Cast In Secret

She started walking again. “What are the odds?”

“Which betting pool?”

“Mine.”

“Four days,” he said cheerfully, “before you lose your temper and try to break something over someone’s head.”

“Any bets as to whose?”

“Some.”

“Name names.”

He laughed. “I’ve got money riding on it.”

“Figures.” She almost paused at the stall of a baker who was known to be friendly to the Hawks or the Swords. Almost. The coin in her pocket would probably last her another three days if she didn’t bother with food. And less than the afternoon if she did; if the baker was friendly, she wasn’t stupid.

“If you’re betting on the Sharks,” Severn said, stopping by her side, “it’s no big surprise you’re always so broke. Good morning, Mrs. Whitmore. We’d like a half-dozen of the buns.”

Hunger versus pride wasn’t much of a struggle; she let Severn buy breakfast, because that was what it was. She’d been keeping company with the midwives the past two nights and it showed. The circles under her eyes accentuated her mood. But it was a good sort of bad—no one had died, no mothers, and no babies. And she had spent time helping to lick the fur of a sole Leontine cub clean.

She still had hair in her mouth. But she was aware of the singular honor offered her by the mother: the willingness to let a stranger near the helpless, mewling cub. It was a gesture not only of trust, but of respect, and it was also a request that Leontine women seldom made.

The mother had watched as Kaylin’s entirely inadequate human tongue had, in a ritual way, licked some of the birthing fluid from the cubling’s closed, delicately veined lids. Kaylin’s stomach was not up to the task of more, but more wasn’t required; she handled the infant with care, marveling at the fine, fine hair that covered him. It was a pale gray, with a spattering of white streaks—these would fade into the Leontine gold she best knew with time. But the birth colors were considered important to the Leontine. And these were not bad colors.

It wasn’t all that often that she was called into a Leontine birthing—because there were no Leontine midwives in the guild, and the Leontines defined the word suspicious when it came to outsiders. She had expected the birth to be difficult, and by Leontine standards, it was—but it was also unusual. There was one cub, and only one. The pregnancy, she had been very quietly told, had been labored and difficult, and it was thought—many times—that Arlan would lose the cubs.

Losing the cubs and not losing her life were not things that Kaylin would normally be consulted about. This time was different, but she wasn’t certain why, or how.

“It’s important,” an exhausted Arlan had deigned to inform her, “that I be able to bear cubs.” She did not say why, and Kaylin, seeing the almost subconscious flick of claws at the end of the pale golden fur of Arlan’s hands, had known better than to ask.

“I will name him Roshan,” his mother had said, and then added, “Roshan Kaylarr.” She’d nodded, then, to Kaylin, and Kaylin had understood that, in as much as a Leontine could be named after her, this child was.

If she had been human, this indomitable and ferocious Leontine woman, Kaylin would have asked what the father thought of the name; in the case of the Leontine males, this was pointless. They loved their kitlings—but they knew when to stay out of the way.

They had wives, plural, and the wives could fight like, well, cats when the need arose—but the pridlea was also a unit unto itself, and where husbands were concerned, they formed a wall of solidarity when it came to protecting their own.

“Kaylin?” Severn said, and she hastily swallowed a mouthful of pastry that thankfully tasted nothing like the salty skin of newborn cub. Shook her head. He backed off, but with a slight smile.

“Where are we?”

“Almost there. Pay attention?”

“I was.”

He nodded with the ease of long practice. “Pay attention to where we actually are, hmm?”

“Trouble?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“You’re going to trip over your own feet, and stone isn’t the best cushion.” He paused, and then said quietly, “And I have something for you.”

She grimaced. “The bracer?”

“It was on my breakfast table in the morning. I thought you’d been with the midwives, and I kept it for you.” He took it out of the satchel he carried by his side. It gleamed gold and sparkled with the caught light of sapphire, ruby and diamond. It was her cage.

And it was, in its fashion, her haven. This, this cold, gleaming artifact, could contain the magic that Sanabalis, the heartless bastard, was trying to teach her to control. It was the only thing that could, and without it—without its existence—she would probably be dead by Imperial order.

It had come from the personal hoard of the Emperor, and it was ancient, although it looked as if it had been newly made. It took no dents or scratches, and no blood remained across its golden surface for long. Its gems didn’t break or scratch, either.

“Put it on,” he said.

She nodded, her fingers keying the sequence that would open it. Sliding it over her wrist, she thought of making some feeble protest—but she was with Severn, not Marcus, and Severn understood.

“You think I’ll need it?” she asked softly, as it clicked shut.

“I don’t know,” he said at last, but after a pause that was evasive. “You know you’re not supposed to take it off.” As she opened her mouth, he added, “By the Hawklord’s orders.”

She bit back the words for a moment, and when they came, they came more smoothly. “You know I can’t help the midwives if I wear it.”

“I know.”

“I can’t heal—”

“I know. I told you, I thought you might have been with the midwives when I saw it this morning.”

The other property of the bracer that would have been the envy of the stupid because it looked so very expensive was that it was impossible to lose. She could take it off if need be, drop it in the nearest trash heap, and it would find its way back to its keeper—that keeper not being Kaylin. For seven years, the keeper had been the Hawklord.

And for a month now, it had been Severn. He never asked why it came to his hand—which was good, because no one, as far as Kaylin could tell, had an explanation—and he never asked, except obliquely, why it wasn’t on hers. He simply gathered it and brought it back to her. And waited.

As a Keeper, he was a lot less onerous than the Hawklord.

“Severn—”

“It’s Elani Street,” he replied with a shrug, “and if you hunt long enough, you’ll find magic here.”

“I know where to find—” But she stopped, catching her words before she tripped over them with her tongue. “I hate magic.”

He stopped walking, turned suddenly, and looked down at her from an uncomfortable height. His hands caught both of her shoulders, and slid up them, trailing the sides of her neck to cup her face, and she met his eyes, brown and simple, dark with a past that she was part of, and a past that she didn’t know at all.

“Don’t,” he told her quietly. “Don’t hate it. It’s part of what you are, now, and nothing will change that. It’s a gift.”

She thought of the ways in which she had killed in a blind fury; thought of the stone walls that had parted like curtains of dust when the magic overwhelmed her. “A gift,” she said bitterly.

And he said, “You have fur on your tongue.” In almost perfect Leontine.