“Oh, joy.”
“My point,” he replied. He offered her the slightest of bows. “I do not need to tell you to keep the morning’s events to yourself.”
“No.”
“But as humans are often resourceful when attempting to find new ways to entangle themselves in difficulties, I offer the advice.”
“Thanks.”
The state of the dining room in which Rennick worked had initially reminded Kaylin of Marcus’s desk. Now, it brought to mind the wreckage of a desk. As she was the Hawk responsible for bartering and haggling with carpenters for replacement desks, she was familiar with the disaster. It seemed to have grown in magnitude from the previous day’s mess, and at this rate, in two days they wouldn’t have to worry about Rennick—he’d never be able to find the door.
Not that this would save them from Mallory’s ire.
She did find the chairs, although they weren’t immediately obvious—piles of teetering papers did that. She picked up a sheaf and set it carefully to one side of the chair. Rennick, leaning back in his chair as if, at any minute, he intended to pass out, watched her.
She looked at what she’d moved. It was not only not in Rennick’s writing, it wasn’t Rennick’s work. It also appeared to have nothing at all to do with the Tha’alani.
“What are you looking at?” Rennick barked. It really was a bark; his voice sounded like sandpaper would sound if it could speak.
“This isn’t about your work.”
“Not directly, no.”
She considered asking him what it was, thought better of it and took her chair.
“Don’t make yourself too comfortable,” he said, in about the same tone of voice. “After we have breakfast, we’re going out.”
Food, when it came, arrived on small tables with wheels. It was brought by servants, five in all, each of them at least twice as old as Kaylin. It was left in silence. Clearly, there was a bit of friction between the serving staff and the playwright.
But food seemed to help. It certainly helped Kaylin. As did the mess, the ordinariness of piles of discarded paper, even the unshaven, blearly-eyed face of a man pushing himself—and everyone around him—too hard. There was no magic here, no shadows, no death—and if Rennick did his job, if he was as good at his job as he had to be, there wouldn’t be mobs in the city streets on either side of the Tha’alani gates.
He ate for a while, idly flipping pages. “You haven’t asked me where we’re going,” he said, without looking up.
She shrugged. “Does it matter? We’re assigned to you for the day. We go where you go.”
“Having discarded the admittedly cheap and easy love story, and clearly not wishing to offend the Tha’alani with a lack of truth as they perceive it, I was at a bit of a loss. But something you said suggested a possible way out.”
“Something I said?”
“People do occasionally pay attention to the words that fall out of your mouth,” he replied. “Don’t look so surprised.”
“It’s not surprise. It’s suspicion.”
He laughed. It was the first time he’d shown anything like humor this morning—well, technically this afternoon, but Kaylin had a rather vague idea of morning as well—and she surprised herself by grinning in response.
“When we first talked about the Tha’alani, you mentioned that you’d taken orphans to the Quarter. Human orphans,” he added, as if this was in any doubt.
She could see where this was going, and the grin dropped from her face as if it were weighted by anvils. “No.”
Give Rennick this much: he wasn’t an idiot. He didn’t try to feign surprise, and he didn’t bother with word games. “Why not?”
“They’re children and I don’t want them involved.”
“In what? Talking to an unshaven Playwright?”
“That, too.”
“I don’t actually need your permission,” he replied. “I can speak to Marrin on my own.” He stood. “You’re free to wander off wherever you like.”
“You can’t just—”
“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been there,” he added. “And it certainly wouldn’t be the first time I’ve interacted with the foundlings Marrin guards so ferociously. The fact that I got in once could be accident—but if I had crossed the lines she’s carved in the floor, walls, and anything else in the Halls that’s not bright enough to move out of the way, I would never be allowed back. I probably wouldn’t be allowed to leave.”
“Not in one piece, no.”
“Kaylin, I don’t like children all that much. I like the theory of children, but the practice is both noisy and tedious. I’m happy to have other people have them—I think of them as future customers.
“But children are universal. We all have them, doesn’t matter which race or which religion. Well, okay, maybe strict adherence to some religions, but you get the general idea. The Tha’alani like children. And I think your orphans may well have liked the Tha’alani. I want to speak with them.”
“Rennick.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“I don’t like to drag children into my work.”
“Do you think they’ll tell me anything you don’t want me to know?”
She forced her hands out of the fists they’d become. “No.”
“Do you think I’d injure them?”
“No. Not you.”
He stopped before the next words left his mouth, and then grimaced. “You could play along with the script.”
“What?”
“I think he expected you to say something else,” Severn said drily.
“I answered his question. In spite of anything he’s said or done, he doesn’t seem like the type of person who would terrorize or harm the helpless.”
“Thank you. I think. But if you don’t think I’ll harm them, what is your objection?”
She shrugged and gave up. “I don’t know,” she told him quietly. “But—they’ve had a hard enough life. They’re never going to have easy lives. I just—” She shook her head. “Why children?”
