“And?”
“The information offered to us came via Lord Nightshade of the fief of Nightshade.”
Copper shaded toward orange in the Dragon Lord’s eyes. “He offered the information first?”
“Of course not. But he offered some of the information to indicate the importance of the offer.”
“And the information he did offer was not sufficient for our investigators?”
“No; if we attempted to investigate thoroughly, we would almost certainly be detected, and any proof of criminal activity would vanish.”
“What was the tidbit he dangled?”
“The Office of the Exchequer has been working in conjunction with two highly placed Arcanists. Both,” he added, “are Barrani, and both might be in possession of some of the embezzled funds.”
* * *
Kaylin did not, through dint of will, whistle. She did sneak a glance at Sanabalis; his eyes hadn’t gotten any redder, which was a positive sign. On the other hand, Marcus’s hadn’t gotten any less orange, which was not, given that Marcus now turned the full force of his glare on her. She felt this a tad unfair, given that she’d already warned him what Nightshade would demand in return for the information; she was not, however, feeling suicidal enough to point this out.
“Were you aware, Private, that the leave of absence requested in return for this information would be extensive?”
“…How extensive?”
“The fieflord is asking for a minimum of six weeks if we provide the transport, and a minimum of eight weeks if we do not.”
She blinked. After a moment, she said, “Eight weeks?” thinking, as she did, of her rent.
“Eight weeks.”
“I can’t take eight weeks off!”
For some reason, this seemed to improve Marcus’s mood. “When you agreed to Teela’s offer of aid during your leave of absence, did it ever occur to you to look up a map of the Empire?”
“…No.”
Sanabalis lifted a hand. “Why is a leave of eight weeks required?”
“She’s to travel to the West March.”
“A map wouldn’t have done you any good, Private,” Sanabalis now told Kaylin. “The West March is not technically part of the Empire. It is a remote stretch of forest of some significant size. It is not, however, the size of the forest that makes it worthy of note.”
This was not exactly a comfort. “What makes it noteworthy?”
“The trees contained in the heart of that forest are not considered…entirely safe.”
“What does that mean? They don’t burn when you breathe on them?”
Sanabalis’s answering silence was glacial.
“Given Teela’s offer, she will also be missing for eight weeks. It’s a good damn thing Nightshade specifically demanded that you go without any other Hawks, or we’d probably have to do without Corporal Handred, as well.”
Kaylin was still stuck on the eight weeks. “Minimum?” she finally managed to say.
“Minimum. There is the possibility of poor weather and impassable roads, and Lord Nightshade wished to make clear that eight weeks might not suffice.”
She shook herself. “The information was useful?”
“The information,” Lord Grammayre replied, before Marcus could, “may finally crack the case for us. It is more than simply useful, but we wasted some time in negotiations for your release, and we are only now in dialogue with the Lord of Wolves.”
The Wolves.
“How bad is this going to be?”
No one answered, which was answer enough.
“You agreed to the leave of absence?”
The Hawklord nodded. Kaylin desperately wanted to ask if this absence involved pay, because she’d have nowhere to live if it didn’t. On the other hand, the right person to ask was Caitlin, not Marcus, and certainly not Marcus in this mood.
“When does this leave start?”
“Teela will be able to better inform you of the actual dates of import; I suggest you speak with her, because she’ll also be able to inform you of expected dress, weather, and, apparently, colorful wildlife. Lord Nightshade, however, is likely to be in touch with you shortly; you are to leave in five days if we are not to provide the transport he’s asking for.”
“And if you do?”
“We’re not.”
“But—”
“Yes?”
“The midwives. And the Foundling Hall. And the—the etiquette lessons—”
“Lord Sanabalis will, of course, evaluate the information once you’ve left, and discuss it with the Imperial Court. In a strict currency evaluation, eight weeks of your time is far less than we might be expected to pay for information of this
nature; it will save money at a time when finances are—”
Sanabalis coughed loudly.
