Michelle Sagara - Cast In Secret

The Tha’alani woman, Ybelline, had corrected him gently for his unkindness, although Kaylin hadn’t bothered to be kind first.

Ybelline had somehow made Kaylin feel comfortable and safe. Had taken memories from the sleeping child she and Severn had brought with them to the office—a child kidnapped by the undead, and almost sacrificed—sparing the child the waking experience of the Tha’alani mind-touch. Holding on to that memory, Kaylin did relax.

Until she was almost at the records mirror itself, and the Tha’alani rose.

He was older than any Tha’alani she had ever met, although he was by no means as aged as Evanton; his hair, which had looked gray, was gray, and his face was lined with age, with sun and wind. His eyes were slate-gray, not a friendly color, and his lips were thin and pale.

And the disturbing stalks on his forehead were weaving in and out among themselves, as if it were the only way he knew how to fidget. It came to Kaylin as she watched them warily that he was, in fact, fidgeting.

Had she ever noticed this before?

Did they all do this?

There was no Hawk on his robes, no official sign. She wondered if he was always in this office, or if he was only here on this particular shift. Wondered, with just a faint edge of hysteria to sharpen the humor, what he’d done to deserve it, if he was.

But he bowed to her, and by this, she knew two things: that he’d risen because she approached him, and only because of that, and that he’d been somehow waiting for her. It didn’t make her comfortable. For perhaps the first time she noticed, as he rose, the deepening lines around his mouth, the slight thinning of his lips. As a thirteen-year-old girl, she had thought it a cruel expression, and that had left scars in her memory that had been slow to heal.

Now … she thought, as objectively as she could—and given she was Kaylin that was hard—that it might be a grimace of pain. And she felt, mingled with her own very visceral revulsion, a twinge of sympathy for a total stranger.

She tried very hard not to notice the way his stalks were swaying. But she did notice; they were swaying to and fro, but almost seemed to be shying away. From her. From, she realized, her revulsion.

She swallowed. Composed herself—as much as that was possible. “Private Kaylin Neya,” she said, introducing herself. She did not offer him her hand, and he did not extend his own.

“I am called Draalzyn, by my people.” The word was broken by an unexpected syllable. The Tha’alani had a language that Kaylin had never bothered to learn because as far as she could tell it contained no colorful—which is to say useful—words. It, in fact, seemed to be free of most words; when Tha’alani conversed, they conversed in silence, and only their hands and their stalks seemed to move. They also touched each other too much.

And she was projecting again. She could see that clearly by the subtle shift of his expression. She wanted to tell the bastard to keep away from her thoughts. It was her first reaction.

But a second reaction followed swiftly. She knew she was the proverbial open book; how often in her life had Severn just glanced at her face and known what it was that was bothering her? She’d never bothered to count. Probably couldn’t count that high unless it involved a wager.

And the second thought, the Tha’alani almost seemed to sense, for his expression grew slightly less severe.

“Private,” Draalzyn said quietly, “I hoped to see you at some point in time.”

“I work inside.”

He nodded. He knew where she worked; that much was clear to her. He seemed to have trouble speaking; he opened his mouth several times, as if searching for words. Or, as if he’d found them, and discarded them as useless.

She waited, eyeing the mirror, and catching a reflected glimpse of Severn as he ran interference. It wouldn’t last.

At last the Tha’alani said, “Ybelline asked me to carry a message to you, if our paths should cross.”

Ybelline. The one Tha’alani Kaylin had met that she had almost liked.

“Why me?” Unlike Draalzyn, Kaylin rarely bothered to stop the words that first came to mind from falling out of her mouth. But she remembered this honey-haired woman so clearly she felt almost—almost—protective of her. She had been so gentle with Catti, an orphan, as unwanted by the world at large as Kaylin had been at her age.

“She believed you could be of assistance to us,” he replied quietly. “And the matter is of some urgency.” He paused, and she realized that the pallor of his face was probably unnatural. He was worried. Or frightened. Or both.

“What’s happened?”

“If you would come to her dwelling in the enclave—or if you would choose a meeting place that is not so crowded in the city itself, she will explain.”

Kaylin nodded.

And the Tha’alani seemed to relax; his shoulders slumped a little in the folds of his robe, as if he had been expecting something else.

Fair enough. Had it been any other Tha’alani, any at all, Kaylin would have refused. Or worse.

“She is willing, of course, to promise that there will be no intrusion, and nothing will be taken from you without—”

Kaylin lifted a hand. “I know the drill,” she said, “and you don’t have to repeat it. I—trust her. And I don’t have time,” she added bitterly, looking again at the mirror’s surface, and at Mallory.

“You wish to access records without interference?” he asked. As if he had read her—no, she told herself forcefully. It was bloody obvious he had. You’d have to be blind and stupid not to recognize the fact.

“Yes.”

“You are looking for?”

She stopped. Looked at him, truly looked at him, as if seeing him for the first time. The Tha’alani worked in this office for a reason. But—

The image of a bruised child’s face rose up before her eyes, captured in water’s depths. It was so strong, so clear, that she couldn’t shake it. It was more concrete in that moment than the rest of the office.

The man waited.

She noted this, her Hawk’s training in place. And she knew as well that all real images that went into records, any real information, would come, in the end, through him or his kin.

“You know what’s in the records?”

“Not all of it,” he began.

“The recent reports. You might know if someone came in looking for a missing girl.”

“Of what age?” His eyes seemed to glaze over, as if he were a living embodiment of what the records contained, and he was accessing the data.

“Nine, maybe ten. Scraggly dark hair, dark eyes. Pale skin. Poor family, I think.”

“How long would she be considered missing?”

“I … don’t know. More than two days.” Maybe, given her condition, many more.

He was still frowning.

And Kaylin clenched her jaw tightly, stepped forward toward him, and, lifting her hands, drew her hair from her forehead. She was shaking. But the girl’s image was strong enough.

“You know this child?” he asked, understanding exactly what she offered.

“No. But I’ve seen her once.”

“And you are willing—” But he stopped. He was, by law, required to give her a long speech full of unreassuring reassurances.

None of which she had time for. He did her the courtesy of not failing to read this clearly, and held her gaze for just that little bit longer than required. She didn’t blink.

His forehead stalks began to elongate, to thin, as they moved toward her exposed skin.

“Don’t touch the mark,” she warned him.

“Ah,” he replied. “No. I will not.”

And they were feathery, those stalks, like the brush of fingertips against forehead. He did not touch her face with his hands, did nothing to hold her in place. In every way, this was unlike the first time she had submitted to the Tha’alani. But this was an act of choice.