Cast In Fury (39 page)

Rennick looked like he wanted to argue—but Rennick always looked like that. He did however manage to snap his jaw shut before anything unfortunate could fall out of his mouth. Lord Sanabalis apparently tolerated his frequent outbursts with equanimity, but you probably didn’t want to rely on that forever. Not with Dragons.

“What have you been up to?” Rennick asked, when Sanabalis had opened the door and closed it from the other side.

“Oh, same old, same old,” Kaylin replied.

“Which means you’re not going to tell me.”

“Pretty much. It was Hawk duty, if that helps.”

Rennick had finished what he called a rough draft. It sat before him in as neat a pile as office paperwork usually sat in. He started to hand it to Kaylin, stopped himself, and almost sighed. “Ybelline?” he said.

She nodded.

“This is a second attempt at writing to order. Would you care to read it?”

She glanced at Kaylin, but it was a quick glance, and it didn’t stay on Kaylin’s face long enough for Kaylin to reply in kind.

“Yes. I’m curious. I understand that this has been difficult for you,” she said, “and I understand why the Emperor thinks it necessary. I also understand that we are not its intended audience, and I will do my best to keep this in mind.” She held out her hand, and he placed the night’s work—the long night’s work, by the look of his stubble and the gray circles under his eyes—into her hands. Then he sat back into his chair and stretched like a cat.

Ybelline read. She was meticulous in her handling of the pages—far more than Rennick himself. But her expression—or rather, the total lack of it—was making Rennick nervous. Kaylin guessed this because it was making
her
nervous, and she hadn’t written the damn thing. It was almost torture to watch, and Kaylin alleviated this by standing and pacing between the small mounds of paper all over the floor.

But when Ybelline cleared her throat, Kaylin took her seat again. Severn, damn him, hadn’t really moved.

Her first question surprised them.

“May I bring my people to see this play?”

Her first reaction—that this was a bad idea in a hundred different ways—didn’t escape before Rennick spoke, possibly because she couldn’t decide which of the hundred to start with.

“Of course,” he replied. And he smiled. It was a tired smile, but for a moment, he looked genuinely pleased.

“I liked the orphans,” Ybelline continued. “We are not without accidents or illnesses, and many of our young have faced life without parents. But not this way.” There was compassion in the tone that didn’t dip toward pity. “Some of my kin might understandably wonder why you placed the orphans in the Quarter, but I think that such a complaint would not be reasonable.” She turned to Kaylin, then. “There is a note in the margins—your foundlings are to act?”

“Not all of them,” he replied. “And, boy, is
that
going to cause trouble.”

Ybelline nodded. “Is that all, then? Will this play be performed soon?” And now, into the smoothness of her voice, cracks appeared. She was weary. Or worried. Probably both.

“With some luck,” Rennick replied. “I have actors in mind for some of the parts, but the rest?” He shrugged. “I’ll have to have auditions. I have to find the right people—
exactly
the right people—to play the Tha’alani.”

“I would suggest some of my kin, but I do not think they would be well-suited to what I understand of your acting.”

“Lord, no. We want them to think humans can be sane,” Rennick said cheerfully.

“She knows
us,
” Kaylin said with a snort. “I’d say Ybelline, at least, is a lost cause.”

Rennick chuckled, but the chuckle lost steam. He looked at Ybelline for a long moment, and then held out his hand; she placed the play into it.

“Rennick,” Kaylin said. “Don’t even
think
it.”

“Don’t you have somewhere you have to be?” Rennick replied. He flipped through the first few pages. Stopped, splitting the stack as if it were a deck of flimsy cards, and set the smaller pile to one side.

“Not yet, we don’t. Rennick—”

A knock interrupted her. Rennick grinned at her glare. “Providence,” he said cheerfully, “is on my side. Go on, answer it.”

“What I’d like to know,” Kaylin said to Tiamaris, “is how you can even
receive
a message from Nightshade. He’s a fieflord. He’s not exactly an Imperial Subject, and I always thought the Emperor frowned on people who lived in the boundaries of his Empire who weren’t.”

“If the Emperor could in safety clear out the fiefs,” Tiamaris replied as they trudged along the emptying streets, “you would have grown up in a very different world. If the fieflords do not serve the Emperor’s will or law, they also serve no others.”