“Now,” Marcus growled, “get lost.”
* * *
Teela was loitering at the bottom of the stairs, her hands behind her back, her shoulders at a slant against the slight curve of the wall. She glanced up when she heard Kaylin’s steps. Given that Kaylin wasn’t exactly attempting to move silently, this wasn’t hard.
“You’ve heard the news?” she said as Kaylin took the last step and drew level with her, in a manner of speaking. Teela, like all Barrani, was tall; she probably had seven inches on Kaylin when Kaylin was standing at her straightest. Teela wasn’t even trying at the moment.
“Yes.”
“Don’t look so glum. Have you ever been outside the City?”
“No.”
Teela whistled. “Well, this will be an adventure for you, then. It’s a useful experience; you can’t stay cooped up behind the City walls for all your life.”
“Why exactly not?”
“In this case? Because Nightshade had a very important piece of information and you happened to mention his offer to Marcus.”
“I didn’t think I’d be gone for eight weeks!”
“Eight is, in my opinion, optimistic.”
Kaylin’s jaw momentarily unhinged. Teela reached out and pushed it shut. “Don’t fret. It’ll be fun.”
“That’s not making me feel a whole lot better, Teela. I know what your definition of fun is.”
* * *
Severn was waiting for Kaylin in the office when she at last reached her desk; she knew this because he was sitting in her chair. He looked up when she tapped his shoulder.
“Bad news?” he asked as he moved to let her sit. He reached into the pack at his feet and pulled out the bracer that prevented her from using magic. She’d thrown it over her shoulder on the run, because she knew it would return to Severn. It always did. “Midwives?”
She took the bracer, slid it over her wrist, and closed it. “Two in the morning.”
“And I heard that I should offer congratulations on the candle.”
The triumph of a lit candle had evaporated. She sat and folded her arms across her desk in a type of lean that implied her spine was melting. “They took Nightshade up on his offer,” she said, speaking to the wood grain and the interior of her elbows.
“Did you expect them to do anything else?”
“…No.”
“Then?”
“…I’ll be absent for eight weeks. Teela thinks it’ll actually be longer.” She lifted her head and turned to look at Severn. “You’re not coming, either.”
He shrugged; it was a fief shrug, and it was a tense one.
“So you’ll be out patrolling with some other Hawk, not me, and gods know if they won’t decide that you’re more effective working with someone else. Marcus might give my beat away.”
“Marcus won’t—”
“And the midwives won’t be able to call me. They’ve had four emergencies in the last two weeks. If those had been part of the eight, at least four people would have died.”
“At least?”
“I think they could have saved two of the babies.”
“But Nightshade’s information may well cra
ck the Exchequer case.”
“May well? It had better tie it up in expensive cloth with bows on top.” She lowered her chin to the desk again. “But putting the Exchequer in prison—or under the ground—wouldn’t save the lives of those mothers. I’m hard put to see which lives it would save. Besides the Hawks.”
Severn tactfully steered the topic away from her visions of mortality. “Teela’s going with you?”
“Yeah. She’s a Lord of the Barrani Court, and apparently whatever this jaunt to the West March is about, it’s ceremonial. She’s got an invitation to go.”
“Well, keep an eye on her.”
Kaylin almost laughed. “Me and what army? You know Teela.”
Severn didn’t have a chance to answer. Bellusdeo appeared at his elbow. “They’ve finally let me out,” she said in accented but reasonable Elantran. She frowned. “You don’t look very happy. The magic lesson didn’t go well?”
“No, the lesson went very well.”
“This is how you react to a good lesson?”
Kaylin snorted but pushed herself off her desk and out of the chair. “No. It’s how I react to bad news.”
When Bellusdeo’s brows rose, Kaylin could almost hear them snap. “What bad news?” she asked in almost entirely the wrong tone of voice.
“The Barrani have some sort of ceremony out in the West March, and I’m obliged to attend it.”
“Why? You’re not Barrani.”
