Cast In Fury

“Tell me about it. No, strike that. Don’t.”

“When did it get this bad?”

“There was an incident two days ago.”

“Incident?”

“It was messy,” he replied, his voice entirely neutral. “The Swordlord made it clear that there will be no more incidents. The Emperor was not impressed.”

She winced. It wasn’t often that she felt sympathy for the Swords. But while she resented the easy life the Swords generally called work, she liked them better than the people with the crossbows down the street.

“You know they’re armed?” she asked casually.

“We are well aware that they’re armed. And no, thank you, we don’t require help in disarming them. They’re waiting for an invitation. Let them wait. At that distance.”

She looked at Severn as Severn exited the carriage. Rennick tumbled out after him. “Sergeant Voone,” Severn said, before the sergeant could speak, “Richard Rennick. He’s the Imperial Playwright.”

“This is not a good time for sightseeing,” the Sword said to Rennick.

Rennick looked him up and down, and then shrugged. “It wasn’t my idea.” But he was subdued, now. He lifted a hand to his face, rubbing the scruff on his chin.

“You can call the Hawks out,” Kaylin continued. “At least the Aerians—”

“We’ve got Aerians here. They’re not currently in the air,” he added. And then he gave her an odd look. “The Hawks have their own difficulties to worry about. I was sorry to hear the news.”

“What news?”

His whole expression shuttered, not that it was ever all that open.

“Voone, what news? What’s happened?”

“You came from the Halls?”

“The Halls don’t usually have access to Imperial Carriages. What happened?”

“No one died,” he replied, and his tone of voice added yet. “But you might want to check in at the office before you head home.”

She wanted to push him for more, but Severn shook his head slightly. “Ybelline.”

There was no Tha’alani guard at the guardhouse. That position was taken up by a dozen Swords. They wore chain, and they carried unsheathed swords. You’d have to be crazy to rush the gatehouse.

Kaylin approached it quietly and answered the questions the Swords asked; they were all perfunctory. Voone escorted them to the squad and left them there, after mentioning her name loudly enough to wake the dead. She noted all of this and tried to squelch her own fear. Severn was right, of course. They’d come here for Ybelline. But the sympathies of Voone made her nervous.

The Swords hadn’t entered the Quarter; they were met by Tha’alani guards. Four men in armor. Their stalks swiveled toward her as she entered.

She saw that they, too, bore unsheathed swords, and it made her … angry. Those weapons just looked wrong in Tha’alani hands; she wondered if they even knew how to use them.

But using them wasn’t an issue. They bowed to her, almost as one man. “Ybelline is waiting for you,” one told her quietly.

“At her house?”

“Not at her domicile. Demett will take you to her.” The man so identified stepped away from his companions.

“Where is she?”

“At the longhouse” was his reply—spoken in the stiff and exact cadence that Tha’alani who were unused to speech used. He obviously expected her to know what the longhouse was, and she didn’t bother to correct him.

She followed him, and it took her a moment to realize why the streets here felt so wrong—they were empty. Usually walking down a Tha’alani street was like walking in the Foundling Hall—it was a gauntlet of little attention-seeking children, with their open curiosity and their utter lack of decorum.

She didn’t care for the change. Hell, even the plants were drooping. Rennick walked between Severn and her, and made certain that there was always at least one body between him and the nearest Tha’alani. He wasn’t overly obvious about it, but it rankled. Even when Kaylin had been terrified of the Tha’alani, she wouldn’t have tried to hide. One, it wouldn’t have done much good and two—well, two, she didn’t casually throw strangers to fates she herself feared.

It was not going to be easy working with Rennick. She spared him a glance every so often, which was more than any of the Tha’alani did. They hadn’t even questioned his presence. It would have been convenient if they had. He’d be on the other side of the gates, where he’d be marginally less annoying.

The guards walked past the latticework of open—and utterly empty—fountains; past the blush of bright pink, deep red and shocking blue flower beds that bordered them; past the neat little circular domes that reminded Kaylin of nothing so much as hills. And if those homes were hills, they were approaching a small fortress that nestled among them. It was two stories tall, and the beams that supported the clay face were almost as wide as she was, and certainly taller. It was larger by far than the building in which Ybelline, the castelord—a word that didn’t suit her at all—chose to live. It was almost imposing.

It was also bloody crowded.

It boasted normal doors—rectangular doors, not the strange ones that adorned most of the Tha’alani homes; these doors weren’t meant to blend with the structure. They stood out. And they were pulled wide and pegged open. Which, given the number of people on the other side of them, made sense—closed doors would have made breathing anything but stale air and sweat almost impossible. As it was, it was dicey.

“This is the longhouse,” Kaylin said.

Demett nodded.

“Demett,” she said, as he turned, “what is the longhouse used for?”

His face went that shade of expressionless that actually meant he was talking—but only to the Tha’alaan: to the minds of his people, and the memories of the dead. She waited for it to pass, as if it were a cloud; it took a while.

“Wait for Ybelline,” he told her quietly.

Ybelline came through the crowd slowly. You could see where she might be moving because her movement caused the other Tha’alani to move, like a human wave composed entirely of bodies. The building was packed. Kaylin thought there might be six or seven hundred people just beyond the open doors, more if the children so absent from the streets were also there.

But Ybelline did not come alone; the movement of the crowd, the slow outward push, wouldn’t have been necessary to allow just one person through. The people spilled out into the streets, beyond Kaylin and Severn. Rennick’s shoulders curled in, and he brought his hands up once or twice, as if to fend off any contact.

The Tha’alani in turn avoided him.

They would. They knew fear when they saw it, especially Rennick’s fear—and his fear was poison to them. They tried just as hard as he did to avoid any contact, but Kaylin had to admit they were more polite about it.

Ybelline appeared at last, between the shoulders of about sixteen tightly grouped men and women. She wore robes, an earth-brown with green edges; her hair was arranged both artlessly and perfectly above her slender neck. Her eyes were the honey-brown of that hair, but they were ringed with gray circles. She looked exhausted.

Exhaustion did not stop her from opening her arms, stepping forward and hugging Kaylin. And nothing in the world would have stopped Kaylin from returning that hug. Nothing.

“Tell me,” she whispered, her lips beside Ybelline’s ear. She knew she should have introduced Rennick, but it had been Severn’s idea to drag him here, and he was therefore, for the moment, Severn’s problem.

The slender stalks, which were the most obvious racial trait of all the Tha’alani, brushed strands of Kaylin’s hair from her forehead, and then settled gently against skin.

They were so delicate, the touch so light, they could hardly be felt at all.

But Ybelline could be—and more, she could be clearly heard. Could clearly hear. With this much contact, she could, if she wanted to, peruse every memory Kaylin had, including ones she wasn’t aware of herself. All the hidden things could be revealed, every bad or stupid or humiliating thing Kaylin had ever done.