Cast In Secret

She nodded and kept walking, and after a while, she said, “This is circular, this room?”

“A large circle, but yes.” Evanton’s eyes were gleaming and dark as he answered. His nod was more a nod of approval than Kaylin had ever seen from him. She took encouragement from it, and continued to watch the room with the eyes—the trained eyes—of a hawk.

Saw a small pond, saw a fire burning in a brazier; felt the wind’s voice above her head and saw the leaves turn at its passing. Saw, in the distance, a rock garden in which no water trickled.

She said, “Elemental.”

And Evanton nodded again.

“Severn?”

“I concur. But it is unusual.”

“And the books, Evanton?”

“Good girl,” he said softly. “Those, do not touch. You may approach them, but do not touch them.”

“I doubt I’d be able to read them.”

“It is not in the reading that they present the greatest threat, and Kaylin, if you spoke no words at all, if you were entirely deprived of language, these books would still speak to you.”

“Magic,” she said with disdain.

“Indeed, and older magic than the magic that is the current fashion. Fashion,” he added, “may be frowned on by the old, but I believe that the trend is not a bad one.”

She half closed her eyes. Listened to the voice of the wind as it rustled through slender branches; golden leaves, white leaves and a pale, pale bloodred, all turned as it passed. Heard, for a moment, a name that was not quite hers as she looked up, to feel its touch across her cheeks.

The mark of Nightshade began to tingle. It was not entirely comfortable. Without thinking, she lifted a hand to her face to touch the mark.

“The mark you bear affords you some protection. He must value you, Kaylin,” Evanton said. He was closer than she realized; she should have heard his shuffling step, but she had heard only the wind. And felt, for a moment, the glimmering dream of flight.

His voice dispelled the wind’s, sent it scattering, left her bound—as she would always be bound—to ground. And because he simply waited, she began to walk again.

To the pond, where small shelves and altars sat across moss beds. Books lay there, and again, candles, unlit, by the dozen. There were small boxes, and a mirror—the first she’d seen since she’d entered this room.

“The mirror—”

“Do not touch it.”

“Wasn’t going to,” she said, although her hand stopped in midair. “But does it work?”

“Work?”

“Is it functional? If I wanted to send a message, could I?”

“Not,” he replied, “to anyone you would care to speak to.” It was an evasion. She accepted it. At the moment, the investigation—such as it was, since he hadn’t actually told them anything useful—was not about mirrors or messages, but it was the first truly modern thing she’d encountered.

Yet even as she thought it, she looked at the mirror, and thought again. Its surface was tarnished and cloudy, and its frame, gold and silver, poorly tended. Unlike the rest of the small, jeweled boxes, the reliquaries—she recognized them for that now—this had been left alone.

“Do they all have mirrors?”

“All?”

“The elemental gardens. There should be four—the fire in the brazier, the water in this small pond, the rocks just beyond those silver trees. I can’t see anything for air—”

“It is very, very hard to build a garden to air,” he replied. “But it is here, and perhaps it is the freest of the elements because it can travel so readily. And the answer is no. None of them do.”

“But this one—”

“Was brought here. It does not belong in this room.”

“But you haven’t moved it.”

“No,” he replied. “And until the Hawks deem it wise, I will not return it to its place. But do not touch it. The hand that held it last left some impression, but it will not, I think, be the equal of yours.”

“You think of everything.”

“I? Hardly. Had I, you would not be here now.”

“Good point. Maybe.” It was hard to leave the mirror, but she did, because the surface of the pond was everything the surface of the mirror was not: clean, smooth, reflective. The breeze that blew above did not touch it at all; she wondered if a pebble would ripple its surface.

“No,” Evanton replied, as if he were reading her mind—which she’d gotten used to in the last few weeks, but still didn’t much care for. “It would not. The earth and the water barely meet here. The pond is not wide,” he added, “but it runs very, very deep.”

She nodded. “These footprints,” she said, although she had barely grazed ground with her eyes, “aren’t yours.”

“No.”

