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Selected praise for Michelle Sagara’s

CAST IN

SHADOW

“Intense, fast-paced, intriguing, compelling and hard to put down, Cast in Shadow is unforgettable.”

—In the Library Reviews

“Michelle Sagara has created one of the most intriguing worlds I have ever read.”

—Fallen Angel Reviews

“Deep, dense and passionate …”

—Romantic Science Fiction and Fantasy

“No one provides an emotional payoff like Michelle Sagara. Combine that with a fast-paced police procedural, deadly magics, five very different races and a wickedly dry sense of humor—well, it doesn’t get any better than this.”

—Bestselling author Tanya Huff

About the Author

Michelle Sagara has written fourteen novels since 1991, when her first book, Into the Dark Lands, was published. She’s written a quarterly book review column for the venerable Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for a number of years, as well as dozens of short stories (or novellas, to be more exact).

In 1986 she started working in an SF specialty bookstore, where she continues to work to this day. She loves reading, is allergic to cats (very, which means they crawl all over her), is happily married, has two lovely children, and has spent all of her life in her native Toronto–none of it on Bay Street.

She started reading fantasy almost as soon as she could read, and fell instantly in love with Narnia; her next fantasy discovery was Patricia McKillip’s Forgotten Beasts of Eld. She moved on to The Hobbit, which led to her discovery of the life-changing The Lord of the Rings.

Her greatest hope for her writing is that someone will read it and be moved by the same sense of magic and mystery that she finds in the books she loves.

She will talk about writing, bookselling and books forever if given a chance. You’ve been warned.

Cast in

Shadow

Michelle

Sagara

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This is for Chris Szego, who read it first, and gave me exactly the encouragement I needed at exactly the right time.

Acknowledgments

Terry Pearson, Tanya Huff and

Rhiannon Rasmussen all read the initial

proposal and outline while I fretted, because

I’m good at that. The fretting. They even

wanted to read more, and did. Also, my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for giving the book a home, and for asking the right questions to keep it on track. Consider them the away team for this book.

The home team: My husband, Thomas West

(whose last name I also write under),

my children, my parents and my son’s

godfather, John Chew, and his wife, Kristen;

my brother Gary and his wife, Ayami.

The Tuesday night and Thursday night crew.

Thanks.

CHAPTER
1

Black circles under the eyes were not, Kaylin decided, a very attractive statement. Neither was hair matted with old sweat, or eyes red with lack of sleep. She accepted the fact that on this particular morning, mirrors were not going to be her friend. Luckily, she didn’t have many of them in the small quarters she called home. She got out of bed slowly, studiously avoided the short hall that led from her bolted doors to the kitchen, the closets and the large space she lived in otherwise, and lifted clothing from beneath a rumpled pile, examining it carefully.

It sort of looked clean.

She pulled the linen tunic over her head, cursed as her hair caught in the strings that secured it and yanked, hard. Shadows fell over the ledge of her single window, stretching across the floor at an ominous angle. She was going to be late. Again.

Pants were less tricky; she only had a few, and chose the black leather ones. They were, at the moment, the only ones she owned that weren’t cut, torn or bloody.

She’d have to ask Iron Jaw for a better clothing allowance. Or more time to spend the pittance she did have.

The mirror in the hall began to glow, and she cursed under her breath. She’d clearly have to ask him on a different morning.

“Coming,” she muttered.

The mirror flashed, light hanging in the room like an extended, time-slowed bolt of lightning. Iron Jaw was in a lousy mood, and it wasn’t even lunch. He hated to use the mirrors.

She buttoned up her pants, pulled on her boots and sidled her way toward the mirror, hoping that the light was the effect of lack of sleep. Not much hope there, really.

“Kaylin, where the hell have you been?”

No, the mirror this morning was definitely not her friend. She pulled her hair up, curled it in a tight bun and shoved the nearest stick she could find through its center. Then she picked up the belt on the table just to the left of that mirror and donned it, adjusting dagger hilts so they didn’t butt against her lower ribs.

“Kaylin Neya, you’d better answer soon. I know you’re there.”

Putting on her best we-both-know-it’s-fake smile, she walked over to the mirror and said, sweetly, “Good morning, Marcus.”

He growled.

Not a particularly encouraging sign, given that Marcus was Leontine, and had a bad habit of ripping the throats out of people who were stupid enough to annoy him. His lower fangs were in evidence as he snarled. But his eyes, cat eyes, were wide and unblinking in the golden fur that adorned his face, and his fur was not—yet—standing on end. His hands, however, were behind his back, and his broad chest was adorned with the full flowing robes of the Hawks.

Official dress. In the morning. Gods, she was going to be in trouble.

“Morning was two hours ago,” he snapped.

“You’re in fancy dress,” she said, changing the subject about as clumsily as she ever did.

“And you look like shit. What the hell were you doing last night?”

“None of your business.”

“Good answer,” he growled. “Why don’t you try it on the Hawklord?”

She groaned. “What day is it?”

“The fourth,” he replied.

Fourth? She counted back, and realized that she’d lost a day. Again. “I’m missing something, aren’t I?”

“Brains,” he snapped. “And survival instinct. The Hawklord’s been waiting for you for three hours.”

“Tell him I’m dead.”

“You will be if you don’t get your ass in here.” He muttered something else, a series of growls that she knew, from experience, meant something disparaging about humans. She let it pass.

“I’ll be there in half an hour.”

“Dressed like that? You’ll be out in thirty-five. On your ass.”

She put her palm on the mirror’s surface, cutting him off and scattering his image. Then she went to her closet and began to really move.

Bathed, cleaned, groomed and in the full dress uniform of the Hawks—which still involved the only intact pants she owned—Kaylin approached the front of the forbidding stone halls ruled by the three Lords of Law: The Lord of Wolves, the Lord of Swords and the Lord of Hawks. At least that’s what they were called on official documents and in polite company, of which Kaylin knew surprisingly little.

The Swords were the city’s peacekeepers, something ill-suited to Kaylin; the Wolves were its hunters, and often, its killers. And the Hawks? The city’s eyes. Ears. The people who actually solved crimes.

Then again, she would think that; Kaylin had been a Hawk for the entire time she’d been involved on the right side of the law, and didn’t speak about the years that preceded it much.

By writ of the Emperor of Karaazon, the Halls of Law were the only standing structures allowed to approach the height of the Imperial palace, and the three towers, set against a wide stretch of expensive ground in the shape of a triangle, flew the flags of the Lords of Law: the Hawk, the Wolf and the Sword. From her vantage, they could hardly be seen; she was too close. But from the rest of the city? They never rested.

