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The fact that he’d nursed her to health after saving the lives of many orphaned children had made an impression; enough of an impression that Kaylin had chosen to avoid him in every way possible for the past couple of weeks.
If he noticed, he gave no sign. But that was Severn all over. After all, he’d joined the damn Wolves and waited for her to find him for seven long years, watching from gods only knew which shadows, a window into the past.
She wasn’t fond of windows. For one, it encouraged thieves, and for two, it made heating a small room that much harder.
But she could look at him, now. She could stand beside him without feeling guilt about the fact that he hadn’t yet died. Or, if she were being truthful, that she hadn’t killed him.
He raised a brow as she slid off the long bench that discouraged loitering. “Kaylin.” His tone of voice told her pretty much everything she needed to know.
She fell into step beside him; he was practically gleaming. Official armor fell off his shoulders like a curtain of glimmering steel, which is pretty much what it was. The Hawks wore surcoats; he hadn’t bothered to put his on. Like Kaylin, he’d grown up in the poorest streets of the city, and like Kaylin, he’d had no parents to rely on. No one to tell him how to dress, and when, and why, for a start.
No one to dress his wounds, to tell him to avoid the streets of the fiefs at night; no one to tell him how to avoid the men who preyed on children, or pressed them into early service.
Like Kaylin, he’d learned those lessons on his own.
“You’ve seen your assignment?” he asked her. He had to look down, and it irritated her. There should, she thought, be strict height limits on entry.
“Yes.”
“I heard a, ah, rumor.” “It’s true.”
“You don’t know what it is yet.”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. It’s probably true.” She hesitated and added, “Which rumor?”
“You offended another Imperial mage.”
“Oh, that.” She shrugged. She half expected him to smile. But not even Kaylin was up to the delusion required to see his curt frown as mirth. “Have you heard about Teela?”
He said a lot of nothing, and kept walking. She took that as a yes. “I was thinking,” she began.
“Oh? When?”
“Very funny. You’ve never worked a Festival before—the Wolves don’t mingle well.”
“I’ve been called upon for the Festival,” he replied, his words carefully neutral. It surprised her, though.
“You have?”
His smile was like a wall. A fortified wall. “Never mind. Working as a Hawk isn’t the same.” “No. It’s been more … interesting.”
“It won’t be. You’ll be given permits and the new ordinances, and you’ll be sent out to talk to a bunch of whiny, hot, would-be merchants. The unlicensed variety.”
“I believe I’ve met a few.” He shrugged. “I won’t be near the market.”
“The market isn’t the problem. Well, okay, breaking up the fights between actual, licensed merchants is—but the Swords do most of that.”
He stopped walking. “I am not taking you with me.”
“I wasn’t going to ask.”
“Good.”
“But I noticed you haven’t been assigned a partner, and I was wondering—”
“Kaylin, do I look like I’m still breathing?”
“It’s been five years since Marcus actually killed anyone—”
“I’d like to see six.” He shook his head. “If you’re concerned about Teela, take my advice. Don’t be. She’s Barrani. These are her games.”
“She’s a Hawk!”
“She’s been a Hawk for a very, very short time. She’s been Barrani for a very, very long time.” “You don’t know her as well as I do.” “Clearly.”
“Severn—”
He held up a hand. “While tolerance for your interpretation of punctuality seems unnaturally high, it also seems to be granted only to you.” He started to walk again, and then stopped. “I don’t want you out in the streets,” he said without looking back. “For the same reason that neither Marcus nor the Hawklord do. But I’m not Marcus, and I’m not the Hawklord.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I have more to lose if you disobey your orders.”
A reminder. One she didn’t want.
“I’ll tell you what I can,” he continued, without looking back. “But stay here. Not even the Arcanum will attempt to reach you in these halls.”
“I have to go home sometime.”
He hit the wall. The movement was so fast she didn’t see it coming; she jumped back in surprise. “I know,” he said softly. And left her.
Severn was not there to walk her home, for which she was profoundly grateful. The area in which she lived wasn’t noted for its crime, and the only major threat to the streets that bounded her building had been a few ferals that had managed to make it across the Ablayne River.
