Cast In Shadow

Tiamaris eyed them both with disdain.

“Where’s your armor?” she asked the Dragon. Anything to change the subject.

“I don’t require any.”

She raised a brow. She’d heard that a dozen times, usually from young would-be recruits. But then again, none of them had ever been a Dragon.

“We’re not covert,” she snapped.

“No one is, in the fiefs.” His shrug was elegant. It made boredom look powerful.

Severn had a long knife, a couple of obvious daggers.

She had the rest of her kit, her throwing knives, the ring that all Hawks wore. She twisted the last almost unconsciously.

“Why were you late this time?” Severn asked quietly.

She started to tell him to mind his own business, and managed to stop herself. She was about to go into the fief of Nightshade with him. She wanted to kill him. And she knew what the Hawks demanded. Balancing these, she said, “I went back for the rest of the information in the damn crystal.”

“Without us?”

She nodded grimly.

“How bad?”

“It’s bad,” she said quietly. Really, really bad. But she didn’t share easily. “There were two deaths. Two boys.”

His expression didn’t change. He’d schooled it about as well as she now schooled hers. “When?”

“Three days apart.”

Tiamaris’s brows rose. “Three days?”

She nodded quietly.

“Kaylin—I’m not sure how aware you were of what happened the last time … you were a child.”

“I was aware of it,” she whispered. “Because I was a child in the fiefs.”

“There were exactly thirteen deaths a year for almost three years. We could time them by moon phase,” Tiamaris added. “The Dark moon. At no time in the previous incident did the deaths occur at such short intervals.”

She nodded almost blankly.

“Where did the new deaths take place?” Severn’s voice was harsh.

“Nightshade,” she said bitterly, shaking herself. “The fieflord must have been in a good mood. We didn’t lose anyone while we were investigating the deaths.”

Severn whistled.

“Timing or no, it was the same,” she added hollowly. “As last time. The examiner’s reports were also in crystal.”

“And the Hawks’ mages?”

She nodded. “Their reports are there as well. Or rather, their précis on the findings. It’s all bullshit.”

“What kind of bullshit?”

“The unintelligible kind. You take magic exams in the Wolves?”

He shrugged. “Take them, or pass them?”

In spite of herself, she laughed. “Me, too.” And then she forced her lips down, thinning them. Remembering Severn’s last act.

He knew, too. He looked at her, his gaze steady. “Elia—Kaylin,” he corrected himself, “it wasn’t—”

But she lifted a hand. She didn’t want to hear it.

Severn took a step closer, and her hand fell to a dagger. He ignored it. Her hand tightened.

Rescue came from an unexpected quarter.

“If you’re both ready,” Tiamaris said, glancing at the very high windows in the change rooms, “we’re late.”

“For what?”

“There are only so many hours of daylight, and not even I want to be in the fiefs at night.”

The Halls of Law receded slowly.

Tiamaris was tall; his stride, long. Kaylin had to scamper to keep up, and she hated that.

She might have been taller had she not hit her meager growth spurts in the winters. That had been in the fiefs, and food had been scarce. Now that food wasn’t? She hadn’t gained an inch. She was never going to be tall. And Tiamaris? He’d probably never gone hungry in his life.

No, be fair. She had no idea what a Dragon’s life was like. She only knew her own. And she knew that Severn, damn him, had no problem matching the dragon step for step. Severn? He’d gone hungry as well. Bone hungry, thin, gaunt with it. They’d weathered those seasons together.

She was veering dangerously close to the land of what-if, and she gave herself a harsh, mental slap. She’d bandaged her hand, but she clenched it nervously, looking at Severn’s back. He’d grabbed the crystal. He’d tried to save her the pain. Why?

She could almost imagine that he’d really changed. Had emerged from the fiefs, become something different. She hated the thought. And why? Hadn’t she? Wasn’t that exactly what she’d done?

Glancing up, she saw the flag of the Hawks on its tower height, and she stopped a moment, hoping to hear its heavy canvas flap in the wind. But she was earthbound. Funny, how it was the unreachable things that had always provided her anchor.

No, she thought, almost free of the shadows cast by the Towers. She hadn’t changed anything but her name. And now she was going back home.

Because she served the Hawklord, and the Hawklord commanded it.

The richest of the merchants liked to nest in the shadows of the Halls; they lined the streets, their expensive windows adorned by equally expensive dress guards and clientele. There were jewelers here—and what good, she thought bitterly, did they do? You couldn’t eat the damn things they produced, and they didn’t stop you from freezing to death in the winter—and clothiers, a fancy word for tailor. There were swordsmiths, fletchers, herbalists and the occasional maker of books. When she’d first heard of those, she’d snuck in with a pocketful of change to see what betting odds were being offered, and on who. Oh, that had kept the company in laughs for a week.

What was absent were brothels, which lined the richer parts of the fiefs. Here, in the lee of the Halls, there were no girls on window duty, beckoning the drunk and the young, idle rich; she’d found the lack hard to get used to.