The girl sat in a chair in the center of the highest point of the Tower of the Hawks. The aperture of the roof was open; moonlight touched her head and shoulders.

Lord Grammayre, Commander of the Hawks, one of the three bodies that enforced the Emperor’s Law, faced her while she waited; her knees were drawn up to her chest and she’d tucked her chin behind them. She didn’t look up.

She couldn’t leave the Tower, but hadn’t tried; the only time she had reacted at all was during his brief mirrored conversation with the Imperial Office. “You are familiar with the Tha’alani?” he’d asked.

She hadn’t answered, but her tight, strained silence was enough; she knew. “I’ll answer your questions,” she finally said in a low, low voice. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I’ve got no reason to lie.”

“You will forgive me,” he said in a voice that implied that if she didn’t he wasn’t concerned. “Your answers to my questions—any of them—will be suspect.” The girl hadn’t arrived as a guest; nor had she arrived as a messenger. She had arrived—through the roof—as an assassin, and it was clear that she understood the cost of failure. “The Tha’alani are best known for their ability to read thoughts, and they can approach memory clusters of events that you yourself might recall less clearly in a conscious fashion.” He watched her closely. “If you do not resist his examination, it will pass quickly. There will be some minimal discomfort.”

“And if I do?”

He didn’t reply.

In the process of ascertaining that she wasn’t armed, he had discovered marks that ran the length of her visible forearm and her lower legs; he was not certain how far they extended. They were a dark gray that was almost black, and they appeared to be writing, although not in a language that he recognized.

“How old are you, Kaylin?”

She didn’t look up at the sound of her name. Since he assumed that the name she had given him was false, he wasn’t surprised. But there was no defiance in her now. “Thirteen.”

The Tower doors flashed a brief blue before they began to roll open. Standing between them was an older Tha’alani man. His expression was grim and set, and the single defining characteristic of his race—the stalks that occupied a third of his forehead—were weaving stiffly. He bowed.

“Lord Grammayre.”

“Garadin.”

“I apologize for my delay. I headed to the cells first, and was redirected.”

“It is a slightly unusual case.” Lord Grammayre nodded to the girl who occupied the central portion of the Tower.

“This is the subject?”

“Yes.”

“She is…young.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

Garadin hesitated. “May I suggest an alternate agent?”

“I have considered it carefully, but I do not have the luxury of time. I must make a decision, and it must be made with minimal knowledge and minimal paperwork.”

“As you wish, Lord Grammayre.”

The subject in question looked up. Her lips thinned and her body locked as if she were in sudden rigor. But once again, she made no attempt to flee. Her eyes and nostrils widened as Garadin approached. “What,” he asked the Lord of Hawks, “am I to search for? What am I to determine?”

“I wish to know who sent her to the Tower. I wish to know,” he added, “where she received the…tattoos…on her arms and legs, and if possible, the extent to which she understands them.” He hesitated, and then added, “I wish to know, in the limited context of an informational search, what your opinions of her state of mind are.”

Garadin nodded his graying head. He turned, reached for the girl’s face, and drew it closer. She struggled, but it was minimal and visceral; she probably couldn’t control the response. Garadin’s thumbs pushed her matted hair out of the way, exposing skin; he touched her forehead with his stalks.

She screamed.

 

It was the screaming that echoed in the Tower long after Garadin had released the girl. Garadin himself was cool and remote. He had not, of course, physically harmed her at all; the Lord of Hawks bore witness, and in any case, that was not the Tha’alani way. Grammayre lifted one hand, and the circle in which the girl sat began to glow.

“Please,” he said to Garadin. “My office.”

 

“She is thirteen years of age,” Garadin said. His voice, like his expression, was shuttered and would remain so, in Lord Grammayre’s experience. “She knew her mother. She has never met her father. She lives in the fiefs.”

“The fiefs.”

Garadin nodded. “The marks cover her inner arms and legs. They are also found across most of her back, to her knowledge.”

“And the marks themselves?”

Garadin said clearly, “She doesn’t understand what they mean, and she fears them. She does not know how she received them.”

“Did you notice that they were glowing while you were conducting your investigation?”

“No.”

“Ah. They were. They were visible through the cloth of at least her shirt.”

Garadin nodded again, as if the information signified little to him either way. “What do you intend for her?”

“What does she want?”

“That is not in the purview of the requested information.”

“I ask only for your opinions.”

“Grammayre, she is young. She is too young to be a Hawk. Short of remanding her into Imperial custody or the custody of the Foundling Halls—if they would take her—I fail to see why it is relevant.”

“She attempted to kill me.”

“Yes. And she failed. She is cognizant of both facts. She expects to die here, and she will not fight that fate. Will you have her executed?”

“Execution requires the usual run through the Imperial Courts.”

“She is not a citizen of the Empire, as you are well aware.”

The Lord of the Hawks was silent for a long moment. “She is not,” he finally said, “similar to any of the assassins sent against me in the past.” Garadin waited.

“I have arrived at my exalted position,” Lord Grammayre said, grimacing, “by instinct.”

“And that?”

“The marks she bears are dangerous,” he said softly.

“And she has attempted to kill you. I fail to see the significant difficulty.”

“She failed to use them to stop you. Given her reaction otherwise, had she been able to, on a purely instinctive level, she would have.”

The stalk jabbed air. “And had she?” was the slightly pointed question.

“You would—I believe—have been safe in the Tower. But more to the point, my second instinctive reaction is that she might, under the right circumstances, prove useful to the Halls of Law.”

“At thirteen?”

“No. But she will not be thirteen forever. What is your opinion, Garadin?”

Garadin exhaled heavily. “It is my opinion,” he finally said, with the enunciated care of his people, “that had she the capability, she would still have failed to kill you. She has killed, but so, Grammayre, have you. It is neither what she wants nor what she enjoys, and inasmuch as humans loathe their own ‘secret’ failings, she loathes herself for many of the deaths she has caused.

“But it is also my opinion that she is unsuited to a certain type of duty. If you ask—or force—her to kill, you will lose her. She will lose what very, very little sense of self or hope she now possesses.” Garadin stood and began to pace in front of the desk in a tight circle. “Give her something to lose and she will fight with everything she has to defend it. But it must be the right thing. And there is the matter of her age. If she will not always be thirteen, she is thirteen now.”

Lord Grammayre nodded. “It will present challenges,” he finally said. “I will, however, petition the Imperial Court for leeway.”

“And not the Emperor directly?”

“I feel this is…a trivial matter, and the Emperor values his time highly.”

Garadin raised a brow. “An indirect petition will take time.”

“Indeed.” Lord Grammayre was silent for long enough that the interview was almost certainly at an end, but before Garadin could leave, he asked one last question. “What is her name?”

“Kaylin Neya.”

“That is not the name she was known by.”

“No. But inasmuch as you wish to change her circumstances, I feel that it is now the name she should be known by. The choice is, of course, yours.”

 

After Garadin left, Lord Grammayre lifted his head. “Records.”

The mirror on his desk was in no way the equivalent of the stately, full-length oval mirror that adorned his Tower room, but it was perfectly functional. The mirror’s reflection—which consisted mostly of sparsely lined shelves and a very clean desk surface—shivered and fell away; what was left was a gray, blank slate.

“External case file. Time, six months past. Bodies—distinguishing marks. Inner arms. Approximate ages of victims. Cause of death.”

The mirror began to flash as Records disgorged the requested information.

 

Sergeant Marcus Kassan looked up from the paperwork that covered most of the visible surface of his desk, butting in teetering stacks against the mirror that was used for personal communication and research. It was, at the moment, in his favorite state: blank. Mirrors had one of two base states: gray and featureless, or reflective. Sergeant Kassan didn’t find reflective all that useful. He knew what he looked like, and anyone who didn’t like it didn’t make it his problem more than once. For the most part, he didn’t have to deal with outsiders. This was a good thing because most of the outsiders who had cause to visit the Halls of Law were human, and Marcus Kassan was not. He was the sole Leontine employed by the Halls of Law, and the racial fur and large fangs often caused humans less familiar with Leontines some distress.

His office, and therefore his job, was confined to investigations. The front office, which was known colloquially as Missing Persons, was the public face of the Halls. He’d only visited twice, which was one damn time too many.

Looking up, he saw two of his Barrani corporals. They looked, to the practiced eye, grim. Marcus had that practice. “Teela?”

“Three more for the morgue,” she said, voice flat. “The building, except for corpses, was abandoned. Someone set off an Arcane bomb.”

“An Arcane bomb?”

Her partner, Tain, nodded.

“Where was the bomb created?”

“We’ve got three distinct magical signatures,” Teela replied. “We’ve run them through Records. You’re not going to like it.”

“How much less could I like it?”

“They’re all Arcanists.”

He swore. In his mother tongue, it was an impressive roar of sound. The office staff, jaded as they were, barely blinked.

He grimaced. “The corpses?”

“Best guess? They’re human.” This wasn’t as sarcastic as it sounded; the Barrani were immortal and their comprehension of mortal age was often poor.

“Best guess,” he growled. His lips had risen, exposing his fangs.

“Oldest would be ten. Two girls, one boy. Youngest estimate, eight.”

“All three of the dead were children?”

She nodded. “One was missing a hand.”

The growl replaced words, and claws knocked piles of paper off the desk.

“The bodies are being conveyed to Red now. We’re here to pick up some of the magical heavy lifters, and we’ll head back to the location.”

“This is the third in the past six months. The Emperor is not going to be happy.”

Teela grimaced. “Probably happier than the victims,” she said under her breath. She was Barrani. Her hearing was as good as a Leontine’s; what the humans in the office wouldn’t pick up, she knew the Sergeant would. She turned away, and then turned back. “I don’t think this is the last of it. I don’t think we’ll have another few months before we discover another half-burned-down building.”

“Why?”

“Hunter’s Moon.” She said the words calmly.

He heard them, by dint of experience, differently. “This has something to do with the Barrani?”

She was silent for a moment. Exhaling, she finally said, “It may. On no previous occasion was an Arcane bomb used. On no previous occasion was magic used in any significant way. The rest of the setup is consistent with the first two sites—but not the bomb.”

Magic implied, to Teela, Barrani involvement. Barrani involvement, to the Sergeant, implied ulcers. The Hawks enforced Imperial Law, and in theory, everyone who lived in the Empire was subject to that Law. In practice, where there was no interracial involvement claimed, the caste courts for each individual race could—and sometimes did—take precedence. The Barrani caste court would surrender Imperial Criminals to the regular courts when the world ended and there were none of them left standing. If then.

“Humans are perfectly capable when it comes to magic.”

“Yes, sir. But the moon…”

“Yes?”

“It’s a Hunter’s Moon,” she repeated softly.

He frowned. “Before I accept the possibility of Barrani involvement, I need something other than a hunch.” Behind the backs of the two Hawks he could clearly see the wings of an Aerian.

The Hawklord’s presence in the office immediately changed the flow of daily office bitching and gossip, because it was very, very seldom that the Lord descended from his Tower. Usually, if he wanted to give or relay orders, he summoned you up to the heights. Which made this instantly suspicious; if he came to Marcus in the office, it meant he wanted everyone to hear what he had to say.

Marcus glared, briefly, at Teela, who lifted one brow in response.

“We came straight here, Sergeant. If word of the latest disaster has reached the Tower, he’s listening in on the mirror transmissions.”

Not unheard of, but not likely. Marcus rose. “Lord Grammayre,” he said as the Barrani Hawks slowly peeled away from the desk. They’d listen, of course, but they could listen while they pretended to be busy a desk or two away. The humans in the office didn’t have that much grace.

“Sergeant Kassan,” Lord Grammayre replied. “Please, be seated. This is not an emergency.”

The simple sentence should have put Marcus at ease. It didn’t. He waited, hoping his ears tufts weren’t standing on end.

The Hawklord flexed his wings and then settled them tightly down his back. “I have an admittedly unusual request to make of your department.”

What a surprise. Marcus folded his arms across his chest and continued to stand. “At the moment, we’re working to capacity,” he said in as neutral a tone as a territorial Leontine could muster.

“I expect no less from the Hawks,” was the smooth reply.

“The last time you had a nonemergency favor, you stuck us with a Court scribe.”

“Yes. And you survived.”

“So did he.”

“As you say. He is not likely to request a repeat, and you are now personally owed a favor by a junior member of the human caste court. But that is not the subject I wish to discuss at the moment.”

Marcus waited. A low growl had set up shop in the back of his throat; it was quiet because his jaws were clamped shut.

Lord Grammayre’s eyes were a pale shade of ash-gray, which was good. “I assure you that the current unusual request will cause vastly less difficulty than the previous one.”

Marcus, still waiting, said nothing. It was, however, a loud nothing.

The Hawklord raised a brow. “Sergeant.”

Marcus knew damn well that he couldn’t say no. But his yes lacked grace and finesse, and he liked to draw it out for as long as possible. “What unusual request do you want us to handle in the middle of a possible disaster?”

“Do you remember the unusual investigation we participated in in the fief known as Nightshade half a year ago?”

Marcus stilled. The office held its collective breath, except for Joey, who showed his usual situational awareness and continued to chatter in the background. “The ritual serial killings?”

“Yes.”

It would have been impossible to forget them; there was exactly one occasion in which the Hawks had lent any of their expertise to an investigation that was theoretically outside the bounds of their—or the Empire’s—jurisdiction.

“One of the possible intended victims appears to have survived. She is currently in custody.”

“The investigation was closed.”

“It was. It is not being reopened now.”

“You think the girl knows something—”

“No. I know for a fact she knows nothing about either the cause or the killers.”

“Then why is she relevant?”

“As I said, she is currently in custody. She arrived voluntarily,” he added.

“So did your scribe, as I recall.” Before the Hawklord could reply, Marcus lifted one padded hand in surrender. Unfortunately, his claws were extended. The Hawklord noticed, of course, but failed to react. Given that one of his reactions could have been the Sergeant’s instant demotion, that was for the best.

“You want my Hawks to escort her home?”

“That would be difficult,” was the bland reply. “Since, at the moment, she has none. She was born—and raised—in the fiefs.”

Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, no. No. Absolutely not.”

“No?”

“If she was a possible victim, that would make her what, twelve? Thirteen?”

“Indeed.”

“You are not turning the Hawks into a babysitting service. The scribe was bad enough—but at least he was legal.”

“I do not require babysitting, as you put it. Nor do I require that the Hawks provide that service, since they are undoubtedly poorly trained for it.”

“Good.”

“She is,” Lord Grammayre continued, “thirteen, not three. She is capable of rudimentary self-defense. I think it highly doubtful that she will expire behind your capable backs when you’re not paying attention.”

“So you do want babysitting.”

The Hawklord grimaced. “I want your observational skills. She is, in my opinion, highly unusual, and she may prove to be of significant benefit to the department.”

“At thirteen?”

“Perhaps. She is not, however, well educated.”

Had he been human, Sergeant Kassan would have groaned.

“She will require lessons in basic skills.”

“How basic?”

“She is not, in my opinion, capable of reading at anything but street-sign level. Nor does she have the requisite skill in secondary languages.”

“The requisite skill…for what?”

“To serve the Law, Sergeant Kassan.”

The silence had managed to catch even Joey’s attention by this point. The only person who broke it was the only person who dared.

“Consider this a progressive experiment on the benefits of early education, Sergeant. It will not be an onerous task. I wish you to introduce her to the duties—and the training—of the Hawks. If she is entirely unsuitable, we will review the attempt and decide at that point how to proceed.”

“Where—exactly—did you intend her to stay?”

“Stay?”

“I note you said she’s currently without a permanent residence.”

“Ah, yes. She has had some experience in scrounging a meager living from the streets for herself. Some funding will, of course, be allocated should you decide that she would be better situated in an apartment with a known address. And while I would love to continue this discussion, the Lords of Law meet with the Emperor in an hour, and I believe today’s meeting will be somewhat…sensitive.”

 

The Halls of Law had been designed by a handful of architects who worked under the watchful eye of the Emperor. It had always been his stated intent to have his city policed by its citizens, and the Halls had therefore been built with an eye to the varying physical needs of the races that comprised Elantra. To date, only one of the three Towers had made any attempt to fulfill Imperial Intent: the Hawks. Lord Grammayre was, of course, Aerian, and it was expected that his rise to power would see an influx of fellow Aerians. What was less expected was the advent of a Leontine and a dozen Barrani. For the most part, the people who policed the streets of Elantra were human.

But it wasn’t the humans who had been sent to the holding cells to retrieve one of its newest occupants, and the lone Aerian who now stood outside a locked door frankly begrudged the trip. While the halls were wide enough and tall enough to accommodate Aerian wings, they were very enclosed; none of the Aerians considered the cells a suitable jail.

Clint, of the Camaraan Flight, was that Aerian. In the pay of the Hawks he generally performed two services: he served as a guard at the doors, and he patrolled the skies above the sprawl of the city itself. He did not serve as a jail escort for children. On the other hand, he liked his work, and refusing the order was about the same as quitting outright, but with the added discomfort of ire thrown in.

He wasn’t entirely certain what to expect, and his hand hovered over the door ward for just a second before he pressed his palm against the glowing rune. The door slid open. No one stepped out.

Clint grimaced. Dropping one hand to a small club, he stepped into the open doorway, spreading his wings slightly as they rose in a defensive arch at his back. Not all of the drunks thrown into the cells were friendly or docile when they woke, which is why two guards were usually assigned to escort them out.

The cells weren’t large. Since all they usually contained were a single man or woman in the throes of a hangover, this wasn’t considered an issue, and Clint was accustomed to seeing belligerence, embarrassment, and guilt on the faces of those he’d been sent to show the doors. True, he’d also seen fury and homicidal rage, but those were rarer, and led not to the streets, but to a different set of holding cells.

The occupant of this particular cell didn’t rage; she also didn’t weep. She sat, looking much smaller than she should have on a cot that size, her knees tucked under her chin, her arms wrapped around her shins. Only her chin rose as he stepped into the doorway. He waited for her to say something; she waited for him to speak.

He blinked. “Follow me.”

After a listless moment, she did exactly that.

 

There was no defiance in the girl. Shame or guilt he could have handled, but instead there was a quiet—and deep—sense of gray despair that permeated her every movement. She noted almost immediately that he was carrying a truncheon, but it didn’t surprise her; he noticed that she did a brief visual scan in the usual places for more lethal weapons as well. But her gaze, when it touched him at all, went straight past his eyes, and therefore his facial expression, to a point above his shoulders.

Whatever she saw there wasn’t making her any happier, and it didn’t make her any more talkative. She didn’t even ask where she was being led. Clint wasn’t certain what the Hawklord had told her; normally he didn’t care. But halfway through the halls that led—slowly—toward the inner office, he found himself wishing he’d asked, because halfway to the office skirted the edge of the Aerie, the tallest part of the Halls of Law. Here, the Aerians practiced drill and formation when the weather was truly crappy.

Aerians weren’t birthed with a natural suit of armor, and they didn’t learn first flight wearing it; the Aerians who were accepted into the Halls of Law therefore had to build some muscle and acclimatize themselves to the more exhausting rigors of long flights sporting extra weight. Their first laden flights were often practiced in the Aerie of the Halls as well, as the shouting in the heights above attested.

The girl looked up as they began to cross the floor and froze, tilting her head back far enough Clint was half-certain he’d have to catch her before she toppled over backward. She didn’t, and something about her expression robbed him of the curt tone that orders were usually given in. The width of her eyes implied something like awe, but the turn of her lips, pain; the dichotomy was striking.

Humans were, among mortals, a singularly frustrating race, because so many of the subtle signs of mood were missing. The biggest of these was the color of the eyes: they had one. That one conveyed exactly nothing. Aerians, Leontines, and the slightly disturbing Tha’alani had the range of normal emotional color shifts, as did the Barrani and the Dragons. Humans were slightly defective. As a small child, Clint had once asked if they were really only intelligent animals, because animals had eyes that were exactly as unchanging. His father had snickered. His mother had been very unamused.

But watching the girl, he felt moved to words. Words, sadly, weren’t his strength, but he tried anyway. “You’ve never met Aerians before, have you?”

“Lord Grammayre,” she said, breaking away instantly and flushing slightly, as if caught in a criminal activity. Or a childish one. “I met Lord Grammayre.” Her gaze immediately hit floor and clung there as if rooted.

“Lord Grammayre asked that I escort you to meet our Sergeant,” he finally said. It was absurd to be talking this carefully to a street thief from the fiefs. Who said she was thirteen? Clint wasn’t certain he believed it now; that kind of wonder was usually reserved for people who could afford to be naive and optimistic. He’d flown low patrols over parts of the fiefs, and he couldn’t believe that this girl was one of those.

“What’s your name?” he asked, because thinking of her as “the girl” was beginning to irritate him.

“Kaylin,” she replied, with enough hesitance it was clearly a lie. “Kaylin Neya.”

“I’m Clint of Camaraan.”

“Camaraan? You’re not from the City?”

“Home is the Southern Stretch,” he replied. When her expression didn’t change, he added, “Yes, I’m from the City—the mountains to the south are considered the City’s outer boundary by the Emperor. Camaraan is my flight. The closest thing you’d have to it is family, although family is too small a word.”

She fell silent, as if regretting the brief outburst of genuine curiosity. This time, her expression stiffened into a neutral mask; it added years to her face.

“Come on,” he told her. “Or we’ll be late.”

 

A Leontine in the very best of moods often sent humans scuttling for the nearest cover. Leontines were taller than the average human, broader, more heavily built—without any fat or extra padding—and entirely covered in fur. They also had obvious fangs, and when annoyed, very obvious claws. Marcus was not in the best of moods.

Aware of this, and aware of why, Caitlin lingered by his desk. In part she could do this with a minimum of effort because the papers he’d accidentally sent flying still covered large parts of the floor, and they were important—for a value of important that screamed bureaucracy—so she had a reason to be there.

Caitlin was officially his aide. She was unofficially everyone’s aide, as long as people didn’t attempt to take advantage of her better nature and her inability to tell them all to drop dead when they tried to shift a crapload of their work onto her shoulders. Marcus had no difficulty with the latter, so things worked out, a few complaints and bruises aside. She was quiet, pleasant, sane, and sympathetic; she was also extremely well organized.

She looked up from a pile of paper she was collating, and Marcus caught a glimpse of her expression before she once again returned to work. It was enough to make him consider, briefly, strangling the Hawklord.

Clint escorted the experiment in early education to the business end of Marcus’s desk; he then took up position one step back and to the girl’s left. And she was a girl. If someone had told Marcus she was ten, he’d have believed it. She approached his desk as if she expected to have her throat ripped out—and deserved it. But she didn’t weep or snivel or plead; he gave her that.

“Name?” he said brusquely.

“Kaylin. Kaylin Neya.”

“Kaylin. You will look at me when I’m speaking to you. The floor isn’t that interesting, and it’s never going to be a threat.” He turned to the mirror and barked for Records. “Record. Kaylin Neya, first interview.”

Her eyes had widened as she watched the shifting swirl of color in the mirror resolve itself into her reflection—absent the rest of the clutter of the office and the Sergeant himself.

“Age?”

“Thirteen.”

“Residence?”

She frowned and remained silent.

“NFA?”

This changed her frown, rather than dissolving it.

“NFA?”

