“It’s not—it’s not quite like that. I think—” She shook her head. “There’s Shadow here, or the corpse of Shadow; it’s spread across everything like it’s blood.”
* * *
Sergeant Kassan was not happy. Given the color of his eyes, there was barely room formoreanger, but he managed it. He didn’t blame Kaylin, because it wasn’t her fault—but when he was in a mood, fault didn’t matter. Convenient targets did.
“I want the Dragon sent home,” Marcus said, dispensing with all pretense at formality.
“I’m not in command of the Dragon; technically, the Hawklord could ask to have her removed. But the Hawklord has been told that Lord Bellusdeo has Imperial permission to be here. By the Emperor.”
“That’s why I’m tellingyouto do it. I want the Dragon sent home. We’re going to be ash and body parts if she’s injured.”
“The Hawklord—”
“The Hawklord is in conference with the Wolflord and the Swordlord. And the Emperor. Security in the Halls should have prevented something like this from happening here. Clearly the breach was deliberate.”
That was what was upsetting him. Stupidity could—and sometimes did—enrage him, but he didn’t consider stupidity malice. He figured he could scream it out of the new recruits—and in general, he could. This wasn’t a problem caused by new recruits who needed to learn the rules.
This was done by someone who already knew what the rules were, and had circumvented them. It implied actual knowledge. Maybe.
“You’re thinking,” Marcus growled.
“I couldn’t feel the magic. At all. It’s possible that someone—anyone—carried it in; it would be unremarkable. It was in the supplies cabinet. Moran might know which supplies it was hidden in. There wasn’t enough left over for me to take an educated guess.
“But...the Shadow is disturbing. It’s the second time we’ve seen it. The man in the holding cells wasn’t aware of it—it seems inert, somehow, and about as sentient as—” She bit back the comment. “It didn’t seem to have a will of its own, and that’s a lot more common with Shadow.”
“I think,” Marcus said, rising as something over Kaylin’s shoulder caught his attention, “it’s time to speak with our prisoner.”
Kaylin turned in the direction of Marcus’s glare; he was incapable, at this point, of anything else. And she recognized the man who stood on the office side of the doors, waiting, his expression dour but otherwise inscrutable.
It was Nevoran, a young member of the Tha’alanari, the small branch of the race of telepaths that was judged strong enough to experience the insanity of outsiders without flooding the group racial memory with it. He was bronze, blond, and his eyes were very, very green, which in the Tha’alani was the equivalent of Barrani blue.
They lightened slightly, gaining some gold, as he saw Kaylin. He bowed to her, not to Marcus, and she saw that beneath the tan, his color was bad. And it would be. Of course it would be. The Emperor demanded—and she remembered, once again, that she hated him for it—that the Tha’alani surrender members for the use of the Halls of Law and the Imperial interrogators. Nevoran was one.
She wished it had been Scoros instead. Or even Ybelline. But that’s not who they’d sent, and perhaps the older two were unavailable.
She crossed the room before Marcus could, reached Nevoran and lifted her face, her forehead. He hesitated only briefly; the flexible stalks that graced the foreheads of every member of his race then danced a moment in the air as he bent toward her. He touched her forehead with those stalks—as he would have to do with the criminal—and she heard his voice. He heard hers. No words were necessary.
She heard more than that, though. She heard Ybelline, the castelord of the Tha’alani—the only castelord Kaylin trusted. The only one she was certain she could.
Kaylin.
Ybelline.
You have not visited us in a while.
Things have been a little hectic here.
Yes. I see.
Kaylin heard an immediate plethora of voices, most of them young. She made field trips to the Tha’alani quarter with the foundlings, and had discovered that children of any race had a lot in common. Although the Tha’alani young could have attention whenever they wanted it, they seemed to want an endless supply, and the foundlings had not yet learned to fear and hate the mind readers. Kaylin wanted to make sure they never did, but that wasn’t in her hands. She could only offer them the experience, and hope.
Kaylin, Nevoran said, a hint of amusement in his tone,I believe your sergeant is about to rip out your throat.There was no fear in the words.Is there anything I should know? This was a very polite way of asking permission to sort through Kaylin’s understanding of events, and she gave it instantly. It was much easier than trying to come up with the right words, and it allowed for very, very little misunderstanding.
Kaylin blinked and opened her eyes as Nevoran withdrew his stalks.
Marcus was growly. “When you’re finished?” he said. There were other words he wanted to add, but Nevoran wasn’t a Hawk, and in general he tried not to humiliate his subordinates in front of outsiders. On the other hand, he’d had a very bad morning, and the day wasn’t looking up.
Caitlin waved to Nevoran and asked how his mother was. Kaylin knew he had a mother—obviously, everyone did—but it had never occurred to her to ask. Nor had it occurred to her to ask about Nevoran’s new, and first, child.
