Cast in Peril. Michelle Sagara
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may have information that is relevant.”
“Yvander was being led to Nightshade,” Kaylin said. The words were sharp and heavy. “In Nightshade, no one’s likely to care.”
Tara frowned. “If something is preying on his people, he will. If he does not have sympathy for the individuals who have gone missing,” she added, “he is nonetheless Lord in his domain, and he cannot afford to overlook such predations.”
“He didn’t give a damn about the Ferals,” was the sharp reply. “And there were certainly brothels like Barren’s, where predators from the City were welcomed.”
“He did not turn a blind eye to the latter,” was Tara’s cool reply. “He profited from it, in a fashion of his choosing.”
Kaylin’s hands bunched into instant fists. She’d learned, on the other hand, to keep still when she was in the grip of a sudden, unexpected anger. She met Tara’s steady gaze and saw that the Avatar’s eyes were no longer obsidian.
“I have angered you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Kaylin replied, exhaling and loosening her hands, “I hate what you’re saying.”
“Is it inaccurate?”
“No. If it were inaccurate, I wouldn’t be angry. You’re not wrong, and I hate that you’re not wrong.”
“My Lord would be sympathetic,” Tara replied. Her wings folded into her back and disappeared as she straightened out her apron.
“We’ll take word to the Halls,” Kaylin said after a long pause. “If I don’t come to visit in the next two months, it’s not because I’m angry.”
Tara frowned. “You are leaving?”
“Yes. I’m going to the West March.” The West March suddenly seemed like a terrible waste of time. People were being kidnapped in the fiefs, and Kaylin and Severn were two Hawks who could navigate its streets. She didn’t say this.
On the other hand, standing on the front steps of the Tower, she didn’t need to; Tara heard it anyway.
* * *
“Kaylin.”
Kaylin, shoulders hunched, was looking for something to kick. “I don’t want to go to the West March. I want to be here.”
“The fiefs aren’t our jurisdiction.”
Kaylin said nothing for two blocks.
“And that’s not why you’re angry.”
Severn knew her. Sometimes, she forgot how well. “No.”
“Nightshade?”
“Yes.” She wanted to spit. She couldn’t bring herself to say the name. “I’ll bet you any money—and I mean any—that there’s a portal to wherever across the border. Whoever was taking Yvander to ‘lunch’ was leading him there.”
“I wouldn’t touch that bet.”
No one still breathing would. “But it makes no sense. The kidnappings. I hate magic.”
The small dragon hissed in her ear.
“I’m sorry, but I do.”
He nipped her earlobe. Had he been larger, she would have grabbed him and tossed him off her shoulders. As it was, she managed to ignore him. “I think this has something to do with the embezzling. The biggest difficulty we’ve had in solving this case has been the lack of distribution of the stolen funds. It’s not in banks. It’s not in drugs. It’s not in gems or other concessions. It’s not in the hands of merchants.”
“You think it’s in the hands of fieflords.”
She did. “Tara’s half-right. They couldn’t just grab people off the street. Dozens? The fieflords would have to notice that. But what if they just buy people? Pay off fieflords? It’s not much different from killing them in brothels we’d shut down in two seconds on this side of the river. They don’t have that option with Tiamaris. He’d eat them for lunch.
“And if it’s Barrani, they’d know that. They’ve been at war with Dragons on and off for centuries. If Tiamaris claims this as his, he’s not selling any of it—not for something as mundane as stolen treasury funds.”
“What, exactly, would the Exchequer or the Human Caste Court derive from that? Stealing funds to give to Barrani to buy chattel doesn’t seem like motivation to risk life and limb—literally. It doesn’t make sense.”
“No.” She slowed. “It doesn’t. But I think it doesn’t make sense because we don’t know where the people went. We’re missing part of the big picture. What we’re not missing is the fact that ‘Michael,’ whoever the hells he was, walked Yvander across the Nightshade border.” With a great deal of bitterness, she added, “There’s no way he doesn’t know. He fingered the Arcanum. He knew who to blame. How?”
“You’re going to Nightshade.”
“I am.”
Chapter 6
The sky was so gray, it was almost the color of silence. The rage bled away as Kaylin walked; it left a familiar despair in its wake.
It had never occurred to Kaylin, growing up in the streets of Nightshade, that a fief could be almost safe. But in Tiamaris, Ferals were hunted, and the ranks of those who formed Tiamaris’s unofficial guard force were growing; people wanted to hunt Ferals here; the young wanted to be heroes. Only the dangerously insane had ever done so in Nightshade, and in Kaylin’s admittedly small experience, they were just as likely to kill as the Ferals and for reasons that were just as clear.
In Tiamaris, people came to the fieflord—or Tara, at least—to report their missing parents.
Tiamaris had owned the fief for almost two months, if that, and these were the changes he had made. Dragons were a force of nature, as all Immortals were, but this Dragon, she understood and, in her own way, admired.
Nightshade had owned his fief for far longer than she had been alive. He could have made the fief an entirely different place, just as Tiamaris was attempting to do. He hadn’t. He had never particularly cared about the people who eked out a miserable existence in the streets surrounding his castle. They were mortal and no more important than any other insignificant and transitory possession.
The Ablayne came into view. She had seen it so often from the wrong side of its banks that it was almost a comfort. The bridge that crossed Tiamaris wasn’t empty, and the men—and women—who walked it weren’t attempting to be furtive. They walked it the way the citizens of Elantra walked to any job or to any market. They did blink a little when they saw Kaylin and Severn, but only because they wore the tabard of the Hawks.
With the streets of the city firmly beneath her feet, she relaxed—but not enough. “Will you go back to the office?” she asked.
“If you’d prefer,” he replied with only a small gap between question and answer to indicate hesitance.
She nodded, and he accompanied her down the riverside street until they reached a more familiar bridge. This one contained no foot traffic, no obvious guards, no carpenters or linguists; it was a bridge in name only and served as it had always served: as a wall, a way of keeping people in their respective homes.
“I’ll be fine,” she told Severn. “It’s not my death he wants.”
“You don’t know what he wants.”
It was true. She didn’t. “I don’t always know what I want.”
“No.” His smile was slight. “Mostly, people don’t.”
“Or they want the wrong things.”
“Wrong?”