Neither, she thought, did the people who served them. She was damn tired.

The front doors were always manned, and she recognized Tanner and Clint as they lowered their pole-arms, barring her way. It was the Hawk’s month for guard duty; they shared rotation of that honor with the Swords. The Wolves, lazy bastards, weren’t considered fit for dress duty. Or ritual entries.

She hated ritual.

Clint and Tanner didn’t love it much better than she did.

“Kaylin, where the hell have you been?” Tanner asked. It was the refrain that punctuated too much of her daily existence.

“Getting cleaned up, if you must know.”

Tanner was, at six and a half feet, tall even for a human. His helm was strictly a dress helm, and it gleamed bronze in the afternoon sunlight, running from the capped height of his head down the line of his nose, as if it were a bird’s mask. To either side of the metal, his eyes were a dark, deep brown.

Clint shook his head, and the glinting helm’s light left an after-image in her vision. But he smiled. He was about two inches shorter than Tanner, and his skin was the dark ebony of the Southern stretch. She loved the sound of his voice, and he knew it.

It wasn’t the only thing she loved about him.

“You’ve got to give up the moonlighting,” he told her.

“When the pay here doesn’t suck.”

He laughed out loud, his halberd shaking as he began to lift it. “You really didn’t get much sleep, did you? Iron Jaw has ears like a Barrani—he’ll have your hide on his wall as a dartboard.”

She rolled her eyes. “Can I go now?”

“Your doom,” he said, his voice still sweet with the sound of amused laughter. But his expression gained a moment’s gravity as he leaned forward and lowered that voice into a fold of deep velvet. “Sesti told me.”

“Sesti told you what?”

“What you were doing the past two days.”

“Tell her to piss off next time you see her.”

He laughed again. She could spend all day making him laugh, just for the thrill of the deep rich tones of that voice. But if she did it today? It would be her last day. She smiled. “That won’t be until his naming day.” Aerian men were forbidden the birthing caves—unless those caves held the dead or the dying. Even then, they could come to claim their wives, no more. Kaylin had never understood this.

“When are you off duty?” she asked him.

“About two hours.”

“You haven’t been home yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Sesti had a boy. Healthy, but his feathers were a mess. Took us three hours to clean ‘em down.”

“Always does,” he said with an affectionate shrug. “Go on. Iron Jaw’s been biting anyone who gets in reach.”

She nodded, walked past and then turning, reached out to touch the soft, ash gray of Clint’s wings. They snapped up and out beneath her fingers.

“You haven’t changed in seven years,” he told her, turning. “Don’t touch the flight feathers.”

If the exterior of the Halls of Law was forbidding, the interior was hardly less so. The front doors opened into a hall that not even cathedrals could boast. It rose three storeys, and across its vaulted ceilings, frescoes had been painted—Hawk, Wolf and Sword, trailing light and shadow in a grim depiction of various hunts. Sunlight streamed in from a window that was at least as tall, and certainly more impressive; the colors of the paint were protected from sunlight, and always on display, a reminder to newcomers of what the Halls meant to those who displeased their rulers.

But this hall was not meant to intimidate; it was built with a practical purpose in mind—which wasn’t true of many of the Imperial buildings. The Aerians that served the Lords of Law did not walk easily in the confined, cramped space of regular human halls. Clint, armed and armored, could easily take to the air in the confines of the rising stone walls, and high, high above her, the perch of the Aerie loomed; she had seen him reach it many, many times. Aerians circled above her, against the backdrop of colored fresco, and as always, she envied them their ability to truly fly.

The closest she’d ever gotten involved a long drop that had almost ended her life. She wasn’t eager to repeat it.

And if the Hawklord had really been waiting for three—close to four—hours now, she didn’t give much for her chances. She began to run.

To the east of the Aerian hall, as it was colloquially called—and never in the hearing of one of the three Lords—stood another tall set of doors, adorned by another set of guards.

She recognized them both: Teela and Tain. They were sometimes called the twins by anyone who had no experience with the subtle temper and cruelty of the Barrani; they were seldom called that twice by the same person. Delicately built, they stood slightly taller than Clint, slightly shorter than Tanner.

Some people found the Barrani beautiful; Kaylin wasn’t so certain, herself. They looked ethereal, delicate and just ever-so-slightly too perfect. Which made her feel solid, plain and grubby. Not exactly a way to win friends and influence people.

They wore the gray and gold of the Hawks in a band across their foreheads; their hair—gorgeous, long, black as the proverbial raven’s wing—had been pulled back and shoved neatly beneath it. Human hair—at least in the ranks of the Hawks—was not allowed that length; it got in the way of pretty much anything. But the Barrani? No such restrictions were placed on them.

Of course, having seen them in a fight, Kaylin was painfully aware that those restrictions would have been pointless.

Teela whistled. At six foot nothing, she wore armor that suited her fighting style—which is to say, none at all. But she carried a large stick. “You’re late,” she said.

Kaylin had to look up to meet her emerald eyes. And emerald? They really were. Hard, sharp and a little brittle around the too perfect edges. That and a stunning, endless shade of deep, blue green. “That’s news?”

“No. That’s the sound of me winning the betting pool.”

“Good. I was rooting for you—and now I want my cut.”

“You’ll get it,” she said with a grin, “if you survive old Iron Jaw.”

“I’m not worried about Iron Jaw. Tain, tell Teela to shut up and get the hell out of the way.”

“What, do I look stupid?”

“Usually.”

“Not that stupid.” He grinned; the row of his perfect teeth had been chipped in one fight or another. When Kaylin had first been inducted into the Hawks, Tain was the only Barrani she could always recognize when he stood among a group of his own people because he had a visible flaw. His only flaw. “Oh, I should warn you—”

“Save it for later.”

He shrugged, lazy and slow. “Remember, Kaylin, I did try.”

She was already past them, and she spent what little breath she had left cursing the fact that the damn halls were so long.

Old Iron Jaw’s desk was huddled in the center of about a dozen similar desks, and distinguishable only by the presence of the Leontine who occupied it. Well, by that and the long furrows he’d dug there over the years when his claws did their automatic extension and raked through the surface of dense, heavy wood. This happened when he was annoyed, and the person who had annoyed him had the good fortune not to be close enough to bear the brunt of those claws instead.

