He blinked. “Follow me.”
After a listless moment, she did exactly that.
There was no defiance in the girl. Shame or guilt he could have handled, but instead there was a quiet—and deep—sense of gray despair that permeated her every movement. She noted almost immediately that he was carrying a truncheon, but it didn’t surprise her; he noticed that she did a brief visual scan in the usual places for more lethal weapons as well. But her gaze, when it touched him at all, went straight past his eyes, and therefore his facial expression, to a point above his shoulders.
Whatever she saw there wasn’t making her any happier, and it didn’t make her any more talkative. She didn’t even ask where she was being led. Clint wasn’t certain what the Hawklord had told her; normally he didn’t care. But halfway through the halls that led—slowly—toward the inner office, he found himself wishing he’d asked, because halfway to the office skirted the edge of the Aerie, the tallest part of the Halls of Law. Here, the Aerians practiced drill and formation when the weather was truly crappy.
Aerians weren’t birthed with a natural suit of armor, and they didn’t learn first flight wearing it; the Aerians who were accepted into the Halls of Law therefore had to build some muscle and acclimatize themselves to the more exhausting rigors of long flights sporting extra weight. Their first laden flights were often practiced in the Aerie of the Halls as well, as the shouting in the heights above attested.
The girl looked up as they began to cross the floor and froze, tilting her head back far enough Clint was half-certain he’d have to catch her before she toppled over backward. She didn’t, and something about her expression robbed him of the curt tone that orders were usually given in. The width of her eyes implied something like awe, but the turn of her lips, pain; the dichotomy was striking.
Humans were, among mortals, a singularly frustrating race, because so many of the subtle signs of mood were missing. The biggest of these was the color of the eyes: they had one. That one conveyed exactly nothing. Aerians, Leontines, and the slightly disturbing Tha’alani had the range of normal emotional color shifts, as did the Barrani and the Dragons. Humans were slightly defective. As a small child, Clint had once asked if they were really only intelligent animals, because animals had eyes that were exactly as unchanging. His father had snickered. His mother had been very unamused.
But watching the girl, he felt moved to words. Words, sadly, weren’t his strength, but he tried anyway. “You’ve never met Aerians before, have you?”
“Lord Grammayre,” she said, breaking away instantly and flushing slightly, as if caught in a criminal activity. Or a childish one. “I met Lord Grammayre.” Her gaze immediately hit floor and clung there as if rooted.
“Lord Grammayre asked that I escort you to meet our Sergeant,” he finally said. It was absurd to be talking this carefully to a street thief from the fiefs. Who said she was thirteen? Clint wasn’t certain he believed it now; that kind of wonder was usually reserved for people who could afford to be naive and optimistic. He’d flown low patrols over parts of the fiefs, and he couldn’t believe that this girl was one of those.
“What’s your name?” he asked, because thinking of her as “the girl” was beginning to irritate him.
“Kaylin,” she replied, with enough hesitance it was clearly a lie. “Kaylin Neya.”
“I’m Clint of Camaraan.”
“Camaraan? You’re not from the City?”
“Home is the Southern Stretch,” he replied. When her expression didn’t change, he added, “Yes, I’m from the City—the mountains to the south are considered the City’s outer boundary by the Emperor. Camaraan is my flight. The closest thing you’d have to it is family, although family is too small a word.”
She fell silent, as if regretting the brief outburst of genuine curiosity. This time, her expression stiffened into a neutral mask; it added years to her face.
“Come on,” he told her. “Or we’ll be late.”
A Leontine in the very best of moods often sent humans scuttling for the nearest cover. Leontines were taller than the average human, broader, more heavily built—without any fat or extra padding—and entirely covered in fur. They also had obvious fangs, and when annoyed, very obvious claws. Marcus was not in the best of moods.
Aware of this, and aware of why, Caitlin lingered by his desk. In part she could do this with a minimum of effort because the papers he’d accidentally sent flying still covered large parts of the floor, and they were important—for a value of important that screamed bureaucracy—so she had a reason to be there.
Caitlin was officially his aide. She was unofficially everyone’s aide, as long as people didn’t attempt to take advantage of her better nature and her inability to tell them all to drop dead when they tried to shift a crapload of their work onto her shoulders. Marcus had no difficulty with the latter, so things worked out, a few complaints and bruises aside. She was quiet, pleasant, sane, and sympathetic; she was also extremely well organized.
She looked up from a pile of paper she was collating, and Marcus caught a glimpse of her expression before she once again returned to work. It was enough to make him consider, briefly, strangling the Hawklord.
Clint escorted the experiment in early education to the business end of Marcus’s desk; he then took up position one step back and to the girl’s left. And she was a girl. If someone had told Marcus she was ten, he’d have believed it. She approached his desk as if she expected to have her throat ripped out—and deserved it. But she didn’t weep or snivel or plead; he gave her that.
“Name?” he said brusquely.
“Kaylin. Kaylin Neya.”
“Kaylin. You will look at me when I’m speaking to you. The floor isn’t that interesting, and it’s never going to be a threat.” He turned to the mirror and barked for Records. “Record. Kaylin Neya, first interview.”
