The Chronicles of Elantra 5 - Cast in Silence (22 page)

“It’s like a—like a disease?”

“Fuck, listen to you. No, it’s not a damn disease. It’s worse. It’s instant. It gets you, you’re not the fucking same.”

“Does it leave?”

“What?”

“Does it
leave when the shadow leaves?
”

Morse, still moving out of range, managed to stare at Kaylin as if she had, in an instant, turned into a total, dribbling moron. “What the hell do you mean
leave?
”

“When it—when it goes away—” Kaylin froze for a second. It was only a second, but Morse, sliding under the restraining force of Kaylin’s words, lunged suddenly in, toward the woman’s throat. One stab, quick, knife pulling up and out. Blood followed in an arc, a brief flash of vivid red, and the woman suddenly staggered and fell.

Morse didn’t clean her dagger, and she didn’t sheathe it. But her expression was dark and, for Morse, angry. “You don’t play games here,” she told Kaylin evenly.

“It doesn’t go, does it?” Kaylin asked quietly.

Morse said, “You’re still pretty damn slow on the uptake.” She turned toward the shadows that were now far more menacing to Kaylin than they had been when they had released the old woman.

Kaylin sheathed her second dagger and knelt at the side of the body. She didn’t ask Morse if it was safe to touch the woman; she didn’t speak to Morse at all. Instead, she caught still shoulders, and she turned the woman over.

She was already dead. Morse was good, had always been good. Kaylin could have killed easily—almost anyone could—but not with the speed, not with the efficiency, that Morse had. Morse didn’t hesitate; she never really had. There was an art to this, and it was all hers.

The woman’s eyes were open.

Kaylin watched as the moving opalescence slowly dimmed, fading at last into a dull, gray-black. There were no irises, no whites. Only when it was done did she reach out to close the woman’s lids.

“I take it back,” Morse said, as Kaylin rose. “You were never
this
stupid.”

Kaylin managed to shrug, but it was costly. “Soft living,” she managed to say. “Does that to a person.”

Morse’s laugh—and she did laugh—was black.

“How many of your own were in—were up there?”

“Should have been two,” Morse said. She looked past Kaylin.

“Four,” the man who had first stopped them said. Kaylin had already forgotten his name.

“How many have come out?” Morse asked, eyes once again on the velvet of shadow.

“Two.”

“You’ve got crossbows?”

The man nodded, and then, when Morse failed to acknowledge the gesture she couldn’t see, given she hadn’t looked at him once, said yes.

“Get ’em out.”

But he shook his head. “They’re already gone,” he said grimly. “Corben’s gone with Walton and Messer. They’re headed down the streets, setting up quarantine.”

Morse swore again. She turned to Kaylin. “You’ve seen enough,” she told her. “They’ll stay.”

“We’re going to look at a quarantine?”

“No point. There’ll just be a lot of dead people.”

“But the shadow—”

“It’s there. People don’t go near it, they don’t change. If they do, they’re gone. Most are like this one—they can’t speak. Some speak, and if you hear ’em, you know damn well they’re not the same. They touch you, the shadow seeps into you, same as them, and you’re gone. You might as well be dead.”

She nodded in the direction of the base of what had been an observation tower. “Once the shadow opens up, it spits out whatever came with it, eats whatever was nearby, and then sits there. It doesn’t grow and it doesn’t move.” She cursed again.

“Do you have any warning—any warning at all—when it’s about to open up? When it’s about to appear?”

Morse shrugged and glanced at her. “Us? No. But you and your fancy scaly friend might. What we’re hoping for, anyway. The rest of us see it form, and we know where it’s going to shed creatures and kill us. We send our cleanup crews, we kill the things that come out, and we move people back. That’s it.

“We’re going to have to set up a makeshift watch on one of the roofs while we build. We can’t afford to be down one, and we’ve lost two today.” She wiped her blade clean and sheathed it. “Go home. Go back across the river.”

Kaylin nodded slowly.

“I’ll pick you up at the bridge in the morning.”

She started to tell Morse she could find the White Towers on her own, and then, remembering the creature on Capstone, thought better of it. Heading down the street, she met Tiamaris. He took one look at her face and closed his mouth.