“Because if children—and children without family and with few friends at all who aren’t likewise destitute and dependent on the charity of a fanged and intemperate Leontine—aren’t afraid of the Tha’alani, grown men and women might pause to feel a bit ashamed of their own fear.” He lifted a hand as she opened her mouth. “And yes, if they understand that the Tha’alani treat even the least of us with kindness, it will also give them something to think about.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I told you, I just want to talk to them.”
“I meant for the play.”
“Ah. That. I’ll explain it as we go.”
Amos was in the garden at the front of the Halls. This meant he was weeding and trimming the hedges, and watering the occasional flowers; as gardens went, it was not a very fine one. Had he been in the back garden, he would have been tending vegetable patches and fruit trees with a number of the older foundlings at his disposal. While Marrin did manage to get money out of the city’s more wealthy inhabitants, she liked to be as self-sufficient as possible.
“Kaylin,” he said, wiping his gloves on an apron that was at least as dirty.
She smiled.
“This is your…friend?”
“Yes. I promise not to try to kill him in the Halls again.”
“Good. Once was more than enough.” He removed a glove and offered Severn a hand; Severn took it without hesitation.
“Kaylin’s got a bit of the Leontine in her,” Amos told Severn. “At least where her temper’s concerned. But Marrin seems to have forgiven her the incident.” He smiled. “And she approves of you.”
“I’m happy to hear it. It means I’ll survive crossing her threshold.”
Amos laughed. “And this young man?”
All men were young to Amos. Rennick smiled. “Richard Rennick,” he said, taking the outstretched hand. “I’ve been here before with the Festival troupe. I spe
nt most of the time dressed as a tree.”
“Oh, the talking tree with the creaky voice?”
“That one.”
“The kids liked it,” Amos replied, as if that were all that were necessary. Or important. Kaylin had often wondered why Amos worked at the Foundling Halls, but she had never asked. And probably never would.
“Is Marrin busy?”
“Not more than usual. Go on in. One of the kids will know where she is.”
Marrin was with the youngest of her foundlings, so her claws were completely sheathed, and her lips were pulled over her fangs. It made her look older, but definitely safer to be around.
Holding a baby of maybe seven months—it was often hard to tell, because they appeared on the Foundling Halls’ steps in various states of health—she turned to smile at Kaylin and Severn. She also smiled at Rennick, so his guess that she’d let him in was accurate.
“What brings you to the Halls?” she asked.
“Mr. Rennick,” Kaylin replied. “He wants to speak to the kids that we took to visit the Tha’alani Quarter.”
“Why?”
Rennick rolled his eyes. “Is everybody this suspicious all of the time?”
Marrin snorted. “It’s my job.”
“Fine. That doesn’t explain the Private’s attitude.”
Leontine chuckling was very much like Leontine growling if you didn’t know them. But the baby apparently understood the difference, in the way that babies do; it was looking around, blue-eyed and alert. “She knows me fairly well,” Marrin told Rennick. “And inasmuch as I’d trust anyone else with my foundlings—” and her tone of voice made clear that that wasn’t much “—I’d trust Kaylin. But if you’re here, she couldn’t find a good reason to keep you out.”
“Does that mean I can skip the explanations?”
“What do you think?”
He sighed, but he didn’t offer her attitude. Instead, he told her more or less what he’d told Kaylin.
“Well, kitling, it seems harmless enough. How much time do you have?”
“All day.”
“Given how much they like to talk,” Marrin replied, “you’ll need it. Find Dock and tell him to gather the others. Not that you’ll be able to stop him.”
Kaylin laughed. “Where is he?”
“He is, in theory, on laundry duty, so he should be out back.”
The children were not as small as they had been when Kaylin had first gone to the Foundling Halls. It always surprised her, how fast they grew. Some of the older children from those early years were no longer in the Foundling Halls, although Marrin checked in on them all.
The children who remained were, as usual, more than willing to talk to an attentive adult. They were also willing to talk to a bored adult, or an adult with glazed eyes and a fixed expression; people who expressed boredom in more obvious ways were not usually allowed to visit a second time, although exceptions were made for emergency visitors like doctors, officers of the Law and—once—firefighters.
Rennick was attentive. He also took a seat on the ground, forcing them to sit closer if they wanted to be heard first. Or at all. He didn’t have paper with him; he wasn’t trying to record their words. Or perhaps he was; he had seldom offered anyone else this kind of complete attention.
Marrin came into the room, and stood beside Kaylin for a while. “You don’t like him?” she asked.
“I didn’t,” Kaylin confessed. “I’m really not sure what to make of him. But…I can imagine that he really does write plays for children, watching him now. He doesn’t like children.”
“No?”
“Well, he said he doesn’t.”
Marrin shrugged. “Humans are like that.” After pausing, she added, “You don’t look like you’ve been sleeping enough.”
“I’m not one of your foundlings, Marrin.”
“No. But you should have been.”
There wasn’t much to be said to that. Kaylin didn’t try. But she stood a while in the comfortable presence of the only Leontine in the Foundling Halls. Possibly the only Leontine in the city who wasn’t confusing or surprising her at the moment. “You couldn’t have found us all,” she said at last. “And if you had, you’d have had to turn half the fiefs into your Halls just to accommodate us.”