Her eyes had widened as she watched the shifting swirl of color in the mirror resolve itself into her reflection—absent the rest of the clutter of the office and the Sergeant himself.
“Age?”
“Thirteen.”
“Residence?”
She frowned and remained silent.
“NFA?”
This changed her frown, rather than dissolving it.
“NFA?”
“No fixed address.”
She nodded.
Caitlin, who’d been watching the very brief and businesslike exchange, now leaned slightly over the desk. “Kaylin,” she said quietly, “when was your last meal?”
“P-pardon?”
“When did you last eat?”
The girl was clearly not one of nature’s liars. Caitlin’s question was not the one she’d expected, and she had no ready answer to offer. Which, of course, was answer enough for Caitlin.
“Yes,” Marcus said, before she could ask his permission to leave to find something for the girl to eat. He didn’t watch her go; the girl did. He gave her ten seconds, which was nine more than anyone else in the office would have gotten, before he barked her name in staccato syllables. “What did I tell you?”
“I look at you when you’re speaking to me, sir.”
“Good. Does Caitlin look like me?”
She flinched. “No, sir.”
“Was she talking to you?”
“No, sir.”
“Then pay attention!”
It was raining. Marcus hated rain. He entered his pridlea squelching through puddles of the runoff from his fur. The fact that he’d spent more time than the walk home required in the streets only made it worse, but he’d needed the time to think.
Kayala, the first and oldest of his five wives, took one look at him and, with a resigned but heated growl, helped him to towel dry. This was an act of great love, as she loathed the smell of wet fur. When she considered him dry enough, she dragged him toward the hearth; Graylin had started the fire burning and dimmed the lights with a curt growl that meant she was considering ripping out their vital organs.
Some days, it was a pity that lights didn’t have vital organs; Marcus would have removed a few of them himself.
“Marcus, why are you bringing work home with you?”
Marcus stretched out across the fur-strewn floor. His three daughters took this as an invitation—although they took pretty much anything as an invitation—to leap all over him. They gnawed at his arms and legs while he tossed them in the air. Reesa joined them, but given Kayala’s expression, none of his other wives did.
He spoke over and around the yowling and the high growls, some of which were his own. Children only noticed tone at this time of night, not content. “We were right,” he said grimly.
“There was a third house.”
He nodded. “Teela and Tain almost managed to track them down, but some word must have gone out. They arrived to corpses and—” he spit “—an Arcane bomb.”
Kayala frowned. “Why does the Emperor not deem them illegal? The only purpose they seem to serve is to throw off the magical scent.”
“Gods know. His gods,” was the careful reply. “We’ll sift through the wreckage tomorrow. Red’s doing an autopsy, but we don’t expect to uncover anything. Or not anything good.”
“How many dead this time?”
“Three. Two girls, one boy.”
His wife began to growl, and the children, piqued, looked up; she shifted the tone of that growl into something playful, hooding the fangs she hadn’t consciously exposed as she did. Marcus’s years with the Hawks had taught them both many things. One: that people were strange. Two: that people were, regardless of race, racial characteristics, or longevity, still people. Except perhaps the Immortals.
Children were children. He cuffed one of his on the ear and she rolled away, exposing her throat and mewling helplessly, which caused Kayala to laugh and sniff the air for threats. This period of supposed helplessness didn’t last long; the kit was back on his chest in a matter of minutes, her small pads and insignificant claws batting Marcus’s face.
“There’s more,” Kayala said, because she knew him well.
“You mean besides the meeting Grammayre had with the other Lords of Law and the Emperor?” He curbed his tongue; Kayala preferred “clean” language around the children. “We look like incompetents and fools. The Imperial Guard is probably snorting in contempt.”
“The Imperial Guard is tasked with protecting the Emperor,” was the dismissive reply. No one could, in her opinion, come close to killing the Emperor, so it was a pathetically easy job. “Your job is to protect the helpless, the defenseless.”
“And the stupid. Don’t forget the stupid.” Marcus dropped his face into his hands, dislodging Leanndra in the process. “We’re not doing our job at the moment. And we’re not the ones who are paying for our incompetence.”
Kayala slid an arm around his shoulders and gently bit his ears. “And?”
He growled at her; she held tight. “Grammayre decided that today, in the middle of this disaster, we’re going to start a—a progressive early-education experiment.”
“Pardon?”
“He’s given us a fiefling. A child.”
Her frown was more serious. “Marcus.” She nodded pointedly at the children, who didn’t appear to be listening. “The Hawklord is not, and has never been, a fool. What does he want from this child?”
“I don’t know. He wants her to tag along underfoot and learn the ropes. Now. Maybe he wants us to protect her.”
“From what?”
“Kayala—I don’t know. She’s scrawny. Underfed. She can’t read. She can speak, but so far, not much—which is the only blessing. She’s marked the same way the children who died in the fiefs were. Says she’s thirteen, but she could be ten. She came to the Hawklord from the fiefs, and he intends her to stay.”
“Where?”
That set up another growl, and Marcus had more difficulty squelching this one. “You can mirror Caitlin tomorrow and ask. I don’t believe Caitlin was happy with my response either, and she’s taken the situation in hand.”
