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Cast In Secret
Michelle Sagara
Stolen goods are so much easier… Still avoiding her magic lessons—yet using her powers when need be—Corporal Kaylin Neya is relishing investigating a regular theft once again. That is, until she finds out the mysterious box was taken from Elani Street, where the mages and charlatans mingle and it’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference between the two. Still, she hopes this might be a mundane case….Then in a back room Kaylin sees a lostlooking girl in a reflective pool…who calls out for Kaylin’s help. Shaken, Kaylin tries to stay focused on the case at hand. But since the stolen item is ancient, has no keyhole and holds tremendous darkness inside, Kaylin knows unknown forces are again playing with her destiny—and her life….
Praise for
MICHELLE
SAGARA
and The Chronicles of Elantra series
Cast in Shadow
“No one provides an emotional payoff like Michelle Sagara.
Combine that with a fast-paced police procedural, deadly
magics, five very different races and a wickedly dry sense of
humor—well, it doesn’t get any better than this.”
—Bestselling author Tanya Huff
“Intense, fast-paced, intriguing, compelling
and hard to put down … unforgettable.”
—In the Library Reviews
Cast in Courtlight “Readers will embrace this compelling, strong-willed heroine with her often sarcastic voice.” —Publishers Weekly
“A fast-paced novel, packed with action and adventure …
integrating the conventions of police procedurals
with more fantastic elements.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
Cast in Secret “The impressively detailed setting and the book’s spirited heroine are sure to charm romance readers as well as fantasy fans who like some mystery with their magic.” —Publishers Weekly
“Remarkable …. Filled with time-release plot threads and
intricate details, these books are both mesmerizing
and unforgettable. If you’re a fan of rich fantasy,
this is the series for you!”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews, Top Pick (4½ stars)
About the Author
MICHELLE SAGARA has written fourteen novels since 1991, when her fi rst book,Into the Dark Lands, was published. She’s written a quarterly book review column for the venerable Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for a number of years, as well as dozens of short stories (or novellas, to be more exact).
In 1986 she started working in an SF specialty bookstore, where she continues to work to this day. She loves reading, is allergic to cats (very, which means they crawl all over her), is happily married, has two lovely children, and has spent all of her life in her native Toronto—none of it on Bay Street
She started reading fantasy almost as soon as she could read, and fell instantly in love with Narnia; her next fantasy discovery was Patricia McKillip’s Forgotten Beasts of Eld. She moved on to The Hobbit, which led to her discovery of the life-changingThe Lord of the Rings.
Her greatest hope for her writing is that someone will read it and be moved by the same sense of magic and mystery that she fi nds in the books she loves.
She will talk about writing, bookselling and books forever if given a chance. You’ve been warned.
Cast in
Secret
Michelle
Sagara
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
AUTHOR NOTE
I always wonder at people who tell other people to get a life, because, for all accounts and purposes, I have one. It’s a good life, but there are times when it’s overwhelming, and at times like that I seek a little bit of escape, and a little bit of something that’s larger. I find it in different places—I adored Buffy, especially the first two seasons, adored beyond reason Firefly, read novels, manga and play video games.
I do all these things because they entertain me, and when I decided to write THE CHRONICLES OF ELANTRA books, I wanted to return some of that entertainment, to capture some of its essence. It was a bit of a departure for me—the stories are structured a little bit more like the beloved television shows mentioned above; each volume has some hint of a larger arc, but should be self-contained in the events. I went for a modern sensibility, because the world itself is strange enough. I wanted to be able to make other people laugh, or to move them, because that’s what I want when I seek escape.
Cast in Shadow introduced Kaylin Neya, a young officer of the Law who’s still trying to sort out who she is and where she fits in. Cast in Courtlight threw her headfirst into politics, which is not one of her strengths. In Cast in Secret, I wanted to reintroduce the Tha’alani—the City’s native telepaths. They keep to themselves as much as possible because most of the citizens of Elantra fear and shun them—after all, how many of us want to be surrounded by people who can, at will, examine all our petty or ugly truths?
Kaylin certainly doesn’t. But in Cast in Secret, she has no choice, and I hope the consequences of that lack of choice give back some of what I’ve found in books, manga, anime and movies through the years.
In October, don’t forget to look for Cast in Fury, which deals with the aftermath of this story—and more about the Tha’alani!
This one is for my kids—and peers—
in Makaveli, on Shadowsong
/bonk
/hug
/love
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My long-suffering husband, Thomas,
kept home, household and the peculiar space
authors often need safe, as always, but also
found time to read the work in progress, even
when the progress was agonizingly slow. My
parents, Ken and Tami; my children, Daniel
and Ross; John and Kristen Chew and their
children, Jamie and Liam, kept my house
lively. Terry Pearson read this in all stages,
and offered the usual commentary, and the
incentive to keep going.
Mary-Theresa Hussey proved saintly in her
patience, and invaluable in the way editors are
when the author is still too much in the book to see it as a book. (And Adam Wilson sent helpful and cheerful reminders, which were, as it turns out, entirely necessary.)
