Harvest Moon (18 page)

In it, she watched the two Barrani. Teela. Tain. They had the long, dark hair of Barrani everywhere, and they also had the flawless skin, the perfect beauty, that made them seem so dangerously aloof. Except when Tain had smiled, she'd noticed that one of his teeth was chipped. It made her vindictively happy for just a moment, but that kind of happiness never lasted.

Case in point: the doors opened and an older man stepped into the room. His hair was that streaked dark that people called gray, and his eyes were a very cool blue; he had a beard. He was wearing a dress, several rings, and an expression that could have frozen water. It thawed slightly when Red approached.

“Ceridath Morlanne,” the man said, “from the Imperial Order of Mages. I was informed that my services were
urgently
required.” He glanced at the bodies.

Red nodded. “It's not pretty,” he added, “but we won't start our work until yours is done.”

“Very well. Let's get to work on this, shall we?” He approached the first of the blanketed corpses. “You wish me to scan all three?”

“Yes. Records,” he added, looking over his shoulder at, as far as Kaylin could tell, his own reflection. She
was wrong, and she understood the minute she also looked at his reflection just how wrong. The mirror—like the small one on the Sergeant's desk—began to glow. The light it emitted was an ugly, harsh blue—it washed everything out, made it seem almost gray. She didn't like it.

“Recording.” She liked the voice even less. But Red didn't seem alarmed by either light or voice, although his expression was now more focused, more intent.

The Barrani also looked less bored. It didn't make them look less dangerous.

The mage, who no one had bothered to introduce, glanced at both the Barrani and Kaylin; he frowned at Kaylin, but said nothing. Red motioned to Kaylin, and Kaylin moved away from the mage and the table in front of which he was standing.

The mage pulled the blanket back, and Red took it out of his hands.

On the slab was a girl's body. She was maybe ten years old.

 

Kaylin couldn't breathe. Didn't want to. She was holding on to air with two fists and clenched jaws. The girl was missing one eye. Her face was a patchwork of crossed cuts, some deeper than others; the incisions ran the length of her jaw and her throat. She was clothed, but not well, and the clothing itself had also been cut and torn. Her arm—one of her arms—was burned.

Kaylin didn't want to look; she couldn't look away. Mute, silent, she watched as the mage began to gesture. The gestures were open-palmed and slow.

Teela sidled over to where she stood. Bending close
enough that her hair brushed the side of Kaylin's face, she said, “Have you seen much magic before?”

Swallowing, Kaylin shook her head.

“Do you know what he's doing?”

She shook her head again. No. But even as she did, she felt her arms and her legs begin to tingle, and her eyes widened as she stared at the mage's back. She wore—she
always
wore—long sleeves. If she'd been alone, she would have opened the wrist-cuffs and peeled the sleeves back to her elbows so she could look at the marks that adorned all of the skin on her inner arms. She wasn't.

But the tingling grew worse as the mage continued to move; it passed from something on the edge of pleasant to something on the edge of painful when he began to speak. She drew breath because she had to breathe, and the pain got worse, as if breathing at all had reminded it she was here.

And then, as her hair began to stand on end—she would have sworn it was standing on end—she saw the girl's corpse begin to glow. She cursed under her breath.

“Kaylin?” Teela whispered, voice tickling her ear. She was way too damn close, and Kaylin wanted to elbow her—sharply—out of the way. But the magic was worse than the fact that a Barrani was standing over her shoulder.

“What—what is he doing to her?” She managed to force the words between her teeth.

“He's a mage. An Imperial mage, meaning he works for the Eternal Emperor, however indirectly.” She paused, and then added, “Magic can't bring the dead back to life, if that's what's bothering you. It can't cause
them more pain, they're already dead. Nothing will ever hurt them again.”

She heard the words as if at a great distance—and as if they came from someone else's mouth, because she could never have imagined they could have come from a
Barrani
. Her arms and legs ached, and her borrowed shirt felt as if it were rubbing the skin off the back of her neck. She couldn't tell them that, of course. She
never
talked about the marks.