“That you know of.”

“That we know of.”

“Which still doesn’t answer my question.”

“No. There
are
ways of sending messages you might be familiar with. They involve no mirrors and no magic.” Dragons were not as good as Barrani at sarcasm, but Tiamaris was cutting it close.

“And you knew it was genuine because?”

Tiamaris had stopped by the bridge that crossed the Ablayne. He pointed, and Kaylin saw a familiar, armed Barrani waiting on the other side. Andellen.

He bowed to Kaylin as she approached. It was a pure Barrani court gesture; it was graceful, and it was absolute. It was also a little too serious.

“Andellen, what’s happened?”

“Lord Andellen,” Tiamaris said, bowing in turn. It was not as low a bow, and it was not as perfect, but it held genuine respect.

Andellen’s bow had been an obeisance. To make this clear, he offered a nod to Severn, who was silent.

“Lord Nightshade sends word,” Andellen replied, nodding at Tiamaris yet somehow implying that Kaylin had the entirety of his attention. “He requests your presence in the Castle, but also requests that you be prepared to move. Corporal Handred,” he added, “he requests your presence as well, if you are available.”

“I’m here,” Severn replied. “How bad is it?” he said, in a level voice.

Andellen shifted his gaze toward the falling sun. “Not yet as bad as it will become,” he said gravely. “If there is anything you require, retrieve it. I will wait.”

Severn glanced at Kaylin. It was a subtle glance, but she understood what he was asking. Quietly, she rolled up her sleeves and touched the luminescent gems that studded her bracer in such an ornate row.

In the silence the click was like distant thunder. She handed the bracer to Severn, and he accepted it wordlessly.

Andellen said, “Lord Tiamaris, did you ever study astrology?”

Tiamaris glanced at the sky. It was cloudless, although the heat-haze of the summer months smudged the air somehow. “The moons,” he said.

“That is our suspicion.”

“They will not be full this eve, but they are close.”

“It is why my Lord feels this eve is critical.”

“I concur. Private?”

Kaylin said, “Let’s go.”

She accepted the passage through the portcullis as if it were of no consequence. She didn’t have space left in her thoughts for the luxury of complaint. She accepted being dumped more or less on all fours on the marble floor of the hallway, and accepted, with as much grace as she had ever managed, Severn’s silent offer of help. She took the hand he held out and levered herself to her feet.

Nightshade was waiting. He wore robes, not armor, and she thought this was a good sign. Until she saw the hilt of the sword that hung by his side. A shorter man would have trailed it across the polished floor. Even a taller man might have looked somehow encumbered by it. It was one of the three named Dragonkillers. Kaylin, who had never named an inanimate object in her life, couldn’t remember what it was called—couldn’t remember at this point if she had ever known.

Tiamaris, however, looked at the sword, and the inner membranes of his eyes rose, muting the shade of orange the bronze was quickly adopting. But he said nothing, did nothing.

“Kaylin,” Lord Nightshade said. “Lord Tiamaris. Corporal. Accept my apologies for the lack of proper hospitality.”

“You found them,” Kaylin replied. It wasn’t the Barrani thing to say, but the Barrani thing to say would probably take two hours of pointless, pretty verbiage.

He lifted a perfect brow, and a half smile formed on his lips. “As you say,” he replied. The smile vanished, as if it had never existed at all. “I am not certain we’ve found
them.
We have, however, found at least the female Leontine.”

“Marai,” Kaylin whispered.

“Yes. But be cautious, Kaylin. I do not know if she would respond to that name should you attempt to use it.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, in the sinking tone of voice that made the question rhetorical.

He didn’t reply. After a pause to let the non-reply sink in, he said, “We must leave, now, and in some haste. Andellen will have gathered some of my guards; and they will accompany us. Attempt to remember that
I
am Lord here. Andellen owes you a debt that you cannot conceive of, and he will tolerate anything you say or do. This will be understood by those who serve—who must serve—me. But I owe you no such debt.”

“And they’ll understand that just as well.”

“Indeed.”

Kaylin nodded grimly. If she could file reports with Mallory, she was certain she could do anything.

