Cast in Silence

by Michelle Sagara

  They followed, and stopped a foot from his back; his hands were spread out along the fence posts, but they weren’t moving.

  “Please tell me that you haven’t tried to open them yet,” Kaylin said to his stiff back.

  “Are you required to believe it?”

  She swore, spinning with far less grace than Nightshade had so that she could once again crane her chin up and look at the clouds. They were now shining as if made of new steel. “Tiamaris—”

  “It’s not shadowstorm,” he told her, in a tone of voice that provided exactly no comfort.

  “Then what the hell is it?”

  “I fear we are about to find out.”

  The clouds parted, then, as if they’d been waiting for exactly that comment. Lightning—or something that would have been lightning if lightning was slow, thick, and solid—groped toward the Tower’s height.

  When it touched the Tower, it changed. The light that had appeared as a slow-moving liquid suddenly stiffened, and for just a moment, looked like a hand, tendrils becoming fingers that gripped—and held—tight. The clouds, with their odd flecks of light, stiffened, as well, losing all motion, all sense that wind might have any effect on them.

  Those clouds now bled into the Tower, light trailing down its walls as if it were, indeed, rain; as they did, they began to dwindle. But the clouds could almost be forgotten; the Tower glowed, bright and silver, as if it were in the running to become moon number three.

  “So,” Tiamaris said softly.

  Nightshade glanced at his profile. So did Kaylin, but something dragged her eyes skyward again, toward those shrinking, condensing clouds. Her skin ached, but no surprise there; so did her jaw, but that was because she’d clamped it shut.

  The clouds had thinned so much they were simple tendrils now, and they were fast being absorbed by what, on the surface, looked like stone. But as they moved, they teased themselves apart into separate strands. Those strands, thin and pale, glowed now with the same steady light that touched the Tower walls. They moved, rising as if pulling against the gravity the Tower exerted, dancing, not by the grace of wind or breeze, but deliberately, as if each turn, each slow twist, was a predetermined step.

  And it was. Kaylin saw that as she watched.

  “Kaylin,” she heard Severn say. She lifted a hand; she didn’t look down. She knew that she had to see this; if the Arkon’s memory crystal was somehow still functioning in this shadow-born version of their past, she had to allow it to capture her vision as perfectly as possible.

  So she watched as the individual tendrils continued to weave. Some, she saw, divided into two or three strands; one would cease its motion, and the other two would carry some variant forward. This happened again and again until all motion stilled. When it did, she saw, clearly, what those strands had been doing: they had been writing, in light, a very complicated rune. A word.

  It shone there, as clear as glass, light illuminating it from within. It looked…familiar. But even as she tried to identify it, it began to fade. She felt a hand on her sleeve, on her arm, as she tried to memorize the intricate lines and strokes. It was a lost cause, and normally she gave up on those immediately; it saved effort.

  Here? She was mesmerized until nothing at all could be seen but night sky and moonlight. Only then did she look down.

  Nightshade was standing in front of her—directly in front of her. He had rolled the sleeve up her arm, and exposed to light, glowing in the same way that the rune in the sky had, were the marks on her arms.

  “I didn’t do that,” she told Lord Nightshade softly.

  He nodded. “What do you think was done?”

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  That produced a very dry chuckle.

  “Enough,” Severn said quietly. He stepped in, but did not touch Nightshade. They fenced with stares for a minute, and then Nightshade let her arm go, dropping his own to his sides. “So,” he said softly to Tiamaris.

  Tiamaris was staring at the Tower. Nothing about it appeared to have changed, and even the light which illuminated it faded as they watched. “It has started,” he said quietly.

  Nightshade, this Nightshade, had no knowledge of the fiefs because the fiefs didn’t exist. But he had never been, frequently to Kaylin’s regret, a fool. “What do you think caused this?” he asked.

  Tiamaris considered his words with care. “Something, or someone, in the heart of the interior, has caused a disturbance.”

  “And this?”

