Moran lifted her face to the skies. “Corporal!”
Clint came down.
Kaylin cursed in Leontine under her breath; Aerian hearing was very much like human hearing. Moran, however, was standing beside her, an arm still wrapped around her shoulders. “You know we’re not on duty, r-right?”
“You think that’s going to make a difference?” Moran grimaced; it was very slight. When Clint was close enough to hear her without the need to raise her voice sergeant-style, she said, “Take Kaylin back to the Halls of Law and deposit her in the infirmary.”
Kaylin’s jaw dropped. “We don’t evenhavean infirmary anymore!” But the truth was, she was shuddering. She was cold. She was exhausted.
Clint didn’t argue. He glanced at Kaylin and shook his head.“Praevolo—”
“And if you call me that again today, I’ll break your right arm. Don’t test me,” she added. “I have a meeting with the Caste Court—or as much of it as we can find—and I’m in a foul mood.”
Chapter 30
Clint was silent for half the flight from the Aerie. Although Moran had told him to take her straight to the infirmary, he stopped, flying to his own home first. There, he borrowed blankets, his wife hovering in a silence weighted with questions. She didn’t ask anything out loud, but clearly Kaylin wasn’t the only one who intended to have a long and involved conversation later.
She did, however, wrap Kaylin in a blanket designed for Aerians, and her expression was much gentler as she did so. “It’s good to see you. You should visit more often.”
“I have no doubt—at all—that she will,” was Clint’s reply. It was very, very neutral in tone, which earned him a glare from his wife. He removed Kaylin as quickly as he possibly could, but his wife was not going to berushed.
* * *
“I like her.”
Clint raised a brow. His eyes were the Aerian version of gray that implied calm. Kaylin thought of the way Clint had fallen to one knee in front of Moran the last time she’d entered the Halls of Law. There was very little that Moran could command that he wouldn’t do. It was a disturbing thought.
Kaylin, for instance, would obey any order the Emperor gave, especially if she was standing in the vicinity of, say, his figurative jaws or his literal breath. But it wasn’t because she revered him. It was because he could reduce her to her component parts without blinking an eye.
Kaylin would obey any order Marcus gave her, because that was herjob. It wasn’t her life. At one point, she wouldn’t have been able to separate the two—but Clint was a Hawk, and Clint was an Aerian, and Moran had become, in the course of a single significant day, his life.
If Moran—no, if thepraevolo—gave Clint an order, he would obey it. If Moran told Clint to do something that broke the law, Kaylin wasn’t certain it would matter to Clint.
And that, she told herself uneasily,is not my problem. It’s none of my business.But...they were all Hawks. Their personal lives were part of their work, because their personal lives were part of who they were, and they brought that to work.
In Moran’s absence, Clint became more himself. On the other hand, he did deposit her in the temporary infirmary. He didn’t strap her to a bed, because the meeting room only had two, and they were narrow emergency cots; he did tell her to sit in one of the many chairs. He then stood by the door.
“She didn’t tell you to stay here.”
“No.”
“I’m notinjured.”
Clint said nothing.
Kaylin cursed. In Aerian. He said more nothing, but folded his arms.
* * *
Moran came to the infirmary what felt like days later. Clint implied heavily that her whining had made it feel like days for him as well, although it had been a paltry four hours.
Moran was wearing the colorful dress that thepraevolowore during ceremonial occasions. She was also wearing the Hawks’ tabard. She had been wearing it when she had first arrived at the Aerie.
Moran frowned, but it was a familiar frown. An infirmary frown.
“What,” Kaylin asked, “did the outcaste want?”
“Power, I think.” She frowned. “The outcaste did approach the Arcanist claiming to bepraevolo. The Arcanist was justifiably suspicious—but my own wings had not yet become public knowledge. He claimed parentage—illegitimate—of the dar Carafel clan; he chose an Aerian who had died decades in the past as his father. Two Aerians accompanied him; they confirmed that he had lived in the Southern Reach, but not in the higher peaks.
