Cast In Shadow

When they left the next hall, she heard voices.

One was particularly loud. It was certainly familiar. She closed her eyes, released the fieflord’s arm, and stumbled as she grabbed folds of shimmering silk, bunching them in her fists. She lifted the skirt of her fine dress, freeing her feet, and after a moment’s hesitation, she kicked off the stupid shoes, the snap of her legs sending them flying in different directions. The floor was cold against her soles. Cold and hard.

Didn’t matter.

She recognized both the voice and its tenor, and she began to run. The lurching movement reminded her of how weak her legs were. But they were strong enough. She made it to the end of the hall, and turned a sharp corner.

There, in a room that was both gaudy and bright—as unlike the rest of the Halls as any room she had yet seen—were Severn, Tiamaris and the two Barrani guards that had accompanied the Lord of Nightshade.

The guards held drawn weapons.

Severn held links of thin chain. At the end of that chain was a flat blade. She had never seen him use a weapon of this kind before, and knew it for a gift of the Wolves.

And she didn’t want to see him use it here.

“Severn!” she shouted.

His angry demand was broken in the middle by the sound of her voice. It should have stopped him.

But he stared at her, at the dress she was wearing, at the bare display of shoulders and arms, her bare feet, at the blood—curse the fieflord, curse him to whichever hell the Barrani occupied—on her cheek, before he changed direction, started the chain spinning.

And she knew the expression on his face. Had seen it before a handful of times in the fiefs. It had always ended in death.

This time, though, she thought it would be the wrong death. She moved before she could think—thought took too much damn time, and she came to stand before him—before him, and between Severn and the fieflord, who had silently come into the room as if he owned it.

Which, in fact, he did.

“Severn!” She shouted, raising her hands, both empty, one brown with the traces of her blood. “Severn, he didn’t touch me!”

Severn met her eyes; the chain was now moving so fast it was a wall, a metal wall. He shortened his grip on it, but he did not let it rest.

“Severn, put it down.”

“If he didn’t touch you, why are you dressed like that?”

“Put it down, Severn. Put it away. You’re here as a Hawk. And the Hawklord wants no fight with the fieflord. You don’t have the luxury of dying. Not here.”

If he did, she wasn’t so sure that his would be the only death. “Don’t start a fief war,” she shouted. Had to shout. “He didn’t touch me. I’m not hurt.”

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

“The mark is bleeding,” she snapped back. “And I don’t need you to protect me, damn it—I’m a Hawk. I can protect myself!”

He slowed, then. She had him. “I don’t need protection,” she said again, and this time the words had multiple meanings to the two of them, and only the two of them.

His face showed the first emotion that wasn’t anger. And she wasn’t certain, after she’d seen it, that she didn’t like the anger better.

“No,” he said at last, heavily. The chain stopped. “It’s been a long time since I could. Protect you.”

Tiamaris, Dragon caste, said in a voice that would have carried the length of the Long Halls, “Well done, Kaylin. Severn. I believe it is time to retreat.” And she saw that his eyes were burning, red; that he, too, had been prepared to fight.

“Your companions lack a certain wisdom,” the fieflord said, voice close to her ear.

“What did you do here, fieflord?” Tiamaris’s voice was low. Dangerous.

“What you suspect, Tiamaris.”

“That was … foolish.”

“Indeed.” He made the admission casually. “And I am not the only one who will pay the price for it. Take her home. She will need some time to recover.”

Severn slowly wrapped the chain round his waist again. He stepped forward and caught Kaylin as her knees buckled. His grip, one hand on either of her upper arms, was not gentle. Kaylin did not resist him.

“The deaths, fieflord?” Tiamaris said quietly. Or as quietly as his voice would let him.

“Three days,” the fieflord said, “between the first and second.”

“And it has been?”

“One day since the last death. If there is a pattern, it will emerge when we find the next sacrifice.”

“Why do you call them that?” Kaylin looked up, looked back at him.

“Because, Kaylin, it is what we believe they are. Sacrifices. Did the Hawklord not tell you that?”

No, of course not, she thought, bitter now. Bitter and bone-weary.

“You will return to the fiefs,” he added softly. “And to the Long Halls.”

“The hell she will,” Severn said.

They stared at each other for a long moment, and then the fieflord turned and walked away.

It was, of course, night in the fiefs.

And they were walking in it. Or rather, Severn and Tiamaris were walking; Kaylin was stumbling. Severn held her up for as long as he could, but in the end, Tiamaris rumbled, and he lifted her. He was not as gentle as the fieflord, because he was not as dangerously personal.

She preferred it.

“Kaylin,” Tiamaris said quietly. “Do you understand why the fiefs exist?”

She shrugged. Or tried. It was hard, while nesting in the arms of a Dragon.

“Have you never wondered?”

“A hundred times,” she said bitterly. “A thousand. Sometimes in one day.”

Tiamaris frowned stiffly. “I can see that Lord Grammayre had his hands full, if he chose to attempt to teach you.”