For good reason, no one with brains got close to an angry Leontine. Iron Jaw—called Sergeant Marcus Kassan to his considerable face—was one of the very few who had managed to make it into the Hawks—Leontines were a tad on the possessive side, they didn’t share space well, and they responded to an order as if it were a suicide wish and they were magic wands.

Iron Jaw, among his own people, would be called the Leontine word for kitten—and its only equivalent in human speech was, as far as Kaylin could translate, Eunuch. No one used it in the Hawks.

He growled when he saw her. It was a low, extended growl and he didn’t bother to open his mouth to make it.

She lifted her chin, exposing her neck in the universal gesture of submission. It was only half-fake. In spite of his legendary temper, his surliness and his habit of making the word martinet a hideous understatement, she liked him. Unlike most of the Barrani, whose lives were built on so many secrets and lies they were confounded by something as inelegant and boring as truth, Iron Jaw was exactly what he appeared to be.

And at the moment, that was pissed off.

He leaped over his desk, his shoulders hunching with a grace that belied his size, and landed in front of it, four inches from where Kaylin stood her ground. His eyes were wide and his breath—well, it was cat’s breath. Never a pleasant thing.

But she knew better than to run from a Leontine, even this one. He let his claws touch her throat and close around the very thin membrane of her skin.

“Kaylin,” he growled. “You are making me look incompetent.”

“Sorry,” she said, breathing very, very carefully.

“Where were you?”

“Getting dressed.”

The claws closed slightly.

There was no way around it; she told him the truth. “I was with Clint’s wife, Sesti. Sesti of the Camaraan clan,” she added, feeling an edged claw bite skin. Knowing that she bled, but only slightly. “She had a difficult birthing, and I promised the midwives’ guild—”

He snarled. But he let his hands drop. “You are not a midwife—”

“I am—”

“You’re a Hawk.” But his fangs had receded behind the generous black curl of what might loosely be called lips were they on someone else’s face. “You used your power.”

She said nothing for a minute. “I couldn’t do that. It’s forbidden by the Hawklord.” Which was more or less true. Well, more true. Kaylin was, as she was loath to admit, a tad special for an untrained human. She could do things that other human Hawks couldn’t. Hell, that other humans couldn’t. The Hawks knew about her, of course.

And the Hawklord? Better than any of them, he had his reasons for mistrusting the use of that power. But what the Hawklord didn’t see, didn’t hurt. As long as he didn’t hear about it.

“Well. Sesti will owe you. Which means Clint will pay.” Marcus wouldn’t tell the Hawklord. Not for something like this. Leontines had a strong understanding of debt, obligation and family. After a moment, his perpetual lack of blinking made her eyes water. “How was the birth?”

“The baby’s fine. The mother’s exhausted.”

“Was it a close thing?”

She shuddered. She’d been late once or twice when the midwives had called her—but that was in the early years, and when she’d clearly seen the cost, she had never been late again. They would have called it a miracle, in the Hawks, if she could make them believe it. “Close enough. But they’ll both pull through.”

He shrugged, and leaned back against the desk. It actually groaned. “More, I’m certain, than can be said of you. The Hawklord is waiting. In his tower.”

Could things be any worse?

She made the climb up the stairs unescorted, although guards flanked the closed doors on every landing. They nodded, and one or two that knew her well enough either shook their heads or smiled. They were almost all human or Aerian; the Barrani were trusted, but only to a point. On a good day, she might take the time to ask them what the Hawklord wanted.

This wasn’t a good day.

She made the landing of the last set of stairs, stopped to catch her breath and shake her legs out and then straightened her shoulders, adjusting her sloppy belt. It was two notches too big, again. And she hadn’t had time to punch a few extra holes.

Her hair was a flyaway mess, and her cheeks, she knew, would be a little too red for dignity—but she often had to choose between dignity and living another hour. She paused at the unattended door, and placed her palm against the golden symbol of the hawk that adorned its lower center. It was a tall door.

Magic trickled up her hand like a painful, frosty flicker. She hated it, and gritted her teeth as it passed through her skin. Of all the things she had had to learn to accept with grace, this was the hardest: to leave her palm there while magic roved and quested, seeking answers.

It was apparently satisfied; the doors began to swing open.

They opened into a round, domed room: the height of the Tower, and the face it showed to all but the most trusted of the Hawklord’s advisors. Given what she knew about the Hawklord, that that number was higher than zero should have come as a big surprise.

She bowed before the doors had fully opened. Because she wore the uniform of a Hawk, a bow was required. Had she worn any other uniform, she’d probably have had to throw in a long grovel as well as a bit of scraping.

“Kaylin Neya,” the Hawklord said coldly.

She rose instantly.

Met his eyes. They were like gray stone, like the walls of the round room; they gave no impression of life, and they hinted at nothing but surface. His face, pale as ivory, heightened their unusual color; his hair, gray, fell beyond his back. He was not Barrani, but he might as well have been; he was tall, proud and very cold.

But his wings crested the rise of drawn hood, and they were white, their pinions folded. Hawklord. It was not because he was Aerian that he was Lord here.

“Hawklord,” she said.

His face grew more stonelike.

“Lord Grammayre,” she added.

“I have been waiting for half of a day, Kaylin. Would you care to offer an explanation for the waste of my time to the Emperor?”

Her shoulders fell about four inches, but she managed to keep her head up. “No, sir.”

He frowned, and then turned toward the distant curve of the shadowed room. In it, she saw a small well of light. And around that light, a man.

Some instinct made her reach for her daggers; they were utterly silent as they slid out of their sheaths. That had been a costly gift from a mage on Elani Street who’d had a little bit of difficulty with a loan shark.

“I have, however, no intention of embarrassing the Hawks by allowing you to speak on their behalf. I have a mission for you,” he added, “and because of its nature, I wish you to take backup.”

Great. She looked down at her boots, and the low edges of the one pair of pants she now owned that wasn’t warzone material. “Lord Grammayre—”

“That was not, of course, a request.” He held out a hand in command, but not to her. “I would like to introduce you to one of your partners. You may recognize him; you may not. He has been seconded from the Wolves. Severn?”

She almost didn’t hear the words; they made no sense.

Because across the round room—a room that now seemed to have no ceiling, her vision had grown so focused—a man stepped into the sun’s light.

A man she recognized, although she hadn’t seen him for years. For seven years.

In utter silence, she threw the first dagger, and hit the ground running.

He was fast.

But he’d always been fast. His own long knife was in the air before she’d run half the distance that separated them; her thrown dagger glanced off it with a sonorous clang. Everything in the Hawk’s tower reverberated; there could be no hidden fights, here.

