Cast in Silence

by Michelle Sagara

  If it had windows, the shutters concealed them. Kaylin suspected that it didn’t. Glass—and a building like this must have had it—was usually the first casualty of a vacancy. She frowned.

  “Tiamaris,” she said, in an entirely different tone of voice. “This tower—you’ve seen it before.”

  He nodded gravely.

  “Does it have a gatehouse on the other side?”

  “Not now.”

  “Did it, when you saw it?”

  He was silent. She took that as a no.

  “If the two of you are finished?” Morse asked.

  Kaylin nodded absently. “Morse, has Barren ever been here?”

  Morse didn’t answer.

  Kaylin emerged from the long grass, just as she had done seven years ago. She had a burr attached to her tabard, and some of the seed that the grass was shedding; given the state of most of Barren’s men, she didn’t bother to remove them. When she’d reached the street again, she turned to look at the tower, and at the fence.

  Shaking her head, she frowned. “I can see it,” she finally said. “Tiamaris?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t like it,” she told him.

  Morse laughed.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing.” But the laughter faded into a grim chuckle before it deserted Morse’s voice. “Remember what I told you, back then.”

  Kaylin frowned. “You told me not to mention where you’d found me.”

  “Still applies.”

  “But—”

  Morse raised a brow.

  Kaylin fell silent. “Why’d you take me in?”

  Morse shrugged. “You wanted to be able to kill a man,” she said. “I thought you were a girl after my own heart.”

  Tiamaris raised a brow, but didn’t offer further comment; he glanced at the tower.

  Please, Kaylin thought suddenly, don’t tell me that this Tower is the Tower of Illien. Maybe he heard her somehow. He didn’t say another word.

  They walked down streets that were familiar to Kaylin. She recognized the faded signs, the faded facades of wooden buildings; she recognized, as well, the turn of the badly cobbled streets. Almost subconsciously, she fell in beside Morse.

  “You got my back?” Morse asked her.

  “Always,” she replied, before thought could catch up with words.

  Morse grimaced. “You don’t think much these days, do you?”

  “Not more than strictly necessary,” Kaylin replied. “But then again—”

  “You never did. I got that.” She stopped walking just a second after Kaylin did. Something like a high, soft growl had been carried by breeze through the nearly empty streets. It was hard to tell which direction it had come from, for if it wasn’t loud, it seemed to permeate the air.

  “Tiamaris?” Kaylin said, voice quiet.

  “I heard it,” he said softly.

  Kaylin turned to Morse. “That wasn’t a feral.”

  “No. But that,” Morse replied, raising her voice slightly, “was a scream.” She glanced at Kaylin, and her smile was all edge. “Let’s see what you’re good for.”

  They ran. If the first sound had been hard to track, the second, a very human scream, had not. It didn’t last, and Kaylin had no hope; they weren’t running to the rescue, here. But if they got there in time, there would be no other screams.

  As always, when she ran, the streets grew long and narrow, like a tunnel without any necessary light to show its end. She reached for her daggers, drawing them without breaking stride. Remembered—and why now?—her mother’s sharp admonition about running while carrying sharp things.

  But when they cleared the last street, when they rounded the bend, they froze. Even Morse stood motionless for a second, her mouth slightly open—Morse’s equivalent of dropping her jaw in shock.

  What stood in the street was in no way a feral—Kaylin had been right about that. Ferals looked as if they might be alive. This creature suffered under no such limitations. It had a body, a short, squat body with six legs, reminiscent of a spider’s. But even that was the wrong word: the legs were solid and muscular, and they ended in long, sharp claws. From where she stood Kaylin could see that they’d dislodged and broken stones.

  It had a head, of sorts; the head was half the size of the body beneath it. It should have overbalanced the creature when it swiveled, because it swiveled so damn fast. It didn’t, of course. The creature’s mouth was an angry, livid slash of red against an obsidian background; the creature’s skin gleamed like chitin.

