Harvest Moon

by Mercedes Lackey, Michelle Sagara

  “Yes, but if I’m there, I might see something, somehow, that gives that little bit more information. If I’m here, I won’t see anything.”

  “And if there’s danger? If you do, in fact, have to fight?”

  Teela snorted, but otherwise said nothing.

  “It won’t be the first time,” Kaylin replied. “It might be the first time I fight with backup.” He was still silent, and she thought it was hesitation. “I’m not stupid. I know when to cut my losses. I know when to run.”

  “You know when to obey a direct order?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t get many of those that were physically possible,” she added.

  He stared at her for what felt like a long damn time. “You understand that if anything happens to you, my neck is on the block. You are thirteen years old. If either Corporal gives you an order, you obey it before you breathe. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He growled. “I do not like this,” he finally said.

  She waited.

  “Fine. Fine. Teela, if anything happens to her, my neck is not going to be the only neck at risk. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tain?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Get out of here.”

  “Well, that could have gone worse,” Tain said to Teela when they were well out of the Sergeant’s earshot.

  Teela raised a dark brow. Her eyes were a stunning, deep emerald, as were Tain’s. She headed down a hall Kaylin hadn’t seen yet. “Come and see the glory of the locker room. If you stick around for long enough, one of these lockers will be yours.”

  Kaylin followed Teela while Tain peeled off.

  Locker room described a room with a bunch of what looked like tiny closets with things written on them. Those things, Teela said, were the names of their various owners. One had been scratched out. “Locker names are low on the list of priorities.”

  “Why are we here?”

  “In theory? We’re getting changed. In practice, you’ve got nothing to change into, and I’m already ready for street duty.”

  “Then—”

  Teela opened one of the small closets. She pulled out two sheathed daggers that hung on a small belt. “These are for you.”

  “But—”

  “He said the Quartermaster wasn’t going to arm you. He didn’t specifically say I couldn’t.”

  “But—”

  “And frankly, it gets on my nerves when you flail around at your hip for a nonexistent weapon. Dealing with the mortals is hard enough as is—I don’t need more irritants.” She smiled, and once again Kaylin was struck by how absolutely gorgeous she was. “There’s a trick you’ll need to learn. Don’t ask permission for anything unless it’s serious. It’s too damn easy for your superior officers to say no, and it’s usually the first thing that comes out of their mouth. I can’t do anything about your lack of armor, though.”

  Kaylin took the daggers. “You think I’ll need them?”

  “You’d better not,” was the cheerful reply. “I can take any human I’ve ever met in a fight, but a Leontine is less certain. We don’t have all day,” she added.

  Kaylin took the hint, slid the belt around her waist, and readjusted it. “Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to what’s left of the building. The mages will meet us there. If you can, fail to speak. The Imperial mages are big on appropriate respect. Ceridath has reason to tolerate you now. The other mage won’t.”

  “Got it.”

  Teela shook her head. “You’re going to have to learn to speak High Barrani.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because it’s a lot harder to show obvious disrespect in High Barrani than it is in your mother tongue. That, and most of our laws were written in it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Emperor is a Dragon, and he considers Barrani the language of bureaucracy?” Teela chuckled.

  Kaylin didn’t even ask what she meant by bureaucracy; she figured she could pick it up on her own.

  Kaylin eyed the carriage dubiously. “We can’t walk?”

  “No. What’s wrong? You’ve never been in a carriage before?”

  “There aren’t many carriages in the fief, and if you get into one, you don’t have a lot of choice about where you go or when you get out.”

  “Fair enough.” Teela opened the door and climbed into the carriage’s interior. Kaylin joined her, although the door was high enough up it took longer. “You ever run into the Ferals there?”

  Kaylin laughed. It was a slightly wild laugh. “Yes.” The carriage lurched forward and began to jump up and down as it moved. Kaylin grabbed the window’s edge to steady herself. It didn’t really work.

  Teela, on the other hand, might have spent her entire life in a cramped, moving box. “See them a lot?”

  “Hear them a lot. It’s not considered safe to actually see them.” She shrugged and added, “I don’t think Nightshade’s Barrani guards were bothered by them.”

  “No, they wouldn’t be. But a pack of Ferals would still be a challenge if you wanted to escape unscratched. It’s a pity they don’t cross the bridge.”

  Kaylin gaped at her. It was a pity that a bunch of large, fanged predators who killed anything that moved didn’t cross the bridge?

  “There’d be a lot less nighttime traffic, and a lot less crime,” Teela offered. She was grinning.

  Kaylin, who had run from the sound of Ferals in her time, failed to see the humor.

  “Kaylin, whether or not you find amusement in the situation doesn’t change the situation itself—so you might as well dredge up something to laugh at. If you can’t, life is pretty much all tears.”

  Kaylin said nothing. Instead, she turned to stare out the window because the world was moving past. It wasn’t moving quickly, but it was a lot closer to the ground than she currently was, and she found it fascinating. She’d seen the streets of the city closest to the Ablayne, and the buildings there were obviously in better repair than the buildings in the fiefs; the people who walked the roads nearest the bridge were better fed and better dressed, especially in the winter, when falling asleep in the wrong place meant you’d never wake up.