“You know whose they are?”

“I have some suspicion.”

Severn knelt with care at Kaylin’s side and examined the moss. He had seen what she had seen, of course. “There are at least two sets,” he told them both. “The larger set belongs to a person of heavier build than the smaller. I would say human, and probably male, from the size.”

Evanton’s answer was lost.

Kaylin was gazing at the surface of the pond. Although the water was clear, there was a darkness in the heart of it that seemed endless. Deep, he had said, and she now believed it; you could throw a body down here and it would simply vanish. The idea of taking a swim had less than no appeal.

But the water’s surface caught and held light, the light from the ceiling above, the one that Aerians would so love, it was that tall.

She could almost see them fly across it, reflected for a moment in passage, and felt again the yearning to fly and be free. To join them.

It was illusion, of course. There was no such thing as freedom. There was only—

Reflection. Movement.

Not hers, and not Severn’s; Evanton stood far enough back that he cast no reflection.

“Kaylin?” Severn said, his voice close to her ear.

But Kaylin was gazing now into the eyes—the wide eyes— of a child’s bruised face. A girl, her hair long and stringy in the way that unwashed children’s hair could often be, her skin pale with winter, although winter was well away. She wore clothing that was too large for her, and threadbare, and undyed. She wore nothing at all on her feet, for Kaylin could see her toes, dirt in the nails.

She came back to the eyes.

The girl whispered a single word.

Kaylin.

CHAPTER

2

The first thing Kaylin had been taught when she’d been allowed to accompany groundhawks on her first investigation of a crime scene was Do not touch anything or we will never bring you back. This also meant, Do not embarrass us by attempting to steal anything. The Hawks were pretty matter-of-fact about her upbringing; they didn’t actually care. The fiefs couldn’t be actively policed, so it wasn’t as if anything she’d done there was on record. If she had been canny enough to survive life on the streets of Nightshade, tough enough to emerge unscathed, and idealistic enough to want to uphold the Law rather than slide through its grip, so much the better.

It had been a missing-person investigation—which usually meant dead person whose body had yet to be found—and they’d walked the narrow streets that faced the fiefs without—quite—touching them. The Law still ruled in this old, boarded-up manor house, by a riverbank and a couple of narrow bridges.

She had been all of fourteen years old, and had spent six long months begging, badgering, and wheedling; when they said yes, she could follow them, she had nearly stopped breathing.

By that point, being a Hawk was the only thing she wanted, and she had held her fidget-prone hands by her sides, stiff as boards, while the Hawks—Teela and Tain for the most part, although Marcus had come along to supervise—had rambled about a series of large, run-down rooms for what felt like hours.

There wasn’t much in the way of temptation on that particular day: nothing worth stealing.

Nothing she wanted to touch.

But this was so much harder. The girl was young. Younger than many of her orphans, the kitlings she visited, taught to read, and told stories—casually censored—of her adventures to. This girl was bruised; her eyes were wide with terror, her face gaunt with either cold or hunger. And she was real.

The water did not distort her; she did not sink into the depths, beckoning for Kaylin to follow to a watery, slow death. There was an aura about her, some faint hint of magic, but there would have to be.

Kaylin knelt with care by the side of this deep, deep pond, this scion of elemental magics. She did not touch the water’s surface, but it was a struggle not to; not to reach out a hand, palm out, to the child whose dark eyes met hers.

As if he knew it—and he probably did—Severn was behind her. He did not approach the water as closely as she herself had done, but instead put both of his hands on her shoulders and held tight.

“Corporal,” she heard Evanton say quietly, “what do you see?”

“Water,” Severn replied. “Very, very deep water.”

“Interesting.”

“You?”

“I see many things,” Evanton replied. “Always. The water here is death.” He paused and then added, “Almost everything is, to the unwary, in this place.”

“Figures,” Kaylin heard herself say, in a voice that was almost normal. “But whose death?”

“A good question, girl. As always.”

“You usually tell me my questions are—”

“Hush.”

