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“That came out of a very specific budget, I recall.”
“Yes. The mascot budget. Which was embarrassing, but—people helped me. When I needed help, they gave it.”
“I do not need help.”
“No?” Kaylin forced her hands to relax, because she had balled them into fists. “I know you won’t die without it. But you know what? I wouldn’t have died, either. I knew how to survive. This is the first time in my life I’ve been able to offer to help. To pay back to the Hawks what was given to me.”
“Kitling.” Teela’s use of the word was so common it might have been Kaylin’s actual name. She slid an arm around Kaylin’s shoulders. “Your age is showing.” When Kaylin failed to reply, Teela added, “No one helped you out because we wanted to humiliate you—if I recall the early days, you did that quite effectively on your own.”
“Thanks a lot, Teela.”
“No one helped you with the expectation that you would owe us, or be obligated to us, in future. Any kindness done to you in the past is not an obligation you must carry with you until you can—somewhat forcefully, I feel—discharge it.”
“It’s not really that,” Kaylin said, looking at her feet. “It’s just—I never had much. I have things now. The Hawks are the only family I have. Moran, you’re a Hawk.” She lifted her chin. “You’re like a terrifying aunt or older sister. Not Barrani-scary—if you’re angry at me, I know I deserve it.”
Teela cleared her throat.
“But I feel like—I feel—” She stopped. “I know this is not really about me.”
“But?” Moran unexpectedly prompted.
“I feel like somehow, still, after years of being a Hawk, and working hard, and becoming an adult—I feel like I’m not grown-up enough, or not good enough, to be allowed to help you.”
“Ugh,” Moran replied. “It has nothing to do with that. It’s not about you, you’re right. I just don’t want to involve you in my personal affairs.”
“And if Teela had offered?”
“I don’t want to involve me in Teela’s personal affairs.”
Kaylin laughed. “I don’t have much choice.”
“You really don’t,” Teela agreed. “The perils of joining the force as a minor, even as a mascot.”
“We can drop the mascot bit anytime now.”
“Kids,” Moran said. “You can have the rest of that particular discussion in the hall. I’ve heard it enough to know there’s nothing new for an audience in it.” They remained silent, and she looked down at the desk, where the familiar was still expectantly perched. “This is irresponsible,” she continued.
“You don’t have to decide right now,” Kaylin told her. “But—come with me when you’re off shift? You can meet Helen. You can see where I live—and where everyone else lives, if they’re okay with that. You can decide then.”
“Fine. Fine, I’ll visit.”
Kaylin wanted to cheer. “Now?”
Moran sighed. “I suppose we might as well get it over with.”
* * *
“You’re expected at the library,” Teela reminded her quietly as they exited the infirmary.
“I know,” Kaylin replied.
“Kitling—”
“She’ll change her mind. If we don’t get her home, she’ll change her mind. I can talk to the Arkon tomorrow.”
“Your funeral.”
* * *
“You live in this neighborhood?” Moran asked as they walked toward Kaylin’s home. Trees—well-groomed and towering—covered the street as if they were nature’s fences.
“I know, right? But it’s where Helen was built.”
“I’m still having difficulty with that.”
“With what?”
“With thinking of a building as a person. It’s not that it has a name—buildings frequently do. So do rooms. They don’t generally have people names, though.”
“Or personalities,” Kaylin agreed. “You’ll understand it better when you meet her.”
Out of the corner of her mouth, Moran asked Teela, “Why did I think this was a good idea?”
“You didn’t, that I recall. You just weren’t willing to accept the cost of refusing to consider it.”
Moran glared at Kaylin. “Teela doesn’t live with you, correct?”
“No. Two of her friends do, and she’s coming with me to check up on them.”
“So...I’d be living with Barrani.”
“Not technically. You might hear them, but at least one of them has been practically invisible for weeks. They’re not like normal Barrani—I think you’d actually like them.”
Teela coughed, but Moran smiled. When the Aerian smiled, she looked vastly more vulnerable—maybe that was why she did it so seldom. “Is there anything else I should know?”
“Not really. Helen likes flowers.”
Moran blinked.
“...And I’m shutting up now. You’ll see.”
* * *
Helen was waiting in the foyer by the time Kaylin entered the house. Like Tara, Helen understood Kaylin’s visceral dislike of door wards; she even considered it sensible, as no one liked pain. She smiled brightly at the sight of Teela.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she told the Barrani. “I’m not certain I can talk any more sense into Annarion; he is very, very worried. Mandoran’s been trying, but Annarion has shut him out completely.”
“Yes, I’d heard,” Teela replied. “Are they in the basement?”
“Mandoran is in his room. Annarion is downstairs.”
“If it’s all right with you, I’ll go talk to Annarion.”
“Of course, dear. I’m very worried about that boy.” Teela walked past her, but Helen had already moved on—though Helen could accompany Teela and simultaneously greet a guest without even blinking.
“Helen, this is Moran. She’s a Hawk, and she’s in charge of the infirmary. As a sergeant. Moran, this is Helen.”
“If it’s easier,” Helen said, extending a hand, “think of me as a particularly concerned landlord.”
“Kaylin talks about you a lot in the office,” Moran replied, offering her the smile she seldom offered anyone in the Halls, except Caitlin. Her wings folded more naturally across her back, losing some of their height; her eyes settled into a comfortable dark gray. “This is a very impressive foyer.”
“Do the Aeries have foyers?”
“Not like this, but yes, there are areas that would serve the same function. The oldest of ours features more weaponry, though.” She seemed hesitant to elaborate further.
