Cast In Courtlight

He smiled as she slid silently through the open arch and along the nearest wall. Even without breathing, it was impossible for her to sneak up on a Barrani Hawk; she knew. She’d been trying for seven years.

“Kaylin,” he said, looking up. His eyes were that shade of bottomless green that made jewelry superfluous. It meant, on the other hand, that he was happy. Or as happy as any Barrani ever got when they weren’t killing someone or winning some invisible-to-human-eyes political struggle.

If Leontines were incapable of acting, Barrani were their opposite; they were incapable of not acting. Immortal, stunningly beautiful, and ultimately cool, they had a quiet love of showmanship. It had taken her years to understand that, as well.

They were, however, plenty capable of being smug, which Tain was now demonstrating to the office staff; he had coins in his hand.

Had she won, she probably wouldn’t. But there was no such thing as a friendly bet among the Barrani, and no one—not even the men and women who were nominally his equals in rank—wanted to be in the wrong kind of debt to a Barrani.

Still, it didn’t stop them from betting. She prided herself on being the person who had introduced the office to this pastime; it was one of the few that she’d enjoyed in her childhood. Then again, anyone who grew up in the wrong part of town—the huge neighborhood known colloquially as the fiefs in the right parts of town—enjoyed gambling. There wasn’t much else about the life to enjoy.

Certainly not its brevity.

She shrugged and made her way to Tain. “You won?”

“It looks that way.” His teeth were chipped; they made his smile look almost natural. They also made him obvious to anyone who hadn’t known the Barrani for months. They looked so much alike, it was hard for humans—or mere humans, as the Barrani often called them—to tell them apart. Much malicious humor could be had in mistaken identity—all of it at a cost to the person making the mistake.

His smile cooled slightly as his gaze glanced off her cheek. There, in thin blue lines that could be called spidery, was the mark of Lord Nightshade—the Barrani outcaste Lord who ruled the fief that Kaylin had grown up in. The mark meant something to the Barrani, and none of it was good.

If she were honest, it meant something to her. But she couldn’t quite say what, and she was content to let the memory lie. Not that she had much choice; Lord Nightshade was not of a mind to remove the mark, and short of that, the only way to effect such a removal also involved the removal of her head. Which, according to Marcus, she’d barely miss anyway, given how much she used it.

In ones and twos the dozen or so Barrani—well, fourteen, if she were paying close attention—that were also privileged to call themselves Hawks had been brought by either Tain or Teela to look at the mark.

In one or two cases, it was a good damn thing Teela was there; they were almost unrestrained once the shock had worn off, and the restraint they did have was all external.

Kaylin had gotten used to this.

And the Barrani, in turn, had grown accustomed to the sight of the offending mark. But they didn’t like it. They didn’t like what it meant.

Kaylin understood that the word they muttered under their breaths was something that loosely translated into consort. Very loosely. And with a lot more vehemence.

Pointing out that marking a human in this fashion was against both Barrani caste law and Imperial Law had met with as much disdain as Kaylin ever showed the Barrani.

“Fieflord, remember? Nightshade? Not exactly the biggest upholder of Imperial law?”

But she didn’t take offense. It was hard to; they were Barrani. A Barrani who wasn’t arrogant was also not breathing. And in a strange way, it was a comfort; they were enraged for her.

Of course, there was a tad more possessiveness in that anger than she’d have ideally liked, but beggars couldn’t be choosy.

“Where’s Teela?” she asked Tain. The two were often inseparable.

Tain’s silence had a little of the Hawklord’s grimness. “Either you’re not going to answer,” she said carefully, “or you are, and I won’t like it.”

“Why would you be displeased?” he said. “You are.”

“It is a matter that concerns the Barrani.” Cold and imperious.

“This means you won’t answer.”

“No,” he said, the word measured and stretched thin, given it was only a meager syllable, and that, in Elantran. Elantran was the default language of the Hawks, because everyone spoke it. Unfortunately, the labyrinthine paper trail of the Law itself was written in Barrani. He could have spoken his mother tongue, and she’d have been able to follow it with the ease of long practice, Barrani being one of the few things she’d been able to learn while locked in a classroom and chained to a desk, metaphorically speaking.

“You’ve looked at the duty roster?” he added.

“Not recently. It’s not like it hasn’t been changed six times a day for the last week. Why?”

He gestured toward the board that had been nailed into the wall by an annoyed bureaucrat. There, also nailed into the wall, was a long piece of paper that bore several marks and a few gashes—that would be Marcus.

The only time the duty roster was this complicated was during the Festival. She approached the board and scanned it carefully.

“I’m not on it!”

“Lucky you. You want to talk to so-called merchants who can’t spell and can’t plot their way out of a wet bag?” “It’s better than the alternative.” “And that?”

“Talking to—or listening to—mages who couldn’t police their way out of a murder.” She frowned. “What’s this?” she asked him softly.

“Good girl.”

Anyone else, she would have hit. Barrani, on the other hand, required more cautious displays of annoyance.

“High Court duty?” She frowned. Looked at the names. There were Aerians among them, and Barrani; there were almost no humans.

Severn was one of them.

“What the hell is High Court duty?”

“Have you paid no attention to office gossip?”

“I’ve been busy being insulted by Imperial mages.”

“This Festival,” he said quietly, “the castelord has called his Court. It has been a number of years since he has chosen to do so. I don’t think you were even alive for the last one.”

She had never been good in the classroom. She had never been bad outside of it. “Teela’s gone to Court,” she said flatly.

“She was summoned, yes.”

“But she’s—”

“She has not been summoned as a Hawk,” he continued quietly. “She will take her place among her peers in the High Caste.”

Kaylin almost gaped at him. “Teela? In the High Caste Court?”

His expression made clear that there was nothing humorous about it, although Kaylin wasn’t laughing. He nodded. The nod was stiff for a Barrani nod; they kind of epitomized grace.

“Is she in trouble?”

“She may well be.”

“Why?”