reason to open it. No, the way in and out was through the gatehouse itself.
Which she had also only seen from the outside.
Clint had brought her, when she was fifteen; he had complained about her weight for the entire trip because she’d begged him to fly, and he had loudly and grudgingly agreed—when she’d promised to leave his flight feathers alone for at least two weeks.
From a distance—the safest one—the gates had still been a shadow and a threat, and it was the only part of the city she had refused to look at while he flew by. His words carried—the lovely, deep timbre of his voice was something she had never learned to ignore—but only his words, and his words alone had painted the picture she now saw clearly.
She could still hear echoes of the words that the wind hadn’t snatched away, and the murmur of his Aerian cadences.
Severn took the lead, and she let him.
She had something to prove, but found, to her annoyance, that pride had its limits. Even annoyance couldn’t overcome them. Because the man—the single man—at the gate was Tha’alani. And he wore not the familiar robes that she had come to hate, but rather a surcoat in the same odd gray over a chain hauberk whose arms glinted in the sunlight, making clear that the Tha’alani were a lot more fastidious in their armor care than the Officers of the Law—or someone else did the cleaning.
“Severn,” she said, stalling for time even as they approached the sole guard, “have you ever had to run down a Tha’alani?”
“Probably as often as you’ve had to investigate one,” he replied. Answer enough.
“Do they never report their crimes?”
He shrugged. “Either that, or they never commit them.”
He must have believed that about as much as she did. But if a crime did not affect a member of another racial enclave, it was the prerogative of the enclave—and its Castelord—to deal with the crime itself in the custom of their kind. And the racial enclaves were not required to submit any legal proceedings to the Halls of Law. Kaylin had thought it cheating when she’d first joined the Hawks, and had complained about these separate laws bitterly—until it was pointed out that were they not separate she would have to learn them all, and probably the languages they were written in.
Or growled in.
After that, she’d kept the complaints to herself.
The guard turned toward them as they approached, aligning first the stalks on his forehead, and then his face and body, as if the latter were afterthought. Severn appeared to take no notice of this, but Kaylin found it unsettling.
She could not see the color of his eyes, but realized after a moment that she could clearly see said eyes—that this guard, like the Leontines and the Barrani, wore no helm. Of course he didn’t wear a helmet, she thought bitterly. It would cripple his most effective weapon. She shoved her hand into her pocket, and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. If it had taken her that damn long to notice something that damn obvious, she was letting her nerves get the better of her.
But Severn was ahead of her, and before she could even uncurl the wretched thing, he said to the guard, “We have come at the invitation of Ybelline Rabon’alani.”
The guard’s expression froze in place, and his stalks waved a moment in the air. He looked carefully at the hawk emblazoned on both of their surcoats, and then searched their faces.
After this silent inspection, he nodded, not to Severn, but to Kaylin, who stood in his shadow. “She will see you,” he said, the words oddly inflected. “Someone will meet you on the other side of the guard house and show you the way to her home.”
“Someone” was another guard, another man in mail. His hair was a pale shade of brown, but it was long, and he wore it in a braid over his left shoulder. His eyes were clear, not golden the way Dragons’ eyes were, but still some shade that was paler than brown, darker than sunlight. He bowed, rising, and she thought him younger than the guard at the gate. His eyes were alive with unspoken curiosity, and his expression was actually an expression.
He stared at her, and she stared back.
“I’m Epharim,” he finally said, his stalks weaving through stray strands of his hair. He waited, and then after a moment, he reddened and held out a hand.
Kaylin took it slowly, and shook it. If it was true you could tell a lot about a person by shaking their hand, she wasn’t sure what she could take out of this handshake. It was stiff, hesitant, almost entirely unnatural.
“Did I do that right?” he said, retrieving his hand, his gaze still far too intent.
“Do what?”
“Greet you.”
“Yes, Epharim,” Severn replied, stepping on Kaylin’s foot before she could open her mouth. Well, before she could speak, at any rate. “I am Corporal Severn Handred, and this is Private Kaylin Neya. We serve the Emperor in the Halls of Law.” He offered his hand in turn, and Epharim took it, repeating the gesture that was supposed to be a handshake.
He beamed. “And what does it mean?” Each word a little too distinct, as if speech itself were something new and unfamiliar. Or as if the language were. But he spoke the common tongue of Elantra, and if the cadences were off, they were, each and every syllable, completely recognizable.
Severn said, “We don’t use names that have specific meanings.” Clearly, Severn had been a master student in racial studies.
“You don’t have a naming tongue?” Epharim’s brows rose. And as they did, Kaylin noticed—with the training she had excelled in—that the passersby in the street all seemed to slow, that their stalks, from different heights, perched upon different shades of hair, seemed to turn toward them. Or toward Epharim.
“Are we causing a scene?” she asked in low tones.
Epharim looked confused. Well, more confused. “A scene? Like in a play?”
“No. A scene, as in everyone in the street for miles stops to stare at us as if we’re insane.”
He blinked. Looked at the people who were—yes—staring at them, and then looked back at Kaylin. “This … is a scene?”
Severn stepped on her other foot.
“People don’t normally stop to stare like that.”
Again his brows rippled, this time toward the bridge of his straight, perfect nose. “They don’t?”
“No.”
“Then how are they expected to observe?”
“Observe what?”
“You. Corporal Severn Handred.”
“Severn will do,” Severn said. “It is our custom.”
“They’re not supposed to,” Kaylin replied, ignoring Severn. “They have other things to do, don’t they?”
“They have things to do,” Epharim agreed, still standing there, anchoring Kaylin in
