Cast In Fury (8 page)

“You ran interference for me when we went to Missing Persons.”

Severn nodded. “But given his feelings about you—and he was quite clear on those—I imagine that he won’t find my role as a Hawk much more to his liking.”

“He probably doesn’t know where you’re from.”

“Then he hasn’t done his homework.”

“Doesn’t seem likely.”

“No, it doesn’t. I imagine that Mallory knows quite a bit about the Hawks at this point.” He stopped. She stared at the street, and he pushed her gently up the few steps to her own apartment door. She’d gotten a new key, and it worked, but it took her three tries to get the damn thing into the lock.

“You’re tired,” he told her, when she cursed in Leontine. “Tired and Mallory are not going to be a pretty combination. Sleep it off. But understand that when you walk into the office in the morning, the rules will be different and everything will change. You wanted to be a Hawk,” he added. “Be one. Tomorrow.”

“I want to talk to the Hawklord.”

“Do that tomorrow as well.” He paused, and then added, “We couldn’t have talked to the Hawklord without speaking to Mallory first. I imagine he’s guarding the tower. Kaylin, he’s made it clear from the start, if I understand things correctly, that you should never have been a Hawk. Nothing would give him more pleasure than correcting an obvious error in judgment. But if he is a vindictive man—and I don’t discount it—he also appears to play
by the rules.

“Don’t give him the satisfaction. Do nothing that he can use as an excuse. He’ll have his own worries,” Severn said.

“What worries?”

“His disdain for Marcus was widely known, and Marcus was popular.”

“Is.”

“Is what?”

“
Is
popular.” She began to stumble up the narrow stairs to her rooms. “Don’t talk about him as if he’s dead.”

“Is popular,” he said, gentling his voice as he followed her. “Most of the department knows how Mallory regards the Hawks under Marcus, and if Mallory is to succeed, he can’t afford to further alienate them. But if you give him an excuse, he’ll use it.”

She opened the door to a darkening room, the shutters wired into a safe—and closed—position. She might not have cared much for Rennick, but she shared his view about morning. And still got her butt out of bed on most days.

“I’ll be good,” she told him in the darkness.

“Tomorrow.”

She nodded again and walked across the room, stepping around the piles of debris that littered it. She removed the stick that held her stubborn hair in place, and sank, fully clothed, into bed.

“Sleep,” he told her. Just that.

She wanted more. She wanted him to tell her that the bad dream would vanish in the sunlight, that she would wake up and the city would be sane, and Marcus would be chewing his lower lip and creating new gouges on his desktop while he moved offending paperwork out of the way.

But she’d grown up in the fiefs, after all, and she knew that what she wanted and what she got had nothing, in the end, in common. She didn’t cry.

But she came close when he kissed her forehead and brushed the lids of her closed eyes with his fingertips.

She woke up to a loud, insistent knocking at her door. Daylight had wedged its unwelcome way through the shutters. She had to remember to get them fixed. Say, by putting a block of stone in their place.

She checked her mirror before she made her way to the door, still wearing the rumpled clothing from the day before. She paused. Someone had messaged her. Someone had tried to get her attention, but they hadn’t tried for very long. She didn’t want to check, besides which, the pounding at the door wasn’t stopping anytime soon. She bypassed the mirror, because if the
first
thing she saw this morning was the afterimage of Mallory’s unwelcome face, she’d break the damn thing, and the mirror was the most expensive thing she owned. She wouldn’t have bothered with the expense—gods knew she never had money—but her duties at the midwives guild pretty much made it a necessity.

Severn was standing in the door frame when she opened the door. He handed her a basket. “Breakfast,” he told her. “Eat.”

“What time is it?”

“Not so late that you don’t have time to eat.” It wasn’t precisely an answer. She lifted the basket top, and the smell of fresh bread became the only thing in the room. That and her growling stomach. “Hey,” she said, as she sat on the bedside and motioned Severn toward the chair. “Is this enchanted?”

“The bread?”

Her frown would have killed lesser men. “Very funny. The basket.”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “I didn’t smell the bread at all until I opened it.”

