The marks were different; the writing was slightly thicker, the swirls almost smudged. “It’s—it’s changed.”
“Yes,” he said, without looking at her. “It’s changed.”
And she knew that he’d both expected it, and feared it. “Severn—”
“It was all for nothing,” he said bitterly, and he turned, then, shoving the chair to one side, his gaze intent, almost wild.
“All for—” She stood. “I don’t—I have to go.”
He said nothing at all as she grabbed her boots and fled; she was three houses down the street before she stopped to put them on.
CHAPTER 9
“Kaylin?”
“Morning, Marcus.”
“Yes. It is. Morning,” he added, his eyes narrowing. “Are you certain you’re Kaylin Neya?”
“Ha ha.”
“Well, you’ve got the right sense of humor.”
Meaning, of course, none. She glared at him balefully.
“You did sleep last night, right?”
She said nothing, choosing to let the dark circles under her eyes speak for themselves. They were a perpetual adornment, and this morning, she’d actually owned the mirror for long enough to see them clearly. Made her miss the wake-up calls, and almost nothing did that.
Caitlin, looking interminably cheerful, breezed by with a quick stop for a good-morning hug. She seldom hugged anyone, but she never missed hugging Kaylin. Caitlin might be a paper-pusher, but she somehow managed to keep Marcus in line—or what passed for it—in most situations; she didn’t much like his temper, but then again, no one in the office did. She was older than she looked, and she’d been on duty, as Marcus’s aide, the day Kaylin had been introduced to the Hawks. Kaylin thought of her as birdlike, and it was true; she’d taken Kaylin under her wing, adopting her. She’d showed Kaylin how to navigate the mass of paperwork that often landed on Marcus’s desk—because Marcus wasn’t going to get to it anytime soon—and made her feel at home.
Or rather, made her feel as if she had one.
Caitlin had found her her apartment. Caitlin had argued the rent down to something that was “only outrageous.” But Caitlin didn’t hover during any of Kaylin’s conversations with Marcus. She was smart.
And she was gone, with just a momentary cluck to indicate that she, too, noticed a substantial lack of sleep. One day if she was lucky, Marcus was going to hire someone thick. The mirror began its sonorous whine.
“Don’t answer that,” Marcus said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Severn booked off.”
“Good.”
“Kaylin—”
“It’s none of your business, Marcus.”
Leontine fur rose.
Kaylin shrunk. Exposed her throat in a perfunctory way. Marcus growled.
“I have to see the Hawklord,” she told him, as his claws brushed her skin. They stopped.
“What happened?” His voice dropped. Not an octave; Leontine voices weren’t that musical. But it did deepen, which was never a good sign.
“The marks,” she said quietly. “They’ve changed.”
He cursed in Leontine, but he kept it short. “Tiamaris is already in the Tower,” he told her, as he shoved her in the direction of the doors.
“Figures.”
Lord Grammayre was also in the Tower, which was less of a surprise. Kaylin entered, and the doors swung shut behind her. She bowed, rose and offered the Hawklord a passable salute—which is to say, passable because there was no one to be offended by its lack of precision—and took a deep breath.
Tiamaris frowned. “Kaylin,” he said, nodding almost formally. “I wasn’t expecting to see you this early—”
“—in the morning. Join the queue.”
“Kaylin,” the Hawklord said, his frown more severe.
She nodded and muttered a brief apology, which Tiamaris failed to notice. Maybe the Dragon wasn’t so bad after all.
“Are you here for the Records?” the Hawklord asked. The frown hadn’t shifted; it deepened. Luckily this one wasn’t entirely her fault.
“Marcus spoke to you?”
“At length. For Marcus,” he added.
“I’m here for the Records. Sort of.” She turned to the mirror. “Records,” she said firmly. And then, after a pause, “Subject—Kaylin Neya.” The mirror here was, of necessity, smaller than the mirror in the examination room had been; the images that began to coalesce were bounded by a long oval. She had to reorient her vision; it was either that or turn the mirror sideways, and she had a good idea of how popular that would make her.
The Hawklord came to stand by her side. “Kaylin?”
She shook her head and undid her buttoned cuffs, pushing them up to her elbows. Exposed, the marks looked less threatening than they had the previous evening, but not by much. She held them out before the mirror’s image, and waited.
“They’ve changed,” Tiamaris said quietly. If he was surprised, she didn’t hear it in his voice. “Is this the first time they’ve changed since your arrival?”
“In the Halls of Law?”
He nodded.
So did she.
“And we have no earlier records of them?”
“We have some,” she said, trying to keep the resentment out of her voice.
“The Tha’alani,” the Hawklord said, by way of explanation.
“May I?” Tiamaris asked her. He did not look at the Hawklord, and she had the feeling that if she said no, he would leave the Records alone. She was surprised at how grateful she felt, and she gave him willingly what she would have resented otherwise: her permission.
He was better at mirrors than she was, no question; he didn’t even speak. Instead, he touched the silvered surface—something the Hawklord had promised to break her fingers for if she ever did the first time he’d let her practice mirror skills here.
