The Chronicles of Elantra 5 - Cast in Silence (18 page)

And what would that younger self say to her, if she knew that Severn was not only still alive, but her partner?
I want to be able to kill a man
. She’d tried. But she wasn’t
still
trying. Some days she woke from the nightmares of Steffi and Jade’s deaths. But they vanished into the past; they no longer withstood sunlight by chilling her until she could feel nothing else at all.

Barren’s memory, however, was not theirs.

Morse raised a brow. On her face, it looked like a twist, but everything about Morse seemed twisted. “You worried?”

Kaylin shook her head.

Morse snorted. “You were always crap at lying.”

“And you,” Kaylin shot back, “were always good at asking questions you already knew the answers to. If you know, why bother?”

“Maybe it’s a test.”

“I suck at those. Trust me.”

“Only the small ones. You suck at the big ones, you’d already be dead.”

Kaylin shrugged. Coming from Morse, that was almost embarrassingly glowing praise. “I’m not afraid of him now,” she said, voice low.

Morse stopped for a moment. “You’re not thirteen anymore.”

“No.”

“He won’t touch you, much. You’re marked,” she added. “He can’t afford to piss off Nightshade. Not now.”

As if, Kaylin thought, Morse could see right through her. She frowned. “Morse?”

“What?” Morse started to walk.

“How old were you when Barren found you?”

“Older than you.”

“Than I was?”

“Yeah. Older, smarter. But he was new, then,” she added. “He had a lot to prove, but he had to prove it in a way that didn’t deplete his ranks.”

Kaylin frowned. “Morse?”

“What?”

“Do you remember Illien?”

Morse froze, then. Just froze. “Where’d you hear that name?”

“Nightshade told me. Lord Nightshade,” Kaylin added with a shrug. When Morse raised a brow, she said, “He’s the fief lord. He’s
also
Barrani. They like their titles.”

“Yeah,” Morse replied after a pause. “I remember Illien.”

“You met him?”

“No. You weren’t born here,” Morse added quietly, “or you’d know the answer to the question. You wouldn’t need to ask. I never met him. I’m still alive.”

She nodded. That had been how she’d felt about Nightshade, growing up in the streets of his fief. But she’d met him, and she was still alive. How much of Morse’s response was that primal, certain fear, and how much of it was fact? “Was Illien human?”

“With a name like that?”

That would be no.

“How did Barren kill him?”

Morse stopped walking again, and then she laughed. “Since you’re so fond of questions, why don’t you ask Barren?”

Which meant, Kaylin thought sourly, that it was exactly the wrong thing to ask Barren—unless she wanted to enrage him. She glanced at Tiamaris. Tiamaris did not do her the favor of returning it. He was watching Morse closely, although he wasn’t openly staring. “Perhaps,” he said at length, “I will spare the Private the embarrassment of asking such an obvious question. By asking it,” he added, “myself.”

Having seen Tiamaris fight, Morse had nothing to say to that; she shrugged. “I should warn you,” she told the Dragon Lord, “that Barren may be human, but he’s got power.”

Tiamaris did not condescend to reply; his silence had Dragon arrogance written all over it. Kaylin didn’t speak because some treacherous part of herself wanted to see him square off against Barren.

Barren didn’t live in the heart of the fief. He lived—he had always lived—near its edge. She’d wondered about that, when Morse had first brought her here. But then, at thirteen, she hadn’t known about the heart of the fiefs, and she hadn’t seen what could emerge from them; it hadn’t occurred to her that ferals weren’t actually alive.

But if he didn’t live in the fief’s heart, he didn’t live in a hovel, either—not that any of the buildings in Barren could be said to be grand or ostentatious. There was, on these streets, some evidence that previous generations of Elantrans—with money, even—had chosen to build homes here. Most of those buildings were in disrepair; one of them was not.

It was to that familiar building that Morse now led them. And she did lead; at some point—Kaylin wasn’t certain when—she had fallen behind in her step. But Barren’s White Towers, which was what he called his residence, now loomed in the distance a few blocks away. There were flags flying atop the two, squat ends of the building; they weren’t, in any real sense, Towers. But they were three stories tall, and given that anything
else
that tall had probably crumbled or fallen into a state of shoddy neglect, they stood out.

