Cast In Secret

“Hush.”

But the girl didn’t vanish until Evanton came to stand by Kaylin’s side. “You’re not one for obedience, blind or otherwise,” he told her, with just a hint of frustration in a voice that was mostly approving. “But I believe I told you to look at nothing too closely.”

“If you saw what I saw—”

“I may well, girl. But as I said, I see many things that the water chooses to reveal. There is always temptation, here, and it knows enough to see deeply.”

“Thisis not—”

“Is it not? Here you sit, spellbound, horrified, gathering and hoarding your anger—which, I believe, is growing as the minutes pass. It isn’t always things that tempt our basest desire—not all temptation is sensual or monetary in nature.” He lifted his hands and gestured and the water rippled at the passage of a strong, strong gust.

All images were broken as it did, and the girl’s face passed into memory—but it was burned there. Kaylin would not forget. Couldn’t. Didn’t, if she were honest, have any desire to do so.

“I know what you saw, Kaylin Neya. More of your life is in your face than you are aware of, in this place. And in the store,” he added quietly.

“This is why you called me,” she said, half a question in the flat statement.

“On the contrary, Kaylin, I requested no one. But this, I believe, has some bearing on the call the Hawks did receive. Even had I wanted to deal with the Law directly—and I believe that there are reasons for avoiding it—I would merely send the report or the request. The old, belligerent Leontine who runs the office would decide who actually responds.”

“Marcus,” she said automatically. “Sergeant Kassan.”

“Very well, Sergeant Kassan, although it was clear by description to whom I referred.” He paused, and then added, “Something was taken from this … room.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “How the hell did someone get into this room?”

“A very good question, and believe that I have friends who are even now considering the problem.”

“Friends?”

“At my age, they are few, and not all of them are mortal, but,” he added, and his face warped into a familiar, wizened expression, “even I have some.”

“And they—”

“I have merely challenged them to break into the elementarium without causing anything to alert me to their presence.”

“Good luck,” she muttered.

“They will need more than luck,” he said softly. “But I expect most of them will survive it.”

She straightened slowly, her knees slightly cricked. It made her wonder how long she’d knelt there. The answer was too damn long; she was still tired from the previous night’s birthing. But the elation of saving a cub’s life passed into shadow, as it so often did.

“What was stolen?” she asked Evanton as she rose. Her voice fell into a regular Hawk’s cadence—all bored business. And watchful.

“A small and unremarkable reliquary,” he replied. “A red box, with gold bands. Both the leather and the gold are worn.”

“What was in it?”

“I am not entirely certain,” he replied, but it was in that I-have-some-ideas-and-I-don’t-want-to-tell tone of voice. “The box is locked. It was locked when I first arrived, and the keys that were made to open it … It has no keyhole, Kaylin.”

“So it can’t be opened.”

“Jumping to conclusions, I see.”

She grimaced. “It has to be opened magically.”

“Good girl,” he replied softly.

“This isn’t really Hawk work—”

“The Hawks don’t investigate thefts?”

“Ye-es,” she said, breaking the single syllable into two. “But not petty thefts as such, and not without a better description of the value of what’s been stolen.”

“People will die,” he told her quietly, “while the reliquary is at large. It exerts its power,” he added softly, “on those who see it and those who possess it. Only—” He stopped. His face got that closed-door look that made it plain he would say no more. Not yet.

“There were two people here,” she said at last.

“Yes. Two. An unusually large woman, or a heavyset man, by the look of those treads, and an unusually small one, or a child, by the look of the second.” He met her eyes.

And she knew who the child had been.

The shop seemed more mundane than it had ever seemed when Evanton escorted them back into it. His robes transformed as he crossed the threshold and the power of wisdom gave way to the power of age and gravity as his shoulders fell into their perpetual bend.

He was once again the ancient, withered shopkeeper and purveyor of odd junk and the occasional true magic. And this man, Kaylin had chattered at for most of her adolescence. If Severn was circumspect—a word she privately hated—she had no such compulsion.

“You think there are going to be murders associated with this theft.”

He didn’t even blink. “Indeed.”

“Or possibly already have been. When exactly did you notice this disturbance?”

“Yesterday,” he replied, his lips pursed as he sought his impossible-to-miss key ring.

“But you don’t think it happened yesterday?”

“I can’t be certain, no. As I said, I’ve sponsored a bit of a contest—”

She lifted a hand. “Don’t give me contests I can’t enter.”

He lifted a brow. “Oddly enough, Private, I think you’re one of the few who could. Possibly. You make a lot of noise, on the other hand, and it may—”

“Evanton, please, these are people’s lives we’re talking about.”

“Yes. But if I am to be somewhat honest, they are not lives, I feel, you would be in a hurry to save.”

“You’re dead wrong,” she said, meaning it.

“About at least one of them,” he said softly. “But if I am not mistaken, she is not—yet—in danger. I feel some of the mystery of their entrance can only be answered by her.”