“We’re leaving,” she told him grimly.

To her surprise, Severn was waiting for them at the bridge that crossed the Ablayne. It was not the usual bridge, but seeing him on the City side made it feel
almost
the same. He was leaning against one post, arms folded across his chest; he looked up as she began to cross, Tiamaris in tow.

“Bad?” he asked, as she paused in front of him. He eased his arms to his sides and glanced at the Dragon Lord.

“Bad,” she agreed, understanding both halves of the single syllable question. “Barren was—Barren. But, Severn?”

He nodded.

“I think he used to be an Arcanist. Tiamaris implied as much, and further implied that he took his sorry ass to the fiefs some ten years ago to avoid being hunted down by Wolves.”

Severn raised a brow, and then nodded; he made no other comment. He wasn’t technically a Wolf anymore. It was just possible he wouldn’t consider this his problem. Then again, in a magical world, it was also possible that he’d suddenly grow wings and fly. He wouldn’t, however, say anything else about it to her, not now; she’d never been a Wolf, and even had she, she’d never been a Shadow Wolf.

“Home,” he told her softly.

Tiamaris cleared his throat. “We are not yet done.”

Kaylin was done. She glanced at the Dragon Lord, saw the color of his eyes, and bit back the words that would tell him just how much she was done. “What’s left?”

“I believe the Arkon and Lord Sanabalis will be waiting for our report.”

“I hope they’re waiting with food,” was her sour reply.

Severn walked with them to the carriage that was waiting. It was an Imperial carriage, to Kaylin’s relief. He joined them, taking the bench beside Kaylin. She sagged against the cushioned back.

“You saw fighting.”

She nodded.

“How bad?”

“Remember the cavern beneath the High Halls?”

“The one that you’re
not supposed to mention
outside of the High Halls?” he asked.

She grimaced and glanced at Tiamaris. “That one.”

“Kaylin—”

“I know, I know. I just wish—”

Tiamaris raised a brow.

“If people would actually just
talk,
without all the need for this stupid secrecy, it would make defending any part of this damn city a hell of a lot easier, you know?”

“It would,” Tiamaris replied gravely. “On the other hand, you would probably find yourself in need of a job. Think of the difficulty as a mixed blessing.”

He had a point. She tried to appreciate it as she turned back to Severn. “It was like what we faced there.”

“What was?”

“The creature we met in the middle of the fief. It was wandering around on the streets like a great misshapen nightmare, trying to blast holes in things with its eye beams. It didn’t do too badly with teeth and claws, either, if it comes to that.”

“You met this during the day?”

She nodded. Looked out the carriage window.

“Kaylin—”

“Yeah, it’s worse,” she told him softly. “I don’t even know what Barren wanted from
me
. I know it should matter. It probably will—but right now it doesn’t.” She felt one of his hands on the back of hers, and she looked up at him. “We had ferals for nightmares,” she told him softly. “In Nightshade. We had ferals. They have—they have—” she shook her head. “They’re going to get eaten, or worse.”

He knew who she meant.

“And at this point, Severn? They’re fighting a holding action, but they’re losing ground day by day. I don’t know if there’s anything—anything at all—that they can do.”

“Or that you can?”

“Or,” she said, bitterly, “that I can.” She held out her arms, sleeves hiding the marks upon her skin.

“You’ll do what you can.”

“I know. But what I can do, right now, doesn’t seem like very much.” She thought about the old woman, her wide and unseeing eyes an accusation.

“Kaylin,” he said quietly. And then, when she failed to look up, “Elianne.”

She looked, then. He stiffened for just a second at what he saw in her face, but the stiffness didn’t hold him. He lifted a hand, cupped her cheek—the cheek that also bore Nightshade’s mark—and left his hand, warm, callused, resting against her skin.

She stiffened, as well, but like his, hers was brief. And then she closed her eyes and leaned into the warmth of his hand.

“Stop judging your life only by the failures,” he whispered.

“What should I do?” she whispered. “I’m always going to fail.”

“We all do,” he said softly, his voice closer now. “We
all
fail. But none of us fail all of the time.”