  But it was the eyes that were the worst: it had not two, but several, and they seemed to ring its head, at varying chaotic levels, as if they sought to form a crown.

  Kaylin muttered a Leontine imprecation.

  Tiamaris joined her.

  “You recognize it?” Kaylin asked him, not taking her eyes off the creature’s feet.

  “Not as such,” the Dragon replied.

  “How bad is it?”

  “We’ll…see.” He hadn’t shrugged himself out of his armor. She waited for a moment, to see if he would start the transformation that would have him unfold in full Dragon glory in the middle of Barren’s streets.

  The creature snarled.

  Tiamaris opened his mouth, his very human mouth, and roared. The inner membranes of his eyes went up, but even muted, those eyes glowed crimson. Kaylin stepped back, keeping Tiamaris close.

  The creature paused, and then its mouth, its much larger, lipless hole of a mouth, turned up in what might have been a smile. Which was bad.

  Worse, though, was its voice. “Well met,” it said and, bunching its massive legs beneath it, it leapt.

  Tiamaris was not there to meet it when it landed; he threw himself clear of both claws and body, and just managed to miss the beam of light that suddenly shot out from an eye on the side of the creature’s head. Kaylin, already in motion, had done the same.

  Morse, not immediately a target, was slower.

  “Morse!” Kaylin shouted, adding Leontine invective for emphasis, forgetting for a moment who she was with, and where.

  Morse didn’t answer; she rolled to her feet.

  “Watch its eyes! Tiamaris has most of its attention! We just need to—” The street two inches short of Kaylin’s feet exploded. She swallowed dust, threw herself clear of the beam that was continuing to dig a runnel in the road, and rolled instantly to her feet.

  Morse shouted her name. It was the wrong name. “Over here!” She threw an arm out, pointed at a door. It was closed, but that generally didn’t mean much in the fiefs. Kaylin hesitated, turned to look over her shoulder. Caught a glimpse of Tiamaris, a glimpse of the creature, a billowing spray of something that wasn’t light, but that glittered anyway.

  “In!” Morse kicked the door open, threw herself through it.

  Kaylin heard Tiamaris roar again. The street broke as the creature leapt and landed; Tiamaris was, once again, well out of the way of its feet. But he pulled something free of his belt—not a sword. She couldn’t, at the moment, remember him ever using one.

  What he held, she couldn’t see; it was small enough that it might have been a dagger. Or, she realized, a focus. It was a focus. A reminder, for Kaylin, of the fact that Lord Tiamaris had spent some time under the tutelage of the Imperial Order of Mages.

  Morse grabbed her arm and dragged her around the door’s frame as the wood just beside Kaylin’s head blossomed into splinters.

  “You get that kind of thing here all the time?” Kaylin asked.

  “Not that one, no.” Morse, still serious, added, “I’m alive, after all.”

  “You and how many others?” She regretted the words almost the instant they left her mouth.

  But Morse wasn’t like most people; she shrugged. “Not enough,” she conceded.

  “How long?”

  “How long what?”

  “How damn long have things like—like that—been wandering the streets here?”

  “Not long. Won’t b
e that long, either,” Morse added, as something shook the building. She grimaced. “Look, I’ve never seen one of those before, all right? Can he stop it?”

  Kaylin shrugged. “Maybe.” She shook herself free of Morse’s restraining hand. “He’ll do a whole lot better with some help.”

  Morse laughed; it was terse, and it was higher than usual. “Have anything in mind?”

  “Yeah. In the future? Carry crossbows.” She looked at the daggers in her hands, and grimaced. “I’m going to be eating gruel in the brig for weeks if I lose these.”

  “Worry about being alive to eat gruel.”

  “You’ve never met the quartermaster,” Kaylin replied. She didn’t ask Morse if Morse could throw a knife. Morse had taught her.

  And in a pinch, Morse never played the idiot. “You want us to take out the eyes.” No question in the statement.

  “If it’s even possible. I’m not sure the blades will travel through whatever it is it’s shooting out of them. Tiamaris has got the body, the claws, and the fangs; we just need to keep moving.”