  But she’d never seen the streets the carriage now took, winding away from the river and toward the city’s outer circle. The closest she had come was her trek to the Halls of Law itself, but the buildings that surrounded the Halls weren’t homes; they were merchant shops, two inns, and a guild building. Farther away from the Halls were the larger, taller buildings that housed many families, but these buildings were actually in decent repair, with doors that worked and actual locks, as Kaylin had discovered on her first night across the bridge. They weren’t great locks, but some training would be required to actually get around them.

  Here, however, the large buildings with their rows and columns of almost identical windows gave way to shorter, flatter, and wider buildings. These buildings moved farther away from the streets in which the carriage traveled. The people who lived in them must be rich.

  Teela’s brows rose into her hairline and almost disappeared. “What, here?” She began to chuckle.

  Kaylin grimaced and waited for the amusement to die out. It took too damn long.

  “Apologies, Kaylin. This would not be considered the more expensive part of the City. If you ever see that, you’ll know. But we’re almost there now.”

  “Caitlin lives—”

  “Caitlin lives in a modest apartment in a very safe part of town, yes. But it’s Caitlin. As far as I can tell there’s not much she spends money on, and not much she wants. She loves her job, she has no family in the City, and she spends some time on days off at the Foundling Halls. Some of her money goes there. We have no idea where the rest of it goes. But she doesn’t want the bother of taking care of a house, as she calls it. We’re reasonably certain she could afford to live here—it would be a longer walk to work, but that’s about it.”

  “And you?”


  “I live where I want to live.”

  “With Tain?”

  Teela laughed. “Sometimes,” she said with genuine amusement. She got out of the carriage before it rolled to a stop, which annoyed the driver, judging from his pinched expression. She didn’t offer to help Kaylin down, and Kaylin jumped out of the coach, landing less than gracefully on her feet, knees bent.

  “This way,” Teela said.

  It wasn’t necessary. The contrast between the house that the carriage had stopped in front of and the houses to either side was marked: the house in the middle was scored black, missing glass in the windows, and missing a front door. The roof looked shaky as well; Kaylin wasn’t certain how much weight it would support if someone were stupid enough to try to climb up on it.

  “Is it safe?” she asked as she joined Teela.

  “More or less.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The fire ate some of the structural beams; the explosion ate some of the floor. We’ve got scaffolding on the interior that’s built from the basement up. If you don’t wander far off that, you should avoid breaking a limb.”

  Tain was waiting inside. From the inside, things looked worse, and the uncertainty about the stability of the roof hardened. But there was, as Teela had said, some scaffolding and planking set up. Ceridath and another man in long robes were standing on some of it.

  “Pretend,” Teela whispered, “you’re certain either one of these two men could kill you—or anyone you care about—if you breathe the wrong way around them.”

  Kaylin nodded. She looked at blackened walls, blackened and questionable stairs leading up, and a large hole in the floor that indicated there was a down. “They were discovered here?”

  Teela nodded. The almost smug amusement that seemed her most frequent expression was entirely absent. So, Kaylin thought, there are some things that aren’t funny, even for you. She found it oddly comforting. “Where?”

  “In the basement. There were a series of small rooms in the basement.” Her lips thinned.

  “You think magic was used here.”

  “Yes. The neighbors are close enough that they would have heard something if the zone hadn’t been magically silenced. You could centralize the magic over the children’s virtual prisons—but depending on how long they lasted, and how long they were kept here, the magic would have to be either recast, in which case a mage was on-site, or extended, in which case the permanence would leave, or should leave, some mark. Understand?”

  Kaylin nodded. “How did you get down to the basement?”

  “There are ladders. None of the scaffolding is magical in nature, which is important at the moment. The basement floor is solid—it’s this one that’s questionable. We’ve had people downstairs for our first rough sweep.”

  “Mages?”

  “Sort of.” She grimaced. “No one as skilled as Ceridath. Ceridath is actually considered one of a handful of experts, but most mages will detect something. The mage we did bring wasn’t hopeful.”

  “Why?”

  “How much do you know about magic?”

  Kaylin pinched her fingers together, and Teela winced.

  “What you saw in the morgue was what we call a signature or an imprint. Any strong magic theoretically leaves one—but not all mages are sensitive enough to individuate what they see or read. Rudimentary magic makes clear that magic was done…a more subtle form of magic is required to actually tell someone by whom.”

  “And you had reasons—besides the wreckage—to suspect magic?”

  “When magic is done and the mage isn’t a fool, he knows that it’s possible that he might be traced. If he can detonate a large amount of magic that is not his, it will overwhelm any traces he might leave behind. Welcome to the Arcane bomb.”

  “One was used here?”

  Teela nodded. “Which of course means there was something to hide. Welcome,” she grimaced, “to most of our job. Heads up,” she added.

  Kaylin looked in the direction of Teela’s glance. Ceridath was starting to cast. “I’d’ve noticed without the warning,” she whispered.

  Teela frowned. “Keep that to yourself for now. Tap my shoulder or arm if you notice anything. That’s it.”

