The Chronicles of Elantra 5 - Cast in Silence (17 page)

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 body.

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.”

Kaylin nodded.

“But you look like you could have kept that up for hours.”

“Maybe hour. You’ve fought one of those before?”

“Hell no. Do I look like I’m dead?” She glanced at Tiamaris. But Morse generally didn’t offer thanks to anyone, so she didn’t actually speak to him. “You’re lucky we’re not on a tight schedule,” she finally said.

“Oh?”

“If we were, we’d be late. Barren’s always been big on punctuality.”

“Big word,” Kaylin said, falling in step beside Morse as Morse began to walk.

“Learn something, you hang around important men like Barren,” Morse replied.

Kaylin nodded. She certainly had. “Anything worth learning?”

Morse chuckled. It was not a happy sound. “Same as always.” She walked another two blocks before she stopped, wincing.

“Ribs?” Kaylin asked quietly.

“All there. Might not all be in one piece. Look, Eli, you’ve seen what we’re facing.”

“You said you hadn’t seen—”

“I haven’t. But then again, the big ones? They don’t often come in exactly the same shape or size. They don’t make the same noises. Some talk. Some don’t. They can be killed,” she added, “but it gets harder and harder with time. That was something special.” She spit to one side to underline the last word. “Doesn’t matter. You’ve seen it, you understand what it means.

“You still want to talk to Barren?”

“I never wanted to talk to Barren,” Kaylin replied. “Not then. Not now.”

“Go home.”

“Can’t.”

Morse shrugged. “Your life, Eli. No one has to know you came this way.”

Four people already did. She started to mention this, remembered who she was talking to, and stopped. Morse could kill them without blinking or breaking a sweat, and they both knew it. She was offering to do that now.

Kaylin owed them nothing. Less than nothing, really. But she shook her head. “You’re not going to like this much,” she told Morse, “but Barren is our last line of defense. We don’t stop whatever is causing this problem, and those creatures are going to be eating their way through the rest of the city. The rest of the city,” she added, touching the Hawk on her chest, “hasn’t had years of ferals and nighttime curfews to get them ready for this kind of thing.”

Morse grinned. “I know. It’s the only thing that makes facing my own death bearable.”

CHAPTER 10

Elianne had been with Morse for six weeks before Morse took her to see Barren the first time. Six weeks of training, albeit not the variety of training she’d see later with the Hawks. She’d learned how to hold a knife, and how to use it a little, in the years she’d lived with Severn, but Severn had never intended her to fight.

He’d never intended her to kill.

Morse was not Severn. Not to look at and not to live with. She’d given Elianne her first throwing daggers, and she’d taught her how to use them. She’d said nothing about self-defense; she only cared about Elianne’s aim. And her arm strength. “Scrawny arms like that, and it doesn’t matter how well you throw; dagger’s going to go an inch through flesh, and it won’t scratch shit out of armor.”

Morse had occupied a large flat in a run-down building by Buckler. Her neighbors were quiet and well behaved, at least around Morse. Morse had taken the time to introduce them all to Elianne; she hadn’t bothered to introduce Elianne to them. Their names, Morse reasoned, weren’t important—they were nobody.

“I work for Barren,” Morse told her, “and they all know it. You work for
me,
and they now know that, too. They give you any trouble, it’s the last thing they’ll do.”

Elianne had nodded, and Morse grinned. “You want at least one of them to step out of line, though.”

“Why?”

“Practice.”

Morse had asked her, “Who was he?” at the start of their third week of training. Elianne, who had come in from a run in Barren, and now sagged against the wall completely winded, had taken her time replying. She’d known enough then to emphasize her lack of breath; Morse wasn’t patient, and if angered, she’d let fly with either harsh words or the back of her hand.

“Who?”

“The guy. The one you want to kill.”

“I thought he was a friend,” Elianne had replied.

“A friend?”

“I can’t remember when I didn’t know him. He was there before my mom died.”

Morse shrugged. “How old were you?”

“Five, I think.”

“How old was he?”

“Ten.”

“But he took care of you.”

Elianne had nodded. “Yeah. He took care of me. Taught me how to look pathetic and cute, if it would help; taught me how to steal, when it wouldn’t. Even taught me how to know the difference.” She rose and began to walk; the first two days Morse had taken them out on a run, her legs had cramped horribly after they’d finally stopped moving. “I trusted him,” she told Morse.

“Yeah,” Morse said. “We’re all stupid once. If we’re lucky, we survive it. If we’re good, they don’t. What’d he do to you?”

Elianne closed her eyes.

“Eli?”

And opened them to the streets of Barren, seven years later. “Sorry. Thinking.”

“Didn’t look like thought.”

Kaylin shrugged. “What passes for thought, these days. I remember the first time you took me to see Barren.”

Morse didn’t bat an eyelash.

“You got any more weapons?”

Kaylin, suddenly hit with an image of the quartermaster, winced. “There wasn’t much left of the blades. I should have kept them anyway.”

Morse shrugged. “Why?”

Explaining the quartermaster to Morse was not high on the list of priorities for the day. Any day. Tiamaris, however, handed her two knives. They weren’t regulation wear, but they had their own sheaths. “For now,” he told her. “And I will make the quartermaster seem like a lamb if you lose them.”

She glanced over her shoulder.

“Casualties of battle are not the same as a loss.”

“If you ever get tired of Court,” she told him with a grimace, “you’ve got a career as a quartermaster ahead of you.”

The streets were empty. Even empty, they became familiar as Kaylin walked them. Maybe it was because she walked them with Morse; she couldn’t quite say. She hadn’t lived here long enough to know them as well as she knew Nightshade’s—but Nightshade had been her childhood home, and until the last day of her life in it, she had managed to find ways to be happy living there.

There was no happiness in Barren. Barren, she thought, had lived up to its name, although her rage and her guilt hadn’t let her be that ironic at the time. What would she say to her younger self, if she met her in these streets?