“Yes,” Kaylin answered, before Annarion could. “Tell Mandoran exactly that. It’s not like he’s not going to know if Annarion needs backup.”
Helen led the way.
Her voice, however, remained behind, and when the Barrani and her own Avatar had cleared both the foyer and the visible upper hall, she said, “He feels that he owns you.”
“He can’t own me. For one, it’s illegal. For two, he’s wrong. I’m not responsible for how he views me. I can’t change it. I’m responsible for how I view me, and I’m telling you it doesn’t matter.”
“He does not have friends, Kaylin. He has lieges and servants. He does not understand family as even Annarion understands it. What you want will never be of value to him in the way that what he wants is. I cannot read him,” she added. “But he is powerful, and that attitude combined with power is not...safe.”
“No, probably not. But—he did spend centuries trying to find a way to reach, or free, his brother. And I actually really like his brother.” She exhaled. “I don’t know how he feels about his brother now, but...he’s capable of more than you fear. I know he is.”
“Perhaps. But you are not his brother. I do not like this,” she added, belaboring the obvious. “But I have grown fond of Annarion, and Annarion is his brother.”
* * *
The discussion wasn’t over by dinner. It wasn’t over by the time Kaylin went to bed. Nor, apparently, was it over when Kaylin woke the next morning.
It wasn’t over when she’d finished breakfast, either, and Mandoran, her only company at the table, was distracted by it because he couldn’t hear most of it.
“Helen can,” Kaylin reassured him. “Annarion’s not in any danger.”
“Not physically, no.” He exhaled and changed the subject in a particularly Mandoran way. “Moran’s not going to be happy that you’re walking around the house like that.”
“I didn’t break a leg,” Kaylin replied. “There is nothing—besides a small burn—wrong with me.”
“That’s not what she thought.”
“Believe that I know what she thought.” Kaylin grimaced. “But I’m well enough.” She stood.
“You’re going to see Kattea?”
“Yes. I don’t suppose Gilbert showed up while I was sleeping?”
Mandoran shook his head. “The Tha’alani castelord did, though.”
“Is she still here?”
“No. Where are you going?”
“We promised that we would do one thing for her if she would help us,” Kaylin replied. “And I am going to do that one thing if it kills me.”
* * *
The wing of the Halls of Law occupied by the Swords never looked as messy and cramped as the Hawks’ office. The choke point was a desk—a very tidily kept desk—behind which Jared sat. Jared was a giant of man, shoved into a chair. Time had made him balder and a little wider; it hadn’t made him more patient. This was because patience was his single saving grace, and he couldn’t possibly contain any more of it and still be part of reality.
She cleared her throat when he lifted an inquisitive brow. “We’re hoping to speak with a Corporal Krevel.”
“Corporal Krevel? You mean Krev?”
Kaylin nodded.
“Idiot broke his arm in the panic. His left arm. He’s in the back writing reports.” Jared frowned. “Heard you’d done yourself an injury, too. What’re you doing in?”
“I’m avoiding Caitlin—and Moran. Mostly Moran.”
“So you’re not on duty today.”
“No.” Kaylin lifted her right hand, and Kattea’s arm came with it. She’d taken hold of Kaylin’s hand when they’d entered the Halls of Law, even though she felt self-conscious about doing so. She was ten, not four. “I’m taking a friend on a tour of the Halls of Law.”
“What did she do wrong?” Jared asked, smiling. Most of the smile was for Kattea. Kattea smiled back at him, but she continued to hide behind Kaylin.
“He doesn’t bite,” Kaylin told her.
“Much,” Jared added. “Sets a bad precedent in the office.”
“I’ve got a Leontine for a sergeant. Biting is pretty much standard operating procedure. Do you mind if we look around?”
“Does it matter?”
Jared’s patience was not immediately obvious to people who didn’t know him or hadn’t worked behind his desk. He wasn’t particularly gentle, and his kindness was of the gruff variety.
“Not a lot, no. I promise I won’t break anything.”
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep. And I hope you’re good at ducking.” To Kattea, he said, “Most of the Swords here today are sitting at their desk until they’ve finished writing out their reports. We had a bit of excitement in the city last week, and they’ll use any excuse they can to avoid the paperwork. It makes them cranky.”
“If everyone already knows what happened, why do they need to write reports?” Kattea asked. Kaylin was a bit surprised, but as it was a bloody good question, she let Jared handle it.
“Because the Lord of Swords is not a patient man, and he can only be in one place at one time. When the paperwork isn’t done, he gets cranky. I’d rather deal with cranky rank and file than cranky Lord of Swords.”
“But why does—”
“Because if the Lord of Swords doesn’t have those reports when he makes his own report to the Emperor, the Emperor gets cranky.”
Kattea nodded. No one, no matter their rank or lot in life, wanted the Emperor to get cranky.
* * *
Given Marcus and his visceral resentment of paperwork, Kaylin was surprised to see that Jared’s remark was true. The desks here were occupied by people who—while frustrated or grim—were writing. All of the Swords had been mobilized during the incident. The reserves had been called out, and shiftwork had been abandoned.
