Cast In Secret

But Severn was ahead of her, and before she could even uncurl the wretched thing, he said to the guard, “We have come at the invitation of Ybelline Rabon’alani.”

The guard’s expression froze in place, and his stalks waved a moment in the air. He looked carefully at the hawk emblazoned on both of their surcoats, and then searched their faces.

After this silent inspection, he nodded, not to Severn, but to Kaylin, who stood in his shadow. “She will see you,” he said, the words oddly inflected. “Someone will meet you on the other side of the guard house and show you the way to her home.”

“Someone” was another guard, another man in mail. His hair was a pale shade of brown, but it was long, and he wore it in a braid over his left shoulder. His eyes were clear, not golden the way Dragons’ eyes were, but still some shade that was paler than brown, darker than sunlight. He bowed, rising, and she thought him younger than the guard at the gate. His eyes were alive with unspoken curiosity, and his expression was actually an expression.

He stared at her, and she stared back.

“I’m Epharim,” he finally said, his stalks weaving through stray strands of his hair. He waited, and then after a moment, he reddened and held out a hand.

Kaylin took it slowly, and shook it. If it was true you could tell a lot about a person by shaking their hand, she wasn’t sure what she could take out of this handshake. It was stiff, hesitant, almost entirely unnatural.

“Did I do that right?” he said, retrieving his hand, his gaze still far too intent.

“Do what?”

“Greet you.”

“Yes, Epharim,” Severn replied, stepping on Kaylin’s foot before she could open her mouth. Well, before she could speak, at any rate. “I am Corporal Severn Handred, and this is Private Kaylin Neya. We serve the Emperor in the Halls of Law.” He offered his hand in turn, and Epharim took it, repeating the gesture that was supposed to be a handshake.

He beamed. “And what does it mean?” Each word a little too distinct, as if speech itself were something new and unfamiliar. Or as if the language were. But he spoke the common tongue of Elantra, and if the cadences were off, they were, each and every syllable, completely recognizable.

Severn said, “We don’t use names that have specific meanings.” Clearly, Severn had been a master student in racial studies.

“You don’t have a naming tongue?” Epharim’s brows rose. And as they did, Kaylin noticed—with the training she had excelled in—that the passersby in the street all seemed to slow, that their stalks, from different heights, perched upon different shades of hair, seemed to turn toward them. Or toward Epharim.

“Are we causing a scene?” she asked in low tones.

Epharim looked confused. Well, more confused. “A scene? Like in a play?”

“No. A scene, as in everyone in the street for miles stops to stare at us as if we’re insane.”

He blinked. Looked at the people who were—yes—staring at them, and then looked back at Kaylin. “This … is a scene?”

Severn stepped on her other foot.

“People don’t normally stop to stare like that.”

Again his brows rippled, this time toward the bridge of his straight, perfect nose. “They don’t?”

“No.”

“Then how are they expected to observe?”

“Observe what?”

“You. Corporal Severn Handred.”

“Severn will do,” Severn said. “It is our custom.”

“They’re not supposed to,” Kaylin replied, ignoring Severn. “They have other things to do, don’t they?”

“They have things to do,” Epharim agreed, still standing there, anchoring Kaylin in place while stragglers farther down also stopped walking and turned to look back. “But most of them have never seen one of your kind so close. They will remember,” he added, as if this was supposed to be a comfort. She had the momentary urge to pull out her beat stick and approach them with a smile that was about as soft as steel, telling them to move along.

But there were children there, their stalks slender, and to her surprise, almost transparent, their eyes wide and openly curious. Too far away to see her own reflection in those eyes, she knew then what she would want reflected, and the impulse left her. She turned slowly back to Epharim, who was beaming at her with an expression she now recognized—a childlike wonder so out of place on the face of a grown man she had failed to see it at first.

She had never seen Tha’alani children before. Never seen their babies, or their elderly, their youths; she had never held one, never ushered one, bloodied and crying, into the world; she had never been called upon by the guild of midwives to save a mother who would otherwise die at what should have been the start of a new life.

