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Praise for MICHELLE SAGARA and THE CHRONICLES OF ELANTRA series

Cast in Shadow “First-rate fantasy. Sagara’s complex characterizations and rich world-building lift her above the crowd.” —New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong

“Intense, fast-paced, intriguing, compelling

and hard to put down … unforgettable.”

—In the Library Reviews

Cast in Courtlight “Readers will embrace this compelling, strong-willed heroine with her often sarcastic voice.” —Publishers Weekly

“Packed with action and adventure … integrating the conventions

of police procedurals with more fantastic elements.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

Cast in Secret “The impressively detailed setting and the book’s spirited heroine are sure to charm romance readers as well as fantasy fans who like some mystery with their magic.” —Publishers Weekly

“Remarkable … Filled with time-release plot threads and intricate

details, these books are both mesmerizing and unforgettable.

If you’re a fan of rich fantasy, this is the series for you!”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews, Top Pick (4½ stars)

About the Author

MICHELLE SAGARA has written twelve novels since 1991, when her first book, Into the Dark Lands, was published. She’s written a quarterly book review column for the venerable Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for a number of years, as well as dozens of short stories (or novellas, to be more exact).

In 1986 she started working in an SF specialty bookstore, where she continues to work to this day. She loves reading, is allergic to cats (very, which means they crawl all over her), is happily married, has two lovely children, and has spent all of her life in her native Toronto—none of it on Bay Street.

She started reading fantasy almost as soon as she could read, and fell instantly in love with Narnia; her next fantasy discovery was Patricia McKillip’s Forgotten Beasts of Eld. She moved on to The Hobbit, which led to her discovery of the life-changing The Lord of the Rings.

Her greatest hope for her writing is that someone will read it and be moved by the same sense of magic and mystery that she finds in the books she loves.

She will talk about writing, bookselling and books forever if given a chance. You’ve been warned.

Cast in

Fury

Michelle Sagara

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Daniel, Ross, Jamie and Liam

CHAPTER 1

Private Kaylin Neya was on time for work and the world hadn’t ended.

A few people’s lives, on the other hand, were in question. The amount of sarcasm Clint could put into shocked silence wasn’t illegal. Yet. But Kaylin had to grudgingly admit, as she glared her way past his lowered halberd and into the Halls of Law, the wings he extended were a nice touch.

The Aerie was almost empty, but it usually was at this time of day; the halls themselves were suspiciously quiet. Then again, maybe the Swords were actually earning their pay instead of milling around the halls looking smug. Even on her bleariest mornings, Kaylin couldn’t have missed the tension and worry that seemed to permeate the city streets recently, and keeping the peace, such as it was in a crowded city, was their job. For a change. The day was already looking brighter. She glanced up as a shadow passed her, and saw a lone Aerian traversing the space high above; he wasn’t practicing maneuvers, and his wings were extended for a steady glide. She still envied the Aerians their wings, a little.

She felt a smidgen of sympathy for the Swords but didn’t let it show. Much. It wasn’t often that the entire city had almost created a new sea coast by the simple expedient of being under most of the surrounding water. She was certain that stories and rumors about the larger-than-Imperial-edict tidal wave that had almost destroyed the harbor—for a start—had already been making the rounds, and growing bigger, if that was even possible, with each telling.

She was waved through—without sarcasm—when she approached the guards that separated the Hawks’ quarters from those of the Wolves or the Swords. The halls were vacant, and even the duty roster seemed to have gathered no darts.

“Oh, come on, guys,” she said, when the entire office stopped as she entered and approached Marcus’s desk. “I’m not always late. Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Have you checked the duty roster, dear?” Caitlin asked, from the safety of her desk. Not that she was ever in any danger; if the office had a collective mother, it was Caitlin.

“Oh. No.” She turned and, at Marcus’s bark of a command, turned back. Marcus’s growl was low, and it was short. He must be tired. And a tired Leontine was generally best kept happy by little displays of obedience. Or big ones.

The paperwork on his desk hadn’t really diminished but also, to Kaylin’s admittedly inexpert eye, hadn’t grown; the emergency that had pulled a number of his Hawks out of their normal routine had been resolved; there was no Festival for almost another year. She couldn’t quite see what would put him in a mood, but the fact that he was in one was obvious—having facial fur that bristled when you were ticked off was a dead giveaway. Having fangs that were almost as long as her fingers—the exposed parts of the fangs, at any rate—was another.

She came to stand a safe distance from the side of his desk, and waited. She even waited quietly.

Her reward? He lifted a stack of paper off his desk and dumped it in her hands. “This,” he said curtly, “is your problem.”

She looked down at what she had assumed were reports—or worse. The paperwork required of the office was, by all accounts, more arcane than any of the magic it also required. To punctuate this, the window very sweetly told the entire office what the hour was.

Kaylin really hated the window. There was money riding on how long it would take someone to accidentally break it, and money riding on who would have the accident. There weren’t many rules that governed office bets, but one of them was that you couldn’t place money on yourself. Which was fair but, in Kaylin’s case, prevented her from winning much.

“Well? Are you going to stand there all day?”

Kaylin looked down at the first sheet in the stack—and it was a large stack. “No, sir.”

“Good. Take note of the roster—your rounds have been changed.”

“Since when? I checked it last night.”

“Since then, obviously.”

She caught Caitlin’s frantic gestures out of the corner of her eye, and nodded. She considered going to the roster by way of Caitlin’s desk, but since they were in opposite directions and Marcus could watch you while his back was turned, she decided to actually go to the roster instead.

Her shoulders did a severe downturn when she saw what had been written beside her name. Even Severn’s name, at the same location, didn’t bring much cheer. The Imperial Palace?

“Don’t make that face,” Teela said, in her left ear.

Barrani could walk in perfect silence, but it took work, and Teela was usually too damn lazy. Kaylin’s little start did not, however, cause her to drop the bundle of paper. Given Marcus’s mood, that was good.

“What’s eating Marcus?”

Teela shrugged, long black hair rising and falling like a perfect curtain. Kaylin tried not to resent the fact that the Barrani weren’t governed by any Hawk regulations when it came to anything they wore. Regulations were, after all, supposed to be practical and as far as Kaylin could tell, Barrani hair never tangled, never got caught in anything, and never got in the way.

And they were gorgeous and lived forever. If it weren’t for the fact that they adored politics—preferably with blood and death—they’d be insufferable.

