The Chronicles of Elantra 5 - Cast in Silence (32 page)

“I think it unwise,” Tiamaris said.

“No kidding,” she replied, adding a few Leontine words for good measure. She had slid into Elantran, which caused Nightshade to raise a brow.
He doesn’t understand me,
she thought, with surprise. He looked so similar to the Nightshade she knew, the fact that centuries had passed had seemed almost unreal.

But he wasn’t her Nightshade, not yet. She wondered, briefly, when he had learned to speak Elantran. And wondered, as well, if Elantran even existed in this City at the moment. If it didn’t, where had it come from? The Dragons certainly hadn’t introduced it.

“Severn,” she said, still speaking her mother-tongue, “two things.”

He nodded, waiting.

“This is a very, very bad idea.” When he raised a brow, she grimaced. “And I don’t know if we get out—or get back—any other way. For a value of out,” she added, “that doesn’t end with our corpses. Nightshade’s said that the Tower takes a master—always. This one doesn’t have one yet.”

“You think it’s already started to search.”

“There are two people here who could easily control it.” Nightshade was frowning. She
knew
that he could understand the emotional gist of what she said, but knew, now, that the words themselves would elude him. It wasn’t exactly privacy, but she’d take what she could get. “So, yeah, I think it’s looking.”

“You don’t want either of them in the Tower.”

“I don’t
know.
I don’t even know if this is real, or if this is some sort of illusionary effect of the storm. I’ve daydreamed for years about changing the past.” She broke off and looked away. “But not
this
damn far back.”

He still waited. When it became clear that she’d retreated, momentarily, from words, he said, “I don’t think the Tower is speaking to either Tiamaris or Nightshade.”

“Please do not tell me you think it’s speaking to me.”

“To you,” he said, “or to me. Look at the door.”

“I really hate magic,” she told him, and spit to the side. “It is so goddamn
creepy
.”

“You noticed.”

“That the door has no doorward? Yeah, I noticed. I also notice that my arms are still glowing. And I
do not
want to be stuck here.” She hesitated, and then approached the open door slowly.

“Private,” Tiamaris said sharply. It was a relief. She turned to look at him. He stepped past her, and toward the open door; the door didn’t slam in his face. It hung open, as if whatever had animated it had retreated. He paused in the frame, and then turned back.

“There are bodies here,” he told her quietly, and in an odd tone of voice.

“Bodies? Multiple?”

“Three.”

“Race?”

“Human.”

She frowned. “How did they die?”

“From this distance? Not of magical causes. Blood loss, or possibly lack of oxygen.”

“How can you tell?”

“I can’t at this distance. But I’ve seen enough death to recognize the state.” The words were slightly clipped. Kaylin gritted her teeth. “Severn?”

“With you,” he replied. They approached the Tower door, and almost ran into Tiamaris’s back.

“Either you let us in,” she told him, in her most reasonable tone of voice, “or you drag them out.”

“I prefer the latter, at the moment.” Again, his tone of voice was unusual.

“Fine.” She stepped away from the door, and when she was well away, he walked into the Tower. She was holding her breath, and realized it only when he reappeared. Dragons looked mostly human, but they were stronger; he didn’t have to make three trips. He wasn’t particularly careful, but there wasn’t much reason to be careful—not here.

Years of training, on the other hand, made Kaylin want to snarl in frustration; Teela would have broken one of her arms if she’d dragged corpses this carelessly out of the area in which they’d been found before the Hawks had gotten everything recorded. The Hawks, she thought, that didn’t exist, even as a concept, yet.

But she understood why he’d been so hesitant the minute he laid the bodies on the ground. It was their clothing. There was nothing fancy about it, nothing terribly expensive—and that was fine with Kaylin; even the fancier streets here didn’t preclude the poor—they practically
demanded
it. But it was
familiar
ratty clothing. It was fief clothing.

She hesitated, and while she did, Tiamaris turned the bodies over.

“Kaylin?” Severn’s voice. She heard it, but didn’t look, didn’t acknowledge him. Swallowing, she knelt by the side of one of the corpses, her hand hovering above his open eyes.

Tiamaris said, “You know these men.” It was not a question.