Then again, she had never been asked to lick natal fluid off the hair of a Tha’alani newborn, so maybe she should be grateful. She wasn’t, but that was the perverse nature of her universe. And as they stared at her, she stared at them, separated by yards of street and a gentle breeze. It was utterly silent.

One of the children—dark-haired, dark-eyed, pale-skinned, too young to be easily identified as either boy or girl—slid loose from his guardian’s grasp and toddled toward her, his stalks weaving in the air so awkwardly she wondered if they could be combed out when they got knotted. It was an idle thought, and it held no fear.

As the child approached, she thought him a boy, and knew that she could easily be wrong, but she had to think him one or the other because it was not a pronoun she ever applied to children.

He was smiling, and he had teeth, and his cheeks began to flush as he teetered in the precarious almost-fall that was a young child’s run. All of Kaylin’s self-consciousness melted in the warmth of that smile, and she knelt slowly, bringing herself as close to the ground—and to his approaching height—as she could while still maintaining any dignity.

He wore a blue-and-red robe, gaudy, bright colors that had a sheen that caught light, and gold around one wrist. She held out her arms without thought, and he chortled with glee. Had he been Leontine, he would have had milk teeth, and she would have been a tad more careful while holding out uncovered hands.

But he was Tha’alani, and almost human, and the stalks that had terrified her were almost literally knotting themselves as they twisted. The terror they held for her, perched on the forehead of older men with grim, shuttered faces, was gone.

She thought he might slow his approach, but the momentum of his trajectory carried him forward, faster and faster, until he was leaning toward the ground; she caught him before the stones did. Swept him up, her hands under his arms, and held his face across from hers, laughing, because she had to laugh. He was laughing.

And as he reached for her, his slender arms dimpled with baby fat that had not yet disappeared with height and age, she let out a small squeal of delight that easily matched his, and she hugged him.

The stalks on his forehead untwined and touched her face, soft as feathers, but slighter and more insistent. They brushed her cheeks, her mouth, her nose, as if they were his fingers, and then rose toward her forehead and hovered there, waiting.

After a moment, they touched her forehead.

She should have been frightened, but it was impossible to be frightened in the face of his open curiosity, his imperious delight, the smug sense of certainty that loved children everywhere show. If she were a danger to him, he couldn’t conceive of it, and she couldn’t, either.

And if he were a danger to her, then she had grown so paranoid and so pathetic that … But she couldn’t hold on to the thought. His stalks continued to bat against her forehead, and she realized that he was looking for hers.

“I don’t have them,” she told him gently, aware that she was confessing some inner fault. His smile faltered, and he looked at her face intently, his eyes wide. He hesitated a moment and then his stalks were moving again, this time more slowly; she could more feel than see them, because she was watching his expression. She thought he might be worried now, or afraid, because she was different, strange, unknown.

Instead, she felt a giddy delight and something else, the desire to be chased around in the open streets, the desire to laugh and to hide and be caught, over and over again. That and mild thirst. None of these were her feelings.

She glanced at Severn, who was watching her as intently as any of the Tha’alani in the tableau the street had become. She heard herself say, “He’s—he’s speaking to me ….”

The Tha’alani had never spoken to her, not this way. They had pried, poked, pulled at memories; they had forced her to see what they were seeing. But they had never exposed themselves as this child had just so joyfully done.

Would it have made a difference?

She set the child down and he ran away, and stopped, and looked back, waiting for her to follow, to chase him.

She looked back at Epharim for guidance, but found nothing there that would stop her or warn her; he had no fear at all for the child, and clearly no sense of impatience at the delay in escorting her to see Ybelline.

“His parents—” she said, touching her unadorned forehead. “They won’t mind?”

“Mind?”

But no parents magically appeared to scoop their wayward child back into the safety of their arms, to keep him from strangers such as Kaylin, and that was answer enough because the child was impatiently waiting to be followed now. She felt the words, rather than heard them. But she would have felt them from any child, of any race. She might have been a little more careful in the southern stretch, where wings were not yet strong enough to carry a child who chose to launch himself off the edge in mimicry of the adult Aerians, but here, a fall was just a fall.

