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When they left the next hall, she heard voices.
One was particularly loud. It was certainly familiar. She closed her eyes, released the fieflord’s arm, and stumbled as she grabbed folds of shimmering silk, bunching them in her fists. She lifted the skirt of her fine dress, freeing her feet, and after a moment’s hesitation, she kicked off the stupid shoes, the snap of her legs sending them flying in different directions. The floor was cold against her soles. Cold and hard.
Didn’t matter.
She recognized both the voice and its tenor, and she began to run. The lurching movement reminded her of how weak her legs were. But they were strong enough. She made it to the end of the hall, and turned a sharp corner.
There, in a room that was both gaudy and bright—as unlike the rest of the Halls as any room she had yet seen—were Severn, Tiamaris and the two Barrani guards that had accompanied the Lord of Nightshade.
The guards held drawn weapons.
Severn held links of thin chain. At the end of that chain was a flat blade. She had never seen him use a weapon of this kind before, and knew it for a gift of the Wolves.
And she didn’t want to see him use it here.
“Severn!” she shouted.
His angry demand was broken in the middle by the sound of her voice. It should have stopped him.
But he stared at her, at the dress she was wearing, at the bare display of shoulders and arms, her bare feet, at the blood—curse the fieflord, curse him to whichever hell the Barrani occupied—on her cheek, before he changed direction, started the chain spinning.
And she knew the expression on his face. Had seen it before a handful of times in the fiefs. It had always ended in death.
This time, though, she thought it would be the wrong death. She moved before she could think—thought took too much damn time, and she came to stand before him—before him, and between Severn and the fieflord, who had silently come into the room as if he owned it.
Which, in fact, he did.
“Severn!” She shouted, raising her hands, both empty, one brown with the traces of her blood. “Severn, he didn’t touch me!”
Severn met her eyes; the chain was now moving so fast it was a wall, a metal wall. He shortened his grip on it, but he did not let it rest.
“Severn, put it down.”
“If he didn’t touch you, why are you dressed like that?”
“Put it down, Severn. Put it away. You’re here as a Hawk. And the Hawklord wants no fight with the fieflord. You don’t have the luxury of dying. Not here.”
If he did, she wasn’t so sure that his would be the only death. “Don’t start a fief war,” she shouted. Had to shout. “He didn’t touch me. I’m not hurt.”
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
“The mark is bleeding,” she snapped back. “And I don’t need you to protect me, damn it—I’m a Hawk. I can protect myself!”
He slowed, then. She had him. “I don’t need protection,” she said again, and this time the words had multiple meanings to the two of them, and only the two of them.
His face showed the first emotion that wasn’t anger. And she wasn’t certain, after she’d seen it, that she didn’t like the anger better.
“No,” he said at last, heavily. The chain stopped. “It’s been a long time since I could. Protect you.”
Tiamaris, Dragon caste, said in a voice that would have carried the length of the Long Halls, “Well done, Kaylin. Severn. I believe it is time to retreat.” And she saw that his eyes were burning, red; that he, too, had been prepared to fight.
“Your companions lack a certain wisdom,” the fieflord said, voice close to her ear.
“What did you do here, fieflord?” Tiamaris’s voice was low. Dangerous.
“What you suspect, Tiamaris.”
“That was … foolish.”
“Indeed.” He made the admission casually. “And I am not the only one who will pay the price for it. Take her home. She will need some time to recover.”
Severn slowly wrapped the chain round his waist again. He stepped forward and caught Kaylin as her knees buckled. His grip, one hand on either of her upper arms, was not gentle. Kaylin did not resist him.
“The deaths, fieflord?” Tiamaris said quietly. Or as quietly as his voice would let him.
“Three days,” the fieflord said, “between the first and second.”
“And it has been?”
“One day since the last death. If there is a pattern, it will emerge when we find the next sacrifice.”
“Why do you call them that?” Kaylin looked up, looked back at him.
“Because, Kaylin, it is what we believe they are. Sacrifices. Did the Hawklord not tell you that?”
No, of course not, she thought, bitter now. Bitter and bone-weary.
“You will return to the fiefs,” he added softly. “And to the Long Halls.”
“The hell she will,” Severn said.
They stared at each other for a long moment, and then the fieflord turned and walked away.
It was, of course, night in the fiefs.
And they were walking in it. Or rather, Severn and Tiamaris were walking; Kaylin was stumbling. Severn held her up for as long as he could, but in the end, Tiamaris rumbled, and he lifted her. He was not as gentle as the fieflord, because he was not as dangerously personal.
She preferred it.
“Kaylin,” Tiamaris said quietly. “Do you understand why the fiefs exist?”
She shrugged. Or tried. It was hard, while nesting in the arms of a Dragon.
“Have you never wondered?”
“A hundred times,” she said bitterly. “A thousand. Sometimes in one day.”
Tiamaris frowned stiffly. “I can see that Lord Grammayre had his hands full, if he chose to attempt to teach you.”
“I don’t need history lessons. They won’t keep me alive.” The words were a familiar refrain in her life; they certainly weren’t original.
“Spoken like a ground Hawk,” Tiamaris replied.
She shrugged again. Although he wore no armor, his chest was hard. “I believe,” he said quietly, “that I will let Lord Grammayre deal with this.”