She was silent for a long moment. “Yes.”

“Who were they?”

“I didn’t know them well. They worked for the fief lord.”

Tiamaris waited more or less patiently—for a Dragon. Kaylin continued to stare. “Barren. They lived in Barren,” Kaylin finally managed. Her voice had thickened; the syllables seemed to stick to her throat.

“They died in Barren?”

She nodded. “Seven years ago, give or take a few months.”

Barren thinks you’re ready.

She closed the dead man’s eyes, and rose.

“Why are they here?” Tiamaris asked. He didn’t ask it of her, but she answered anyway.

“The Tower. And if this is its idea of conversation, it can go straight to hell.”

CHAPTER 17

Barren thinks you’re ready.
Morse, her lopsided grin, her hands on dagger hilts, the points toward Elianne. She stared at them, wondering, dully, if this were the day Morse would kill her. Gray day, cold and almost wintry, although there was no snow. But the day didn’t matter. The time didn’t matter.

She was in Barren. Morse was waiting. She lifted her hands, and Morse reversed the daggers, placing both of their hilts into her palms. Her smile was still there. The side of it was that purple-yellow of fading bruise. Where the bruise had come from, Elianne didn’t know. She didn’t ask. If Morse wanted her—or anyone else to know—they’d know. They’d probably have bruises of their own at the end of the conversation, but they’d know.

“Who?” she asked.

Morse nodded. “Start with Sorco. You know him?”

The name meant nothing. Elianne hesitated, but didn’t let it show. “Not by name,” she finally said. “He travels alone?”

“No.” Morse waited for questions. Elianne didn’t have any. She understood what Barren meant by ready: this was a test. “He’ll travel with two others. If you can separate him, fine. You’re only on Sorco. If you can’t…”

“Are you going with me?”

“No.” Morse shoved her hands through the short brush of her hair. “
Are
you ready?”

“Yes.”

Morse raised one brow, and then shrugged; the shrug was more pronounced. She was irritated. “You’ve got seven days.”

“Seven
days?
”

“Barren figured seven days was long enough. At the end of seven days, he’ll either send someone else or go in person.”

“He’ll send you, you mean.”

Morse exhaled. “No. That’s exactly what I
don’t
mean. You’re mine, as far as Barren is concerned.”

Elianne closed her eyes. Swallowed. “Everything in Barren is his,” she said quietly.

Morse said nothing, and when Elianne opened her eyes again, she saw that the older woman was staring at the wall. Her hands were fists. “Fine. What’s
mine
is your training. I found you. I thought you might be worth something. He’s not testing you, here.”

But he was. They both knew it.

“He’s testing me.”

Morse would pay if she failed. How, and for how long, Elianne didn’t know. Didn’t ask. “You can’t come with me,” she said, voice flat.

Everything in Barren belongs to me.

She checked her sleeves, made sure they were fastened. They had no buttons, but they did have strings sewn—badly—on the inside of the wrists. She’d gotten good at tying them with her offhand. Morse believed you could train yourself to use either hand efficiently; the strings were one of the ways in which Elianne pursued this.

Morse lived in a building that was close to what passed for a market in Barren. No, it was a market, but it wasn’t the same as the market in Nightshade. It was sparser, grayer, dirtier. She checked the mental image of Morse’s map. This was not Sorco’s beat.

His beat lay elsewhere. Closer to the river, where Morse said the real money was. Closer, Elianne thought, to the bridge.

Of course it’s closer to the bridge,
Morse had said with a sneer.
Where do you think the money comes from?

It had never occurred to her to wonder, in all her years in Nightshade. But she understood it, now. It was a bleak, bitter knowledge. There were people on the other side of the river who came to the fiefs. What they did in the fiefs they could not do in the rest of the City; not without getting into trouble. Whatever trouble meant, there.

“We need their money,” Morse told her grimly. “So the rules are pretty damn simple. Don’t fuck with them. Don’t scare them off.”

The streets didn’t open up as she approached the river; they were still narrow and in poor repair. Only by the river streets themselves had any effort been taken to insure that they were safe, and if you saw clean, well-repaired streets, you knew you were taking a chance. She’d never come this close to the river, not in Barren. In Nightshade, she and Severn had gone, on warmer days, to look at the bridge and to try to see what lay beyond it.