“He’s Ironjaw,” Teela said. “But he’s been in that mood since late last night.” Her tone of voice made it clear that it was serious enough that Kaylin should change the subject now, and Kaylin had known Teela for so many years it wasn’t possible to misinterpret.

“Figures. Save a city, get sent to the Imperial Palace.”

“It’s more impressive than being sent to the docks or the Commons.”

“More people to offend.”

“True, and some of them are significant.” Teela smiled. In all, it wasn’t a happy expression. “Have you even taken a look at what you’re holding?”

“I just got it, Teela.”

“You might want to read it over,” the Hawk replied. “Severn’s waiting in the West room. And so is the Dragon.”

The Dragon was generally known by the rank and file as Lord Sanabalis. One of Four Dragon Lords that comprised the Dragon contingent of the Imperial Court, he was also a member of the Imperial Order of Mages. He had graciously come out of teaching retirement to take on one pupil, that pupil being Kaylin herself. She tried to remember to be grateful, and usually succeeded when she wasn’t actively staring at a candle wick in a vain attempt to get it to catch fire.

Which, come to think, was most of the time.

But she knew her lesson schedule more or less by heart now, and none of those lessons started at the beginning of her day. Given her nocturnal activities, and the desire of the Hawks not to annoy the mages, Marcus had forbidden any lesson that started before lunch. It gave her a decent chance of not missing any.

So Sanabalis wasn’t here to teach her anything new about candles. She pushed the door open—it was open, so she didn’t have to go through her daily ritual of teeth-grinding while waiting for the doorward to magically identify her—and saw that Severn and Sanabalis were seated across the room’s only table, talking quietly.

They stopped when they saw her, and she slid between the door and its frame, dropping the stack of paper on the tabletop.

“Marcus is in a mood,” she told Severn.

“It’s better than yours.”

“I’m not in a—” She stopped. “You mean better than mine will be?”

“Pretty much. Take a seat. Lord Sanabalis is here to inform us of our duties, and to escort us to the man we’ll be aiding.”

When Severn spoke Barrani, it was generally a bad sign. Lord Sanabalis, on the other hand, almost always spoke in Barrani.

“We don’t have to talk to the Emperor, do we?” she said, sinking into the chair slowly. It was rock hard and weighed more than she did.

“No,” Lord Sanabalis replied. “Unless something goes gravely, gravely wrong, the Emperor has more important duties to attend.”

“Does this mean there’s no lesson today?”

“There will be, as you say, no lesson for the course of your duties at the Palace.”

“Well, that’s something. Who are we investigating?”

Severn hesitated.

“Investigating?” Sanabalis replied, raising a brow. “I rather think, if you were sent to investigate someone, the last place the Hawks would agree to second you would be the Imperial Palace. As you should know, the Imperial Guards deal with any difficulties that arise in the Palace. And they do not arise.”

“Yes, Sanabalis.” She hesitated. “What are we doing there, then? We’re not exactly guard material—”

One of his silver brows rose into his thinning hairline.

Fair enough; if the Imperial Guard would be offended at outside investigators, they would probably completely lose it at outside guards. “So we’re not there as investigators, we’re not there as guards. Are we there as Hawks?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

She grimaced. “That usually means no.”

“You are Hawks or you could not be seconded in this fashion. You are not, however, there as representatives of the Law.”

The old bastard looked like he was enjoying himself. Exactly how he conveyed this, Kaylin wasn’t quite certain—his expression was neutral enough, and his voice was smooth as glass.

“So what are we there as?”

“As Cultural Resources,” he replied smoothly.

“As what?”

“Cultural Resources.”

“I heard you. What exactly does that mean?”

“Ah. Have you taken a moment to peruse the documents you placed upon the table?”

“No.”

“I’d advise you to do so. We are not expected at the Palace until after lunch. I felt, given the unpredictability of your schedule, that this was wisest.”

“But—”

“Many of the questions you are no doubt impatient to ask will be answered by even the briefest of perusals.”

She wondered if he were a betting man, or Dragon. But given Dragons in general, she doubted it.

“If it eases your mind, Private Neya, Sergeant Kassan is required to pay you for the time you spend seconded to the Palace. He also,” he continued, lifting a hand to stop her from speaking, “expects you to report in each morning.

“For some reason, he is concerned about the assignment. I can’t imagine why.”

“Act One, Scene One.” Kaylin looked at Severn. “Act One, Scene One?”

“It’s a play,” Severn said, shrugging slightly. The left corner of his mouth was turned up in something that hinted at amusement. “You’re familiar with plays?”

Kaylin snorted. She read the description of stage materials—mostly the painted facades of buildings and bushes, in different sizes. And, she thought, in odd colors. “Poynter’s road?”

Severn nodded. “It’s—”

“I know where it is—but the buildings don’t look anything like that on Poynter’s.”

“Kaylin—”

“No, Corporal Handred, allow her to speak freely. It will, in theory, get it out of her system.”

“You want me to read a play?”

“Not exactly. The play itself is not complete, or not complete to our satisfaction. The author’s name might be familiar to you.” He raised one brow.

“Richard Rennick.” She looked at Severn. “Should we know him?”

“He’s the Imperial Playwright,” Severn told her quietly. “The position is held by one Playwright every five years. There’s usually a competition of some sort—a series of different plays staged for the Emperor. He apparently won, three years ago.”

Lord Sanabalis said, “The Emperor feels that human arts should be encouraged. Don’t look at me like that, Kaylin. Dragons seldom have an interest in drama.”

“Who’s the judge of this contest?”

“The Emperor.”

“So the winner is the person who appeals most to someone who doesn’t even like plays?”

“Something very like that,” he replied.

“And you want us to … work with this Rennick?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps you should read more than three pages.”

She grimaced. “Sanabalis—”

“Lord Sanabalis,” Severn corrected her.

“Lord Sanabalis, then. What on earth do I know about plays?”

“Clearly nothing.” He frowned. “However it is not for your expertise in the dramatic arts that you have been seconded.”

“Go on.”

“It is for your expertise—such as it is—on the Tha’alani.”

It was Kaylin’s turn to frown, but some of the exasperation left her, then. “I’m not an expert,” she told him quietly.

“No. But the Tha’alani seconded to the Court would possibly be even less comfortable in an advisory role.”

