Cast in Shadow

by Michelle Sagara

  “But?”

  “He cut the leader. He kicked. The leader drew back, and had no one else been out, it would have gone badly. But someone else was out—the man who had been hunting Jade. They ate that someone else instead.

  “Jade wouldn’t talk about it. We didn’t press her. We caught her by the arms and we ran. The man was stupid. Maybe he was drunk. He screamed a lot, and it drew the rest of the feral pack. We made it back home to Steffi. She was just waiting for us, all white. She’d been watching from the window. She’d ignored every word Severn had told her. I would have, too.

  “This time, when I asked Severn if we could keep this child until we found someplace else for her, he didn’t argue. He said, ‘only until we can find her a place.’ But he knew what that meant. Steffi knew it, too. She took Jade by the hand, and asked her name. Jade answered.” She shuddered. “I was nine,” she told the Hawklord. “I had a stick. I called it a club. Severn had two, and a dagger. He’d been trying to teach me how to use them, and I’d been trying real hard not to learn.

  “But after that night, I learned. Jade was bleeding from the shoulder to the wrist, but she was…she wasn’t screaming. She was almost smiling. Steffi asked her who the man was—Steffi wasn’t even with us, but she’d seen it all from the small window—and Severn told Steffi to shut up. He never asked Jade. And because he didn’t, I didn’t.

  “But Jade never hated the ferals the way the rest of us did.”

  “Jade was seven?”

  “Seven and a bit. Her mother was dead, she said. Severn didn’t believe her.”

  “He said as much?”

  “No. But I knew Severn. He let her lie. Steffi was sort of happy to have Jade at home, because it meant that Steffi wasn’t the baby anymore.” In spite of herself, Kaylin smiled at that memory. “Jade was furious being called a baby, but hers was a sullen fury, and it was hard to hate Steffi for long.

  “We made it through that winter. Steffi and Jade slept together. I slept with them sometimes, and sometimes with Severn. It wasn’t—” she reddened. “We were kids,” she said at last. “He never touched me. Not like that. But it was crowded, we couldn’t take a step without hitting each other. Severn talked about finding us a bigger place. Things were going well, sort of. Steffi was a better thief than I was. Everyone liked her instantly. It’s easy to steal things from people when you’ve already charmed their socks off.

  “But we didn’t find a bigger place. None of us could read. None of us could write. Severn was fit for work, but not the type of work we wanted. It would have kept him away for too long, and it would have meant working for the fieflord. That’s not a job with a long life expectancy in the wrong areas of the fief. Too many people with too much to prove, and the fieflord isn’t without his challengers.”

  The Hawklord nodded quietly.

  Kaylin continued to talk; she couldn’t have stopped had he ordered it—not without magical bindings to enforce the order. And she spoke nonsense, because now that she’d finally started, she wanted to tell him something that would make her children as real to him as they had been to her.

  “Jade could sing. She used to sing for us, sometimes. We’d join in, but really, it was her voice that was special. She knew a lot of songs. I don’t know from where. She was never as friendly with strangers as Steffi was—she was always too self-conscious about her scars. But she trusted us, in the end, and her song was one of the few things she thought she could offer us, because I certainly couldn’t. I loved the sound of her voice.” Kaylin’s stopped for a moment. “I can’t do this.”

  Lord Grammayre waited. He had always known when to wait.

  “You don’t want me as a Hawk,” she told him quietly.

  “It’s not the first time you’ve said that.”

  “It’s as true now as it was then.”

  “What did I tell you, then?”

  “That you made your own decisions,” she replied, wooden.

  “That hasn’t changed.”

  “Don’t you regret it?” she asked him softly, staring at her hands.

  He didn’t answer.

  “When I was ten,” she said, when she couldn’t stand the silence for another second, “everything changed.” She lifted her arms. Beneath the buttoned shirt, the tattoos were alive; she could almost feel them crawling across her skin. “It was winter again. Sometimes I think the whole of my life in the fiefs was lived in winter.

