She screamed.
It was the screaming that echoed in the Tower long after Garadin had released the girl. Garadin himself was cool and remote. He had not, of course, physically harmed her at all; the Lord of Hawks bore witness, and in any case, that was not the Tha’alani way. Grammayre lifted one hand, and the circle in which the girl sat began to glow.
“Please,” he said to Garadin. “My office.”
“She is thirteen years of age,” Garadin said. His voice, like his expression, was shuttered and would remain so, in Lord Grammayre’s experience. “She knew her mother. She has never met her father. She lives in the fiefs.”
“The fiefs.”
Garadin nodded. “The marks cover her inner arms and legs. They are also found across most of her back, to her knowledge.”
“And the marks themselves?”
Garadin said clearly, “She doesn’t understand what they mean, and she fears them. She does not know how she received them.”
“Did you notice that they were glowing while you were conducting your investigation?”
“No.”
“Ah. They were. They were visible through the cloth of at least her shirt.”
Garadin nodded again, as if the information signified little to him either way. “What do you intend for her?”
“What does she want?”
“That is not in the purview of the requested information.”
“I ask only for your opinions.”
“Grammayre, she is young. She is too young to be a Hawk. Short of remanding her into Imperial custody or the custody of the Foundling Halls—if they would take her—I fail to see why it is relevant.”
“She attempted to kill me.”
“Yes. And she failed. She is cognizant of both facts. She expects to die here, and she will not fight that fate. Will you have her executed?”
“Execution requires the usual run through the Imperial Courts.”
“She is not a citizen of the Empire, as you are well aware.”
The Lord of the Hawks was silent for a long moment. “She is not,” he finally said, “similar to any of the assassins sent against me in the past.” Garadin waited.
“I have arrived at my exalted position,” Lord Grammayre said, grimacing, “by instinct.”
“And that?”
“The marks she bears are dangerous,” he said softly.
“And she has attempted to kill you. I fail to see the significant difficulty.”
“She failed to use them to stop you. Given her reaction otherwise, had she been able to, on a purely instinctive level, she would have.”
The stalk jabbed air. “And had she?” was the slightly pointed question.
“You would—I believe—have been safe in the Tower. But more to the point, my second instinctive reaction is that she might, under the right circumstances, prove useful to the Halls of Law.”
“At thirteen?”
“No. But she will not be thirteen forever. What is your opinion, Garadin?”
Garadin exhaled heavily. “It is my opinion,” he finally said, with the enunciated care of his people, “that had she the capability, she would still have failed to kill you. She has killed, but so, Grammayre, have you. It is neither what she wants nor what she enjoys, and inasmuch as humans loathe their own ‘secret’ failings, she loathes herself for many of the deaths she has caused.
“But it is also my opinion that she is unsuited to a certain type of duty. If you ask—or force—her to kill, you will lose her. She will lose what very, very little sense of self or hope she now possesses.” Garadin stood and began to pace in front of the desk in a tight circle. “Give her something to lose and she will fight with everything she has to defend it. But it must be the right thing. And there is the matter of her age. If she will not always be thirteen, she is thirteen now.”
Lord Grammayre nodded. “It will present challenges,” he finally said. “I will, however, petition the Imperial Court for leeway.”
“And not the Emperor directly?”
“I feel this is…a trivial matter, and the Emperor values his time highly.”
Garadin raised a brow. “An indirect petition will take time.”
“Indeed.” Lord Grammayre was silent for long enough that the interview was almost certainly at an end, but before Garadin could leave, he asked one last question. “What is her name?”
“Kaylin Neya.”
“That is not the name she was known by.”
“No. But inasmuch as you wish to change her circumstances, I feel that it is now the name she should be known by. The choice is, of course, yours.”
After Garadin left, Lord Grammayre lifted his head. “Records.”
The mirror on his desk was in no way the equivalent of the stately, full-length oval mirror that adorned his Tower room, but it was perfectly functional. The mirror’s reflection—which consisted mostly of sparsely lined shelves and a very clean desk surface—shivered and fell away; what was left was a gray, blank slate.
“External case file. Time, six months past. Bodies—distinguishing marks. Inner arms. Approximate ages of victims. Cause of death.”
The mirror began to flash as Records disgorged the requested information.
Sergeant Marcus Kassan looked up from the paperwork that covered most of the visible surface of his desk, butting in teetering stacks against the mirror that was used for personal communication and research. It was, at the moment, in his favorite state: blank. Mirrors had one of two base states: gray and featureless, or reflective. Sergeant Kassan didn’t find reflective all that useful. He knew what he looked like, and anyone who didn’t like it didn’t make it his problem more than once. For the most part, he didn’t have to deal with outsiders. This was a good thing because most of the outsiders who had cause to visit the Halls of Law were human, and Marcus Kassan was not. He was the sole Leontine employed by the Halls of Law, and the racial fur and large fangs often caused humans less familiar with Leontines some distress.
His office, and therefore his job, was confined to investigations. The front office, which was known colloquially as Missing Persons, was the public face of the Halls. He’d only visited twice, which was one damn time too many.
