Harvest Moon

by Mercedes Lackey, Michelle Sagara

  “No. Some Barrani, but mostly just humans.”

  “You won’t see a lot of Leontines in the rest of Elantra, either. They tend to stay in the Leontine Quarter. You probably noticed his fangs.”

  Kaylin gave a vigorous nod.

  “He doesn’t use them except in exceptional circumstances. You will never be an exceptional circumstance. He does, on the other hand, forget about his claws. If you ever see the surface of his desk—and there’s a chance you won’t for a couple of months—it’s heavily gouged. You said you’ve met Barrani?”

  “Yes.”

  And clearly, she wasn’t fond of the experience. “You’ll have noticed their eyes change color depending on their mood?”

  “Blue is death.”

  “Good. In Leontines, red is death. Gold is good. Orange is pushing your luck. Also, if he looks like he’s gained thirty pounds in a minute? That’s just his fur, but it’s bad. If you’ve done something to cause a shift in eye color the best thing you can do is to expose your throat. Like this,” she added, lifting her chin.

  Kaylin’s brow rippled toward the bridge of her nose in disbelief. “You said—”

  “That he won’t use his fangs, yes. But exposing your throat is a way of acknowledging—in Leontine terms—that he’s the boss.”

  “Oh. And he won’t try to tear it out?”

  “He hasn’t yet. What else is there? The Aerians mostly live in the Southern Stretch, but one or two do make their homes in the City itself—it requires more space and ceiling height than most of the buildings have.”

  “The Barrani?”

  “They also live in the City. Some make their home in the High Halls, which is where the Barrani caste court reigns. There is no Barrani Quarter; there is no Aerian Quarter. Only the Leontines and the Tha’alani have a separate Quarter, but in the case of the Leontines, there are no walls to mark it.” She hesitated again, and decided that she’d asked enough questions for the evening.

  “Let me get some blankets. I’m sorry,” she added, “but I don’t have an extra bed. I’ve got the couch here, and bedrolls if you’d prefer the floor. I’m an early riser,” she added a little apologetically, “so I might wake you.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure?”

  “It’s okay for me to stay here?”

  “I’m sure. It’s a great deal safer than the streets at night.”

  “Here? There aren’t even any Ferals. There’s probably not much that can hurt me.” She rose. “I’m sure, dear. If you can sleep in the street, that’s fine—but I won’t be able to sleep knowing I sent you there. I’m not doing this for your sake, I’m doing it for my own. Can you live with that?”

  Kaylin nodded. Caitlin brought her both blankets and bedroll and was not at all surprised that the girl chose to sleep on the floor.

  She was slightly surprised that Kaylin was already awake in the morning. She’d folded the blankets and rolled up the bedroll and left them neatly beside one wall, and she sat on the floor, waiting. She was dressed. Dear gods.

  Caitlin turned and began to root through her closet; she came up with a shirt and a set of trousers that she thought would definitely need a belt. But belts, she did have, and the clothing had the benefit of being clean and in good repair.

  She handed these to Kaylin, who looked set to object—politely. “You can give them back when your own clothes are clean, but you cannot continue to go in to work in the clothing you’re wearing now. It needs mending, and it needs patching as well, and for the next week or two, I won’t have time to do either. Can you?”

  “…a little.”

  “Good. I imagine you have no needles, no thread, and no scraps, to go along with the lack of a roof over your head. The needles, thread, and scraps I can supply now, and we’re working on the problem of a roof.”

  “I could sleep in the cells at night,” she offered.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “They’re warm, and they’re safe.”

  “You will sleep in the cells,” she replied firmly, “over my dead body.”

  They made it most of the way to the office before Kaylin spoke again, and it was in a much quieter voice. “Caitlin, what does he want from me?”

  “Who, dear? Marcus?” Mostly, he wanted her gone, but Caitlin was not about to say this out loud.

  “The Hawklord.”