“It keeps the rodents at bay. More or less.”

“Where’d you get it done?”

“Evanton’s.”

“He’d like it. It’s practical.”

“I think he thought it perhaps too practical. But he took the money.” He paused and then added, “It keeps the food fresher, as well. It won’t last forever,” he said, “but it lasts longer. Which, given the insane hours you generally keep, also seemed practical.”

“Wait—it’s for me?”

“It’s for you.”

She hesitated, and then nodded. “Thanks. Did you talk to Mallory?”

“Last night.”

“The Hawklord?”

“No. I’ll say this for Mallory, that paperwork is going to get done before the week’s out.”

“Ha. I’ve seen that pile—most of it was there when I got inducted.”

“Betting?”

“Sure. We can pool in the office.”

“Actually, we can’t.”

Silence. It didn’t last longer than it took to finish swallowing something that could have been chewed longer, judging by the way it lodged in the back of her throat. “We can’t
bet?
” To a fiefling, it was like being told
don’t breathe.

“It’s not in keeping with the formal tone he feels is professional in office environs. He is looking forward to correcting the laxity.”

Kaylin’s bread now resembled clay. Her stomach was kind enough to stop growling, so her throat could pick up the sound.

“Change your clothing,” he added. “And you may have to get your hair cut.”

“What?”

“I think you heard me.”

“My hair?”

“It’s not regulation length.”

“Neither is Teela’s!”

“I believe he intends for
all
of the Hawks to sport regulation cuts.”

If she hadn’t swallowed the mouthful, she would have probably sprayed it across the room. “He thinks he can make the
Barrani
cut their hair?”

“He hopes to make his mark on the office,” Severn replied, a perfectly serious expression smoothing out the lines of his face. “I think he believes it will speak well of his tenure if he can be seen to have effected changes that Marcus could not.”

“Marcus never tried.”

“No. But there are no Barrani in Missing Persons. There are no Leontines. There are no Aerians.”

“So what you’re saying is you think he failed Racial Integration classes as well.”

“Pretty much. Oh, I imagine he passed them—some people can pass a test without ever looking at the content.”

“The Aerians pretty much go by regs. I keep my hair out of the way.”

“I don’t think that will be a convincing argument. Stay clear of it if he brings it up.”

“What does that mean?”

“Say yes, and ignore him for a day or two. Your yes will pale beside the very Barrani No he’s likely to get from twelve of his Hawks. He’s not a fool. I imagine that the dictate will be quietly set aside as insignificant given the flaws that he obviously sees in the present office bureaucracy. By which I mean reports and paperwork. He will feel the need to impress upon his superiors the qualities that he can bring to the job, particularly if those qualities are ones which his predecessor lacked.”

She nodded, and finished eating. Then she picked up what was hopefully a clean shirt, and began to change. It was going to be a
long
day.

“Kaylin?”

“Hmm?”

“Someone mirrored you.”

“Oh, right. I didn’t want to look in case it was Mallory. Who was it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well
look.
”

He was silent for a moment, after which he said, “Your mirror isn’t keyed?”

“Hells no—that costs money.”

“Kaylin—the Hawks would pay to have it done. Some of our investigations would not be helped if anyone could listen in on more sensitive discussions.”

“Look, if someone’s listening in on
my
life, they’ve got no bloody life of their own, and they’re welcome to be as bored as they like. Usually it’s just Marcus screaming about the time, anyway.”

She could tell by the set of his lips that the conversation was not finished. He did, however, touch the mirror and ask for a replay.

The mirror hummed a moment, and then went flat.

“You said this wasn’t keyed.”

“It’s not.”

“It’s not playing.”

“Crap. If it’s broken, I’ll—I’ll—” She shoved a stick into the bun she had made of her hair, and stomped over to the mirror. What she did
not
need right now was anything she couldn’t afford. A new mirror being her chief concern.

“Mirror,” she said, in the tone of voice she usually reserved for choice Leontine words. “Replay.”

The mirror shimmered, the neutral matte of its sleeping surface slowly breaking to reveal a face. A Leontine face.

