Cast In Secret

Yet even as she thought it, she looked at the mirror, and thought again. Its surface was tarnished and cloudy, and its frame, gold and silver, poorly tended. Unlike the rest of the small, jeweled boxes, the reliquaries—she recognized them for that now—this had been left alone.

“Do they all have mirrors?”

“All?”

“The elemental gardens. There should be four—the fire in the brazier, the water in this small pond, the rocks just beyond those silver trees. I can’t see anything for air—”

“It is very, very hard to build a garden to air,” he replied. “But it is here, and perhaps it is the freest of the elements because it can travel so readily. And the answer is no. None of them do.”

“But this one—”

“Was brought here. It does not belong in this room.”

“But you haven’t moved it.”

“No,” he replied. “And until the Hawks deem it wise, I will not return it to its place. But do not touch it. The hand that held it last left some impression, but it will not, I think, be the equal of yours.”

“You think of everything.”

“I? Hardly. Had I, you would not be here now.”

“Good point. Maybe.” It was hard to leave the mirror, but she did, because the surface of the pond was everything the surface of the mirror was not: clean, smooth, reflective. The breeze that blew above did not touch it at all; she wondered if a pebble would ripple its surface.

“No,” Evanton replied, as if he were reading her mind—which she’d gotten used to in the last few weeks, but still didn’t much care for. “It would not. The earth and the water barely meet here. The pond is not wide,” he added, “but it runs very, very deep.”

She nodded. “These footprints,” she said, although she had barely grazed ground with her eyes, “aren’t yours.”

“No.”

“You know whose they are?”

“I have some suspicion.”

Severn knelt with care at Kaylin’s side and examined the moss. He had seen what she had seen, of course. “There are at least two sets,” he told them both. “The larger set belongs to a person of heavier build than the smaller. I would say human, and probably male, from the size.”

Evanton’s answer was lost.

Kaylin was gazing at the surface of the pond. Although the water was clear, there was a darkness in the heart of it that seemed endless. Deep, he had said, and she now believed it; you could throw a body down here and it would simply vanish. The idea of taking a swim had less than no appeal.

But the water’s surface caught and held light, the light from the ceiling above, the one that Aerians would so love, it was that tall.

She could almost see them fly across it, reflected for a moment in passage, and felt again the yearning to fly and be free. To join them.

It was illusion, of course. There was no such thing as freedom. There was only—

Reflection. Movement.

Not hers, and not Severn’s; Evanton stood far enough back that he cast no reflection.

“Kaylin?” Severn said, his voice close to her ear.

But Kaylin was gazing now into the eyes—the wide eyes— of a child’s bruised face. A girl, her hair long and stringy in the way that unwashed children’s hair could often be, her skin pale with winter, although winter was well away. She wore clothing that was too large for her, and threadbare, and undyed. She wore nothing at all on her feet, for Kaylin could see her toes, dirt in the nails.

She came back to the eyes.

The girl whispered a single word.

Kaylin.

CHAPTER

2

The first thing Kaylin had been taught when she’d been allowed to accompany groundhawks on her first investigation of a crime scene was Do not touch anything or we will never bring you back. This also meant, Do not embarrass us by attempting to steal anything. The Hawks were pretty matter-of-fact about her upbringing; they didn’t actually care. The fiefs couldn’t be actively policed, so it wasn’t as if anything she’d done there was on record. If she had been canny enough to survive life on the streets of Nightshade, tough enough to emerge unscathed, and idealistic enough to want to uphold the Law rather than slide through its grip, so much the better.

It had been a missing-person investigation—which usually meant dead person whose body had yet to be found—and they’d walked the narrow streets that faced the fiefs without—quite—touching them. The Law still ruled in this old, boarded-up manor house, by a riverbank and a couple of narrow bridges.

She had been all of fourteen years old, and had spent six long months begging, badgering, and wheedling; when they said yes, she could follow them, she had nearly stopped breathing.

By that point, being a Hawk was the only thing she wanted, and she had held her fidget-prone hands by her sides, stiff as boards, while the Hawks—Teela and Tain for the most part, although Marcus had come along to supervise—had rambled about a series of large, run-down rooms for what felt like hours.

There wasn’t much in the way of temptation on that particular day: nothing worth stealing.

Nothing she wanted to touch.

But this was so much harder. The girl was young. Younger than many of her orphans, the kitlings she visited, taught to read, and told stories—casually censored—of her adventures to. This girl was bruised; her eyes were wide with terror, her face gaunt with either cold or hunger. And she was real.

The water did not distort her; she did not sink into the depths, beckoning for Kaylin to follow to a watery, slow death. There was an aura about her, some faint hint of magic, but there would have to be.

Kaylin knelt with care by the side of this deep, deep pond, this scion of elemental magics. She did not touch the water’s surface, but it was a struggle not to; not to reach out a hand, palm out, to the child whose dark eyes met hers.

As if he knew it—and he probably did—Severn was behind her. He did not approach the water as closely as she herself had done, but instead put both of his hands on her shoulders and held tight.

“Corporal,” she heard Evanton say quietly, “what do you see?”

“Water,” Severn replied. “Very, very deep water.”

“Interesting.”

“You?”

“I see many things,” Evanton replied. “Always. The water here is death.” He paused and then added, “Almost everything is, to the unwary, in this place.”

“Figures,” Kaylin heard herself say, in a voice that was almost normal. “But whose death?”

“A good question, girl. As always.”

“You usually tell me my questions are—”