The building was fenced, and the fence—unlike the fence that had opened so fortuitously on the night that Kaylin had run here—was in solid, even shining repair; there was a functional guardhouse which was probably not more than nine years old. Someone—she wasn’t sure who—had even sheared the grass, and if there were no flower beds, there were standing trees that didn’t look too badly in need of pruning.

But the guards, rather than looking like the official adornments that often accompanied a gatehouse, looked as if they’d seen action; their armor was scuffed, and it was entirely practical. They didn’t have tabards—but in Barren, they wouldn’t—but they had that undershaven, underslept look that Kaylin associated with stakeouts and trouble. There were also more of them than Kaylin remembered.

Tiamaris nodded toward the building. “This is where Barren lives?”

Kaylin nodded. “It hasn’t changed much,” she added quietly. “And at least it doesn’t have cages and a gallows.”

“Lord Nightshade always did have a penchant for the melodramatic,” was the Dragon Lord’s reply. “It is not entirely necessary, however.”

“No,” she replied. “Morse?”

“Waiting for the two of you to finish jabbering. Barren never likes the sound of any voice that isn’t his.”

True enough. Kaylin took a breath and stopped talking. Morse didn’t ask her if she was ready; she was here. It was too late to change that. But she did walk up to the gatehouse. The guards—none of whom Kaylin recognized—nodded at Morse. They gave Kaylin the once-over, sneered openly at the Hawk, and then glanced at Tiamaris. Give them this much, she thought, they don’t look bored.

From their reaction, only one of them recognized Tiamaris for what he was. The other three? They assumed he was, like Kaylin, a Hawk. The Law wasn’t much feared in any of the fiefs, but it wasn’t generally subject to this kind of open contempt.

She seriously hoped they’d keep their mouths shut. She could take it—more or less, and when she felt like it—but Dragon dignity was a finicky and unpredictable thing. Morse said nothing at all, but they must have seen something in her nonexpression, because they finally nodded and let them all through.

They didn’t all stay at the gatehouse; they sent a runner.

The runner moved far more quickly than Kaylin, Morse or Tiamaris, even though the distance from the fence to the house wasn’t that long. The doors opened just as they reached them. A bristling row of guards—two abreast, and three deep—greeted them.

“We’ll take over from here,” one of them told Morse.

Morse shrugged.

“And you,” he added, pointing to Tiamaris, “are to wait outside.”

Morse grinned. “Good luck with that,” she told the guard. “I’ll just step back and see how it works out for you.”

Even the most dense or stupid of men wouldn’t have misinterpreted Morse’s amused malice; this guard was neither. He turned to Kaylin and said, “Ask him to wait outside.”

Kaylin now shrugged, mimicking Morse. “I can’t,” she told him blandly. “He’s an officer.” She glanced at Tiamaris.

His eyes had shaded to orange, and he lowered his membranes to make this difference clear. The man who was speaking, and who Kaylin therefore assumed was in charge, took a step back. He stopped before he hit the man behind him, and turned and whispered something quickly.

The man then pushed his way through the rest of the guards and headed up the stairs. They were set well back, and there was enough room in this entrance for a real fight, swords and all; the ceiling here ran the full three stories of the building. But no one drew a sword; no one drew even as much as a dagger.

When the man clanked his way back down the stairs, he spoke to the guard.

“All right,” the man told Tiamaris. “You’ve got permission to enter.”

Tiamaris said nothing at all, but his eyes did not shade back to their familiar gold. He did, however, raise his inner membranes, muting the clearest sign of Dragon temper. The guards spread out, losing their look of uniformity, and with it, any suggestion of real training. They took front and back when they reached the stairs, and Kaylin and Tiamaris formed up in the middle.

Together they were escorted up the staircase and down the long and impressive hall that led to Barren’s office. The doors were closed, and Kaylin saw with a grimace that they were warded—something new, and something she didn’t see much of at all in the fiefs. But it wasn’t her palm that was going to do the stinging; a guard reached out and touched it.

The doors rolled open, and seated behind a large and completely clear desk, sat Barren, Lord of the fief.

Almost seven years had passed since she’d last seen him behind that desk. Seven years, most of them spent tagging along underfoot of one Hawk or another. She wasn’t scrawny in the same way she’d been then, and she wasn’t a child. She tried to see Barren from that perspective, while her hands curled in loose fists and her mouth went dry.

