Barren was waiting. He had four men in the room, and Morse joined him, taking up a position that was almost formal—for Morse—to his right and one step behind. He didn’t look pleased to see his visitors. Too damn bad.
It occurred to Kaylin as she watched him that it was over, for him. He had never truly been fief lord; he had called himself fief lord, and everyone who lived in the fief had obeyed him as if the words were true—because he could kill them, and did. Even me, she thought. No. I was worse. I helped him. I was part of what terrified people. And killed them.
Because she had been afraid, too. Fear was like that; a disease—or worse—it crippled and destroyed not just one life, but the lives of everyone it touched. She could remember, watching him, why she had been afraid. She hated it, but she felt the fear as if it still lived inside of her, small but hidden.
She looked up, met his gaze, and saw him measuring her; trying to see how much of her he still had in his grip. “You went to the old tower,” he finally said, speaking to Kaylin.
Kaylin turned to Tiamaris, to make a point; the Dragon’s eyes were a pale orange. He wasn’t angry, yet; he was, however irritated. Barren wasn’t born in the fiefs; he had to know there was a cost to irritating Dragons. “She did.” It was the Dragon who replied.
Barren turned to him slowly, as if Barren, and not Tiamaris, were still fief lord. “You met its occupant.”
“I,” Tiamaris replied, “am now its occupant.”
Barren’s expression was shuttered and impassive; nothing escaped it.
“You are the reason,” Tiamaris said, breaking his silence, “that this fief stood so long against the borderlands. Both your power, which you gave involuntarily, and your foresight, which you applied in your choice of residence and the building of the watchtowers, formed a surprisingly effective guard against the shadows that lie at the center of the seventh…fief.”
Barren nodded carefully. If he’d been a cheap, stupid thug, he would have been grinning by this point; he was a suspicious, cautious man. A cruel one.
Tiamaris then waited. Having been a Dragon’s student for the better part of a few months, Kaylin understood the pressure that silence could bring to bear.
“What do you propose?” Barren finally asked. “This is not the Empire.”
“No.”
“The Eternal Emperor has never had an interest in another Dragon Lord ruling territory within his domain,” Barren continued, his expression completely neutral. Kaylin understood why, now. He thought he had a chance; the Dragons could fight it out, and Barren assumed that the Emperor would win.
It was a good assumption; the Dragon Court belonged to the Emperor.
Tiamaris nodded. “You misunderstand the Emperor. He has never had an interest in any others ruling territory within his claimed domain. The fact that I am Dragon does not change his opinion. The fiefs have been allowed to stand because he has never chosen to claim them as his own.
“None of us are interested in fighting a war that will cause our own destruction.” He paused, and then said, “The Emperor has never fully tested himself against the power of the Towers that sustain the borders. It would be an interesting contest.”
Kaylin remembered that she needed to breathe about a minute after his words sunk in.
“You intend to fight him if he comes.”
“The fief,” Tiamaris replied, “is mine.”
Barren took a moment before he spoke again. “As a Lord of the Dragon Court, your time was of great value. The minutiae of day-to-day life in the fief—”
Tiamaris lifted a hand. “If you mean to offer me your services, I’m afraid I cannot accept them. You are known as fiefLord here, and your obvious presence in a role of power would confuse the issue of rulership. I mean to leave no one in doubt.”
Barren looked slightly surprised for the first time since Tiamaris had entered the room. “Why did you come?” he asked.
“To acknowledge your contribution to the fief,” Tiamaris replied. “In recognition of that fact, I will allow you—and your men—to exit the building before I destroy it. You are free to go where you will. You will not remain within the boundaries of my fief. I believe,” he added, with the barest hint of an edged smile, “that you are familiar with the boundaries.”
Before Barren could frame an answer, Tiamaris turned to Kaylin. “If that is acceptable to you?”
She looked at Tiamaris, started to speak and stopped. He was fief lord. Not Hawk. Not a member of the Imperial Court. Laws and rules were defined by one man—or woman. How they upheld their laws was their own business, because the Law didn’t come here.