She ran after him and his laughter filled the street, and it was joined by the laughter of literally dozens of other children as he ran past—other children, older and younger, and many of the adults. Like a multitude of voices sharing the same throat, the same joy, the same word.

She caught the child, knowing the game, and tickled him, lifting him and throwing him in the air, taking care to hold on to his armpits. And on the way down, she laughed, as well, and her laughter was asynchronous, out of step with the crowd.

But when she set the boy free and turned to face Severn and Epharim, she saw only joy in Epharim’s expression. No resignation, no sense of lost time, no judgment and no fear.

And this was the part of the city that had so terrified her that she wouldn’t even look down at it from the safety of the skies.

Epharim waited until she had joined them again and said softly, “You fear discovery. You fear your own thoughts.” And he said it with pity. Kaylin was not the world’s biggest pity fan. “Fear, we all know,” he added. “And we all know rejection and pain. But none of us have ever suffered this fear of being revealed, this fear of being seen as we are.” He was serene, and without judgment.

“The children will not sense this in you,” he added softly. “They are not so powerful yet, and they are children. If they know other thoughts, they can’t be bothered listening to the ones that don’t concern them.”

She nodded absently, wondering what it would be like to live an entire life in a world where every thought was known. Would it even be possible to lie? Would it ever occur to someone to try it? Would it be possible to love in secret, to desire the things you couldn’t have?

Would it be possible to kill?

Epharim said, “We are human,” but his tone was quiet. “And there are few of us who can enter your world and live with what we find there. Very few of you who could live in ours, and not be shocked or scandalized by what you would find here. We have very different ideas of what is natural, of what nature means.

“But the young are the young,” he added softly. “And the child will remember you, now.” He smiled and said, “I think he was shocked that you had no ahporae. Come. Ybelline is waiting.”

“You know that from here?”

He nodded. “She is not far, and she is very, very sensitive.”

“But she lives on the outside.”

“She lives here. She travels at the behest of the Emperor. But Dragons are not mortal, and their thoughts are so vast and so strange they are more comfortable for us in many ways.”

She wondered at a race that could find the presence of Dragons more comforting than the presence of humans.

“There is very little a Dragon fears,” Epharim said.

And she didn’t even resent the way he answered the things she hadn’t said aloud. Perhaps her time with Nightshade had prepared her for this. Or perhaps the child had given her a small key.

“Fear?”

He nodded.

“It’s the fear that’s bad?”

“It is the fear that is most common. We frighten your kind.”

She nodded, and with more force.

“Fear kills,” he told her quietly. “It maims and it kills. It twists and it breaks. And among your kind, fear is part of the foundations upon which you build all thought.” His face shuttered as he said this, and he looked at her with his pale eyes, his antennae drawn back and down across his hair. “It is why so few are chosen to go and be among your kind. It takes a special talent to dwell so long with your thoughts and not absorb them, becoming like you.”

Kaylin couldn’t even imagine a life without fear.

Ybelline’s dwelling was not small. It was a manor, but all of its surfaces were rounded; even the corners of the building bent gradually, and looked to Kaylin’s eye like a rectangle trying its best to imitate an oval, and not quite succeeding. It felt like stone to the touch, and she knew this because she did. But it was a brown that most stone didn’t go without effort.

There were windows along the curve of the wall, but no balcony. Doors, the only flat surface she could see. Instead of steps, there was a ramp that sloped up gradually. Epharim lead them toward it.

“You don’t have horses here?”

“There are horses where horses are needed,” he replied. “But we find oxen more pliable.”

“But they’re food!”

He said nothing, but it was the kind of nothing that promoted stillness.

The doors slid open—literally disappearing into either wall—as he approached. “Ybelline will be in the back,” he told her. “She’s expecting you.” He paused, and then added, “We understand your fear, Kaylin Neya. It is not entirely groundless. But if I have said we live without fear, I have not been entirely truthful. We fear your kind.”

She started to say something, managed to think the better of it before the words left her mouth, and said instead, “So do I.”

“Help us, if you can.”