  Morse stared at her for a minute, and then shook her head. “I am out of my fucking mind,” she muttered.

  “Oh, it’s real.”

  “That’s not what I meant. What I meant,” Morse added, crouching well below eye-level and peering into the very loud street, “is that I should be running about now.”

  “To where?”

  “Anywhere that doesn’t have that in it.”

  “Good point.” Kaylin sucked in air, and crouching, added, “If he goes down, we’re dead anyway. I don’t think we have much of a chance at outrunning the creature.”

  “I’d be willing to give it a shot.”

  “Be my guest.”

  Morse shook her head. “There’s nowhere for me but here,” she said grimly. “There’s no Hawk waiting for me at the end of the bridge.”

  The way she said bridge? It was the way the outer Elantrans might use the word rainbow. Kaylin knew; she’d been a fief ling for most of her life. She wanted to argue, but now was so not the time.

  And truthfully? Morse killed people. It’s what she did. How much of that could she leave behind? How much of that did she want to?

  “Ready,” Morse said, rising and backing away from the door.

  “Back entrance?”

  Morse nodded. They retreated from the frame of the door where a watchful eye—one at any rate—was probably waiting.

  The door opened into dirt and something that would, on a non-rainy day, pass for an alley. They slid out that door. The building itself might as well have been deserted for all the attention anyone paid them; no doors opened; no curious faces peered around them. Even the window shutters were closed.

  The building was narrow; the passage between it and the next was one stout person wide, no more. Kaylin started forward, bumped into Morse and stopped. So much about Barren made her feel young again, but some of her training, some of the life she’d lived since she’d left it on Barren’s mission, held.

  Morse raised the broken brow, and then nodded. She had no dignity in a fight like this; let someone else take the lead. She shadowed Kaylin as they walked down the alley, moving quickly and quietly.

  Tiamaris was alive. He was not in melee with the creature, and he was not in full Dragon form. She wondered why; had she the ability, she would have been. But if he wasn’t scaled and huge, his hands were glowing; he held ground by force of the magic she had never really seen him use.

  There was no way to sneak up on the creature’s eyes; she approached, instead, at a run. Halfway to Tiamaris, she leapt out of the way of a beam that grazed dirt, kicking up a cloud. She didn’t wait for it to clear; instead, she rolled up on her feet and kept moving.

  When she was in range, she let one of her daggers fly. The eyes weren’t human eyes; they were as large as fists. The dagger glinted as it flew, and it flew true. The eye itself shot out one beam; Kaylin didn’t wait to see what had happened to the dagger, because she was in its way. She jumped clear, holding her second knife.

  She heard the creature’s growl. High-pitched, it reminded her more of keening or wailing than aggression.

  “Got it!” Morse shouted. She wasn’t certain whether or not Morse was speaking of herself or of Kaylin, and it didn’t matter. She ran at that eye again, pausing just long enough to throw first the dagger and then herself. Over her head, a beam passed, green and gray; she heard wall splinter in the distance.

  Ducking back into the alley, she drew two more knives. They weren’t as good as the ones she’d just let fly; they were for emergency use, and it showed. But they were the right shape, and they held an edge. Drawing these, unaware of where Morse was, she crouched low, rolled up to one side, and then began to run.

  It was harder, now; the creature was tossing that head from side to side in wild fury. But the eyes were still open, and presumably still searching for a target. She had to pause to take aim. It almost killed her. She threw herself clear, lost hold of the dagger, and stumbled back, landing heavily on her hands.

  Rolling, she was hit by a spray of dirt and loose rock; she could hear stone ding against her armor, as if she were a badly padded bell. She managed to get her knees under her, to raise herself up and fold her feet so that she landed on them.

  Purple beam, bad. The dirt left in its wake was sizzling. One dagger left, she thought. That, and keep moving.