Looking up, he saw two of his Barrani corporals. They looked, to the practiced eye, grim. Marcus had that practice. “Teela?”
“Three more for the morgue,” she said, voice flat. “The building, except for corpses, was abandoned. Someone set off an Arcane bomb.”
“An Arcane bomb?”
Her partner, Tain, nodded.
“Where was the bomb created?”
“We’ve got three distinct magical signatures,” Teela replied. “We’ve run them through Records. You’re not going to like it.”
“How much less could I like it?”
“They’re all Arcanists.”
He swore. In his mother tongue, it was an impressive roar of sound. The office staff, jaded as they were, barely blinked.
He grimaced. “The corpses?”
“Best guess? They’re human.” This wasn’t as sarcastic as it sounded; the Barrani were immortal and their comprehension of mortal age was often poor.
“Best guess,” he growled. His lips had risen, exposing his fangs.
“Oldest would be ten. Two girls, one boy. Youngest estimate, eight.”
“All three of the dead were children?”
She nodded. “One was missing a hand.”
The growl replaced words, and claws knocked piles of paper off the desk.
“The bodies are being conveyed to Red now. We’re here to pick up some of the magical heavy lifters, and we’ll head back to the location.”
“This is the third in the past six months. The Emperor is not going to be happy.”
Teela grimaced. “Probably happier than the victims,” she said under her breath. She was Barrani. Her hearing was as good as a Leontine’s; what the humans in the office wouldn’t pick up, she knew the Sergeant would. She turned away, and the
n turned back. “I don’t think this is the last of it. I don’t think we’ll have another few months before we discover another half-burned-down building.”
“Why?”
“Hunter’s Moon.” She said the words calmly.
He heard them, by dint of experience, differently. “This has something to do with the Barrani?”
She was silent for a moment. Exhaling, she finally said, “It may. On no previous occasion was an Arcane bomb used. On no previous occasion was magic used in any significant way. The rest of the setup is consistent with the first two sites—but not the bomb.”
Magic implied, to Teela, Barrani involvement. Barrani involvement, to the Sergeant, implied ulcers. The Hawks enforced Imperial Law, and in theory, everyone who lived in the Empire was subject to that Law. In practice, where there was no interracial involvement claimed, the caste courts for each individual race could—and sometimes did—take precedence. The Barrani caste court would surrender Imperial Criminals to the regular courts when the world ended and there were none of them left standing. If then.
“Humans are perfectly capable when it comes to magic.”
“Yes, sir. But the moon…”
“Yes?”
“It’s a Hunter’s Moon,” she repeated softly.
He frowned. “Before I accept the possibility of Barrani involvement, I need something other than a hunch.” Behind the backs of the two Hawks he could clearly see the wings of an Aerian.
The Hawklord’s presence in the office immediately changed the flow of daily office bitching and gossip, because it was very, very seldom that the Lord descended from his Tower. Usually, if he wanted to give or relay orders, he summoned you up to the heights. Which made this instantly suspicious; if he came to Marcus in the office, it meant he wanted everyone to hear what he had to say.
Marcus glared, briefly, at Teela, who lifted one brow in response.
“We came straight here, Sergeant. If word of the latest disaster has reached the Tower, he’s listening in on the mirror transmissions.”
Not unheard of, but not likely. Marcus rose. “Lord Grammayre,” he said as the Barrani Hawks slowly peeled away from the desk. They’d listen, of course, but they could listen while they pretended to be busy a desk or two away. The humans in the office didn’t have that much grace.
“Sergeant Kassan,” Lord Grammayre replied. “Please, be seated. This is not an emergency.”
The simple sentence should have put Marcus at ease. It didn’t. He waited, hoping his ears tufts weren’t standing on end.
The Hawklord flexed his wings and then settled them tightly down his back. “I have an admittedly unusual request to make of your department.”
What a surprise. Marcus folded his arms across his chest and continued to stand. “At the moment, we’re working to capacity,” he said in as neutral a tone as a territorial Leontine could muster.
“I expect no less from the Hawks,” was the smooth reply.
“The last time you had a nonemergency favor, you stuck us with a Court scribe.”
“Yes. And you survived.”
“So did he.”
“As you say. He is not likely to request a repeat, and you are now personally owed a favor by a junior member of the human caste court. But that is not the subject I wish to discuss at the moment.”
Marcus waited. A low growl had set up shop in the back of his throat; it was quiet because his jaws were clamped shut.
Lord Grammayre’s eyes were a pale shade of ash-gray, which was good. “I assure you that the current unusual request will cause vastly less difficulty than the previous one.”
Marcus, still waiting, said nothing. It was, however, a loud nothing.
The Hawklord raised a brow. “Sergeant.”
Marcus knew damn well that he couldn’t say no. But his yes lacked grace and finesse, and he liked to draw it out for as long as possible. “What unusual request do you want us to handle in the middle of a possible disaster?”
“Do you remember the unusual investigation we participated in in the fief known as Nightshade half a year ago?”
Marcus stilled. The office held its collective breath, except for Joey, who showed his usual situational awareness and continued to chatter in the background. “The ritual serial killings?”
