Cast in Ruin (17 page)

“Do you think you will find that information?”

“I don’t know. If you can mark the points where the storms occurred—”

“I cannot mark all of them,” was the quiet reply. “Some of my defenses—demonstrably—were compromised in the absence of a Lord. I could not see clearly all that was occurring within the boundaries of the fief at that time.” She hesitated and then said, “Lord Illien might know.”

Kaylin was silent for a full thirty seconds. “…Severn and I are going to head out to see if we can find
any
leads. If you can mark areas where the storms were known entities, we’ll see how much overlap there was. A lot depends on whether or not we can find a single eyewitness anywhere.”

Kaylin and Severn weren’t wearing the Hawk. This didn’t stop doors from being closed—usually on their feet—or, better, failing to be opened at all. The gem, activated, with its stunning but admittedly unusual representation of a well-dressed stranger, had seemed like such a good idea at the time. The Arkon’s reaction should have been a big clue.

But in the streets of the fiefs, magic of any kind was more terrifying than weapons. It was probably on par with Ferals, at least in the sunlight hours.

In two hours, they managed to talk to three people in total, the last two because Severn deactivated the gem and described the “missing person” with words.

“We clearly need more obvious magic in these streets,” Kaylin muttered as they began to walk toward the well at the end of the road.

“They’re probably confusing it with Shadow; they’ve seen enough of
that
to last a few lifetimes.”

“They’ve probably seen a Dragon, as well—which most of the rest of the city hasn’t.”

“Ferals.”

“Okay, fine, this is going to be harder than it looked.” She glanced at the sun’s height.

The well was never completely abandoned at this time of day. The streets around the well were about as crowded as fief streets ever got, and children were playing in the streets. Well, technically, four of them were playing and two of them were having a tug-of-war over a stick while practicing street language that would only grow more useful with time.

“This is the well,” Severn said quietly.

Kaylin nodded. “I’m surprised there are any people here at all, given the scare about the water.”

“The corpse didn’t decay—at all. I’m sure it’s not worse than drinking any other well water in the fief.”

Kaylin wasn’t, but was willing to take his word for it. Wells in the fiefs could be claimed by the fieflord or his thugs, and often were. People bartered for water because it was better than broken bones, lost teeth, or severe bruises. Since she wasn’t in the best of moods to begin with, she’d been sort of looking forward to knocking a few teeth out of someone’s mouth, but there were no “guards” near the well. There weren’t, from a brief scan of the streets, any lookouts of any sort, either.

“Tiamaris has really done a good job with this place,” she murmured, taking a seat in the shadows cast by the well itself and placing her back against the stone there. She stretched out both legs and took a deep breath. “Gem?”

Severn tried to hand her the crystal.

“Not falling for that.”

He chuckled and activated it. The woman appeared above his palms, as if he were carrying her. This had the advantage of clearing the streets of anyone who wasn’t terribly nearsighted. Or old enough to know better.

“Let’s see how it goes,” Severn told her. “An hour?”

She glanced at the sun. “Two, tops.”

It took less than an hour for someone to approach them. The someone was young, which wasn’t surprising, and he was sprinting ahead of an older woman who wouldn’t make it half a street from Ferals if she were stupid enough to be caught out at night. Young or no, the child hesitated slightly as she approached, but sped up again when she realized that she was about to be snatched off the ground by an increasingly angry caretaker.

Kaylin raised a brow. “You’re going to be in deep trouble,” she told the girl.

This seemed to mean “Please, jump on my thigh in an attempt to reach Severn” as far as the child was concerned. The girl tried to grab the image. Her hands passed through nothing, and she almost fell over.

Kaylin caught the back of her oversize, thinning shirt. There weren’t a lot of polite children in the fiefs, but the girl mumbled a thank-you. This didn’t stop her from trying to grab the skirts of the image again.

The old woman who’d been keeping an eye on her stopped at a much safer distance—four yards, give or take—and bowed nervously. “She means no harm,” she said, rising. “Give her back to me. I’ll make sure she never bothers you again.”