“If they can’t—” She stopped. “Why has the Emperor commissioned a play about the Tha’alani?”

Lord Sanabalis didn’t answer. But she met his eyes; they were their usual placid gold. His lower membranes, however, were up.

“It’s because of—of the water, isn’t it?”

“The tidal wave.”

“That one.”

“Yes. I am not aware of how much you saw, or how much you read about after the fact—but the Tha’alani, led by their castelord, left their Quarter in larger numbers than the city has ever seen. They walked to the docks, and they spread out along the port and the seawall. When the waters began to shift—and it was dramatic, Kaylin, even to one who has seen as much as I have—”

“You weren’t there,” she told him, but the words were soft. “You were with us.”

“I accessed records when I returned to the Palace.” He was now using his teacher tone of voice.

And I didn’t, Kaylin supplied. She glanced at Severn, who nodded very slightly. She cleared her throat. It was still hard for her to think about the Tha’alaan, and the Tha’alani were the Tha’alaan in some ways. “They hoped to save the city, if the waters rose.”

“Yes. But I invite you to think about appearances, Kaylin.”

“The wave didn’t hit the city.”

“No. It did not. The Oracles, however, were not widely bandied about. For many people—for almost all of them— the first warning of danger was the sight of the water itself, rising. The storm before it signified nothing, to them—it was merely weather.”

She nodded slowly.

“From their point of view—from what they could see—the Tha’alani went to the waters, and the waters rose.”

She closed her eyes.

“You understand our difficulty.”

She did.

“You yourself feared the Tha’alani. You do not do so now,” he added. “But you must understand the fear that people have.”

She nodded quietly.

“The Emperor understands it as well. He cannot, of course, explain the whole of what happened—and given the sparsity of reports generated by your office in the wake of events, I am not entirely certain he could explain it even if that was his desire. I am not, however, here to lecture you on the quality of your paperwork. I believe it best that some things remain uncommitted to paper.

“I, however, was fully debriefed. What I know, he now knows. He will not expose The Keeper, and no mention of the young Tha’alani man will leave the Court for that reason. Nor will the young Tha’alani man face the Emperor’s Justice, for that reason.”

The fact that the Emperor couldn’t reach him probably had something to do with it, in Kaylin’s opinion. She managed to keep this to herself. Instead, she returned to the matter at hand. “So this Richard Rennick wrote a … play. About the Tha’alani.”

“He wrote a play about the Tha’alani’s attempt to save the city, yes.”

“But all of it’s garbage. Because we’re not allowed to tell the truth.”

“Garbage is an unfortunate choice of word. Lose it,” he added, condescending to speak Elantran. He must have been serious. There were whole days where he affected complete ignorance of the language which most of the city actually spoke.

She picked up the sheaf of dog-eared pages. “Have you even read this?”

“I have. It is not, I believe, the current version, if that’s of any consequence.”

“What do you mean?”

“Where we could prevail upon the Tha’alani at Court, we did. The effect that this had upon the playwright was … unfortunate.”

“What happened?”

“Ybelline and her companions were given a copy of the play. They read it with some concern.”

“I bet.”

“They returned the play to Mr. Rennick. Luckily Lord Tiamaris was at hand; he intercepted their corrections.”

“This would be lucky because?”

“They understand the Emperor’s concerns. Believe that they feel them even more strongly than the Emperor does. They are not … however …” His hesitation spoke volumes.

Kaylin almost winced. When the silence became awkward, she sighed and looked at Severn.

Severn nodded.

“They don’t know how to lie,” she said quietly. “And this … all of it … it must seem like one big lie to them.”

She’d managed to nudge Sanabalis’s brows toward his receding hairline, which had to count for something. On the other hand, the fact that his surprise was more due to her comprehension than their inability probably counted for something too.

“If the truth is supposed to ease people’s fear, Ybelline could learn to live with that. But in her world, lies don’t ease fear. So I imagine what she handed back to Rennick—or what she tried to hand him—was pretty much all of the truth she thought it safe to put out there.”

“Indeed.”

“And the Emperor’s version of safe to put out there isn’t the same.”

“Again, astute. We may yet make progress in your life as a student.”

“I think it would be easier than this. What did Rennick say?”

Sanabalis did wince, at that. “I think it best to ignore that. Suffice it to say that he did not feel his efforts to be adequately appreciated. Ybelline, however, did understand the difficulty, and if you must find a person to blame for your current assignment—”

“I won’t blame her.”

“—she suggested you. And Corporal Handred. She said she was confident that you would work in the interests of her people, but with a better understanding of the intended audience for the play itself.”

“Meaning my people.”

Sanabalis nodded. “Which reminds me of another matter Ybelline also mentioned. The Swords have stationed a small force adjacent to the Tha’alani Quarter,” he added, in a more subdued tone. “And before you ask, Kaylin, yes, it was entirely necessary.

“Ybelline has asked for your aid in the Quarter.”

“For my aid? What the hell happened?”

“However,” he added, lifting a hand in the universal I’m not finished, so shut up gesture, “you are to visit the Quarter after you report for duty.”

On the off chance that Kaylin decided to reverse the order, Sanabalis chose to accompany her to the Palace. This wasn’t the first time he’d done this, and to be fair, if he’d gone ahead, she would have gone to the Imperial Palace by whichever convoluted route took her to the Tha’alani Quarter first. But as she had to stop by the Quartermaster to get kitted out in appropriate dress uniform—and as the Quartermaster was still a touch angry, which wasn’t exactly the right word for his state (the right words couldn’t be used in polite company of any race, all of the Hawks being multilingual when it came to swearing)—she actually appreciated Sanabalis’s suspicion, because if the Quartermaster was willing to make her wait or suffer, he was not willing to piss off a Dragon Lord.

He was, however, unfailingly polite and friendly when talking to Severn. Severn did not lose expensive dresses.

She took the uniform from Severn’s hands and headed to the lockers, where she added a much cleaner—and longer—surcoat to the clothing she generally wore. If she were a Sword, she’d also get a thin chain hauberk that was shiny and clean, because those looked good; Hawks didn’t generally have them as part of their uniform, dress or no, although most of the human Hawks did own one.

She had managed to lose her daggers—where lose in this case meant that something magical had transformed them into part of a very elaborate yet somehow very skimpy dress—and had bought a single replacement. The other dagger was coming out of her pay.

But it wasn’t coming out of her hide, for which she should probably be grateful.