But the girl didn’t vanish until Evanton came to stand by Kaylin’s side. “You’re not one for obedience, blind or otherwise,” he told her, with just a hint of frustration in a voice that was mostly approving. “But I believe I told you to look at nothing too closely.”

“If you saw what I saw—”

“I may well, girl. But as I said, I see many things that the water chooses to reveal. There is always temptation, here, and it knows enough to see deeply.”

“This is not—”

“Is it not? Here you sit, spellbound, horrified, gathering and hoarding your anger—which, I believe, is growing as the minutes pass. It isn’t always things that tempt our basest desire—not all temptation is sensual or monetary in nature.” He lifted his hands and gestured and the water rippled at the passage of a strong, strong gust.

All images were broken as it did, and the girl’s face passed into memory—but it was burned there. Kaylin would not forget. Couldn’t. Didn’t, if she were honest, have any desire to do so.

“I know what you saw, Kaylin Neya. More of your life is in your face than you are aware of, in this place. And in the store,” he added quietly.

“This is why you called me,” she said, half a question in the flat statement.

“On the contrary, Kaylin, I requested no one. But this, I believe, has some bearing on the call the Hawks did receive. Even had I wanted to deal with the Law directly—and I believe that there are reasons for avoiding it—I would merely send the report or the request. The old, belligerent Leontine who runs the office would decide who actually responds.”

“Marcus,” she said automatically. “Sergeant Kassan.”

“Very well, Sergeant Kassan, although it was clear by description to whom I referred.” He paused, and then added, “Something was taken from this … room.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “How the hell did someone get into this room?”

“A very good question, and believe that I have friends who are even now considering the problem.”

“Friends?”

“At my age, they are few, and not all of them are mortal, but,” he added, and his face warped into a familiar, wizened expression, “even I have some.”

“And they—”

“I have merely challenged them to break into the elementarium without causing anything to alert me to their presence.”

“Good luck,” she muttered.

“They will need more than luck,” he said softly. “But I expect most of them will survive it.”

She straightened slowly, her knees slightly cricked. It made her wonder how long she’d knelt there. The answer was too damn long; she was still tired from the previous night’s birthing. But the elation of saving a cub’s life passed into shadow, as it so often did.

“What was stolen?” she asked Evanton as she rose. Her voice fell into a regular Hawk’s cadence—all bored business. And watchful.

“A small and unremarkable reliquary,” he replied. “A red box, with gold bands. Both the leather and the gold are worn.”

“What was in it?”

“I am not entirely certain,” he replied, but it was in that I-have-some-ideas-and-I-don’t-want-to-tell tone of voice. “The box is locked. It was locked when I first arrived, and the keys that were made to open it … It has no keyhole, Kaylin.”

“So it can’t be opened.”

“Jumping to conclusions, I see.”

She grimaced. “It has to be opened magically.”

“Good girl,” he replied softly.

“This isn’t really Hawk work—”

“The Hawks don’t investigate thefts?”

“Ye-es,” she said, breaking the single syllable into two. “But not petty thefts as such, and not without a better description of the value of what’s been stolen.”

“People will die,” he told her quietly, “while the reliquary is at large. It exerts its power,” he added softly, “on those who see it and those who possess it. Only—” He stopped. His face got that closed-door look that made it plain he would say no more. Not yet.

“There were two people here,” she said at last.

“Yes. Two. An unusually large woman, or a heavyset man, by the look of those treads, and an unusually small one, or a child, by the look of the second.” He met her eyes.

And she knew who the child had been.

The shop seemed more mundane than it had ever seemed when Evanton escorted them back into it. His robes transformed as he crossed the threshold and the power of wisdom gave way to the power of age and gravity as his shoulders fell into their perpetual bend.

He was once again the ancient, withered shopkeeper and purveyor of odd junk and the occasional true magic. And this man, Kaylin had chattered at for most of her adolescence. If Severn was circumspect—a word she privately hated—she had no such compulsion.

“You think there are going to be murders associated with this theft.”