“Yes.”
It would have been impossible to forget them; there was exactly one occasion in which the Hawks had lent any of their expertise to an investigation that was theoretically outside the bounds of their—or the Empire’s—jurisdiction.
“One of the possible intended victims appears to have survived. She is currently in custody.”
“The investigation was closed.”
“It was. It is not being reopened now.”
“You think the girl knows something—”
“No. I know for a fact she knows nothing about either the cause or the killers.”
“Then why is she relevant?”
“As I said, she is currently in custody. She arrived voluntarily,” he added.
“So did your scribe, as I recall.” Before the Hawklord could reply, Marcus lifted one padded hand in surrender. Unfortunately, his claws were extended. The Hawklord noticed, of course, but failed to react. Given that one of his reactions could have been the Sergeant’s instant demotion, that was for the best.
“You want my Hawks to escort her home?”
“That would be difficult,” was the bland reply. “Since, at the moment, she has none. She was born—and raised—in the fiefs.”
Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, no. No. Absolutely not.”
“No?”
“If she was a possible victim, that would make her what, twelve? Thirteen?”
“Indeed.”
“You are not turning the Hawks into a babysitting service. The scribe was bad enough—but at least he was legal.”
“I do not require babysitting, as you put it. Nor do I require that the Hawks provide that service, since they are undoubtedly poorly trained for it.”
“Good.”
“She is,” Lord Grammayre continued, “thirteen, not three. She is capable of rudimentary self-defense. I think it highly doubtful that she will expire behind your capable backs when you’re not paying attention.”
“So you do want babysitting.”
The Hawklord grimaced. “I want your observational skills. She is, in my opinion, highly unusual, and she may prove to be of significant benefit to the department.”
“At thirteen?”
“Perhaps. She is not, however, well educated.”
Had he been human, Sergeant Kassan would have groaned.
“She will require lessons in basic skills.”
“How basic?”
“She is not, in my opinion, capable of reading at anything but street-sign level. Nor does she have the requisite skill in secondary languages.”
“The requisite skill…for what?”
“To serve the Law, Sergeant Kassan.”
The silence had managed to catch even Joey’s attention by this point. The only person who broke it was the only person who dared.
“Consider this a progressive experiment on the benefits of early education, Sergeant. It will not be an onerous task. I wish you to introduce her to the duties—and the training—of the Hawks. If she is entirely unsuitable, we will review the attempt and decide at that point how to proceed.”
“Where—exactly—did you intend her to stay?”
“Stay?”
“I note you said she’s currently without a permanent residence.”
“Ah, yes. She has had some experience in scrounging a meager living from the streets for herself. Some funding will, of course, be allocated should you decide that she would be better situated in an apartment with a known address. And while I would love to continue this discussion, the Lords of Law meet with the Emperor in an hour, and I believe today’s meeting will be somewhat…sensitive.”
The Halls of Law had been designed by a handful of architect
s who worked under the watchful eye of the Emperor. It had always been his stated intent to have his city policed by its citizens, and the Halls had therefore been built with an eye to the varying physical needs of the races that comprised Elantra. To date, only one of the three Towers had made any attempt to fulfill Imperial Intent: the Hawks. Lord Grammayre was, of course, Aerian, and it was expected that his rise to power would see an influx of fellow Aerians. What was less expected was the advent of a Leontine and a dozen Barrani. For the most part, the people who policed the streets of Elantra were human.
But it wasn’t the humans who had been sent to the holding cells to retrieve one of its newest occupants, and the lone Aerian who now stood outside a locked door frankly begrudged the trip. While the halls were wide enough and tall enough to accommodate Aerian wings, they were very enclosed; none of the Aerians considered the cells a suitable jail.
Clint, of the Camaraan Flight, was that Aerian. In the pay of the Hawks he generally performed two services: he served as a guard at the doors, and he patrolled the skies above the sprawl of the city itself. He did not serve as a jail escort for children. On the other hand, he liked his work, and refusing the order was about the same as quitting outright, but with the added discomfort of ire thrown in.
He wasn’t entirely certain what to expect, and his hand hovered over the door ward for just a second before he pressed his palm against the glowing rune. The door slid open. No one stepped out.
Clint grimaced. Dropping one hand to a small club, he stepped into the open doorway, spreading his wings slightly as they rose in a defensive arch at his back. Not all of the drunks thrown into the cells were friendly or docile when they woke, which is why two guards were usually assigned to escort them out.
The cells weren’t large. Since all they usually contained were a single man or woman in the throes of a hangover, this wasn’t considered an issue, and Clint was accustomed to seeing belligerence, embarrassment, and guilt on the faces of those he’d been sent to show the doors. True, he’d also seen fury and homicidal rage, but those were rarer, and led not to the streets, but to a different set of holding cells.
The occupant of this particular cell didn’t rage; she also didn’t weep. She sat, looking much smaller than she should have on a cot that size, her knees tucked under her chin, her arms wrapped around her shins. Only her chin rose as he stepped into the doorway. He waited for her to say something; she waited for him to speak.
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