Severn straightened her surcoat. It had the usual embroidered Hawk, dead center, but the golden thread and the beading was so perfectly clean it almost hurt to look at the flight feathers. To this, Kaylin added a small, beadwork patch.

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” Severn told her. But he didn’t tell her to take it off, probably because he knew she wouldn’t. The beads survived anything. Which was more, she thought glumly, than could be said about the rest of the clothing she owned.

She took the time to clean her boots.

Severn caught her arm and said “There’s nothing to be nervous about.”

She winced. “That obvious?”

“You don’t generally care about your boots, no.”

“I just—Marcus hates it when I go to the Palace. I swear he sits by his damn mirror waiting to hear that I’ve been thrown in the dungeons or eaten or something.”

They started to walk down the hall, and Sanabalis took the lead.

“You aren’t reporting directly to the Emperor,” Severn replied. “So it’s unlikely that anyone you offend will have you eaten.”

“You’re sure?”

“Unless the Emperor’s decided that you really are a threat to his Empire, in which case he could dispense with the petty part of you actually annoying some high-ranking official, and go straight to the eating. He’s an Emperor. He doesn’t have to worry about the niceties of the Law.”

She squared her shoulders. Smiled at Severn. “I know I’m going to have to learn how to do this—how to talk with people who’ve never even approached the banks of the Ablayne. But I’m not good at lying. I’m not good at talking.”

“You talk all the time,” he said, with just the hint of a smile. He was already moving out of the way before she hit him.

“I talk to people who know more or less what I know, and who don’t bloody care if I say things nicely or not. I hate the idea that my career is riding on my ability to be someone else’s idea of polite.”

“I would dislike it as well,” Sanabalis said, with a hint of the same smile Severn had offered. “But if it’s of comfort, Kaylin, you will not feel this way in twenty years.”

She bit her tongue. Hard.

And he nodded in approval.

This was going to be a long assignment.

On the way to the Palace, she read as much of the play as she could. She’d seen some street theater in her time, but her entire familiarity with plays put on for an audience involved a lot of loud children and the Foundling Halls’ small stage. Marrin, the Leontine who guarded and raised the orphans in said Hall, had put aside one of the large rooms in the former manor for just that purpose. For most of the year it stood empty, but during Festival season, and at odd intervals throughout the year, the cloths were dragged off the various bits and pieces of furniture—and the paintings and candelabras—and the room was opened to the visiting actors.

Kaylin had been there for almost all of the plays that occurred at any time other than Festival; Marrin often called her in to help supervise. She didn’t always get the play—and some of the stories, which were clearly meant to be familiar to small children before they watched the play, were a mystery to her—but the men and women in their funny hats and wigs and makeup were universally friendly and warm. The kids loved plays; they would watch in near silence—near being as much as anyone sane could hope for—and laugh or scream at all the right lines.

Kaylin seriously hoped that this play wasn’t meant for those children, because they would have been bored to tears. And bored children were a special hell of their own.

As near as she could tell, Mr. Rennick had decided that a budding romance between two Tha’alani teens was a good idea—for reasons that made no sense to Kaylin. Having seen evidence of the Tha’alani concept of romance, Kaylin had no doubt at all that this would be first on the list of things that Ybelline had attempted to correct. Second on that list would be the disapproving parents. Third on that list would be the couple attempting to sneak off somewhere together so they could be alone.

She stopped herself from dumping the play out the window, and only partly because the Swords on the streets were in a bad enough mood they might stop even an Imperial Carriage and attempt to hand someone a ticket for littering.

“Does this ever get to the point?”

“Hmm?”

“I mean, does he even get to the docks and the damn tidal wave?”

“Well, yes—but the love story is meant to convey to the audience that the Tha’alani are as human as we are. And misunderstood love occurs in all species.”

“It does?”

“Well, in Mr. Rennick’s mind, yes. But I would say that he is not entirely wrong.”

“Oh. What does a Dragon romance look like?” she asked.

Sanabalis snorted. Kaylin swore she saw a small plume of fire erupt just above his beard. Which seemed to constitute his answer on that front, and Kaylin couldn’t offhand recall mention of a female Dragon at court. She was certain they must exist somewhere.

She wondered, briefly, what a Barrani romance looked like, and decided she probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between that and one of their assassination attempts. Instead, she said, “Look, the Tha’alani are like the rest of us. Sort of. But this whole romance—it’s just wrong. I think Ybelline would find the … the possessive-ness, the sense of—”

“Ownership?”

“Don’t mock me, Sanabalis. What I’m trying to say is that they don’t experience love that way.”

“Which is not, in fact, what you did say.”

“Fine. The point is, they don’t. They don’t have the disapproving parents thing, and they definitely don’t sneak off for privacy.”

“Ah. Well, then, how would you structure a play in which it was utterly essential that the audience empathize with the Tha’alani?”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“I’d write about the years in which they were tortured like criminals because they wouldn’t serve the Emperor by reading other people’s minds for him. Because they couldn’t, without going insane, and driving everyone they knew and loved insane in the process.”

Sanabalis’s eyes shaded to orange. In Dragon eyes, this meant irritation. Red was anger, and in general, if you saw red Dragon eyes, it was probably the last thing you would ever see.

“Kaylin,” Severn said.

“It would work,” she told him, an edge to the words. “People could sympathize with that.”

“I believe it would cast the Emperor in an unflattering light.”

She said nothing. Loudly. But it didn’t last. “I’m sorry, Sanabalis.”

“Generally one apologizes for behavior one means to curb,” he replied stiffly. But his eyes shaded back to burnished gold.

“It worked for me,” she told him quietly. “Knowing that—knowing what they suffered—it changed the way I felt about them. Look—I understand why people are afraid of the Tha’alani. I know why I was. It never occurred to me that they wanted to be left alone. That they never ever wanted to read our minds. And the experiments conducted on the Tha’alani—it changed the way I felt about them. Forever.”

He nodded. “You understand, however, why that information could not be part of a public entertainment.”

She nodded slowly. “It’s just that it would work, that’s all.” She looked at Severn. “Did you ever fear them?”

“Yes. But my understanding of the Tha’alani was different.”

She had the grace to say, “You wanted to understand them.”

“Yes.”

“I wanted to hide from them.”

He nodded again. “It’s natural. Kaylin, I’m five years older than you are. Five years ago—”

“It’s not your age,” she said, swatting the words away. Willing to be this truthful. “It’s you.”