Before she could ask him more, he turned and left them. Kaylin looked at Severn. Severn was quiet and remote. “What do you think is going on?” she asked softly.

“Nothing good.” He began to walk and Kaylin fell into step beside him. “You did well, out there.”

“Hmm?”

“With the child.”

“The—Oh.” She opened her mouth and he lifted a hand.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t do that on purpose.”

“But—”

“Because it doesn’t matter. Be yourself here. It’s enough.”

“I’m always myself,” she said, half-ruefully, thinking about Marcus and the Hawks.

“I know. I’ve watched you, remember?” He shook his head. “I couldn’t have done that.”

“He was a child.”

“I know. But—they were willing to touch you.”

“No one touched—”

“Your thoughts, at that moment. They all did.”

She hesitated; a momentary revulsion gripped her.

“They’re afraid of us with more reason than we fear them,” he told her quietly. “Study the Tha’alani. Those who walk among the deaf will come back injured, or insane—by their standards—if they go too often. They absorb our fear and our terrible isolation.

“We’re a race of insane people, to the Tha’alani. Think about it, Kaylin—a home where there can be no misunderstanding. Where all anger is known and faced instantly, and all fear is addressed and calmed. Where all love is known, and all desire is accepted.”

“Oh?” Kaylin said, after a moment. “Then why am I here today?”

Severn said quietly, “Bet you dinner that it has something to do with the deaf.”

“Meaning us.”

“Meaning our kind, yes.”

She thought about it for two seconds. It was a sucker bet, and she didn’t make those on the losing end. “No deal.”

His smile was brief and dark. It suited his face so perfectly, with all its nuance, that she realized he was right: it was not a smile she could even imagine on Epharim’s face.

Ybelline was waiting for them in a garden that was both sedate and seemed, at first, very simple. She sat at a table in the open air, and there were empty chairs around it—two empty chairs. Kaylin bowed briskly; Severn’s bow was extended. But genuine. He obviously knew Ybelline, and Ybelline’s graceful nod implied that she remembered him. They’d met before. Maybe they’d even worked together. Seven years, Severn had lived a life that Kaylin knew nothing about.

Did you see what I can’t see? she thought with a pang. Do you know what he won’t tell me?

As if in answer, Ybelline turned to Kaylin. But her antennae were flat against the honeyed gold of her hair, and her eyes were dark, a color that sunlight didn’t seem to penetrate. Kaylin had seen that color before in Tha’alani, but she wasn’t certain what it meant.

“Please,” Ybelline said, her voice rich and deep, but still slightly odd. “Be seated.”

They both obeyed her easy request as if it weren’t a thinly veiled command—and Ybelline was so gracious, it might not have been. She offered them tea, and like the color of her hair it was warm and honeyed. Severn drank without pause, although Kaylin knew he didn’t particularly like sweet in beverages. Kaylin, on the other hand, thought they should be desserts.

“What you did, Kaylin Neya, was good.”

Kaylin was confused.

“Ah, I meant with the son of Raseina. The boy. Epharim told me about it.” She did not smile as she spoke, but her tone conveyed gratitude. Which was odd. “You are fond of children,” she added, “and now, the collective knows this.”

Collective?

“The Tha’alaan,” Ybelline said, raising one brow. She looked at Severn, who was wincing. But she didn’t miss a beat, and her brow fell. “Your introduction to my kin was not a kind one. Perhaps not harsher than you deserved, but still, harrowing.”

Kaylin nodded at both statements.

“I have been gathering my own thoughts among my kin,” Ybelline continued, “and I would have conveyed what I felt in you the first time we met—but this was better. The child touched you—he is strong—and what he felt, the Tha’alaan felt. Your people believe in lies,” she added, “because they cannot hear truth.

“But there is no lie in that affection, although you fear us.”

“He’s a child—” Kaylin began.

“He is, but he will not always be a child, and many of your kind would fear him for what he might see, or how they might affect him with their fear and their secrets, the things they cannot help but hide. Hiding didn’t occur to you when he ran toward you.”

“It was a test?”