  “I would say that this…” and here he gestured toward the Tower “…is our—your—last line of defense.”

  “Against?”

  “The ferals,” Kaylin broke in, “for one. They’ll come. I don’t know when.”

  “Ferals?”

  She cursed. “They’re like hunting dogs. Except larger. Smarter. They’re black, or so dark a gray it’s almost the same. They don’t come out during the day.” Which no longer applied in Barren, but she let that go. “They hunt in packs. They kill whatever they can find in the open street.”

  He raised a brow, and she cursed again, this time in Leontine. “No, they wouldn’t be able to kill you. But it’s not you they’ll hunt. It’s us. It’s people like me.” She hesitated.

  “Can they be killed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then this does not sound like a disaster.”

  When he put it like that, it didn’t. It certainly didn’t seem like more of a disaster than street gangs and drug dealers and loan sharks. She turned to look between the tines of this very well-kept gate, to the equally well-kept streets beyond them. How would it happen? How would the City go from this—where no one looked as if they were starving or prematurely aged by a life on the streets—to the fiefs she’d been born in?

  “There will be more than her ferals,” Tiamaris said softly. “I do not know what form it will take, but I am certain, Lord Nightshade, that you will recognize it when you see it; you or your kin. There is a reason the High Halls stand where they stand. A reason, in the end, that the capital of the future Empire will also stand here. That reason lies in the ruins and the buildings that your kin now explore. And that we also do, to our lasting regret.”

  “Could we stop them?” Kaylin asked them both.

  They stared at her.

  “Could we go out—now—and head toward the center of the City? Could we find them and stop them before—before—”

  “Before what?”

  “Before they release or invoke whatever it is they must have to cause things to change so damn much.”

  “It is centuries, Kaylin,” Tiamaris told her gently. “There are those who live here in relative wealth. How long do you think they will stay once the ferals come?”

  “But it’s—it’s their home.”

  “They will find another. They will still be wealthy, and they will be alive.” He watched her. “It will not happen overnight, but it will happen. I think it has already happened. The start.”

  She started to speak, and stopped. “Because of what just happened to the Tower.”

  “If I guess correctly, there are six such buildings, ringed by the river. They have all been touched by similar clouds. They will all…wake. Soon.” He glanced at Nightshade, and then back. “Even if we go now, and we are against all odds successful, you delay, you do not prevent. There are always men of power—in any race—who will be drawn to what lies at the heart of our fiefs.”

  “Why?”

  “I do not know why they—”

  “Why were you?”

  He raised a brow. His eyes had shaded from gold to bronze so slowly she hadn’t really tracked the change. But in the end, he merely said, “I am not considered of significant power among my kind. I was sent to investigate.”

  “And the Outcaste?”

  “It was different.”

  Lord Nightshade lifted a hand. “I believe the time for your conversation is at an end,” he told them both softly.

  Kaylin didn’t even ne
ed to ask him why.

  The Tower at their back had suddenly developed something that looked suspiciously like a door.

  It was not a terribly fine door. The frame that contained it was solid and blocky, one piece with the stone of the Tower. There were no letters above it, or, as was often the case in parts of Elantra, adorning the wall to either side. In fact, it looked as if the door had been added as an afterthought. Given that the door seemed flat, rectangular, and plain—the type of door behind which someone like Kaylin or Severn would live—it might have been. It had a doorknob. The hinges were on the inside. It seemed—at this distance—to lack a keyhole.

  Kaylin glanced at Severn.

  “No,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t there before.” He’d spoken very little since they’d arrived on this cold, night street—but she was used to that. Severn had never been much of a talker. He looked at the door.

  So did Kaylin. “Tiamaris?”

  The Dragon didn’t seem surprised. He didn’t, on the other hand, seem amused or curious, either. Nightshade did. “An invitation?” he asked softly.

  Kaylin said, “How? No one’s home. Not yet.”

  The door swung open.