“Hello, Kaylin.”

She snarled. Words were lost; what remained was motion, movement, intent. She held the second dagger in her hand as she unsheathed the third; heard the Hawklord’s cold command at her back as if it were simple breeze in the open streets.

The open streets of the fiefs, almost a decade past.

His smile exposed teeth, the narrowing of eyes, the sudden tensing of shoulder and chest as he gathered motion, hoarding it.

Left hand out, she loosed a second dagger, and he parried it, but only barely. The third, she had at his chest before he could bring his knife down.

Too easy, she thought desperately. Too damn easy.

She looked up at his lazy smile and brought her dagger in.

Light blinded her. Light, it seemed, from the sound of his sudden curse, blinded him; they were driven apart by the invisible hands of the Hawklord’s power, and they were held fast, their feet inches above the ground.

Her eyes grew accustomed, by slow degree, to the darkness of the domed room.

“I see,” the Hawklord said quietly, “that you know Severn. Severn, you failed to mention this in your interview.”

Severn had always recovered quickly. “I didn’t recognize the name,” he said, voice even, smile still draped across his face. He moved slowly, very slowly, and sheathed his long knife, waiting.

And she looked up at his face. He wasn’t as tall as Tanner, and he wasn’t as broad; he had the catlike grace of a young Leontine, and his hair was a burnished copper, something that reddened in caught light. But his eyes were the blue she remembered, cold blue, and if he had new scars—and he did—they hadn’t changed his face enough to remove it from her memory.

“Kaylin?”

She said nothing for a long, long time. And given the tone of the Hawklord’s voice, it wasn’t a wise expenditure of that time.

“I know him,” she said at last.

“That has already been established.” The Hawk’s lips turned up in a cold smile. “You seldom attempt to kill a man for no reason in this tower. But not,” he added, “never.”

She ignored the comment. “He’s no Wolf,” she told the man who ruled the Hawks in all their guises. “I don’t care what he told you—he doesn’t serve the Wolflord.”

He chose to ignore her use of the Lord of Wolves, her more colloquial title. “Ah. And who does he serve, Kaylin?”

“One of the seven,” she said, spitting to the side.

“The seven?”

She was dead tired of his word games. “The fieflords,” she said.

“Ah. Severn?”

“I was a Wolf,” he replied, as if this bored him. As if everything did. He ran a hand through his hair; it was just shy of regulation length. “I served the Lord of Wolves.” Each word emphasized and correct.

“You’re lying.”

“Ask the Lord of Hawks,” he told her, with a shrug. “He’s got the paperwork.”

“No,” the Hawklord replied quietly, “I don’t.”

Severn was silent, assessing the tone of the Hawklord’s words. After a moment, he shrugged again; the folds of his robes shifted, and Kaylin heard the distinct sound of cloth rubbing against leather. He was not entirely unarmored here.

Too bad.

“I was a Shadow Wolf,” he said at last.

“For how long?” She refused to be shocked. Refused to let his admission slow her down.

“Years,” he replied. Just that.

She didn’t believe him. “He’s lying.”

“I didn’t say how many,” he added softly. As if it were a game.

“He is not lying,” the Hawklord told her. “Believe that when the unusual request for transfer between the Towers arrives, we check very carefully. When the man who requests the transfer is of the Shadows, our investigations are more thorough.”

“Thorough how?”

“We called in the Tha’alani.”

She froze. She had faced Tha’alani before, but only once, and she had been thirteen years old at the time. She had sworn, then, that she would die before she let one touch her again. The Tha’alani were an obscenity; they touched not flesh—although that in and of itself caused her problems—but thought, mind, heart, all the hidden things.

All the things that had to stay hidden if they were to be protected.

They were sometimes called Truthseekers. But it was a pal try word. Kaylin privately preferred rapist as the more accurate term.

“He subjected himself to the Tha’alani willingly,” the Hawklord added.

“And the Tha’alani said he was telling the truth.”

“Indeed.”

“And what truth? What could he say that would make him worthy of the Hawks?”

But the Hawklord’s patience had ebbed. “Enough to satisfy the Lord of Hawks,” he told her. “Will you question me?”

No. Not if she wanted to be a Hawk. “Why? Why him?”

“Because, Kaylin, he is one of two men who understand the fiefs as well as you do.”

She froze.

“The other will be with us shortly.”

After about ten minutes, the Hawklord let them go. Mostly. The barrier that held Kaylin’s arms to her side slowly thinned; she could move as if she were under water. Given that she was likely to try to kill Severn again the minute she got the chance, she tried hard not to resent the Hawklord’s caution.

“Feel all better now that that’s out of your system?” Severn asked quietly.

She wanted to cut the lips off his face; it would ruin his smirk. “No.”

“No?”

“You’re not dead.”

He laughed and shook his head. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you Elianne?”

“Tell him to let us go and you can find that out for yourself.”

“I doubt the Lord of Hawks would take the orders of a former Shadow Wolf. Although given your tardiness and his apparent acceptance of it, he’s a damn site more tolerant than the Lord of Wolves was.”

“Try.”

He laughed again. “Not yet, little—what did he call you? Kaylin? Not yet.”

The Lord of Hawks watched them with the keen sight of their namesake.

“You want to send us into the fiefs,” she said at last, trying to keep the accusation out of her voice.

“Yes. It’s been seven years, Kaylin. Long enough.”

“Long enough for what? Three of the fieflords are outcaste Barrani—I could live and die in the time it took them to blink!”

The Hawklord turned his full attention upon her. “I think I have been overly tolerant,” he said at last, and in a tone of voice she hadn’t heard since she’d first arrived in this tower. “You are either Hawk or you are not. Decide.”

Her silence was enough of an answer, but only barely. “The third is coming now.”

The door, which had probably closed the moment Kaylin had fully stepped across its threshold, swung open again.

A man walked into the room. He wore no armor that she could hear beneath the full flow of his perfect robes. Her hearing had always been good. “Lord Grammayre,” he said, bowing low.

“Tiamaris,” the Hawklord replied. “I would like to introduce you to Kaylin and Severn. You will work with them.”

The man rose. His hair was a dark, dark black—Barrani black—but his build was all wrong for Barrani. He was a shade taller than Teela, and about twice her width. Three times, maybe. His hands were empty; he carried no obvious weapon. Wore no open medallion. The hand that he lifted in ritual greeting, palm out, was smooth and unadorned.