So she concentrated, instead, on the mage, and the ravaged, small body beneath his hands. For a long moment, nothing changed. The girl was still dead, the gaping wounds no longer bleeding. Her eyes had been closed by whoever had brought her here, or maybe Red himself, because he seemed kind enough to actually care about the dead.

The mage turned to Red, sweat beading his forehead. “Records—there is no evidence of any trace of magic within or upon the corpse. In the considered opinion of Ceridath Morlanne, the cause of death was not magical in nature, although it is possible that the physical injuries were caused indirectly by magical devices.”

Kaylin sucked in air so sharply it should have cut her mouth.

“Hold a moment.” Teela spoke in a crisp, clear voice that was aimed over Kaylin's head at the mage. “Do not drop the scan.” She'd never looked friendly, but at this moment, she sounded much more like the Barrani that Kaylin expected: the implied
or I will kill you
hung, unsaid, in the air.

Turning to Kaylin, she said, “Tell me what you see.” The tone of voice had softened, but not by much. It didn't matter. From out of the closed eyelids of the
dead girl, rising as if they were made of golden smoke, were the shapes and forms of something that reminded Kaylin very much of the hidden marks that adorned her skin.

 

“Kaylin,” Teela said again, her voice sharper and harder.

Kaylin shook herself and pointed.

“No,
describe
it.”

“I must object,” the mage said coldly. “Is the Corporal accusing me of lying?”

Red was staring at Teela. It was, however, Tain who answered. “Not yet,” he said in a voice as cold as the mage's. “Although, if there's anything you'd like to say in your own defense, now would perhaps be advisable.” As the mage lifted his chin, Tain reached out and touched the surface of the mirror. “Lord Grammayre, code three. Red?”

The coroner nodded slowly, and there was a sharp
snap
of sound that came from the doors. “Ceridath?”

The mage was furious, and the fury began to unfold in a series of very polite, very layered threats. Kaylin listened with half an ear, but there weren't any interesting or useful words there, and she still had Teela standing over her shoulder like a very bad nightmare.

“There are…runes…” Kaylin finally said. “They're gold, and sort of smoky, not solid. They're floating
right above her eyes,
Teela.”

“Not for me, they're not. Red, Tain?”

Tain shook his head. Red, however, said, “I can't see anything out of the ordinary for a morgue.”

Ceridath now turned to Kaylin. “Are you claiming,” he said with obvious disbelief, “to be a
mage?
”

She shook her head.

“Have you had
any
experience in the Imperial Halls, any tutoring
whatsoever?
”

“No.”

“Red,” the mage said, “I have no idea when the Hawks began to employ children, but this one is clearly lying.”

The coroner looked exceptionally uncomfortable. “Kaylin, if this is a game of some sort, stop playing it now. It's already going to cause more trouble than you can imagine with the Imperial Order, and we rely on the Imperial Order for most of the magical work the Halls require.”

“I don't think she's playing a game,” Teela said. “But if she is, she'll have the Hawklord to deal with. Or the Sergeant. I wouldn't personally have called it a code three, Tain.”

He shrugged and then grinned. “I was bored.”

“Let this be a lesson to you,” Teela told Kaylin under her breath. “There's nothing more dangerous and unpredictable than a bored immortal—we've had several centuries to perfect the art.”

“What's a code three?”

“No one can enter or leave this room except the Hawklord and anyone he chooses to bring with him.”

“That's bad?”

“You try keeping an angry mage contained in a room he doesn't want to stay in. It gets ugly real fast.”

“You've tried?”

“I've got several centuries on you. Yeah, I've tried.”

“Did it work?”

“I'm still here.”

“What do you think he's going to do?”

“Him? Probably nothing.” She glanced at Kaylin's empty hands. “We're going to need to get you some kind of dagger. That grasping at empty air is going to get old really fast. If things start to look tricky, stand behind me. Directly behind me,” she added. “Not somewhere near the wall.”

The mage now drew himself up to his full height; his cheeks were red. “Reginald,” he said in a cold, clear voice. “The Imperial Order will hear about this blatant lack of respect for one of its senior members.”

Teela whistled under her breath. “Pretend you didn't hear that name.”