  She started to answer—Caitlin could say a lot of words that meant precisely nothing in measured, even tones and very erudite words—and stopped herself. “I don’t know. I know the Sergeant far better than I know Lord Grammayre, so anything I say here will be at best a guess. I could be entirely wrong.”

  “What’s your guess?”

  “I think he wants you to learn about the Hawks because he thinks something about the Hawks will mean something to you. Something more than just a job and a roof over your head, although there is absolutely nothing wrong with those two things.”

  The girl was silent for half a block. “Why?”

  “Why, dear?”

  “Why do you think he thinks that?”

  “It’s just a hunch,” was her quiet reply.

  The arrival at the doors was poorly timed; they weren’t the only people who were on their way in, and although it was early, they were made to wait. This in itself wasn’t unfortunate, but the reason they were made to wait was: some of the Barrani Hawks were carrying stretchers into the building. They’d make their way to the morgue, where Red would be waiting to examine them; Caitlin was pretty sure she knew which bodies lay beneath the heavy sheeting that covered the stretchers.

  She turned protectively to Kaylin, who watched in silence. After a moment, Caitlin said, “You’ve seen corpses before.”

  Kaylin, still watching as the Barrani conveyed the dead up the stairs and through the open door, nodded bleakly. “I thought it would be different here, across the bridge.” The whole of her expression was simultaneously hard and fragile, as if it were porcelain. “What did they do?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Why did they kill them?”

  A moment went by as Caitlin sorted through the words to figure out what they were actually asking. When she did, her brows rose into her hairline. “The Barrani did not kill them,” she told the girl, a little more vehemently than she’d intended.

  Kaylin glanced at Caitlin, and to her surprise, Caitlin caught the girl by her shoulders and pulled her around. “Kaylin, those Barrani are Hawks. They patrol the streets of the City in an attempt to enforce the Emperor’s Laws. One of those laws prohibits murder, and the courts are especially harsh when the victims are children. The Hawks didn’t kill whoever they’re taking to the morgue—someone else did.

  “And we are going to find out who it was.”

  “And then what?” was the bitter reply.

  “And then he’ll be brought to justice. Or she,” Caitlin added, to be fair.

  “Justice.” The girl almost spit. The bodies disappeared through the open door as she watched. “I’ve seen justice like this all my life. I thought it would be different—”

  Caitlin shook her. “You don’t know what it’s like. You haven’t lived here for more than a day—at best. Don’t judge. Watch. Learn. Do you want to see where the bodies are going, and why?”

  Kaylin’s eyes were wide, but she was almost mute; she managed a nod. Feeling slightly ashamed of her temper, Caitlin let go of the girl’s arms, and instead caught her by one hand and marched her to the doors.

  Clint and Navarre were on duty. They lowered their weapons to bar entrance, because it was actually part of their job; today it was not a part of their job Caitlin had any patience with. She didn’t shout or raise her voice, however; she merely gave them a pointed look at her hand, and the child attached to it. The weapons rose sheepishly, although Clint looked faintly concerned.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked. But he asked Kaylin, not Caitlin.

  “She saw the bodies arrive,” Caitlin replied, because it was absol
utely clear to her that Kaylin wouldn’t.

  Clint’s normally friendly face lost much of its warmth.

  “We’re heading to the morgue,” Caitlin added.

  The morgue was run by a man known to the Hawks as Red. It wasn’t his legal name, but he had a severe dislike for that—why, Caitlin honestly didn’t know—and was therefore called Red by anyone who wanted him to do any work for them again, ever. Except for his dislike of his name, he was an even-tempered, serious man, and like most of the Hawks, spent far too many hours at work when the situation demanded it.

  Kaylin entered the room behind Caitlin and stopped just inside the doorway. The bodies had already been moved from stretchers to tables, although they remained covered. Red was speaking in low tones to the Barrani Hawks who’d stayed behind. There were two. He looked up as Caitlin cleared her throat. So did the Barrani.

  “Caitlin?” Red said as he headed toward her. “What brings you here?”

  Caitlin smiled and nodded toward Kaylin. “Kaylin, this is Red. Red, this is Kaylin.”

