So, Tiamaris said, splaying a hand across the tables surface. That was true.
She looked at him again. How much do you know about me? Which wasnt really the important question. And why?
Which was. Youve been a Hawk for a day, if Im any judge.
Two, he replied.
It takes longer than two days to make a Hawk.
He shrugged. It takes only the word of the Hawklord.
He was, of course, right. She cursed the Lord of the Hawks in the seven languages she knew. Which wasnt saying much; she could only speak four passably, but she was enough of a Hawk that shed picked up the important words in the other three, and none of them were suitable for children or politics.
Languages were her only academic gift. Shed failed almost every other class shed been forced to take. Lord Grammayre had been about as tolerant as a disappointed parent could be, and shed endured more lectures about applying herself than she cared to remember. At least a third of them had been delivered in Aerian, hed been that annoyed; it was his habit to speak formal Barrani when addressing the Hawks, although when frustrated he could descend into Elantran, the human tongue.
The crystal, Tiamaris said.
Shed bought about all the time she could afford. Grinding her teethwhich caused Severn to laughshe put her left palm over it; caught between her palms, the crystal began to pulse. She felt its beat and almost dropped it as it began to warm; warmth gave way to heat, and heat to something that was just shy of fire.
Shed touched fire before; been touched by it. Someplace, she still bore the scars. But shed be damned if she let a little pain get in her way. Not in front of these two.
The crystal was beating. She felt it, and almost recognized the cadence of its insistent drumming. After a moment, she realized why; it had slowed, timing itself to the rhythm of her heart.
Which was too damn loud anyway.
Here we go, she said softly.
Kaylin.
The Hawklords voice was unmistakable. She relaxed, hearing it; it was calm and almost pleasant. An Aerian voice.
Kaylin, witness.
The fiefs opened up in her line of sight; she lost track of the room. She could see the boundaries that marked the criminal territories colloquially called the fiefs; they occupied the western half of the riverside, swallowing all but the Port Authority by the old docks. The view was top side, high; someone had flown this stretch. Someone had carried the unlocked crystal, linked to it, feeding it images, vision, the certainty of knowledge.
Grammayre? She couldnt be certain.
The Lords of Law were the fist of the Emperor; they owed their allegiance and existence to his whim. This was a truth that she had faced almost daily for seven years. The Hawks, the Wolves and the Swords were not soldiers; they were no part of the Imperial army.
But they were allowed arms and armor, by law; in their individual ways, they kept the laws of the city of Elantra. And if that wasnt a war, she didnt want to see one. No one loved the guards who served the Lords of Law, but almost no one crossed them. Not outside of the fiefs.
Within the fiefs?
Old pain crossed her features, distorting them. She closed her eyes. Her vision however, was caught in crystal; she watched as the fiefs drew closer, undeniable now. Saw the boundaries beyond which the Lords of Law had little sway, held little power, and all of that power theoretical.
The armies would have more, but the Emperor seldom allowed the armies to crusade within his city.
And so the fiefs continued to exist.
In the fiefs, the slavery that had been abolished for a generation and a half still existed in all but name. Whole grand houses, opulent, golden manses, opened their doors to visitors, and within those doors, the rich could purchase anything. A moments illegal escape, in the smoke-wreathed rooms of the opiates. A moments pleasure, in the private parlors of the prostitutes. And a death, here or there, if ones tastes shaded to the sadistic.
Sordid, storybook, the fiefs made their money off those who would never dream of living within their borders.
And the fieflords ruled. They had their own laws, their own armies, their own liegeseverything but open warfare. Open war in the city would bring the army down upon them all. This was understood, and it was perhaps the only thing that kept the fieflords in check. But in Kaylins experience, it wasnt near enough. People lived and died at their whim. Money ruled the fiefs; money and power.
But the people who lived in them, who lived in the old buildings, the crumbling tenements, the small, squalid houses, had neither. They made what living they could, and they dreamed of a time when they might cross the boundaries that divided the one city from the other, seeking freedom or safety in the streets beyond.
They might as well have lived in a different country.
