Kaylin looked at it. Looked at Severn. Understood nothing at all. “How do you know how to read this?” she whispered.
“I am considered a scholar,” was his cautious reply. “I dabble in the antiquities.”
Which meant magery. She didn’t bother to ask.
“Let me go,” she said wearily, adding command to the words.
To her surprise, Tiamaris withdrew his grip. “You are interesting, Kaylin, as the Hawklord surmised. But I am surprised, now.”
“At what?”
“That the Hawklord let you live.”
Kaylin said nothing.
Again, for reasons that made no sense, Severn said, “Why?” His hands had once again fallen beneath the surface of the table.
“Your story … is strange. And you must understand that the deaths in the fiefs some years ago were also investigated.”
The deaths. Seven years ago. She shuddered.
For the first time since she’d met Tiamaris, his expression went bleak. The way distant, snow-covered cliffs were.
“You were there, back then,” she said softly.
“I was there.”
“And you weren’t a Hawk.”
“No.”
She lifted a shaking head. Looked down at her arms. “What does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, even now, eyes upon her face. “But in the end, the killings stopped. Does the Hawklord know of these?”
She nodded. She almost matched his bleakness. “He knows almost everything about me.”
“And he does not suspect that you were involved in the incidents.”
Her eyes rounded. She was too stunned to be angry; that might come later.
“You don’t understand, and clearly Grammayre did not see fit to inform you. As I will be working with you, I will. The first death must have occurred—and Lord Grammayre would be acquainted with the approximate time—on the day you say these appeared. On the same solstice.”
The silence was, as they say, deafening. And into the silence, the shadow of accusation crept.
“She had nothing to do with the deaths of the others,” Severn snapped. “They were all—”
Kaylin said, “Shut up, Severn.”
To her surprise, Severn did.
“I believe you” was the quiet reply. “Having met her, I believe you.” Tiamaris looked across the table at Kaylin; the table seemed to have grown very, very long. From that distance, he said, “You said that it had started again. Tell me what you think has started.”
She swallowed. Her mouth was very dry. “The deaths,” she whispered at last. “In Nightshade. I thought—when the first body appeared—I was so certain I would die next. Because of the marks. We all were.” “All?”
Her lips thinned. She didn’t answer the question. It wasn’t any of his damn business. A different life.
“What happened?”
She shook her head. Inhaled and rose, placing tender palms against the hard surface of scarred wood. “I didn’t die. I don’t know why,” she said at last. “But I do know where we’re going.”
“To Nightshade,” Severn said quietly.
“To Nightshade.” She started toward the door. Stopped.
She turned back to look at Severn, who had not risen to join her. “It’s not finished,” she told him softly.
He said nothing, but after a moment, added, “I know. Elianne—”
“I’m Kaylin,” she whispered. “Don’t forget it.”
“I won’t. Will you?”
She shook her head, and instead of murderous rage, she felt something different, something more dangerous. “I won’t forget what you did, in Nightshade.”
He said nothing at all.
“I need to get something to eat. Meet me in the front hall in an hour. No, two. Be ready.”
“For the fiefs?” He laughed bitterly.
Tiamaris, however, nodded.
She left the room, walking quietly and with a stately dignity that she seldom possessed. Only when she was certain she’d left them both behind did she stop to empty the negligible contents of her stomach.
Marcus was there, of course. As if he’d been waiting. He probably had. He placed velvet paw-pads upon her shoulder, and squeezed; she felt the full pads of his palms press into her tunic. Warmth, there.
“Kaylin.”
“I don’t want to go back,” she whispered, in a voice she hated. It was a thirteen-year-old’s voice. A child’s voice.
“Don’t tell me where you’re going. If I’m not mistaken, you’re bound.” He glanced at her blistered palm and his breath came out in a huff that sounded similar to a growl.
It was a comforting sound, or it was meant to be. If you knew a Leontine. She knew this one.
“But I can guess,” he added grimly. “Come. The quartermaster has given me what you requisitioned.”
“I didn’t—”
“The Hawklord understands where you’re going,” Marcus said quietly. “And he was prepared. He was not, I think, prepared for losing the half day. He’s docked your pay.”
“Bastard,” she whispered, but with no heat.
His hand ran over her rounded back. As if she were his, part of his pride. “I brought you this,” he said, when she at last straightened, her stomach still unsettled.
She knew what he held.
It looked like a bracer, but shorter, and it was golden in sheen. Three gems adorned it, and to the untrained eye, they were valuable: ruby, sapphire and diamond.
But Kaylin knew they were more than that. “I won’t lose control,” she started.
His eyes were as narrow as they ever got. “It wasn’t a request, Kaylin. I know where you’re going.”
“He told you?”
His nose wrinkled as he looked at the mess around her feet. And on it.
“Oh.”