“No fixed address.”

She nodded.

Caitlin, who’d been watching the very brief and businesslike exchange, now leaned slightly over the desk. “Kaylin,” she said quietly, “when was your last meal?”

“P-pardon?”

“When did you last eat?”

The girl was clearly not one of nature’s liars. Caitlin’s question was not the one she’d expected, and she had no ready answer to offer. Which, of course, was answer enough for Caitlin.

“Yes,” Marcus said, before she could ask his permission to leave to find something for the girl to eat. He didn’t watch her go; the girl did. He gave her ten seconds, which was nine more than anyone else in the office would have gotten, before he barked her name in staccato syllables. “What did I tell you?”

“I look at you when you’re speaking to me, sir.”

“Good. Does Caitlin look like me?”

She flinched. “No, sir.”

“Was she talking to you?”

“No, sir.”

“Then pay attention!”

 

It was raining. Marcus hated rain. He entered his pridlea squelching through puddles of the runoff from his fur. The fact that he’d spent more time than the walk home required in the streets only made it worse, but he’d needed the time to think.

Kayala, the first and oldest of his five wives, took one look at him and, with a resigned but heated growl, helped him to towel dry. This was an act of great love, as she loathed the smell of wet fur. When she considered him dry enough, she dragged him toward the hearth; Graylin had started the fire burning and dimmed the lights with a curt growl that meant she was considering ripping out their vital organs. Some days, it was a pity that lights didn’t have vital organs; Marcus would have removed a few of them himself.

“Marcus, why are you bringing work home with you?”

Marcus stretched out across the fur-strewn floor. His three daughters took this as an invitation—although they took pretty much anything as an invitation—to leap all over him. They gnawed at his arms and legs while he tossed them in the air. Reesa joined them, but given Kayala’s expression, none of his other wives did.

He spoke over and around the yowling and the high growls, some of which were his own. Children only noticed tone at this time of night, not content. “We were right,” he said grimly.

“There was a third house.”

He nodded. “Teela and Tain almost managed to track them down, but some word must have gone out. They arrived to corpses and—” he spit “—an Arcane bomb.”

Kayala frowned. “Why does the Emperor not deem them illegal? The only purpose they seem to serve is to throw off the magical scent.”

“Gods know. His gods,” was the careful reply. “We’ll sift through the wreckage tomorrow. Red’s doing an autopsy, but we don’t expect to uncover anything. Or not anything good.”

“How many dead this time?”

“Three. Two girls, one boy.”

His wife began to growl, and the children, piqued, looked up; she shifted the tone of that growl into something playful, hooding the fangs she hadn’t consciously exposed as she did. Marcus’s years with the Hawks had taught them both many things. One: that people were strange. Two: that people were, regardless of race, racial characteristics, or longevity, still people. Except perhaps the Immortals.

Children were children. He cuffed one of his on the ear and she rolled away, exposing her throat and mewling helplessly, which caused Kayala to laugh and sniff the air for threats. This period of supposed helplessness didn’t last long; the kit was back on his chest in a matter of minutes, her small pads and insignificant claws batting Marcus’s face.

“There’s more,” Kayala said, because she knew him well.

“You mean besides the meeting Grammayre had with the other Lords of Law and the Emperor?” He curbed his tongue; Kayala preferred “clean” language around the children. “We look like incompetents and fools. The Imperial Guard is probably snorting in contempt.”

“The Imperial Guard is tasked with protecting the Emperor,” was the dismissive reply. No one could, in her opinion, come close to killing the Emperor, so it was a pathetically easy job. “Your job is to protect the helpless, the defenseless.”

“And the stupid. Don’t forget the stupid.” Marcus dropped his face into his hands, dislodging Leanndra in the process. “We’re not doing our job at the moment. And we’re not the ones who are paying for our incompetence.”

Kayala slid an arm around his shoulders and gently bit his ears. “And?”

He growled at her; she held tight. “Grammayre decided that today, in the middle of this disaster, we’re going to start a—a progressive early-education experiment.”

“Pardon?”

“He’s given us a fiefling. A child.”

Her frown was more serious. “Marcus.” She nodded pointedly at the children, who didn’t appear to be listening. “The Hawklord is not, and has never been, a fool. What does he want from this child?”

“I don’t know. He wants her to tag along underfoot and learn the ropes. Now. Maybe he wants us to protect her.”

“From what?”

“Kayala—I don’t know. She’s scrawny. Underfed. She can’t read. She can speak, but so far, not much—which is the only blessing. She’s marked the same way the children who died in the fiefs were. Says she’s thirteen, but she could be ten. She came to the Hawklord from the fiefs, and he intends her to stay.”

“Where?”

That set up another growl, and Marcus had more difficulty squelching this one. “You can mirror Caitlin tomorrow and ask. I don’t believe Caitlin was happy with my response either, and she’s taken the situation in hand.”

 

“I’m sorry, dear,” Caitlin said as she opened her door into a dim apartment. “But we really had very little notice. I’ve sent messages to a number of possible landlords, but at this time of day, I don’t expect to hear back until tomorrow.” She nonetheless swept Kaylin into her home. The girl was quiet, and had been quiet for most of the walk from the Halls of Law. The workday had been long—and given the events reported by Teela and Tain, that wasn’t likely to change any time in the near future.

In spite of her apologetic words, the first thing Caitlin did was check her mirror. It was in its reflective state, but no aurora of color blurred the image; no one had called. With a sigh, she turned back to the girl, who remained standing, shoulders slumped, in the small vestibule that served as a hall.

Caitlin was one of the few Hawks who had no desire to walk the beat or be in the thick of things. She liked the office, she tolerated the office squabbles, and she organized the paperwork required by the Imperial Palace. She knew who everyone was; everyone knew who she was. She understood which rules were firm and which could be nudged or broken; inasmuch as an office could be, it was like a home—a family home. Her own apartment was her retreat.

But, like the office, she opened it up at need.

She tapped the lights and they began to glow, revealing the clutter of her home. It wasn’t that Caitlin was messy; she wasn’t. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to part from gifts or other small tokens of affections, no matter how tacky they actually were. Still, her kitchen was clean, and the mess itself was mostly free of dust and cobwebs. She walked into the kitchen and then walked back out when she realized she wasn’t being followed. Biting back a sigh, she said, “Kaylin?”

The girl moved hesitantly through the hall, pausing briefly to glance at the two framed paintings on the walls nearest the door. Caitlin waited until Kaylin moved into the larger sitting room in which guests were entertained, if entertain was the right word. “Please, take a seat.”

The girl took a dubious look at clothing that had weathered a few unwashed days and a night in the cells, and then at the very clean upholstery. “I can stand,” she finally said. “Or I can sit on the floor. We didn’t have a lot of furniture—” She stopped speaking, swallowed, and said nothing.

“If you must sit on the floor,” Caitlin told her, “come sit in the kitchen. I’ll be making dinner, and I’d be happy for the company.” It wasn’t, strictly speaking, completely true, but it was true enough for the moment. Had she been opposed to company, she wouldn’t have invited the girl home.

She took the cutting board off its place on the wall, and slid two knives from their block. No, she would have come home to the comfort and safety of her own apartment while the child wandered the streets in the dark, waiting for the Halls of Law to once again open its doors. She grimaced.

Kaylin came into the kitchen. “Can I help with anything?”

Caitlin raised a brow in surprise. She started to say no, and then thought better of it. “Yes, if you’re all right handling knives. I’ve broth in the pot on the stove. It’s cool now. If you’ll take over the potatoes and carrots, I’ll start the stove going.”

She did start the fire, and thought with a grimace that she should have reversed the tasks, as the girl was young enough to be truly flexible, and the stove hadn’t gotten less finicky or more easy to load with the passage of years. But when she was done, she watched Kaylin work. The girl was slow, deliberate, and focused; it was as if the task itself deserved or demanded all of her attention. Or as if it distracted her from her surroundings; she didn’t want to be here. Caitlin wasn’t offended.

She thanked Kaylin for her help, told her where to find dishes, and left the soup to boil.

 

Part of the reason for the girl’s discomfort came up over dinner. “Look, I appreciate you trying to help me find a place,” she said in a tone of voice that didn’t exactly ooze gratitude, “but you have to know something—I can’t afford one. I’ve got next to no money.”

“You’ll need a place to stay, dear.”

Kaylin shrugged. “I’ll find a place to stay.”

“On this side of the river?”

The girl fell silent. She’d eaten a large meal and was still picking at the bread, but her gaze was on that unfocused elsewhere. “No,” she finally said, the single word very low. “Probably one of the fiefs.”

“Oh? Which one?”

She shrugged. “Does it matter?” The words were laced with enough bitterness that they added years to her.

“If I understood Lord Grammayre correctly, you’re to work in some capacity for the Hawks.”

Kaylin was silent.

“To do that, you’ll need to live in the City. The Law doesn’t extend—”

“To the fiefs? I know. Believe that I know.”

Silence. Caitlin didn’t let it get uncomfortable. “Were you born in the fiefs?”

“Yes. In Nightshade.”

“You’ve never lived in the City.”

“No—we had no way of getting here, and no way of affording it even if we did.”

Since the fiefs were a footbridge away from the rest of the City, getting here, as Kaylin put it, wasn’t the problem. But living here, with no job and no family, would be. “Do you want to go back?”

Kaylin stared at her as if she’d grown an extra head, which Caitlin assumed meant no. “No,” she said, voice low. “But I have no idea what to do here.” She threw one arm wide as if to take in the whole city.

“If I know the Sergeant, he’ll find something. I won’t guarantee that you’ll like it,” she added. “But he won’t let you starve while you’re working for him. He is a bit intimidating when you first meet him.” She expected Kaylin to either agree or declare her Total Lack of Fear, but the girl did neither. She was watchful. “He’s Leontine. Have you met a Leontine before?”

“No. Some Barrani, but mostly just humans.”

“You won’t see a lot of Leontines in the rest of Elantra, either. They tend to stay in the Leontine Quarter. You probably noticed his fangs.”

Kaylin gave a vigorous nod.

“He doesn’t use them except in exceptional circumstances. You will never be an exceptional circumstance. He does, on the other hand, forget about his claws. If you ever see the surface of his desk—and there’s a chance you won’t for a couple of months—it’s heavily gouged. You said you’ve met Barrani?”

“Yes.”

And clearly, she wasn’t fond of the experience. “You’ll have noticed their eyes change color depending on their mood?”

“Blue is death.”

“Good. In Leontines, red is death. Gold is good. Orange is pushing your luck. Also, if he looks like he’s gained thirty pounds in a minute? That’s just his fur, but it’s bad. If you’ve done something to cause a shift in eye color the best thing you can do is to expose your throat. Like this,” she added, lifting her chin.

Kaylin’s brow rippled toward the bridge of her nose in disbelief. “You said—”

“That he won’t use his fangs, yes. But exposing your throat is a way of acknowledging—in Leontine terms—that he’s the boss.”

“Oh. And he won’t try to tear it out?”

“He hasn’t yet. What else is there? The Aerians mostly live in the Southern Stretch, but one or two do make their homes in the City itself—it requires more space and ceiling height than most of the buildings have.”

“The Barrani?”

“They also live in the City. Some make their home in the High Halls, which is where the Barrani caste court reigns. There is no Barrani Quarter; there is no Aerian Quarter. Only the Leontines and the Tha’alani have a separate Quarter, but in the case of the Leontines, there are no walls to mark it.” She hesitated again, and decided that she’d asked enough questions for the evening.

“Let me get some blankets. I’m sorry,” she added, “but I don’t have an extra bed. I’ve got the couch here, and bedrolls if you’d prefer the floor. I’m an early riser,” she added a little apologetically, “so I might wake you.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure?”

“It’s okay for me to stay here?”

“I’m sure. It’s a great deal safer than the streets at night.”

“Here? There aren’t even any Ferals. There’s probably not much that can hurt me.” She rose. “I’m sure, dear. If you can sleep in the street, that’s fine—but I won’t be able to sleep knowing I sent you there. I’m not doing this for your sake, I’m doing it for my own. Can you live with that?”

Kaylin nodded. Caitlin brought her both blankets and bedroll and was not at all surprised that the girl chose to sleep on the floor.

 

She was slightly surprised that Kaylin was already awake in the morning. She’d folded the blankets and rolled up the bedroll and left them neatly beside one wall, and she sat on the floor, waiting. She was dressed. Dear gods.

Caitlin turned and began to root through her closet; she came up with a shirt and a set of trousers that she thought would definitely need a belt. But belts, she did have, and the clothing had the benefit of being clean and in good repair.

She handed these to Kaylin, who looked set to object—politely. “You can give them back when your own clothes are clean, but you cannot continue to go in to work in the clothing you’re wearing now. It needs mending, and it needs patching as well, and for the next week or two, I won’t have time to do either. Can you?”

“…a little.”

“Good. I imagine you have no needles, no thread, and no scraps, to go along with the lack of a roof over your head. The needles, thread, and scraps I can supply now, and we’re working on the problem of a roof.”

“I could sleep in the cells at night,” she offered.

“Absolutely not.”

“They’re warm, and they’re safe.”

“You will sleep in the cells,” she replied firmly, “over my dead body.”

 

They made it most of the way to the office before Kaylin spoke again, and it was in a much quieter voice. “Caitlin, what does he want from me?”

“Who, dear? Marcus?” Mostly, he wanted her gone, but Caitlin was not about to say this out loud.

“The Hawklord.”

She started to answer—Caitlin could say a lot of words that meant precisely nothing in measured, even tones and very erudite words—and stopped herself. “I don’t know. I know the Sergeant far better than I know Lord Grammayre, so anything I say here will be at best a guess. I could be entirely wrong.”

“What’s your guess?”

“I think he wants you to learn about the Hawks because he thinks something about the Hawks will mean something to you. Something more than just a job and a roof over your head, although there is absolutely nothing wrong with those two things.”

The girl was silent for half a block. “Why?”

“Why, dear?”

“Why do you think he thinks that?”

“It’s just a hunch,” was her quiet reply.

 

The arrival at the doors was poorly timed; they weren’t the only people who were on their way in, and although it was early, they were made to wait. This in itself wasn’t unfortunate, but the reason they were made to wait was: some of the Barrani Hawks were carrying stretchers into the building. They’d make their way to the morgue, where Red would be waiting to examine them; Caitlin was pretty sure she knew which bodies lay beneath the heavy sheeting that covered the stretchers.

She turned protectively to Kaylin, who watched in silence. After a moment, Caitlin said, “You’ve seen corpses before.”

Kaylin, still watching as the Barrani conveyed the dead up the stairs and through the open door, nodded bleakly. “I thought it would be different here, across the bridge.” The whole of her expression was simultaneously hard and fragile, as if it were porcelain. “What did they do?”

“Pardon?”

“Why did they kill them?”

A moment went by as Caitlin sorted through the words to figure out what they were actually asking. When she did, her brows rose into her hairline. “The Barrani did not kill them,” she told the girl, a little more vehemently than she’d intended.

Kaylin glanced at Caitlin, and to her surprise, Caitlin caught the girl by her shoulders and pulled her around. “Kaylin, those Barrani are Hawks. They patrol the streets of the City in an attempt to enforce the Emperor’s Laws. One of those laws prohibits murder, and the courts are especially harsh when the victims are children. The Hawks didn’t kill whoever they’re taking to the morgue—someone else did.

“And we are going to find out who it was.”

“And then what?” was the bitter reply.

“And then he’ll be brought to justice. Or she,” Caitlin added, to be fair.

“Justice.” The girl almost spit. The bodies disappeared through the open door as she watched. “I’ve seen justice like this all my life. I thought it would be different—”

Caitlin shook her. “You don’t know what it’s like. You haven’t lived here for more than a day—at best. Don’t judge. Watch. Learn. Do you want to see where the bodies are going, and why?”

Kaylin’s eyes were wide, but she was almost mute; she managed a nod. Feeling slightly ashamed of her temper, Caitlin let go of the girl’s arms, and instead caught her by one hand and marched her to the doors.

Clint and Navarre were on duty. They lowered their weapons to bar entrance, because it was actually part of their job; today it was not a part of their job Caitlin had any patience with. She didn’t shout or raise her voice, however; she merely gave them a pointed look at her hand, and the child attached to it. The weapons rose sheepishly, although Clint looked faintly concerned.

“Is everything all right?” he asked. But he asked Kaylin, not Caitlin.

“She saw the bodies arrive,” Caitlin replied, because it was absolutely clear to her that Kaylin wouldn’t.

Clint’s normally friendly face lost much of its warmth.

“We’re heading to the morgue,” Caitlin added.

 

The morgue was run by a man known to the Hawks as Red. It wasn’t his legal name, but he had a severe dislike for that—why, Caitlin honestly didn’t know—and was therefore called Red by anyone who wanted him to do any work for them again, ever. Except for his dislike of his name, he was an even-tempered, serious man, and like most of the Hawks, spent far too many hours at work when the situation demanded it.

Kaylin entered the room behind Caitlin and stopped just inside the doorway. The bodies had already been moved from stretchers to tables, although they remained covered. Red was speaking in low tones to the Barrani Hawks who’d stayed behind. There were two. He looked up as Caitlin cleared her throat. So did the Barrani.

“Caitlin?” Red said as he headed toward her. “What brings you here?”

Caitlin smiled and nodded toward Kaylin. “Kaylin, this is Red. Red, this is Kaylin.”

Red held out a hand, which Kaylin immediately took. “Pleased to meet you.” He turned to Caitlin again and raised a brow.

“Kaylin, by request of Lord Grammayre, is to spend some time in the company of the Hawks.”

“She’s a bit young to be a recruit, isn’t she?” was his dubious reply.

“She is.”

“And possibly a bit young to see the inside of a working morgue.”

“That, I doubt.” She looked toward Kaylin. “Do you want to leave?”

Kaylin frowned, but shook her head. “What is this place?”

“The morgue.”

“Yes, I heard that—I mean, what’s it for?”

Red shrugged. “This is where the dead are brought, but only in two cases. If a person has died in suspicious circumstances, their body is brought here, where they’re examined for traces of magic and chemical interference. If we find either, we log it as a murder, and the Hawks are sent to investigate.”

“And these?” She looked at the three covered corpses.

He was silent for a long moment. “These,” he finally said, “there’s no question. They were murdered. We’re not looking for proof of a murder versus natural causes, we’re looking for anything about the death itself that might give us information about the killers.”

Kaylin glanced pointedly at the two Barrani who were lounging—there really wasn’t another word for it—by the far wall, looking bored. One of them peeled herself off the wall as she noticed the look Kaylin was giving them. She sauntered over to Red. Her eyes were a shade of green that had a lot of blue in it, but at the moment, given the surroundings, that was fair.

The younger girl stood her ground, but she bent into her knees and her hands reached for air before she realized she wasn’t actually armed. Teela raised a dark brow.

“You don’t have daggers,” she said conversationally. “And even if you did, you’d be committing suicide if you drew one on me.”

Kaylin said nothing.

“You think we killed them,” was Teela’s flat comment.

“And you didn’t?”

Red looked slightly shocked.

“As it happens, no, we didn’t.” She lifted a brow in Caitlin’s direction; Caitlin, however, had her expression on lockdown. “Not that we’ve got anything against a little violence, but we like a bit of fight.” Her smile was distinctly unfriendly.

Kaylin’s was entirely absent. After a minute, she looked at Red and said, clearly, “You believe them?”

Tain—and it was Tain—whistled. “You are not here to make any friends, are you?”

Red, however, raised both his hands and said, “Of course I believe them!”

“Why?”

Even Teela looked surprised.

“I’ve seen Barrani on the streets for most of my life,” Kaylin told him. “They could do more damage than Ferals.”

“Ferals?” Teela frowned. Oddly enough, the frown broke the tension that had been growing in her expression. “Wait, you grew up in the fiefs?”

“I did.” After a small pause, she added, “Nightshade.”

“Nightshade,” was the cool reply, “is outcaste.”

Kaylin’s expression didn’t change.

Looking over Kaylin’s head, Teela met Caitlin’s steady gaze. “You’re certain the Hawklord insisted that she learn the ropes?”

“You were there, Teela. You heard every word, and Barrani memory is pretty much perfect.”

“Yes, but mortal memory isn’t,” Teela replied, grinning. “All right, we’ll take her.”

“P-pardon?”

“You heard me. Mortal hearing is inferior, but not that inferior.”

“I’m not certain that’s what Lord Grammayre had in mind,” Caitlin said stiffly.

“He probably doesn’t know what he had in mind, either. Look, she doesn’t even know what an outcaste is. She’s certainly got no clue about what the Hawks do—and what they don’t, which is more germane at the moment. I’m guessing she has very rudimentary fighting skills, and she can probably handle herself if things get ugly.”

“Teela, may I point out that she’s underage?”

Teela shrugged as if to say it was irrelevant. From a Barrani view, the difference between thirteen and eighteen was probably inconsequential, but then again, the Barrani didn’t write the laws. “We’re not asking her to fight. We’re not asking her to take statements. We’re not asking her to deliver the bad news to parents or the families of the deceased. We’re not asking her to do anything, Caitlin, except hang around and observe.

“We can keep her alive,” she added.

“And what protects her from you?”

“Ironjaw.”

Caitlin cleared her throat. “Please keep in mind that we have—”

“Ironjaw is what the Sergeant is called behind his back,” Tain told Kaylin. “I’m Tain,” he added. “And this is Teela. How strong is your stomach?”

“Depends. What am I eating?”

“Oh, not eating,” was the slightly evil reply. “Watching.”

“Tain,” Red began. The door ward’s high-pitched scree saved him from giving the rest of the possible lecture.

“Mage is here,” Teela told Caitlin. “We’re up. If you want to head back to the office to prevent the use of reports as kitty litter, we’ll keep an eye on Kaylin.”

Kaylin looked close to panic.

“…unless she’s too afraid to watch.”

“Teela,” Caitlin said, “be nice, dear.”

“I’m not afraid,” was the defiant—and expected—reply. Caitlin sighed and handed over the reins. “I’ll expect her back at my desk at closing,” she warned the two Barrani.

“We’ll have her there. In one piece, even.”

 

Kaylin stayed as close to Red as she could without hiding behind him. She didn’t trust the Barrani, but she was already kicking herself—mentally—for antagonizing them. She would never have done anything that stupid in Nightshade. But Nightshade was gone. She would never go back there, not alive—and dead, she wouldn’t care, because she wouldn’t feel a thing.

She looked around the room. It was practically empty; there was one stool, unoccupied, against a wall; there was one long counter with a couple of jars pushed back against the wall beneath some cupboards. There was a heavy basin in the center of the counter, and a couple of buckets to one side on the floor. And there were tables. A lot of tables. Across from the cupboards was the longest mirror Kaylin had ever seen in her life; it stretched from one end of the wall to the other. It had no frame to speak of, which was also something she’d never seen.

In it, she watched the two Barrani. Teela. Tain. They had the long, dark hair of Barrani everywhere, and they also had the flawless skin, the perfect beauty, that made them seem so dangerously aloof. Except when Tain had smiled, she’d noticed that one of his teeth was chipped. It made her vindictively happy for just a moment, but that kind of happiness never lasted.