“It's not up to me,” was the cold reply. “It's up to Lord Grammayre.”

“Very well. I will play out this charade with as much patience as a busy mage can muster. But I think the scans of the other two corpses are now on permanent hold.”

 

Kaylin wasn't sure what to expect. To her eyes, both Tain and Teela looked…bored. They certainly didn't seem to consider the robed man a threat. She knew better than to trust them, but…Red and Caitlin weren't afraid of them. It would take a much greater depth of suspicion than Kaylin had ever possessed to be suspicious of Caitlin, because even in the fiefs, people like Caitlin existed.

The door opened. In its frame stood the man who ruled the Hawks. His gaze narrowed the minute it touched Kaylin, who resisted the urge to hide behind Teela.

“Lord Grammayre,” Ceridath began.

The Hawklord lifted one hand. “Ceridath,” he said.
His voice was as smooth as the surface of the mirror, and he offered the mage a very unusual bow. This seemed to mollify the mage somewhat.

“Red, you summoned me?”

“I did,” Tain said before Red could speak.

“I…see. There was of a course a very good reason for the summons.”

Tain nodded, unfazed by the sudden ice in the Hawklord's voice. “The Imperial mage—on record—stated uncategorically that there was no magic to be found on the first of the corpses he examined.”

“That was not the unexpected result,” the Hawklord replied. “Since none of the other victims have shown any signs of magical abuse.”

Tain nodded. “We have, however, done the scans under the auspices of a single mage.”

“Corporal, Ceridath is
not
the only mage who has been part of the investigation of this particular ring.”

“No, indeed. He is one of three.”

“Corporal—”

“Your Corporal is accusing me of falsifying my reports. Of, essentially, lying,” Ceridath said.

Lord Grammayre raised one hand to his forehead, where he pinched the bridge of his nose. “On what grounds, Corporal?” he demanded in a tone that made clear the answer had better be bloody good.

The answer, sadly, was now shuffling slightly behind Teela in spite of her earlier intentions. She did not consider herself bloody good evidence of anything.

“The latest addition to the Hawks,” Tain replied.

Lord Grammayre turned to Kaylin and she froze on the spot. “Kaylin,” he said quietly, “come here imme
diately.” He glanced at the open door and it closed. He hadn't spoken a word.

“Grammayre, I warn you—” Ceridath began.

The Hawklord ignored him. He waited for Kaylin, and Kaylin—with an unexpected shove between the shoulder blades, stumbled more or less in the right direction. When she reached him, he lifted his wings, stretching them, for a moment, to their full span. Flight feathers longer than her arm cut light and cast shadow as they began to fold—slowly—over her upturned face.

She startled, and he reached out and caught her shoulders, but his grip was gentle and steadying as his wings came down around them both.

“What,” he said quietly, in this privacy of wings and his voice, “did you see?”

She told him.

“You are certain?”

“I don't know—I've never seen anything like it before, and I don't understand what it means—”

“Nor is your understanding required. But this is very, very unfortunate news. Go to Teela when I release you. Stay behind her, should things become difficult.”

It was almost exactly what Teela had said. “Wait.”

His wings stopped moving. “Yes?”

“The Barrani—do you trust them?”

“Yes.”

“And you're certain they didn't kill these children?”

His eyes widened in surprise, and then they narrowed in something that looked unpleasantly like pity. “Yes, Kaylin. If I can be certain of nothing else about them, I'm certain of that.” He lifted his wings and folded them once again behind his back. “Ceridath,” he said. “If you
have anything of import that you wish to tell us, now is the time.”

Ceridath's eyes widened enough they were almost entirely round. “You cannot be serious.”

“I can. Mirror,” he added, “Magister Dreury of the Imperial Order of Mages.”

 

The mirror went gray. It stayed gray for at least five minutes, and judging from the expression on Red's face, the delay was unusual. But the Hawklord stood as if he could wait all day—or year. When the mirror at last lost the flat, impenetrable gray, it opened into what looked like a very, very rich man's office. There were shelves in the background, and books lined every single one of them; there were glass cabinets that reflected a light whose source she couldn't see.