“Perhaps. But I have often found understanding my enemies gives me an edge when confronting them.” He paused and then added, “The first Tha’alani I met was Ybelline herself.”

“You met her first?”

“I was under consideration for the Shadows,” he told her. “Ybelline could read everything of note, and still remain detached. There are very few others who could. She was summoned. And it is very, very hard to fear Ybelline.”

Kaylin smiled at this. It was a small smile, but it acknowledged the truth: it was hard to fear her. Even though she could ferret all truth, all secrets, from a human mind. Because in spite of it, one had the sense that Ybelline could know everything and like you anyway.

Maybe that was something they could work with.

CHAPTER 2

Kaylin’s first impression of Richard Rennick could be summed up in two words: Oh, god.

She wasn’t fussy about which god, either. She was pretty sure she couldn’t name half of the ones that figured in official religions, and of the half she could name, the spelling or accents would be off. One of the things that living in the fiefs taught you was that it didn’t particularly matter which god you prayed to—none of them listened, anyway.

Rennick looked like an Arcanist might look if he had been kept from sleep for a week, and kept from the other amenities that came with sleep—like, say, shaving utensils—for at least as long, if not longer. His hair made her hair look tidy. It wasn’t long, but it couldn’t be called short either, and it seemed to fray every which way the light caught it. He didn’t have a beard, and he didn’t have much of a chin, either. It was buried beneath what might, in a few long weeks, be a beard—but messier.

His clothing, on the other hand, was very expensive and had it been on any other person, would have gone past the border of ostentatious; on him it looked lived in. She thought he might be forty. Or thirty. It was hard to tell.

What wasn’t hard to tell: he was having a bad day. And he wasn’t averse to sharing.

He didn’t have manners, either. When Sanabalis entered the room, he looked up from his desk—well, from the very, very long dining table at which he was seated—and grunted in annoyance.

The table itself was what one would expect in the Palace—it was dark, large, obviously well oiled. But the surface was covered in bits and pieces of paper, some of it crumpled in balls that had obviously been thrown some distance. Not all of those were on the table; the carpets had their fair share too.

“Mr. Rennick,” Lord Sanabalis said, bowing. “Forgive me for intruding.”

Another grunt. Sanabalis didn’t even blink an eye.

“I would like to introduce you to Corporal Handred and Private Neya. These are the people Ybelline Rabon’alani spoke of when we last discussed the importance of your work.”

He looked up at that, and managed to lose some slouch. “I hope you last longer than my previous assistants.”

“You had other assistants for this?”

“Oh, not for this project. In general, the office of Official Imperial Playwright comes with assistants.” The sneer that he put in the words managed to remain off his face. Barely.

“They won’t, however, allow me to hire my own assistants, and the ones they’ve sent me must have been dredged from the bottom of the filing pool.”

Kaylin gave Sanabalis what she hoped was a smile. She moved her lips in the right direction.

“We don’t intend to interfere in any way,” she began.

“Oh, please. Take a number and stand in line. If you somehow—by some small miracle—manage not to interfere, you’ll be the only people in this godsforsaken Palace who haven’t tried to tell me how to do my job.”

Sanabalis offered Kaylin a smile that was at least as genuine as hers had been.

On the other hand, if the Emperor hadn’t eaten Rennick, things obviously weren’t as formal as all that, and Kaylin felt a surprisingly strong relief; she was almost happy to have met him. Or would have been, if it were all in the past.

“This is not like filing,” he added, clearly warming up. He even vacated his seat and shoved his hands into pockets that lined the seams of his robes. “This is not an exact bloody science. Do you have any idea what they’ve asked of me?”

She had a fairly good idea, but said, “No.”

Something in her tone caused his eyes to narrow and Severn’s foot to stray slightly closer to hers. But she offered what she hoped was a sympathetic grimace; it was all she was up for.

“No, you probably don’t. But I’ll tell you.”

Of this, no one could be in any doubt.

“They want me to write a play that makes the Tha’alani human.”

There was certainly a sneer in his expression now, and Kaylin had to actively work to keep her hands from becoming fists. You’ve said worse, she told herself. You’ve said a lot worse.

Yes, she added, but he’s never going to go through what you did to change your bloody mind. Because she was used to arguing with herself, she then thought, And we’re going to have to do what experience won’t. Oh, god.

“I am willing to face a challenge,” he added. “Even one as difficult as this—but the Tha’alani themselves don’t seem to understand the purpose of the play I did write. They said it wasn’t true. I told them I wanted a bigger truth. It wasn’t real, but truth isn’t always arrived at by the real.”

“I can see how that would confuse them,” she offered.

“And now they’ve sent you. Have you ever even seen one of my plays?”

“I haven’t seen a play that wasn’t written for children,” she replied.

This didn’t seem to surprise him. He seemed to expect it.

Severn, however, said, “I have.”

“Oh, really?” A voice shouldn’t have legally been able to contain that much sarcasm. And, Kaylin thought, a person shouldn’t be subject to as much sarcasm as this twice in a single day. “Which one?”

“Winter,” Severn replied.

Rennick opened his mouth, but for the moment, he seemed to have run out of words. His eyes widened, his jaw closed, and his lips turned up in a genuine smile. Thirty, Kaylin thought. Or maybe even younger. “That was my second play—I wrote it before I won the seat.” He paused, and then his eyes narrowed. “Where did you see it?”

“It was staged in the Forum,” Severn replied, without missing a beat. “Constance Dargo directed it. I believe the actress who played the role of Lament was—”

“Trudy.”

“Gertrude Ellen.”

“That would be Trudy.” His eyes, however, had lost some of their suspicion. “She could be such a bitch. But she made a number of good points about some of the dialogue.”

“The dialogue was changed?”

“Good god, yes. Dialogue on the page is always stiffer than spoken dialogue—you can’t get a real sense of what it sounds like until actors put it through its paces. The first staging of any play defines the play. What did you think of it?”

“I thought it very interesting, especially given where it played, and when. It was also unusual in that it didn’t feature a relationship as its central motivation.”

“Starving people seldom have the time to worry about social niceties.”

Severn glanced at Kaylin.

“But you might be the first person sent me who’s actually familiar with my work,” Rennick said, picking up the reins where he had dropped them.

“And as one such person, I have no intention of guiding your work. You know it. I don’t.”

