and then got down on her hands and knees at the foot of her bed. Severn didn’t ask her what she was doing; he knew. If they’d both lived on the right side of the fiefs for more than seven years, they both had old habits that would probably never leave them. She pulled up one of the narrow floorboards that started about a foot from the bed’s end, and traveled, beneath the frame, toward the headboard.

  She cursed when she bumped her head, but it was almost cursory; she always managed to bump her head when she tried to pry the damn board up. Beneath it, however, was a groove in the wood; the board was too narrow for anything like a box, and a box would have been too obvious.

  She didn’t own much of value; it was one of the things that hadn’t really changed between the fiefs and the outer city. But what she did own, she hid here. And one of those things was a heavy gold ring. She grabbed it in one hand, and then fumbled with the board until it was more or less pressed back into its resting place.

  She crawled out again and sat back on her knees, brushing the dust out of her hair. There was an unfortunate amount of it, and catching Severn’s glance, she said, “I’m never home—when am I supposed to do housework?”

  He did not point out that he managed. Which was good. The ring in her hand had already started to make her skin itch, and that always made her a bit touchy. She daydreamed about running across a type of magic that didn’t. “Here it is,” she told Severn. The ring was still heavy, still gold, and still adorned by emerald and ivory—but this time, she could see a pattern in the intermingling of the two; the very first time she’d been given this ring, it had blurred every time she tried to study it.

  “Kaylin?”

  The emeralds, such as they were, were teardrop cuts that suggested the slow drift of leaves, of green. But the ivory? It lay among the emeralds like a single, slender feather. She held it up to Severn. “I thought we might need this.”

  “The ring given you by the Lord of the West March?”

  She nodded. “It looks…different.”

  “You are now a Lord of the High Court,” he pointed out. “Perhaps that’s why.”

  She slid it over her finger; it was about five sizes too big—as if gold couldn’t possibly be used by the Barrani in small enough quantities for a ring that would actually fit her fingers—but it didn’t fall off. Nor would it. “I’m ready,” she told Severn, and rose.

  He didn’t seem to notice the ring. He was frowning in that particular way that meant, for Severn, thought.

  “Kaylin, when you say the Lord of the Green attempted to give his name away,” Severn said quietly, “you imply that it had to go somewhere. To who, or what?”

  She looked at Severn. “I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “I didn’t really ask. And yes,” she added, as she looked toward the door, “I should have.”

  “Oh, I didn’t say that,” he replied as he followed her. “You were dealing with the Barrani High Court, after all.”

  They took a normal carriage to the High Halls, or rather, to within a few blocks of the High Halls. In theory, all of the city streets were public, and could be used by any carriage that was roadworthy; in practice, suspicion and the natural fear of “outsiders” being what it was, the streets in front of the High Halls—or the very, very large grounds that eventually led to them—were for foot traffic only. The occasional bold child would wander around the gates until his parents caught up with him; the occasional foolish teenager would attempt to get through on a dare.

  Other than that? Merchants, politicians, the various nobles of different castes that actually thought impressing the Barrani was important—and to be fair, they had a lot of the City’s wealth in their immortal hands—were the only other people who could be seen.

  The Emperor was big on the entire concept of racial integration and racial harmony, but then again, the Emperor rarely left his palace.

  Kaylin walked up to the gatehouse. Well, to one of the gatehouses. It was occupied by flawlessly armored Barrani guards. Gritting her teeth, she approached one—and almost had to pick up her jaw when he tendered her a Barrani bow. It was a damn good bow, even given the armor. Maybe especially given that.

  “Lord Kaylin,” the guard said. She had lifted her hand to expose the ring that she wore, and her hand dropped to her side.

  “I’m here to see—”

  He lifted a gauntlet. “I am not required,” he told her quietly, “to ask permission to grant you entry to the High Halls. You are Lord of the High Court—the High Halls are your home.”