Case in point: the doors opened and an older man stepped into the room. His hair was that streaked dark that people called gray, and his eyes were a very cool blue; he had a beard. He was wearing a dress, several rings, and an expression that could have frozen water. It thawed slightly when Red approached.

“Ceridath Morlanne,” the man said, “from the Imperial Order of Mages. I was informed that my services were urgently required.” He glanced at the bodies.

Red nodded. “It’s not pretty,” he added, “but we won’t start our work until yours is done.”

“Very well. Let’s get to work on this, shall we?” He approached the first of the blanketed corpses. “You wish me to scan all three?”

“Yes. Records,” he added, looking over his shoulder at, as far as Kaylin could tell, his own reflection. She was wrong, and she understood the minute she also looked at his reflection just how wrong. The mirror—like the small one on the Sergeant’s desk—began to glow. The light it emitted was an ugly, harsh blue—it washed everything out, made it seem almost gray. She didn’t like it.

“Recording.” She liked the voice even less. But Red didn’t seem alarmed by either light or voice, although his expression was now more focused, more intent.

The Barrani also looked less bored. It didn’t make them look less dangerous.

The mage, who no one had bothered to introduce, glanced at both the Barrani and Kaylin; he frowned at Kaylin, but said nothing. Red motioned to Kaylin, and Kaylin moved away from the mage and the table in front of which he was standing.

The mage pulled the blanket back, and Red took it out of his hands.

On the slab was a girl’s body. She was maybe ten years old.

 

Kaylin couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to. She was holding on to air with two fists and clenched jaws. The girl was missing one eye. Her face was a patchwork of crossed cuts, some deeper than others; the incisions ran the length of her jaw and her throat. She was clothed, but not well, and the clothing itself had also been cut and torn. Her arm—one of her arms—was burned.

Kaylin didn’t want to look; she couldn’t look away. Mute, silent, she watched as the mage began to gesture. The gestures were open-palmed and slow.

Teela sidled over to where she stood. Bending close enough that her hair brushed the side of Kaylin’s face, she said, “Have you seen much magic before?”

Swallowing, Kaylin shook her head.

“Do you know what he’s doing?”

She shook her head again. No. But even as she did, she felt her arms and her legs begin to tingle, and her eyes widened as she stared at the mage’s back. She wore—she always wore—long sleeves. If she’d been alone, she would have opened the wrist-cuffs and peeled the sleeves back to her elbows so she could look at the marks that adorned all of the skin on her inner arms. She wasn’t.

But the tingling grew worse as the mage continued to move; it passed from something on the edge of pleasant to something on the edge of painful when he began to speak. She drew breath because she had to breathe, and the pain got worse, as if breathing at all had reminded it she was here.

And then, as her hair began to stand on end—she would have sworn it was standing on end—she saw the girl’s corpse begin to glow. She cursed under her breath.

“Kaylin?” Teela whispered, voice tickling her ear. She was way too damn close, and Kaylin wanted to elbow her—sharply—out of the way. But the magic was worse than the fact that a Barrani was standing over her shoulder.

“What—what is he doing to her?” She managed to force the words between her teeth.

“He’s a mage. An Imperial mage, meaning he works for the Eternal Emperor, however indirectly.” She paused, and then added, “Magic can’t bring the dead back to life, if that’s what’s bothering you. It can’t cause them more pain, they’re already dead. Nothing will ever hurt them again.”

She heard the words as if at a great distance—and as if they came from someone else’s mouth, because she could never have imagined they could have come from a Barrani. Her arms and legs ached, and her borrowed shirt felt as if it were rubbing the skin off the back of her neck. She couldn’t tell them that, of course. She never talked about the marks.

So she concentrated, instead, on the mage, and the ravaged, small body beneath his hands. For a long moment, nothing changed. The girl was still dead, the gaping wounds no longer bleeding. Her eyes had been closed by whoever had brought her here, or maybe Red himself, because he seemed kind enough to actually care about the dead.

The mage turned to Red, sweat beading his forehead. “Records—there is no evidence of any trace of magic within or upon the corpse. In the considered opinion of Ceridath Morlanne, the cause of death was not magical in nature, although it is possible that the physical injuries were caused indirectly by magical devices.”

Kaylin sucked in air so sharply it should have cut her mouth.

“Hold a moment.” Teela spoke in a crisp, clear voice that was aimed over Kaylin’s head at the mage. “Do not drop the scan.” She’d never looked friendly, but at this moment, she sounded much more like the Barrani that Kaylin expected: the implied or I will kill you hung, unsaid, in the air.

Turning to Kaylin, she said, “Tell me what you see.” The tone of voice had softened, but not by much. It didn’t matter. From out of the closed eyelids of the dead girl, rising as if they were made of golden smoke, were the shapes and forms of something that reminded Kaylin very much of the hidden marks that adorned her skin.

 

“Kaylin,” Teela said again, her voice sharper and harder.

Kaylin shook herself and pointed. “No, describe it.”

“I must object,” the mage said coldly. “Is the Corporal accusing me of lying?”

Red was staring at Teela. It was, however, Tain who answered. “Not yet,” he said in a voice as cold as the mage’s. “Although, if there’s anything you’d like to say in your own defense, now would perhaps be advisable.” As the mage lifted his chin, Tain reached out and touched the surface of the mirror. “Lord Grammayre, code three. Red?”

The coroner nodded slowly, and there was a sharp snap of sound that came from the doors. “Ceridath?”

The mage was furious, and the fury began to unfold in a series of very polite, very layered threats. Kaylin listened with half an ear, but there weren’t any interesting or useful words there, and she still had Teela standing over her shoulder like a very bad nightmare.

“There are…runes…” Kaylin finally said. “They’re gold, and sort of smoky, not solid. They’re floating right above her eyes, Teela.”

“Not for me, they’re not. Red, Tain?”

Tain shook his head. Red, however, said, “I can’t see anything out of the ordinary for a morgue.”

Ceridath now turned to Kaylin. “Are you claiming,” he said with obvious disbelief, “to be a mage?”

She shook her head.

“Have you had any experience in the Imperial Halls, any tutoring whatsoever?”

“No.”

“Red,” the mage said, “I have no idea when the Hawks began to employ children, but this one is clearly lying.”

The coroner looked exceptionally uncomfortable. “Kaylin, if this is a game of some sort, stop playing it now. It’s already going to cause more trouble than you can imagine with the Imperial Order, and we rely on the Imperial Order for most of the magical work the Halls require.”

“I don’t think she’s playing a game,” Teela said. “But if she is, she’ll have the Hawklord to deal with. Or the Sergeant. I wouldn’t personally have called it a code three, Tain.”

He shrugged and then grinned. “I was bored.”

“Let this be a lesson to you,” Teela told Kaylin under her breath. “There’s nothing more dangerous and unpredictable than a bored immortal—we’ve had several centuries to perfect the art.”

“What’s a code three?”

“No one can enter or leave this room except the Hawklord and anyone he chooses to bring with him.”

“That’s bad?”

“You try keeping an angry mage contained in a room he doesn’t want to stay in. It gets ugly real fast.”

“You’ve tried?”

“I’ve got several centuries on you. Yeah, I’ve tried.”

“Did it work?”

“I’m still here.”

“What do you think he’s going to do?”

“Him? Probably nothing.” She glanced at Kaylin’s empty hands. “We’re going to need to get you some kind of dagger. That grasping at empty air is going to get old really fast. If things start to look tricky, stand behind me. Directly behind me,” she added. “Not somewhere near the wall.”

The mage now drew himself up to his full height; his cheeks were red. “Reginald,” he said in a cold, clear voice. “The Imperial Order will hear about this blatant lack of respect for one of its senior members.”

Teela whistled under her breath. “Pretend you didn’t hear that name.”

“It’s not up to me,” was the cold reply. “It’s up to Lord Grammayre.”

“Very well. I will play out this charade with as much patience as a busy mage can muster. But I think the scans of the other two corpses are now on permanent hold.”

 

Kaylin wasn’t sure what to expect. To her eyes, both Tain and Teela looked…bored. They certainly didn’t seem to consider the robed man a threat. She knew better than to trust them, but…Red and Caitlin weren’t afraid of them. It would take a much greater depth of suspicion than Kaylin had ever possessed to be suspicious of Caitlin, because even in the fiefs, people like Caitlin existed.

The door opened. In its frame stood the man who ruled the Hawks. His gaze narrowed the minute it touched Kaylin, who resisted the urge to hide behind Teela.

“Lord Grammayre,” Ceridath began.

The Hawklord lifted one hand. “Ceridath,” he said. His voice was as smooth as the surface of the mirror, and he offered the mage a very unusual bow. This seemed to mollify the mage somewhat.

“Red, you summoned me?”

“I did,” Tain said before Red could speak.

“I…see. There was of a course a very good reason for the summons.”

Tain nodded, unfazed by the sudden ice in the Hawklord’s voice. “The Imperial mage—on record—stated uncategorically that there was no magic to be found on the first of the corpses he examined.”

“That was not the unexpected result,” the Hawklord replied. “Since none of the other victims have shown any signs of magical abuse.”

Tain nodded. “We have, however, done the scans under the auspices of a single mage.”

“Corporal, Ceridath is not the only mage who has been part of the investigation of this particular ring.”

“No, indeed. He is one of three.”

“Corporal—”

“Your Corporal is accusing me of falsifying my reports. Of, essentially, lying,” Ceridath said.

Lord Grammayre raised one hand to his forehead, where he pinched the bridge of his nose. “On what grounds, Corporal?” he demanded in a tone that made clear the answer had better be bloody good.

The answer, sadly, was now shuffling slightly behind Teela in spite of her earlier intentions. She did not consider herself bloody good evidence of anything.

“The latest addition to the Hawks,” Tain replied.

Lord Grammayre turned to Kaylin and she froze on the spot. “Kaylin,” he said quietly, “come here immediately.” He glanced at the open door and it closed. He hadn’t spoken a word.

“Grammayre, I warn you—” Ceridath began.

The Hawklord ignored him. He waited for Kaylin, and Kaylin—with an unexpected shove between the shoulder blades, stumbled more or less in the right direction. When she reached him, he lifted his wings, stretching them, for a moment, to their full span. Flight feathers longer than her arm cut light and cast shadow as they began to fold—slowly—over her upturned face.

She startled, and he reached out and caught her shoulders, but his grip was gentle and steadying as his wings came down around them both.

“What,” he said quietly, in this privacy of wings and his voice, “did you see?”

She told him.

“You are certain?”

“I don’t know—I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I don’t understand what it means—”

“Nor is your understanding required. But this is very, very unfortunate news. Go to Teela when I release you. Stay behind her, should things become difficult.”

It was almost exactly what Teela had said. “Wait.”

His wings stopped moving. “Yes?”

“The Barrani—do you trust them?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re certain they didn’t kill these children?”

His eyes widened in surprise, and then they narrowed in something that looked unpleasantly like pity. “Yes, Kaylin. If I can be certain of nothing else about them, I’m certain of that.” He lifted his wings and folded them once again behind his back. “Ceridath,” he said. “If you have anything of import that you wish to tell us, now is the time.”

Ceridath’s eyes widened enough they were almost entirely round. “You cannot be serious.”

“I can. Mirror,” he added, “Magister Dreury of the Imperial Order of Mages.”

 

The mirror went gray. It stayed gray for at least five minutes, and judging from the expression on Red’s face, the delay was unusual. But the Hawklord stood as if he could wait all day—or year. When the mirror at last lost the flat, impenetrable gray, it opened into what looked like a very, very rich man’s office. There were shelves in the background, and books lined every single one of them; there were glass cabinets that reflected a light whose source she couldn’t see.

But in the centre of the mirror was a man who sat behind a large, almost shiny, desk. Unlike the desk of the Hawks’s Sergeant, this one had a visible surface; it was, in fact, all surface.

“Lord Grammayre,” the man said, frowning. “My apologies for the delay.”

The Hawklord inclined his head and waited while the man behind the desk surveyed the room. At least that’s what Kaylin assumed he was doing. “Ceridath,” he said, as if to confirm her suspicion.

“Lord Dreury,” Ceridath replied, executing a much more human bow.

“Is there some difficulty, Lord Grammayre?”

“There is a possible misunderstanding,” the Hawklord replied. “And I require a member of the Imperial Order to attend us.”

“You have one.”

“Indeed. I would like a second opinion. I would further request that that second opinion come from a mage who does not normally work within the Halls of Law, and who is senior enough to make no mistakes—at all.”

Lord Dreury’s frown deepened. He wasn’t a young man, so the frown only shifted the lines of his face, rather than adding any. He began to speak, but this time, Kaylin didn’t understand a word he was saying.

Nor did she understand a single word of the Hawklord’s reply, but clearly the shift in language wasn’t a sign that either man was happy. She glanced at Teela, Tain, and Red—who all appeared to be able to follow what was actually being said. As did Lord Dreury.

It wasn’t short. The syllables sounded soft and extended, but the tones in which they were spoken implied the exact opposite. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Teela’s back looked a lot less impressive than it had when anyone had been paying attention to her.

She glanced at the exposed body that lay on the table, and the conversation—or argument—faded into the background. Without thinking, she walked to the corpse of the young girl whose closed eyes had revealed golden words—words that Kaylin couldn’t read. Red noticed when she reached the body and moved toward her, although his gaze was still riveted on the mirror and the increasingly chilly voice of the man it contained.

Kaylin reached for the sheet that had covered the girl’s body and face. She took care not to touch anything besides the blanket. Starting at the girl’s feet—at her shoeless feet, at the bruised ring around her right ankle—she set one edge of the blanket down, taking care to cover everything. The blanket was heavier than the ones Kaylin was used to, but she’d often had to do without.

She knew what she was doing was stupid and pointless. Teela was right: the girl was dead. Nothing could be done to change that, and nothing worse could happen to her: she was beyond pain or fear.

But pointless or no, she did it anyway: she pulled the blanket up the dead girl’s body, covering her torn and bloody clothing. Only when it reached her chin did she stop. She hesitated for a moment, and then tucked the edge of the blanket under the girl’s chin, as if she were sleeping, or ever would again.

Red placed a hand on her shoulder, and she startled and turned, pulling away, her hands reaching for air again. He lifted his hand—both hands—in the air, palms toward her in an exaggerated gesture of surrender, before he drew away from Lord Grammayre and the mage.

“You can’t leave yet,” he told her quietly. “But when you can—”

“When’ll that be?”

“Probably not more than a couple of hours.” He grimaced. “I don’t know what you did, but it’s going to be costly if you’re wrong.” Shaking his head, he added, “This isn’t the place for you. The morgue, I mean. In a couple of weeks, come back, I’ll show you what I do. But this’ll be hard, even for me. It’s not something you should have to see.”

“Why?”

He frowned. Reaching past her, he unfolded the blanket’s upper edge and pulled it over the girl’s face. “This doesn’t bother you?”

“I’ve seen worse,” she replied, meaning it. She bit her lip and turned away, not from the corpse, but from his gaze. “Who killed them?”

“We don’t know. But if what you said was true, we’ll be a lot closer to getting an answer.” He hesitated, and then said, “These aren’t the first victims.”

“There are more?” It wasn’t the stupidest question she’d asked in her life, but it was close. She turned away. Turned back. “Are they all this young?”

“Or younger, yes.”

“But—but why? Why are they doing this?”

“Because they want to and they can, for now.”

“Why here?”

He frowned. “Pardon?”

“Why here, on this side of the river? I thought everything like this happened across the bridge. In the fiefs,” she added with bewildered bitterness.

“Kaylin, people live on either side of the bridge. And people are people, no matter where they live, and no matter how much they have. Some are Caitlin—they give what they can, and they keep the rest of us in line. Some are…not.”

“But—but on the other side of the river, no one cares.”

“Really?”

She stared at him.

“No one cares? No one’s bothered? No one’s afraid?”

“Of course people are afraid! We have no one there but the fieflord—and if the fieflord takes you or sells you, that’s it, that’s the only law! There are—there are supposed to be—laws here. There are supposed to be Hawks and Swords, and they’re supposed to keep people safe. People like her,” she added.

He stared at her for a minute, and she thought if he could have opened the doors, he would have thrown her out. But when he spoke, his voice was calm and quiet. “Who do you think those Hawks and Swords are?” he asked softly. “Do you think they’re perfect, Kaylin? Do you think they have flawless days without a single error, ever? Do you think they have eyes in the back and the sides of their heads?

“Do you think they’re not afraid?” He turned to the corpse. “This is the price of failure, yes. We don’t pay it. The most we can do—and what we always try to do—is to make sure it doesn’t happen again the same way. But we’re human—”

Teela cleared her throat loudly.

Red frowned. “We’re human,” he repeated. “We’re never going to be perfect. Best we can do is learn from our mistakes, and keep trying.”

She stared at him.

“Perhaps,” Lord Grammayre said in distinctly chilly and entirely comprehensible words, “this philosophical discussion about the nature of humanity and the purpose of the Hawks could wait for a more suitable time?”

Red flushed. Kaylin looked at her feet.

 

Three hours later, the doors were finally opened to admit another stranger in dark robes. He was older than Ceridath, and he wore a very thick gold chain, from which an equally thick gold medallion hung. He didn’t look friendly—but at this point, no one in the room did. His beard was long and thin at the ends, and his hair was sparse, but what made him instantly unusual were two things: the color of his eyes and the way both of the Barrani lost any look of boredom.

His eyes were almost the same gold that the Sergeant’s had been. But he was definitely not covered in fur and claws or fangs.

“Lord Grammayre,” he said. “Ceridath.”

Ceridath bowed.

“The Magister evinced some concern at your request, Lord Grammayre. It is highly unusual, and it was not done through the proper—and more germane, discreet—channels.”

“I did not think we had the luxury of time. Forgive me,” he added. “I did not realize they would appoint such an important member to the task.”

“Ah. They did not. I am fond of my Imperial Order, and when I realized that the Magister was…flustered…I undertook the task on my own recognizance. Three candidates were proposed, but I felt, at this juncture, that absolute certainty—swift certainty—was essential.” He spoke to no one but Lord Grammayre; everyone else might have been furniture. Or worse.

“I do not, however, have all day. Please, proceed.”

Red, still invisible, walked over to the body that he had just covered. He removed the blanket himself.

“Ceridath, you were responsible for the scan?”

“Yes, Lord.”

“And the analysis?”

“Mine.”

“Very well. If I recall correctly, your sensitivity to magical residual effects has always been considered your strength. It is among the strongest in the Imperial Order.” Ceridath nodded.

“Is there anything you would like to say before I begin?”

If there was, he couldn’t even manage a single syllable. It was the first time he’d looked less than icily composed or civilly furious. The new mage frowned, and his eyes began to shift color, moving from gold to bronze. “Ceridath,” he said, and this time his voice was a low rumble.

Ceridath remained silent.

The older mage turned to the exposed corpse. “Lord Grammayre, with your permission?”

“Granted.”

“Records. Secondary autopsy scan by Sanabalis of the Imperial Order of Mages. Note time and date.”

“Noted.”

Just as Ceridath had, Sanabalis began to cast. The movements he used were different; less fluid, to Kaylin’s eye. He didn’t speak, either. But he was doing something similar, because she felt the marks on her arms and legs begin to tingle. She braced herself, bit her lip, and remained silent when the tingling became painful. What failed to emerge this time were the runes that had risen like golden ghosts from the dead girl’s eyes.

Teela walked over to where Kaylin stood, knees bent, lower lip between her teeth. “Well?”

Kaylin shook her head as the older mage said, “I do not find anything remiss, Lord Grammayre.”

Teela grimaced and said something almost incomprehensible under her breath. The tone, however, made it clear that it was a curse—just not in a language that Kaylin understood. The Barrani Hawk lifted her head. “Lord Sanabalis,” she said quietly, “is Ceridath’s grasp of the particulars of the spell greater than yours?”

The older mage frowned. “Why do you ask?”

“The results of his spell, and the results of yours, differ.”

“They do not,” Ceridath began.

But Sanabalis lifted a hand. “In what way?”

“I would have you cast either a different spell, or a more centralized one,” Teela replied, avoiding a direct answer. “Centralized where?”

“The girl’s eyes.”

He frowned. “What about her eyes?”

“There is some residual magic there, and it is defined.”

“I did not realize that you had spent any time in the Imperial Order, Corporal.”

“Ah. I did not, of course. I spent some time dabbling in the early Arcanum, but I was not considered a promising student, and after some political turmoil, I was allowed to retire. But in my studies, there were different spells of detection; some required subtlety, and some did not. In this case, I believe that any spell was not cast to kill the child, and it was not cast on her corpse, which would make any traces hard to detect.”

“Indeed. It is why the three mages seconded to the coroner are those who specifically specialize in such subtleties. But the request was made for a mage who does not regularly attend the Halls.”

“The child was mortal,” Teela continued. “It is possible that your detections are not finely tuned toward things that change and decay even in life. Neither you nor I are mortal, after all.”

The mage simply nodded. If he wasn’t mortal, Kaylin thought, what was he? “Your point is taken.” He turned back to the body and this time his spell—if this is what a spell looked like—took longer. The accompanying motion of hands was subtle and slow.

Lord Grammayre glanced at Teela, and then at Kaylin, but he didn’t choose to speak. Teela, however, gently guided Kaylin closer to the corpse over which the mage labored. She kept herself between Kaylin and the mage, but she left a line of sight open.

This time, after a much longer period of lip-biting pain, Kaylin saw the words begin to rise from the girl’s closed eyes. They weren’t solid, but they weren’t so complicated she couldn’t begin to see a shape and a pattern to them; the two glyphs were the same.

Teela touched her shoulder lightly, and Kaylin nodded emphatically. But it wasn’t necessary; the mage’s eyes suddenly widened—and they went from bronze to a very fiery orange almost instantly.

“There is something, then,” Lord Grammayre said softly, and with just a hint of relief.

“There is,” was the low, low reply.

“Is it strong enough to trace?”

“It is strong enough for Ceridath to trace.” The words managed to be both heated and deathly cold at the same time. “Or he would have felt no need to lie about his findings.” He turned to Ceridath. “I believe your tenure here will not be as short as you planned. Lord Grammayre, place Ceridath under arrest.”

The Hawklord nodded.

“I will send for the Tha’alani.”

 

Ceridath lifted an ashen face. “That won’t be necessary,” he said softly, and without much hope. Without the ice of defiance, he looked much older.

“Given your actions here, any information you now willingly surrender will be suspect. I am disappointed, Ceridath.”

“Yes. And I will pay for my treachery.” He straightened his shoulders; his breath was ragged, and when he exhaled, his shoulders once again sunk. He hadn’t otherwise moved.

“Why did you lie?” Kaylin demanded.

The Hawklord lifted a hand. “Kaylin, that will be enough.”

“No—no it won’t. Look at him—he has everything. He obviously has money, he’s obviously respected. They had nothing, and even if he does die for this, it’ll be a clean death. None of these three got that. And you said there were more—”

“Kaylin.”

She knew it was stupid. It was more than stupid—it was dangerous. She didn’t know Elantra. She couldn’t trust the Hawks. She had no weapons, and even if she had, there were two Barrani here; she didn’t have a hope in a direct confrontation with even one. But all of her life—all of the life she could remember—she’d dreamed of crossing the bridge over the Ablayne River, of leaving the fiefs and arriving in the City, where things were safe.