“And let me tell you—you don’t … Oh.”

“But the Emperor’s dictates are clear,” Severn continued, into the very welcome silence. “Winter was a work that reached out to people who had everything and reminded them, for a moment, of the fate of the rest of the city. You were chosen to write this for a reason.”

“I was chosen because they don’t have to pay me more.”

At that, Kaylin did chuckle. Rennick actually looked in her direction, but the hostility had ebbed. Slightly. As far as Rennick seemed to be concerned, Dragons didn’t exist, and he didn’t bother to glance at Sanabalis.

Kaylin did. The Dragon’s eyes were a placid gold. Clearly, he had met Rennick before, and for some reason, he had decided not to kill him then.

“Look,” Rennick added, running his hands through his hair as if he would like to pull it all out by its roots, “Winter wasn’t meant to be a message. It wasn’t meant to tell the audience anything about the state of the poor or the starving. I loved Lament—I wanted to tell her story in a way that would move people. Talia Korvick was the first Lament—I’ll grant that Trudy did a better job, but Trudy wouldn’t touch my unknown little play for its first staging.”

The idea that Rennick cared about moving anyone in a way that didn’t mean out of my sight surprised Kaylin. Almost as much as the fact that he would admit it.

“You achieved that—but you also made people think about what her life entailed, and how her life might have been different.”

“Yes—but that was incidental. I don’t know how to make people think differently. And the Emperor appears to want me to … to educate people. With characters that are in no way my own creations. It’s dishonest,” he added.

Given that he told lies for a living, this struck Kaylin as funny. Sanabalis, however, stepped on her foot.

“Lament wasn’t a real person but you made her real. The Tha’alani are real in the same way that the rest of us are—and Lament was human.” Severn frowned slightly, his thinking expression. “Have you been out in the streets since the storm?”

Rennick frowned. “Not far, no.”

“People are afraid. Frightened people are often ugly people. The Tha’alani—”

“From all reports, they tried to kill us.”

Kaylin didn’t care at that moment if Sanabalis stepped on her foot and broke it. “By standing in the way of the tidal wave? They would have been the first people hit by the damn thing!”

Rennick actually looked at her, possibly for the first time. After a moment, he said, “There is that.”

“Look, I don’t know what you’ve heard, and I don’t bloody care—they tried to save the city. And if this is what they get for trying to save it, they should have just let it drown.”

“And you know this how?”

“I was there—” She shut her mouth. Loudly. “I’m the cultural expert,” she told him instead.

“You were there?”

“She was not,” Sanabalis said, speaking in his deep rumble. “But she is a friend of the Tha’alani, and as much as anyone who was not born Tha’alani can, she now understands them. Mr. Rennick, I am aware that you find the current assignment somewhat stressful—”

“The Imperial Playwright writes his own work,” Rennick snapped. “This is—this is political propaganda.”

“But what you write, and what you stage—provided any of the directors available meet your rather strict criteria—will influence the city for decades to come. It is necessary work, even if you find it distasteful.”

“In other words,” Kaylin added sweetly, “The Emperor doesn’t care what you think.”

Severn glanced at Kaylin, and his expression cleared. Whatever he had been balancing in the back of his mind had settled into a decision. “With your leave, Lord Sanabalis, we have duties elsewhere.”

“What?” Rennick glared at Severn. “You definitely haven’t outlasted the previous assistants.”

“Our presence has been requested by the castelord of the Tha’alani,” he continued, ignoring Rennick—which might, to Kaylin’s mind, be the best policy. “And if you think it would be of help to you, you may accompany us.”

Hard to believe that only a few weeks ago, Kaylin would have skirted this Quarter of the town as if it had the plague. Fear made things big; her mental map of the Tha’alani district had been a huge, gray shadow that would, luck willing, remain completely in the dark.

Now, it seemed small. It had one large gate, and way too few guards—usually one—between it and the rest of the city. The only people who left the Quarter for much of anything were the Tha’alani seconded to the Imperial Service—and like many, many people in Elantra, they hated their jobs. Of course they did their jobs to prevent the Emperor from turning their race into small piles of ash, but they didn’t make this a big public complaint.

And they still liked the Hawks. Kaylin privately thought that was crazy—in their situation, she wouldn’t have.

Lord Sanabalis had arranged for a carriage, but he had not chosen to accompany them to the Quarter. This was probably for the best, as a Dragon wandering the streets could make anyone who noticed him nervous. On the other hand, people were already nervous, and if they wanted to take it out on something, Kaylin privately had a preference for something that could fight back, although she conceded that this was a fief definition of the word “fight.”

Rennick was silent for the most part, which came as a bit of a shock. He stuck his head out the window once or twice when something caught his eye, and he frequently stuck his arm out as if writing on air, but Severn said nothing; clearly Rennick was not of a station where babysitting was considered part of their duties.

But he pulled both arm and head into the carriage when they at last began the drive up Poynter’s road, because even Rennick could tell that the bodies on this particular street were on the wrong side of “tense.” They were like little murders waiting to happen.

“Don’t they have anything better to do?” she muttered to Severn.

He said nothing.

It was Rennick who said, “Probably not. They don’t want the Tha’alani to leave the Quarter, and they’re making sure that they don’t. Hey! That man has a crossbow!”

Kaylin had seen it. The fact that it was still in his hands implied that the Swords had far more work than they should have, and it troubled her. But not enough that she wanted to stop the carriage, get down and start a fight.

Because it would be a fight, and it would probably get messy.

“They’re frightened,” she said, surprising herself.

“Funny how frightened people can be damn scary,” Rennick replied. But he looked thoughtful, not worried.

“How many?” Kaylin asked Severn.

“A hundred and fifty, maybe. Some of them are in the upper windows along the street. I imagine that the Tha’alani who serve the Emperor are being heavily escorted.”

“Or given a vacation.”

He nodded.

“Has there been any official word about the incident?” Rennick asked quietly.

Kaylin shrugged.

“You don’t know?”

“Right up until one of those idiots fires his crossbow or swings his—is that a pickax?” Severn nodded. “Swings his ax,” she continued, “it’s not Hawk business. It’s Sword, and the Swords are here.”

And they were. Kaylin had thought they’d send twenty men out; she was wrong by almost an order of magnitude. She thought there were maybe two hundred in total—no wonder the Halls of Law were so damn quiet.