“I was hoping,” Kaylin said, rightly guessing the reason for the hesitation, “that Moran could stay with us. Her wings were injured when the Barrani ancestors came to visit, and she can’t fly properly, so she either has to take a leave of absence—”
“—or find a place to stay while she heals?” Helen was looking at Moran’s wings. Kaylin guessed that she was assessing them from a different vantage point—from the front, very little of the actual injuries could be examined.
“Yes, that. And at the moment, she’s living in the—”
Moran cleared her throat. Loudly.
“Yes, I see. That won’t do. I do have rooms that I think might suit you, if you would care to look at them. I don’t, unfortunately, have a working connection to the mirror network yet. Kaylin has been quite vocal about the necessity. Would you also require it?”
Moran’s smile in response was almost feline. “No, actually, having no mirror connection would be a godsend.”
* * *
Kaylin followed her guest and Helen, trailing behind. She wasn’t certain what she should be doing. Moran’s rooms would be her rooms; they weren’t part of Kaylin’s living space unless Moran specifically invited her in. But Helen was Kaylin’s home, and in theory, it was Kaylin offering hospitality. Would it be bad manners to tag along? Bad manners to hang back?
Etiquette gave Kaylin a headache, in part because good etiquette demanded entirely different behaviors in almost exactly the same situations. And also because it was Diarmat who was teaching.
She lagged behind, small and squawky across her shoulders like a wet blanket. He didn’t even lift his head when Moran opened the door Helen indicated. Her room was nestled between everyone else’s in the hall of doors; the door was adorned by a very simple, but obviously winged, person in silhouette.
Kaylin wasn’t certain what to expect. She’d seen the Aerie in which Clint and his flight lived—or rather, she’d seen the large, public spaces the entire Aerie shared. It had looked like a giant cave, though with smoother walls and adornments. She didn’t recall windows, but didn’t remember the darkness of natural caves, either. She had no idea what Aerians did for kitchens; she knew they didn’t eat sitting in normal chairs, because their wings made it impossible.
She had no idea how they slept. The fledglings slept in traditional bassinets, though with more padding. Other creatures with wings slept sitting upright—or hanging upside down, in the case of bats. She’d never been stupid enough to ask the Aerians whether they did the same thing. Or perhaps she’d just been too self-conscious about sounding stupid.
Kaylin started forward and almost ran into Moran’s back. The Aerian was standing in the doorway, her right hand on the frame; her knuckles were white.
“Moran?” Kaylin asked.
Moran didn’t appear to hear her, which might have been because of the raucous noise of birds. Kaylin couldn’t tell if they were angry birds or not; she could only tell that there were a lot of them.
Moran turned in the doorway to face Helen, who waited in silence. She then looked at Kaylin. “Did you know?” she asked, her voice entirely unlike the harsh bark the infirmary required.
Kaylin shook her head. “I still don’t.”
Moran stepped into the room, indicating by gesture that Kaylin should follow.
* * *
This was not a room in the traditional sense of the word; it only had three walls, for one. The floor was harder than the one in Kaylin’s room; it was stone. Flat stone, mind, that had obviously been worked—but still, stone. Kaylin’s habit of falling out of bed when nightmares were bad or the mirror barked did not lend itself to hard stone floors.
The walls appeared to be made of stone, too—and the stone wasn’t cut stone or block; it was all of a piece. Arches had been worked into the walls, and Kaylin could see light from rooms to the left and right of this one. But this room was enormous. It was also not one in which Kaylin thought she could ever sleep, because it was missing a wall.
There were buildings so decrepit in the fiefs that walls had come down. Tiamaris was fixing those, usually by destroying the rotting ruins and rebuilding from scratch, but Nightshade had never cared enough about the fief and its citizens to do the same—and having a shelter without walls was the same as having no shelter at all, when night fell.
She said nothing. She knew Moran’s life in the Aerie was not her own life in Nightshade. Hells, it wasn’t her life in Elantra. But it shadowed her; it was so much a part of where she’d come from.
Moran left Kaylin at the door and walked, wings lifting, toward the open sky that faced the rest of the room. The sky was city sky: it was dappled with clouds, but blue and bright, sun setting in the distance. Moran turned away from that sky to face Helen. Kaylin had never seen the expression her face now wore. It was almost uncomfortable to look at; Kaylin felt as if she was intruding on something incredibly private.
Moran opened her mouth, but no words came out. She looked much, much younger than she did in the Halls. Without a word, she turned and left the entry room, walking to the right of where Kaylin stood looking out.
When she’d left, Kaylin said quietly, “She has to stay here. She has to stay here.”
“I am not a jail,” Helen said. Her voice was gentle. “I understand what you want to offer, and Kaylin, I am—as I have said before—happy to do so. Your Moran means you no harm; she is afraid that her presence here will cause it. I can’t convince her to shed that fear, because her presence will cause you no harm here. But it isn’t what happens here that she’s afraid of. It’s what happens outside of these walls.
“She trusts your safety to me while you are here. I’m not entirely certain what you told her, but I don’t need to be. I cannot promise your safety while you are not within my walls—and you will not always be here. I accept that, or I could not have become your home. If she can live with the guilt, she will, I think, remain.”
Moran came back. She looked frail, which again was discomfiting. She didn’t speak; instead, she walked directly through the arch opposite the one she’d just exited. She paused this time and said, “Kaylin, come with me.” She held out a hand. It wasn’t a command, but it also wasn’t the sarcastic barking that generally passed for requests in the Halls of Law from anyone who wasn’t Caitlin.
Kaylin, almost mute, followed, thinking at Helen before she realized that Helen might actually respond to the thoughts—which would just humiliate a Hawk and an Aerian who were both accustomed to more privacy. Helen was mercifully silent.
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