He was, seated, not a tall man; when he rose—and he would, she thought—he was slightly taller than Tiamaris. He wasn’t fat, and he wasn’t old; he was older, and he had one new scar that ran the length of his cheek. It hadn’t faded to white, but it didn’t make him look any worse. His hair, which had always been a shade of pale gold, hadn’t obviously grayed; his skin was dark, but he’d just passed through summer.

His eyes were still blue, and at that, the gray-blue that always seemed so unfriendly. And his hands were still that square, callused set of hands; he held a dagger in one as if it were just a piece of jewelry. He was not, however, ostentatiously dressed in any way; that wasn’t his style. He also didn’t wear armor, at least not in the Towers. When he went out in the streets, he usually did.

“Welcome back, Elianne,” he said, and at that point, he did unfold. “You’re looking well.”

She said nothing, and he frowned.

“Did you miss Barren?”

“No.”

He shrugged slightly. Smiled. It was, as far as smiles went, much a match for Morse’s. “I hear that the Hawklord is still alive.”

“There’s always a Hawklord,” she replied, keeping her voice even.

“But it’s the man who’s ruled the Hawks for the past—how many?—several years.”

She shrugged. It was a fief gesture. She kept her expression as even and neutral as possible as he came out from behind his desk. When he didn’t speak, she said, “You wanted to speak to me.”

“I did. I had hoped the conversation might be private.” He glanced at Tiamaris as he said this. Kaylin didn’t. And she didn’t take her eyes from the dagger in his hands, either.

He noted this, and his eyes narrowed slightly.

Before he could speak, Kaylin did. “If you’re about to remind me who the boss here is, I need to remind you that I don’t work for you, anymore.”

“I spent a few months training you, girl.”

She shrugged. “They spent a few years.”

“And they pay you as well as I did?”

She exhaled. “Better, in most ways.”

He spit to the side. “I know what you’re paid.”

“And where I work, apparently.”

He lifted the dagger, and she smiled. It was not, to her surprise, a forced smile. “I’ve had a long week,” she told him softly. “And I’ve got a Dragon as a partner.” She closed her mouth on the rest of the words; they would have been a threat. And, she thought, they would have gone on for days, and once they’d started, she’d never be free of them. “I owe you nothing,” she continued. “You sent me to hang just to deliver a cheap thug’s message.”

His brows rose, and then he laughed. “When did you figure that out?”

She didn’t answer.

“I didn’t think you had it in you, to be honest,” he replied, still chuckling. “I should have paid more attention to you, Eli. I never cared much for stupid girls.”

And that, Kaylin thought, with a burning bitterness, was exactly what she’d been. Stupid. Terrified. Angry. Desperate to prove herself. And to whom? To
what?
This man. A fief lord who had—No.

I was thirteen,
she reminded herself, forcing her hands not to curl into fists. She turned to Tiamaris. “I think we’re done here,” she told him curtly.

Tiamaris nodded. He didn’t shrug, but the nod was almost the equivalent, it was so careless.

“We’re not finished yet,” Barren said.

Tiamaris lowered the inner membranes of his eyes. “If you don’t wish to be finished,” he told Barren, speaking for the first time, “I’d suggest you make clear what your
request
is.”

“It’s not a
request
.”

“It is,” Kaylin told him. “I came here for my own reasons, but in the end? I don’t give a shit if you send a wagonload of personal letters across the bridge. Send them to the Hawklord. Send them to the Emperor.”

Barren grinned. “You’re bluffing.”

“Maybe. But you’re desperate. We’ve both got our cards on the table, and we can both see most of them. You want to play your hand now?”

The grin deserted his face. What was left in its wake passed for thoughtful, with Barren. Thought and Barren usually meant trouble for the poor sod he was thinking
at.
“You’ve gotten better at this game.” His eyes flickered, so briefly it might have been a trick of the light, to Tiamaris and back. She thought, if the Dragon Lord hadn’t been present, the game—as Barren called it—would have taken a turn for the deeply personal.

“No,” she told him quietly. “I stopped playing it years ago. That’s why I don’t live on this side of the bridge, in
any
fief.”