But while they lined the street, they hadn’t built an official barricade, they did meet the carriage in the road, well away from the gatehouse, and they did tell the driver to step down. They also opened the doors, and Kaylin made sure she tumbled out first.

“Private Neya?” said the man who had delivered the curt instructions. He was older than Kaylin by about fifteen years, and the day seemed to have added about a hundred new wrinkles, and a layer of gray to his skin, but she recognized him. “Max—Uh, Sergeant,” she added, as he looked pointedly over her soldier. “Sergeant Voone. You’re out here?”

Max wasn’t retired, exactly, but he spent a lot of his time behind a desk. He appeared to like it a great deal more than Marcus—but a corpse would have given that impression as well. And Max looked tired.

“Most of us are, as you put it, out here. I know why we’re here—what are you doing in a fancy box?”

“Oh. Uh, we were sent here.”

“By?”

“Lord Sanabalis.”

He whistled. “To do what?”

“Not to step all over your toes, relax.”

His chuckle was entirely mirthless. “We’ll relax when these people remember they have jobs and family.”

“I’m thinking they remember the family part,” Kaylin replied. “People go crazy when they think they’re protecting their own.”

“Tell me about it. No, strike that. Don’t.”

“When did it get this bad?”

“There was an incident two days ago.”

“Incident?”

“It was messy,” he replied, his voice entirely neutral. “The Swordlord made it clear that there will be no more incidents. The Emperor was not impressed.”

She winced. It wasn’t often that she felt sympathy for the Swords. But while she resented the easy life the Swords generally called work, she liked them better than the people with the crossbows down the street.

“You know they’re armed?” she asked casually.

“We are well aware that they’re armed. And no, thank you, we don’t require help in disarming them. They’re waiting for an invitation. Let them wait. At that distance.”

She looked at Severn as Severn exited the carriage. Rennick tumbled out after him. “Sergeant Voone,” Severn said, before the sergeant could speak, “Richard Rennick. He’s the Imperial Playwright.”

“This is not a good time for sightseeing,” the Sword said to Rennick.

Rennick looked him up and down, and then shrugged. “It wasn’t my idea.” But he was subdued, now. He lifted a hand to his face, rubbing the scruff on his chin.

“You can call the Hawks out,” Kaylin continued. “At least the Aerians—”

“We’ve got Aerians here. They’re not currently in the air,” he added. And then he gave her an odd look. “The Hawks have their own difficulties to worry about. I was sorry to hear the news.”

“What news?”

His whole expression shuttered, not that it was ever all that open.

“Voone, what news? What’s happened?”

“You came from the Halls?”

“The Halls don’t usually have access to Imperial Carriages. What happened?”

“No one died,” he replied, and his tone of voice added yet. “But you might want to check in at the office before you head home.”

She wanted to push him for more, but Severn shook his head slightly. “Ybelline.”

There was no Tha’alani guard at the guardhouse. That position was taken up by a dozen Swords. They wore chain, and they carried unsheathed swords. You’d have to be crazy to rush the gatehouse.

Kaylin approached it quietly and answered the questions the Swords asked; they were all perfunctory. Voone escorted them to the squad and left them there, after mentioning her name loudly enough to wake the dead. She noted all of this and tried to squelch her own fear. Severn was right, of course. They’d come here for Ybelline. But the sympathies of Voone made her nervous.

The Swords hadn’t entered the Quarter; they were met by Tha’alani guards. Four men in armor. Their stalks swiveled toward her as she entered.

She saw that they, too, bore unsheathed swords, and it made her … angry. Those weapons just looked wrong in Tha’alani hands; she wondered if they even knew how to use them.

But using them wasn’t an issue. They bowed to her, almost as one man. “Ybelline is waiting for you,” one told her quietly.

“At her house?”

“Not at her domicile. Demett will take you to her.” The man so identified stepped away from his companions.

“Where is she?”

“At the longhouse” was his reply—spoken in the stiff and exact cadence that Tha’alani who were unused to speech used. He obviously expected her to know what the longhouse was, and she didn’t bother to correct him.

She followed him, and it took her a moment to realize why the streets here felt so wrong—they were empty. Usually walking down a Tha’alani street was like walking in the Foundling Hall—it was a gauntlet of little attention-seeking children, with their open curiosity and their utter lack of decorum.

She didn’t care for the change. Hell, even the plants were drooping. Rennick walked between Severn and her, and made certain that there was always at least one body between him and the nearest Tha’alani. He wasn’t overly obvious about it, but it rankled. Even when Kaylin had been terrified of the Tha’alani, she wouldn’t have tried to hide. One, it wouldn’t have done much good and two—well, two, she didn’t casually throw strangers to fates she herself feared.

It was not going to be easy working with Rennick. She spared him a glance every so often, which was more than any of the Tha’alani did. They hadn’t even questioned his presence. It would have been convenient if they had. He’d be on the other side of the gates, where he’d be marginally less annoying.

The guards walked past the latticework of open—and utterly empty—fountains; past the blush of bright pink, deep red and shocking blue flower beds that bordered them; past the neat little circular domes that reminded Kaylin of nothing so much as hills. And if those homes were hills, they were approaching a small fortress that nestled among them. It was two stories tall, and the beams that supported the clay face were almost as wide as she was, and certainly taller. It was larger by far than the building in which Ybelline, the castelord—a word that didn’t suit her at all—chose to live. It was almost imposing.

It was also bloody crowded.

It boasted normal doors—rectangular doors, not the strange ones that adorned most of the Tha’alani homes; these doors weren’t meant to blend with the structure. They stood out. And they were pulled wide and pegged open. Which, given the number of people on the other side of them, made sense—closed doors would have made breathing anything but stale air and sweat almost impossible. As it was, it was dicey.

“This is the longhouse,” Kaylin said.

Demett nodded.

“Demett,” she said, as he turned, “what is the longhouse used for?”

His face went that shade of expressionless that actually meant he was talking—but only to the Tha’alaan: to the minds of his people, and the memories of the dead. She waited for it to pass, as if it were a cloud; it took a while.

“Wait for Ybelline,” he told her quietly.

Ybelline came through the crowd slowly. You could see where she might be moving because her movement caused the other Tha’alani to move, like a human wave composed entirely of bodies. The building was packed. Kaylin thought there might be six or seven hundred people just beyond the open doors, more if the children so absent from the streets were also there.

