Michelle Sagara - Cast in Silence

“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 on The Chronicles of Elantra series

“Intense, fast-paced, intriguing, compelling and hard to put down…unforgettable.”

—In the Library Reviews on Cast in Shadow

“Readers will embrace this compelling, strong-willed heroine with her often sarcastic voice.”

—Publishers Weekly on Cast in Courtlight

“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 on Cast in Secret

“Along with the exquisitely detailed worldbuilding, Sagara’s character development is mesmerizing. She expertly breathes life into a stubborn yet evolving heroine. A true master of her craft!”

—RT Book Reviews (4 ½ stars) on Cast in Fury

“With prose that is elegantly descriptive, Sagara answers some longstanding questions and adds another layer of mystery. Each visit to this amazing world, with its richness of place and character, is one to relish.”

—RT Book Reviews (4 ½ stars) on Cast in Silence

www.mirabooks.co.uk

One of the best things—for me—about writing fantasy is that a writer can enlarge issues that people face on a daily basis, by making the stakes higher; it’s not often that you can cause the end of the world in real life because of choices you’ve made. But the end-of-the-world feeling is a very real dread day to day. The consequences are always bigger, but the emotional response is rooted in a writer’s experience, and our experiences don’t actually include dark gods, primal chaos and perfect immortals. Except maybe when we’re sleeping.

Kaylin Neya started life on the page as a Private in the arm of Law enforcement known as The Hawks—her city’s version of a cop. But, as is so often the case, her known life started before that, and what there was of it was buried in the organizational nightmare I often refer to as my notes. Some of that past came to light in her first outing, Cast in Shadow, because a lot of her story makes no sense without it.

She doesn’t live in the past, although she will always be affected by it, and she’s managed to keep a lid on it—until now. Cast in Silence is about the missing six months of her life, between her life in the fief of Nightshade and her life as a Hawk. To say she’s ambivalent about those six months would be a bit of an understatement.

But to me, it echoes a lot of ambivalence about choices we made for various reasons when we were younger or less experienced. Or at least choices I did. If you’re returning to Kaylin and Elantra, I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I did writing it.

This is for Ayami, the sister-in-law who makes having a brother a blessing.

Living with a writer is not easy. My children are probably used to it because it’s all they’ve ever known, but my husband, Thomas, had a sane and reasonable upbringing, and still manages to create the space in which I do write, day-in and day-out. He and Terry Pearson form my alpha reader team, and are brave enough to argue with me when reading a raw first draft (and I mean raw).

If living with a writer is not easy, it’s my suspicion that working with a writer is often just as fraught, so I am deeply grateful to Mary-Theresa Hussey, who has been the very model of patience and understanding, and who continues to provide a home for Elantra. And to Kathleen Oudit and the art staff for the fabulous job they continue to do when creating covers for these books. If writing a novel is a solitary endeavor, publishing a novel is teamwork, and I have been blessed with a great team.

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

EPILOGUE

“It’s eight o’clock in the morning. Please remember to fill out your reports and hand in your paperwork.” Had the cheerful and musical voice belonged to a person who could be easily strangled, it would have stopped in mid-sentence.

Sadly, it was the melodious voice of the streetside window which interrupted the bustling and vastly less perky office in which the branch of Law known as the Hawks was based. That window, which had been installed complete with a magical, time-telling voice in some misguided attempt at humor, had been adjusted in the past couple of weeks by Acting Sergeant Mallory, and no one who had to work where they could hear it—and were prevented by office regulations from destroying it—considered the adjustments to be an improvement.

Sergeant Marcus Kassan, the large and currently bristling Leontine behind the central desk in the Hawks’ Office raised his fist and flexed his fingers. Long claws, gleaming in the sun’s light, appeared from beneath his golden fur. He had not yet shattered the window—and given it was installed with the guidance of Imperial Mages, that would have been damn hard—but he looked like he was on the edge of finally doing it in. The betting pool had not yet been won, but at least three people were out money, Private Kaylin Neya being one. The office had discovered, however, that the windows couldn’t be scratched, and Kaylin had argued vociferously that this should have counted as a victory condition. She’d lost.

Then again, Leontines were generally all about the clawing, biting, rending, and ripping out of throats; they weren’t as good with smashing things.

Kaylin’s personal favorite was the new end-of-day message, wherein the cheerful voice of the window told the departing staff that they were to be in the office at 7:00 a.m., and they were to be shaved, where shaving was appropriate, and otherwise clean. She was less keen on the last bit, in which the Hawks were reminded to check the duty roster for last-minute adjustments.

“Why doesn’t he just have the mages shut it down?” she asked Caitlin, as Marcus drove new furrows into his desk.

“I think he considers it a reminder of the differences between Sergeant Mallory’s temporary tenure and his more permanent record,” Caitlin replied. The reply, like the question that engendered it, was very, very quiet. This didn’t guarantee that it couldn’t be overheard, but unless Marcus had it in for you, he was capable of a bit of selective deafness. If he hadn’t been, his office would be half manned for at least an entire duty cycle, and the half that was left alive would be too busy cleaning up to cause trouble.

“Neya!” Given Marcus’s current mood, the fact that there had been no bloodshed was pushing the goodwill of whatever gods watched over underslept and under-paid police. “You’re due out on beat in five minutes. Stop bothering Caitlin and hit the street.”