  It was hard to both run and wait. The creature’s gaze shredded street, staving in a wall or two when Kaylin got too close. She didn’t have much choice; the streets weren’t wide enough for decent running maneuvers. But the wood, like pipe leaves under fire, curled and blackened. The buildings would follow, she thought, and when they did, people would either run into the streets, into the alleys—or die.

  Given the shuttered windows, she was pretty certain which of the three it would be. She chanced stillness, raising her dagger hand, and as she searched for a target, she saw Morse.

  Morse wasn’t running, not the way Kaylin had run; she wasn’t leaping to avoid the strafing beams of those eyes. She’d—damn her anyway—found a moment to run in. Kaylin could see her moving at speed, a long knife in either hand. She didn’t leap to the side to avoid the one beam that turned on her; she rolled forward, head tucked in, knees to chest, and came to her feet under the angle of the beam.

  Smart, sort of. She’d brought herself into range of claws, range of ragged jaw. But the beams wouldn’t get her, not unless the creature wanted to lower its head, exposing the back of its neck—if it even had one—to Kaylin. To Kaylin or Tiamaris. Morse drove both knives into the underside of that head, and then threw herself clear, rolling away from the forepaws that broke ground in their attempt to skewer her.

  While she did, Kaylin threw her knife, and it flew in a fast arc toward its target; the point pierced open eye, and the dagger’s unadorned hilt jutted from iris. One lid tried to close over that eye, as if to protect what remained of it. Fire flew from Tiamaris—hand or mouth, Kaylin couldn’t see—distorting air as it struck another eye.

  The beams were fewer now; the creature’s head turned slowly. It was easier—thank the gods—to avoid them.

  From the underside of the creature’s massive, misshapen head, shadow trailed in wisps, like dark blood made of smoke. Smoke that moved against the breeze, not that there was much of it, as if it were seeking something. West, toward the city, it stretched, thinning, and east, toward the heart of the fiefs.

  She cried out a warning to Tiamaris, who stiffened. But stiff, he was not still; his arms rose, and he threw back his head and roared. Dragon words. Dragon voice, even contained by his human throat. The ground shook with the force of it and the air shook, as well, tearing at the shadow that stretched in either direction.

  And then he lowered his head again and he breathed.

  The creature was thrown back by the force of that breath, driven ten feet, its legs digging trenches in the earth. Smoke of a different kind began to leave the moving b
ody.

  She had no weapons now but a long knife, and this she drew; she couldn’t throw it worth a damn, and she wasn’t about to close with the flames. But she’d seen enough fights; this one was over. All that was left was the paperwork.

  “Get them out!” Tiamaris shouted.

  “Out’s death!” Morse shouted over him.

  But Kaylin nodded. At who, she wasn’t certain. She turned toward the buildings that had started to burn, and she kicked one door open and headed in.

  Morse managed to keep most of her disgust to herself when the street was finally full of people. Many of those people were either too young or too old to run; they were certainly not in any position to defend themselves, and given what they’d just seen in the streets, it wouldn’t have mattered much if they had been. Kaylin knew she and Morse would have died had Tiamaris not been with them, and she silently thanked Sanabalis for his presence.

  Kaylin, who had had some training in dealing with frightened crowds, raised her voice and ordered people to follow her. Morse looked as if she might argue, but she shrugged instead; her clothing was torn, and her armor looked as if it had absorbed at least one claw-strike—and at that, not well.

  “Follow her,” she said to the stragglers, who were indulging in their fascination with fire and the buildings it was slowly consuming. That, and the horror of it; it wasn’t by the look of it much of a home, but it probably contained most of what they could call their own.

  Except their lives, Kaylin thought grimly. She took them to the border street, and when Morse nodded, she asked them to find friends, family or deserted buildings and wait. She didn’t tell them the fire would be put out, because she had no idea at all whether or not it would; it would depend on the fief lord’s response.

  After they’d gone, or at least, after Kaylin had left them somewhere that was theoretically safe, she turned back to Morse. “That was clever,” she said quietly.

  Morse shrugged. “You might remember I don’t like running much.”