Cast In Secret

“Private,” Draalzyn said quietly, “I hoped to see you at some point in time.”

“I work inside.”

He nodded. He knew where she worked; that much was clear to her. He seemed to have trouble speaking; he opened his mouth several times, as if searching for words. Or, as if he’d found them, and discarded them as useless.

She waited, eyeing the mirror, and catching a reflected glimpse of Severn as he ran interference. It wouldn’t last.

At last the Tha’alani said, “Ybelline asked me to carry a message to you, if our paths should cross.”

Ybelline. The one Tha’alani Kaylin had met that she had almost liked.

“Why me?” Unlike Draalzyn, Kaylin rarely bothered to stop the words that first came to mind from falling out of her mouth. But she remembered this honey-haired woman so clearly she felt almost—almost—protective of her. She had been so gentle with Catti, an orphan, as unwanted by the world at large as Kaylin had been at her age.

“She believed you could be of assistance to us,” he replied quietly. “And the matter is of some urgency.” He paused, and she realized that the pallor of his face was probably unnatural. He was worried. Or frightened. Or both.

“What’s happened?”

“If you would come to her dwelling in the enclave—or if you would choose a meeting place that is not so crowded in the city itself, she will explain.”

Kaylin nodded.

And the Tha’alani seemed to relax; his shoulders slumped a little in the folds of his robe, as if he had been expecting something else.

Fair enough. Had it been any other Tha’alani, any at all, Kaylin would have refused. Or worse.

“She is willing, of course, to promise that there will be no intrusion, and nothing will be taken from you without—”

Kaylin lifted a hand. “I know the drill,” she said, “and you don’t have to repeat it. I—trust her. And I don’t have time,” she added bitterly, looking again at the mirror’s surface, and at Mallory.

“You wish to access records without interference?” he asked. As if he had read her—no, she told herself forcefully. It was bloody obvious he had. You’d have to be blind and stupid not to recognize the fact.

“Yes.”

“You are looking for?”

She stopped. Looked at him, truly looked at him, as if seeing him for the first time. The Tha’alani worked in this office for a reason. But—

The image of a bruised child’s face rose up before her eyes, captured in water’s depths. It was so strong, so clear, that she couldn’t shake it. It was more concrete in that moment than the rest of the office.

The man waited.

She noted this, her Hawk’s training in place. And she knew as well that all real images that went into records, any real information, would come, in the end, through him or his kin.

“You know what’s in the records?”

“Not all of it,” he began.

“The recent reports. You might know if someone came in looking for a missing girl.”

“Of what age?” His eyes seemed to glaze over, as if he were a living embodiment of what the records contained, and he was accessing the data.

“Nine, maybe ten. Scraggly dark hair, dark eyes. Pale skin. Poor family, I think.”

“How long would she be considered missing?”

“I … don’t know. More than two days.” Maybe, given her condition, many more.

He was still frowning.

And Kaylin clenched her jaw tightly, stepped forward toward him, and, lifting her hands, drew her hair from her forehead. She was shaking. But the girl’s image was strong enough.

“You know this child?” he asked, understanding exactly what she offered.

“No. But I’ve seen her once.”

“And you are willing—” But he stopped. He was, by law, required to give her a long speech full of unreassuring reassurances.

None of which she had time for. He did her the courtesy of not failing to read this clearly, and held her gaze for just that little bit longer than required. She didn’t blink.

His forehead stalks began to elongate, to thin, as they moved toward her exposed skin.

“Don’t touch the mark,” she warned him.

“Ah,” he replied. “No. I will not.”

And they were feathery, those stalks, like the brush of fingertips against forehead. He did not touch her face with his hands, did nothing to hold her in place. In every way, this was unlike the first time she had submitted to the Tha’alani. But this was an act of choice.

And if he saw more than she wanted him to see, what of it? It made her squirm, the fear of exposure, and she balanced that fear—as she so often did—with the greater fear: the child’s bruised face. The frustration, anger and, yes, pride and joy that she felt just being deemed worthy to bear the Hawk. The fear of failing what that meant, all that that entailed.

The Tha’alani stalks were pale and trembling, as if in a breeze, but they lingered a long time against her skin, although she did not relive any memories but the memory of the water, its dark, dark depths, and the emergence of that strange child’s face.

Then he withdrew, and he offered her a half-bow. He rose quickly, however, dispensing courtesy as required, and with sincerity, but no more. “I better understand Ybelline’s odd request,” he told her quietly. “And I do not know if what I tell you will give you comfort or grief, but no such child has been reported missing. There is no image of her in the records.

“But go, and speak with Ybelline, Private Neya. I fear that your partner is about to lose his composure.” He bent to his desk, and wrote something carefully in bold, neat Barrani lettering. An address.

CHAPTER

3

“And you’ve never hit him?” Severn asked, as they left the crowded courtyard behind in the growing shadows of afternoon.

“No. He and Marcus have history. I couldn’t find where Mallory’d buried the skeletons in his closet, so it didn’t seem wise. Marcus, in case you hadn’t noticed, has a bit of a temper.”

Severn’s dark brow rose slightly. “Wise? You have grown.” He paused and added, “He probably doesn’t have them in his closet—he probably has them neatly categorized by bone type in his filing cabinets.”

Kaylin snickered. “You feel like a long walk?”

“Was that rhetorical?”