Images rushed past—solid, clear images, not the hazy things that Kaylin often invoked. She watched in fascination as he dredged them up from Record bowels, slotting them into the meagre space until he had five different sequences, all of her arms.
“This would be the first time you noticed the marks?” He asked her, pointing to one of them.
Spider-thin, like webs, ash-gray. “Yes,” she said, although she herself could no longer remember what they had looked like.
“And this would be seven years ago?”
“Give or take six months.”
He nodded again. But instead of fear or resentment, she felt curiosity, and she let it guide her. The marks, the earliest ones, had changed over the course of—
She swallowed. Too much to think about, here.
“They did change,” he said softly. “With the earlier killings.” He didn’t sound surprised. In fact, she suspected that he had already studied them. She didn’t ask when; she owed him. He stared at the surface of the mirror, and the writing became larger in each of the images he had chosen. He’d picked one set of marks to focus on. She could see that they had darkened—that took no study.
But she could also see that some part of the swirling pattern had shifted.
“I…guess so.”
“When did you first use your powers?”
She looked at the Hawklord for the first time.
“He is aware of them,” the Hawklord replied evenly. “The mages were not. What were you—”
“Thinking?”
“I hesitate to use the word.”
She was silent for a full minute, and then she said, “I was thinking that the mages might be more useful if they had more information.”
The Dragon and the Aerian exchanged a glance.
“I want it stopped,” she added bitterly. Her hands started to shake, and she let the sleeves fall. “I don’t want to go back to that room again. I don’t want anyone to be brought there. Not for this. Not because of these.”
“And exposing yourself would accomplish this how?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. You’
ve always said I don’t appreciate mages—it’s true, I don’t—but I don’t always know how the little bits and pieces of information I gather on a case are going to fit together, either.”
“Admirable,” the Hawklord said, as if it were anything but. “But in this case, misguided. Yes, it may give them insight—but the cost for that insight would be too high. You will not take that risk again.”
“Yes, sir.” She hesitated; Tiamaris was still studying the different marks, as if he hoped to force meaning out of them. She let him. “Did the mages do anything useful?”
“That’s the Kaylin I know,” the Hawklord replied dryly. “Callantine took some of the skin with him. He retreated with his coterie.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I believe it is his intent to visit the oracles.”
“Oracles?”
“Before you indulge in pointless contempt, may I repeat your own words? Information comes from unexpected sources.”
“I certainly wouldn’t expect anything useful out of oracles,” she said, not bothering to hide her scorn.
The Hawklord chose to ignore it. “There have been three deaths in the fiefs, and in shorter span than any previous deaths of this nature. If the mages are ignorant of the reasons, they are well aware that three is not the desired number; they know that more will fall. The mages are not certain of anything in this investigation, except for the presence of magic. They are aware that the markings are linguistic. They are not aware of what those marks mean.”
Tiamaris looked up. “Grammayre,” he said. Kaylin thought he was unaware of the dropping of the honorific, and the Hawklord didn’t seem to notice its absence either. Not something Kaylin could get away with. Not, in fact, something any of the Hawks could. What was Tiamaris, to the Hawklord?
“Tiamaris?”
“Look.” The mirror had shifted. When, Kaylin wasn’t certain. “These are the marks on the boy’s arms. And this, this and this—the marks on different victims. They are, as you know, the same.”
The Hawklord nodded.
“These are Kaylin’s arms, as they first appeared. These are her arms now. Can you see the pattern emerging?”
The Hawklord didn’t frown; his face didn’t change at all.
Kaylin looked at Tiamaris. And then she looked at her arms. “They’re changing,” she said softly. “Into what was written on them. On the dead.”
“Yes,” Tiamaris said quietly. “That is my guess.”
It was more than a guess; given the visual cues, she could see it clearly herself. She had been afraid of dying, once. It was a better fear. “You don’t think when they change, if they do change completely, that it’s going to kill me.”
“No, Kaylin,” he said softly. “Not you.”
“What do you think it will do?”
His utter silence was not a comfort.
“Tiamaris?”
“I don’t know,” he said at last. And he wasn’t telling the truth.
She called him on it. “You’re lying.”
And took a mental note as his eyes went straight from a flat gold to a bitter, bright red: Don’t ever call a Dragon a liar.
The Hawklord stepped between them. He did not touch Kaylin, and he certainly didn’t raise a hand against Tiamaris, but his presence had a calming effect. Sort of. “She was raised in the fiefs. She has little understanding of the Courts, and as you’ve chosen to study here, you must expect this.”
Tiamaris nodded grimly. “I was not lying,” he told her, in a voice that would have frozen the entire Ablayne in an instant. “I do not know what will happen.”
“You have suspicions.”
“If you have half a thought to spare,” he replied, “so do you. You’ve seen the seal in the Long Halls of Nightshade—you’ve seen the writings of the Old Ones. You know that this is an old magic.” The red left his eyes; they were now a burnt orange, and receding into their usual gold. “But it is true, Grammayre, I forget myself. Kaylin, I told you—mages died in the study of marks like these. They were on stone walls, stone tablets, golden spheres. Not a single such mark has been found upon anything living save you.