He didn’t even blink. “Indeed.”

“Or possibly already have been. When exactly did you notice this disturbance?”

“Yesterday,” he replied, his lips pursed as he sought his impossible-to-miss key ring.

“But you don’t think it happened yesterday?”

“I can’t be certain, no. As I said, I’ve sponsored a bit of a contest—”

She lifted a hand. “Don’t give me contests I can’t enter.”

He lifted a brow. “Oddly enough, Private, I think you’re one of the few who could. Possibly. You make a lot of noise, on the other hand, and it may—”

“Evanton, please, these are people’s lives we’re talking about.”

“Yes. But if I am to be somewhat honest, they are not lives, I feel, you would be in a hurry to save.”

“You’re dead wrong,” she said, meaning it.

“About at least one of them,” he said softly. “But if I am not mistaken, she is not—yet—in danger. I feel some of the mystery of their entrance can only be answered by her.”

“By a child?”

“You might wish to fill the corporal in on what you saw,” Evanton told her.

“It’s not necessary,” Severn replied, before Kaylin could. “I have a good idea of what she saw.”

“Oh?”

“She gets a particular look when she’s dealing with children in distress.” He paused and then said, voice devoid of all texture and all emotion, “Kaylin has always had a weakness for children. Even when she was, by all legal standards, a child herself.

“And that’s not a look she gets when the child is happy or looks well treated,” he added softly. “Then, she’s only wistful.”

Evanton nodded as if everything Severn had said confirmed what he already knew. “Very well. You make a good team,” he told them both. “He’s much better for you than those two Barrani slouchers.”

Kaylin sidestepped the question in the old man’s words. Remembered the brief touch of Severn’s palms on her cheeks. But that was personal. This was worse.

“What will the manner of death be?”

“That, I cannot tell you. It is very, very seldom that I invite visitors into the elementarium, and with cause. You felt compelled to touch nothing and take nothing, because that room had nothing to offer you.”

“I felt compelled—”

“Yes, but not to take, Kaylin. Not to acquire. And I cannot yet tell you why the water chose to show you the girl. I can only tell you that what you saw was in some fashion true.”

“She called me by name.”

He spun so fast she almost tripped over him and sent them both flying—which in his case would probably have broken every bone in his frail body. She managed to catch herself on the wall.

“By name?” he asked, one brow melding with his receding hairline.

She nodded.

“Ah, girl,” he said, with a shake of the head. He turned away again. “If I had found you first—”

“What does it mean?”

“I cannot say for certain,” he replied. “But this much, I can guess—she touched the heart of the elemental water, and woke some of its slumbering intent. It wants you to find her, Kaylin.”

“And that’s a bad thing.”

“It may well be,” Evanton replied. “But if I told you—if I could honestly tell you—that it would mean the end of the Empire itself were you to pursue it, you’d pursue it anyway.

“Water is canny that way. It sees into the deeps that we hide.” But he turned away as he spoke.

“Evanton—”

“Old man—”

He stopped as Severn and Kaylin’s words collided, but did not look back. “If you’re about to accuse me of knowing more than I’ve told you, stand in line and take a number,” he said in a voice so dry a little spark would have set it on fire. “I’m a very busy man. Do come and visit again.”

“Kaylin—”

Kaylin lifted a hand and swatted her name aside.

“You’re going to crack the road if you don’t stop walking like that.”

“Severn, I don’t have a sense of humor about—”

“Almost anything? Fair enough. I’ve been accused of that.”

She stopped walking. Although his stride was easily the longer of the two, she’d been making him work to keep up. Not that it showed. Much.

Since her entrance into the ranks of the Barrani High Court, Kaylin had grown more aware of Severn; of where he was, how close he was, or how far. It was as if—as if something bound them, something gossamer like spider’s web, but finer, and ultimately stronger. She had given him her name—if it was her name—and he had accepted it.

But he had never used it. When she shut him out, he accepted the distance.

It’s not my name, he had told her quietly, it’s yours. If I understand Barrani names at all.