“Be wary, Kaylin,” he added in a softer voice. “Be aware that there are those you cannot save.”

The men who served Nightshade
were
armored. Even Andellen. It made a stark contrast between the men who followed and the one who commanded. It was also interesting to observe their reactions. They were, as expected, silent and deferential to their Lord. They were wary of Tiamaris—not that she blamed them, although she silently lauded their good sense—and they were…wary of Kaylin. Not in the same way. Men who see walking death—which, for the purpose of this observation, was the Dragon—tended to be wary in the
I don’t want to die
way. They weren’t that kind of wary around Kaylin. But she spent whole days not remembering the mark Nightshade had placed on her cheek, and this wasn’t going to be one of them.

Severn, on the other hand, seemed to be entirely beneath their notice. It’s not a mistake that Nightshade would have made.

In turn, the guards seemed entirely beneath Tiamaris’s notice, and they didn’t seem to be insulted by the lack of attention.

Nightshade walked past the guards. Kaylin followed, but his stride was longer and she had to work to match it. “Wait,” she said.

He turned. “Andellen.”

Andellen bowed briskly and broke ranks to join them.

“Kaylin Neya is, for the duration of our excursion, your responsibility. Answer any questions she poses, if they do not compromise our security. She is, of course, human, and is abrupt and somewhat graceless. You will overlook these flaws.”

“Lord,” Andellen replied, bowing again. The fall of his hair framed his face like a cowl made of dark light. “Lord Kaylin,” he said, and bowed to her.

She bit back the urge to refute the title. While it had become a running office joke, she understood that to these men, it meant far more than her squirming, annoyed embarrassment. To be embarrassed by it at all would be an insult.

“Lord Andellen,” she replied in kind, accenting his name in the High Barrani fashion. As much as she hated the language—and given the volumes of legalese that were
all
written in High Barrani there was a lot to hate—it forced a certain form and structure on her speech. Oh, she’d never be
good
at it, and it would never come as easily as Leontine—but High Barrani didn’t have a lot of unfortunate curse words.

“Lord Nightshade will be occupied for some time. His sense of the fief is not ours, and in this case, it
is
required. If you have questions you wish answered, I will attempt to answer them.”

“Are we going to stay in this fief?”

One dark brow rose. Clearly, whatever question he’d been expecting to field, it wasn’t this one.

His lips curved slightly. “You have a Hawk’s instincts.” He began to walk. She fell in beside him, and Severn joined them, walking to the other side of the Barrani Lord.

“Was she human?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

Kaylin frowned, and realized that the Barrani word she’d spoken was
mortal,
not
human.
They used it to refer to humans so often, it was an easy mistake to make. “Did she still look like a Leontine?”

His silence was telling; he clearly knew the answer and just as clearly was reluctant to give it.

“No,” he said at last. “I did not see her in the flesh. I saw what the mirrors saw, no more. But to my eyes, no.”

“How did he know it was her, then?”

“He is Nightshade,” Andellen replied gravely.

It took a moment for the weight of the sentence to sink roots. When it did, she was silent for at least two blocks.

“What does he want me to do?” she asked at last.

“Have you ever ventured across the borders of Nightshade?”

“Yes.” The single word was as flat and hard as a dungeon door, and just about as inviting.

“Not across the river,” he began.

“No. It wasn’t.”

“It is not considered safe—or wise—to cross the boundaries,” Andellen said softly. “And if you did indeed cross them, and you are here, you were either lucky or deaf.”

She said nothing.

“Kaylin.”

She looked across Andellen’s carefully composed expression, and met Severn’s gaze. She looked away. Took a breath. “We’re going to the edge of the fief.”

“Yes.”

“What do you expect to find there?”

“If we are both very unlucky and correct, a Dragon,” he replied. If Tiamaris, who kept an easy pace with Nightshade several yards ahead, heard the comment, he didn’t respond.

“And if we’re lucky?”

“We attract his attention when we are prepared for it.”

Which, to Kaylin’s mind, would be never.

“I’m supposed to catch his attention.”

“If necessary, yes.” There was a subtle hesitation before Andellen spoke again. “Lord Nightshade will not leave the fief.”