He could give her Barren. Barren, the man.
“He injured you, if I am not mistaken, in his tenure as Lord here.”
She swallowed. Nodded.
Barren didn’t try to argue with Tiamaris; he wouldn’t. He wasn’t afraid of Kaylin. He had nothing to fear from her. His men still stood around him, willing to follow his orders as long as it wasn’t too damn costly. The words of the new fief lord had not yet sunk in. “Well?” Barren said.
Her knuckles were white as they rested over the pommel of her dagger. She could kill him. It would silence at least one of the memories that haunted the worst of her nights. But…she had walked into Barren. She had been so focused on guilt and loss and anger, she had given her allegiance to a man who had never—would never—be worthy of it. She’d paid. But she wasn’t the only one.
And killing him for the sake of the dead wouldn’t ease her guilt or her culpability in their deaths.
“Elianne,” Morse said. Her old name. Kaylin looked across to Morse, who was standing where she always stood. Her face was shuttered, her expression remote; she wasn’t pleading for Barren. But she was asking for something. They hadn’t lived together long, and Kaylin had been so self-absorbed she couldn’t put two plus two together to save her life; she’d survived by accident and luck. But she wasn’t a thirteen-year-old on the run anymore, and she understood, suddenly, what it was. It changed things.
It changed nothing.
Kaylin drew breath before she turned to Tiamaris. “No,” she said quietly. “His life’s not mine to take.”
“Very well,” Tiamaris replied. “You are free to leave.” He reached out with one hand and caught Severn’s shoulder tightly. “You will not hunt in my domain.”
Barren’s eyes widened.
“We are given leave to hunt where we will,” Severn replied.
“Indeed. But I will be forced to kill you, an act which I would regret. If you need to hunt him, you will hunt him after he leaves the fief, not before.”
Severn was silent for a full minute before he nodded. Until he nodded, Tiamaris didn’t release him. But Severn wasn’t stupid; he wasn’t impulsive. He would not try to kill Barren in the fief. Not now. She didn’t have to worry about Severn.
So Kaylin watched Morse instead. Morse’s expression didn’t change at all when Tiamaris refused Severn his arguably legal right to execution. Morse understood that Severn was a dead man if he even tried; you didn’t piss off a Dragon and survive, not when he was standing fewer than ten feet away.
Barren turned to the four men in the room. Nodded curtly. They formed up around him, like a small human shield between Barren and the Dragon. Morse joined them, standing slightly apart the way she usually did. She didn’t look at Kaylin.
Barren didn’t waste breath arguing with Tiamaris, and he had never been fool enough to meet him head-on. Even if he’d still had the magic Tara had drained from him, he wasn’t that type of stupid. Which, Kaylin though, was a bitter disappointment. But she’d made her decision, and if it was bitter, it was still hers; she’d live with it.
And who will die because of it? There were whole days she hated having anything that resembled a conscience.
But sometimes, it asked the right question at the right damn time. She barely saw Morse move. One minute, she was walking in her cautious, cocky way toward the double doors to one side of B
arren’s back, and the next, she was at his side, the flash of steel in her hand brief, the blood that gushed from the whole of his suddenly open throat less so. He didn’t even have the chance to turn, to face her; he toppled backward, the whole of his body crashing to the carpet as if it were already in rigor.
But it jerked there, his eyes glazed and unblinking.
The four men froze; Morse killed one before he’d managed to turn to face her. That was Morse. The other three closed on her, and Kaylin started forward; Severn caught her, dragging her back, as Tiamaris roared. There was fire—literal fire—in the breath that left his mouth. He wasn’t particularly careful about the floors or the carpets, but then again, he’d already said he was going to burn the building to the ground.
He was only slightly more careful about Barren’s men. At least one of them screamed. Morse was out of the fire before it hit her would-be assailants, but she didn’t even try for the door. She watched Barren. She watched Barren die.