In the fiefs, ferals were common. So were murderers, and they both had the same effect—but there was something about shiny, long fangs bunched in the front of a half ton of rank fur and large paws that made the ferals seem the greater threat. They weren’t exactly intelligent; they certainly didn’t care much whether their meal was rich or poor, something that couldn’t be said about any of the other occupants of the fiefs.
But they were occupants of the fiefs.
They had, apparently, caused mayhem and fear for a night this side of the river; it took all of a second night for the Wolves of the Law to hunt them down and exterminate them. No such Law existed in the fiefs, and the streets at night in the fiefs were deserted for that reason.
No, crime in the fiefs happened during the sunlight.
Here? They happened most frequently when the sun went down.
It was one of the adjustments she’d found hard to make when she’d first crossed the river.
And she’d dreamed of that crossing for most of her childhood. The river was the divide. Beyond the far banks, she would find wealth beyond measure, and food, and the comfort of a place she could call her own; she’d find friends and meet people who she could trust.
Okay, she’d been a bit naive.
Hard to believe that a girl from the fiefs could be naive—but dreams died hard, and they could be such a damn embarrassment if they were shared. Which, because she was foolish, they had been. The Hawks had snickered for weeks, and without the grace to wait until her back was turned.
She’d stolen their inkwells in response. Except for Garrity’s; him, she’d left invisible ink.
But it had taught her something. The Law? It existed for a reason. The reason being that people weren’t basically as honest as she’d dreamed they would be, when they had the choice.
At home, she’d had no choice: steal or starve. Here, they had a choice. But it was steal or be left behind. Words failed her when she tried to put her contempt for this into them; she often hit people instead. Or tried.
This is when she discovered that Law applied to the officers of said Law. All in all, a discovery she could have done without.
She wondered, not for the first time, what Severn’s life with the Wolves had been like. He wouldn’t talk about it. And that was probably a good thing, if he wanted to keep on breathing. He’d spent time in the Shadows, and the Shadows were unkind; they were the darkest face the Law could turn on the populace. People whispered about Shadow Wolves when they’d had too much to drink. Some even said there were arcane arts that turned good men—well, okay, bad men—into things that weren’t men anymore.
But she’d seen Severn, and she knew that he was more or less exactly what he had been when he’d taken her under his wing after her mother’s death. She’d been five. He was ten. She’d thought she understood him, then—but what had she understood?
That he would die to protect her.
She could live with that.
That he would kill to protect her.
Hating the direction of her thoughts, she turned them aside; she’d become good at that, over the years.
It wasn’t close to dark, yet; the sun was edging across the river, and reflected light turned parts of the slow-moving water a shade of pink that would have been an embarrassment to the man the river had been named after. She paused on the banks, looking up and down their length for as far as the eye—and hers was keen—could see. The riverbanks were where many petty criminals gathered to exchange gold for a moment’s illegal escape from pathos; it was easy to dump evidence, and the river would carry it away before it could be gathered and used in the courts.
Of course, some officers forgot the Laws that applied to Officers of the Law at that point; they called it self-defense. Had any of the injured dealers ever lodged a complaint, Teela and Tain would have been permanent fixtures on the inside of the small prison that sheltered behind the Halls. But oddly enough, there seemed to be a game in this, and you lost if you complained.
Everyone knew, after all, that the Barrani had only been part of the Law for some two decades—the whole of Kaylin’s life. And they had memories that lasted a lot longer.
There were no deals going down.
Even the petty criminals seemed to have decided their stash was better sold on the streets that the Festival occupied. And the streets? Once the carters had got in and done their work, they were almost impassable. You couldn’t walk a foot without someone trying to sell you something, usually at a three hundred percent markup over what it would cost at any other time of year.
She found herself at the foot of the bridge. It was, by foreign accounts, a perfectly normal, if somewhat unimpressive, bridge; you could take a horse across it, and you could certainly march a contingent of men that way—but a wagon was almost impossible, unless the driver was unnaturally gifted and the horses under perfect control. Perfect.
She didn’t much like riding. She stood there, and then leaned over the nearest rail, watching the water pass under her feet. Here, on the boundary of her old life, she let the day unwind. The night was cool, for a Festival night; the air was clear. She wondered, sourly, if the Arcanum was controlling the weather; it was unseasonal. It would also be illegal.