“Why?”

Where it was safe to have friends and safe to love people because none of them would die. Not this way. Not this way, again. And maybe, a dark thought said, this is what she deserved; the life that she’d lived was hers no matter where she lived it. She shouted once, wordless, in fury and denial and found herself a foot away from Ceridath.

Ceridath met her eyes, his own as human and unchanging as hers, and said, “Because they have my granddaughter.” And he raised shaking hands to cover those eyes and his face.

She stared at the fine, jade veins in those hands and the fury was instantly guttered. It left her feeling cold and empty, but that—she was used to that. His words were the only spoken words for several minutes.

Lord Grammayre broke the silence. “Why,” he said softly, “did you not come to us?”

The hands fell away. Ceridath looked at him, and then from him to the dead, and he said, “You couldn’t save them. How could I count on you to save her? She’s eight years old,” he added, closing his eyes again. “She’s eight, she’s been so sheltered—”

“Do you know who has her?”

“No. I know the message came keyed to my personal mirror—at home—and I haven’t been able to trace it. I didn’t try very hard. The first attempt was detected, and they—” He flinched. “She’s eight,” he said again.

“What were you told to do?”

“I was to make certain I would be sent to the Halls of Law today because they knew someone would be sent. I was to falsify reports if there was anything to be reported. I have a spotless record,” he added bitterly, “and my report would not be questioned.”

“Did you recognize the signature you saw on the dead girl?”

He shook his head. “No.”

The other mage lifted a hand; his eyes had dimmed from the fiery orange to something that was almost gold. “Have you been to any of the three sites?”

“No. I was scheduled,” he added, “to attend the investigation into the third site this afternoon.”

“At your request?”

“Yes.”

“Good. It means there’s something to be detected there. I will send Farris.”

“A fine choice. He has no family. No wife, no children. His mother is up the coast.” He hesitated again, and then squared his shoulders. “I have forfeited all rights, but nonetheless I ask that you allow me to communicate with my daughter.”

“It’s her child?”

“Yes.”

Kaylin surprised herself now. “If you don’t go,” she told Ceridath, “they’ll kill her. If she’s even alive now.”

“She’s alive for the moment.”

“But they’ll kill—”

“Yes.”

Kaylin swallowed, wanting the anger and the confusion that had fled. Turning to Lord Grammayre, she said, “Let him come with us. Please.”

He raised a brow. “With ‘us’?”

Teela cleared her throat. “We’re due on-site this afternoon. I thought we’d take her with us. She could see some of the work the Hawks do, and it would keep her out of Caitlin’s hair. And frankly, a first introduction to the Hawks shouldn’t be a face full of angry Leontine, and he’s going to be in a mood when he hears about this.”

The Hawklord frowned. “This was not exactly what I had in mind for Kaylin,” he finally said. “But you are correct in at least one thing—the Sergeant will be ill-pleased. Very well. But Teela? While I have no objections to her presence in this particular part of the investigation, you are to return her to—”

“Caitlin at the end of the day in one piece.”

He raised a pale brow.

“She already handed us the memo when she dropped Kaylin off at the morgue.” She bent and whispered, “Caitlin is scarier, in the end.”

Kaylin looked at the Barrani as if she were insane, which caused Tain to chuckle.

“When you’re old enough, you’ll understand the joys of paperwork and reports. Caitlin can either expedite them or accidentally lose them. Or see that they’re sent to the wrong department entirely. If you need to piss off anyone in the department, avoid pissing off Caitlin.”

“You are also to return Kaylin to the Halls if there is any sign of unforeseen difficulty, Teela. She hasn’t been trained, and even I am not willing to throw an untrained, unschooled girl into a conflict that involves magic and far too much money. Do I make myself clear?”

“As glass, sir.”

“Good.” He turned.

“Wait!” Kaylin said, taking an anxious step forward. Teela caught her by the shoulder, and she shrugged the hand off.

“While you are in transit, Corporal, I would appreciate if you explain explicitly the allowable forms of address, and the proper occasions for them.” The Hawklord’s voice defined the word icy.

Ice clearly didn’t stop Kaylin. “What about the mage? Will you let him come—”

The Hawklord now turned his back—which was basically large folded wings—toward her.

“Lord Sanabalis. My apologies for the disruption of your day, and if you feel he will accept them, my apologies for my curt words with Magister Dreury.”

This time, when Teela grabbed Kaylin’s shoulders, she held tightly; it’d leave bruises. “Hush, and listen,” she whispered.

“I feel,” the Hawklord continued, as if there had been no interruption, “if we are to even attempt a facade for the sake of the mage’s grandchild, it is best that the results of your visit are not openly known. Whether or not you feel Ceridath deserves mercy or leeway, I must leave up to you. The addition of the second mage, however, is not optional.” He gestured and the doors slid open.

Before Kaylin could hear the reply, Teela dragged her out of the room.

 

“I absolutely forbid it.”

Sergeant Kassan was not, as Teela had implied, happy. His eyes were a shade of unpleasant orange, but even if Caitlin hadn’t given warning, Kaylin would have known he was in a foul mood. The office was a lot quieter than it had been the previous day. But the silence was different. People were grimmer. The conversations that occurred were hushed, but not in a furtive way; there was no laughter. There were no smiles.

“Word got here before we did,” Teela said to Tain.

He shrugged. “I told you the Quartermaster was going to give you a hassle. She’s thirteen, Teela. He hates to equip half the Hawks on a good day, and they’re the Imperial version of legal.”

“The Quartermaster mirrored,” the Sergeant added. “And it took five minutes to talk him off the ceiling. He has no intention of arming a child.”

The child in question bristled, but managed to keep quiet, even though she knew how to wield a dagger.

“We didn’t intend for him to arm her,” Teela explained. “But some sort of rudimentary armor—”

“Which she would have no use for anywhere she’s going?”

Teela grimaced. It looked lovely. “I don’t know how much Lord Grammayre told you, but…she was helpful, Marcus. She was even, in my opinion, necessary. No, she didn’t have to fight a mage, and no, she’s not expected to storm a blockade, but she didn’t have to do either.”

“What, exactly, are you claiming she did?”

“She saw something that the mage missed.”

“Probably the nose in front of his damn face.” The Sergeant followed this with something that had a lot of r’s in it. “I don’t care if she saw the end of the world, Teela. I forbid it. She is not going on-site with you.”

“What is she going to do instead? Shuffle paper? File? You know if she touches the files, Caitlin’s going to pull all her hair out, and human hair doesn’t grow back so easily. They won’t take her in Missing Persons—she’s too young, and the visitors who come there are already spooked enough they want authority figures.” She leaned over his desk, somehow avoiding the piles of paper there. “She’ll be with us. Nothing we’re likely to encounter is going through two Barrani to get to a child.”

“Did I give the impression there was room for argument?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why are you still here?”

Teela nodded sharply and stepped away from the desk.

Kaylin, silent until this moment, stepped forward. She couldn’t lean over the desk without sending the papers flying, and didn’t try—instead, she walked around its side to stand to the right of the chair the Sergeant was now filling. He watched her, his eyes bronze, his brows scrunched over them in recognizable confusion. “Yes?”

“I want to go with them.”

One brow rose, changing the lines of his facial fur. “And some people want to jump off high buildings.”

“Yes, but they want to die. Or try flying, which is about the same thing if you don’t have wings. I don’t want to die.”

“Then you don’t want to tag along with Barrani. Trust me.”

She swallowed. “I don’t want to be with Barrani, no. But I want to go where they’re going.”

A low growl began in his throat; she was afraid he’d open his mouth and it would emerge as a roar. But she stood her ground, lifting her chin as Caitlin had showed her, although it made it harder to talk. “I was in the morgue today. I was there when they uncovered one of the—the victims. Someone is killing them, and if I can help at all, even by accident, I want to help.”

“Why?”

She almost didn’t answer. Almost couldn’t. But silence wouldn’t help her here, and it certainly wouldn’t help anyone else. “Because helping is not what I did in my old life. And I want this life to be different.”

He stared at her. His eyes hadn’t changed color, but he hadn’t roared yet either. “Go on.” He did fold his arms across his very broad chest, and she noticed that his claws were extended.

“I couldn’t save anyone in the fiefs. I thought here no one would need saving.” She swallowed again, mouth dry. “So I was wrong about that, too. But…” She turned to look at Teela, who was waiting in silence. “I did help. No, I didn’t fight, and I wasn’t muscle. I didn’t make any threats. I couldn’t even understand half of what was said in the damn room. But I helped.

“Teela thinks I’ll be useful at the site. She’s probably wrong. But I want to try. Because if you don’t find enough information, whoever’s been doing this will keep on doing it. More people will die.”

“That’s not going to change one way or the other. You can be here or you can be there and it’s still true.”

“Yes, but if I’m there, I might see something, somehow, that gives that little bit more information. If I’m here, I won’t see anything.”

“And if there’s danger? If you do, in fact, have to fight?”

Teela snorted, but otherwise said nothing.

“It won’t be the first time,” Kaylin replied. “It might be the first time I fight with backup.” He was still silent, and she thought it was hesitation. “I’m not stupid. I know when to cut my losses. I know when to run.”

“You know when to obey a direct order?”

“Yeah. Didn’t get many of those that were physically possible,” she added.

He stared at her for what felt like a long damn time. “You understand that if anything happens to you, my neck is on the block. You are thirteen years old. If either Corporal gives you an order, you obey it before you breathe. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

He growled. “I do not like this,” he finally said.

She waited.

“Fine. Fine. Teela, if anything happens to her, my neck is not going to be the only neck at risk. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tain?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Get out of here.”

 

“Well, that could have gone worse,” Tain said to Teela when they were well out of the Sergeant’s earshot.

Teela raised a dark brow. Her eyes were a stunning, deep emerald, as were Tain’s. She headed down a hall Kaylin hadn’t seen yet. “Come and see the glory of the locker room. If you stick around for long enough, one of these lockers will be yours.”

Kaylin followed Teela while Tain peeled off.

Locker room described a room with a bunch of what looked like tiny closets with things written on them. Those things, Teela said, were the names of their various owners. One had been scratched out. “Locker names are low on the list of priorities.”

“Why are we here?”

“In theory? We’re getting changed. In practice, you’ve got nothing to change into, and I’m already ready for street duty.”

“Then—”

Teela opened one of the small closets. She pulled out two sheathed daggers that hung on a small belt. “These are for you.”

“But—”

“He said the Quartermaster wasn’t going to arm you. He didn’t specifically say I couldn’t.”

“But—”

“And frankly, it gets on my nerves when you flail around at your hip for a nonexistent weapon. Dealing with the mortals is hard enough as is—I don’t need more irritants.” She smiled, and once again Kaylin was struck by how absolutely gorgeous she was. “There’s a trick you’ll need to learn. Don’t ask permission for anything unless it’s serious. It’s too damn easy for your superior officers to say no, and it’s usually the first thing that comes out of their mouth. I can’t do anything about your lack of armor, though.”

Kaylin took the daggers. “You think I’ll need them?”

“You’d better not,” was the cheerful reply. “I can take any human I’ve ever met in a fight, but a Leontine is less certain. We don’t have all day,” she added.

Kaylin took the hint, slid the belt around her waist, and readjusted it. “Where are we going?”

“We’re going to what’s left of the building. The mages will meet us there. If you can, fail to speak. The Imperial mages are big on appropriate respect. Ceridath has reason to tolerate you now. The other mage won’t.”

“Got it.”

Teela shook her head. “You’re going to have to learn to speak High Barrani.”

“What? Why?”

“Because it’s a lot harder to show obvious disrespect in High Barrani than it is in your mother tongue. That, and most of our laws were written in it.”

“Why?”

“Because the Emperor is a Dragon, and he considers Barrani the language of bureaucracy?” Teela chuckled.

Kaylin didn’t even ask what she meant by bureaucracy; she figured she could pick it up on her own.

 

Kaylin eyed the carriage dubiously. “We can’t walk?”

“No. What’s wrong? You’ve never been in a carriage before?”

“There aren’t many carriages in the fief, and if you get into one, you don’t have a lot of choice about where you go or when you get out.”

“Fair enough.” Teela opened the door and climbed into the carriage’s interior. Kaylin joined her, although the door was high enough up it took longer. “You ever run into the Ferals there?”

Kaylin laughed. It was a slightly wild laugh. “Yes.” The carriage lurched forward and began to jump up and down as it moved. Kaylin grabbed the window’s edge to steady herself. It didn’t really work.

Teela, on the other hand, might have spent her entire life in a cramped, moving box. “See them a lot?”

“Hear them a lot. It’s not considered safe to actually see them.” She shrugged and added, “I don’t think Nightshade’s Barrani guards were bothered by them.”

“No, they wouldn’t be. But a pack of Ferals would still be a challenge if you wanted to escape unscratched. It’s a pity they don’t cross the bridge.”

Kaylin gaped at her. It was a pity that a bunch of large, fanged predators who killed anything that moved didn’t cross the bridge?

“There’d be a lot less nighttime traffic, and a lot less crime,” Teela offered. She was grinning.

Kaylin, who had run from the sound of Ferals in her time, failed to see the humor.

“Kaylin, whether or not you find amusement in the situation doesn’t change the situation itself—so you might as well dredge up something to laugh at. If you can’t, life is pretty much all tears.”

Kaylin said nothing. Instead, she turned to stare out the window because the world was moving past. It wasn’t moving quickly, but it was a lot closer to the ground than she currently was, and she found it fascinating. She’d seen the streets of the city closest to the Ablayne, and the buildings there were obviously in better repair than the buildings in the fiefs; the people who walked the roads nearest the bridge were better fed and better dressed, especially in the winter, when falling asleep in the wrong place meant you’d never wake up.

But she’d never seen the streets the carriage now took, winding away from the river and toward the city’s outer circle. The closest she had come was her trek to the Halls of Law itself, but the buildings that surrounded the Halls weren’t homes; they were merchant shops, two inns, and a guild building. Farther away from the Halls were the larger, taller buildings that housed many families, but these buildings were actually in decent repair, with doors that worked and actual locks, as Kaylin had discovered on her first night across the bridge. They weren’t great locks, but some training would be required to actually get around them.

Here, however, the large buildings with their rows and columns of almost identical windows gave way to shorter, flatter, and wider buildings. These buildings moved farther away from the streets in which the carriage traveled. The people who lived in them must be rich.

Teela’s brows rose into her hairline and almost disappeared. “What, here?” She began to chuckle.

Kaylin grimaced and waited for the amusement to die out. It took too damn long.

“Apologies, Kaylin. This would not be considered the more expensive part of the City. If you ever see that, you’ll know. But we’re almost there now.”

“Caitlin lives—”

“Caitlin lives in a modest apartment in a very safe part of town, yes. But it’s Caitlin. As far as I can tell there’s not much she spends money on, and not much she wants. She loves her job, she has no family in the City, and she spends some time on days off at the Foundling Halls. Some of her money goes there. We have no idea where the rest of it goes. But she doesn’t want the bother of taking care of a house, as she calls it. We’re reasonably certain she could afford to live here—it would be a longer walk to work, but that’s about it.”

“And you?”

“I live where I want to live.”

“With Tain?”

Teela laughed. “Sometimes,” she said with genuine amusement. She got out of the carriage before it rolled to a stop, which annoyed the driver, judging from his pinched expression. She didn’t offer to help Kaylin down, and Kaylin jumped out of the coach, landing less than gracefully on her feet, knees bent.

“This way,” Teela said.

It wasn’t necessary. The contrast between the house that the carriage had stopped in front of and the houses to either side was marked: the house in the middle was scored black, missing glass in the windows, and missing a front door. The roof looked shaky as well; Kaylin wasn’t certain how much weight it would support if someone were stupid enough to try to climb up on it.

“Is it safe?” she asked as she joined Teela.

“More or less.”

“What does that mean?”

“The fire ate some of the structural beams; the explosion ate some of the floor. We’ve got scaffolding on the interior that’s built from the basement up. If you don’t wander far off that, you should avoid breaking a limb.”

 

Tain was waiting inside. From the inside, things looked worse, and the uncertainty about the stability of the roof hardened. But there was, as Teela had said, some scaffolding and planking set up. Ceridath and another man in long robes were standing on some of it.

“Pretend,” Teela whispered, “you’re certain either one of these two men could kill you—or anyone you care about—if you breathe the wrong way around them.”

Kaylin nodded. She looked at blackened walls, blackened and questionable stairs leading up, and a large hole in the floor that indicated there was a down. “They were discovered here?”

Teela nodded. The almost smug amusement that seemed her most frequent expression was entirely absent. So, Kaylin thought, there are some things that aren’t funny, even for you. She found it oddly comforting. “Where?”

“In the basement. There were a series of small rooms in the basement.” Her lips thinned.

“You think magic was used here.”

“Yes. The neighbors are close enough that they would have heard something if the zone hadn’t been magically silenced. You could centralize the magic over the children’s virtual prisons—but depending on how long they lasted, and how long they were kept here, the magic would have to be either recast, in which case a mage was on-site, or extended, in which case the permanence would leave, or should leave, some mark. Understand?”

Kaylin nodded. “How did you get down to the basement?”

“There are ladders. None of the scaffolding is magical in nature, which is important at the moment. The basement floor is solid—it’s this one that’s questionable. We’ve had people downstairs for our first rough sweep.”

“Mages?”

“Sort of.” She grimaced. “No one as skilled as Ceridath. Ceridath is actually considered one of a handful of experts, but most mages will detect something. The mage we did bring wasn’t hopeful.”

“Why?”

“How much do you know about magic?”

Kaylin pinched her fingers together, and Teela winced.

“What you saw in the morgue was what we call a signature or an imprint. Any strong magic theoretically leaves one—but not all mages are sensitive enough to individuate what they see or read. Rudimentary magic makes clear that magic was done…a more subtle form of magic is required to actually tell someone by whom.”

“And you had reasons—besides the wreckage—to suspect magic?”

“When magic is done and the mage isn’t a fool, he knows that it’s possible that he might be traced. If he can detonate a large amount of magic that is not his, it will overwhelm any traces he might leave behind. Welcome to the Arcane bomb.”

“One was used here?”

Teela nodded. “Which of course means there was something to hide. Welcome,” she grimaced, “to most of our job. Heads up,” she added.

Kaylin looked in the direction of Teela’s glance. Ceridath was starting to cast. “I’d’ve noticed without the warning,” she whispered.

Teela frowned. “Keep that to yourself for now. Tap my shoulder or arm if you notice anything. That’s it.”

 

Kaylin watched Ceridath. His movements were broader and wider; he spoke softly, and in an almost cajoling tone of voice. The man at his side, to whom she hadn’t been introduced, nodded once, and then began to cast himself.

Kaylin had never been exposed to much magic, and was now very, very grateful for the lack. But…there’d been worse pain, and nothing was either broken or bleeding; she endured in a silence of drawn and held breath and heavy exhales.

Ceridath met her eyes only once, but the expression on his face made her want to cry. She recognized it. She thought she’d even felt it herself. She looked away, then. But there was no safety in shifting her gaze, because as his spell continued, her vision wobbled. Mindful of Teela’s quiet warning, she remained silent—but it was difficult. Along one of the walls, she could see faint, blue light resolve itself into one large rune. It was more circular in shape than the marks on her arms, although it looked like some sort of writing. Except huge and solid. What had drifted up from the dead girl’s eyes had been wispy, slight; there was nothing slight about this mark.

She frowned and leaned forward on the scaffolding, catching a beam to anchor her weight and getting splinters as well as stability. There was a second rune farther down the wall; it was as large, and it, too, was an even, glowing blue. As Ceridath continued to cast, both runes grew brighter, until they made the rest of the building look shadowed and dim in comparison.

Teela poked her sharply, and Kaylin looked up. She nodded.

“What do you see?”

“You told me I wasn’t supposed to say—”

“Say it quietly. They’re only human, they won’t catch it.”

Tain chuckled.

Kaylin frowned. “Can you ask Ceridath to stop?”

“Stop?”

“Or go back?”

“That’s even less clear, Kaylin.”

“When he first started, I could see runes, but they were fainter. And about the height of the wall.”

“The whole wall?”

“Between what’s left of the floor and what’s left of the ceiling.”

“And now?”

“They’re really, really bright.”

“Which is why you’re squinting so badly?”

Kaylin nodded. “I think—I think if there were anything else to see, he’s not going to see it now.”

“But you think you might.”

“No, not now. I can barely make out the gaping hole in the floor anymore. But…at the beginning, I think maybe.”

Teela asked a few more questions, and then squared her shoulders. “There is one problem.”

“Only one?”

This earned a brief grin. “Are you certain it’s Ceridath’s spell and not Farris’s?”

“No.”

“Farris is here to confirm the accuracy of Ceridath’s findings.”

Kaylin nodded.

“It’s going to be difficult to tell him to ‘turn off’ his spell, if it’s him. And I’m not sure how easy it is to tell them to turn it down, either. From my understanding of magic, that’s not the way it works. Wait here.”

 

It wasn’t Teela who returned; it was Ceridath. Teela was deep in discussion with Farris. Farris was, as Ceridath had promised, younger, but like Ceridath, being an Imperial mage seemed to put a chip on his shoulder the size of a small fief. Tain had come to stand by Teela’s side, which made their area on the scaffolding very crowded.

Ceridath knelt by Kaylin. He looked old and tired. He still looked arrogant, but it wasn’t as offensive somehow. “I do not understand how you can do what you do,” he said quietly, “but I understand that it is you. What Teela is asking is…unusual.”

“What’s she asking?” Kaylin said, keeping her voice low.

“She is asking for an extension of the casting period, rather than its completion.”

“So, make the beginning part longer and skip the end?”

“Something very like that, but with perhaps more polished words.”

“Can you do it?”

“It would be—in very different circumstances—a very interesting theoretical endeavor.” He took one look at her expression and grimaced. “I may be able to do what you ask—but I’m not sure it will have the results you hope for. Tell me what you saw, from beginning to end.”

She hesitated and glanced at Teela, but no help was forthcoming from that quarter. “Does it matter? You’re going to have to say you saw nothing, aren’t you?”

The momentary shine left his eyes. “Without some intervention on the part of the Magister, this may be the last act of magic I am legally allowed to perform. It is my specialty, and until my grandchild was kidnapped, I was extremely proud of my skill. If I am never to practice it again, I will use it now to my full abilities. Yes, I will lie. Farris, however, will not.

“Tell me, Kaylin.”

She began to describe not the runes themselves but rather the changing quality of the light they emitted as the spell progressed. His brows rose and he shook his head. “You are wasted, wherever you are now.”

Her snort was brief and bitter, and she turned her face away.

“My apologies. I did not mean to offend.”

She swallowed and turned back. “I didn’t see anything but the large, blue runes—those are from the Arcane bomb?”

“Yes. It is not the way I see them,” he added.

“Oh?” In spite of herself, she asked, “What do you see?”

“I see the manifestation of power’s trace as if it were a mosaic or a textile tapestry. The colors are not singular, and they don’t form as literal runes or sigils, although I call what I see a ‘signature.’”

“Did you see—her eyes—”

He flinched, but nodded. “It was very, very subtle. I feel that if I had not been sent, it might have gone entirely unnoticed. It looked almost like a mask, a half mask that’s meant to rest on the bridge of the nose.”