“She’s not bothering us,” Kaylin replied. She didn’t bother to speak softly; no point, and in the fiefs at the moment, it would just seem suspicious. The girl had fallen through the image the crystal projected another three times, and only Severn’s arm had stopped the last one from ending in a face-plant at the base of the well.

The old woman finally called the child by name. In this case it was Susa, and it was said in the low growl that only elderly voices can achieve. It was ignored, on the other hand, in the way that only the youthful could manage.

“What,” the woman said, because a quarter hour of this had made it less strange or less terrifying, “is that?”

“We’re members of the Imperial Hawks,” Kaylin replied, which wasn’t really an answer. “This is one of the tools we use—across the bridge—to find missing people.”

“You think someone was stupid enough to run
to
the fiefs?” The last word had squeaked up a register, and was followed by a snort. On the surface, it was the only reasonable fief response to Kaylin’s reply.

Kaylin glanced at Severn. For a guy who was better with words, he was way too content to let her fumble through most of the talking. “She’s not from Elantra.”

“Dressed like that, she’s not from Tiamaris, either.”

Strike two. “We’re here because Lord Tiamaris used to work with the Imperial Hawks before he took the Tower.”

This got the old woman’s attention. It did not, however, cause her face to go either white or green with fear, and it didn’t cause her to instantly collapse to her knees, the nearest door being a little too far to conveniently leap for.

“Lord Tiamaris is currently busy doing two things: securing the border, and overseeing the reconstruction of the fief. So he asked us to look into this, as a favor. I’m Private Neya,” she added, “and this is Corporal Handred. We’re both Hawks when we cross the bridge.”

“Look into? That girl, the one Susa keeps falling through, she’s important to the Lord?”

“Yes. We’re not sure why,” Kaylin added.

“She missing?”

This was technically trickier, since according to Severn, one of the seven bodies had been discovered in the well they were currently leaning against.

“You should ask the Lady. She’ll be able to find her if she’s here.”

“She’d be able to find her,” Kaylin said, still cautious, “if she were a citizen of Tiamaris; she’s not. She’s a visitor.”

“From where?” This was sharper.

“To be frank, we’re not sure. The Lord did ask the Lady, but it’s not something the Lady could find out. We’re his backup. We’re not certain we can find out, either—but this is part of what we do across the bridge.”

“You always find your missing people? Susa, do
not
jump up and down on his legs like that. You’ll hurt him.”

“Not always, no. Lord Tiamaris is aware of what we can, and can’t, promise. If we fail, he’s not going to eat us or turn us to ash.”

“Well, she doesn’t look like one of those foreigners.” One wrinkled, bony hand was now rubbing her chin.

“The Norannir?”

“The giants.”

“Ah. No, she’s not.”

“I haven’t seen her, not around here.” She frowned in an entirely different way, because the inevitable had started to occur. All the children who hadn’t been pulled off the street or dragged around a corner began to approach them; Susa had tested the waters, and as she was unbruised and obviously still alive, it meant curiosity was more or less safe.

With the children came their caretakers, many of whom were older, and some of whom were young enough to be older siblings—or at least she hoped they were. They were on that edge of young enough to still need mothers.

Severn said quietly, “You didn’t have one at that age.”

“Did I say that out loud?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Good. Answer it the same way.”

An hour and a half later, the crystal had been handed—carefully and with stern warning and near death threats—around the growing group of children. Susa had long since disappeared to scrounge for food, and many of the other children had followed buckets down one street or the other, but they’d all been replaced by equally curious children who were willing to approach strangers in a crowd. Kaylin’s legs were cramping because she was sitting on them, and her stomach was beginning to make threats of its own.

But one of the children—a six-or seven-year-old, given fief food—said, “Hey, we saw her!”

Kaylin raised a brow. “You’re certain you saw her? Not someone who looked like her?” It was all she could do to stay seated, but leaping to her feet would have scattered the crowd as easily as if they were small birds.

The child frowned. “It was her.”

“Did anyone else see her? Any of your friends?”