Kaylin and Severn could not likewise lift hand—but their background in the fiefs hadn’t made the gesture automatic. Lord Grammayre was under no such disadvantage; he lifted his ringed hand in greeting, and lowered his chin slightly.

“Tiamaris has some knowledge of the fiefs,” he told them both. Tiamaris lowered his perfectly raised hand, and turned to face them.

Something about the man’s eyes were all wrong; it took Kaylin a moment to realize what it was. They were orange. A deep, bright orange that hinted at red and gold. Her own eyes almost fell out of their sockets.

“You have the privilege,” Lord Grammayre told her quietly, “of meeting the only member of the Dragon caste to ever apply to serve in the Halls of Law.”

Severn recovered first. He laughed. “It’s true, then,” he said, to no one in particular.

That rankled. “Like you’d know true if it bit you on the ass.”

“You really are a mongrel unit.”

“No, Severn,” the Hawklord replied softly. Too softly. Had it been anyone else speaking, Kaylin might have dared a warning kick.

She hoped Severn hung himself instead.

Severn fell silent.

“The Hawks have always been open to those who seek service under the banner of the Emperor’s Law. Where service is offered it is accepted, by whoever offers it. Tiamaris has chosen to make that offer, and it has been accepted, by the Three Towers. And the Emperor. If the Wolves choose different criteria upon which to accept applicants, that is the business of the Lord of Wolves; if the Swords choose to retain only the mortal races, that is likewise the concern of their lord.

“I would, of course, be pleased to explain your mission. But I have spent precious hours in this tower, and I have other duties to which I must attend. The Lords of Law meet within the half hour.” He reached into the folds of his robes and pulled out a large gem.

Even Kaylin could see it glow.

He held it a moment in his open palm. “This contains all of the information the Hawks have been able to gather about your mission. Some of it was placed within the gem by the Tha’alani, some was placed there by Wolves and Swords. You will study it,” he added quietly, “and it will tell you all you require.

“If you have questions, contain them. You will have to find answers on your own. You will speak to no one of what you see within the gem. It is spellbound, and it will enforce that command.”

He hesitated a moment, and then, lifting his hand, he gestured. Kaylin fell an inch to the ground and stumbled, righting herself.

“Kaylin.”

She turned. Saw that he held out both his open hand and the large gem it contained—to her. For just a minute she considered the wisdom of a different occupation.

But her past would follow her out the doors; here it was hidden. Without a word, she held out a hand, and he dropped the crystal into the shaking curve of her palm. Blue light seared her vision; her fingers closed instinctively.

She was surprised when she didn’t throw it away.

“Interesting,” the Hawklord said softly. She thought he might say more, but the meeting with the Lords of Law clearly demanded his full attention. “You are dismissed,” he said quietly. “You may speak with Marcus. Tell him that you are to be equipped in any reasonable manner. Remind him that the equipment is not to be logged.

“That is all.”

CHAPTER
2

Judging by the quality of the silence, which had gone from absolute to cryptlike, Iron Jaw still hadn’t recovered his good humor, such as it was. The people who usually occupied the desks in line of sight seemed to have developed an extended case of lunch. Kaylin’s stomach really wanted to join them. Either that, or to lose the breakfast she hadn’t had. She couldn’t quite decide which.

Severn. Here. Her hands were fists, which, given that one of them was clutching something with sharp edges, was unfortunate. If it hadn’t been years since she’d badly wanted to kill someone—and face it, she wasn’t angelae—it had been years since she’d tried. Her timing, as always, was impeccable.

Marcus looked up from his paperwork. She wondered which poor sacrificial soul had delivered it. She didn’t envy them.

“Well?” He growled.

She shrugged. Not really safe, given his mood—but she was in a mood of her own. “We need a safe room,” she told him, waving the crystal she still clutched.

His brows rose, or rather, the fur above his eyes did. When it settled, he looked annoyed. Nothing new, there. “West room,” he said, curtly. “And those two?”

“Ask the Hawklord.”

His lip curled back over his teeth, and she decided that his mood trumped hers. “Severn,” she said curtly. “Formerly of the Wolves.”

“Here?”

“I said formerly.”

“And the other?”

“Tiamaris. He’s a …”

The low growl deepened. The Leontine slid around the desk, paperwork forgotten.

Tiamaris stood his ground. Stood it with such complete confidence, Kaylin wondered if anything ever shook him.

“That’s a caste name, isn’t it?” the Leontine asked.

“That is none of your concern, Sergeant Kassan,” Tiamaris replied. His voice gave nothing away. Kaylin was impressed. Not that he knew Marcus’s rank—anyone who knew the uniform could see that—but that he knew his pride name.

Marcus drew closer, and as he did, he gained height—or at least his fur did. It was a Leontine trait, when the Leontine felt threatened. That usually only happened in the presence of his wives or his kits.

Severn sat on an empty desk and folded arms across his chest, smirking. Kaylin almost joined him. Almost.

But she didn’t want to be where he was; she had decided that a long time ago. Wouldn’t think about it here, because if by some miracle Marcus didn’t go feral, she might, and she didn’t want to be the cause of an office death. Not when the Hawklord had made clear what the price of that death would be.

“Tiamaris, you said?” Marcus’s growl could sometimes be mistaken for a purr. Kaylin kept a flinch in check as she realized Iron Jaw was actually speaking Barrani. It was the formal language of the Lords of Law, and as he was allergic to most forms of formal, he seldom used it.

Tiamaris raised a dark brow. They were almost of a height. Marcus continued to close; Tiamaris continued to mime a statue. Inches fell away.

Men. “Actually, Marcus, I said it,” Kaylin lifted the crystal as if it were an Imperial writ.

To her surprise, Marcus actually turned to look at her. But if his gaze was fastened on the crystal she held, his words were for Tiamaris. “This is my office,” he said quietly, each word textured by the full growl of a Leontine in his prime. “These are my Hawks. If you … choose to work here, you accept that.”

“I choose to serve at the pleasure of the Lord of Hawks,” was the neutral reply. It, too, was in Barrani. Kaylin realized that she had not heard Tiamaris speak in any other language since he’d entered the tower.

Kaylin tried again. “We’re to be kitted out,” she began. “And the Hawklord—”

“He told me.” He turned his gaze back to Tiamaris. “This isn’t finished,” he said quietly.

“No,” Tiamaris concurred, in an agreeable tone of voice that implied anything but. “It’s barely begun. Sergeant?”

