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Morse shrugged and turned, almost bored, to look at Margot. “That should cover the cost of the window, and the inconvenience to your customers. Do you want to cause trouble for us?” The words shaded into threat, even blandly delivered.
“I will if you ever break another one of my windows,” was the curt reply.
“Fair enough,” Morse said, and turned back to Kaylin. “Well, Officer?”
Kaylin walked up to Margot, trying to remember her intense dislike of the woman. It was gone; it had crumbled. Margot wouldn’t cause trouble for Morse. No one with half a brain would. “Margot?”
“It was probably a misunderstanding of some sort,” the exotic charlatan replied. She took a second to cast a venomous glare at Billington who, with his lack of finesse and class, was standing in the street, openly counting his new money.
Kaylin was certain word of his ill-gotten gains would be spreading down the street and the bars and taverns would be opening conveniently early to take advantage of him. Couldn’t happen to a nicer man.
“Well, then,” Morse said cheerfully. “We’ll just be going.”
Kaylin said nothing for a long moment. Then she turned. “Morse.”
“I always wondered what had happened to you,” Morse told her. “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to confirm the rumors.” Her eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at Kaylin’s face.
It took Kaylin a moment to realize what Morse was looking at: her mark. Nightshade’s mark. It was so much a part of her by this point she could forget it was there. But Morse had never seen it.
“You haven’t changed much,” Morse told her, her expression replacing the harsh edges with growing distance. “Except for your cheek, you almost look the same.”
“Why did you come here, Morse?”
The woman shrugged. “I told you, I’m running an errand.”
“Is it legal?”
“I live in Barren. You haven’t been gone so long that you don’t remember the definition of law, there.”
“You’re not there now,” Kaylin said, shading the words differently this time.
Morse hesitated, the way she sometimes did when she was about to say something serious. “I am. In any way that counts. You’re not.” She looked as if she would say more, but one of the men with her approached them, and the moment, which was so thin it might cut, broke. “Yeah, legal. Unless running messages breaks Imperial Law these days.”
“Depends on what’s in the message.”
“Judge for yourself, Eli.” Morse shoved a hand into her shirt, and came up with a flattened, squished piece of paper. Or two. “It’s for you. Obb,” she added, “get your butt out of the damn glass. We’re heading back. We’re late.”
Kaylin took the letter and stared at it. Then she glanced at Severn, whose hands were still on his blades. She flinched at his expression, but she didn’t—quite—look away. She managed a shrug.
“I’ll come by later for the reply,” Morse told her.
Don’t bother, Kaylin almost said. But she couldn’t force the words out of her mouth. What came out, instead, was “Later.”
Morse nodded, and walked away; the others trailed after her like a badly behaved shadow. Only when they’d turned a corner a few blocks down the street did Severn relax enough to approach her.
“Kaylin?”
She looked at him, and then shook her head. Bent down to pick up a small slab of glass.
“Leave it,” he told her, catching her wrist. “Margot can clean it up. She’s got the money for it at the moment, and it’ll employ someone for a few hours. If she fails to clean it up, you can charge her with littering.”
She nodded, stood and looked down the street. Morse. Here.
“I knew her,” she told Severn, without once looking up at his face, “when I lived in Barren.”
He was silent. He didn’t ask her when that was; he wasn’t an idiot, he could figure it out. What he said, instead, was “Did you meet the fieflord of Barren while you were there?”
She nodded, almost numb.
CHAPTER 3
For the rest of the day—admittedly one shortened by two hours in the elemental garden—Kaylin didn’t bump into another offensive sandwich board. Severn assumed the street-side stretch of their patrol. He didn’t speak, and as Kaylin didn’t have much she wanted to say, the rest of their round was pretty damn quiet. By the end of it, she was mostly dry.
So was the letter she was carrying. She wanted to read it. At the same time, she wanted to burn it or toss it into the nearest garbage heap. Elani was fairly tidy, on the other hand, so the garbage heaps were not that close to their patrol route.