“I’m sorry, dear,” Caitlin said as she opened her door into a dim apartment. “But we really had very little notice. I’ve sent messages to a number of possible landlords, but at this time of day, I don’t expect to hear back until tomorrow.” She nonetheless swept Kaylin into her home. The girl was quiet, and had been quiet for most of the walk from the Halls of Law. The workday had been long—and given the events reported by Teela and Tain, that wasn’t likely to change any time in the near future.
In spite of her apologetic words, the first thing Caitlin did was check her mirror. It was in its reflective state, but no aurora of color blurred the image; no one had called. With a sigh, she turned back to the girl, who remained standing, shoulders slumped, in the small vestibule that served as a hall.
Caitlin was one of the few Hawks who had no desire to walk the beat or be in the thick of things. She liked the office, she tolerated the office squabbles, and she organized the paperwork required by the Imperial Palace. She knew who everyone was; everyone knew who she was. She understood which rules were firm and which could be nudged or broken; inasmuch as an office could be, it was like a home—a family home. Her own apartment was her retreat.
But, like the office, she opened it up at need.
She tapped the lights and they began to glow, revealing the clutter of her home. It wasn’t that Caitlin was messy; she wasn’t. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to part from gifts or other small tokens of affections, no matter how tacky they actually were. Still, her kitchen was clean, and the mess itself was mostly free of dust and cobwebs. She walked into the kitchen and then walked back out when she realized she wasn’t being followed. Biting back a sigh, she said, “Kaylin?”
The girl moved hesitantly through the hall, pausing briefly to glance at the two framed paintings on the walls nearest the door. Caitlin waited until Kaylin moved into the larger sitting room in which guests were entertained, if entertain was the right word. “Please, take a seat.”
The girl took a dubious look at clothing that had weathered a few unwashed days and a night in the cells, and then at the very clean upholstery. “I can stand,” she finally said. “Or I can sit on the floor. We didn’t have a lot of furniture—” She stopped speaking, swallowed, and said nothing.
“If you must sit on the floor,” Caitlin told her, “come sit in the kitchen. I’ll be making dinner, and I’d be happy for the company.” It wasn’t, strictly speaking, completely true, but it was true enough for the moment. Had she been opposed to company, she wouldn’t have invited the girl home.
She took the cutting board off its place on the wall, and slid two knives from their block. No, she would have come home to the comfort and safety of her own apartment while the child wandered the streets in the dark, waiting for the Halls of Law to once again open its doors. She grimaced.
Kaylin came into the kitchen. “Can I help with anything?”
Caitlin raised a brow in surprise. She started to say no, and then thought better of it. “Yes, if you’re all right handling knives. I’ve broth in the pot on the stove. It’s cool now. If you’ll take over the potatoes and carrots, I’ll start the stove going.”
She did start the fire, and thought with a grimace that she should have reversed the tasks, as the girl was young enough to be truly flexible, and the stove hadn’t gotten less finicky or more easy to load with the passage of years. But when she was done, she watched Kaylin work. The girl was slow, deliberate, and focused; it was as if the task itself deserved or demanded all of her attention. Or as if it distracted her from her surroundings; she didn’t want to be here. Caitlin wasn’t offended.
She thanked Kaylin for her help, told her where to find dishes, and left the soup to boil.
Part of the reason for the girl’s discomfort came up over dinner. “Look, I appreciate you trying to help me find a place,” she said in a tone of voice that didn’t exactly ooze gratitude, “but you have to know something—I can’t afford one.
I’ve got next to no money.”
“You’ll need a place to stay, dear.”
Kaylin shrugged. “I’ll find a place to stay.”
“On this side of the river?”
The girl fell silent. She’d eaten a large meal and was still picking at the bread, but her gaze was on that unfocused elsewhere. “No,” she finally said, the single word very low. “Probably one of the fiefs.”
“Oh? Which one?”
She shrugged. “Does it matter?” The words were laced with enough bitterness that they added years to her.
“If I understood Lord Grammayre correctly, you’re to work in some capacity for the Hawks.”
Kaylin was silent.
“To do that, you’ll need to live in the City. The Law doesn’t extend—”
“To the fiefs? I know. Believe that I know.”
Silence. Caitlin didn’t let it get uncomfortable. “Were you born in the fiefs?”
“Yes. In Nightshade.”
“You’ve never lived in the City.”
“No—we had no way of getting here, and no way of affording it even if we did.”
Since the fiefs were a footbridge away from the rest of the City, getting here, as Kaylin put it, wasn’t the problem. But living here, with no job and no family, would be. “Do you want to go back?”
Kaylin stared at her as if she’d grown an extra head, which Caitlin assumed meant no. “No,” she said, voice low. “But I have no idea what to do here.” She threw one arm wide as if to take in the whole city.
“If I know the Sergeant, he’ll find something. I won’t guarantee that you’ll like it,” she added. “But he won’t let you starve while you’re working for him. He is a bit intimidating when you first meet him.” She expected Kaylin to either agree or declare her Total Lack of Fear, but the girl did neither. She was watchful. “He’s Leontine. Have you met a Leontine before?”
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