  The universe, on occasion, had a very irritating sense of humor.

  “I think it unwise,” Tiamaris said.

  “No kidding,” she replied, adding a few Leontine words for good measure. She had slid into Elantran, which caused Nightshade to raise a brow. He doesn’t understand me, she thought, with surprise. He looked so similar to the Nightshade she knew, the fact that centuries had passed had seemed almost unreal.

  But he wasn’t her Nightshade, not yet. She wondered, briefly, when he had learned to speak Elantran. And wondered, as well, if Elantran even existed in this City at the moment. If it didn’t, where had it come from? The Dragons certainly hadn’t introduced it.

  “Severn,” she said, still speaking her mother-tongue, “two things.”

  He nodded, waiting.

  “This is a very, very bad idea.” When he raised a brow, she grimaced. “And I don’t know if we get out—or get back—any other way. For a value of out,” she added, “that doesn’t end with our corpses. Nightshade’s said that the Tower takes a master—always. This one doesn’t have one yet.”

  “You think it’s already started to search.”

  “There are two people here who could easily control it.” Nightshade was frowning. She knew that he could understand the emotional gist of what she said, but knew, now, that the words themselves would elude him. It wasn’t exactly privacy, but she’d take what she could get. “So, yeah, I think it’s looking.”

  “You don’t want either of them in the Tower.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know if this is real, or if this is some sort of illusionary effect of the storm. I’ve daydreamed for years about changing the past.” She broke off and looked away. “But not this damn far back.”

  He still waited. When it became clear that she’d retreated, momentarily, from words, he said, “I don’t think the Tower is speaking to either Tiamaris or Nightshade.”

  “Please do not tell me you think it’s speaking to me.”

  “To you,” he said, “or to me. Look at the door.”

  “I really hate magic,” she told him, and spit to the side. “It is so goddamn creepy.”

  “You noticed.”

  “That the door has no doorward? Yeah, I noticed. I also notice that my arms are still glowing. And I do not want to be stuck here.” She hesitated, and then approached the open door slowly.

  “Private,” Tiamaris said sharply. It was a relief. She turned to look at him. He stepped past her, and toward the open door; the door didn’t slam in his face. It hung open, as if whatever had animated it had retreated. He paused in the frame, and then turned back.

  “There are bodies here,” he told her quietly, and in an odd tone of voice.

  “Bodies? Multiple?”

  “Three.”

  “Race?”

  “Human.”

  She frowned. “How did they die?”

  “From this distance? Not of magical causes. Blood loss, or possibly lack of oxygen.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I can’t at this distance. But I’ve seen enough death to recognize the state.” The words were slightly clipped. Kaylin gritted her teeth. “Severn?”

  “With you,” he replied. They approached the Tower door, and almost ran into Tiamaris’s back.

  “Either you let us in,” she told him, in her most reasonable tone of voice, “or you drag them out.”

  “I prefer the latter, at the moment.” Again, his tone of voice was unusual.

  “Fine.” She stepped away from the door, and when she was well away, he walked into the Tower. She was holding her breath, and realized it only when he reappeared. Dragons looked mostly human, but they were stronger; he didn’t have to make three trips. He wasn’t particularly careful, but there wasn’t much reason to be careful—not here.

  Years of training, on the other hand, made Kaylin want to snarl in frustration; Teela would have broken one of her arms if she’d dragged corpses this carelessly out of the area in which they’d been found before the Hawks had gotten everything recorded. The Hawks, she thought, that didn’t exist, even as a concept, yet.

  But she understood why he’d been so hesitant the minute he laid the bodies on the ground. It was their clothing. There was nothing fancy about it, nothing terribly expensive—and that was fine with Kaylin; even the fancier streets here didn’t preclude the poor—they practically demanded it. But it was familiar ratty clothing. It was fief clothing.

  She hesitated, and while she did, Tiamaris turned the bodies over.