Kaylin’s mouth stopped flapping as her brain caught up with it. She glanced at Severn for help, but he had nothing to offer. “I can’t really talk about it,” she finally said. “Not without having my throat ripped out.”
Bellusdeo, however, knew that this wasn’t literal. It had taken her a couple of days to figure that out, because Marcus was still his usual suspicious and unfriendly self when dealing with Dragons. “I almost think I will apply for a job in the Halls,” she said, her voice cool. “I’ve heard that the Hawks are very multiracial, and they’ve even had a Dragon as a member before.”
“Marcus would be your boss,” Kaylin replied quickly.
“Yes. I’ll admit that is a deterrent. Are you ready to go home?”
Kaylin had been ready to go home an hour ago, which would have been during the meeting with the Hawklord, Sanabalis, and Marcus. She nodded, looking out the window, which was silent for the moment. “We have time to grab something to eat—and get changed—before we head to the palace and the charming Lord Diarmat for tonight’s personal torture session.”
* * *
The streets wouldn’t be empty for hours yet, but they weren’t quite as crowded as they had been on the way in, and Kaylin couldn’t be late, in a career-detrimental way, to enter her own apartment. She could, however, miss the few remaining farmers in the market, so she hurried to that destination, Bellusdeo in tow. Bellusdeo had a few questions about food acquisition, but in the main, the worst of them had been answered on their first foray into the market, much to Kaylin’s frustration and the bemusement of the farmers.
It was helpful to have Bellusdeo here, on the other hand, because the baskets in which food was generally carried home were still in said home. They made their way back to the apartment; by this point, Bellusdeo had no difficulty finding it.
The Dragon practiced her Elantran in the market, and she practiced it in the street. Kaylin tried—very hard—to elide all swearing from her commentary and her answers to Bellusdeo’s questions, and only in part because it was slightly embarrassing to have to explain what the rude words meant.
But she was hungry and slightly discouraged as she made her way to the apartment, her thoughts mostly on the midwives, Tiamaris, and the total lack of privacy one room afforded.
She unlocked the door, entered her room, and made a beeline for the mirror; when it showed a total lack of calls, she relaxed. She let her hair down, literally, and tried to put the stick where she could easily find it in the morning. She then went to the kitchen for a couple of plates. There was still water that was potable, and the food she’d bought for the evening didn’t require anything as complicated as cooking.
Bellusdeo took a seat on the bed, which was fair; the chair was a clothing repository at the moment, and Kaylin wasn’t so exhausted that she needed to fall over and sleep. The bed, however, creaked ominously as it received Dragon weight, and while it hadn’t yet collapsed beneath Bellusdeo, the sound reminded Kaylin of the unhatched egg that now resided beneath her. She quickly shoved the remainder of a hard, smooth cheese into her mouth and tried not to look as if she was diving in a panic for the box that contained the egg.
Bellusdeo snorted. Kaylin had the grace to look a little embarrassed as she unwound the various bits and pieces of cloth that served as poor insulation for the egg during her absence.
The egg was a pale shade of purple in her hands.
“It wasn’t that color earlier,” Bellusdeo observed, leaning back on her hands and stretching.
“No, it wasn’t. Tomorrow, if it hasn’t hatched, I’m going to bring it with me to the office.”
“Oh, your Sergeant will love that, I’m certain.” She frowned and looked up at the shutters of the window as they popped open.
Kaylin, still holding the egg, winced and rose. “Sorry about that,” she said, because the shutter had narrowly avoided the back of Bellusdeo’s head. “They’re warped. I keep meaning to see about getting them replaced—”
“When you say ‘replaced,’ do you mean you intend to build new ones?”
“Hells, no. I couldn’t make new shutters that would be half as good as these, and these are no good. Let me tie them together.”