But Ybelline did not come alone; the movement of the crowd, the slow outward push, wouldn’t have been necessary to allow just one person through. The people spilled out into the streets, beyond Kaylin and Severn. Rennick’s shoulders curled in, and he brought his hands up once or twice, as if to fend off any contact.

The Tha’alani in turn avoided him.

They would. They knew fear when they saw it, especially Rennick’s fear—and his fear was poison to them. They tried just as hard as he did to avoid any contact, but Kaylin had to admit they were more polite about it.

Ybelline appeared at last, between the shoulders of about sixteen tightly grouped men and women. She wore robes, an earth-brown with green edges; her hair was arranged both artlessly and perfectly above her slender neck. Her eyes were the honey-brown of that hair, but they were ringed with gray circles. She looked exhausted.

Exhaustion did not stop her from opening her arms, stepping forward and hugging Kaylin. And nothing in the world would have stopped Kaylin from returning that hug. Nothing.

“Tell me,” she whispered, her lips beside Ybelline’s ear. She knew she should have introduced Rennick, but it had been Severn’s idea to drag him here, and he was therefore, for the moment, Severn’s problem.

The slender stalks, which were the most obvious racial trait of all the Tha’alani, brushed strands of Kaylin’s hair from her forehead, and then settled gently against skin.

They were so delicate, the touch so light, they could hardly be felt at all.

But Ybelline could be—and more, she could be clearly heard. Could clearly hear. With this much contact, she could, if she wanted to, peruse every memory Kaylin had, including ones she wasn’t aware of herself. All the hidden things could be revealed, every bad or stupid or humiliating thing Kaylin had ever done.

And Kaylin, knowing this, didn’t care.

But she wasn’t prepared for Ybelline’s voice when it came. It was raw and, at first, there were no words—just the sense of things that might have become words with enough distance and effort. With too much distance and effort.

But she saw what Ybelline meant her to see in the brief glimpse of steel and blood and the bodies of the fallen, all interposed, all flashing over and over again in quick succession in front of Kaylin’s eyes. Except that her eyes were closed.

Help me. Just that, two words.

Kaylin rolled up her sleeves and, without even looking at her wrist, pressed the gems on the bracer in the sequence that would open it: white, blue, white, blue, red, red, red. She dropped it on the ground as if it were garbage—but she could. If she’d tossed it on a garbage heap, it would find its way back to her. She’d only tried that once. Maybe twice.

This was magic’s cage. And without it, she was free to do whatever she could. For this reason it was technically against orders to remove it.

Her hands were tingling. “Ybelline,” she said, and then, Ybelline.

Ybelline, you have to let go of me.

The Tha’alani castelord did as Kaylin bid; she let go, withdrew her arms, her stalks. With them went the wild taste of fear—Ybelline’s fear. She kept it from the Tha’alaan, and therefore from her people, but she was exhausted. And Kaylin understood the exhaustion; it was hard for any Tha’alani to live alone, on the inside of their thoughts, the way humans did.

The way humans needed to.

The Tha’alani who had followed Ybelline out of the longhouse had come bearing stretchers. Four stretchers. Four men. They might once have worn armor—had, Kaylin thought, remembering the brief flash of images that had emerged from her contact with Ybelline.

But they weren’t dead. They weren’t dead yet.

“Put them down,” Kaylin said, easing her voice into the command that came naturally when she was on the beat. There were no children here; she had time to notice their absence, to be grateful for it. No more.

The crowd stepped back. The bodies lay on stretchers. Someone had dressed wounds, had cleaned burns—burns!—had done what they could to preserve life. Freed of the constraints that the ancient bracer placed on her magic, Kaylin knelt between two of these stretchers and touched two foreheads with her right and left palms. She was gentle, although she didn’t have to be—the men here were in no danger of regaining consciousness anytime soon. They had that gray-white pallor that spoke of loss of blood. She was surprised that they hadn’t succumbed to the wounds they had taken. Many of those wounds weren’t clean cuts; they had been caused by people who weren’t used to handling weapons.

Kaylin grimaced. “Severn?”

She saw his shadow. Knew he was listening.

“Get water,” she told him. “I’ll need it.”

“There are four men—”

“I can do this. Just—water. Food.”

His shadow was still for a moment, but he was silent. Everything they said or did now—every single thing—would be watched by all of the Tha’alani, no matter where they were, no matter how young or how old, how strong or how weak. All of the Tha’alani who watched would see, and what they saw would become part of the Tha’alaan, the living memory of the entire race; Tha’alani children four hundred years from now could search the Tha’alaan and see the events of this day through the eyes of these witnesses.

And for once in her life, Kaylin was determined to make a good impression.

Severn knew; he wasn’t an idiot. He knew that humans—her kind, and his—had done this damage. He knew how important it was to the city that humans be seen to undo it. She didn’t even hear him go.

It was hard.

It was harder than destroying walls that were solid stone, harder than killing a man. Healing always was. It was harder than saving infants who were trapped in a womb; harder, even, than holding their mothers when shock and loss of blood threatened their lives.

Harder than saving a child in the Foundling Hall.

But she had done all of that.

She felt the shape of their bodies and the beat—erratic and labored—of their hearts. She heard their thoughts, not as thoughts, but as memories, almost inseparable from her own. She felt their injuries, the broken bones, the old scars from—falling out of a tree? She even snorted. These weren’t men who got caught out in bar brawls.

They weren’t men who were accustomed to war of any kind.

She could save them. She could see where infection had taken its toll, eating into flesh and muscle. Two men. If she wanted them to live, she couldn’t use any more power than was absolutely necessary. No miracles, not yet. No obvious miracles.

But the subtle ones were the only ones that counted.

The bones that would knit on their own, she left; the ones that wouldn’t mend properly, she fixed. She tried not to see what had caused the breaks, but gave up quickly. That took too much effort, too much energy.

When she lifted her hands from their faces, she felt the touch of their stalks, clinging briefly to her skin. She told them to sleep.

She heard Ybelline’s voice. Felt Severn’s hands under her arms, shoring her up as she stood and wobbled. She didn’t brush him off, didn’t try. She let him carry some of her weight as she approached the last two men, their stretchers like pale bruises on the ground.

She felt grass beneath her knees as she crushed it, folding too quickly to the ground. Righting herself, which really meant letting Severn pick her up, she reached out to touch them.