“Take the West room,” he replied, eyes lidding slowly. Kaylin knew, then, that Tiamaris was close to death. Would have been, had he not been a Dragon. “Kaylin, show them.”

She took a deep breath. Thought about telling them all that she wasn’t their babysitter. Thought better of it a full second before her mouth opened on the words. “Right.” She offered a very sloppy salute, palm out but not exactly flat. It was also, she realized, as Iron Jaw stared at it, the wrong hand.

“You two, follow.”

“Whatever you say,” Severn told her, sliding off the desk. “Lead on, Kaylin.”

The West room was one of four such rooms, and they were all just as poetically named. The Leontines didn’t really go in for fancy names. Near as Kaylin could tell, the Leontine word for food translated roughly as “corpse.” Some accommodations had to be made in culinary discussions.

When Marcus had first taken the job, the safe rooms—like all of the rest of the rooms in the labyrinthine Halls of Law ruled by the Hawklord—had been named after upstanding citizens, people with a lot of money or distant relatives of the living Emperor. Marcus had pretty much pissed in every possible corner in the Hawks’ domain, and after he’d finished doing that, he’d fixed a few more things. Starting with the names.

Still, in all, West was better than some seven syllable name that she wouldn’t be able to pronounce without a dictionary. Now if he’d only do something about the damn wards on the doors….

Before she touched the door, she turned to Tiamaris. “Don’t antagonize him,” she said quietly.

“Was I?”

She didn’t know enough about Dragons to be certain he had done so on purpose. But she knew enough about men. “Marcus crawled his way up the ladder over a pile of corpses,” she replied. “And we need him where he is. Don’t push him.”

For the first time that day, Tiamaris smiled.

Kaylin decided that she preferred it when he didn’t. His teeth weren’t exactly like normal teeth; they didn’t have the pronounced canines of the Leontine, but they seemed to glitter. His eyes certainly did.

She pushed the door open and walked into the room.

“Severn,” she said, the name sliding off her tongue before she could halt it, “sit down. Tiamaris?”

“Kaylin?”

“We can’t proceed until the door is closed—the gem is keyed.”

“Ah.” He crossed the threshold into the small, windowless room. It looked like a prison cell. On the wrong days, it was. And the prisoners it contained? She shuddered.

The door slid shut behind him. Severn sat, lounging across a chair as if he were in his personal rooms. Tiamaris sat stiffly, as if he weren’t used to bending in the middle.

And Kaylin stood between them, between the proverbial rock and a hard place. She looked at Severn. Looked at the familiar scars that she’d never forgotten, and looked at the newer ones.

She wanted to kill him.

And he knew it. His smile stilled, until it was a mask, a presentation. Behind it, his blue eyes were hooded, watchful. His hands had fallen beneath the level of the plain, wooden table that was the only flat surface that wasn’t the floor.

“Are you really a Hawk?” He asked casually.

“Are you really a Wolf?”

They stared at each other for a beat too long.

“Kaylin,” Tiamaris said quietly. “I believe you have business to attend to.”

“I’m a Hawk,” she replied.

“Why?”

“Why?” Her hand closed around the crystal. “Yeah,” she said to Tiamaris. “Business. As usual.”

There had been a time when she would have answered any question Severn had asked. Any question. But she wasn’t that girl, now. She had no desire to share any of her life with him. Instead, she looked at the crystal. Some hesitance must have showed, because Tiamaris raised a brow.

“You are familiar with these, yes?”

“I’ve seen them,” she said coldly.

“But you’ve never used one.”

She shoved nonexistent hair out of her eyes, as if she were stalling. Her earlier years in the streets of the fiefs had proved that lies were valuable. Her formative years with the Hawks had shown her that they were also usually transparent, if they were hers. At last, she said, “No. Never.”

“If you would allow me—”

“No.”

Another brow rose. “No?”

The word sounded like a threat.

“No,” she said, finding her feet. “The Hawklord gave it to me. You try to use it, and if it’s keyed, we’ll be picking you out of our hair for weeks.”

His smile was not a comfort. He held out his hand. “I have the advantage,” he told her softly, “of knowing how to unlock a crystal.”

After a pause, in which she acknowledged privately that she was stalling, she said, “Why is he sending a Dragon into the fiefs?”

Tiamaris shrugged. “You must ask him. I fear he will not answer, however.” His eyes narrowed, gold giving way to the fire of red. “I confess I am equally curious. Why has he chosen to send an untried girl there?”

“I’m not untried,” she snapped. “I’ve been with the Hawks for seven years.”

“You’ve been with the Hawks,” he replied, “since you were thirteen. By caste reckoning, you were a child, then. You reached your age of majority two years ago. In accordance with the rules of Law, you have been a Hawk for two years.”

“Caste reckoning,” she snapped, “is for the castes. I grew up in the fiefs. Age means something else, there.”

“So,” Tiamaris said, splaying a hand across the table’s surface. “That was true.”

She looked at him again. How much do you know about me? Which wasn’t really the important question. And why?

Which was. “You’ve been a Hawk for a day, if I’m any judge.”

“Two,” he replied.

“It takes longer than two days to make a Hawk.”

He shrugged. “It takes only the word of the Hawklord.”

He was, of course, right. She cursed the Lord of the Hawks in the seven languages she knew. Which wasn’t saying much; she could only speak four passably, but she was enough of a Hawk that she’d picked up the important words in the other three, and none of them were suitable for children or politics.

Languages were her only academic gift. She’d failed almost every other class she’d been forced to take. Lord Grammayre had been about as tolerant as a disappointed parent could be, and she’d endured more lectures about applying herself than she cared to remember. At least a third of them had been delivered in Aerian, he’d been that annoyed; it was his habit to speak formal Barrani when addressing the Hawks, although when frustrated he could descend into Elantran, the human tongue.

“The crystal,” Tiamaris said.

She’d bought about all the time she could afford. Grinding her teeth—which caused Severn to laugh—she put her left palm over it; caught between her palms, the crystal began to pulse. She felt its beat and almost dropped it as it began to warm; warmth gave way to heat, and heat to something that was just shy of fire.

She’d touched fire before; been touched by it. Someplace, she still bore the scars. But she’d be damned if she let a little pain get in her way. Not in front of these two.

The crystal was beating. She felt it, and almost recognized the cadence of its insistent drumming. After a moment, she realized why; it had slowed, timing itself to the rhythm of her heart.

Which was too damn loud anyway.

“Here we go,” she said softly.

Kaylin.

The Hawklord’s voice was unmistakable. She relaxed, hearing it; it was calm and almost pleasant. An Aerian voice.