  “The marks appeared. We were listening to Jade sing. I was waiting to tell a story. I told them stories, and they were patient enough to pretend they were interested. Severn was leaning against the wall by the door. We didn’t have bolts,” she added, “and in the winter, people could get pretty desperate.”

  “But Steffi suddenly pointed at my arms. I think she may have shrieked. Steffi wasn’t a screamer. Didn’t matter—Severn was off the wall as if it were suddenly on fire. He was across the room by the time I figured out what Steffi was pointing at.

  “He held my wrist as the marks began to write themselves across my skin. He watched them. We all did. It was scary,” she added softly, remembering. The way they had huddled together in a room that was warm because it was small and it held so many of them. The way Jade had come to her side, had put a skeletal arm around her, as if the marks were scars. As if it made them more alike.

  “But it stopped at the elbow. I didn’t notice the marks on my legs for another day, and I didn’t tell the kids. I told Severn. I was old enough by then to be a little self-conscious, but not much. He was Severn.

  “We waited. We waited for three days for something else to happen. Steffi thought it was the plague. Severn told her she was an idiot. Oh, there were a lot of tears, then.

  “But it was two weeks before we got what seemed like an answer, and it was a grim, terrible answer.”

  “The first of the victims,” the Hawklord said.

  She nodded. “A boy,” she added quietly. “My age. Benito. I knew him. He was the son of one of the two grocers that would actually let us near his stall. The grocer had seven children, and he knew what hunger did to the young. He knew that we would steal anything we could when his back was turned—and he did. Turn his back, I mean. He turned it just often enough. We paid him whenever we could,” she added. “And it was from his brother that we heard the news.

  “His brother was really shaken. He talked about the marks. He talked about the death. He told us to be careful. He didn’t know about the marks on my arms,” she added, “because Severn made me cover them up. Even then.

  “Jade was terrified for me. Severn said nothing. But after that day, he never let me out of sight. We waited, just waited. And a month later—another death. That was Tina,” she added bitterly. “She lived at the farthest reach of the fief. Before my mother died, we would sometimes play together.

  “The deaths happened once a month. And every time one happened, we were frightened and relieved. Frightened, because a madmn was running free in the fief—not even the fieflord was able to catch him, and by that time, the fieflord had been informed. I hadn’t met him, then. I never wanted to. But we were relieved because it wasn’t me.

  “Your power?”

  “I was getting to that.” But she wasn’t; she was cataloguing every death. Giving it a name. And she would have done so until the hours had dwindled into night, and from night, into morning. He stopped her. “It was maybe six months after the marks appeared. A small boy had been thrown off the back of a cart, and he was lying in the road. He was bleeding. I thought he would die. I made it to him first, and I picked him up—Severn told me not to but I couldn’t help myself.

  “He was shaking, and he was cold—he was barely awake. But I felt the cold, in him, and I felt other things, broken things, things that were somehow wrong. I couldn’t tell you what they were—not then. But I could mend them. I knew it.

  “And I did. I helped the boy to his feet as his father got control of the cart and came running back. I didn’t tell his father what I’d do
ne. Severn was holding my arm, and he shook his head. I always listened to Severn,” she added bitterly. “The man took his son, thanked his god, and thanked us for trying to help. He tossed us a couple of coins. We didn’t have a lot of pride. We took ’em and thanked him.

  “But when we got home, Severn questioned me, and I answered him. He told me—he made me promise—that I would never tell anyone else. I asked him why—I was so naive then—and he told me that if I did, someone would come to take me away, and he’d never see me again. I hated that thought, and when he explained that if I could heal a stranger, I could heal someone powerful, I understood why he had made me promise, and I never spoke of it. But I did use the gift, and he let me.

  “I used to think that I could find the children. The ones who were killed. I used to daydream that I could find them in time, and I could heal them all. I thought they were all like me, somehow—that they were healers, and that someone wanted to kill them all, rather than leave their gift in the fiefs.”