  Red held out a hand, which Kaylin immediately took. “Pleased to meet you.” He turned to Caitlin again and raised a brow.

  “Kaylin, by request of Lord Grammayre, is to spend some time in the company of the Hawks.”

  “She’s a bit young to be a recruit, isn’t she?” was his dubious reply.

  “She is.”

  “And possibly a bit young to see the inside of a working morgue.”

  “That, I doubt.” She looked toward Kaylin. “Do you want to leave?”

  Kaylin frowned, but shook her head. “What is this place?”

  “The morgue.”

  “Yes, I heard that—I mean, what’s it for?”

  Red shrugged. “This is where the dead are brought, but only in two cases. If a person has died in suspicious circumstances, their body is brought here, where they’re examined for traces of magic and chemical interference. If we find either, we log it as a murder, and the Hawks are sent to investigate.”

  “And these?” She looked at the three covered corpses.

  He was silent for a long moment. “These,” he finally said, “there’s no question. They were murdered. We’re not looking for proof of a murder versus natural causes, we’re looking for anything about the death itself that might give us information about the killers.”

  Kaylin glanced pointedly at the two Barrani who were lounging—there really wasn’t another word for it—by the far wall, looking bored. One of them peeled herself off the wall as she noticed the look Kaylin was giving them. She sauntered over to Red. Her eyes were a shade of green that had a lot of blue in it, but at the moment, given the surroundings, that was fair.

  The younger girl stood her ground, but she bent into her knees and her hands reached for air before she realized she wasn’t actually armed. Teela raised a dark brow.

  “You don’t have daggers,” she said conversationally. “And even if you did, you’d be committing suicide if you drew one on me.”

  Kaylin said nothing.

  “You think we killed them,” was Teela’s flat comment.

  “And you didn’t?”

  Red looked slightly shocked.

  “As it happens, no, we didn’t.” She lifted a brow in Caitlin’s direction; Caitlin, however, had her expression on lockdown. “Not that we’ve got anything against a little violence, but we like a bit of fight.” Her smile was distinctly unfriendly.

  Kaylin’s was entirely absent. After a minute, she looked at Red and said, clearly, “You believe them?”

  Tain—and it was Tain—whistled. “You are not here to make any friends, are you?”

  Red, however, raised both his hands and said, “Of course I believe them!”

  “Why?”

  Even Teela looked surprised.

  “I’ve seen Barrani on the streets for most of my life,” Kaylin told him. “They could do more damage than Ferals.”

  “Ferals?” Teela frowned. Oddly enough, the frown broke the tension that had been growing in her expression. “Wait, you grew up in the fiefs?”

  “I did.” After a small pause, she added, “Nightshade.”

  “Nightshade,” was the cool reply, “is outcaste.”

  Kaylin’s expression didn’t change.

  Looking over Kaylin’s head, Teela met Caitlin’s steady gaze. “You’re certain the Hawklord insisted that she learn the ropes?”

  “You were there, Teela. You heard every word, and Barrani memory is pretty much perfect.”

  “Yes, but mortal memory isn’t,” Teela replied, grinning. “All right, we’ll take her.”

  “P-pardon?”

  “You heard me. Mortal hearing is inferior, but not that inferior.”

  “I’m not certain that’s what Lord Grammayre had in mind,” Caitlin said stiffly.

  “He probably doesn’t know what he had in mind, either. Look, she doesn’t even know what an outcaste is. She’s certainly got no clue about what the Hawks do—and what they don’t, which is more germane at the moment. I’m guessing she has very rudimentary fighting skills, and she can probably handle herself if things get ugly.”

  “Teela, may I point out that she’s underage?”

  Teela shrugged as if to say it was irrelevant. From a Barrani view, the difference between thirteen and eighteen was probably inconsequential, but then again, the Barrani didn’t write the laws. “We’re not asking her to fight. We’re not asking her to take statements. We’re not asking her to deliver the bad news to parents or the families of the deceased. We’re not asking her to do anything, Caitlin, except hang around and observe.