“No. Not a planned test, but perhaps the gods are kind.”

Kaylin had her doubts, and was aware that keeping them to herself around this woman was impossible. Then again, she generally didn’t keep that particular thought to herself, so no big loss.

But Severn said, before she could continue down that path, “Why was this fortunate, Ybelline? Why would it have been necessary to make such a statement to the Tha’alaan?”

Kaylin looked at Severn with surprise and a complete certainty that his question was actually one she should have been thinking.

“Yes,” Severn said, not bothering to spare her because, well, Ybelline would probably hear it anyway, “it was. But where children are concerned, you seem to forget simple things like thinking.”

Funny man. She thought about hitting him. Briefly.

Ybelline’s stalks rose and fell, as if thought itself were too heavy. She was silent for a long while, staring at Kaylin, and at Severn. Then she rose, leaving the table behind, and turned her back on them. Even among humans, this would not have been considered a good sign.

“You are very guarded,” Ybelline said to Severn. “And I choose to trust you without touching your inner thoughts.”

“And Kaylin isn’t.”

“No,” Ybelline said softly. “And I think she may have more that she feels needs to be hidden.”

Severn said nothing.

Kaylin froze for just a second. But Ybelline’s voice was so gentle, so free from censure, that the moment passed, and Kaylin let it go. She wanted to trust this woman. She had wanted to trust her the first time she’d laid eyes on her. Kaylin didn’t remember her mother very well—but something about Ybelline reminded her of that past. Never mind that the past was in the poverty of the fief of Nightshade.

Ybelline lifted her arms, wrapped them around herself. Kaylin could see her fingers trembling in the still air, the warm sun. “We need you to help us,” she said quietly.

With anything came to mind, but didn’t leave Kaylin’s lips. Of course, the fact that this didn’t matter occurred to her only after she’d successfully bit back the words; they were so loud.

“One of our children is missing.”

CHAPTER

4

Missing.

The word was heavy. It opened between them like a chasm created by the breaking of earth in the aftermath of magic. Kaylin did not look at Severn, but she was aware that he was watching her. Not staring, not exactly, but aware of her reaction. She schooled her expression—a phrase she hated—with care, entirely for his benefit.

“You haven’t reported her as missing.” Not a question.

“No,” Ybelline said, and she almost shuddered. Did, although it was subtle, a ripple that passed through her and left her changed.

“You don’t believe that she just wandered out of the quarter on her own.” Flat words.

“No,” Ybelline replied.

Which made sense. The young child Kaylin had so unselfconsciously lifted had had the attention of everyone in the street simply because he wanted it, and the adults were happy to indulge the simple desire of someone who was certain he was loved. Any child, Kaylin thought, would have that certainty, among the Tha’alani. She felt a pang as she thought of the orphans in the Foundling Halls, Marrin’s kits. They had never been certain of that.

Kaylin stepped back, but not physically. She was a Hawk, and reminded herself that that was what she had chosen to be. And a Hawk asked questions, sought answers, sifted through facts. No matter how much they dreaded them.

“What happened?” she asked, not bothering to hide that dread.

Ybelline did not close her eyes as she turned back to them, and her eyes were dark. The color, Kaylin thought, of either sorrow or horror. She still wasn’t sure.

“She was not at her home,” Ybelline began. “Understand that we have a … looser sense of home … than your kin. We are aware of where our children are, and we watch them, as a community. We listen for them. We hear their pain or their fear, and any one of us—any—will come to their rescue if rescue is required.

“Mayalee is a wanderer,” she added. “A young explorer. And she is fond of night, and stars, and navigation. She is bold—” The words stopped for a moment. “She is afraid of very little. Not even heights or falling.

“And none of our children—in the Tha’alaan—are afraid of strangers. We have no word for it,” she added, “that does not mean outsider. And no outsiders come here.”

“You think one did.”

“One must have,” Ybelline said bitterly. But something was not right, something about the words hinted at evasion. Kaylin looked at Severn to see if he had noticed, but she read nothing on his face, nothing in his expression. He was, as Ybelline had said, careful.