Harvest Moon (27 page)

She didn't answer.

“Does it
matter?
” Kaylin finally demanded. Everyone in the hall looked down at her, in more ways than one. “The children—”

The Arcanist glanced at Teela. “I leave this in your hands,” he told her. “In order to fulfill the terms of a
very
tedious contract, I must now retire to write—and submit—a report to the Captain.”

As the Captain turned, Teela caught his arm. “Captain Neall,” she said, voice low, “we have two important pieces of information. The first, the location of the current intended victims. The second, very little time.”

“How did you obtain that information?”

“I did not obtain it. The Arcanist did. It will no doubt be costly, but it amused him. Unfortunately, it did not amuse the source of the information—the mirror was destroyed in the midst of the discussion.”

“The Arcanist destroyed—”

“No. The person on the other end.”

Ceridath's brows rose. “That would be impossible—” He stopped.

“Yes. If the person on the other end were not in some part responsible for the creation of the mirror itself, it would be. The mirror was not created by mortals, or even mortal mages.”

Captain Neall wanted to say more; that was clear. What he did say, however, was, “The location, Corporal.”

“It's on Vaturcroft. The fourth house.”

Captain Neall grimaced. “I'll mirror the Wolflord.”

“Not from Farris's office you won't,” Teela replied in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice. “Tain.”

“Where are you going?” the Captain asked.

“To Vaturcroft. We're under your orders while we investigate within the Imperial Order's confines. We're beholden to no such thing now, and we can't afford to wait. Farris, should he still be here, is your problem.” Turning, she began to jog down the long hall. Tain followed on her heels, and so did Kaylin. She wasn't surprised to see Ceridath join her as well.

“We'll take a carriage,” he said when they were almost at the exit. He was breathing heavily, and it hadn't been that much of a run. Teela and Tain had been stopped by the guards, which allowed Ceridath the chance to catch up.

He looked at one of those guards and said, “We need a carriage
now.
”

 

Kaylin didn't even notice how uncomfortable the carriage was. She didn't notice the buildings that passed by the windows, and only briefly noticed the people scrambling to get out of the way. What she noticed was
the silence in the cabin; the silence and the sense that everything—
everything
—was taking too damn long.

Teela glanced once at Ceridath and opened her mouth; she closed it again before words could escape.

When the carriage lurched to a stop, she checked to see that Kaylin still had the daggers she'd been given. “We're one building down from where we'll need to be. I have no idea how many children they have, but that's the house. There are guards. They're not visible, and there shouldn't be many.”

The house was far larger than the previous house had been, and it was separated from its neighbors by a lot more land and a stretch of fence.

“Farris won't be there, not yet. We don't know whether or not he sent a message, or if his contingency did we might be too late. If we're not, there'll be fighting. We can't afford to keep an eye on you and an eye out for their victims—you're not chained, you're not hobbled. You can use those,” she added. No question. “Use them.” She looked up at the mage. “I don't know much about your specialty—”

“I can get you in safely. I can—unless Farris was exceptionally cautious—get you in quietly. I am not remaining behind,” he added.

Teela took a deep breath, nodded, expelled. “Good. We'll head to the back and hope the neighbors gape from the windows for a while before they think of doing anything sensible.”

 

The back door—which was really a small side door—had a mark on its upper center which clearly indicated a door ward. Ceridath grimaced briefly and began to cast; Teela and Tain waited. “Simple ward,” the mage
finally said. “Hold.” He cast again, and this time when he was done, he told them, “Now.”

Kaylin assumed they meant to pick the lock.

They broke through the door instead; she wasn't certain it wasn't faster. But if she'd wondered what Ceridath was doing, she understood it then: they made no noise at all. But noisy or no, Ceridath continued to cast the minute he cleared the door's frame, yanking his robes free of splintered wood. Kaylin knew why: the other children had been hidden, probably with the aid of magic, from view. If it was there, he'd find it.

So would she.

