Cast In Secret

If it was true that the Barrani had a lock on arrogance, and the Dragons on inscrutability, it was also true that for petty malice, you really couldn’t do better than finding a truly loathsome human. And to Kaylin’s youthful disappointment, she hadn’t actually had to look that far to find this one.

His name was Constant Mallory—and, give him this, if she’d had that as a name, and she’d been too stupid to change it, she might have developed a few personality ticks. He was, for all intents and purposes, the ruler of this small enclave. He answered to Marcus, and to the Hawklord, but his answers could be both disingenuous and fawning, and she thought he’d learned enough from the Barrani to dispense with truth entirely.

She was aware that he and Marcus had, as the office liked to call it, “history.” She’d once asked why, and Teela had said, with some disdain, “You really don’t pay attention, do you? How much of history is spent discussing happy children and fluffy bunnies?”

“It’s true,” Tain had half drawled. “If humans actually had a lifespan, things would have been a lot more interesting around here a few centuries ago. But that’s the problem with mortals—they get a little power and it all comes tumbling down. It’s a good thing you breed so quickly.”

Teela and Tain had no problems at all with Mallory. They didn’t like him, but then again, given the way they treated people they did like—and Kaylin had some experience with this—their lack of affection was a dubious negative. Like many humans, he treated the Barrani with respect and care. He had not always given Marcus the same respect.

Or rather, he’d given him exactly the same respect, but then again, Marcus took subtle office politics about as well as he took vegetarian menus.

Mallory had wanted the Leontine’s job. Then again, so had Marcus. Marcus had come out on top. The miracle of the tussle, to Kaylin’s mind, was that Mallory had come out alive. She gathered that not everyone had.

But getting people who’d been there to talk about it was more difficult than getting criminals to cough up useful information. And, as a harried Sergeant Kassan had finally said, “You’re usually so proud of your ignorance. Learn to live with it, Kaylin.” The implication being that living and living with it, on that particular day, were the same thing.

Mallory was tall. He was, by human standards, fit, and not even painful to look at: he was competent, quick-witted, and good with a sword. He handled his paperwork with care—a distinction that he did not fail to note on the rare occasions he was allowed to visit Caitlin’s office.

But he was a self-important prick, and he was the only Hawk of note who had spoken against her induction. The latter, she was unlikely to forget. The former, she had come to expect from the world at large.

His greeting was not in any way friendly. Her smile was not in any way friendly. It was, as Marcus called it with some distaste, a human social custom. Probably because it didn’t involve enough blood and fur.

But she had never come with Severn before.

And Severn became completely still beside her.

“Corporal Handred,” Mallory said, greeting him as if that stillness were not a warning signal. “Our newest recruit.”

Severn extended a hand, and Mallory took it firmly. “I see that they have you babysitting. It’s unusual to see the private in any company that isn’t Barrani. How are you finding the Hawks so far?”

“Interesting,” Severn replied. At least he hadn’t gone monosyllabic.

“Compared to the Wolves?”

Severn didn’t even pause. “Yes. Longer hours. I confess that I’ve seen many reports from your office, but I’ve seldom had a chance to visit in person.”

Mallory looked slightly at a loss, but he recovered quickly enough. “We do important work here,” he began, straightening his shoulders somewhat. “It’s here that most of the cases that require official attention are brought to the notice of the Law.”

“I imagine you deal with a lot of reports. How do you separate the frauds from the actual crimes?”

Mallory looked genuinely surprised, and Kaylin fought an urge to kick someone—mostly because she couldn’t decide whether or not she’d kick Severn or Mallory. Mallory took the lead, and Severn, walking by his side, continued to ask pleasant questions, his voice engulfed slowly by the office noise.

Leaving Kaylin on her own, with no Mallory vindictively standing over her shoulder. It was a trick not even Teela had ever tried.

There were two ways to get useful information about the missing persons being reported by the people who came to the Halls. The hard way—which was to take notes, to have the official artists employed by the Halls on hand, and to attempt to draw a picture of some sort that could be used as an identifier. This was both the least efficient and the most commonly used method of gaining some sort of visual information the Hawks could then use.

The second, and far more efficient, method involved the Tha’alani. And the reason it was little used was, in Kaylin’s opinion, pretty damn obvious. She looked across the crowded office as if the people in it were shadows and smoke, and against the far wall, bordered on either side by finely crafted wooden dividers, and no door, sat a gray-haired man.

At least he looked like a man from the back. But he wore robes, rather than the official uniform of the Hawks; if he was finicky about detail, there might be a gold Hawk embroidered on the left breast of the gray cloth; if he wasn’t, there would be nothing at all.

Kaylin preferred the nothing at all.