“But the writing on your arms when it first appeared is substantially different from the writing that was placed upon the sacrificial victims. And given the nature of their deaths, and the significance of the writing, there is only one conclusion that can be drawn.”
“I’m a danger.”
“Yes.” Before she could speak, he raised a hand. “The gift that you have shown—the healing—is not a dark art. It is a rare one, and the fact that you evince it at all, given your deplorable lack of education, makes you unique. It also,” he added softly, “must make the task the killers have undertaken somewhat more difficult. If I had to guess, from my scant knowledge, I would say that the early writing speaks, in some way, to your impulse to heal. The writings upon the sacrifices speak to death, and only death. Here,” he said, images shifting, “is the earliest image we have of the symbols on your arms. Do you see this sigil?” It was a circle, a small circle, simple and adorned with something that might have been stylized leaves. “I believe this is a token. It means not death, but a natural end, a natural beginning.
“This,” he said, quietly, as he shifted his focus to the arm of a faceless dead corpse, “is death. It is a circle that is divided, and it loses the sense of nature. To change these in writing is simple. But there is more than writing here. I believe they attempt to change some essential part of the nature of the magic. Were you a different person—”
“She would never have left the Tower alive,” the Hawklord said quietly.
“Would that have been better?” Kaylin asked softly.
“It is a question you must answer,” the Hawklord replied. He was grim now. Cold. “But it is not just for yourself that the answer will be offered. My judgment hangs in the balance as well.”
She swallowed. “Tiamaris,” she said softly, “will you stay?”
He raised a brow.
“While I…study the Records. Of the previous deaths.”
“Ah. Yes, Kaylin. I will stay. I have much desired the opportunity to question you, and it has long been denied me.”
“When did you ask?”
“It is not relevant,” the Hawklord replied, lifting a hand. “Tiamaris.”
“Lord Grammayre.”
Hours passed in the tower room. The shadows lessened as the sun reached the center of the domed ceiling; Kaylin hardly marked the passage of time. Her neck was stiff; she had to pace to keep her legs steady. Tiamaris worked the mirror; he had offered it to her, and she had done nothing—her way of declining.
The first hour had gone by in silence. Silence had never been her strength. She might have hated people who felt the need to cram a lot of words into a silence just to fill it, but she was honest enough to know that she hovered on the edge of being one of them. Silences were barbed in unexpected ways; with words, you generally knew where the traps were.
But there were some times when words were so inadequate it was almost obscene to use them. She hovered between the two impulses, and spoke only partway through the second hour. “How many?”
He could have pretended not to understand her, but he had some pity; although he was crisp and intent, her color had faded to something between gray and green.
“Thirty-eight.”
“Right. I knew that.” But she hadn’t. She’d known the number. She’d understood it, the way she understood most numbers. She’d never wanted to get closer to it than that. And this? Even though her hands weren’t actually on the bodies, they might as well have been. The Records had far less sympathy than the Dragon did; they were clear, crisp, concise; they captured everything.
And what they didn’t, she could fill in: the smell. The temperature of the skin.
“All of the deaths took place in Nightshade.”
Tiamaris nodded.
“Can you—can the Records map them for me?”
“There is n
o obvious pattern—”
“Can you just get me a map?”
He nodded. But as he lifted a hand, as he turned to face the mirror fully, he asked the first intrusive question. “Kaylin, do you know all of their names for a reason?”
She hadn’t spoken the names out loud. And she didn’t much mind being called a liar; she almost said no. But it wouldn’t help. The truth might lead to answers she didn’t already have. But it was too much, for the moment; she changed the subject instead. “When I was younger—when they were happening—I thought it was happening everywhere. We didn’t read much. We couldn’t. We didn’t have a sense of what was going on outside of our fief. We thought there were hundreds of deaths.
“We thought the outer city didn’t care.”
“And now?”
“Didn’t matter how much you cared, did it?” She said bitterly. Then she stopped. “It does. Matter. It just didn’t make a difference.”
“And if it didn’t make a difference then,” Tiamaris said, his back still toward her, “you can’t see how it’s going to make a difference now.”
She nodded.
“You’re here.”
“I meant a good difference.” The mirror shifted suddenly, as if it had taken time to gather and sort the information she’d requested, and then spit it out all at once. Tiamaris said something about small mirrors under his breath; she would have laughed at any other time. But in this one, she watched Nightshade unfold. It wasn’t a map in the traditional sense of the word, it was an aerial capture of the actual buildings and streets. There were no obvious signs, but the mirror provided small words that ran along the street lengths in a bright, glowing gold. “That one’s wrong,” she said, without thinking.
“Which one?”
“That street name. That’s not what it’s called.”
“That’s what it’s officially called.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Keep in mind,” Tiamaris said, as small red points began to flash across those “official” streets, “that these lights indicate where the bodies were discovered. They don’t indicate where they were killed.”
She nodded. “Are they coming up in the…right order?”
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