Kaylin? Tinny, robbed of the threat and grandeur of a Dragons natural voice, she heard Tiamaris.
Can you see it?
Silence. A beat. No, he said quietly. The gem is, as you claimed, keyed to you. It appears you are to be our conduit to the investigation. He didnt sound pleased, and she knew she was being petty when she felt a moments satisfaction.
But the satisfaction was very short-lived; the view dipped and veered, rolling in the sky. Clint had once taken her up in the air. Shed been with the Hawks for a handful of weeks, and she was thin with the hunger that dogged most children in the fiefs; hed caught her under the arms, and shed clung to him, determined to fly with him.
But she had found the distance from Clint to ground overwhelming. She couldnt follow what she saw; couldnt do anything but shut her eyes and shiver. Wind against her face, like it was now, was a reminder of what she wasnt: Aerian, and meant for the skies.
But hed held her tight, and his voice, in her ear, became an anchor. He teased a sense of security slowly out of her fear, her frozen stiffness, and she had at last opened those eyes and looked. He took her to his home, to the heights of the Aeries in the cliffs that bordered the southern face of the city.
His home was not the home she had fled.
Not the home that the crystals flight was returning her to.
The first fief passed beneath her shadow. She saw the tallest of the buildings it contained, and saw the gallows and the hanging cage that lay occupied beside it. Someone had angered the servants of the fieflord here, and they meant it to be known; the cages occupantman? Woman? She couldnt tell from this distancewas clearly still alive.
The voyager didnt pause here; he merely observed.
From a distance, she was encouraged to do the same. But she had seen those cages from the ground; had watched a friend die in one, had discovered, on that day, what it meant to be truly powerless.
She struggled with the crystal, but she was overmastered here. The Hawksher place in the Hawkshad given her the illusion of power. And the Hawklord was going to strip her of it before he let her leave. To remind heras she had not reminded herselfthat she was still powerless, still young.
This is the domain of the outcaste Barrani fieflord known as Nightshade, his voice said.We do not, of course, know his real name. It is hidden by spells far stronger than those we can comfortably use. Not even the Barrani castelords dare to challenge Nightshade in his own Dominion.
She closed her eyes. It didnt help.
You know this fief.
She knew it. Severn knew it. They had lived, and almost died, in its streets. And Severn had done much, much worse there. The desire to kill him was paralyzing. It was wed to a bitter desire for justiceand justice was a fools dream in the fiefs.
There are deaths here which you must investigate. More information is forthcoming.
The crystal shifted in her hands, becoming almost too hot to hold. She held it anyway as her view suddenly banked and shifted.
She was on the ground. The smell of the streets, overpowering in its terrible familiarity, filled her senses. She staggered, stumbled, stood; she looked down to see that her tunican unfamiliar tunic, a mans garbwas red with blood.
She felt no pain, but she knew that this memory was courtesy of the Thaalani, and she hated it. It was different in all ways from the distant observation of the Hawklord; it was full of terror, of pain, of the inability to acknowledge or deny either.
She stumbled in the streets, and her arms ached; she was carrying something. No, he was, whoever he was. He stumbled along the busy streets; the sun was high. Some people watched him from a distance, open curiosity mixed with dread in their unfamiliarblessedly sofaces. None approached. None offered him aid with the burden he bore. And when his strength at last gave out, when his knees bent, when his arms unlocked in a shudder that spoke of effort, of time, she saw why; saw it from his eyes.
A body rolled down his lap, bloody, devoid of life.
He screamed, then. A name, over and over, as if the name were a summons, as if it contained the power to command life to return.
But watching now as a Hawk, watching as someone trained to know death and its causes, Kaylin knew that it was futile.
The boyten years of age, maybe twelvehad been disemboweled. His arms hung slack by his sides, and she could see, from wrist to elbow, the black tattoos that had been painted there, indelible, in flesh.
She had seen them before. She knew that it wasnt only his arms that bore those marks; his inner thighs would bear them, too.
She screamed.
And Severn screamed in quick succession as she inexplicably lost contact with the gem.