But they didn’t belong there. They’d never tried to leave.

And why?
Why?
As if to find an answer, she now followed the road that led to the bridge from Barren. It wasn’t the same bridge, of course; it didn’t even look the same. It was flatter, slightly wider; the height of the curve didn’t mark the midpoint between real life and dream. There were no guards on either side. There never had been, that she knew of.

Two days, she lingered by the river streets, watching the big houses. There were three; they were probably brothels. Or some combination of a brothel and something else. It was true: men came from the bridge, crossing into Barren as carelessly as if the bridge were just another damn street. They came in the late afternoon; they would leave before it got too dark.

At the end of the second day, pushing sunset, she finally caught sight of three men who didn’t look much like outsiders. Not like the other customers, and not like the guards who did keep an eye out for important people who might need to make their way back across the bridge to real safety.

Promising.

One man was clearly in charge. Hair and height were right. He approached the closest of the big houses, followed closely by his two men. Knocked on the door. She couldn’t hear what was said, but it didn’t take long before the door opened fully and he was let inside. His men trailed him like awkward shadows.

She waited for them to leave. The sun sank. Sunrise and sunset marked boundaries for the ferals. Sorco—if it
was
Sorco—had two armed guards; he could afford to take risks. She couldn’t.

Come on. Come
on.
She watched, feeling the air cool. Shadows lengthened; she could feel the minutes stretch; could feel her stomach begin to knot, not with the familiar pangs of hunger, but with an equally familiar fear. It was a long way home, and even at a dead sprint, she wasn’t going to make it.

Sorco—if it was him—didn’t emerge. Clearly, whatever skimming involved it probably
also
involved partaking. She took a deep breath, counting days. She had some left, and if she wanted to keep it that way, she couldn’t stand here, watching as the street darkened around her. She marked the house. If Sorco was drunk or cocky, he’d leave before dawn. If he wasn’t, she might have a small chance of catching him on his rounds—but to do that? She had to be alive.

She turned and ran.

The moons were high and clear. The streets were deserted. She could hear the slap of her soles against cobbles, some of which were so poorly placed, they caused her to stumble. It didn’t matter; she injured nothing and rolled to her feet. Dignity wasn’t important in the night streets of the fiefs.

A third of the way home, she heard them. She froze. It wasn’t just fear, although fear was sensible; she had to listen. Ferals had howls that meant, as far as she was concerned, boredom. Or hunger. With ferals it was pretty much one and the same. They had howls that meant other things. Anyone who had lived in a room with warped boards as a window shutter got familiar with the sound of their calls. They howled when they sighted—or scented—quarry; they howled in clashing voices when they were trying to run it to ground.

Less often they howled in pain, because some of their quarry—at least in Nightshade—were Barrani, and were perfectly capable of taking down a feral or three without losing limbs. Or life.

They did not howl when they were feeding. They snarled or growled, and Elianne had only heard that a couple of times, because it was a quiet sound. Occasionally those snarls turned into actual fighting; it was the only time the ferals seemed to work as less than a perfect team.

She listened, trying to pinpoint direction. The one good thing about ferals—or the one stupid thing about them, depending on your point of view—was that they never seemed to shut up. They could howl all night. Severn had taught her how to listen, how to figure out which way was safe—or safer, at any rate—to run.

She froze again, and tried to rid herself of the sudden memory of night streets in Nightshade. Severn had taken her by the hand, he’d led her into the middle of the street just beneath their one-room hovel, and he’d told her to close her eyes. Just that. And she’d done it.

No more no more no more.

But she stood in a totally foreign street, without the promise of safety a door and a few yards away, and she closed her eyes and did what she’d learned to do then. Listen. Just…listen.

When she opened her eyes, she stared bleakly at the streets.

The ferals were running between her and the only home she had. Had she known the streets—and the yards, the alleys, the doors with poor locks and no crossbars—better, she might have been able to run in a wide circle, coming up far enough behind where they were roaming that she could make it in one piece. She didn’t.