  She had to admire him; he said all this with a straight face. Then again, he was Barrani; she had seen Teela lie outrageously with a perfectly serious expression.

  “Lord Severn,” the guard added, offering Severn an exact duplicate of the bow he had offered Kaylin.

  Severn nodded, and offered Kaylin his arm. Given that she was wearing boots and leather leggings, it felt a bit odd to actually take that arm, but she could see, by the set of his jaw, that he was going to leave it hanging there until she either walked past him and left him behind, or put her hand on it.

  The Halls were as fine—and as intimidatingly tall—as Kaylin remembered. Everything in them—from the statues that adorned pillars that served as a kind of entry, to the fountains and standing vases that littered the carefully marbled floor—was calculated to imply beauty, eternity, and superiority. They made her feel out of place; she wondered if that was the point. But Severn didn’t appear to notice, and she knew that if he didn’t, she shouldn’t. She worked on it.

  She also worked on trying to remember how to get from the front of the damn building to the inner Courtyard, and gave up; she had no idea if that’s where she would find anyone she needed to speak with, anyway. The problem, she thought, with Halls like these is that anyone who had a right to be in them—or felt they did—already knew how to find anything else.

  And she didn’t particularly enjoy looking like the idiot she was beginning to feel she was. “I need to learn how to plan,” she finally told Severn, her shoulders sinking. “This is probably as stupid as showing up at the front steps of the palace expecting to find the Emperor and have a little chat.”

  He chuckled.

  “I don’t suppose I can blame you?”

  “If it helps, be my guest.” He put an arm around her shoulders, shedding the formal posture he’d adopted. It looked stupid with his clothing, anyway. “I’m sure they’ll cover some of this in etiquette class.”

  She elbowed him in the stomach, and then looked around at the serene, and empty, Halls. Five minutes later, she abandoned pride and approached a lone Barrani male who seemed to be wandering the Halls as if to soak up that serenity.

  “Excuse me,” she said, in High Barrani.

  He frowned, but turned to face her. She didn’t recognize him. Then again, the Barrani looked so damn much alike most of the time, she felt she could be forgiven. He had the gleam
ing, long black hair and the emerald green eyes that were racial traits; he also had perfect, unscarred skin.

  “I am looking for the castelord.”

  The man’s frown deepened for just a moment, but his eyes stayed green; he didn’t consider her a threat, and he didn’t—yet—consider her enough of an irritation. She lifted her hand. He looked at the ring upon her finger, and the frown eased. “You are Lord Kaylin. And your companion must be Lord Severn.”

  She nodded.

  “I am Lord Vanyor. I will not say the High Lord is expecting you,” he added, “but at the moment, it is likely that he will make time to converse, if that is your desire.”

  She waited. So, unfortunately, did he. If he was chatty, for a Barrani Lord, he was still Barrani; he was going to make her ask for help. “Can you take us to him?”

  “Ah. My apologies, Lord Kaylin. Yes, of course.”

  The High Lord, or the castelord, a title Kaylin vastly preferred, could be found in the gardens. Garden, in this case, had to be a very flexible word—the Barrani gardens were huge, and one had the sense, entering them, that the forest that surrounded them was not, in fact, bound by the walls that also surrounded them. She did not, however, have to contend with doorwards on the way there, for which she was grateful; doorwards were a bit superfluous when there were no actual doors, at least not by the route Lord Vanyor chose to take.

  She walked slowly through the forest. She should have moved fast, but the trees themselves held her attention, as did the small plants and flowers that grew among them, seeking scattered beams of light. They weren’t the same as they’d been the last time she’d seen them. The outer Halls were—but marble generally didn’t change much in a few months.

  When they broke through the artful cover of trees, she saw the High Lord, and she paused. He was deep in conversation with his consort, her pale hair a striking contrast to the rest of the Barrani present. They were elegantly, and simply, robed, and the consort was adorned with flowers that looked a bit like lilies. She paused, and she turned her head, and then she rose quickly; the High Lord followed her gaze.