But the Swords—like the Hawks—were down in numbers.
Almost no one who worked on the force resented being called up in an emergency. Emergencies caused panic, and the Swords were trained to contain it and to insert themselves as de facto leaders into any group large enough to turn mob without warning. Almost no one, however, enjoyed it when paperwork was considered that emergency.
In other words, if there was a bad day to bring Kattea to the office, this was it. Kaylin drew Kattea aside and said, “I’m not sure this is a good day. No officer I know is in a great mood when they’re chained to a desk with a non-life-threatening injury and being forced to write reports.”
Kattea nodded as if she’d actually listened to—and heard—the words. But her hand tightened around Kaylin’s, and Kaylin correctly interpreted this as there are no bad days.
* * *
Corporal Krevel was maybe fifteen years older than Kaylin at first glance; then again, his shoulders were hunched, and his hair looked as if he’d tried to extract chunks of it in frustration and had mostly failed. Kaylin started toward his desk, and Kattea’s hand tightened. She stopped and turned to look at the girl.
And then, seeing her eyes—which were watery, but still managing to keep tears in the right place—she looked away. She hadn’t rehearsed what she’d meant to say—which would have been smart—and found even the basics of general introduction had deserted her, because she was thinking like Kattea.
She was thinking of what she might have said to her own mother, if she’d somehow had a chance to go back in time to a point when that mother was still alive. She inhaled, exhaled and walked over to Krevel’s desk.
Krevel looked up when her shadow darkened the paper on which he was, admittedly resentfully, writing. His fingers were ink-stained; his nails were short. His slightly narrowed gaze wasn’t hostile; he recognized Kaylin’s tabard. He didn’t immediatel
y recognize Kaylin, but seemed to think he should. After a moment, his eyes cleared.
“Private Neya,” he said, abandoning the paperwork with almost palpable relief. Any excuse that didn’t involve more death was going to be grabbed with both hands if it tried to escape.
“The same.”
“Rumors of your demise were greatly exaggerated?”
“Evidently.” She smiled, held out a hand; he shook it. She introduced both Mandoran and Kattea, and continued, “Caitlin says you’ve had some recent good news?”
He smiled broadly; the smile shifted the lines of his face, and possibly also explained the dark circles under his eyes. “Yes. Three weeks ago, actually—but in keeping with my wife’s family traditions, it won’t be public knowledge for another year.”
“Why?”
Kattea said, “Because so many babies die early. It’s bad luck.”
Corporal Krevel looked surprised. “I’m sorry. My manners are appalling.” He offered Kattea his hand; there was a moment’s hesitation before she took it. To Kaylin, he added, “Missing Persons?”
“Missing Persons wasn’t much help,” Kaylin replied.
Kattea said, “No one is looking for me.” She tried to smile. It took just enough effort that she lost control of her eyes—a control that had been shaky to begin with. Tears began to stream down her face as she forced her hands to her sides, where they balled in helpless fists.
Krevel frowned. “Are you all right?” he asked the girl. He lifted his gaze to Kaylin, which was a silent repeat of the question he’d asked. Kaylin had nothing to give him. She wanted to explain—and given the recent events, with large chunks of the city disappearing—she might have made the explanation stick. But...then what? According to Caitlin, they already had a child—a newborn daughter named Kattea.
Kattea nodded. She didn’t speak for a long moment. “Can you tell me what you saw?”
“What I saw?”
“When the city disappeared?”
Kaylin threw him an “it’s your job” look.
But Krevel, frowning, nodded. “You might want to grab a chair,” he added. Most of them were filled at the moment.
Kaylin left to find a chair and was surprised when Kattea accompanied her. “He liked to tell that story, sometimes,” she whispered. “I’ve heard it all my life.”
Not exactly the stuff of bedtime stories, in Kaylin’s opinion.
“He loved being an Imperial Sword. It was what he did. He said it was important to know what you stood for. He would tell me stories about being a Sword. I thought maybe I could be one, when I grew up.” She paused in front of an empty chair, one of four against the wall nearest the Swords’ duty roster.
“But...there was no Emperor. There were no Swords left.” She smiled brightly, or tried. “I wanted— I know I can’t hug him. I know he can’t hug me. I know I can’t apologize or tell him that I always loved him. Or tell him that I understood why he left.
“And I want to do all those things. But he’s not my father. He will be. But he’s someone else’s father now. We’re strangers.” She exhaled and then turned, leaving the chair to blindly throw her arms around Kaylin. “I love him. But he doesn’t even know me.”
Kaylin held her.
“And it has to be enough to know that he’s still alive. When the Halls of Law were lost—he said it broke something in him.”
“He said that to you?”
Kattea snorted. “Not to me. He was never that honest with me. He treated me like I was a kid.”
Kaylin did not point out that she was, technically, a child. She also didn’t point that eavesdropping was rude, because rude or no, it was pretty much human nature. “Help me with the chair,” Kattea said, voice momentarily muffled. “I can’t— He won’t—”
Hugging her tightly, Kaylin said, “Do you want to leave?”
Kattea shook her head. “He loved his job.”
“Doesn’t look like he loves it much right now.”