“Her whole upper face?”

He nodded. “But as I said, it’s the visualization of a paradigm—it is not exact. Your visualization adds information to mine, and I would say your visualization implies that the exact location of the magical connection was, in fact, her eyes. But mine—” He frowned. “Are you certain you have no desire to study the magical arts?”

Kaylin stared at him, and he reddened slightly. “One day,” he said, “you’ll have the privilege of doing something you love for a living.” His face fell. “And I hope when you do, you are never in a position where you are forced to betray it.”

Kaylin, who had been so angry, also lowered her head. “You were trying to save your granddaughter,” she whispered. “I think—I think I’d do the same.”

“Then do that now.” His reply was firmer and stronger. “I will…experiment. I can’t help but notice that the Corporal failed to mention your part in uncovering my duplicity to Lord Sanabalis. Even now she fails to mention it to young Farris. Do you know why?”

“No.”

“I will attempt a similar discretion. Cough if you think I’m casting…too quickly.” He started to speak, looked down at her, and shook his head. “You are not so much older than she is.”

“I’m not your blood.”

“No, you are not that.” He made his way back to the argument in progress, because it had become an argument, and like the previous argument-with-mages, had shifted into a language that Kaylin couldn’t understand. It frustrated her. But Teela didn’t pull a weapon, and the mage didn’t call down lightning or fire—if they even could. She realized she didn’t know a lot about either Hawks or mages.

Ceridath’s presence dumped figurative water on the heat. He looked old, forbidding, and unamused; Kaylin could practically feel the disgust he radiated. She almost couldn’t believe he was the same man who had come to talk to her—the man who loved his magic and his theories just a little bit less than he loved his granddaughter.

Teela and Tain withdrew, exchanging a glance that was both chagrined and amused. “I don’t know what you said to him,” Teela whispered, “but don’t say it again.”

“He’s going to try it.”

“I didn’t get that impression from what he said.”

“What did he say?”

“Never mind. Do you need to get closer to the ground?”

Kaylin shook her head. Her skin was beginning its unpleasant tingle, and as far as she could tell, Ceridath hadn’t even started to cast. But the marks on the walls began to glow again. She leaned over the edge of the planking and looked toward the floor, where she saw a similar mark; it was squarer in shape and it was the same pale blue. Shaking her head, she said, “I think we’re going to need to go downstairs.”

 

Downstairs in this case meant ladders. Teela didn’t trust the look of the main floor; Kaylin did—she was certain it would collapse if she tried to walk across it. The ladders, on the other hand, were solid. She made her way down into a darkness alleviated by lamplight. A lot of lamplight. They weren’t the only people in the basement, but the other three were Hawks, not mages. They didn’t wear the tabards that Teela and Tain wore, but their jackets had the same Hawk embroidered across either shoulder.

“Teela,” one of the men said.

“You talked to the neighbors?”

He nodded. “They didn’t see anything unusual. The house was apparently being rented.”

“Did they see or speak with the tenant?”

“Not often. He was apparently friendly and not particularly suspicious.”

“Age, height?”

“Thirty-five to forty, about six-three. Reasonably well dressed, apparently well educated, although not in Elantra.”

“Human?”

“What else in this part of town?”

Teela frowned, and the man grimaced. “Yes, sir. He apparently went out during the day, came back around dinnertime. He wasn’t covered in blood, didn’t entertain any obvious mages, and had the usual number of friends.”

“Which would be?”

“A few couples who would arrive around dinner and leave afterward. That’s it. He wasn’t fat, wasn’t fit, wasn’t bald, wasn’t striking—very, very nondescript.”

“Name?”

“Luivide.”

“Is that his first name or his family name?”

“Family name. Garron is his first name.”

“You ran a check?”

The man nodded. “We’ve got nothing in Records.”

“How surprising. Has he been seen since?”

“No. They assume he died in the, er, fire.”

Kaylin peered around Teela. She’d been listening to the conversation and looking at everything that the lamplight touched, her brow furrowed. “Is that the same description of the guys at the other places? Teela said this was the third.”

The man raised both brows. “What’s this, Teela? You’ve got a trainee? Seems a little on the young side.”

“Shut up and answer her question.”

The man chuckled. “No. All of the buildings were rented, but one of them was rented by a woman, the other by an older man. Hey, don’t touch anything—Teela, keep an eye on her!”

“Kaylin, listen to him. We haven’t finished sifting through the wreckage yet.”

But Kaylin barely heard her. The glowing blue runes that dominated the floor above had worked their way down to the basement, but they were fainter and more diffuse; they lay not across the walls, but across the packed dirt of the floor itself. She edged through them, searching.

Teela followed quietly, moving like a cat, her steps light and deliberate. After a moment, she said, “This way.”

Kaylin allowed herself to be led. Ceridath had started to speak—when, she wasn’t certain—and his voice was now a steady, slow drone. The large runes began to shift in place, their patterns blurring—but they didn’t get any brighter.

Teela led her to what remained of a small room. Here, of all the space in the basement so far, the blue light from the large runes was strongest; it lay pulsing against the three walls that didn’t contain what was left of a door. Kaylin squinted, frowned, and began to cough. She’d never been a good liar, and her cough—while loud—was so badly staged it wouldn’t have passed as a cough to anyone who wasn’t listening for it.

Teela stared at her when she’d finished, one brow lifted. “Are you quite finished?”

Kaylin mumbled something that she hoped would pass as an apology and waited to see if Ceridath had heard. The light from the runes softened slowly—although it might have been her imagination. She wondered, if he saw this light as something textile, if he could lift it to see what might be underneath.

She couldn’t. And what was underneath the light at the moment was a lot of porous rock that sat above more packed dirt. The ground was scorched, but even scorched, the smell of rotting flesh was strong. Kaylin started to kneel, but Teela caught her shoulders. “Not here,” she said firmly. “We’re not done here yet.”

“There’s nothing to touch,” Kaylin pointed out.

Teela didn’t reply.

Kaylin coughed again. This time, Teela cuffed the side of her head.

“What are you doing?”

Kaylin squinted. “It’s too—it’s too bright. I think there’s something—” She pointed at the ground.

The Barrani Hawk was at her elbow instantly.

Kaylin knelt. She placed her palm against the porous stone, aware that as she did she was probably touching layers of dried blood.

“I told you not to touch anything,” the Barrani said in a chilly whisper.

“There’s something here, Teela,” she whispered. “I can almost see a smudge of different color. It’s not like the last time. I think it’s a wider area, almost like a circle.”

Teela stiffened, and Kaylin looked up.

“A circle.” The Hawk’s eyes were sapphire-blue; Kaylin rocked back on her heels. She did not, however, reach for her daggers. Or breathe.

“Are you absolutely certain?”

“No.”

“I’ll get the mages.”

 

It took longer to bring the mages down than it had to get any of the Hawks to the basement. Ceridath was slow to stop his casting, and Farris was clearly used to being in charge when he was brought into an “ongoing investigation.” Being told how and where to work irritated him.

His irritation clearly amused Teela, which also irritated him; Kaylin half suspected that the Barrani was doing it on purpose. But they did come down the ladders, something their very fine robes didn’t help, and Teela led them to the room. Ceridath looked slightly queasy; Farris, clearly, had spent more time on-site.

“Corporal,” he said coldly, “they were children. I hardly think magic was necessary to either contain or confine them.”

“I’m not implying that that was the point of the magic,” was the cold reply. “You’re not here to deduce on our behalf, you’re here to provide information.”

Farris slipped into what Kaylin could now recognize as High Barrani. She had to admire his courage—or his insanity—because he appeared to be unleashing it on a visibly annoyed Barrani. If he’d been just a little more friendly, she’d’ve tried to warn him. As it was, she sucked air through her teeth as Ceridath once again started to cast. This time, the spell was different, the focus different; Kaylin couldn’t see the spell itself, but she could see the effects of it.

She coughed, but this time she coughed quietly. Ceridath’s head snapped up in obvious annoyance—but not at her.

“If,” he said in Elantran, “the two of you wouldn’t mind, some of us are trying to do work that requires concentration.” He offered the brunt of his icy glare to Teela, stopped casting, and folded his arms.

Teela grimaced, but took the hint; she moved the argument. Farris came with it as if attached by chains. Frowning, Ceridath then waved Kaylin over.

His tone was curt and condescending—but his expression was not; she understood that he was once again attempting to hear what she had to say without looking like he was listening or asking. His knees bent slowly, and he grimaced, shifting his robes to avoid as much of the debris as it was possible to while kneeling in it.

“Farris is right,” he murmured. “It makes no sense for magic to be used here, not directly on the children. But…it was. It undoubtedly was.” He looked at her. “You saw something here?”

“Yes. But not very clearly—it was like a smudge of different color.”

He grimaced. “The entire floor is polluted.”

She nodded. “I was thinking—if you see things as textiles, can you, you know, lift them to see what might be underneath?”

He raised one brow and then his lips curved in a very faint smile. But he didn’t say she was wasted where she was, and he didn’t ask her to study magic. “Let me look now. Farris will come when he’s finished arguing with the Corporal. I have no idea why he does it—or where he gets the energy…it doesn’t matter if she’s only a lowly Hawk. She’s Barrani. The Barrani could clean garbage off the street convinced of their innate superiority to mortals.”

Kaylin, on the other hand, suddenly thought she understood why Teela was deliberately trying to annoy the younger mage, and she felt grateful. She also felt her skin begin to tingle. It wasn’t as immediately painful as it had been the first time, which meant he was using a different spell or she was getting used to his magic.

She watched as the blue marks began to emerge. They weren’t runic in the way they had been across the walls; it was as if the runes or sigils were so large they couldn’t be contained in shape and form by something as small as the patch of floor.

She coughed gently; he grimaced. “I am trying,” was the curt reply. It was strained, and if she looked carefully, she could see sweat beading his forehead. The blue didn’t get any brighter, but it didn’t dim. She began to examine the floor as carefully as he appeared to be examining it. “There,” she said.

“I see it. I’m surprised you could. Well, more surprised.”

“Does it look like cloth to you?”

“Very much, but fine, fine cloth. Its color?”

“The same color as—as the magic on the dead girl. But it looks like it’s circular.”

“Keep watching. Watch closely. You will not have much time.”

She nodded. The blue light moved. It rose. As it rose, she could see that it was attached by threads, or trails of sharp light, to the floor itself. But beneath it she could see her golden smudge: it was not as bright as the blue light—she thought, when cast, it had never been as bright—but it was infinitely more complicated: it had the shape of the runes on her skin, but the lines, the strokes, the rounded curves, were finer and more dense. She recognized it, although it seemed more solid: it was the same mark as those that had risen from a dead girl’s eyes in the morgue, but written over and over again until it comprised a closed circle, surrounding the blackened rock.

Looking up, she met Ceridath’s eyes; he was watching her intently.

“It’s the same,” she said softly.

He nodded, and then said, “Corporal?”

Teela crossed the damp floor. Farris was behind her, and behind Farris, Tain. “Well?”

“I find evidence of the Arcane bomb here. It’s likely that at least one was detonated in the holding cell. It obviates any possibility of any other magic. This was not unexpected,” he added. “Farris?”

“I do not feel it is a good use of either our time or our power,” was the clipped, curt reply.

“Then please, feel free to tell the Emperor that,” Teela snapped.

Farris was silent; he met and held her gaze. Her gaze was now very blue, with very little green in it.

“You are the only person in the Imperial Order who is likely to find something I cannot,” Ceridath pointed out. “And the Magister made clear that the Emperor is now almost…angry…with the lack of progress in this case.” Farris nodded.

Kaylin waited for the familiar bite of magic. She kept her expression neutral and concentrated on keeping her breathing even, but she didn’t move to stand behind either Teela or Ceridath; instead, she watched Farris. His casting was not the slow, steady cast of the older mage; it was quick and sharp. The effects were instant; the blue light that adorned the ground grew by degrees, and the quality of it looked different, to Kaylin’s eye. She glanced at Ceridath, who was absorbed in the manifestation of the spell’s progress. This time, Kaylin could see the faint smudge that marred the otherwise solid blue, distorting its edges. She watched, waiting for Farris’s reaction.

It was a long time in coming, but the smudge never got any clearer; it was lost entirely to the blue light at the end. Farris turned to Teela. “There is nothing here that I can detect. The magic from the Arcane bomb is too strong. Ceridath?”

Ceridath hesitated for just a fraction of a second, and then nodded. “If that will satisfy you, Corporal, our work here is done.”

Teela didn’t look satisfied. But she nodded. “Do you gentlemen require an escort, or can you find your own way home to the ivory tower?”

“Oh, given Imperial concern and the amount of work you’ll no doubt have to do here, I’m sure we can find our own way,” Farris replied coldly. “Ceridath?”

“I am fatigued, and I would like to leave this place as soon as possible.”

“Good. Have a good day, Corporal.”

 

Teela waited in silence for five minutes after the mages had departed. It was exactly the wrong kind of silence, and Kaylin backed away from it as if it were an unsheathed sword. Tain, who knew her better, did the same.

“She’s not fond of mages,” he told Kaylin.

“Is anyone? I don’t think the Sergeant likes them much either.”

“He doesn’t. Our line of work is seldom as interesting—to mages—as their own. It is also work they feel any undereducated idiot could manage. Being put under our command annoys them, as it devalues their time. I don’t care one way or the other,” he added. “Teela doesn’t appreciate it.”

No kidding.

“But that’s not what’s made her angry at the moment.”

“No?”

“No. Come on, we’re heading back to the office.”

 

Teela was angry enough that she didn’t go to the office by way of the locker room, which meant Kaylin was still wearing two daggers—and a layer of dirt and dust—when they marched past the board with the Hawks’ duty roster toward the Sergeant, who was still sitting behind two large stacks of paper looking like an embattled, giant cat. Caitlin raised her head when Teela stormed by. She quietly did something to the mirror on her desk, and then rose; no one else appeared stupid enough to dare.

The Sergeant looked up as Teela reached the business end of his desk. Something about the Barrani caused his golden eyes to shade to an instant orange. “You found something.”

“Yes and no,” Teela replied. “We’re about to head up to the Tower. I thought you might as well join us because you’re going to get called there anyway, and it gives you a break from the paperwork.”

“Hawklord?”

She nodded.

“How serious is this?”

“Very.”

The Sergeant left his desk. When he joined Teela he stopped and looked at Kaylin, who’d been quietly standing behind Tain. “Wait with Caitlin,” he told her.

Teela, however, shook her head. “We’ll need her upstairs.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’ll have enough to worry about after the meeting. You won’t remember that you didn’t want her there later.”

 

Lord Grammayre was in the Tower. Kaylin had seen the inside of the Tower once, and once was enough; she approached it with dread. Dread, however, didn’t make her walk slowly; she couldn’t. Teela all but flew up the stairs, setting the pace. Teela also pressed her hand against the door ward—if you could call pounding it so hard they could probably hear it a Tower away “pressing.” The doors rolled open immediately.

The man everyone called the Hawklord was standing in the center of his Tower, facing a tall, oval mirror. Kaylin had never seen so many mirrors in her life, but even if she had, she would never have seen so many that offered no reflection to the person standing—or sitting—in front of it.

Teela saluted. It was crisp, sharp, and absolute. Tain did likewise, but it didn’t have the intensity of Teela’s gesture.

The Hawklord nodded. “How did the site investigation go?”

“We had two mages. Ceridath and Farris, the latter of whom is every bit as irritating as you’d expect a much older mage to be, without the excuse of age.”

The description, while accurate, didn’t seem to amuse the Hawklord. “What occurred?”

“Our initial sweep was correct—Arcane bombs were used.”

The Hawklord waited.

Teela turned to Kaylin and very treacherously nudged her toward the man who commanded them all. “Kaylin can tell you,” she said.

The Hawklord’s wings shifted slightly as he resettled them across his back. “Very well. Kaylin?”

She stared at him, mouth dry, aware that this was the man to whom she had to prove herself. And prove herself in order to do what?

“Kaylin?” he said again.

“Magic was used there before the Arcane bombs, sir.”

“You saw evidence of its use?”

She nodded.

“How clearly?”

“Not very clearly at first. Ceridath did something that made it clear enough that I could see the trace of it as a rune or a sigil.”

“Ceridath did?”

“He was trying to get the information,” she said quietly. “While trying to hide that fact that I was helping him. But he did something—I think it was hard—he looked a lot more tired after he’d finished. That made it clear to both of us.”

“Both?”

“Ceridath and me.”

“You are certain Ceridath saw what you saw.”

“I’m certain he saw what he saw.”

The Hawklord raised a brow. “I see you have been speaking with a mage. You are certain, then, that you are interpreting the same trace?”

She nodded firmly.

“I fail to see how this is a difficulty.”

“There are two,” Teela cut in. “The first is relatively minor—it’s the same sigil as the sigil found on one of the victims. It’s more cohesive because the tissue is not organic and not decaying. In and of itself, it gives us no new information. We knew a mage was involved, and it, in fact, seems to be the same mage.”

“I fail to see why this is a difficulty.”

Teela glanced at Tain; Tain glanced at the wall. “You’ll note the moon’s position.”

When the Hawklord failed to reply, she spoke a sharp word, and the long, oval mirror to one side of the Hawklord began to glow, as if it were a window into the clearest of nighttime skies. In its center, too large for the oval to contain, was the moon; it was tinged a pale red.

“Noted,” the Hawklord said. “Why is this significant?”

“The mortals call it the Harvest Moon. The Barrani call it the Hunter’s Moon. But when the Barrani call it the Harvest Moon, it has significantly different meaning—the Barrani do not till fields.”

“The previous deaths on record did not occur during a particular phase of the moon. With the exception of magic—a magic that might well have gone undetected—there is no obvious difference in the operation. We are, in my opinion, clearly dealing with the same criminal element.”

Teela fell silent. It was not a comfortable silence.

“I require some proof, Teela. Interracial crimes, especially those that concern the Barrani, are difficult in ways you of all people should understand. What is your second difficulty?”

“Ceridath, as expected, lied about his findings.”

The Hawklord nodded.

“I had some doubts about the usefulness of that lie in preserving his granddaughter’s life. Those doubts are significantly reduced now.”

“Oh?”

“He had a known reason to lie. The second mage, to our knowledge, did not.”

Both wings now rose as flight feathers expanded outward. “You are saying that the second mage lied.”

“I am.”

“Do you think he’s aware of Ceridath’s difficulty?”

“Oh, I’m certain he is. But not through Ceridath. I’m certain Ceridath was surprised.”

“You did not confront the second mage.”

“No.”

“Good. Dismissed. Sergeant Kassan excepted. Corporal, put a quiet alert out to the Barrani Hawks. I may have need of their services on very short notice.” He turned to the mirror and said something that Kaylin didn’t understand—again!—and the gray in the mirror folded in on itself to reveal a man in what looked like armor.

Teela’s brows rose, and she caught Kaylin by the shoulder. “Time to leave,” she said.

“But—”

“You heard the Corporal,” the Sergeant literally growled. “Go with her to Caitlin’s desk and stay there.”

 

“I don’t understand,” Kaylin said as they made their way down the stairs. The Barrani could walk quietly so naturally hers sounded like the only footsteps, and they echoed all the way up the spiral staircase.

Teela stopped walking so quickly Kaylin ran into her back. It was, notably, Kaylin who bounced. Teela turned to her; the Hawk’s eyes weren’t quite green, but they weren’t quite blue, either.

“You may have indirectly given us the only break we’ve had in this case. All joking at your expense aside, we needed you there. We thought the Hawklord had lost one too many flight feathers when he dumped you on the Sergeant. Now we’re wondering what the Hawklord knew that we didn’t.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Tain chuckled. “Come on. If we don’t get you down to Caitlin’s desk, Ironjaw will sharpen his teeth on us.”

“Or try,” Teela added.

“But what’s going to happen? And who was that guy?”

“That guy in the mirror, as you call him, is the Lord of Wolves. There aren’t as many Wolves in the Halls as there are either Swords or Hawks, and with some reason. But they’re good at a couple of things. Ground hunts. Surveillance. I bet someone’s heading over to the Imperial Order now—or as soon as their conversation is finished. The Lord of Wolves isn’t a very chatty man, but he’s rumored to be hideously efficient.”

“Wait,” Kaylin said as they began to walk again.

“What?”

“You bet?”

“Pardon?”

“You just said ‘I bet.’”

“It’s a human turn of phrase. It means I’m fairly certain—”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Really? And what do you think it means?”

Kaylin, at home for a moment in a subject she understood, began to explain.

 

“I really do not think that’s a good idea, dear,” Caitlin said firmly. She had folded her arms across her chest and was looking pointedly at Teela and Tain, while ostensibly talking to Kaylin.

“What, people don’t make bets here?”

“They do—but not in the office. I don’t think it’s entirely appropriate.”

“But—but why not?”

“Yes, Caitlin,” Tain added, smiling as he leaned over the back of a chair. “Why not?”

“Well, for one—”

“Incoming,” Teela said, saving Caitlin from her explanation. They all turned to see Sergeant Kassan—whose fur was notably fluffier—enter the office. “Fur standing on end, eyes orange,” Kaylin murmured to Caitlin.

“Yes, dear. Come sit on my side of the desk. Teela, Tain, I believe he wants to speak with you. And I have some good news for Kaylin, so why don’t you go and speak with the Sergeant somewhere else.”

“Why?”

“I want her to be able to hear it.”

 

“Kaylin, dear,” Caitlin said in a tone of voice that suggested it wasn’t the first time. “I realize the exit is interesting, but it hasn’t changed in the last five minutes, and it’s unlikely to change in the next five, either.”

Kaylin reddened and turned back to Caitlin. “I’m sorry,” she said morosely. “But—I want to know where they went. I want to know if they—if they found the people they’re looking for. I want to know what happens.”

“We all do. And whatever you did must have impressed Teela. I’d say she’s actually fond of you, inasmuch as that’s possible for the Barrani. But there are other things you have to think about first. Two of the landlords did mirror me while you were out, and we now have two possible apartments.”

Kaylin looked at the floor between her feet. “I can’t afford a place. I thought I told you that?”

“And I told you that there would be some budgetary room to help you with the cost of accommodations,” was the firm reply. “If there’s no emergency, we’ll leave a bit early tonight, and we’ll go to look at the two places.” Kaylin nodded.

“In the meantime, what have you eaten today?”

 

Kaylin was quiet as they left the building. If there’d been an emergency, it wasn’t the kind that required Caitlin’s immediate attention; she didn’t leave early, but she didn’t stay very late, as she put it. She led Kaylin through much, much quieter halls toward the exit, which was still manned by guards. Kaylin recognized one as Clint, the first Hawk she’d actually laid eyes on, if you didn’t include the Hawklord.

She stopped in front of him, and turned.

He raised one brow. He was tall, although not as tall as the wingless human who stood to his right. It was the Aerian who had her attention.

“Kaylin?” Caitlin said over her shoulder. “We don’t want to be late, dear.”

She startled, nodded, and turned to join Caitlin. Then she turned back. “Clint?”

He raised a brow.

“How much weight can you carry?”

“Pardon?”

“When you fly—how much weight can you take with you?”