  “You were wrong.”

  She nodded quietly. “But the marks changed. I didn’t notice it, then. Severn must have. I can see this now, but then? It was just Severn, and he had always been my protector. He didn’t tell us when a new death had occurred, if we weren’t together when he found out about it. He didn’t tell us where. Sometimes we didn’t find out at all. I had no idea that the deaths were happening only in Nightshade. I think Severn must have.” She shook her head. “I got better at clubs and daggers. I got better at defending myself. Severn was larger, and faster, than any of us, but he pushed me, and I improved. I didn’t want to teach Steffi and Jade. I wanted to protect them. I guess I wanted them to be children for as long as they could. It’s not long, in the fiefs. They were mine,” she added, “and I was Severn’s.

  “But when almost three years had passed, and the deaths hadn’t stopped, Severn left us alone one night. He made me stand in his spot by the door, and he promised he’d be back—but he wouldn’t tell me where he was going.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “He came back almost a day later. The waiting was bad,” she added. “We knew the fiefs. We knew it was night. We knew he might never come back at all. But I wasn’t five anymore, and I had Steffi and Jade to think about. We could steal enough between the three of us to keep the room if we had to, and we could scrounge enough food so we wouldn’t starve. We’d never done it without Severn, and if I hadn’t had the two girls, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have panicked. But I did have them.

  “When he came back, I was happy—for about five minutes. But everything about him was wrong. He was—he was hurt, somehow. He was frightened. I’d never seen him frightened before, not like that.” She closed her eyes. “I was thirteen,” she said softly. “I trusted him.”

  “He watched me like a—like a Hawk. He asked questions, about the marks on my arms. They were just a part of me, by that point. No one had killed me yet. I answered him. That was all.”

  “But three days before the long night, he sent me out foraging for food. He gave me money, so I wouldn’t have to steal single—he never trusted that. I went shopping. I suspected nothing. Nothing.

  “And when I came home to the room…” She was shaking now, eyes closed. She couldn’t find words. And she couldn’t leave them alone. Struggling, she said, “The blood.” It was soft, a whisper of sound. “The room was covered in blood. It was everywhere. And Severn was there, part of it, covered in it. His hands were still wet.”

  Her eyes were dry. “Steffi and Jade were dead. I don’t know if they fought him. I don’t know if he slit their throats in their sleep, or if—” her throat closed.

  “I saw him. I saw him, and I knew. I screamed. I screamed at him. I—”

  “You ran.”

  “I had to run,” she said quietly, the intensity of the words a quality more than a sound. “I knew I couldn’t kill him. I knew I had to.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I went. I never looked back. I didn’t even bury them—” her arms were locked, rigid, beneath her breasts; her body was weighted toward ground. She could taste blood in her mouth; could feel it in her cheeks. Her eyes were dry. She wanted them to be dry.

  “He killed them,” she said softly. “I saw it. He didn’t even try to deny it.”

  “Why, Kaylin? Why did he kill them?”

  “I don’t know!”

  The Hawklord said nothing for a long moment, and then he crossed the stone floor and knelt in front of her. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t try.

  “I came here, in the end,” she continued.

  “Six months after you left.”

  She nodded. “Please don’t ask me where I was.”

  “I won’t. I can guess, and it’s not relevant. Records, end,” he added, as if it were an afterthought.

  “Do you understand?” she cried. She looked up, forcing her eyes to open. “Do you understand why I had to try? He came to the foundling halls. He came to my children. I can’t let him—ever—” Her fist slammed stone, slammed gold inlay. “They were my children,” she shouted. “They were mine. And they trusted us both. I failed them. He killed them.”

  His arms enfolded her, then; she might have shoved them away, but his wings followed, covering her and hiding her from the sight of the sky.