Her hands were blistered; her skin was broken along the lines of the rigid crystal. And so were Severns. He dropped the crystal instantly and it hit the table with a thunk, fastening itself to the wooden surface.
She thought it should roll.
It was a stupid thought.
What are you doing? She shouted at Severn, the words ground through clenched teeth, the pain in her hands making her stupid.
Prying the gem away from you, he snapped back, composure momentarily forgotten.
Why?
He shrugged. The shrug, which started at his shoulder, ended in a shudder. You didnt like what you were looking at, he added quietly.
And it matters?
Yes.
Why?
He didnt answer.
That was brave, Tiamaris said, speaking for the first time. And very, very foolish. The Hawklord must have gone to some expense to create this crystal. It is obviously unusual. Kaylin?
She shook her head. Actually, she just shook. She wanted to touch the gem again, and she wanted to destroy it. Torn between the twothe one an imperative and the other an impossibilityshe was frozen.
Tiamaris said quietly, I owe you a debt. The words were grave. His eyes had edged from red to gold, and the gold was liquid light.
Debt?
I would have taken the gem. It would have been unwise. It appears that the Hawklord trusts you, Kaylin. And it would appear, he added, with just the hint of a dark smile, that that trust does not extend to his newest recruits.
But Severn refused to be drawn into the conversation; he was staring at Kaylin. His own hands had started to swell and blister.
Did you see it? she asked him, all enmity momentarily forgotten. He was Severn, she was Elianne, and the streets of the fiefs had become that most impossible of things: more terrifying than either had ever thought possible.
He shook his head. No, he said, devoid now of arrogance or ease. But I know what you saw.
How?
Ive only heard you scream that way once in your life, he replied. He lifted a hand, as if to touch her, and she shied away instantly, her hand falling to her dagger hilt. To one of many.
He accepted her rejection as if it hadnt happened. I was there, back then, he added quietly. I saw it too. Its happening again, isnt it?
She closed her eyes. After a moment, eyes still closed, she rolled up her sleeves, exposing the length of arm from wrist to elbow.
There, in black lines, in an elegant and menacing swirl, were tattoos that were almost twin to the ones upon the dead boys arms.
She was surprised when someone touched her wrist, and her eyes jerked open.
But Tiamaris held the wrist in a grip that could probably crush bone with little effort. Funny, how human his hands looked. How human they werent.
She tried to pull away. He didnt appear to notice.
But his eyes flickered as she drew a dagger out of its sheath with her free hand. Shed moved slowly, and the daggers made no soundbut he was instantly aware of them.
I wouldnt, if I were you. Lord Grammayre is not known for his tolerance of fighting among his own.
Let go, she whispered.
He didnt appear to have heard her. Do you know what these markings mean? He asked. His inner eye membrane had risen, lending opacity to the sudden fire of his eyes.
Death, she whispered.
Yes, he replied. He studied them with care, and after a moment, she realized he was reading them. They mean death. But that is not all they mean, Kaylin of the Hawks.
This isntthis isnt Dragon.
No. It is far older than Dragon, as you so quaintly call our tongue.
Barrani?
His lip curled in open disdain.
Ill take that as a no. She hesitated. These patterns had been with her since she had gained the age of ten, a significant age in the fiefs. Not many children survived that long when theyd lost their parents.
Where did you get these?
In Nightshade, she whispered.
Who put them upon you? Who marked you thus?
It was Severn who answered. No one.
Impossible.
I saw them, Severn replied. I saw them grow. We all did. They started one morning in Winter.
On what day?
The shortest one.
Tiamaris said nothing. She wanted him to continue to say nothing, but he opened his mouth anyway. I saw the bodies, he said at last. And the tattoos of the dead did not just, as you say, start. They were put there, and at some cost.
Not hers, Severn said quietly.
Tiamaris frowned. There is something here, he said at last, that even I cannot read.
Do youdo you know someone who can?
Only one, Tiamaris replied, and it would not be safe for you to ask him.
Why?
He would probably take both arms.
Severn said, He could try. And his long dagger was suddenly in his hand.