His look of confusion cleared, but it was replaced by suspicion. “Why?”

The man to his right had begun to chuckle.

“Kaylin—” Caitlin said, and gently touched her shoulder.

Kaylin’s shoulder’s dropped slightly, and she reddened. “Never mind,” she murmured. “It was—it was just a question.” She turned what she hoped looked like a genuine smile on Caitlin and climbed down the stairs.

 

Tanner waited until they were far enough down the street—although still visible—before he burst into laughter, which was, strictly speaking, frowned on for door guards. Clint glared at him.

“You know what she wanted to ask.”

Clint considered accidentally dropping his weapon somewhere in the vicinity of Tanner’s foot, which was also frowned on. The Hawks were expected to have some dignity in public. “Yes, I know what she wanted to ask.”

It was one of the few hazards the Aerian Hawks faced at public events and in public places. For some reason that wasn’t immediately obvious to Clint, human children were fascinated by Aerian wings. And the Aerian ability to fly. But Kaylin wasn’t exactly a child…

Tanner was almost finished laughing when Clint glared at him. The glare apparently reset the period of the laughter. “It makes me feel like a pony,” the Aerian grumbled.

“You could always say no.”

“Easy for you to say—they’re not asking you. I don’t notice you telling the little rats to get lost when they ask you to carry them on your shoulders.”

Tanner shrugged as Clint looked pointedly toward the interior of the Halls. “Yeah, but I know I have the words big sucker tattooed across my forehead. What’s your excuse? What are you looking for?”

“Who,” Clint replied. “We’re about to be relieved. Shift’s up five minutes ago.”

“And you’re so anxious to get home?”

“Where else?”

Tanner laughed again. “They’re not walking quickly,” he offered.

Clint told him where he could go.

Kaylin was embarrassed enough to be silent for a couple of blocks. But Caitlin was so mild and so friendly it was hard to remain silent. “It’s just—it’s their wings. It’s that they can fly,” she said, shoving her thumbs into her belt loops. “They’re not trapped on the ground.”

“They still have to eat and sleep, which means they still have to work.”

Kaylin nodded. “I know they’re mortal. I know they’re probably just like normal people, but—” she shrugged “—they can fly.” As if that explained anything. “I don’t weigh much,” she added anxiously. “And I wasn’t going to—” She reddened.

“You won’t be the first person who’s asked, dear. I’m sure he wasn’t offended.”

“He probably thinks I’m an idiot.”

“Oh, I doubt it.” She stopped walking. “Do you see that building? The one with the coral roof?”

“What, the pink one?”

Caitlin nodded. “Except it’s not quite pink.”

It looked pink enough to Kaylin.

“There’s an apartment available there. It’s not apparently very large. We’ll see it, of course. But it’s a modern building, and it would be quite safe.”

“What do you mean, modern?”

 

What she meant by modern became clear the instant they approached the front doors. It wasn’t the windows—although there were glass windows in the door which looked in on a large, well-lit foyer—and it wasn’t the walk, which was smooth, flat stone; nor was it the plants that had been dropped in the front of the building, near the walkway. It was the door itself.

There was a sigil on the door that glowed faintly.

Caitlin reached out to touch it; nothing happened. “See?” she said. “It’s warded. Someone will come to open the door in a minute—we’re expected—but no one can enter the building if they don’t live here.”

Kaylin was staring with growing unease at the ward itself. “It’s magic, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes, dear, but so are the mirrors in the office. Most of the doors in the Halls have wards, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“I don’t—I don’t want to touch it,” Kaylin finally said. “Not every day. The other building—is it as modern?”

“No. But I do think this is a safer building for a young lady your age.”

Kaylin folded her arms across her chest and tried to dredge up the gratitude she knew she should be feeling. Grimacing, she lifted her hand and placed her palm against the door.

She bit her lip hard enough that it started to bleed when she felt the magic suddenly surge—painfully—up her palm.

Caitlin, watching her, frowned and sighed. “I’ll explain things to the landlord.”

 

“I’m sorry.” Kaylin meant it; she felt awful.

Caitlin had been not angry, which would have been bad; she’d been disappointed, which was infinitely worse. “You’re going to have to live in whichever apartment we choose,” was the reasonable reply. “You shouldn’t feel bad about choosing one that suits you.”

This didn’t make Kaylin feel all that much better. She knew she didn’t deserve the help she’d been offered, and she didn’t understand why Caitlin had taken her under her wing. But she didn’t want her to stop, either, and only in part because she was a free roof and food. Kaylin had watched her at work, and she’d watched the way the other Hawks reacted to her—even at a distance. It was like she was…family. Their family.

Kaylin could live without family. She’d proved that. She could live with family as well. But losing family was the hardest thing she’d survived, and she never wanted to do it again.

Then why find one at all? her inner voice said. What you don’t have, you can’t lose. It’s safer.

But safety was cold.

As if the words were thoughts and some nebulous—and vindictive—god had picked them out of the air, she heard a loud shout from above.

“Kaylin, move!”

 

It wasn’t all children that had this effect on Clint. It really wasn’t.

It was the orphans. The foundlings. The children whose expression screamed homeless even if they never said a word. Seeing her in the holding cell that first time, he should have recognized instantly that she was trouble. Well, okay, he’d recognized that—but he should have clearly seen what kind of trouble. It was her eyes. Her unchanging human eyes. Yes, there was no variation of color to indicate the shift in her mood—but she was one human who didn’t need it. The width of her eyes was enough.

He flew lower over the City than he usually did while on sky patrol, but he’d lost the armor and the visible signs of his profession. He knew she was with Caitlin, and if the girl wasn’t familiar enough to be recognized at a distance, Caitlin certainly was.

But it wasn’t Kaylin or Caitlin that Clint saw first, and the person he did see he didn’t recognize. It didn’t matter. He recognized the position the man had taken on the flat of a roof; he lay flush with it, propped up on his elbows, his hands positioned beneath him as if he was sitting. Clint glanced at the street just below the building, and he almost froze.

There, coming into view, were the two women he had set out from the Halls to find: Caitlin. Kaylin. The man on the roof shifted, tightening his position. With a growing sense of certainty and horror, Clint understood who his target was.

“Kaylin, move!”

He folded wings as the assassin on the roof fired and then rolled to his feet to face an Aerian who was hurtling from the air to meet him.

 

Kaylin threw herself forward, tucking her chin and rolling as if she were still in the fiefs and that shouted warning was the very thin divide between life and death. She heard the beating of wings, heard a sudden, sharp whistle of air—and worse, heard the grunt of surprise and pain just behind and above where she’d come to her feet, knees bent. She drew her daggers while turning, and then almost dropped them.

Caitlin was clutching her arm, her eyes wide. Blood seeped between her fingers. Kaylin glanced quickly around the street; it was empty. She jammed her knives back into her sheath and ran the few steps to Caitlin, where she caught the older woman by the arms and drew her as quickly as possible into the nearest gap between two buildings.

The bolt had winged Caitlin’s upper arm. Kaylin hadn’t seen the assassin. She hadn’t seen him—or her—because she hadn’t even been looking. “Caitlin?” she whispered.

Caitlin nodded, looking dazed. “I’m fine.”

“Wait here,” Kaylin told her. “I’ll run and get help—we’re not far—” She stopped speaking for just a minute. She was afraid to leave Caitlin here; she was afraid that they wouldn’t make it back if she didn’t. She had no sense of the lay of the land anywhere except directly around the Halls of Law themselves.

“Kaylin, I’m fine. It’s just my arm,” Caitlin whispered.

But she was white, she was bleeding, and she was trembling. Kaylin held her. Beyond the mouth of the alley she could hear the clash of steel, the sound of raised voices, as if they were a world away. What mattered was here, now.

“I never told you,” Kaylin said.

This understandably confused the older woman, who was still clutching her arm. “Told me what, dear?”

“I—” Kaylin unbuttoned one sleeve and yanked it up to the crook of her elbow, exposing the marks that she always kept hidden. “These,” she said.

Caitlin looked at them. She was still confused. “Tattoos?”

“No. They started to appear on my skin months ago. On the insides of my arms—both arms, and the insides of my legs. On my back, as well. They all look like this. Like writing. But I can’t read them. No one could.”

“No one?”

No one I could show them to. Kaylin simply nodded. “I didn’t understand what they meant. I still don’t. But…after they appeared I discovered I could do one useful thing with them that I’d never been able to do without them.”

As if she were talking about the weather, the office, or tea, Caitlin nodded. “Was it a useful or helpful thing?”

Kaylin swallowed. “Let me show you.” The exposed marks on her arm began to glow. In the fading evening light, they looked like some combination of blue and gold; it wasn’t enough to see by. But Caitlin looked at the runes as if hypnotized.

“Your hands are very warm,” the older woman said.

Kaylin nodded. “They are.” She reached out and gently pried Caitlin’s hand from the wound. Caitlin winced, but didn’t struggle or argue; she watched as Kaylin placed her own hand there in its stead. Her eyes rounded.

“Kaylin, what are you doing?”

“I’m—I’m closing it. The wound, I mean.”

Caitlin was silent for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was hushed. “You need to speak with Lord Grammayre.”

“I think he already knows,” was the bitter reply. She knew Caitlin wanted to hear more, and she’d even started to try to find the words, when Clint rescued her. He landed at the mouth of the alley. His left arm was bleeding, but not a lot more than Caitlin’s had been. It seemed to bother him a lot less, on the other hand.

“Thank the gods,” he said. His wings were high and rigid. In the poorer light, Kaylin couldn’t tell what color his eyes were. “You’re both all right.”

“Yes, dear,” Caitlin replied. “Did you catch the person who attempted to fire?”

“Yes. Or rather, the ground did. His leg is broken. His right arm is broken. It’s possible a few of his ribs are also cracked.”

Caitlin winced, which caused Clint to roll his eyes—and even in the poor light, that was obvious. “Try to remember he was aiming to kill?”

Caitlin glanced at her arm and managed a wry smile. “That might not be as hard as it should be.” She gently removed Kaylin’s hand, and they both got to their feet. When Clint saw her bloodied sleeve, his expression changed.

When Caitlin saw his expression, hers changed as well. She lifted both her hands. “I’m fine, Clint. I wasn’t hurt.” Frowning, she added, “But you were. I think, as we’re close enough to the Halls, we should head to the infirmary. I need to use the mirror,” she added. “I think we’re going to have to miss the apartment viewing.”

 

As they walked back to the Halls, Caitlin said, “It’s a very good thing you were there, Clint.”

His expression could have been carved out of stone, there was so little give in it.

Caitlin raised a brow. “Why were you there?”

Kaylin had been wondering the same thing, but given the grimness of Clint’s expression, and the definite presence of his blood, would never have had the courage to ask.

For his part, Clint pretended he hadn’t heard the question—and maybe he hadn’t. His gaze was focused in a sweep above the ground, at window—or roof—height. Kaylin joined him as the buildings grew more familiar; it was a pretty silent walk, and even Caitlin had given up on small talk by the time they reached the Halls of Law. The guards on the door were two men Kaylin didn’t recognize. Clint and Caitlin clearly did, but more important, the guards recognized them—and were expecting them.

There was more grim on those steps than she’d seen anywhere but at the wreckage of the house.

“Sergeant’s waiting for you in the infirmary,” one of the men told Caitlin.

Caitlin winced.

“I can wait here,” Kaylin told her.

“No, dear, I really don’t think that’s an option.”

“I can wait in the office?”

“A better choice, but I still don’t think that’s an option. And Clint does need to get to the infirmary. Arguing will only delay—”

“I’m fine,” the Aerian Hawk barked.

“You’re bleeding.”

Clint eyed the torn remnant of her sleeve. “And you’re not? Oh, wait—I’m somehow less hardy than the office den mother, a woman who doesn’t train, doesn’t work out, and doesn’t—ever—join ground or air patrols.”

“The air patrols would be a bit difficult.”

Clint snorted, but that was infinitely better than his rigid silence. Kaylin glanced at his wings; they were fuller and slightly higher than they usually were, but even so, they looked soft and lovely. She flushed when he suddenly turned on her. “They’re just wings. They’re like arms or legs.”

Kaylin nodded, and Clint smacked his own forehead. “Here,” he said, extending one. When she didn’t move, he did, stepping toward her. He lowered the wing, but kept it extended. “This is not a comfortable position,” he told her.

She understood that he meant her to actually touch his wing, and she stood there like an idiot, her mouth half-open. “Can I—can I hurt it?”

Both of his brows rose. “What, you?” Before she could answer, he continued. “The day you can accidentally hurt my wings is the day I retire. At the very least. Just be careful of the flight feathers.”

It wasn’t flight. He wasn’t offering her the skies. It was—it was really a handshake. And she knew it was stupid…but she reached out anyway, her hands trembling.

“See?” he said, voice gruff. “Solid. Not as soft as they look. Not the stuff of dreams.”

She smiled, eyes wide. “Not the stuff of dreams,” she repeated quietly. He was wavering in her vision, and he lifted his wings to gently brush her cheek.

“Come on,” he said, voice gruffer. “If Morlan lets me out of the infirmary without her usual hour-long lecture on wound care, I’ll take you up over the City. Just don’t tell everyone.”

 

Sergeant Kassan was, indeed, waiting in the infirmary. He wasn’t the only one. The infirmary, like the morgue, was a large room with a wall full of cupboards, a lot of counter space cluttered by a bunch of lidded jars. But instead of the morgue’s tables, it contained beds with thin sheets, and there was no intimidating wall-size mirror anywhere in sight. There were standing screens shoved toward one wall; Kaylin guessed they could be pulled and moved anywhere a modicum of privacy was needed.

At the moment, they probably wouldn’t have fit.

The Sergeant was standing in the center of a pack of Hawks who looked identical. They wore the Hawks’ tabard, and they had the long, flowing hair that characterized the Barrani. She knew that Teela and Tain must be among them, and was embarrassed to admit—even to herself—that she couldn’t tell which ones they were.

They saved her the humiliation of asking. Teela separated herself from the pack and approached. Her usual elegant saunter was gone, and if Kaylin had thought she’d never looked friendly before, she repented. Before she could speak, however, someone intercepted her.

“Caitlin!”

“Morlan,” Caitlin replied with a tired smile.

Morlan was an Aerian with spotted wings, and one of the only female Aerians Kaylin had seen in the Halls. The infirmary was, as Caitlin quietly pointed out, her roost. She was happy to see Caitlin—for all of five seconds. But the torn and bloodied sleeve caught her attention on the sixth second, and all Caitlin’s protestations aside, there was instant worry—and instant rage, but the rage was channeled into something productive. She made Caitlin sit down.

The Sergeant came over to the bedside, and Morlan also made him leave it, which caused his fur to stand on end. “Caitlin?”

“I am honestly fine, Marcus. You’ll note that Clint is still bleeding, on the other hand.”

“That? That’s not bleeding, it’s a kitten scratch.”

Only when she’d pulled back the sleeve to see Caitlin’s arm did Morlan stop.

“I told you,” Caitlin began.

Morlan frowned. “Whose blood is this?”

Caitlin was silent.

“It’s hers,” Clint said.

“It can’t be,” Morlan replied in an equally flat voice. “You can look if you want, Sergeant. There’s no wound.”

The Sergeant, however, was looking at Kaylin, and after a minute, so was everyone else in the room. They were all angry, and Kaylin couldn’t figure out why, but she felt her throat tighten. She could use anger as a defense or a shield, but she was tired and confused; she let it be.

Caitlin reached out and caught one of Kaylin’s hands. “You don’t understand. They’re not angry at you,” she said, as if every emotion Kaylin felt had been put into loud, screaming words.

“They’re angry.” Kaylin looked at Caitlin. She understood in that moment why almost everyone did. There was nothing threatening about Caitlin, but there was something about her that suggested a spine that would neither bow nor break.

The Sergeant growled. His eyes were classic orange, and his fur had not, in fact, come back down. “Kitling,” he said, “They’re angry for Caitlin. She was lucky.”

Kaylin felt herself relaxing. That anger made sense to her.

“It wasn’t luck,” Caitlin told him. “Whoever it was, he wasn’t aiming at me.”

Teela didn’t look surprised. She placed a hand on Kaylin’s shoulder. “They were aiming for our trainee?”

Caitlin nodded. “Clint?”

“It was Kaylin.”

This should have calmed people down. It didn’t. The Sergeant’s eyes had gone from orange to a peculiar shade that wasn’t quite red, and his lips had curled, exposing the length of his fangs. Teeth that long wouldn’t have fit in Kaylin’s mouth, even when it was fully open.

“We need to have a chat with the Wolflord,” Teela said, heading for the door.

“Corporal,” the Sergeant growled.

“What?” She spun, her hair gleaming as it followed her movement.

“Wait for me.” He stalked out the door first, and Teela signaled to Tain, who broke away from the Barrani pack to join them. Kaylin started to follow, and Caitlin’s hand tightened.

“Not you, dear.”

“But—”

“You don’t like hostility, and that is not going to be a friendly meeting.”

“Should we wait?”

“Yes. I don’t think the Sergeant is going to let us leave without an escort. Not tonight.” She sighed, and added, “There’s also the matter of the injured assassin.”

Morlan lifted a wing. “The Hawklord’s with him now,” she said grimly. “And the Tha’alani are on their way to meet him as we speak. If he knows anything, we’ll know it before Marcus gets out of his meeting. But yes, I think you should stay in the office until things have settled down a bit.”

The mirror flashed enough of a warning that Caitlin could tell Kaylin to put the chair back, as people were often territorial about their chairs, their desks, or their square feet of cubicle. Kaylin was therefore sitting on the floor at Caitlin’s feet when an angry Leontine and a small host of Barrani swept in. They had been joined by two Aerians, both of whom were familiar to Kaylin: Clint and Lord Grammayre.

They had also been joined by three men Kaylin didn’t recognize. Given the sheer size of the Halls, this wasn’t surprising—but none of the three wore the now-familiar Hawk. “We’re not going to have much time,” one of the strangers was telling the angry Leontine. “We’ll have two hours from start to finish tomorrow. That’s it. If we find what you hope we’ll find, all bets are off.”

“If we don’t?”

“A member of the Imperial Dragon Court takes a personal interest in the well-being of the Imperial Order,” was the reply. It seemed to mean something to everyone there. “You’ve got one man on the inside, but he’s almost certainly under constant surveillance. We’re not going in that way.”

Kaylin started to rise, and Caitlin caught her hand and pressed it firmly.

The movement, however, caught the attention of the man. “You are Kaylin Neya?” he asked, one brow rising just that little bit too high. She nodded.

“Captain Neall,” he said, and held out a hand. She shook it with only a trace of hesitation. “I’m with the Wolves.”

“She’s with the Hawks,” one of the Barrani said curtly.

The Captain raised his brow again. He was tall, slim, and younger than Caitlin; he had one scar across his forehead, and a nose that suggested a fistfight, but he was impeccably dressed and his posture was perfect. “Lord Grammayre?”

“She is, indeed, with the Hawks, if the poor display of manners does not already make that clear.”

“How much does she know?”

“She was not present for the interrogation of the prisoner. She does, however, have a clear understanding of the methods used.”

Kaylin froze for just a minute, but the Hawklord’s expression was neutral.

“Very well.” Captain Neall turned to Kaylin and then turned back to Lord Grammayre. “How old is she?”

“Kaylin?”

“Thirteen,” Kaylin replied. “Almost fourteen.”

Captain Neall grimaced. “Let’s stick with thirteen.”

Kaylin reddened, and once again, one of the Barrani spoke. “From our perspective she’s almost fourteen. She’s also almost eighteen.”

This time, the Captain ignored the comment. “The man on the roof had a crossbow. I assume you are aware of this fact.”

She nodded.

“The crossbow itself is of local make, and it is not of particularly high quality. Nor is that entirely relevant. Had the Corporal not interfered, he would have hit—and in all likelihood killed—his target. His target, we are informed, was you. Do you have any idea why?”

Someone coughed.

“I assume someone was paying him,” Kaylin said.

This caused a different type of coughing.

“Very clever. Yes, someone was paying him.”

“Who?”

“Less clear. A human woman, roughly forty, possibly fifty. Well dressed, slender. We have a memory crystal with a functional image.”

“Where did she meet him?”

He raised a brow. “Young lady, I believe I’m the one asking the questions.” He glanced at Lord Grammayre and shook his head. “The woman in question is not connected in any way with the Imperial Order of Mages. It is through the Imperial Order, however, that the information was conveyed.”

“How do you know that?”

“Kaylin,” the Hawklord said. “Answer the Captain’s questions without posing your own, or we will be here until morning.”

“There are only two points of origin we consider probable.”

Kaylin nodded.

“And I am informed by the Corporal that we will require your assistance on-site to evaluate the two possibilities.”

The Sergeant growled.

“We’ve already agreed to take some of the Barrani Hawks,” the Captain said in a smooth, no-nonsense tone. “If they cannot protect her, given the circumstances, very little can. If we do not apprehend the criminals, it’s likely that Barrani or no, she won’t survive. For some reason, someone considered her a very grave threat.”

Kaylin looked at Teela, recognizable because she, too, was almost growling. “What am I supposed to do?” she asked quietly.

“Exactly what you did on-site. No more and no less. If Ceridath was behind this, I will kill him slowly.”

But Kaylin shook her head. “I’d bet money it wasn’t him—and even if it was, they have his granddaughter and he knows what they’ve done to their other victims.”

“That’s not the way it works, kitling.”

“Maybe it should be.”

The Hawklord cleared his throat. “Kaylin, you will go with Teela and Tain tomorrow afternoon. You will obey them if they give orders. They are subordinate in all situations to the Wolves in charge of the surveillance unless they feel your life is in danger.”

Kaylin nodded.

It was Marcus who said, “You don’t have to do this. You’re not a Hawk. You’ve made no pledge and taken no oaths. You’re not even getting paid. You’ve been here for a day—”

“Two,” she said.

He growled; she lifted her chin.

“Nobody likes a pedant. You’ve been here for a day, and you’ve got assassins on you. At your age. In my department. They are asking you to do this, not ordering you to do it. You can refuse without breaking any laws, and frankly I’ll sleep tonight if you do.” He glared at her for a long, silent minute. “None of this is getting through, is it?”

She nodded.

“You want to go.”

She nodded again.

“Why?”

“Because there’s a chance we can save Ceridath’s granddaughter. And the other children they must have gathered somewhere in this city. Because I won’t just be underfoot.”

“You understand the risks, after tonight?”

She almost laughed, but it would have been the wrong laugh. “We couldn’t even walk outside at this time of night without taking our lives in our hands. We had Ferals hunting by sundown. I think I can live with a little risk—and it’s a risk I get to choose. I want to help. My reasons haven’t changed. I’ve seen what happened to those children, too—I understand the risks.” She folded her arms tightly across her chest.

“Fine.” He turned to Teela. “Escort Caitlin and Kaylin home. Clint will fly scout.”

Clint nodded.

As they left the office—still occupied by the rest of the Barrani, the Captain, and the Hawklord, Clint said, “Kaylin, you are going to age most of the department prematurely by the end of tomorrow. Swear to god I can see my hair graying.”

“Speak for yourself,” Teela laughed.

“Fine. Most of the department who can age. Have you really only been here two days?”