CHAPTER
1
Private Kaylin Neya studied the duty roster, and given how little she studied anything that wasn’t somehow involved with a corpse, this said something.
The official roster was like a dartboard, except that people threw pencils at it instead. Sometimes they hit a bull’s-eye anyway. Lined up in columns by day, and color-coded for the more moronic—or hungover—by district, it told the various members of the branch of law enforcement known as the Hawks where, exactly, they were meant to either find trouble or stay out of it. Kaylin could easily make out her name, although some clod with lousy aim had managed to make a giant hole in it.
If it was true that the roster could never make everyone happy, it was somehow also true that it could make everyone unhappy. Sergeant Marcus Kassan, in charge of assigning duties on a monthly basis, had a strong sense of fairness; if someone was going to suffer, everyone might as well keep them company.
As the Hawks’ only Leontine officer—in fact, the only Leontine to be an officer of the Halls of Law—he presided over the men and women under his command with a hooded set of fangs in a face that was fur, large eyes and peaked ears—in that order. He also boasted a set of claws that made daggers superfluous and did a good job against swords, as well.
Kaylin had no pencil with which to puncture the paper, or she’d have thrown more at it than liberal curses.
Swearing at one’s assignment wasn’t unusual in the office; as far as office pastimes went, it was one that most of the Hawks indulged in. Kaylin’s partner, Corporal Severn Handred, looked easily over her shoulder, but waited until she turned to raise a dark brow in her general direction. That brow was bisected by a slender, white line, a scar that didn’t so much mar his face as hint at secret histories.
Secret, at least, to Kaylin; she hadn’t seen him take that one.
“What will you be missing?” he asked, when her impressive spate of cursing—in four official languages—had died down enough that he could be heard without shouting. Severn rarely raised his voice.
“Game,” she said curtly. “Ball,” she added.
“Playing?”
She grimaced. “Betting.” Which, for Kaylin, was synonymous with watching.
“Figures. Who were you betting on?”
She shrugged. “Sharks.”
“So you’ll save some money.”
This caused an entirely different spate of swearing, and she punctuated this by punching his shoulder, which he thoughtfully turned in her direction. “You’d be betting on the Tigers, I suppose?”
“Already have,” he replied. “Our shift?” He glanced at the window. It told the time. Literally. Mages had been allowed to go mad when they’d been asked to encourage punctuality, and it showed. The urge to tell the window to shut the hell up came and went several times a day.
The fact that mages had been allowed to perform the spell or series of spells seemed almost a direct criticism of Kaylin, who wasn’t exactly punctual on the best of days.
“Private Neya and Corporal Handred, report to the Quartermaster before active duty.” Some sweet young voice had been used to capture the words. Kaylin seriously wanted to meet the person behind it. And was pretty sure the person behind it seriously didn’t want to meet her.
“Quartermaster?” Severn said, with the barest hint of a sympathetic grimace.
Kaylin said, “Can I break the window first?”
“Won’t help. He’s probably responsible for having the glass replaced, and you’re in enough trouble with him as is.”
It was true. She had barely managed to crawl up the ladder from thing-scraped-off-the-bottom-of-a-shoe-after-a-dog-fight in the unspoken ranks the Quartermaster gave the Hawks; she was now merely in the person-I-can’t-see category, which was a distinct improvement, although it usually meant she was the last to get kitted out. The Quartermaster was officious enough, however, to make last and late two entirely different domains—if only, in Kaylin’s case, by seconds.
“It was just a stupid dress,” she muttered. “One dress, and I’m in the doghouse.”
“I doubt it. You know how much he loves those dogs.”
“Yeah. A lot more than he likes the rest of us.”
“It was an expensive dress, Kaylin.”
“I didn’t choose it!”
“No. But you did give it back with a few bloodstains, a dozen knife tears, and about a pound less fabric.”
“It’s not like it could have been used by anyone else—”
“Not in that condition, no. And,” he added, lifting a hand, “I’m not the Quartermaster, I didn’t have to haggle with the Seamstresses Guild, and I don’t really care.”
“Yeah, but his life doesn’t depend on me, so he doesn’t have to listen to me whine.”
Severn chuckled. “No. Your career depends on him, however. Good job, Kaylin.”
They walked down the long hall that led to Marcus’s desk, which just happened to be situated so that it crossed almost any indoor path a Hawk could take in the line of duty. He liked to keep an eye on things. Or a claw across the throat, as the Leontine saying went.
As the Hawks’ sergeant, assignments came from him, and reports—which involved the paperwork he so hated—went to him. Caitlin, his assistant, and for all purposes, his second in command, was the one who would actually read the submissions, and she wisely chose to pass on only those that she felt were important. The rest, she fudged.
And since the Festival season was, as of two days past, officially over, most of those reports involved a lot of cleanup, a lot of official fines—which helped the coffers of the Halls of Law immensely—and a lot of petty bickering, which would be referred to the unofficial courts in the various racial enclaves for mediation.