Kaylin, witness.

The fiefs opened up in her line of sight; she lost track of the room. She could see the boundaries that marked the criminal territories colloquially called the fiefs; they occupied the western half of the riverside, swallowing all but the Port Authority by the old docks. The view was top side, high; someone had flown this stretch. Someone had carried the unlocked crystal, linked to it, feeding it images, vision, the certainty of knowledge.

Grammayre? She couldn’t be certain.

The Lords of Law were the fist of the Emperor; they owed their allegiance and existence to his whim. This was a truth that she had faced almost daily for seven years. The Hawks, the Wolves and the Swords were not soldiers; they were no part of the Imperial army.

But they were allowed arms and armor, by law; in their individual ways, they kept the laws of the city of Elantra. And if that wasn’t a war, she didn’t want to see one. No one loved the guards who served the Lords of Law, but almost no one crossed them. Not outside of the fiefs.

Within the fiefs?

Old pain crossed her features, distorting them. She closed her eyes. Her vision however, was caught in crystal; she watched as the fiefs drew closer, undeniable now. Saw the boundaries beyond which the Lords of Law had little sway, held little power, and all of that power theoretical.

The armies would have more, but the Emperor seldom allowed the armies to crusade within his city.

And so the fiefs continued to exist.

In the fiefs, the slavery that had been abolished for a generation and a half still existed in all but name. Whole grand houses, opulent, golden manses, opened their doors to visitors, and within those doors, the rich could purchase anything. A moment’s illegal escape, in the smoke-wreathed rooms of the opiates. A moment’s pleasure, in the private parlors of the prostitutes. And a death, here or there, if one’s tastes shaded to the sadistic.

Sordid, storybook, the fiefs made their money off those who would never dream of living within their borders.

And the fieflords ruled. They had their own laws, their own armies, their own lieges—everything but open warfare. Open war in the city would bring the army down upon them all. This was understood, and it was perhaps the only thing that kept the fieflords in check. But in Kaylin’s experience, it wasn’t near enough. People lived and died at their whim. Money ruled the fiefs; money and power.

But the people who lived in them, who lived in the old buildings, the crumbling tenements, the small, squalid houses, had neither. They made what living they could, and they dreamed of a time when they might cross the boundaries that divided the one city from the other, seeking freedom or safety in the streets beyond.

They might as well have lived in a different country.

“Kaylin?” Tinny, robbed of the threat and grandeur of a Dragon’s natural voice, she heard Tiamaris.

“Can you see it?”

Silence. A beat. “No,” he said quietly. “The gem is, as you claimed, keyed to you. It appears you are to be our conduit to the investigation.” He didn’t sound pleased, and she knew she was being petty when she felt a moment’s satisfaction.

But the satisfaction was very short-lived; the view dipped and veered, rolling in the sky. Clint had once taken her up in the air. She’d been with the Hawks for a handful of weeks, and she was thin with the hunger that dogged most children in the fiefs; he’d caught her under the arms, and she’d clung to him, determined to fly with him.

But she had found the distance from Clint to ground overwhelming. She couldn’t follow what she saw; couldn’t do anything but shut her eyes and shiver. Wind against her face, like it was now, was a reminder of what she wasn’t: Aerian, and meant for the skies.

But he’d held her tight, and his voice, in her ear, became an anchor. He teased a sense of security slowly out of her fear, her frozen stiffness, and she had at last opened those eyes and looked. He took her to his home, to the heights of the Aeries in the cliffs that bordered the southern face of the city.

His home was not the home she had fled.

Not the home that the crystal’s flight was returning her to.

The first fief passed beneath her shadow. She saw the tallest of the buildings it contained, and saw the gallows and the hanging cage that lay occupied beside it. Someone had angered the servants of the fieflord here, and they meant it to be known; the cage’s occupant—man? Woman? She couldn’t tell from this distance—was clearly still alive.

The voyager didn’t pause here; he merely observed.

From a distance, she was encouraged to do the same. But she had seen those cages from the ground; had watched a friend die in one, had discovered, on that day, what it meant to be truly powerless.

She struggled with the crystal, but she was overmastered here. The Hawks—her place in the Hawks—had given her the illusion of power. And the Hawklord was going to strip her of it before he let her leave. To remind her—as she had not reminded herself—that she was still powerless, still young.

This is the domain of the outcaste Barrani fieflord known as Nightshade, his voice said.We do not, of course, know his real name. It is hidden by spells far stronger than those we can comfortably use. Not even the Barrani castelords dare to challenge Nightshade in his own Dominion.

She closed her eyes. It didn’t help.

You know this fief.

She knew it. Severn knew it. They had lived, and almost died, in its streets. And Severn had done much, much worse there. The desire to kill him was paralyzing. It was wed to a bitter desire for justice—and justice was a fool’s dream in the fiefs.

There are deaths here which you must investigate. More information is forthcoming.

The crystal shifted in her hands, becoming almost too hot to hold. She held it anyway as her view suddenly banked and shifted.

She was on the ground. The smell of the streets, overpowering in its terrible familiarity, filled her senses. She staggered, stumbled, stood; she looked down to see that her tunic—an unfamiliar tunic, a man’s garb—was red with blood.

She felt no pain, but she knew that this memory was courtesy of the Tha’alani, and she hated it. It was different in all ways from the distant observation of the Hawklord; it was full of terror, of pain, of the inability to acknowledge or deny either.

She stumbled in the streets, and her arms ached; she was carrying something. No, he was, whoever he was. He stumbled along the busy streets; the sun was high. Some people watched him from a distance, open curiosity mixed with dread in their unfamiliar—blessedly so—faces. None approached. None offered him aid with the burden he bore. And when his strength at last gave out, when his knees bent, when his arms unlocked in a shudder that spoke of effort, of time, she saw why; saw it from his eyes.

A body rolled down his lap, bloody, devoid of life.

He screamed, then. A name, over and over, as if the name were a summons, as if it contained the power to command life to return.

But watching now as a Hawk, watching as someone trained to know death and its causes, Kaylin knew that it was futile.

The boy—ten years of age, maybe twelve—had been disemboweled. His arms hung slack by his sides, and she could see, from wrist to elbow, the black tattoos that had been painted there, indelible, in flesh.

She had seen them before. She knew that it wasn’t only his arms that bore those marks; his inner thighs would bear them, too.

She screamed.

And Severn screamed in quick succession as she inexplicably lost contact with the gem.