Kaylin nodded. She hesitated, and then said, “Did you mean it? About the flying?”

He raised a brow and then laughed. “Yeah, I meant it. I know where Caitlin lives. I’ll take you there the long way. No one’s targeting Caitlin directly, so it’ll even be practical.”

Teela and Tain came to Caitlin’s in the morning as well, and Kaylin caught a glimpse of Aerian shadow across the early-morning streets when they left the building. The two Barrani Hawks were silent and their expressions kept people away. They would have kept Kaylin away had she not known they were there for her benefit; even given the tabards, they looked like walking death wishes.

They made it to the Halls of Law without incident, which seemed to disappoint at least Teela. Caitlin took Kaylin to one side and, to the shock of many, asked for help sorting through the reports in her in-pile. This lasted only as long as it took Kaylin to admit that she couldn’t read the necessary précis of what the reports contained, never mind the reports themselves. The older woman pursed her lips and said, “That will have to change. If you mean to work here at all, you’ll actually need to write some reports, and you’ll need to be able to read—and understand—a lot of them as well.

“I’ll speak to the Hawklord about that. The new recruits are expected to take classes in a number of different subjects, because some of the knowledge the Hawks have isn’t considered general knowledge. You’ll probably be asked to join those.”

Kaylin nodded, only half listening. “I want to learn High Barrani.”

“You’ll need to learn High Barrani—but without the ability to read and write, that’s going to be very difficult. You can take these down the hall to the morgue, though. I’m afraid until you start classes, there’ll be a lot of errand running. Most days will not be as eventful as yesterday.”

Kaylin carried messages until Teela came to get her. “Here,” she said, tossing a bundle of cloth at Kaylin. “Just put it on over whatever you’re wearing. It’s going to be a bit on the long side, but hopefully not much.”

“What is it?”

“Just put it on.”

With a little help from Caitlin, she did just that—and discovered that it was a cut-down version of the tabard Teela and Tain wore when they left the Halls. The embroidered Hawk figured prominently across its chest. She was silent for a long moment, running her fingers over its stylized wings.

Teela gave her that moment, no more. “Come on, kitling. If we’re late to meet up with the Wolves, the Sergeant will have what’s left of our hides.”

“Be careful, Kaylin,” Caitlin called out at her retreating back.

 

“It’s like they don’t trust us,” Teela murmured.

“There’s a reason they don’t generally partner the Barrani Hawks with the fragile ones,” Tain pointed out. “And given everyone’s obsession with a handful of mortal years, they’ve classified Kaylin as exceptionally fragile.”

“Yes, but we weren’t supposed to be watching over the other ones. Heads up,” she added as they turned a corner and almost ran into Captain Neall and two of his Wolves. He nodded as if he’d expected the near collision and turned neatly on heel.

“The carriages are waiting.”

Kaylin winced, but said nothing; instead, in silence, she followed Teela and Tain. The Wolves weren’t particularly friendly or chatty, but at this point, she didn’t expect it; she expected the tension that had gripped the two Barrani, so she wasn’t disappointed.

There was something almost dreamlike about the carriage ride. The streets moved past, framed by the window, and jostling as the wheels moved up and down; she watched the buildings change, caught glimpses of other carriages on the wider roads, and saw people moving out of the way—or pointing—as they drove past. They drove quickly, and at last came to a stop. Teela was first out of the carriage.

“You’re sure the direct route is the one we want?” Eyeing the building dubiously, Kaylin climbed out and looked at it; the building, while not as tall as the Halls of Law, was still pretty damn tall. It had two towers, shorter but somehow more majestic, at either end. Between those towers lay an expanse of pale stone, with windows—glass windows—and wide arches for various doors. Of course, to get to any of the doors, they had to get through the fences, or over them.

Captain Neall, on the other hand, didn’t look like the type of man who was prepared to climb them. He walked to a small break in the fence—it looked like a small hut—and waited until someone came out. That someone was armed, large, and not particularly friendly—but while Kaylin preferred friendly, she’d long since given up on actually finding much of it.

The Captain handed the man some rolled-up paper, and the man unrolled it, read it—Kaylin had never wanted to read so badly in her life—and handed it back. Then he walked back into the small hut, and after a moment, the gates opened. They creaked.

“Let the Captain do the talking,” Teela told Kaylin quietly. “Even if they ask you a direct question.”

“This is your entire crew?” the guard asked Captain Neall. The Captain nodded, and added more impatiently, “The composition of the crew is detailed in the directive.”

Kaylin frowned. “We’re the Law, right?”

Teela nodded.

“We need permission to visit?”

“It’s the Imperial Order of Mages. You probably need permission to sneeze.”

“But…we’re investigating something illegal.”

“Yes. And apparently we’re required to remain within the boundaries of the law, regardless. Funny thing that. No one mortal likes a hypocrite, except perhaps the hypocrite himself.”

“And the Barrani don’t care?”

“The Barrani,” she said with a slender, edged smile, “don’t bother with the hypocrisy. If they have the power, and they’re certain of it, they do pretty much whatever they want. If there’s uncertainty, they resort to diplomacy, but no one believes a word the other person is saying.”

“So why are you working for the Hawks?”

Tain stepped on Kaylin’s foot, and that was all the reply she got. They followed the guards down the walk and toward the large front doors, where more guards stood waiting. These guards, however, didn’t stop them, as they already had two as escorts.

The building itself was very, very fine; it was bright, the halls were tall—although not so tall as the Aerie in the Halls of Law—and everything was well lit; the floors gleamed, where they could be clearly seen. Long rugs covered the center stretch of floor, absorbing noise. There was very little noise that wasn’t footsteps. She was beginning to feel comfortable in this silent anonymity, when a man approached from the other end of the hall. She recognized him: It was Magister Dreury.

Kaylin wasn’t too proud to hide behind Teela. Teela, on the other hand, didn’t appear to be concerned; she looked pointedly at Captain Neall.

“Captain,” the Magister said in a cold, autocratic voice. “This is a highly unusual visit.”

“It is, indeed, Magister. I’m certain you appreciate our concerns, and the reasons for a private, congenial visit. I was informed by the Lord of Wolves that any public investigation would be considered an insult to the fine members of the Imperial Order, and that such an extreme of accusation and possible public panic would be undesirable both for the Halls and for the Imperial Order itself.

“It is, however, possible—”

The Magister lifted a multiringed hand. “Enough,” he said curtly. “I am far too old to play games of this nature for more than a few hours a day, and I’ve served my few hours. The meeting is in progress. You will have the run of the two areas you’ve requested for the duration. You will leave before the meeting itself is adjourned.”

“Of course.”

“Good. I myself am somewhat late, and as the meeting will not commence without my presence, I will lead you to the rooms.”

 

The areas, as the Magister had called them, weren’t completely empty. There was one man lounging in a chair, his feet on a desk, his hands folded in a steeple across his chest. He appeared to be sleeping, although he opened one eye as they crossed the threshold. The man was not, however, human; he was Barrani.

Teela’s eyes went to an instant, cold blue; Tain’s also lost all green, but Tain, of the two, seemed less likely to overreact.

“Neall,” Teela began, forgetting his rank. “You go too damn far.”

The Barrani stranger stood, straightening the fall of his robes. His eyes were completely emerald-green, and his smile, while stunning, was also like a dagger’s edge. “I see that rumors have some substance in this regard. You are with the Hawks.” He offered Teela what Kaylin assumed was a very sarcastic bow; she ignored it.

“Corporal.” The Captain’s voice was cold. “At the moment we cannot afford entanglement with Imperial mages. At least the Arcanists work, aboveboard, for money.”

“For significant amounts of money,” Teela snapped.

“Oh, not always,” the Barrani interjected. “Sometimes we do it because we’re…bored. This sounded like it had the possibility of amusement.”

“Given the price you’re charging,” Captain Neall said, “it had better provide the Wolves with more than just the dubious pleasure of amusing you.”

The man smiled. He glanced at Teela and Tain, and then at Kaylin—but her age didn’t seem to immediately trigger any condescension. Or, Kaylin amended, any unnatural condescension, given he was Barrani. “I’m certain it will provide the necessary information.”

Teela was frowning; Captain Neall noticed—Kaylin thought he’d miss something when they put out his eyes, if then. He nodded to the man he’d identified as an Arcanist, but hadn’t bothered to introduce. Kaylin, mindful of Barrani hearing, didn’t ask what an Arcanist was, or what the difference between an Arcanist and a mage was. Instead, when Captain Neall led them out of the room—through a different door—she trailed behind Teela and Tain.

She wasn’t certain what she’d expected. What she hadn’t expected was the mess. The desk made Sergeant Kassan’s desk look tidy.

“This,” the Captain said, “is Ceridath’s. Both rooms—the outer and the inner—are his. It is in this second room that he is reputed to do most of his study.”

Kaylin honestly couldn’t see how. Then again, she’d never owned so much raw stuff in her life; she had no idea if she’d be as messy, otherwise. There were layers of mess. She started to say something, remembered she wasn’t supposed to speak, and then bit her lip as her arms and legs began the slow burn that clearly indicated the presence of magic in the room.

What was disturbing was the fact that the Arcanist hadn’t bothered to gesture or speak at all. Looking at him, he appeared to be reading the spines of the several hundred books that formed a bastion along the shelves of the wall opposite the door, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. He did walk, he did move, but he was—like Teela or Tain—completely graceful and entirely unselfconscious as he did.

Kaylin wasn’t. She walked slowly because it felt like her skin was being rubbed off every time anything came into contact with it—like, say, her clothing. But as the spell grew stronger, the room began to shift, very slightly, in her view. There were some spells on the books themselves, but not all of the books, and the spells were almost ethereal; there was very little obvious light cast. The color wasn’t the gold of the other spells; it wasn’t the blue of the Arcane bombs. It was a shadowy slate, which was probably why it was easy to miss.

She examined other parts of the room as the spell continued to grow in power, and again, some objects seemed to have been somehow magically enspelled, but the color was a theme; it was gray, or a gray-blue at its brightest, and it never quite emerged into something strongly runic. The last place she turned was the desk, and there she froze.

Teela came to her instantly, and touched her shoulder without speaking. Kaylin pointed toward the mirror on his desk. It was rectangular, with a metal frame that had small claws for legs; at the height of the frame, in the center of the bar, was one bright, golden sigil.

It was the same sigil.

“Thank you,” the Captain said to the Arcanist. “If we can now move to the second set of rooms?”

The Arcanist nodded. “He is not a terribly significant power,” he said dismissively of Ceridath. “But possessed of some subtlety.”

“Wait, can you tell what the spell is supposed to do?”

“I?” The Arcanist glanced from the desk to Kaylin for the first time. “Not immediately, although were I given a week, yes.”

“Without triggering it,” Teela added.

“Oh, well.”

 

The second set of rooms was a study in contrasts. Although the exterior room was very similar to Ceridath’s, the interior was almost spotless. It gleamed. It was possessed of at least as many books, at least as many shelves, and to Kaylin’s eye, the shelves were finer; the surface of the unoccupied desk was almost spotless. A mirror rested on the corner nearest the door. It was an oval, not a rectangle, and it seemed to be made of silver; the frame was not simple; the height of the oval was a carved figure with spread arms and the hint of wings, and the arms seemed to be more highly polished than the rest, because they seemed to reflect more light.

“This,” the Arcanist said, with a critical eye, “was a costly piece.”

“We’re not concerned with the piece, per se,” was Captain Neall’s terse reply. “But rather the possibility of external enchantment.”

But Teela said, “That was not crafted by mortal hands.”

“No?”

“Oh no,” the Arcanist said softly.

He began to cast, again with no outward display at all of his gathering—and spreading—power. Kaylin was almost surprised when no similar golden glyph appeared anywhere on the mirror. Which wasn’t to say that there were no glyphs; there were. They were ice-blue and forest-green; there was one that defined the color yellow. They worked in concert, and they were so intricate she couldn’t have traced their pattern; they were also compelling.

But she turned toward the rest of the study as the Arcanist did, and followed him as he began to examine the books on the shelves.

She didn’t get very far. What was missing on the mirror, she found on the books; the enchantments were not as subtle, not as hard to see, as the enchantments in Ceridath’s study. But every single one of them was, in Kaylin’s vision, a radiant gold, and in that light, she could see a very familiar sigil.

 

She looked to Teela who was watching her like, well, a Hawk. Something must have caught Captain Neall’s attention, because he said, “Thank you. We have the information we need,” to the Arcanist.

The Arcanist’s spell did not, however, fade or drop, although he did move away from the Captain toward Farris’s desk. Kaylin watched him as he sauntered over to the chair behind the desk. Seating himself as if he owned it, he leaned toward the mirror and gestured; the sigils that Kaylin now knew meant a spell had been cast began to move. They danced in the air just above the frame as if they were performing for his benefit.

Teela shook Kaylin by the shoulder and Kaylin dragged her attention back to the attentive Captain of the Wolves.

“He’ll hear everything we say,” Teela told the Captain.

The Captain glanced at the Arcanist and shrugged. “He is not a fool. Whether he hears it or not, he will deduce.”

Teela stiffened. “We will speak elsewhere,” she finally said, “Or we will not speak.” Turning—and still holding Kaylin’s shoulder, she began to leave the room.

The Arcanist, however, lifted his voice. “Teela, if you are not still caught up in your present passion of attempting to blend in with the mortals—or perhaps, more interestingly, if you are—you will find this particular spell of interest.”

Teela’s grip tightened suddenly; Kaylin wondered, briefly, if she’d keep the collarbone. Then the Barrani Hawk let go and turned to Tain. “Take her out of earshot before you allow Neall his questions. I will speak with the Arcanist.”

Tain frowned; his eyes had shaded to blue. They weren’t as dark a blue as Teela’s, though. “I don’t like it.”

“No. I am not in danger, here. Remember.”

Tain nodded slowly, and withdrew; he also caught Kaylin by the shoulder, but only to break her stare, which had gone back to the sigils above Farris’s mirror as if anchored. He was less physical than Teela, or perhaps more willing to allow her some dignity.

Only when Tain judged the distance sufficient—which was when they were once again in Ceridath’s outer office—did he relinquish all command to Captain Neall. Neall was brusque; he was clearly not pleased, but he’d obviously been told when to make his compromises with the men of an entirely different division, even if he outranked them.

“Ceridath’s mirror was enchanted,” Kaylin said quietly. “By whoever cast the spell on both the dead girl and the holding room at the—at the site.” She glanced at Tain, who nodded.

“You are certain of this?”

“I’m not a mage, but…if what Ceridath said was true, yes. Mages leave signatures. The signatures are unique.”

“And Farris’s mirror?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t his mirror—”

“The Arcanist seemed fascinated by it.”

“There were other spells on the mirror—just not one cast by the mage who enchanted the child.” Kaylin shrugged. “I don’t know more than Ceridath told me. I don’t even know if I understood it all.”

“I highly doubt that.”

Kaylin decided then and there that she didn’t like the man. “The mirror didn’t have the enchantment we were looking for—or maybe you couldn’t see that for yourself?”

Captain Neall raised one brow. “Indeed, I cannot. Nor have I made any claim of competence in that area.”

“Neither have I.”

Tain cleared his throat. “Kaylin.”

She turned, flushed, to glare, and he said, “The children will die soon. Any chance we have to save them is slipping by as minutes pass. Decide how much this display of ego is worth to you.” He spoke so mildly and so carelessly he might have been talking about a midday snack—on a day when she wasn’t almost starving.

The anger left her in a rush. She swallowed, thinking of the one corpse she’d briefly glimpsed. Of the empty holding cell, and the blood on the floor. Lifting her chin, meeting the gaze of the Captain—which hadn’t changed at all, the heartless bastard—she said, “Farris’s books, like Ceridath’s books, were enchanted. Not all of them, only a few—but on Farris’s books, the signature matched the signature on the corpses and on the site. They matched the spell on Ceridath’s mirror as well.” She frowned. “Ceridath said that he only made one attempt to investigate—”

Words fled and she turned in a panic toward his inner office. She slid between both Hawks and Wolves in a desperate attempt to reach the mirror. Only when she saw its flat, lifeless surface did she begin to breathe again.

“Kaylin,” Captain Neall said, more of an edge to his voice.

She turned to him almost wildly. “Ceridath said—he tried to find out who was communicating with him, and how—and it went badly. I think they must have hurt his granddaughter. He stopped. But we don’t know how they know or what they detected, and if he—”

The door to the outer office slammed open. There wasn’t any need to find out who had entered because whoever it was ran straight from the entrance of the outer office to the door of the inner sanctum.

In it, hair slightly wild and eyes very wide, chest heaving as if from a great exertion, stood Ceridath.

 

They hadn’t been close to two hours; even Kaylin, caught up in her observations, knew that. But Ceridath was here, regardless. She wondered if anyone had noticed his absence, and wondered what it would cost him if they had. But he seemed to feel he’d already lost everything, so maybe it didn’t matter to him anymore.

He made it to the mirror, just as Kaylin had done, and saw its flat surface. Only then did his shoulders and brows fall. She looked up at him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He glanced at Captain Neall, the other two Wolves, and Tain. “I hardly think you have anything to apologize for,” he told her. “Given that the Captain of the Wolves is undoubtedly in charge here. Captain?”

“As you surmise, we are investigating you. We are almost done,” he added. “But our investigations also encompass a colleague.”

“Farris?”

The Captain nodded. “Our expert has identified—”

Ceridath turned to Kaylin, which obviously surprised the Captain. Kaylin said, “Unless someone else was enchanting his books, the mage who cast the magic on the girl and the one who cast the magic on the floor was Farris. He also did something to your mirror,” she added.

“My granddaughter—”

“We’ll find out,” Captain Neall replied. His smile—the first he’d offered—made Kaylin take a step back. It also made her wonder what the Wolves did in the service of the Emperor’s Law. “We have enough information now to confront Farris directly. Lord Sanabalis will be on his way shortly, as will the Interrogators.”

“Tha’alani?”

Captain Neall nodded. He started to say something else, when they were interrupted by a very loud bang. Neall lifted his head and said something extremely rude about Arcanists before he gestured and everyone filed out of the room toward where they’d left Teela.

 

All professional calm had left the Captain’s face, and although it was petty, Kaylin felt a little satisfaction at seeing him behave like a human being. He moved, dragging his Wolves, a Hawk, and a mage in his wake, until he reached Farris’s rooms. The door to Farris’s outer office was shut. Kaylin looked at the door ward that adorned its center and grimaced; it was glowing very brightly.

“Do not touch the door,” Ceridath said as the Captain lifted his palm. “The chamber was initially opened by Farris?”

“By the Magister,” the Captain replied.

“The Magister will not easily be able to open the door again.” He began to gesture, and Kaylin watched as the door’s rune slowly transformed itself into a now-familiar sigil. “Who did you leave in the room?” Ceridath asked softly, his forehead creased, his brows slightly gathered in concentration.

“A Barrani Hawk,” the Captain replied. Then, after a pause, “And a Barrani Arcanist.”

The spell faltered a moment—or at least the brightness of Farris’s signature did. Ceridath’s eyes rounded so much it was a wonder they stayed in his head. “You led an Arcanist here?”

“The Magister was aware of his presence, and while he did not fully approve, he acceded to the request. Why is the door closed?”

“You would mostly likely have to ask Farris if you want an exact answer—but it is not at all uncommon for contingency spells to be placed upon the doors of any experienced mage. If something has triggered a contingency, the doors often lock. Sometimes they…resist…attempts to open them. If, however, you are not attached to your hand, you may attempt to use the ward.”

“If I do?”

“In the very best case, it will merely alert Farris of your presence, as I was alerted.”

“And in the worst?”

“It will still alert Farris to your presence. The likelihood of his ignorance, given the activation, is small, however.”

Kaylin could see an argument brewing—or at least a lengthy and heated discussion—and she started to tell them both that they didn’t have the time for it. But the door came to her rescue, in a fashion: it disintegrated.

Both the mage and the Captain seemed to forget how to speak as the Barrani Arcanist stepped into the hall, dusting ash off his robes. “Gentlemen.” He turned back toward the empty frame and offered Teela a hand. She glanced at it, and then offered the Captain of the Wolves a very sharp salute.

The Arcanist snorted.

“Captain,” Teela said without preamble, “we have a problem.”

The Captain looked past her shoulder into the room. So did Kaylin; the outer office—at least—seemed to be untouched. Except for the now-absent door.

“Is it a problem that involves the political fury of the Magister?”

“No, sir.”

His eyes narrowed into slits. “Is it a problem that involves the political ire of the Barrani?”

She didn’t answer.

“Does it matter?” Kaylin finally demanded. Everyone in the hall looked down at her, in more ways than one. “The children—”

The Arcanist glanced at Teela. “I leave this in your hands,” he told her. “In order to fulfill the terms of a very tedious contract, I must now retire to write—and submit—a report to the Captain.”

As the Captain turned, Teela caught his arm. “Captain Neall,” she said, voice low, “we have two important pieces of information. The first, the location of the current intended victims. The second, very little time.”

“How did you obtain that information?”

“I did not obtain it. The Arcanist did. It will no doubt be costly, but it amused him. Unfortunately, it did not amuse the source of the information—the mirror was destroyed in the midst of the discussion.”

“The Arcanist destroyed—”

“No. The person on the other end.”

Ceridath’s brows rose. “That would be impossible—” He stopped.

“Yes. If the person on the other end were not in some part responsible for the creation of the mirror itself, it would be. The mirror was not created by mortals, or even mortal mages.”

Captain Neall wanted to say more; that was clear. What he did say, however, was, “The location, Corporal.”

“It’s on Vaturcroft. The fourth house.”

Captain Neall grimaced. “I’ll mirror the Wolflord.”

“Not from Farris’s office you won’t,” Teela replied in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice. “Tain.”

“Where are you going?” the Captain asked.

“To Vaturcroft. We’re under your orders while we investigate within the Imperial Order’s confines. We’re beholden to no such thing now, and we can’t afford to wait. Farris, should he still be here, is your problem.” Turning, she began to jog down the long hall. Tain followed on her heels, and so did Kaylin. She wasn’t surprised to see Ceridath join her as well.

“We’ll take a carriage,” he said when they were almost at the exit. He was breathing heavily, and it hadn’t been that much of a run. Teela and Tain had been stopped by the guards, which allowed Ceridath the chance to catch up.

He looked at one of those guards and said, “We need a carriage now.”

 

Kaylin didn’t even notice how uncomfortable the carriage was. She didn’t notice the buildings that passed by the windows, and only briefly noticed the people scrambling to get out of the way. What she noticed was the silence in the cabin; the silence and the sense that everything—everything—was taking too damn long.

Teela glanced once at Ceridath and opened her mouth; she closed it again before words could escape.

When the carriage lurched to a stop, she checked to see that Kaylin still had the daggers she’d been given. “We’re one building down from where we’ll need to be. I have no idea how many children they have, but that’s the house. There are guards. They’re not visible, and there shouldn’t be many.”

The house was far larger than the previous house had been, and it was separated from its neighbors by a lot more land and a stretch of fence.