Teela and Tain paid no attention to either mage or trainee; they were alert and focused. Since nothing made any sound, everything was visual. It was eerie, to Kaylin. Teela didn't appear to like it much either, but if she cursed, none of it reached Kaylin's ears. Ceridath motioned them forward into what looked like a long galley; it was mostly counter, and mostly clean. It was also empty.

There were stairs leading down almost across from the entrance. Teela looked to the mage, and he frowned. Kaylin felt no magic that wasn't his, and she saw nothing at all that implied magic had been done anywhere near this room.

Down
, Ceridath mouthed, as if remembering something suddenly.

They nodded; they didn't have to break the door down.

They did have to deal with the men coming up the stairs. The men weren't dressed for fighting; if they were the type of thugs the fieflords kept, the thugs here dressed better.

Maybe the law was different, Kaylin thought. Maybe there were rules that weren't meant to be broken, and the Hawks had to follow those because they also upheld them. But one of the men's hands were red with blood; his clothing was spotted with it. Kaylin
screamed
in the silence as part of the floor fell out from under her feet.

It wasn't the literal floor; she knew this because Teela and Tain were already in motion. She drew her own daggers and as the men fell down the stairs—being kicked suddenly in the midsection helped—she leapt down the stairs as if she were their shadow.

Too late too late toolatetoolate.

Sound did not return. In silence, they moved into the basement. It wasn't well lit, but light was here— Ceridath's light, and the lights on the walls in tarnished sconces. The shadows they cast flickered, warped and stretched or thickened as they moved. They came across two more men, but these men
were
armed.

Not for long, though. They were human, and they obviously weren't trained to deal with a faceful of deadly Barrani. They went down, again in silence. The Barrani were already on the move. There were doors here, solid doors, not cell doors; nothing from the outside could see in, and nothing from the inside could look out. Here, though, the Barrani stopped; one door was ajar.

Kaylin ran toward it; Teela caught her shoulder. Sound returned to the world in an ugly rush although magic didn't leave it; her arms and legs hurt so much she thought her skin was peeling off. And she
didn't care
. It
didn't matter
. What mattered was the door. The blood on the floor, visible in the crappy light.

She reached the door before Teela—a feat she could never manage to repeat—and threw it open as the men
on the floor began to groan. She heard steel against stone, but didn't move, didn't look, didn't even try to draw her own daggers. There was a child on the floor, facedown; blood pooled around her upper body, but it was wet, red; it wasn't sticky yet.

Someone was screaming and screaming and screaming—a child, a high voice, a terrible voice. She couldn't stop. But she
moved.
“Kaylin,
no!
” Teela shouted.

Kaylin ran to the side of the girl, knelt, and pulled her off the ground.

As she did, the floor began to
burn
.

 

It burned in a thin circle, a barrier of flickering light. Although it had taken the shape and the form of fire, it was
cold
. Its flame was the color of silver moon washed in a red that, no matter how pale it became, would never be pink.
Coral?
Kaylin thought, but it was brief, a flash of Caitlin. Through the flames, she rolled the girl over onto her lap and saw that the child's throat had been cut. She screamed for them both, and her cheeks were hot and wet. The child's face bore cuts.

But these cuts, unlike the cuts on the corpse in the morgue, were precise strokes, like…writing. Her face was the color of wax, this child. Her blood was still running, and Kaylin's tabard absorbed it. She drew the child into her arms, and her voice died at last into a raw silence.

“Kaylin!”

She didn't even look. Her arms, her legs, her back—they were burning, yes. But…it wasn't the burn that Ceridath's magic, or Farris's, or even the unnamed Arcanist had caused. She
knew
this warmth, this heat, this
burning, even if she had never
ever
felt it so strongly. Her arms, what little of them were exposed, given her chosen burden, were so incandescent a white that they could easily be seen through her sleeves.

Through Caitlin's sleeves.