“No,” she said, tired now. “I think I know what you’re asking.”
“Oh?”
“You’re asking me if I’ve ever wondered why the Lords of Law don’t just close the fieflords down permanently.”
“Indeed.”
“Hell, we’ve all wondered that.”
“There is a reason. I think you begin to see some of it. The fiefs are the oldest part of the city. They are, with the exception of ruins to the West and East of Elantra, the oldest part of the Empire; they have stood since the coming of the castes.
“I … spent time in the fiefs, studying the old writings, the old magics. I was not alone, but over half of the mages sent with me did not survive. The old magics are alive, if their architects are not. There are some places in the fiefs that could not easily be conquered without destroying half of the city, if they could be conquered at all. They almost all bear certain … markings.”
Her head hurt, and she didn’t want to think. But she made the effort. “The tattoo,” she said faintly.
“Yes. It is the only living thing I—or any one of us—has seen that speaks of the Old Ones. It is why you have always been of interest.”
“Have I?”
He said nothing, then.
In the dark of the fief’s streets, shadows moved. They were pale white, a blur of motion that hunched three feet above the ground. Severn cursed.
Kaylin was still dressed in the finery of Nightshade, but she wore her daggers again; she hadn’t bothered to change, because there was no privacy, and she wasn’t up to stripping in front of everyone. Severn had taken her clothing. “What?” she asked. Too sharply.
“It’s the ferals,” he said.
She really cursed. She had always been able to outcurse Severn.
In the moonlight—the bright moon—she could see that Severn was right: the ferals had come out to play. And if the Hawks weren’t bloody careful, some poor child would come out in the morning—to play—and would discover what the ferals had left behind.
She’d done it herself, once or twice. Whole nightmares remained of those experiences.
“Severn?”
He was already unlooping the long chain. “There’s only two,” he said softly. Nothing in his voice hinted of fear. Nothing in his posture did either. She wondered if he had changed so much that he felt none.
She hadn’t.
Tiamaris set her down. “Don’t move,” he told her grimly. Her hand had already clutched a throwing knife; it was out of her belt, and the moonlight glinted along one of its two edges. But her hand was weak, and she knew she didn’t have the strength to throw true. Wondered if this was the fieflord’s way of getting rid of her.
Her eyes were already acclimatized to the moonlight. She could see the four-legged lope of the creatures that dominated the fief streets at night. They were not numerous; they didn’t have to be. If you were lucky, you could weather the stretch of a night and never see one.
Unlucky? Well, you only had to see them once.
She hadn’t seen them as a child. But later?
Later, Severn by her side, she had. She was caught by the memory; she could see Severn now, and Severn as he was. The seven years made a difference. The weapon that he wielded made a bigger one.
Hand on dagger, she stood between Tiamaris and Severn, and she waited. The quiet growl of the hunting feral almost made her hair stand on end; it certainly made her skin a lot less smooth; goose bumps did that.
The ferals weren’t as stupid as dogs. They weren’t as lazy as cats. They weren’t, as far as anyone could tell, really animals at all. But what they were wasn’t clear. Besides deadly. She felt the tension shore her up. Found her footing on the uneven ground, and held it.
The last time she had faced ferals, she had stood in Tiamaris’s position, and between her and Severn, a child had cowered. Lost child. Stupid child. But still living.
She didn’t like the analogy that memory made of the situation.
Severn waited, his chain a moving wall. He wasn’t even breathing heavily. He spoke her name once, and she responded with a short grunt. It was enough.
The ferals leaped.
They leaped in concert, their jaws wide and silent. The moonlight seemed to cast no shadow beneath their moving bodies, but then again, it was dark enough that shadows were everywhere. Severn’s chain shortened suddenly as he drew it in, and then it lengthened as he let it go.
Feral growl became a howl of pain; a severed paw flew past Kaylin’s ear.
Tiamaris had no like weapon; he waited.
The feral that had leaped at him landed feet away, and it bristled. Tiamaris opened his mouth and roared.
That, Kaylin thought, wincing, would wake the entire damn fief. But she watched as the feral froze, and then watched, in astonishment, as it yelped and turned tail. Like a dog. Had she really been afraid of these creatures?
The one facing Severn lost another paw, and then lost half its face. It toppled.
“Kaylin?”
She shook her head.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “Where there are two, there are likely to be more.”
But Tiamaris said, softly, “Not tonight.” He picked Kaylin up again, and he began to move.
They crossed the bridge over the Ablayne in the moonlight. The Halls of Law loomed in the distance, like shad-owlords. “Kaylin,” Tiamaris said quietly, “the Hawklord will be waiting.”
“All right,” she said, into his chest. “But I’d better be getting overtime for this.”
If Kaylin slept—and she did—the Halls of Law never did. The crew changed; the guards changed. The offices that were a conduit between one labyrinth of bureaucracy and another, however, were empty. She was grateful for that. Severn had cleaned the blade of his weapon, and he’d looped it round his waist again. But he didn’t leave.
The guards at the interior door were Aerian. Clint wasn’t one of them, but she recognized the older men. They were a bit stuffier than Clint, but she liked them anyway.
“Holder,” she said.
He raised a brow. “You went on a raid dressed like that?”