Morse, she thought. She glanced once at Severn, and remembered walking different streets, with an entirely different goal, beside Morse. Morse who could talk you deaf or cut you without blinking. She hadn’t been so scarred, back then. She hadn’t looked as old.
But she’d always looked as dangerous.
“Dinner?” Severn asked, as they headed back to the Halls.
“Will it come as much of a surprise if I say I’m not hungry?”
“Actually, it would.”
She grimaced, dredging a small smile out of somewhere. Where, given her mood, she honestly couldn’t say.
“Did you figure out what was bothering you?”
“Probably not. On the other hand, whatever it was couldn’t be as bad as what’s bothering me now.” She hesitated. Glanced at him as they reached the steps that lead into the building. “Severn—”
“We can talk over dinner. We can not talk over dinner, as well. You did a pretty good job of that on patrol.” His smile was slight, and it was shadowed, but he offered it anyway. “I told you, the past is the past. I don’t care to know what you don’t care to tell me.”
She nodded. She knew he meant it. But he didn’t know what she knew. She’d tried to tell him, but only once. Now, she had no desire to even try. Telling him about the past was one thing; telling him about the past when it had crept, unwelcome and unexpected, into the present was another.
What had she expected?
When she’d crossed the bridge over the Ablayne, when she’d stepped foot on the cobbled and patrolled streets of the Emperor’s city, she had never truly expected to stay here. She hadn’t come to escape.
“Kaylin?”
“Sorry, did you say something?”
He grimaced. “Not much. Lockers. We can file a non-report in the morning.”
She nodded and fell into step beside him; they’d managed to make it to the Aerie without any conscious awareness, on her part, of passing through the doors. She remembered the first time she’d come in through the front doors. She remembered the first time she’d arrived at the Halls of Law. They weren’t the same.
For a moment, the Halls of Law looked so insubstantial she could almost see the street through the stonework. But the streets she saw weren’t the streets of Nightshade; they weren’t the streets of the city whose laws she had vowed to give her life enforcing. They were darker, grayer, devoid of even the hope she’d felt in Nightshade at Severn’s side.
Barren.
“Okay,” Severn told her. “Stay here a minute.”
She shook her head and dredged up what she hoped was a smile. Judging from his grimace, it was a pretty pathetic one. “I’ll go get changed,” she told his retreating back.
She walked into the locker room, found her locker and leaned her forehead against its door for a minute.
“Hey.”
She jumped back from the locker door, wondering whether or not she’d fallen asleep standing up. Having done it on one or two occasions, she didn’t wonder if it were possible, but it was never anything like good sleep, and it usually ended abruptly with the unpleasant sensation of falling, and the even less pleasant sensation of landing.
“Teela?”
Teela grinned. Barrani didn’t smile or laugh much as a general rule, and when they did, it was usually at someone else’s expense. “You look like crap,” she told Kaylin. “Come on, get changed. We’re not going out if you’re dressed like that. Iron Jaw would have our hides pinned to the dartboard by morning. If he waited that long.”
Kaylin’s body started to obey; she stripped off her tabard and her armor, taking care to set Morse’s letter on the inside of her locker. But her brain caught up, and she stopped, tunic halfway over her upper body. “What do you mean, we’re going out?”
“Severn seems to think you need a drink.”
“I’m not going to get a drink if I go out with you!”
Teela’s shrug was lazy. “Tain’s been bored all day.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. I am not going out drinking with Tain. Not when he’s bored.”
Teela, stripping off her own gear, laughed. “We’re not going to cause too much trouble. Your Corporal is going with us.”
“You’ve gone drinking with officers and you’ve managed to wreck half a tavern!”
She shrugged, her lazy smile spreading across her full lips. “They weren’t conscious for most of it.”
“Teela—”
“And I’m guessing your Corporal can hold his drinks a tad better. Which, all things considered, would be a pity.”
“Teela, don’t even think it.”
“Last I heard, thinking wasn’t illegal. Come on, Kaylin. I’ve never gone drinking with Severn.”
“Obviously not, if this was his idea. I’m going to kill him.”