Debriefing, as Tiamaris called it, took some time. Luckily for Kaylin, it was Tiamaris’s time. They both got out of the carriage in the usual courtyard, leaving Severn behind, and they both entered the halls through the same guard posts, but they separated when they reached the interior. Tiamaris pointed her in the direction of Sanabalis’s rooms and walked off.

Sanabalis was not actually
in
his rooms, but the doors were slightly ajar; she didn’t have to touch the obnoxious doorwards that littered the palace doors like cheap paint. She was grateful for that, and grateful, as well, for the dinner that was set out on the small table in the sitting room. She wanted to call it a parlor, but thought it was too big for that, and she couldn’t quite remember what
else
to call it.

Since it didn’t matter, she grabbed the closest chair and tried to slide it across the carpet. It weighed more than she did. She grimaced and moved the small table instead, curling her legs beneath her and picking up bread rolls and a knife. Butter, beef, cheese and an assortment of fruit were also present; it wasn’t a fancy meal.

But she’d missed lunch, and while she didn’t feel like eating, she was hungry. She ate. That much, years of fief living had made habit. Eating in silence was less of a habit, but she’d only be talking to herself; she was quiet.

At length the quiet drove her out of her chair and toward the grand windows that the room boasted. Framed in its panels were the Halls of Law, flags flying at full mast in the breeze high above the city streets. She could see the occasional Aerian flying in that breeze, as well, and as often happened, she felt a pang of envy for the gift of flight.

When she’d first met the rest of the Hawks, she had daydreamed endlessly about waking up one day possessed of wings. She had pestered every Aerian who was on active duty and wasn’t injured to take her flying, and almost every Hawk had complied, some grumbling as they did. They didn’t really understand why she’d loved flight; it was like loving walking, to them.

But the streets looked so small and so quiet from the heights. The problems that plagued anyone who happened to live on the ground seemed to vanish. For whole minutes at a time, she felt as if she had shed her past, and all the crimes and failures it contained.

Landing was always hard.

This time she’d landed in Barren.

She turned away from the window, and then back, staring at the Halls. It shouldn’t be like this. The Law shouldn’t be confined by something as small as a river, and it shouldn’t be limited by something as terrifying as shadow. It should cover the
whole damn
city. The Emperor should
care
about the people in Barren, or Nightshade, or Liatt—any of the fiefs. It wasn’t as if the people who lived in them had any choice about where they were born, or how or to who. They didn’t deserve to be abandoned.

They didn’t deserve to die the way the old woman had died.

Her hands became fists as she stared.

“Bad?”

She glanced up at the window, and at the shadow of Lord Sanabalis’s reflection. It was not yet dark enough for that reflection to be more than a shadow. She shrugged, pure fief gesture, and turned.

Tiamaris was standing just behind Sanabalis.

“The Arkon will join us in a few moments,” Sanabalis told her.

Great.

“He was not greatly pleased that Lord Tiamaris failed to observe everything that occurred. Nor,” Sanabalis added, “was the Emperor.”

“He had his reasons.”

“They were good reasons,” the Dragon Lord who was also her only teacher said. “Which is why Tiamaris will continue his duties.”

“Who would I have been stuck with—accompanied by, otherwise?”

“Suffice it to say that you are happy with the outcome.” He glanced at the relocated table. “I’m happy to see that you ate,” he added, in a tone of voice which clearly said
put things back where you found them.
It was a neat trick. She tidied while he took his customary chair.

Tiamaris seated himself as far from Sanabalis as one could, given the arrangement of the chairs, which told Kaylin as much as she wanted to know about how the debriefing had gone.

The Arkon arrived some fifteen minutes later. He entered the room and took a seat, nodding to both Tiamaris and Sanabalis; he failed to offer Kaylin a nod until she retreated from the window. She did with some speed.

“Lord Tiamaris has informed us of some of the events that occurred in the fief today,” he told Kaylin when she was seated. “We would like to hear from you.”

She grimaced. “Hear from, or extract a memory crystal?”

“At the moment, the words will do. The crystals are not inexpensive and they are not trivial to manufacture. This conversation is, of course, being observed and will be entered into Imperial Records. Some comparison of the information contained in your crystal and the words you speak today will of necessity be done. We are, however, aware of the ways in which human memory is fallible.