“The mirror’s not keyed,” Kaylin said, her voice losing heat as she struggled with her very inadequate memory. The woman was familiar. Not one of Marcus’s wives—she knew all of them on sight, having been to their home dozens of times before she was allowed to join the Hawks.

“No,” Severn said thoughtfully. “But the message is. I can wait in the hall if you want the privacy.”

“Don’t bother. It’ll save me the hassle of repeating what it says. I know her,” Kaylin said suddenly. “I saw her when I went to the Quarter for the midwives. Her name was Arlan. But it was supposed to be—”

“Kaylin Neya,” the woman said, her voice so hushed Kaylin wasn’t surprised when the image in the mirror turned and looked over its shoulder furtively. “You came. You helped birth my son, Roshan Kaylarr. He has need of your aid, and there is no one else I can ask. I humbly beseech you, return to him.” She looked over her shoulder again. “I cannot speak freely. But come again this evening at the same hour you arrived in my den on your first visit. Come alone, if it is possible. Bring only people you can trust, if it is not. I must go.” She faced the mirror fully and said a phrase in Leontine before the mirror blanked.

Severn looked at her. “What did she say?”

“You don’t know?”

“I didn’t understand all of the Leontine, no.”

“But you
always
understand more than I do.”

He raised a brow.

“She said her throat was in my claws.”

“That’s what it sounded like. What does it mean?”

“She’s begging. More than begging. She’s promising that she’ll do anything—anything
at all
—that I ask of her in return for this favor. No, it’s more than that—she’s saying that if I don’t do this, she faces a fate worse than death. Yes, it’s a little over the top. They don’t use it much.” She closed her eyes. “Her son was the only cub in her litter, and he barely survived the birthing. If something’s gone wrong with him—”

“She would have called you
now,
not at some unspecified hour.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Kaylin replied, rearranging her hair thoughtfully. “I’m also thinking that it can’t be entirely coincidence that something’s wrong in the Quarter at this time. I went in to help with the baby—Leontines don’t usually call in the human midwives, but…it was an odd birth. None of her wives were present and she was alone. The entire place was empty. I left the midwives behind because it was the Leontine Quarter, and they allowed it—barely.”

“She looks—and I admit I’m not an expert in Leontine physiology—young. Maybe she has no wives yet.”

“Maybe. And maybe she got my name from Marcus the first time I visited, and maybe she can tell us something about what’s happening to him.”

“Careful, Kaylin. You don’t want to start an intercourt incident.”

“I never want to start an incident,” she replied, opening the door. “Then again, I never want to stand in the rain getting soaked either. Some things are just beyond my control.”

As if in reply to this, he reached into his pouch and pulled out the heavy, golden bracer that she wore when she wasn’t with the midwives. Or, more accurately, when she wasn’t being called upon to use the strange magic that came with the marks on her arms, legs and back.

“That’s why you came?” she asked, taking the bracer and clamping it firmly shut around her wrist.

“That,” he replied, “and to make sure you get to work on time.”

Clint was on duty. If she had the timing right, he’d flown to the Southern Stretch, slept and flown back, without much else in between. He didn’t look surprised to see her and, given she had been on time two days in a row, this said something. It wasn’t a good something, but it was something. He let them both in without a word, although he returned Severn’s nod as they passed.

Her first stop was the Quartermaster. Given the silent war they’d been waging for the past several weeks—over a stupid dress, no less—she expected bad news. She had no doubt at all that the acting Sergeant had asked for a general inventory of items, and the various Hawks those items currently resided with. Kaylin’s minor problem was that she’d lost one hauberk, one surcoat and two daggers. If she had lost them in the line of Official duty—which did happen in some of the messier takedowns—that was considered an expense for the Departmental Budget; if she’d lost them—as she had—to work that
must
remain unofficial, she was going to be out the money.

Or out the door.

Begging was something she’d done in her time, but it didn’t come naturally now. Nor did letting down her guard. She had, however, decided to take Severn at his word. She needed to play nice, to be official.

The Quartermaster was clearly in the middle of the inventory that she guessed he’d been asked to take. He took about five minutes to look up, a sure sign that he’d seen her coming.