“My grandfather.”

“He’s here?”

“Nah. He’s back at home.”

“And he’s the only other person?”

“Don’t know. He’s the only person who was with me.”

“Where did you see her?”

The boy had the grace to pale, although he was dark enough it wasn’t immediately obvious. His voice dropped, and the line of his shoulders fell, as if they were drooping. The other children were all watching him with the type of curiosity that small carrion creatures might display if they were actually friendly.

“Here,” he finally said, almost inaudibly.

“What do you mean, here?”

He pointed at the well.

“You saw her body in the well?”

“No—she was—no. We didn’t put her there!”

Kaylin lifted both hands; Severn lifted one. At the moment, the other was occupied by the crystal. “We don’t think you—any of you—put her there. Where did you see her?”

Hesitation again. Kaylin fished a silver coin out of her pocket. She then fished another out, and a third. “Where did you see her?” she asked again.

The boy, no fool, hesitated. Kaylin thought about adding another coin. She didn’t because she’d’ve had to fish it out of Severn’s pockets. Instead, she held her palm flat and steady. There was a small chance that one of the other kids would try to grab it and pull a runner, but that might have happened in any street of the city, not just these ones. It was worth the risk.

It was worth the risk because the boy reached out with an unsteady hand, and he did take the silver that had been warmed by its contact with her. “She was walking toward the well,” he told Kaylin, having made his decision. “She was drunk.”

“You’re certain?”

“She was walking like a drunk.”

“Did she climb into the well?”

“Hells, no. She fell into the well, though. She stopped just here,” he added, pulling himself slightly out of the crowd to approach the well itself. “She looked down. Grandpa tried to stop her, but we were too far away.”

“She fell in?”

The boy nodded. “Fell in. Grandpa was worried—it’s our well,” he added, as if to make clear his grandfather wasn’t an idiot humanitarian. “But—she was talking. When she was leaning over the water, she was talking.”

“What did she say?”

“We didn’t understand it. Some foreign words.”

“Did you see where she came from?”

He hesitated again. Then he slid the coins into his pocket and pushed them as far down as they would go. He lifted a hand and pointed. “She came from there.”

Kaylin rose for the first time; Severn, however, remained seated. The boy was pointing at a building that looked, from this distance, to be one of the older buildings in the fief. It was stone, although the stone had cracked, and some of its corners had crumbled. There was a roof, although it looked much more recent than the walls. Windows—and it had windows—wore shutters that were warped and faded.

“Can I go now?” the boy asked.

Kaylin nodded. “Thank you. You’ve helped your Lord and Lady. Severn?”

There weren’t a lot of buildings in the fiefs that were unoccupied. In Tiamaris, this was probably more true at the moment than in any other fief. If Kaylin had entertained the vague and hopeful notion that this building would be an exception, it was dashed pretty quickly. Like many of the oldest of buildings, it was set farther back from the street, although in this case,
street
was a charitable word for a mixture of stone and dirt with a lot of weeds thrown in.

There had once been fencing, and the perimeter of the property had been defined by a wall or a demiwall. What remained was crumbled stone that stood at various heights, and rusty spots where fence posts had once resided. Beyond what had probably been the property line, the weeds were higher. There was a door, but it wasn’t much of a door, given that only two of three hinges seemed to actually be working; it had had a lock, but that had been removed or destroyed some time ago, as well. It creaked.

“She was alive,” Kaylin said as she pushed the door inward.

Severn nodded. He spoke a single word, and the crystal’s image immediately winked out. He slid the crystal into the pouch at his hip.

“Do you think it was an illusion of some kind?”

“I don’t see why anyone would bother.”

Neither did Kaylin. On the other hand, Kaylin didn’t understand how there could be seven of her, either. Transformational magic did, in theory, exist, but in practice, she couldn’t immediately recall a case in which it had been relevant. Magic that transformed living creatures, on the other hand, was a magic best ascribed to gods. She was fairly certain that any less-than-divine mages who tried it would end up with corpses, regardless of their starting material.