His eyes were still a wary blue. “Fair enough.” He spoke Elantran. Kaylin doubted a similar phrase existed in Barrani.
“Where is Annarion anyway?”
“Kitling.”
Mandoran raised a black brow. “He’s visiting his brother.”
Nightshade.
“And no, before you ask, it’s not going well.”
“Why didn’t you go with him?”
“I wasn’t invited. Or rather, I was specifically not invited. Lord Calarnenne was willing to entertain Teela, but for some reason, Teela didn’t choose to accept his invitation.”
“I am uninterested in playing games of power with Nightshade.”
“But Annarion—”
“Is not in danger. Whatever else Nightshade intends in future, the death of his youngest brother is no part of his plan. It is safe for Annarion to rage only in the absence of witnesses. Nightshade didn’t invite me because he was concerned for Annarion’s safety; he wished to confine Annarion’s wrath. I,” she added, with a slender, sharp smile, “did not.” She glanced pointedly at the mark Nightshade had left on Kaylin’s cheek. It was just so much skin to the younger Hawk, but it never failed to annoy Teela.
“Heads up. Margot on the prowl,” Teela added.
Margot was possibly the person on Elani street Kaylin disliked the most, not that there was any shortage of rivals for that position. She was a tall, gorgeous redhead, and she made the color look natural. She was statuesque, her skin was fair, her eyes striking, and she could milk money out of stone by oozing wisdom and charm.
Neither of which Kaylin privately believed she had.
“She won’t come here,” Kaylin replied. “She’s seen me.”
If Kaylin played the least-favorite game, so did Margot. Kaylin was on the top of the Hawk’s list, and possibly near the top three across the board. She still blamed Kaylin for the loss of one of her most lucrative clients, which cost Kaylin no sleep at night, ever.
“Pretty,” Mandoran said, which didn’t help. Margot was not an idiot, whatever else one could call her; she cast an equally appreciative look at Mandoran, but kept her distance. Barrani affairs were seldom safe for mortals, and attempting to bilk a Barrani out of money was a mug’s game; it required stupidity and overbearing ego, and Margot only had one of the two. She pretty much failed to see Kaylin as Kaylin sauntered past.
“She is attractive,” Teela said—which was obviously meant to irritate Kaylin, because there wasn’t any other reason to say it out loud.
Bellusdeo shook her head. “By mortal standards, perhaps, but there’s a brittle edge to the line of her mouth I find unappealing.”
“Guys,” Kaylin snapped. “A little less ogling and a little more patrolling.”
“I’m not patrolling,” Mandoran chuckled.
“Technically, you’re not here.”
He laughed. “You know,” he said, “I think, when you have a place of your own, I’m going to be visiting a lot. You really are much less stodgy than Teela’s become.”
“Teela is no one’s definition of ‘stodgy.’”
“Kaylin will not be living on her own, and I don’t do drop-ins,” Bellusdeo pointed out. Her eyes remained golden. Mandoran’s had edged toward green, but a stubborn streak of blue persisted. If he eventually chose to be comfortable around a Dragon, it wasn’t going to be today.
He shrugged. “From the sound of it, you’re not going to find much of a place of your own anyway.”
“I can find a place,” Kaylin said. “And Bellusdeo, despite appearances, doesn’t require something palatial or even regal, given where we were living before.”
“Oh, it’s not your friend that’s going to be the problem.” He glanced at Teela’s expressionless face, and added, “on the other hand, it could be worse for you. You could be living with Tain.” His grimace looked nothing like a Barrani expression.
Teela cleared her throat. Loudly.
“You’re living with Tain?”
“If you can call it living, yes. For some reason, he doesn’t seem to want me to see much of your fair city. I want,” he added, “to visit the Leontines I hear you have living here. I didn’t even know they could function in cities. But your Sergeant seems fine wearing clothes.”
Bellusdeo glanced at Kaylin. Kaylin turned a tight-lipped stare on Teela, who shrugged. “Surely you expected this?” the Barrani Hawk asked. “You know he hasn’t lived in a mortal city before; he certainly hasn’t lived in this one.”
“The Leontines,” Kaylin told Mandoran, in chilly Barrani, “are not animals. Nor are the humans. The Aerians are not birds. This is a city, not a zoo—and none of its inhabitants are here to be stared at through cage bars.”
“Kitling.”
Mandoran chuckled. “My apologies, Lord Kaylin. I seem to have touched a sensitive spot.”
“You’ve reminded me of all the things I hate about Immortals. I don’t know if you’d consider that a sensitive point or not.” She didn’t much care, either. The small dragon lifted a head and squawked. When Kaylin, still tight-lipped, ignored him, he nipped her ear.
“What?” She turned to glare at him, and he avoided her by leaping off her shoulders to hover in the air. When she still failed to understand whatever it was he was trying to tell her, he added sounds to the flap of wings, and when she failed to get that, he flew, head first, toward a window. A storefront window.
Kaylin ran after him, arms outstretched, while people in the street stopped to stare. She hadn’t been patrolling on Elani for almost two months; the small dragon was still a novelty. Some of the gawkers were no doubt assigning a monetary value to him; she pitied anyone foolish enough to actually try to grab him and carry him off. Actually, scratch that. At the moment, she’d probably enjoy it.
It was only as she reached up for small and squawky that she recognized which window he’d threatened: it was Evanton’s.
The door, habitually shut, now swung open; a wizened, bent old man was standing on the other side of the frame, his frown bracketed by a decade’s worth of lines. “Don’t stand there gawking,” he said, matching tone of voice to expression. “Come in. I put tea on ten minutes ago.”
* * *
Evanton didn’t actually drink tea. He made it for guests. Given his current mood, those guests might as well have been tax collectors. Bellusdeo entered his store, her eyes rounding. If she’d been mortal, Kaylin would have assumed she was surprised at the clutter and the occasional moving cobweb. She wasn’t. She turned to Evanton, in his apron, his jeweler’s glass hanging on the edge of a tarnished silver chain, his white hair in wisps above the crown of his head.
And she bowed.
This