“Tiamaris,” Kaylin said, urgent now, “take Tara—”
But Tara shook her head. “This is the one who hurt you,” she said to Kaylin, in a voice as cold as any Kaylin had ever heard her use.
Great. She had made friends with an overprotective and somewhat cold-blooded Tower.
“I will watch him die.”
It wasn’t for Tara’s sake that she wanted Tara out, and Tiamaris turned to her, raising one dark brow to make clear that he understood.
“Severn, let me go.”
“Kaylin—”
“Please. I won’t do anything stupid.”
He bent slightly and whispered a single word in her ear. Don’t. Then he let go.
She walked quickly toward Morse, putting herself directly between Tiamaris and the woman who had, for better or worse, found her in the streets and taken her home. But she stopped just shy of her, because she had never seen Morse like this before. Her face had gone from cool neutrality to blank, and her eyes were almost as wide and glassy as Barren’s. Her hands were red and wet; the blood hadn’t even gone sticky yet.
But Morse, like Kaylin, couldn’t just be touched. She couldn’t be hugged. There was no easy way to offer her comfort. No way at all, really, but this. “Morse.”
She looked up at the sound of her name.
“He’s dead.”
Morse nodded, but it wasn’t a fief nod—it was too automatic, too empty, for that.
“Morse—”
“Will the Dragon kill me, now?” Morse asked, in the ghost of her former voice. Something had left her; Kaylin wondered if it would ever come back.
“No,” she replied, with more certainty than she felt.
“He should.”
“Morse—”
Morse shook her head. She pushed Kaylin to one side with no force at all and stumbled over to Barren’s body. There, she knelt, staring at his open eyes, his still face. Kaylin thought, then, that hatred was corrosive, but in some ways, if you had nothing else, it could sustain you. It was poor sustenance, but sometimes poor was better than nothing.
Nothing, however, was what she said. She didn’t ask Morse why; Morse wouldn’t have answered. But she crouched a little distance away from Morse, over Barren’s body, and she waited in case Morse asked for anything.
Morse didn’t. She didn’t cry; that would have been too easy.
Tiamaris walked quietly across the room. Kaylin rose, turning to face him, but his gaze was on Morse, and his eyes were almost entirely gold. Light from the windows cast his shadow across Morse; she looked up as it touched her. Her eyes were dull, almost gray. She said nothing.
Tiamaris seemed to expect that nothing. He turned to Kaylin. “I accept your choice, in this,” he said softly, “but the White Towers must be destroyed if we cannot, in safety, diffuse the changes in its structure.”
“You said—”
“Yes. That was also true. There is not always a single reason to do something—often there are many. Morse,” he said.
She looked up at the sound of her name. If you weren’t watching her face closely, she might have been looking at Tiamaris. “Yeah.”
“Tiamaris—” Kaylin began.
He lifted one hand, and she swallowed her words—which wasn’t hard; she hadn’t quite figured out what to say.
“He is dead.”
“Barren’s dead.” Morse’s voice was wooden, almost without inflection.
“You served him.”
Morse said nothing.
“You killed him.”
She nodded.
“It’s over. What will you do now?”
“Now?” Her eyes focused, slowly, on his face, and as they did, her expression hardened. She shook herself, looked once at Barren, and then stood. But she rose clumsily, as if she were drunk. “I’m done here. You want to kill me for countermanding your orders, you can—”
“You were not under my orders,” he replied quietly. “Or you would already be dead.”
She nodded. There was no display of bravado left in her, although she’d never been one for displays of stupid to begin with. Or maybe she had been, to begin with—Kaylin hadn’t known her, then. Didn’t really know her now, if it came to that. Morse didn’t get close to people. She didn’t let people close to her, either.
It was why Kaylin had been able to walk away, in the end. Maybe that had been Morse’s way of being kind.
“You don’t want me,” Morse told Tiamaris, after a long silence. “I was his muscle.”
