Cast In Shadow

The fourth man came in on her right.

He’d had enough time to survey the fight, and just enough time to pick his target; she obviously appeared to be the weaker of the two. It annoyed her. Marcus would have had her hide—although he considered humans to have so little hide it was almost not worth taking—had she let the annoyance get the better of her.

She did the next best thing; she kicked his knee. Hard. She caught him on the side of the leg, and he grunted; he swung his long knife in, and she twisted her arm up in an instinctive, almost impossible position, to deflect it. Thankful for cages, for just a minute. There wasn’t a weapon in the city that could go through that bracer. The blow drove her arm into her chest, and she threw her weight onto her back leg, snapping a kick with her front one.

He grabbed for her leg. He was too slow; it brought his chest in close enough that she could hit him. She did, throwing her fists forward and butting the underside of his chin with her head.

She heard his jaw snap shut.

And then he went flying as Severn caught the side of his head with an extended side swing. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

And he wasn’t carrying a weapon. Then again, neither was she. She straightened up. “Two and a half,” she said calmly.

“Two.”

“Yours was an assist. I had him.”

Tiamaris, however, had had something different: enough. “If you insist,” he said in cold and perfect Barrani, something to be feared in the fiefs, “you can play these games until sunset. But if you’ve finished proving some vague human dominance theory, we have work to do.”

Killjoy. She caught his expression, however, and slammed her teeth down over the word.

“Training in the Hawks isn’t bad,” Severn said, as he fell in step beside her, shortening his stride.

“Wolves obviously know what they’re doing,” she replied, grudging the words. “We’re even here.”

He nodded. “Why are you in such a hurry?” He asked Tiamaris’s back. “Brecht won’t be sober.”

He wasn’t. And he wasn’t clean either. Not that it made that much difference; Brecht ran a bar, and the smells that lingered in the daytime were already overpowering enough.

“Is he even alive?” Severn asked, from the vantage of the open door. There were no lights, and the windows were all shuttered. Brecht had always been damn proud of the fact that he had windows. Well, one of them, anyway. The ones near the door were pretty much boards, these days.

“He’s alive,” Kaylin replied, grimacing. “He’s not conscious, but he is alive.” She stood over the ungainly heap that Brecht usually became when he’d emptied too many bottles. Counted the empties beside him, and whistled. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to wake him up.”

“Hang on,” Severn said. “I’ll be back in a second.”

“Where you going?”

“The old well.”

She laughed. “Don’t forget a bucket. This isn’t the city market.”

“Good point.”

Brecht sputtered a lot when the water hit his face. He had to; he had been in the middle of a very noisy inhale. His eyes were red and round when they opened, and he grabbed an empty, cracking it on the hardwood of his personal chair. It shattered in about the right way, leaving him with a suitable weapon. Not that he was in any shape to wield one.

Kaylin stood in front of him, and held out both palms, indicating that she meant him no harm. Or, judging from the water that now streamed down him as if he were a mountain, no more harm. He swore a lot, which she expected.

He even got up, although he wobbled. His legs were like large logs.

“Brecht,” Kaylin said softly. “Sorry about waking you, but we need to talk.”

“Bar’s closed.” This wasn’t evidence that he was actually awake; Brecht could say this in his sleep. She’d seen it.

“We don’t want to talk when the bar’s open,” Kaylin replied. “Too many people. And some of them, we’d have to kill.”

“Not in my bar.”

She shrugged. “We’d try to take the fight outside.”

He closed his eyes and rubbed water off his face. Didn’t work. Dropping the bottle, or the half of it that he still held, he tried mopping his face with his apron. Given that that, too, was soaked, it didn’t help much either. The swearing that followed, on the other hand, seemed to do him a world of good.

He shook himself, like a Leontine waking, and then his bloodshot eyes narrowed. “Is that Elianne? And Severn? Together?”

Before she could frame a reply, he muttered, “I’ve got to drink something better than swill.” But he continued to stare at her, and after a minute, he snorted. Water flew out his nostrils. “Do that again,” he added, “and you won’t be.”

“Together?”

“Alive.” He frowned. “Who’s the nob?”

“Tiamaris. He’s a—a friend.”

Suspicion, which was his natural expression, chased surprise off his face. “A friend of who?”

“Mine, sort of. Look, Brecht, we need to—”

“Yeah, I heard you. You need to talk. Tell you what. You go behind the counter and get me a bottle of—”

“No,” Severn said.

Brecht cursed him for a three-mothered cur. All in all, it was almost affectionate. “What do you need to talk about?” he said after he’d finished.

She started to speak, stopped and waited.

He lost about four inches in height. “I should have known,” he said softly. “Look, Elianne—”

“I’m called Kaylin, now,” she said quietly.

“Shit, I barely remembered the old name.” Which was probably true. “You got out,” he added. “We heard about it. I thought it was a lie—I thought you were dead, like the others.”

She closed her eyes. She could not look at Severn.

Severn said nothing.

“But it’s started again,” the old man continued. His hands were over his face when she opened her eyes. Old hands, now. Seven years had changed him. “Connie’s lost her boy. I found him.”

“What did you do?”

“I sent a runner. You don’t know him,” he added. “He came after your time. I sent a runner to the damn Lords of Law.”