Fear hit. Relief. Terror. Hope. They tore at her, but they held her aloft at the same time. She reached out, palm against the gaping wound as if by one hand she could hold the child's throat together. She didn't
know
if this girl was Ceridath's granddaughter; she didn't care. She could do something. She could banish some memories. She could—at last—arrive
in time
.

She felt the heat in her hands, and she felt it leave; she felt the girl's throat, and she felt—as she held breath, in silence—the faintest of pulses. She touched the girl's cheeks with her palms, which was difficult given the difference in their sizes and their positions; she touched the girl's eyes, her forehead, the brief gashes in her stomach.

The girl's eyes opened.

They were the wrong shade of green.

What is this?
a voice said. It was neither young nor female. The flames in the circle rose higher, lapping at her feet.

Kaylin looked through them to meet the
very
blue eyes of Teela. “Teela!” she shouted.

Teela took a step toward her and went down as Tain tackled her, full on. Behind them, jaw slack, stood Ceridath, his expression heartbreaking.

 

Teela rose. She kicked one of the groaning men in the face; it was vicious but short. She would have kicked Tain, but Tain was too fast for her; he got out of the way.

“Kitling!” she shouted.

Kaylin nodded. “It's—something's wrong with her—”

“It's a Harvest Circle.” Teela actually punched the wall closest to the doorway. Kaylin heard it, but didn't see it. “If we'd waited until it was dark, you'd—”

“I got here
in time
. I—she's speaking,” Kaylin said. “But—in a man's voice.”

Teela said a whole lot of what sounded like Leontine, then, and turned to the mage. She spoke in Barrani. The mage's eyes widened and he answered—in Barrani. If it was the last thing she ever did on this earth, Kaylin was going to learn how to speak that damn language like a native.

This time, Teela approached the circle with care, but made no attempt to cross it. “The circle isn't at full power.”

It doesn't need to be,
the strange voice said. Kaylin realized, then, that it wasn't the girl speaking; her lips didn't move.
Tell her that, since she seems to care for you. It doesn't need to be.

“The bastard is gloating,” Kaylin translated.

“Tell him I will kill him slowly. Far, far more slowly than anyone his pathetic circle has devoured.” Her eyes were now so dark a blue they were almost all black. Beauty, Kaylin realized, was death. Because Teela had never looked more beautiful than she did at this moment. She spoke, and she spoke clearly in the lilting, lovely words that were High Barrani.

Kaylin would have been terrified into a run that wouldn't have ended while she could still breathe—if then. The man—if he was that—
laughed
. At the same time, the girl stirred in Kaylin's arms. She was a stranger, a stranger's child, someone who Kaylin didn't
know and might never see again. She was also, for just that moment, the most precious gift that Kaylin had ever been given.

“Teela—if there are others in the other rooms, get them out!”

“Tain is working on it,” Teela replied. “They're not in danger now. You are.”

Tell her I am not here,
was the whispered reply.
I have broken none of her coveted Laws
.
All of the damage and death has been caused by her mortals. It has been a glorious Harvest, and it is not
yet
finished.

“I think—I think he thinks he knows you.”

The circle of flames grew taller and brighter. Kaylin could still see through them.

Teela said something to Ceridath, and Ceridath shook his head; he looked…broken.

“Try. Try, damn you
.”

The man laughed.
Do you understand the significance of Harvest, little one?
he asked Kaylin.
Do you understand the significance of the lunar circle in which you now stand? You have…surprised me. You have taken my Harvest from me; she will not now die without my direct intervention.

“You wanted to kill her.”

Ah, no. I merely wanted the experience of her death. I saw it all so clearly, if briefly; she was anointed.

“Why?
Why?
”

He laughed. It was his laughter, in the end—his laughter, not Teela's anger or fear, not the mage's horrible despair—that pushed Kaylin over an edge she had never realized she'd been walking. Her arms tightened around the girl, as this man—this monster, this worse-than-vulture—continued to speak.