“Farris won’t be there, not yet. We don’t know whether or not he sent a message, or if his contingency did we might be too late. If we’re not, there’ll be fighting. We can’t afford to keep an eye on you and an eye out for their victims—you’re not chained, you’re not hobbled. You can use those,” she added. No question. “Use them.” She looked up at the mage. “I don’t know much about your specialty—”

“I can get you in safely. I can—unless Farris was exceptionally cautious—get you in quietly. I am not remaining behind,” he added.

Teela took a deep breath, nodded, expelled. “Good. We’ll head to the back and hope the neighbors gape from the windows for a while before they think of doing anything sensible.”

 

The back door—which was really a small side door—had a mark on its upper center which clearly indicated a door ward. Ceridath grimaced briefly and began to cast; Teela and Tain waited. “Simple ward,” the mage finally said. “Hold.” He cast again, and this time when he was done, he told them, “Now.”

Kaylin assumed they meant to pick the lock.

They broke through the door instead; she wasn’t certain it wasn’t faster. But if she’d wondered what Ceridath was doing, she understood it then: they made no noise at all. But noisy or no, Ceridath continued to cast the minute he cleared the door’s frame, yanking his robes free of splintered wood. Kaylin knew why: the other children had been hidden, probably with the aid of magic, from view. If it was there, he’d find it.

So would she.

Teela and Tain paid no attention to either mage or trainee; they were alert and focused. Since nothing made any sound, everything was visual. It was eerie, to Kaylin. Teela didn’t appear to like it much either, but if she cursed, none of it reached Kaylin’s ears. Ceridath motioned them forward into what looked like a long galley; it was mostly counter, and mostly clean. It was also empty.

There were stairs leading down almost across from the entrance. Teela looked to the mage, and he frowned. Kaylin felt no magic that wasn’t his, and she saw nothing at all that implied magic had been done anywhere near this room.

Down, Ceridath mouthed, as if remembering something suddenly.

They nodded; they didn’t have to break the door down.

They did have to deal with the men coming up the stairs. The men weren’t dressed for fighting; if they were the type of thugs the fieflords kept, the thugs here dressed better.

Maybe the law was different, Kaylin thought. Maybe there were rules that weren’t meant to be broken, and the Hawks had to follow those because they also upheld them. But one of the men’s hands were red with blood; his clothing was spotted with it. Kaylin screamed in the silence as part of the floor fell out from under her feet.

It wasn’t the literal floor; she knew this because Teela and Tain were already in motion. She drew her own daggers and as the men fell down the stairs—being kicked suddenly in the midsection helped—she leapt down the stairs as if she were their shadow.

Too late too late toolatetoolate.

Sound did not return. In silence, they moved into the basement. It wasn’t well lit, but light was here—Ceridath’s light, and the lights on the walls in tarnished sconces. The shadows they cast flickered, warped and stretched or thickened as they moved. They came across two more men, but these men were armed.

Not for long, though. They were human, and they obviously weren’t trained to deal with a faceful of deadly Barrani. They went down, again in silence. The Barrani were already on the move. There were doors here, solid doors, not cell doors; nothing from the outside could see in, and nothing from the inside could look out. Here, though, the Barrani stopped; one door was ajar.

Kaylin ran toward it; Teela caught her shoulder. Sound returned to the world in an ugly rush although magic didn’t leave it; her arms and legs hurt so much she thought her skin was peeling off. And she didn’t care. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the door. The blood on the floor, visible in the crappy light.

She reached the door before Teela—a feat she could never manage to repeat—and threw it open as the men on the floor began to groan. She heard steel against stone, but didn’t move, didn’t look, didn’t even try to draw her own daggers. There was a child on the floor, facedown; blood pooled around her upper body, but it was wet, red; it wasn’t sticky yet.

Someone was screaming and screaming and screaming—a child, a high voice, a terrible voice. She couldn’t stop. But she moved. “Kaylin, no!” Teela shouted.

Kaylin ran to the side of the girl, knelt, and pulled her off the ground.

As she did, the floor began to burn.

 

It burned in a thin circle, a barrier of flickering light. Although it had taken the shape and the form of fire, it was cold. Its flame was the color of silver moon washed in a red that, no matter how pale it became, would never be pink. Coral? Kaylin thought, but it was brief, a flash of Caitlin. Through the flames, she rolled the girl over onto her lap and saw that the child’s throat had been cut. She screamed for them both, and her cheeks were hot and wet. The child’s face bore cuts.

But these cuts, unlike the cuts on the corpse in the morgue, were precise strokes, like…writing. Her face was the color of wax, this child. Her blood was still running, and Kaylin’s tabard absorbed it. She drew the child into her arms, and her voice died at last into a raw silence.

“Kaylin!”

She didn’t even look. Her arms, her legs, her back—they were burning, yes. But…it wasn’t the burn that Ceridath’s magic, or Farris’s, or even the unnamed Arcanist had caused. She knew this warmth, this heat, this burning, even if she had never ever felt it so strongly. Her arms, what little of them were exposed, given her chosen burden, were so incandescent a white that they could easily be seen through her sleeves.

Through Caitlin’s sleeves.

Fear hit. Relief. Terror. Hope. They tore at her, but they held her aloft at the same time. She reached out, palm against the gaping wound as if by one hand she could hold the child’s throat together. She didn’t know if this girl was Ceridath’s granddaughter; she didn’t care. She could do something. She could banish some memories. She could—at last—arrive in time.

She felt the heat in her hands, and she felt it leave; she felt the girl’s throat, and she felt—as she held breath, in silence—the faintest of pulses. She touched the girl’s cheeks with her palms, which was difficult given the difference in their sizes and their positions; she touched the girl’s eyes, her forehead, the brief gashes in her stomach.

The girl’s eyes opened.

They were the wrong shade of green.

What is this? a voice said. It was neither young nor female. The flames in the circle rose higher, lapping at her feet.

Kaylin looked through them to meet the very blue eyes of Teela. “Teela!” she shouted.

Teela took a step toward her and went down as Tain tackled her, full on. Behind them, jaw slack, stood Ceridath, his expression heartbreaking.

 

Teela rose. She kicked one of the groaning men in the face; it was vicious but short. She would have kicked Tain, but Tain was too fast for her; he got out of the way.

“Kitling!” she shouted.

Kaylin nodded. “It’s—something’s wrong with her—”

“It’s a Harvest Circle.” Teela actually punched the wall closest to the doorway. Kaylin heard it, but didn’t see it. “If we’d waited until it was dark, you’d—”

“I got here in time. I—she’s speaking,” Kaylin said. “But—in a man’s voice.”

Teela said a whole lot of what sounded like Leontine, then, and turned to the mage. She spoke in Barrani. The mage’s eyes widened and he answered—in Barrani. If it was the last thing she ever did on this earth, Kaylin was going to learn how to speak that damn language like a native.

This time, Teela approached the circle with care, but made no attempt to cross it. “The circle isn’t at full power.”

It doesn’t need to be, the strange voice said. Kaylin realized, then, that it wasn’t the girl speaking; her lips didn’t move. Tell her that, since she seems to care for you. It doesn’t need to be.

“The bastard is gloating,” Kaylin translated.

“Tell him I will kill him slowly. Far, far more slowly than anyone his pathetic circle has devoured.” Her eyes were now so dark a blue they were almost all black. Beauty, Kaylin realized, was death. Because Teela had never looked more beautiful than she did at this moment. She spoke, and she spoke clearly in the lilting, lovely words that were High Barrani.

Kaylin would have been terrified into a run that wouldn’t have ended while she could still breathe—if then. The man—if he was that—laughed. At the same time, the girl stirred in Kaylin’s arms. She was a stranger, a stranger’s child, someone who Kaylin didn’t know and might never see again. She was also, for just that moment, the most precious gift that Kaylin had ever been given.

“Teela—if there are others in the other rooms, get them out!”

“Tain is working on it,” Teela replied. “They’re not in danger now. You are.”

Tell her I am not here, was the whispered reply. I have broken none of her coveted Laws. All of the damage and death has been caused by her mortals. It has been a glorious Harvest, and it is not yet finished.

“I think—I think he thinks he knows you.”

The circle of flames grew taller and brighter. Kaylin could still see through them.

Teela said something to Ceridath, and Ceridath shook his head; he looked…broken.

“Try. Try, damn you.”

The man laughed. Do you understand the significance of Harvest, little one? he asked Kaylin. Do you understand the significance of the lunar circle in which you now stand? You have…surprised me. You have taken my Harvest from me; she will not now die without my direct intervention.

“You wanted to kill her.”

Ah, no. I merely wanted the experience of her death. I saw it all so clearly, if briefly; she was anointed.

“Why? Why?”

He laughed. It was his laughter, in the end—his laughter, not Teela’s anger or fear, not the mage’s horrible despair—that pushed Kaylin over an edge she had never realized she’d been walking. Her arms tightened around the girl, as this man—this monster, this worse-than-vulture—continued to speak.

Death is not a given for my people. Life is, and it is endless. There is no variation; there is gain, there is loss, there is the gathering of power, the brief flower of love.

She hated that he could even use the word. Her arms were still glowing, but…they were, like the circle, burning. They were burning hot to his cold, and the cloth that covered the marks began to thin. It didn’t turn to ash, though; it turned to…thought. To memory. It faded, like so many intangibles could fade: hope. Trust. Love. Even love.

But we can experience what we have not been given; it is a gift of the Harvest Moon, for those who are willing to risk it. There is power of a different kind to be found in its ice; power, knowledge. You are born to, and of, flesh; our kind was first carved of stone, the bones of earth. The seasons shift and we are touched by their changes in a way mortals could never be. Let me tell you. Let me tell you while you give me what the circle requires before it releases us both.

The marks on her leg were also burning, and the cloth that hid them thinned, becoming translucent. But the girl in her arms didn’t burn. She began to struggle, but her struggles were as weak as she was. Her eyes were still green—and they were Barrani green, a color Kaylin should have recognized.

“Let her go,” she said, voice low.

He laughed. He laughed again. You’re worried about her when you are here?

“Let. Her. Go.”

The fires began to bend toward her, although the boundary of the circle itself didn’t change; it wouldn’t. It was clearly writ in stone. Stone, she thought, and blood.

Moon gives us the cold fire; it does not burn, but it consumes nonetheless. You can leave the circle—you can try. It may consume you. She, however, cannot. We are bound until the last of her life slips away. You have extended the offering; you cannot end it. The sun is falling; bring your mages, bring your Dragons; it matters not. She bears the marks.

“No,” Kaylin said, withdrawing her hands from the girl’s face. “She doesn’t.” The cuts were gone. Her skin was pale except where it was red-brown with her own blood, but her cheeks were entirely unblemished.

The green of only one of the girl’s eyes began to fade as Kaylin watched in the light of the heightened flames. “Ceridath!” She shouted. “Cast!”

He looked up, looked through the fires that everyone could see, and blinked.

“Cast what?” he shouted, his hands becoming trembling fists.

“Help me see!”

His eyes widened in confusion, but he understood what she was asking; he didn’t understand why. It didn’t matter. She felt the familiar, comfortable pain of his spell begin to take hold, even though her marks were visible and glaring in their brilliance. She looked down at the girl’s eye. At the green eye. She remembered, sickened, that the body in the morgue had been missing one eye. As Ceridath’s spell heightened her own ability to see magic, she saw two signatures: one was familiar.

One was not. The unfamiliar signature was an icy-blue, a sky-blue, and it shone entirely from the iris of the emerald eye.

She’d done many things in her life. None of them had included gouging out the eyes of a child. Her stomach rebelled; her conscious thought overrode it. This wasn’t the child’s eye. Kaylin didn’t even know if she could see anything through it; she was pretty certain someone—someone Barrani—did.

The flames bent in and touched Kaylin; some of the heat went out of the marks on her arms as she raised them. She felt no cold, but the child in her lap screamed as the flames also touched her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the girl. She looked up in helpless fear and saw that Teela and Ceridath were no longer alone; Tain had joined them. Tain, and three other children, only one of whom was now clutched in the arms of a man who loved her more than he loved, in the end, the thing that made him what he was.

The girl didn’t hear her hoarse apology; the other children did hear the girl’s screams.

What are you doing, child?

Sickened, hand shaking, Kaylin took a breath so sharp it almost cut. But her hand was steady as she reached down and plucked out the child’s emerald eye.

 

It rested in her palm, and the worst thing about it was the fact that it seemed to be turning, as if the gaze, absent the rest of a face, was trying to see. The child stopped screaming the instant the eye was gone, and she looked up at Kaylin, her face whole except for the empty socket, her arms shaking as she stilled. The fire closed over them both, and Kaylin’s marks once again lost heat; the fire, however, touched nothing. It didn’t burn, any more than moonlight could.

She rose. She helped the girl to her feet, gazing at the cut and bloody dress she now wore, at her matted hair, the things that healing could never fix—and didn’t need to. But when she tried to step over the circle, she bounced. “Teela,” she cried.

Teela said nothing, but she came to the circle’s edge.

“Help her,” Kaylin whispered. Her hand became a fist around the eye as she pushed the girl through the circular blanketing flames.

She then walked back to the center of the circle and opened her palm. Brilliant, and a little less green, a little more blue, the eye observed her. She could almost see the ghost of a Barrani face imposed over it, and as she concentrated, it grew stronger. It wasn’t a distinctive face; to Kaylin, unaccustomed to any contact with Barrani that running could avoid, the Barrani all looked too similar.

But this face filled her not with fear, but rage.

“What are you doing?” he said. This time, his transparent lips moved as he spoke. She could see his other eye now, could see the shift, the total loss of green; his eyes weren’t the blue she was accustomed to seeing in Teela, and she was grateful for that.

“If I could,” she said, voice low, “I would show you mortality. You only live forever if no one kills you. I can’t.” She felt the runes on her arms and legs once again begin to burn, and this time she burned with them. “I don’t care about your Harvest. I don’t care about your moon. I don’t care about your boredom.”

“Is it really me that angers you?” His voice grew softer. “These children would have died anyway. They were prey to mortals, very much like themselves. I did not arrange for their deaths, and I did not offer those deaths for sale. I was aware of them, and I made my accommodations with their jailers. That is all.”

“You didn’t help them. You knew.”

One brow rose. “I do not help cows or the sheep led to slaughter to feed your endless, messy hungers, either. Nor do you eat what is slaughtered although you raise no hand yourself. If you choose to visit the slaughterhouse, what crime do you commit? You watch, you do not affect the fate of the slaughtered one way or the other.”

Her body tightened until it was hard and stiff; until she could feel—she could only feel—two things: the marks on her skin and the anger beneath it that had become everything for just a moment. She opened her mouth, but words failed her entirely; her voice did not. She screamed her rage and her pain and her helplessness, and as she did, she lifted the eye. It widened, and she closed the fist, crushing it.

She heard his scream.

She had never heard a Barrani scream before. It was almost enough.

Oh, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t. Because she knew as she stood, screaming and shaking, that every word he had spoken was true. Hate the Barrani, fear them—as anyone who’d lived in the fief of Nightshade learned quickly—it didn’t matter: it was the humans who had started this. It was men and women who had taken these children and offered them gods only knew where for sale. The fires that had surrounded her had guttered; she didn’t even know when.

But absent that cold, cold fire, there was nothing that could quench the flames, the rage. “Kaylin, no!” Teela shouted. Tinny, tiny voice, lost in the maelstrom.

There were two men here, two men who’d had weapons, two men who had been jailers for death. For horrible, painful death. The power was still strong in her and she gestured and they rose, and their eyes widened; she felt their confusion give way to fear. They opened their mouths on screams and blood and the marks burned and she saw red—only red—and some of it was theirs; their blood, their skin. She peeled them open as they screamed.

But their screams weren’t the only screams, and she choked, stepped, stumbled, her hand still clutching something cold and hard, her throat raw.

The children were screaming.

They were screaming in terror. She’d come in time. She’d saved them. And…she was terrifying them now.

No, gods, no. She wanted to tell them that she was doing this for them—or for the children who had died, or the children who wouldn’t have to—but it wasn’t the truth, and she knew it.

Teela caught her arms. Teela, Barrani, beautiful and immortal; Teela, easily bored, blue-eyed and so graceful. It was Teela who shook her; Teela who raised a hand to slap her, and Teela who lowered that hand when she finally met her eyes.

Kaylin turned back to the room with its fading circle of fire, shrugging at least one arm free to do it. There, her knees buckled; there, she began to retch and cough and weep.

 

She wasn’t sure how long it took the rest of the Hawks to arrive; she wasn’t sure how much time had passed. But the marks on her arms and legs no longer burned; they no longer glowed. They were spent, and perhaps they were as disgusted with Kaylin as she herself was. The children—even the girl whose life she had barely saved—avoided her; they held on to Tain or his shadow. One girl had buried herself in Ceridath’s arms, and Ceridath held her.

But his gaze, when Kaylin rose unsteadily and joined Teela and Tain—staying as far from the children as she could—was full of something suspiciously like pity. Pity was better, far better, than horror.

“Your granddaughter?” she whispered. Her throat hurt; she wasn’t sure she could speak in anything louder.

He nodded. “Meredith,” he said into her hair as she refused to turn to Kaylin. Her hair, which was almost black, and was so ratty, so tangled, so dirty. “I know. But…Kaylin saved you, in the end. If it were not for Kaylin—”

But the child wouldn’t look at Kaylin. And Kaylin, looking at what remained of the men she had killed—horribly, brutally killed—couldn’t blame her.

Marcus was there. Somehow. Marcus, four Barrani Hawks, and—of all people—Clint, his wing ridges high, his eyes a blue that was, as he saw Kaylin, shading to gray. Marcus said something to Teela and Tain—his eyes were orange, and the orange didn’t fade.

But Ceridath understood what was said, even if Kaylin couldn’t. He lifted his chin from its messy, beloved perch, and he spoke in soft, modulated High Barrani.

Teela and Tain exchanged a glance, but said nothing as they looked at Ceridath.

“What did he say?” Kaylin asked sharply, her voice rough and low. “Teela—tell me. Did he—did he tell the Sergeant that he killed those men?”

Ceridath looked at her over his granddaughter’s head. “I have nothing left to lose,” he told Kaylin softly. “Everything that I could possibly hope to preserve is safe, now.”

But she shook her head, in pain. She looked at the blood-soaked Hawk that rested on her chest—well, more on her stomach, really, because the tabard was just too damn large, even cut down—and she wanted to cry. She lifted her chin instead, exposing her throat, and exposing everything else as well. “I killed them,” she told Sergeant Kassan. “He didn’t.”

“Kaylin,” Ceridath shook his head. “Let me—”

Marcus flexed claws; he had no further glance to spare the mage. “How?”

Clint’s eyes had now stopped their shift to gray.

“I don’t know,” was her quiet reply. “I don’t know how. Does it matter? They’d been disarmed. They couldn’t do anything else.” She lowered her chin because she lowered her head. “I was just so angry. I couldn’t reach the other. I wanted them to suffer. I wanted them to die. I wanted them to understand what it felt like to be a helpless victim.” She raised her head again, trying not to cry. “Are you going to arrest me now?”

His eyes were an odd shade of gold. When they’d become gold, she didn’t know; she hadn’t been looking at him.

“Kitling,” he said. “Come here.”

She didn’t. Instead, she began to remove the tabard. She stopped when he growled.

“Did I or did I not give you an order?”

“You did,” Teela said. “I heard it.”

“Half the block heard it,” Tain muttered.

Kaylin stared at him in confusion.

“Did I?” He barked.

“Yes?”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Then why are you still standing there?”

She looked back at Teela, Tain, and the children who huddled directly behind them. Teela nudged her forward.

She walked like a condemned person to where the Leontine Sergeant stood, and lifted her chin again. But he caught it, and she discovered that the pads of his paws were very, very soft—or at least they could be. He didn’t speak; he met her eyes and held her gaze for what seemed like minutes. And then he cuffed the side of her head gently.

“Go with Clint,” he told her. “He’ll take you back to Caitlin. We’ve got a few hours of work to do here; wait with her. I’ll need to speak with Lord Grammayre after the debriefing.” He growled, and added, “Stay out of trouble. If Teela and Tain make it back to the office in one piece,” and he glanced at them and growled again, “keep away from them.”

Teela raised a brow, but was wise enough—or amused enough—to make no comment.

Kaylin looked at Clint, who was watching her, arms folded across his broad chest. He didn’t smile, but he didn’t frown, either; he just nodded. “Go straight there.”

 

The moon was full and low; the sky was the type of clear only the coldest of winter sees. But it wasn’t cold. Kaylin knew because she was in it. Clint had made clear that holding on as tightly as she wanted to was just one side of strangulation—the wrong side—and she’d done her best to relax her grip; to let him do the work.

To trust him to carry her.

“He’s not mad at me?” She raised her voice when the wind grew louder.

“The Sergeant? No. He will be when the paperwork hits his desk, but you’ve got the brains to hide behind Caitlin.” His arms tightened briefly. “He’s Leontine. He’s practical. There’s no way those men would have survived the end of their trial.” He was quiet for a moment, and his eyes were a soft shade of ash-gray. They looked odd; the rest of his face was so dark and so warm. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to you,” he added, because he knew she was afraid. “But I know it won’t happen without a fight. You’re too damn young to be a Hawk.

“But without you, there’d be four more corpses in the morgue. Teela won’t let anyone forget, and Barrani memory is perfect. Just remember when you start basic training: you wanted to be here.”

 

Directly to the Halls took an hour, and it passed over parts of the City the carriage hadn’t. She pointed at things. She asked him a hundred questions. He answered them all, his voice low and deep, coming somewhere from his chest. She didn’t want to land, but landing—like waking—was going to happen anyway, so she tried to remember everything, because memory, no one could steal.

It was late, and the office should have been empty, but Caitlin was there, at her desk, her mirror blank. She looked up when she saw Kaylin, and stood. Kaylin, still covered in blood—although it was mostly dry now—hesitated, and Caitlin walked around the desk toward her, where she engulfed her in a fierce hug. When she let go, she said, “I have food, dear. I’m certain you haven’t eaten.

“And I’ve got some news.”

“The landlord?”

“We’re scheduled to see the apartment in two days.”

“But the money—”

Caitlin smiled, although it seemed like a nervous smile. “We do have the funds, but it was a little more complicated to get at them than I’d expected. The rules with regard to non-casual labor are actually quite strict, and you are, unfortunately, very underage.”

Kaylin wilted.

“But as I said, the funding is available.”

“How?”

“I’m not sure you’ll like it, dear.”

How bad could it be? “As long as I don’t have to kill anyone, I don’t care.”

Caitlin looked shocked the way only Caitlin could. And mildly disapproving. Kaylin slid around her to the food that she’d promised. “You most certainly will not have to kill anyone. But…the department has funds set aside, in principle, for a departmental mascot.”

“A what?”

“A mascot, dear. You’ve never heard of them?”

Kaylin, mouth full of bread, shook her head.

“Ah. Well. A mascot is supposed to bring good luck to, ah, an organization. It’s also thought to be a symbol of something the organization stands for.”

“So what part won’t I like?”

Caitlin just shook her head and smiled. “You’ll find out, dear. Chew before you swallow. You’ll be good for the department,” she added. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Teela quite so…human. Don’t repeat that where she can hear it, and do remember the Barrani have much better hearing than ours.

“Give me the tabard. I’ll make sure it’s cleaned. You’ll need it. It’s large,” she added, “but I’m certain you’ll grow into it.”