“Can you kill him after I’m finished?”
“No.”
Teela laughed as someone started hammering on the door. That would be Tain, Kaylin thought. “You get it,” she told Teela, as she belted her tunic. “I’ve had a bad enough day already.”
It had been several months since Kaylin had gone drinking with Teela and Tain. Several months, in fact, since she had appeared at work, slightly gray-faced, with dark circles under her eyes and a headache that she was certain at the time not even beheading would cure.
Teela had shrugged her way out of her regulation gear. Since Teela was tall and almost preternaturally beautiful—a characteristic she shared with all of her race—she would look stunning in sack-cloth; the change of clothing did not actually make that much of a difference. The same could be said of Tain, although Tain had a chipped tooth. That single flaw had made him the first of the Barrani that Kaylin could easily distinguish; they all looked very similar when she had first joined the Hawks.
Severn, however, wore black and gray, and he looked very different. He had set aside his obvious weapons, although he still wore his chains; they were wrapped around his waist like a fashion statement. It was not exactly cold in Elantra at this time of year, but Kaylin wore the usual long-sleeved shirt. The marks on her arms made her self-conscious, and she could live more easily with sweat.
They approached the front doors. Clint was on guard duty. When he saw Kaylin beside Teela, he grimaced. “Teela—”
“We’re off-duty,” she told him cheerfully.
He rolled his eyes. Kaylin privately thought he’d lost his mind if he expected responsibility from that quarter.
Severn, however, smiled at Clint. “I’ll stop them from trashing the tavern.”
Clint grimaced. “You’ve clearly never gone drinking with Teela and Tain.”
Severn’s idea of drinking was not Teela’s idea of drinking; he led them to the Spotted Pig. Kaylin glanced at Teela; she was betting they had about fifteen minutes before Teela decided to go somewhere else. Only on a very lucky day would her “go someplace else” not involve dragging Kaylin with her when she stormed out.
Barrani clientele was always a mixed blessing, because about a quarter of the time, something ugly happened. The definition of ugly was a real-life lesson in cultural paradigms, because nothing had ever happened that Teela did not find amusing.
The fact that neither Teela nor Tain said a word when they entered the quiet and rather unpretentious environs of the Spotted Pig was a bit suspicious. Given they were Barrani, suspicion was only natural; Kaylin took a seat—at a table—beside Severn. Teela and Tain occupied the bench across from them. They seldom ate much when they went anywhere; human food was not generally to their taste, although Kaylin, having eaten with the Barrani in no less a place than the High Court, didn’t really see why.
They ordered food and wine; the wine arrived before the food, and it arrived in mugs that were better suited to ale.
Kaylin looked at Severn.
“What exactly is going on here?”
“We’re having a bite to eat, and something to drink. Maybe,” Tain added, glancing around the quiet room. “I can’t imagine—”
Teela stepped on his foot. Kaylin couldn’t actually see this, of course, but she could hear it, and frankly, very little else would cut Tain off.
“Severn.”
“Oh, leave him alone, kitling.”
Kaylin’s eyes narrowed. It had been years—with a few exceptions—since anyone but Marcus had called her by that name. And most of those years had gone into living down the rank of Office Mascot. She stared at Teela, who smiled her slow, lazy, catlike grin. “What’s this about, Teela?”
“You tell me. Severn said you met an old acquaintance on your rounds in Elani.”
“No one you’d know.”
Tain, who had been mostly silent, started to drink. “This isn’t terrible,” he told Teela, mock surprise in every word.
She cuffed the side of his head, although her fingers trailed sensuously through the length of his hair afterward, which ruined the gesture, in Kaylin’s opinion. “Kitling,” she said, resting her elbows on the scarred, old wood, “we were told not to ask you many questions.”
“And you listened about as well as you normally do.”
Teela shrugged. “It’s habit. When you first wandered into the office, Marcus made clear to everyone there—particularly the Barrani—that you were not to be too heavily discouraged. Or damaged,” she added.
“Too bad he didn’t make that clearer to the drillmaster.”