  “Kaylin?” Severn’s voice. She heard it, but didn’t look, didn’t acknowledge him. Swallowing, she knelt by the side of one of the corpses, her hand hovering above his open eyes.

  Tiamaris said, “You know these men.” It was not a question.

  She was silent for a long moment. “Yes.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I didn’t know them well. They worked for the fief lord.”

  Tiamaris waited more or less patiently—for a Dragon. Kaylin continued to stare. “Barren. They lived in Barren,” Kaylin finally managed. Her voice had thickened; the syllables seemed to stick to her throat.

  “They died in Barren?”

  She nodded. “Seven years ago, give or take a few months.”

  Barren thinks you’re ready.

  She closed the dead man’s eyes, and rose.

  “Why are they here?” Tiamaris asked. He didn’t ask it of her, but she answered anyway.

  “The Tower. And if this is its idea of conversation, it can go straight to hell.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Barren thinks you’re ready. Morse, her lopsided grin, her hands on dagger hilts, the points toward Elianne. She stared at them, wondering, dully, if this were the day Morse would kill her. Gray day, cold and almost wintry, although there was no snow. But the day didn’t matter. The time didn’t matter.

  She was in Barren. Morse was waiting. She lifted her hands, and Morse reversed the daggers, placing both of their hilts into her palms. Her smile was still there. The side of it was that purple-yellow of fading bruise. Where the bruise had come from, Elianne didn’t know. She didn’t ask. If Morse wanted her—or anyone else to know—they’d know. They’d probably have bruises of their own at the end of the conversation, but they’d know.

  “Who?” she asked.

  Morse nodded. “Start with Sorco. You know him?”

  The name meant nothing. Elianne hesitated, but didn’t let it show. “Not by name,” she finally said. “He travels alone?”

  “No.” Morse waited for questions. Elianne didn’t have any. She understood what Barren meant by ready: this was a test. “He’ll travel with two others. If you can separate him, fine. You’re only on Sorco. If you can’t…”

  “Are you going with me?”

 
“No.” Morse shoved her hands through the short brush of her hair. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  Morse raised one brow, and then shrugged; the shrug was more pronounced. She was irritated. “You’ve got seven days.”

  “Seven days?”

  “Barren figured seven days was long enough. At the end of seven days, he’ll either send someone else or go in person.”

  “He’ll send you, you mean.”

  Morse exhaled. “No. That’s exactly what I don’t mean. You’re mine, as far as Barren is concerned.”

  Elianne closed her eyes. Swallowed. “Everything in Barren is his,” she said quietly.

  Morse said nothing, and when Elianne opened her eyes again, she saw that the older woman was staring at the wall. Her hands were fists. “Fine. What’s mine is your training. I found you. I thought you might be worth something. He’s not testing you, here.”

  But he was. They both knew it.

  “He’s testing me.”

  Morse would pay if she failed. How, and for how long, Elianne didn’t know. Didn’t ask. “You can’t come with me,” she said, voice flat.

  Everything in Barren belongs to me.

  She checked her sleeves, made sure they were fastened. They had no buttons, but they did have strings sewn—badly—on the inside of the wrists. She’d gotten good at tying them with her offhand. Morse believed you could train yourself to use either hand efficiently; the strings were one of the ways in which Elianne pursued this.

  Morse lived in a building that was close to what passed for a market in Barren. No, it was a market, but it wasn’t the same as the market in Nightshade. It was sparser, grayer, dirtier. She checked the mental image of Morse’s map. This was not Sorco’s beat.

  His beat lay elsewhere. Closer to the river, where Morse said the real money was. Closer, Elianne thought, to the bridge.

  Of course it’s closer to the bridge, Morse had said with a sneer. Where do you think the money comes from?

  It had never occurred to her to wonder, in all her years in Nightshade. But she understood it, now. It was a bleak, bitter knowledge. There were people on the other side of the river who came to the fiefs. What they did in the fiefs they could not do in the rest of the City; not without getting into trouble. Whatever trouble meant, there.