I’m not Barrani.

You’re not human. Not completely. But you’re still Kaylin.

Could you? Could you use it?

He’d been quiet for a long time; she could still remember the texture of that silence, the way he’d stared at her face for a moment, and then turned away almost wearily. What do you want me to say, Kaylin?

She hadn’t answered. She wasn’t certain.

“We have to find her,” she told him, her voice quieter now.

“I know. Any idea where to start?”

Missing Persons was a zoo. Almost literally. Although the offices that fronted the public square in the Halls were slightly better equipped and more severe than the interior offices in which Kaylin spent much—too damn much—of her day, they were in no way quieter.

For one, they were full of people who would never—with any luck—wear a uniform that granted them any kind of Imperial authority. For two, the people who milled about, either shouting at each other, pacing, crying or shouting at the officers who looked appropriately harried, were by no means all human; although here, as throughout most sectors of Elantra, humans outnumbered the others by quite a large margin. For three, many of the visitors were either four times Kaylin’s age, or less than half of it. Kaylin recognized a smattering of at least four languages, and some of what was said was, in the words of Caitlin, “colorful.”

Impatience was the order of the day.

Missing Persons was, in theory, the responsibility of the Hawks. Depending, of course, upon who exactly was missing. Some missing persons had left a small trail of death and destruction in their wake, and these investigations were often—begrudgingly—handed over to the Wolves, the smallest of the three forces who called the Halls of Law home.

The staffing of the office, however, was the purview of the Hawklord. Or his senior officers. None of whom, Kaylin thought with a grimace, were ever on the floors here.

She herself was seldom here, and of all duties the Hawks considered their own, this was her least favorite. She was not always the most patient of people—and people who were desperate enough to come to the Halls seeking word of their missing, and possibly dead, kin required patience at the very least.

She was also not quite graceful enough to forgive other people their impatience. But at least she was aware of hers.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the vagabond.”

And, if she were entirely truthful, there were other reasons for hating this place. Grinding her teeth into what she hoped would pass for a smile, she faced the worst of them squarely.

If it was true that the Barrani had a lock on arrogance, and the Dragons on inscrutability, it was also true that for petty malice, you really couldn’t do better than finding a truly loathsome human. And to Kaylin’s youthful disappointment, she hadn’t actually had to look that far to find this one.

His name was Constant Mallory—and, give him this, if she’d had that as a name, and she’d been too stupid to change it, she might have developed a few personality ticks. He was, for all intents and purposes, the ruler of this small enclave. He answered to Marcus, and to the Hawklord, but his answers could be both disingenuous and fawning, and she thought he’d learned enough from the Barrani to dispense with truth entirely.

She was aware that he and Marcus had, as the office liked to call it, “history.” She’d once asked why, and Teela had said, with some disdain, “You really don’t pay attention, do you? How much of history is spent discussing happy children and fluffy bunnies?”

“It’s true,” Tain had half drawled. “If humans actually had a lifespan, things would have been a lot more interesting around here a few centuries ago. But that’s the problem with mortals—they get a little power and it all comes tumbling down. It’s a good thing you breed so quickly.”

Teela and Tain had no problems at all with Mallory. They didn’t like him, but then again, given the way they treated people they did like—and Kaylin had some experience with this—their lack of affection was a dubious negative. Like many humans, he treated the Barrani with respect and care. He had not always given Marcus the same respect.

Or rather, he’d given him exactly the same respect, but then again, Marcus took subtle office politics about as well as he took vegetarian menus.

Mallory had wanted the Leontine’s job. Then again, so had Marcus. Marcus had come out on top. The miracle of the tussle, to Kaylin’s mind, was that Mallory had come out alive. She gathered that not everyone had.

But getting people who’d been there to talk about it was more difficult than getting criminals to cough up useful information. And, as a harried Sergeant Kassan had finally said, “You’re usually so proud of your ignorance. Learn to live with it, Kaylin.” The implication being that living and living with it, on that particular day, were the same thing.