“That would be worse than what’s there?”
Kaylin shook her head. “It would be so much better than what’s there.” She shifted slightly, turning away from the conversation they were having. “Rennick is really good with them.”
“Yes. He is not, unfortunately, as well mannered around adults, but that doesn’t cause me problems.” The Leontine’s gaze swiveled back to Kaylin and stayed there for a little longer than was comfortable.
“Did you eat?”
“Rennick fed us.”
“Did you eat yesterday?”
“When Rennick fed us.”
“Kaylin.”
Kaylin looked away from Rennick. And then looked back. Marrin’s eyes were golden.
“We’ve had some trouble at the office,” she said at last. “Marcus has…taken a leave of absence.”
“Ah. I had heard something to that effect.”
“How much to that effect?”
Marrin raised a brow. Her whiskers and the edges of her fur had grayed, but the gold that she must have been in her prime was still visible. It made her look almost silver in the light. “Come to the kitchen,” she said. It wasn’t exactly a request. It wasn’t exactly a command.
Kaylin waited a moment and then nodded.
“Corporal Handred may join us, if he likes.”
“You understand, dear,” Marrin said, as she opened cupboards looking for a kettle, “that Marcus is a bit unusual.”
Marrin and Caitlin were the only two people on the planet who were allowed to call Kaylin “dear.” Something about the way they said it took the edge off it; there wasn’t any condescension in their tone.
“I thought I knew that,” Kaylin replied, leaning into one of the long, clean counters.
“And now?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t. I’m not sure what I know now.”
“What is happening in the Quarter?”
“How much have you heard?”
“Only a little. I don’t visit often. This is my home.”
“Marrin, what do you know about Dragons?”
The Leontine busied herself with bread and cheese, neither of which she ate in any great quantities. “Why do you ask?”
“I accompanied one to the Quarter,” Kaylin replied.
“Ah.” The chopping motion never stopped; it was a rhythmic, staccato beat. “That must have been interesting. Did he fly?”
“Hells no. It’s sixteen different kinds of illegal, for one, and the only thing that polices the Dragons is the Emperor. This particular Dragon just…walked. And talked a lot.”
“Talked?”
“Have you heard a Dragon talk?”
“No.”
“But…”
“I wish I’d been there,” Marrin said. Something in her voice had changed, but it was subtle in a way that Leontines usually weren’t; Kaylin didn’t know what it meant.
Kaylin hesitated again, and then said, “He was telling them a story.”
The chopping stopped entirely. “A story?”
“About their creation.”
The older Leontine turned slowly away from the countertop. “Why, Kaylin?”
“He thought it was necessary.” As answers went, it wasn’t a good one; she could see that in the expression Marrin gave her.
“Why?” The tone was sharper, but Marrin’s claws were still sheathed, and her eyes had shaded into an odd color, not red, not gold, but not—quite—the orange that was a storm warning where Leontine temper was concerned.
“I’m sorry, Marrin, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I’m not really supposed to be talking about it. As in, big angry Dragon will rip off my legs if I do.”
Marrin turned away, th
en. She was utterly silent, and completely still—if she hadn’t been standing, Kaylin would have rushed to her side to see if she was still breathing. But after a moment, the old Leontine—and she looked old, suddenly—said, “I thought I had escaped all of this,” and bowed her head.
After a moment, she began to speak.
“When I was younger,” she said, “I lived on the plains. We knew of the city, of course, but it was no part of our lives. I was married.”
Kaylin wanted to see her eyes, but they were hidden by her posture, which clearly said “keep your distance,” even without evident fangs or claws.
“I was my husband’s first wife and we were young. I was also his only wife, although I had some thoughts on who we might make offers for in the future. I was planning my Pridlea,” she said. Her voice was so shorn of its regular growl it sounded almost human. “I became pregnant quickly—I think we both wanted that.” She turned, without lifting her head, and reached for the counter, for the knife she had momentarily set aside. Slowly and methodically, she returned to the task at hand—as if feeding Kaylin was somehow important. Or as if it were an anchor.
“I had one cub, in the fall. She was healthy. Even though a litter of one is unusual, we would have been happy, but the child was—even at birth, and almost hairless—marked.”
Kaylin’s breath was sharper than the knife.
“Yes, kitling. She had red fur.”
Kaylin closed her eyes.
“It had been many, many years since a cub had been born with the marks. I was exhausted, and weakened. The birth, as first births often are, was hard. I had no wives, then, but our mothers and their wives had come, and they saw, of course.
“My husband’s mother summoned the Elders. She took my daughter from me before we could lick her fur clean. The cub was so peaceful, so quiet. She opened her eyes without the touch of tongues on her lids, and she looked at the world. The world looked back,” she added. Her voice was neutral.
“Marrin, you don’t have to tell me this if you don’t want.”
A graying brow rose as Marrin looked across the counter at Kaylin. “You’ve never asked,” she said mildly.
Cast in Fury Page 21