Bellusdeo, however, was looking at something in her lap. She rose, her expression freezing solid. It wasn’t her expression that was the problem: it was the color of her eyes. They’d shifted from lazy gold to a deep, deep red without stopping for anything else in between. “Kaylin,” she said, moving toward her and toward the door, as well. “The shutters—”
But Kaylin didn’t need to hear more, because something flew in through the open window.
Chapter 2
Kaylin’s first instinct was to ram the shutters shut, but she was carrying the egg, and she’d have to set it down—or drop it. “Get down, Bellusdeo.” Her voice was sharp, harsh.
Bellusdeo caught Kaylin by the shoulders and dragged her from the window as Kaylin ducked out of any line of sight that wasn’t at a severe angle and tried to see where the crossbow bolt had landed. She didn’t find it.
“Kaylin, we have to leave.”
“If there’s more than one assassin,” Kaylin countered, “running out the door in a panic is playing into their hands.” She grabbed for the egg’s carton as a second bolt flew through the open window.
Except it wasn’t a bolt. Kaylin felt the hair on her neck instantly stand at attention, which was bad; the marks on her body began to burn, which was worse. She couldn’t see what she’d clearly heard land on the floor of her apartment, but she didn’t need to see it to know—suddenly and completely—what it was. Her eyes widened.
“Gods—Bellusdeo—it’s an Arcane bomb—”
The room exploded.
* * *
Wood flew out in a wide circle: shutters, parts of the wall, wooden floor slats, and the soft wood that formed their base. Her mattress sent feathers into the air, and the feathers were caught in a blue, blue sizzle, becoming a miniature lightning storm. There was so damn much magic in the room, Kaylin’s entire body was screaming in pain on the way to total numbness.
Which was better than being dead.
Bellusdeo had her arms around Kaylin and her back toward the window; her body was pressed against the egg that Kaylin still held between almost nerveless palms. The world expanded around them; shards of mirror flew past Kaylin’s cheek and lodged in the Dragon’s hair. The floor beneath their feet cracked and gave; the joists above their heads did the same, bending up toward someone else’s floor. Wind whipped whatever wasn’t nailed down thr
ough the air—which would, in this apartment, be everything.
Everything except the two women who stood at what had once been its center. Kaylin could see a sphere surrounding them; it was a soft, pale gold, like the color of a living word—but there were no words to shed it.
“Are you all right?” she shouted.
Bellusdeo nodded. Her eyes were still bloodred, and her hands were like bruising pincers.
“I didn’t know you were so powerful—”
Bellusdeo’s brows rose into her very disheveled hair. “I’m not. This isn’t me.”
“It’s not me, either.” Kaylin looked at the bracer on her wrist; its gems’ lights were flashing so quickly they looked like chaos embedded in gold. Somewhere above, below, and to the right, people began to shout and scream as Kaylin looked at her hands.
For once, Kaylin was barely aware of the civilians.
The egg’s shell had cracked, and bits of it were flying in the unnatural wind the Arcane bomb had caused. It didn’t matter. What was in—what had been surrounded by—that shell stared up at her. It was small and pale; it was also, like slightly smoky glass, translucent. Everything except its eyes. Its eyes were disturbing; they had no irises, no pupils, no whites. They would have been gray or silver, except for the constant, moving flecks of color that seemed to all but swim across their surface. Like opals, she thought.
Or, remembering the effects of the Shadow that had destroyed the watchtowers in the fief formerly known as Barren, like malignant storms.
Bellusdeo looked down, as well. She tried to move out of the way, but since she didn’t actually let go of Kaylin’s shoulders, it was awkward. Dragons weren’t known for their flexibility. She hissed, a wordless sibilant. “Kaylin, your arm.”
“The bracer does that some of the time. Ignore it.”
“I wasn’t talking about your bracer. Your—your marks, Chosen.”
Kaylin frowned. She couldn’t take her eyes off the small creature—and only in part because she didn’t want to. It had the form and shape of something reptilian, but not the actual scales. A long neck, a long tail, and a delicate head with a tapered jaw, the beast now sat in her palms.
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