“So was Kaylin. She now works indirectly for the Emperor. But perhaps you feel that the change in rulership will not be to your liking. It will be reflected, in the end, at all levels in the fief of Tiamaris.”
“How?”
“I dislike the lack of organization and the lack of basic laws within Barren. I intend to establish both. The laws will follow closely the Imperial laws. You may not be familiar with them,” he added. “But if you intend to remain in this fief in any capacity, you will learn.
“There will be one or two significant departures from Imperial Law, the most obvious of which will be the lack of an Emperor. But there will be a basic core of guards who see that my laws are upheld. I will not require your services in the capacity of assassin. If I believe someone merits death, I will kill them.”
“Just like that.”
He nodded. “I will also see to the ferals.”
“The ferals?” Morse grimaced. “Why?”
“Because the fief is mine, and nothing hunts in it without my permission. If they are not, indeed, dumb beasts driven by hunger, they will learn.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I do not think there is a home for you across the river.”
Morse shrugged. Her body lost its unnatural stiffness as she did. She nodded in Kaylin’s direction. “Because I’m not soft, the way she is?”
“You took her in.”
“I taught her,” Morse snapped, with more than a little heat, “everything she knows about killing. The rest of the shit she picked up came from someone else—blame it on them.”
But Tiamaris was unwilling to let Morse have the point; Kaylin wanted to kick him. He didn’t understand the fiefs. “You were not happy when she returned.”
“Barren wanted her here. He didn’t tell me why. Anything he wanted, he wanted to strengthen himself. And I,” she added, glaring pointedly at his corpse, “had no interest in seeing him strengthened. I was waiting,” she added, and this time her voice lost some of its edge. “I’ve been waiting for so damn long.”
“The fief was falling. The people—”
She shrugged. “If the shadows hadn’t killed them, Barren would have, sooner or later. Killed them or destroyed them and left them standing. He was good at that.”
“You are alive.”
“I know how to stay alive. Always have.” The bitterness, the self-loathing, in the words was so familiar to Kaylin she felt it as her own. It hurt.
“And are you willing to take the risk
of keeping other people alive?”
Kaylin sucked in air. Tiamaris, you bastard.
Morse, however, wasn’t Kaylin. She rallied. “You pay me enough, there’s no damn risk I won’t take.”
Tiamaris smiled. It was a thin smile. “We will have time to discuss your definition of enough. Will you serve?”
Morse shrugged. “I have to swear some fancy-ass oath of allegiance?”
Kaylin cringed.
“No. For the moment, the only witnesses present would not appreciate the gravitas of a more formal oath. I will, however, take whatever oath you offer that would be considered binding.”
“Binding?”
“That has meaning to you.”
She froze. “And if I don’t have one?”
“You are free to leave. Provided,” he added, “that no one here has a grudge that would prevent it.” His smile was thin, but there was genuine amusement in it. Kaylin didn’t like it, much.
Morse stared at him for way too long. Then she turned to Kaylin. “How on the level is he?”
“About money?”
“About anything.”
“He was a Hawk.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“You couldn’t bribe him. You couldn’t kill him. You couldn’t get him to break his word unless you managed either the first or the second.”
“You know this how?”
Kaylin shrugged. “He has my back. Any fight we’ve been in.”
“He was in charge?”
“Not always. Didn’t matter. He faced down an older, bigger Dragon.”
“An older—What, they fight?”
“In the fiefs. There’s an Outcaste Dragon in the fiefs.”
Morse tensed. Turned to Tiamaris. “This isn’t over yet?”
Tiamaris said nothing.
“Fuck it. All right, I’m in. If you want me, I’m in. I’m not good at keeping other people alive. They don’t fucking listen. They do what they think is fucking right. They get themselves killed. I’m not good at it. So you have to know what you’re getting, because I don’t want my ass fried for their kind of stupid.”
Tiamaris raised a brow.
“I’m saying I’ll try. I’m saying I’ll give it what I’ve got. But I’m not swearing any damn oath that says I’ll succeed at it.”
Cast in Silence Page 44