  “We can keep her alive,” she added.

  “And what protects her from you?”

  “Ironjaw.”

  Caitlin cleared her throat. “Please keep in mind that we have—”

  “Ironjaw is what the Sergeant is called behind his back,” Tain told Kaylin. “I’m Tain,” he added. “And this is Teela. How strong is your stomach?”

  “Depends. What am I eating?”

  “Oh, not eating,” was the slightly evil reply. “Watching.”

  “Tain,” Red began. The door ward’s high-pitched scree saved him from giving the rest of the possible lecture.

  “Mage is here,” Teela told Caitlin. “We’re up. If you want to head back to the office to prevent the use of reports as kitty litter, we’ll keep an eye on Kaylin.”

  Kaylin looked close to panic.

  “…unless she’s too afraid to watch.”

  “Teela,” Caitlin said, “be nice, dear.”

  “I’m not afraid,” was the defiant—and expected—reply. Caitlin sighed and handed over the reins. “I’ll expect her back at my desk at closing,” she warned the two Barrani.

  “We’ll have her there. In one piece, even.”

  Kaylin stayed as close to Red as she could without hiding behind him. She didn’t trust the Barrani, but she was already kicking herself—mentally—for antagonizing them. She would never have done anything that stupid in Nightshade. But Nightshade was gone. She would never go back there, not alive—and dead, she wouldn’t care, because she wouldn’t feel a thing.

  She looked around the room. It was practically empty; there was one stool, unoccupied, against a wall; there was one long counter with a couple of jars pushed back against the wall beneath some cupboards. There was a heavy basin in the center of the counter, and a couple of buckets to one side on the floor. And there were tables. A lot of tables. Across from the cupboards was the longest mirror Kaylin had ever seen in her life; it stretched from one end of the wall to the other. It had no frame to speak of, which was also something she’d never seen.

  In it, she watched the two Barrani. Teela. Tain. They had the long, dark hair of Barrani everywhere, and they also had the flawless skin, the perfect beauty, that made them seem so dangerously aloof. Except when Tain had smiled, she’d noticed that one of his teeth was chipped. It made her vindictively happy for just a moment, but that kind of happiness
never lasted.

  Case in point: the doors opened and an older man stepped into the room. His hair was that streaked dark that people called gray, and his eyes were a very cool blue; he had a beard. He was wearing a dress, several rings, and an expression that could have frozen water. It thawed slightly when Red approached.

  “Ceridath Morlanne,” the man said, “from the Imperial Order of Mages. I was informed that my services were urgently required.” He glanced at the bodies.

  Red nodded. “It’s not pretty,” he added, “but we won’t start our work until yours is done.”

  “Very well. Let’s get to work on this, shall we?” He approached the first of the blanketed corpses. “You wish me to scan all three?”

  “Yes. Records,” he added, looking over his shoulder at, as far as Kaylin could tell, his own reflection. She was wrong, and she understood the minute she also looked at his reflection just how wrong. The mirror—like the small one on the Sergeant’s desk—began to glow. The light it emitted was an ugly, harsh blue—it washed everything out, made it seem almost gray. She didn’t like it.

  “Recording.” She liked the voice even less. But Red didn’t seem alarmed by either light or voice, although his expression was now more focused, more intent.

  The Barrani also looked less bored. It didn’t make them look less dangerous.

  The mage, who no one had bothered to introduce, glanced at both the Barrani and Kaylin; he frowned at Kaylin, but said nothing. Red motioned to Kaylin, and Kaylin moved away from the mage and the table in front of which he was standing.

  The mage pulled the blanket back, and Red took it out of his hands.

  On the slab was a girl’s body. She was maybe ten years old.

  Kaylin couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to. She was holding on to air with two fists and clenched jaws. The girl was missing one eye. Her face was a patchwork of crossed cuts, some deeper than others; the incisions ran the length of her jaw and her throat. She was clothed, but not well, and the clothing itself had also been cut and torn. Her arm—one of her arms—was burned.