Cast in Peril. Michelle Sagara
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knocked and then took a step back to wait. The doors took five minutes to roll open.
Standing between them as they opened was Morse. She was alone, which was also unusual; she was on edge, which was worse. “Tiamaris wants to speak with you,” she said without preamble.
“Where’s Tara?”
“In the mirror room. If she wants to be disturbed, she’ll let us know. She’s been there for the past three days,” she added as she turned and began to lead them into the cavernous, wide halls of the Tower.
“Morse?”
Morse shrugged. “Yeah,” she said, answering the question Kaylin had asked by tone alone. “It’s been bad.” She paused, squinted, and then said, “Where’d you get the glass dragon?”
* * *
Tiamaris was waiting in what looked like a war room. The wall opposite the doors was a vast display of mirrors, none of which were in their reflective state. The whole of the fief, in much cleaner lines than the streets ever saw, was laid out to the left. Across those streets were lines in different colors; one was a bright, sharp red. It demanded attention.
Not even mindful of the distinctly orange color of his lidded eyes, Kaylin came to stand beside the fieflord.
“Word arrived that you encountered some difficulty yesterday,” he said, sparing her a passing glance. The glance, however, became a full-on stare when it hit the curled body of the small glass dragon. “What,” he asked in a sharper tone of voice, “is that?”
“The reason the difficulty wasn’t fatal.”
“Pardon?”
“The small dragon—”
“It is not a dragon.”
“Sorry. The small winged lizard—” The glass dragon lifted his head and glared balefully at the side of her face. “You’re smaller than he is,” she told it.
“It appears to understand what we are saying.”
“Yes. He doesn’t speak, though. He was hatched during the explosion of the Arcane bomb that destroyed a quarter of the building. Given what’s left of my apartment, we should have gone down with it. We didn’t. Bellusdeo thinks it’s because the— He protected us.”
Kaylin turned to Severn, who was examining the map with a frown. “The Arkon is doing research as we speak. None of which is relevant at the moment. The red is the last known location?”
The fieflord shook his head. “I will never understand mortals. Yes.”
She counted. There were a lot more than one missing boy.
“What did the Sergeant tell you?”
“He handed me a report,” she replied. “Miccha Jannoson crossed the bridge from the City and didn’t return. Are any of these lines relevant to that report?”
Tiamaris lifted a hand, and Kaylin followed its movement. One thread. It started three yards from the bridge, on the fief side of the Ablayne. It was notable for its length: it was short, much shorter than the streets.
“I don’t understand.”
“Tara spent much time constructing these overlays,” he replied, as if that would explain things.
It didn’t. “Miccha wasn’t a citizen of the fief.”
“No.”
“The Tower, any Tower, is in theory capable of tracking its citizens.”
“That,” he replied, “is a statement only partially based in truth. What she can track, should she so choose, is the approximate activity of people within my domain, if she has enough information to work with. Her records of the Barren years are notably scant, but the information she’s processed since I accepted the mantle of fieflord are of necessity more complete.”
“She couldn’t find Bellusdeo,” Kaylin pointed out, her gaze moving to the other tracks of red, some much longer.
“She couldn’t, no,” he agreed. “But there are probable reasons for that, chief among them being she had only a corpse with which to work.”
“She has even less in the case of Miccha.”
Tiamaris turned to regard her. “She is watching the bridge closely,” he finally said.
“What are the purple points?”
“The purple points—and they are not markedly purple to my eye—are unknowns.”
“Unknowns?” She glanced at the Dragon Lord. Miccha was an unknown, but Tara had clearly tagged him. “What exactly do you mean by ‘unknown’?”
“The fieflord, through the auspices of his or her Tower’s defenses, can see anything that occurs within the fief should they be paying attention. It is not, however, a trivial affair on our part. It is less difficult when the Tower is sentient, awake, and watchful, but even Tara has her limits. In the case of Miccha, she noted him precisely because he crossed the bridge and appeared to have very little reason to do so.”
“He did it on a dare.”
Tiamaris raised a brow. “It was an expensive dare,” he finally said.
“You think he’s dead.”
“I think he will not return to his family.” He hesitated and then added, “He is not the only person within my fief’s borders to disappear abruptly; he is the only citizen of the Empire to do so and therefore the only person who is directly relevant to your duties.”
“A lot of missing-persons reports are filed, Tiamaris. You know that.”
“Yes.”
“What distinguishes this one from those?”
“There is no obvious commonality among those who are missing. They are variously youthful, elderly, male, female.”
“They were reported missing?”
“Two were, directly to Tara. Those are the burnt-orange lines. Relatives of the missing women came to Tara for help a day after their parents disappeared. The orange lines are their known paths and destinations for the day prior to the reported disappearance. She was not, then, at full alert.”
“Now?”
He indicated four red lines. “These occurred after the first requests for aid. Those,” he added, pointing at lines that were a paler orange, “are possible similar disappearances. Morse has her people out in the streets in an attempt to discern whether or not the disappearances are real.”
Morse wouldn’t get that information directly, but she had Tara as backup. She asked the questions no one in their right mind—for a fief value—would answer; Tara eavesdropped on the conversations that occurred after Morse left the vicinity of possible witnesses. The citizens of the fief, if they thought about it for a few minutes, could figure out what was going on, but years of survival-based behaviors didn’t disappear in a month or two, and Morse caused terror in anyone sane, regardless. Tara didn’t.
The fact that the disappearances had been reported at all was an almost shocking display of trust. “That’s a dozen in total.”
“Including your citizen, yes.”
“What do you suspect?” It was clear he suspected something out of the ordinary, and fief crimes encompassed a lot of ordinary on any given day.
“There are ways of remaining hidden; not all of them are one-hundred-percent effective if someone is watching with care. If those reported as missing were dead within this fief, we would know by this point. We have discovered no bodies. Given twelve possible disappearances in total, with no word and very little in the way of clues…”
Kaylin grimaced. “Magic,” she said with the curt disgust only found in the Halls of Law.
“Magic,”