Technically. In this city, even on this side of the banks, power was the order of the day; if you had it, the Law was a petty inconvenience. As long as no one was killed, or more likely, you were very, very good at disposing of the bodies.
Her cheek was throbbing dully; she lifted a hand almost absently to touch the flower placed there by the magic that she most hated. Well, second most. The magic that she most hated was engraved on her arms, her legs, the back, now, of her neck.
But it had been quiet. If it weren’t for the arrogance of the Imperial mages, she would have had nothing to complain about, and this was unnatural. Complaining, according to Garrity, was the gods-given right of people who were Doing Something Useful; it was a little luxury. When, you know, duty forbade larger luxuries, like drinking.
And she wasn’t Doing Something Useful, as Garrity would put it. The Festival season had been expressly forbidden her; she was surprised that they hadn’t sent her out of town on the first coach.
Her cheek was actively painful, now. She touched it, wondering if it was swollen; if the lines engraved there were like the lines of a burn, and had taken some sort of stupid infection. Her skin was cool to the touch, her palm a little too dry.
She let her hand fall, casually, to her side. It was the side at which her daggers were neatly arranged.
Straightening slightly, she turned.
A man was standing at the foot of the far end of the bridge, except that he wasn’t. A man, that is.
Surprise robbed her of words for a moment, but it added the hilt of a dagger, and the rest of the blade followed as she drew it. A warning, really. Or perhaps a gesture of greeting; it certainly wouldn’t do her much good in a fight.
He was Barrani.
She wasn’t. The odds favored him.
Even had she been Barrani, the odds would still favor him. He was, after all, Lord Nightshade, the crime lord under whose sway the fief of Nightshade prospered.
“It is sunset,” Lord Nightshade said as he stepped onto the bridge. The wooden planks didn’t even register his weight. Which, given the age of the bridge, said more about his movement than it did about the planks.
“Almost.” She managed to shrug.
“You shouldn’t be out in the streets, Kaylin. I was, I believe, most explicit about that.”
She shrugged again before his words really registered. Sometimes nerves made her quick; sometimes they slowed her down. Quick was preferable. “Explicit to who?”
He raised a perfect, dark brow. It was perfect because he was Barrani. In fact, his eyes, which were a deep, startling green, were also perfect, and framed by—yes—perfect lashes. His face was the long, fine face of Barrani everywhere, his hair, the long perfect raven-wing black. He moved like a dancer. Or a hunting feral.
But he wore clothing—a long, dark cape over a robe that was both fine and edged with gold. Nothing about Barrani dress was ever less than ostentatious, even when it happened to be the same uniform—sized up—that she herself was now wearing.
She hated that. Anyone sane did.
Well, all right, anyone sane who wasn’t also immortal and perfect and didn’t take unearthly beauty for granted. “Why are you here?”
“Because you are,” he replied. “You’ve been calling me for the last week.”
She frowned. “I haven’t.”
His shrug was elegant; it made hers look grubby. And unlike Teela or Tain, he didn’t even make an effort; he spoke Barrani, and at that, the High Caste Barrani she most despised. Teela spoke Elantran when she was with the Hawks. Even when they were Barrani. When Teela broke into Barrani of any flavor, it meant trouble. “As you like,” he said quietly.
He drew closer, but stopped about two feet away. He did not, however, lean against the railing.
“You’re almost on my turf,” she said quietly.
“Almost is a mortal word.” He gazed at the river, and gestured; it seemed to freeze in its bed, like sleek glass. She could see herself clearly in the momentary reflection; she could see him more clearly, and in the end, it was the fieflord she looked at. Who wouldn’t?
“You have not come to visit,” he said quietly.
She started to reply, and caught the words before they left her mouth, for perhaps the first time today. The fieflord was not known for his sense of humor. Or perhaps he was: He regularly killed people who offended by implying it existed at all.
Bravery was costly in the fiefs. Defiance was more painful, but not ultimately more costly.
“No,” she said when she could talk. “I haven’t.”
Before she could move, he reached out to touch her cheek, his fingers caressing the skin that bore his mark. He did not touch any other part of her face, but he didn’t have to—his meaning, in the gesture, was plain.
“You could remove it,” she told him softly.