  He did not let her leave the Tower for another hour, and it was spent in silence, in the peculiar warmth of the harbor his wings granted the wingless.

  “I’m on report?” she asked him, when he at last withdrew.

  He met her eyes, his the pale gray of Aerian thought. She didn’t know what color hers were; human eyes didn’t change to reflect what was captured beneath the closed lines of composed expression. Not that hers was composed. But he gave her the time to do it.

  “I cannot judge you,” he said quietly. “And if I were given only your words as guide, I could do little else but judge Severn. I make no excuse for him, Kaylin.”

  “There isn’t one!”

  “No,” the Hawklord agreed gravely. “None. But at times, from the remove of age, if there is nothing that excuses, there is often something that explains.”

  “You won’t see him killed.”

  “Not by you.” The Hawklord’s face was shuttered. “You’ve killed before,” he added, before she could take offense at his protectiveness, his desire to shelter her. And she would have—but only as a blind. A screen.

  “I—”

  “But except for that one time, it was always in self-defense. It was always in a clean fight.”

  She flinched, thinking that he would speak of the time she had lost control of her power—and had discovered what that loss could mean.

  But instead, he said, “You’ve always been fond of children.” He knew. He dismissed it. “This is different. The fight is internal, and it is not a fight that anyone but you can finish.”

  She grimaced. “And not by killing Severn.”

  “Do you honestly think that would bring you peace or closure?”

  She nodded sharply.

  “Then you are still young.”

  “Can he just get away with this?”

  “The fiefs are not the demesnes of the Lords of Law,” the Hawklord replied.

  “That’s only practice. In theory—”

  “In practice,” he continued quietly, “the fiefdoms have been ceded to their fieflords. Even if I desired his death, in this, I would have to defer to the Wolf Lord.”

  “Then talk to him—”

  “And I will remind you that Severn was a Shadow Wolf. The Wolf Lord knows what he is capable of, or he would never have inducted Severn into the ranks of the Shadows. Not all crimes are forgiven when one chooses to serve the Lords of Law—but those crimes committed in foreign territories are not considered crimes for the purpose of our evaluations.” He took a breath, held it and then settled his wings. “Severn will be here within the quarter hour, Kaylin.”

  “Here? Why?”

  “You
are not the only person to face suspension. Although the truth in this case is somewhat stretched, it does take two to fight.”

  “Then ask him why,” she said bitterly. “Ask him. I hope you get an answer.”

  “And you will not ask him?”

  She shook her head. “Not in this lifetime.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t care.”

  His eyes narrowed. He didn’t argue, however. “You are on report,” he told her quietly. “See Marcus. If you can convince the Sergeant that your actions in no way materially harmed the Hawks, he may even agree to partial pay while your case is reviewed.”

  Marcus was waiting for her. Severn was not. She had no idea how he intended to climb the Tower stairs, but he intended to do it unseen. As her hands were already gripping the pommels of her dagger in a movement as old as her memory, this was a decidedly Good Thing.

  But Marcus growled when he saw her, and she noticed that not even Caitlin had remained in the office. She wondered idly if every department that served the other Lords emptied this way, but doubted it; no one else had a Leontine at its center.

  His claws were extended. “Private,” he said curtly, the growl extending the r in the first syllable.

  “Sergeant.”

  “The Hawklord took his time. I see he was considerate enough to leave something for me.”

  She shrunk. She was tired; bone weary. She’d been cut, although she didn’t remember when; when the fury was on her, pain didn’t make much of an impression unless it was damaging enough to slow her down.

  She expected questions; he had the right to ask them. She expected anger, and had already lifted her throat in reply. But his eyes were small and warm.

  Without preamble, he said, “You’re on report.”

  She nodded.

  “You might never make it off report.”

  And nodded again. She’d already lived through the loss of one family, and if she desperately wanted to avoid losing the second, she knew that she’d made her choice in the foundling halls.

  “If you weren’t already skeletal, I’d suspend you without pay.”