Cast In Shadow

“I don’t need history lessons. They won’t keep me alive.” The words were a familiar refrain in her life; they certainly weren’t original.

“Spoken like a ground Hawk,” Tiamaris replied.

She shrugged again. Although he wore no armor, his chest was hard. “I believe,” he said quietly, “that I will let Lord Grammayre deal with this.”

“No,” she said, tired now. “I think I know what you’re asking.”

“Oh?”

“You’re asking me if I’ve ever wondered why the Lords of Law don’t just close the fieflords down permanently.”

“Indeed.”

“Hell, we’ve all wondered that.”

“There is a reason. I think you begin to see some of it. The fiefs are the oldest part of the city. They are, with the exception of ruins to the West and East of Elantra, the oldest part of the Empire; they have stood since the coming of the castes.

“I … spent time in the fiefs, studying the old writings, the old magics. I was not alone, but over half of the mages sent with me did not survive. The old magics are alive, if their architects are not. There are some places in the fiefs that could not easily be conquered without destroying half of the city, if they could be conquered at all. They almost all bear certain … markings.”

Her head hurt, and she didn’t want to think. But she made the effort. “The tattoo,” she said faintly.

“Yes. It is the only living thing I—or any one of us—has seen that speaks of the Old Ones. It is why you have always been of interest.”

“Have I?”

He said nothing, then.

In the dark of the fief’s streets, shadows moved. They were pale white, a blur of motion that hunched three feet above the ground. Severn cursed.

Kaylin was still dressed in the finery of Nightshade, but she wore her daggers again; she hadn’t bothered to change, because there was no privacy, and she wasn’t up to stripping in front of everyone. Severn had taken her clothing. “What?” she asked. Too sharply.

“It’s the ferals,” he said.

She really cursed. She had always been able to outcurse Severn.

In the moonlight—the bright moon—she could see that Severn was right: the ferals had come out to play. And if the Hawks weren’t bloody careful, some poor child would come out in the morning—to play—and would discover what the ferals had left behind.

She’d done it herself, once or twice. Whole nightmares remained of those experiences.

“Severn?”

He was already unlooping the long chain. “There’s only two,” he said softly. Nothing in his voice hinted of fear. Nothing in his posture did either. She wondered if he had changed so much that he felt none.

She hadn’t.

Tiamaris set her down. “Don’t move,” he told her grimly. Her hand had already clutched a throwing knife; it was out of her belt, and the moonlight glinted along one of its two edges. But her hand was weak, and she knew she didn’t have the strength to throw true. Wondered if this was the fieflord’s way of getting rid of her.

Her eyes were already acclimatized to the moonlight. She could see the four-legged lope of the creatures that dominated the fief streets at night. They were not numerous; they didn’t have to be. If you were lucky, you could weather the stretch of a night and never see one.

Unlucky? Well, you only had to see them once.

She hadn’t seen them as a child. But later?

Later, Severn by her side, she had. She was caught by the memory; she could see Severn now, and Severn as he was. The seven years made a difference. The weapon that he wielded made a bigger one.

Hand on dagger, she stood between Tiamaris and Severn, and she waited. The quiet growl of the hunting feral almost made her hair stand on end; it certainly made her skin a lot less smooth; goose bumps did that.

The ferals weren’t as stupid as dogs. They weren’t as lazy as cats. They weren’t, as far as anyone could tell, really animals at all. But what they were wasn’t clear. Besides deadly. She felt the tension shore her up. Found her footing on the uneven ground, and held it.

The last time she had faced ferals, she had stood in Tiamaris’s position, and between her and Severn, a child had cowered. Lost child. Stupid child. But still living.

She didn’t like the analogy that memory made of the situation.

Severn waited, his chain a moving wall. He wasn’t even breathing heavily. He spoke her name once, and she responded with a short grunt. It was enough.

The ferals leaped.

They leaped in concert, their jaws wide and silent. The moonlight seemed to cast no shadow beneath their moving bodies, but then again, it was dark enough that shadows were everywhere. Severn’s chain shortened suddenly as he drew it in, and then it lengthened as he let it go.

Feral growl became a howl of pain; a severed paw flew past Kaylin’s ear.

Tiamaris had no like weapon; he waited.

The feral that had leaped at him landed feet away, and it bristled. Tiamaris opened his mouth and roared.

That, Kaylin thought, wincing, would wake the entire damn fief. But she watched as the feral froze, and then watched, in astonishment, as it yelped and turned tail. Like a dog. Had she really been afraid of these creatures?

The one facing Severn lost another paw, and then lost half its face. It toppled.

“Kaylin?”

She shook her head.

“Come on,” he said quietly. “Where there are two, there are likely to be more.”

But Tiamaris said, softly, “Not tonight.” He picked Kaylin up again, and he began to move.

They crossed the bridge over the Ablayne in the moonlight. The Halls of Law loomed in the distance, like shad-owlords. “Kaylin,” Tiamaris said quietly, “the Hawklord will be waiting.”

“All right,” she said, into his chest. “But I’d better be getting overtime for this.”

If Kaylin slept—and she did—the Halls of Law never did. The crew changed; the guards changed. The offices that were a conduit between one labyrinth of bureaucracy and another, however, were empty. She was grateful for that. Severn had cleaned the blade of his weapon, and he’d looped it round his waist again. But he didn’t leave.

The guards at the interior door were Aerian. Clint wasn’t one of them, but she recognized the older men. They were a bit stuffier than Clint, but she liked them anyway.

“Holder,” she said.

He raised a brow. “You went on a raid dressed like that?”