From the front, although he didn’t turn, the illusion of humanity would vanish; the slender stalks that rose from his forehead would be visible in the hallmark paleness of his face. His eyes would probably be blue; hard to tell with the Tha’alani, but then again, she usually avoided meeting their eyes—it meant she was standing too damn close.

Those stalks were their weapons, their means of invasion; they were prehensile, and they moved. They would attach themselves to the face of anyone—anything at all—in the Empire, and they would draw from that person’s thoughts everything. Everything they were told to look for. Possibly more. All the hidden secrets, the private memories, the terrors and the joys would be laid bare for their inspection.

Officially, there were no Tha’alani in the ranks of the Hawks; they were, however, always on call should the law require their services. The only office that had a Tha’alani on staff was this one, and he was a grant from the Imperial Court. All of the Tha’alani who served the Law were seconded by the Dragon Emperor. A warning to anyone who might otherwise treat them like the invasive horrors they actually were.

It was probably the real reason she hated the Missing Persons office so much. Men like Mallory were so common in her life, she could only expend so much energy hating him. Most of the time.

To the left of the stall in which the Tha’alani sat, back facing her, was a long, slender mirror edged in gold that had seen better days. It was flecked and peeling. It was also out of sight of the public, tucked as it was against the other edge of the wall and the divider.

Records.

She squared her shoulders and moved toward the mirror on the wall. It was inactive and she could see Severn and Mallory bent over Mallory’s impeccable desk, discussing something that no doubt would have bored her to tears. She probably owed Severn a drink or ten.

She walked toward the mirror, and forced herself to relax, to walk naturally. She tried to remember the one Tha’alani woman she had met that had not somehow terrified her. She was slender, and had reminded Kaylin inexplicably of warm sun in autumn. Now, however, was not the time to think of sunlight, or warmth. It made her job difficult. Instead, Kaylin tried to remember what Ybelline had said about the lives of the Tha’alani who could serve time among the “deaf,” and by that, she had clearly meant humans. Kaylin’s kind. No, wait, one of the Dragons had said that.

The Tha’alani woman, Ybelline, had corrected him gently for his unkindness, although Kaylin hadn’t bothered to be kind first.

Ybelline had somehow made Kaylin feel comfortable and safe. Had taken memories from the sleeping child she and Severn had brought with them to the office—a child kidnapped by the undead, and almost sacrificed—sparing the child the waking experience of the Tha’alani mind-touch. Holding on to that memory, Kaylin did relax.

Until she was almost at the records mirror itself, and the Tha’alani rose.

He was older than any Tha’alani she had ever met, although he was by no means as aged as Evanton; his hair, which had looked gray, was gray, and his face was lined with age, with sun and wind. His eyes were slate-gray, not a friendly color, and his lips were thin and pale.

And the disturbing stalks on his forehead were weaving in and out among themselves, as if it were the only way he knew how to fidget. It came to Kaylin as she watched them warily that he was, in fact, fidgeting.

Had she ever noticed this before?

Did they all do this?

There was no Hawk on his robes, no official sign. She wondered if he was always in this office, or if he was only here on this particular shift. Wondered, with just a faint edge of hysteria to sharpen the humor, what he’d done to deserve it, if he was.

But he bowed to her, and by this, she knew two things: that he’d risen because she approached him, and only because of that, and that he’d been somehow waiting for her. It didn’t make her comfortable. For perhaps the first time she noticed, as he rose, the deepening lines around his mouth, the slight thinning of his lips. As a thirteen-year-old girl, she had thought it a cruel expression, and that had left scars in her memory that had been slow to heal.

Now … she thought, as objectively as she could—and given she was Kaylin that was hard—that it might be a grimace of pain. And she felt, mingled with her own very visceral revulsion, a twinge of sympathy for a total stranger.

She tried very hard not to notice the way his stalks were swaying. But she did notice; they were swaying to and fro, but almost seemed to be shying away. From her. From, she realized, her revulsion.

She swallowed. Composed herself—as much as that was possible. “Private Kaylin Neya,” she said, introducing herself. She did not offer him her hand, and he did not extend his own.

“I am called Draalzyn, by my people.” The word was broken by an unexpected syllable. The Tha’alani had a language that Kaylin had never bothered to learn because as far as she could tell it contained no colorful—which is to say useful—words. It, in fact, seemed to be free of most words; when Tha’alani conversed, they conversed in silence, and only their hands and their stalks seemed to move. They also touched each other too much.

And she was projecting again. She could see that clearly by the subtle shift of his expression. She wanted to tell the bastard to keep away from her thoughts. It was her first reaction.

But a second reaction followed swiftly. She knew she was the proverbial open book; how often in her life had Severn just glanced at her face and known what it was that was bothering her? She’d never bothered to count. Probably couldn’t count that high unless it involved a wager.

And the second thought, the Tha’alani almost seemed to sense, for his expression grew slightly less severe.