Her hands were blistered; her skin was broken along the lines of the rigid crystal. And so were Severn’s. He dropped the crystal instantly and it hit the table with a thunk, fastening itself to the wooden surface.

She thought it should roll.

It was a stupid thought.

“What are you doing?” She shouted at Severn, the words ground through clenched teeth, the pain in her hands making her stupid.

“Prying the gem away from you,” he snapped back, composure momentarily forgotten.

“Why?”

He shrugged. The shrug, which started at his shoulder, ended in a shudder. “You didn’t like what you were looking at,” he added quietly.

“And it matters?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer.

“That was brave,” Tiamaris said, speaking for the first time. “And very, very foolish. The Hawklord must have gone to some expense to create this crystal. It is … obviously unusual. Kaylin?”

She shook her head. Actually, she just shook. She wanted to touch the gem again, and she wanted to destroy it. Torn between the two—the one an imperative and the other an impossibility—she was frozen.

Tiamaris said quietly, “I owe you a debt.” The words were grave. His eyes had edged from red to gold, and the gold was liquid light.

“Debt?”

“I would have taken the gem. It would have been … unwise. It appears that the Hawklord trusts you, Kaylin. And it would appear,” he added, with just the hint of a dark smile, “that that trust does not extend to his newest recruits.”

But Severn refused to be drawn into the conversation; he was staring at Kaylin. His own hands had started to swell and blister.

“Did you see it?” she asked him, all enmity momentarily forgotten. He was Severn, she was Elianne, and the streets of the fiefs had become that most impossible of things: more terrifying than either had ever thought possible.

He shook his head. “No,” he said, devoid now of arrogance or ease. “But I know what you saw.”

“How?”

“I’ve only heard you scream that way once in your life,” he replied. He lifted a hand, as if to touch her, and she shied away instantly, her hand falling to her dagger hilt. To one of many.

He accepted her rejection as if it hadn’t happened. “I was there, back then,” he added quietly. “I saw it too. It’s happening again, isn’t it?”

She closed her eyes. After a moment, eyes still closed, she rolled up her sleeves, exposing the length of arm from wrist to elbow.

There, in black lines, in an elegant and menacing swirl, were tattoos that were almost twin to the ones upon the dead boy’s arms.

She was surprised when someone touched her wrist, and her eyes jerked open.

But Tiamaris held the wrist in a grip that could probably crush bone with little effort. Funny, how human his hands looked. How human they weren’t.

She tried to pull away. He didn’t appear to notice.

But his eyes flickered as she drew a dagger out of its sheath with her free hand. She’d moved slowly, and the daggers made no sound—but he was instantly aware of them.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you. Lord Grammayre is not known for his tolerance of fighting among his own.”

“Let go,” she whispered.

He didn’t appear to have heard her. “Do you know what these markings mean?” He asked. His inner eye membrane had risen, lending opacity to the sudden fire of his eyes.

“Death,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he replied. He studied them with care, and after a moment, she realized he was reading them. “They mean death. But that is not all they mean, Kaylin of the Hawks.”

“This isn’t—this isn’t Dragon.”

“No. It is far older than Dragon, as you so quaintly call our tongue.”

“Barrani?”

His lip curled in open disdain.

“I’ll take that as a no.” She hesitated. These patterns had been with her since she had gained the age of ten, a significant age in the fiefs. Not many children survived that long when they’d lost their parents.

“Where did you get these?”

“In Nightshade,” she whispered.

“Who put them upon you? Who marked you thus?”

It was Severn who answered. “No one.”

“Impossible.”

“I saw them,” Severn replied. “I saw them … grow. We all did. They started one morning in Winter.”

“On what day?”

“The shortest one.”

Tiamaris said nothing. She wanted him to continue to say nothing, but he opened his mouth anyway. “I saw the bodies,” he said at last. “And the tattoos of the dead did not just, as you say, ‘start.’ They were put there, and at some cost.”

“Not hers,” Severn said quietly.

Tiamaris frowned. “There is something here,” he said at last, “that even I cannot read.”

“Do you—do you know someone who can?”

“Only one,” Tiamaris replied, “and it would not be safe for you to ask him.”

“Why?”

“He would probably take both arms.”

Severn said, “He could try.” And his long dagger was suddenly in his hand.

Kaylin looked at it. Looked at Severn. Understood nothing at all. “How do you know how to read this?” she whispered.

“I am considered a scholar,” was his cautious reply. “I dabble in the antiquities.”

Which meant magery. She didn’t bother to ask.

“Let me go,” she said wearily, adding command to the words.

To her surprise, Tiamaris withdrew his grip. “You are interesting, Kaylin, as the Hawklord surmised. But I am surprised, now.”

“At what?”

“That the Hawklord let you live.”

Kaylin said nothing.

Again, for reasons that made no sense, Severn said, “Why?” His hands had once again fallen beneath the surface of the table.

“Your story … is strange. And you must understand that the deaths in the fiefs some years ago were also investigated.”

The deaths. Seven years ago. She shuddered.

For the first time since she’d met Tiamaris, his expression went bleak. The way distant, snow-covered cliffs were.

“You were there, back then,” she said softly.

“I was there.”

“And you weren’t a Hawk.”

“No.”

She lifted a shaking head. Looked down at her arms. “What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, even now, eyes upon her face. “But in the end, the killings stopped. Does the Hawklord know of these?”

She nodded. She almost matched his bleakness. “He knows almost everything about me.”

“And he does not suspect that you were involved in the incidents.”

Her eyes rounded. She was too stunned to be angry; that might come later.

“You don’t understand, and clearly Grammayre did not see fit to inform you. As I will be working with you, I will. The first death must have occurred—and Lord Grammayre would be acquainted with the approximate time—on the day you say these appeared. On the same solstice.”

The silence was, as they say, deafening. And into the silence, the shadow of accusation crept.

“She had nothing to do with the deaths of the others,” Severn snapped. “They were all—”

Kaylin said, “Shut up, Severn.”

To her surprise, Severn did.

“I believe you” was the quiet reply. “Having met her, I believe you.” Tiamaris looked across the table at Kaylin; the table seemed to have grown very, very long. From that distance, he said, “You said that it had started again. Tell me what you think has started.”

She swallowed. Her mouth was very dry. “The deaths,” she whispered at last. “In Nightshade. I thought—when the first body appeared—I was so certain I would die next. Because of the marks. We all were.” “All?”

Her lips thinned. She didn’t answer the question. It wasn’t any of his damn business. A different life.