Michelle Sagara - Cast In Shadow

But he’d always been fast. His own long knife was in the air before she’d run half the distance that separated them; her thrown dagger glanced off it with a sonorous clang. Everything in the Hawk’s tower reverberated; there could be no hidden fights, here.

“Hello, Kaylin.”

She snarled. Words were lost; what remained was motion, movement, intent. She held the second dagger in her hand as she unsheathed the third; heard the Hawklord’s cold command at her back as if it were simple breeze in the open streets.

The open streets of the fiefs, almost a decade past.

His smile exposed teeth, the narrowing of eyes, the sudden tensing of shoulder and chest as he gathered motion, hoarding it.

Left hand out, she loosed a second dagger, and he parried it, but only barely. The third, she had at his chest before he could bring his knife down.

Too easy, she thought desperately. Too damn easy.

She looked up at his lazy smile and brought her dagger in.

Light blinded her. Light, it seemed, from the sound of his sudden curse, blinded him; they were driven apart by the invisible hands of the Hawklord’s power, and they were held fast, their feet inches above the ground.

Her eyes grew accustomed, by slow degree, to the darkness of the domed room.

“I see,” the Hawklord said quietly, “that you know Severn. Severn, you failed to mention this in your interview.”

Severn had always recovered quickly. “I didn’t recognize the name,” he said, voice even, smile still draped across his face. He moved slowly, very slowly, and sheathed his long knife, waiting.

And she looked up at his face. He wasn’t as tall as Tanner, and he wasn’t as broad; he had the catlike grace of a young Leontine, and his hair was a burnished copper, something that reddened in caught light. But his eyes were the blue she remembered, cold blue, and if he had new scars—and he did—they hadn’t changed his face enough to remove it from her memory.

“Kaylin?”

She said nothing for a long, long time. And given the tone of the Hawklord’s voice, it wasn’t a wise expenditure of that time.

“I know him,” she said at last.

“That has already been established.” The Hawk’s lips turned up in a cold smile. “You seldom attempt to kill a man for no reason in this tower. But not,” he added, “never.”

She ignored the comment. “He’s no Wolf,” she told the man who ruled the Hawks in all their guises. “I don’t care what he told you—he doesn’t serve the Wolflord.”

He chose to ignore her use of the Lord of Wolves, her more colloquial title. “Ah. And who does he serve, Kaylin?”

“One of the seven,” she said, spitting to the side.

“The seven?”

She was dead tired of his word games. “The fieflords,” she said.

“Ah. Severn?”

“I was a Wolf,” he replied, as if this bored him. As if everything did. He ran a hand through his hair; it was just shy of regulation length. “I served the Lord of Wolves.” Each word emphasized and correct.

“You’re lying.”

“Ask the Lord of Hawks,” he told her, with a shrug. “He’s got the paperwork.”

“No,” the Hawklord replied quietly, “I don’t.”

Severn was silent, assessing the tone of the Hawklord’s words. After a moment, he shrugged again; the folds of his robes shifted, and Kaylin heard the distinct sound of cloth rubbing against leather. He was not entirely unarmored here.

Too bad.

“I was a Shadow Wolf,” he said at last.

“For how long?” She refused to be shocked. Refused to let his admission slow her down.

“Years,” he replied. Just that.

She didn’t believe him. “He’s lying.”

“I didn’t say how many,” he added softly. As if it were a game.

“He is not lying,” the Hawklord told her. “Believe that when the unusual request for transfer between the Towers arrives, we check very carefully. When the man who requests the transfer is of the Shadows, our investigations are more thorough.”

“Thorough how?”

“We called in the Tha’alani.”

She froze. She had faced Tha’alani before, but only once, and she had been thirteen years old at the time. She had sworn, then, that she would die before she let one touch her again. The Tha’alani were an obscenity; they touched not flesh—although that in and of itself caused her problems—but thought, mind, heart, all the hidden things.

All the things that had to stay hidden if they were to be protected.

They were sometimes called Truthseekers. But it was a pal try word. Kaylin privately preferred rapist as the more accurate term.

“He subjected himself to the Tha’alani willingly,” the Hawklord added.

“And the Tha’alani said he was telling the truth.”

“Indeed.”

“And what truth? What could he say that would make him worthy of the Hawks?”

But the Hawklord’s patience had ebbed. “Enough to satisfy the Lord of Hawks,” he told her. “Will you question me?”

No. Not if she wanted to be a Hawk. “Why? Why him?”

“Because, Kaylin, he is one of two men who understand the fiefs as well as you do.”

She froze.

“The other will be with us shortly.”

After about ten minutes, the Hawklord let them go. Mostly. The barrier that held Kaylin’s arms to her side slowly thinned; she could move as if she were under water. Given that she was likely to try to kill Severn again the minute she got the chance, she tried hard not to resent the Hawklord’s caution.

“Feel all better now that that’s out of your system?” Severn asked quietly.

She wanted to cut the lips off his face; it would ruin his smirk. “No.”

“No?”

“You’re not dead.”

He laughed and shook his head. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you Elianne?”

“Tell him to let us go and you can find that out for yourself.”

“I doubt the Lord of Hawks would take the orders of a former Shadow Wolf. Although given your tardiness and his apparent acceptance of it, he’s a damn site more tolerant than the Lord of Wolves was.”

“Try.”

He laughed again. “Not yet, little—what did he call you? Kaylin? Not yet.”

The Lord of Hawks watched them with the keen sight of their namesake.

“You want to send us into the fiefs,” she said at last, trying to keep the accusation out of her voice.

“Yes. It’s been seven years, Kaylin. Long enough.”

“Long enough for what? Three of the fieflords are outcaste Barrani —I could live and die in the time it took them to blink!”

The Hawklord turned his full attention upon her. “I think I have been overly tolerant,” he said at last, and in a tone of voice she hadn’t heard since she’d first arrived in this tower. “You are either Hawk or you are not. Decide.”

Her silence was enough of an answer, but only barely. “The third is coming now.”

The door, which had probably closed the moment Kaylin had fully stepped across its threshold, swung open again.

A man walked into the room. He wore no armor that she could hear beneath the full flow of his perfect robes. Her hearing had always been good. “Lord Grammayre,” he said, bowing low.

“Tiamaris,” the Hawklord replied. “I would like to introduce you to Kaylin and Severn. You will work with them.”

The man rose. His hair was a dark, dark black—Barrani black—but his build was all wrong for Barrani. He was a shade taller than Teela, and about twice her width. Three times, maybe. His hands were empty; he carried no obvious weapon. Wore no open medallion. The hand that he lifted in ritual greeting, palm out, was smooth and unadorned.

Kaylin and Severn could not likewise lift hand—but their background in the fiefs hadn’t made the gesture automatic. Lord Grammayre was under no such disadvantage; he lifted his ringed hand in greeting, and lowered his chin slightly.