That got a small laugh out of Kattea, which was probably as much as she could manage. Kaylin disentangled herself from the girl and helped move the heavy chair to where the corporal was waiting. Kattea brought it in close and crawled into it.
As it happened, Jared interrupted them before Krevel could start.
“Bad news for the private,” he said, waving Krevel back to his report writing.
“Oh?”
“Moran wants to see you.”
“I’m going to kill Clint.” She turned to Kattea and her father and said, “Can you wait here for a few minutes? Moran’s annoyed language isn’t suitable for children.”
“Or anyone, really,” Krevel agreed.
As she walked away, Kaylin could hear Corporal Krevel answering a young girl’s questions with growing excitement and pride in what he did. It wasn’t a bedtime story. It wasn’t a hug. It wasn’t a declaration of forgiveness, and it wasn’t—and couldn’t be—a homecoming.
But it was all she could get, and Kattea wanted it desperately. A story about the end of the world that she’d heard so often growing up, it was probably memorized. A story about the end of the world that wasn’t the end of any world but her own.
* * *
Moran’s eyes were ash-gray, which was not the color Kaylin had been dreading when she entered the infirmary. She motioned toward the chair the Hawks privately dubbed the Torture Mill, and Kaylin meekly sat in it.
“You didn’t come here alone.”
Kaylin shook her head. The small dragon squawked. Moran frowned in the general direction of the noise.
“Kattea is with her father?”
Kaylin was surprised. In retrospect, she shouldn’t have been. Moran was living with them, after all. Of course she knew.
“Helen was worried,” the sergeant explained. She examined Kaylin’s cheek. “Marcus is worried.”
“I’ve avoided the office.”
“And how did I know you were here?” She took the much more comfortable chair opposite Kaylin’s. “What are you going to do with Kattea?”
“I don’t know. Marrin would take her, but the Foundling Hall is always crowded and it’s always short on funding. And we have room...and Helen would never let anything bad happen to Kattea.”
“What does Kattea want?”
“I don’t know. She won’t say.” Kaylin exhaled. “She’s waiting for Gilbert. My guess is that she thinks, if she doesn’t make a choice, there’s still a chance he’ll come back.”
“What do you think?”
Kaylin examined her palms. “I think Gilbert’s not human. Or Leontine. Or Barrani. Or even Helen. I think he had to injure himself, possibly profoundly, in order to spend time with us at all. I think—” She exhaled. “I think Gilbert, or something like him, was probably responsible for what happened to our city in the future we didn’t reach. All the deaths, the absence, I mean.
“I don’t believe that Kattea would be—could be—happy with Gilbert.”
“But?”
“But it’s what she wants. And if I was certain that she couldn’t be happy, that she couldn’t survive—”
“But you’re not.”
“No. Gilbert kept Kattea alive. He found her. He brought her here. His time with Nightshade—time which will no longer exist—had a profound effect on him. I think there’s a possibility she could.”
“She’s too young to know what she wants.”
“Then we’re all too young to know what we want. We don’t know how things will turn out. We don’t know what will happen in the future. But—he was there when she needed him. She had no expectation that he would be. She thought she was going to die. She didn’t.
“And she was right. I mean, she was wrong, but she was right. Gilbert did need her. Or rather, we needed her to be with Gi
lbert. I think—I think he kept her as a reminder of what would otherwise be destroyed.”
“But Gilbert has not returned,” Moran said quietly.
“...No. Until he does, if he does, she’ll stay with us.”
Moran nodded.
“So you called me in here—”
“To give Kattea some time alone with a man who thinks she’s a stranger, yes.” She wrapped her arms around her upper body. “I envy her. I envy her, and I almost pity her.” She shook herself, adopting a harsher expression that was more at home in the infirmary—where it was admittedly necessary.
* * *
Kaylin rescued Corporal Krevel an hour later, and hated to do it. She watched from a distance as Kattea continued to pepper the poor man with questions. She was sitting almost unselfconsciously close to him, but she was young enough that he didn’t appear to notice.
“Kaylin!” she said, when Kaylin approached. “Corporal Krevel’s daughter has the same name as me!”
“I hope she grows up to be a tenth as lovely” was the corporal’s gallant reply.
“I’m sure she will,” Kaylin replied. She held out a hand. Kattea hesitated briefly and then took it; her grip was both shaky and strong.
Epilogue
Kaylin didn’t see Severn again until she resumed her regular duties. She tried—once—to reach him in other ways, but he was silent and withdrawn. So she paused to dump her bracer into the Ablayne on her way to her first official day back in the office and on the beat.
The duty roster was up, and she was penciled in—on her regular Elani beat—with Severn.
He made it with seconds to spare and met her eyes for the time it took to blink—which was to say, she almost missed it. The walk to Elani was beyond awkward. Kaylin had a million questions she wanted to ask, but settled on one at random.
“Where have you been?”
He glanced at her. After a long beat, in which she thought he wouldn’t answer at all, he said, “Is there a way for you to take your name back?”
She missed a beat. She didn’t miss a step. “Killing you.”
“That seems a bit extreme.”
Cast in Honor Page 45