  Kaylin watched Ceridath. His movements were broader and wider; he spoke softly, and in an almost cajoling tone of voice. The man at his side, to whom she hadn’t been introduced, nodded once, and then began to cast himself.

  Kaylin had never been exposed to much magic, and was now very, very grateful for the lack. But…there’d been worse pain, and nothing was either broken or bleeding; she endured in a silence of drawn and held breath and heavy exhales.

  Ceridath met her eyes only once, but the expression on his face made her want to cry. She recognized it. She thought she’d even felt it herself. She looked away, then. But there was no safety in shifting her gaze, because as his spell continued, her vision wobbled. Mindful of Teela’s quiet warning, she remained silent—but it was difficult. Along one of the walls, she could see faint, blue light resolve itself into one large rune. It was more circular in shape than the marks on her arms, although it looked like some sort of writing. Except huge and solid. What had drifted up from the dead girl’s eyes had been wispy, slight; there was nothing slight about this mark.

  She frowned and leaned forward on the scaffolding, catching a beam to anchor her weight and getting splinters as well as stability. There was a second rune farther down the wall; it was as large, and it, too, was an even, glowing blue. As Ceridath continued to cast, both runes grew brighter, until they made the rest of the building look shadowed and dim in comparison.

  Teela poked her sharply, and Kaylin looked up. She nodded.

  “What do you see?”

  “You told me I wasn’t supposed to say—”

  “Say it quietly. They’re only human, they won’t catch it.”

  Tain chuckled.

  Kaylin frowned. “Can you ask Ceridath to stop?”

  “Stop?”

  “Or go back?”

  “That’s even less clear, Kaylin.”

  “When he first started, I could see runes, but they were fainter. And about the height of the wall.”

  “The whole wall?”

  “Between what’s left of the floor and what’s left of the ceiling.”

  “And now?”

  “They’re really, really bright.”

  “Which is why you’re squinting so badly?”

  Kaylin nodded. “I think—I think if there were anything else to see, he’s not going to see it now.”

  “But you think you might.”

  “No, not now. I can barely make out the gaping hole in the floor anymore. But…at the beginning, I think maybe.”

  Teela asked a few more questions, and then squared her shoulders. “There is one problem.”

  “Only one?”

  This earned a brief grin. “Are you certain it’s Ceridath’s spell and not Farris’s?”

  “No.”

  “Farris is here to confirm the accuracy of Ceridath’s findings.”

  Kaylin nodded.

  “It’s going to be difficult to tell him to ‘turn off’ his spell, if it’s him. And I’m not sure how easy it is to tell them to turn it down, either. From my understanding of magic, that’s not the way it works. Wait here.”

  It wasn’t Teela who returned; it was Ceridath. Teela was deep in discussion with Farris. Farris was, as Ceridath had promised, younger, but like Ceridath, being an Imperial mage seemed to put a chip on his shoulder the size of a small fief. Tain had come to stand by Teela’s side, which made their area on the scaffolding very crowded.

  Ceridath knelt by Kaylin. He looked old and tired. He still looked arrogant, but it wasn’t as offensive somehow. “I do not understand how you can do what you do,” he said quietly, “but I understand that it is you. What Teela is asking is…unusual.”

  “What’s she asking?” Kaylin said, keeping her voice low.

 
“She is asking for an extension of the casting period, rather than its completion.”

  “So, make the beginning part longer and skip the end?”

  “Something very like that, but with perhaps more polished words.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “It would be—in very different circumstances—a very interesting theoretical endeavor.” He took one look at her expression and grimaced. “I may be able to do what you ask—but I’m not sure it will have the results you hope for. Tell me what you saw, from beginning to end.”

  She hesitated and glanced at Teela, but no help was forthcoming from that quarter. “Does it matter? You’re going to have to say you saw nothing, aren’t you?”

  The momentary shine left his eyes. “Without some intervention on the part of the Magister, this may be the last act of magic I am legally allowed to perform. It is my specialty, and until my grandchild was kidnapped, I was extremely proud of my skill. If I am never to practice it again, I will use it now to my full abilities. Yes, I will lie. Farris, however, will not.

  “Tell me, Kaylin.”

  She began to describe not the runes themselves but rather the changing quality of the light they emitted as the spell progressed. His brows rose and he shook his head. “You are wasted, wherever you are now.”

  Her snort was brief and bitter, and she turned her face away.

  “My apologies. I did not mean to offend.”

  She swallowed and turned back. “I didn’t see anything but the large, blue runes—those are from the Arcane bomb?”

  “Yes. It is not the way I see them,” he added.

  “Oh?” In spite of herself, she asked, “What do you see?”

  “I see the manifestation of power’s trace as if it were a mosaic or a textile tapestry. The colors are not singular, and they don’t form as literal runes or sigils, although I call what I see a ‘signature.’”

  “Did you see—her eyes—”

  He flinched, but nodded. “It was very, very subtle. I feel that if I had not been sent, it might have gone entirely unnoticed. It looked almost like a mask, a half mask that’s meant to rest on the bridge of the nose.”

  “Her whole upper face?”