Cast In Deception. Michelle Sagara
had all retreated—to the middle of the alley; there were walls to either side, and the windows they possessed weren’t large enough to cause tactical problems.
“Exactly.”
Severn had finished unwinding the chain, although this was not the place to make full use of it; the alley was too narrow. All of the alleys in the warrens were. “He’s coming.”
Kaylin nodded, her expression shifting. The familiar kept one wing across both of her eyes. She shook her head. “Go to Bellusdeo,” she told the translucent, winged creature. “Now.”
“I don’t need his protection—”
“No, I do. If anything happens to me, I’ll recover. Unless I’m dead. If anything happens to you, I’ll only wish I was dead. Probably forever.” She grimaced.
Severn said, “Magic?”
She nodded. Her skin was beginning to tingle. Tingling was not painful, but in general, it didn’t stop there. Kaylin’s allergy to magic—if allergy was the wrong word, it was the one she used anyway—made certain types of magic actively painful. It was why she hated doorwards and other modern security features. Invisibility—and there were whole libraries about how it worked, all jealously guarded by mages—was not a small magic. It wasn’t considered nearly as insignificant as a doorward.
The small dragon resolutely remained on her shoulder. “He’s not ditching the invisibility,” she said, glaring at her familiar. If he wouldn’t leave her shoulder, she’d have to move. The familiar was the only certain protection that either of them had against a large influx of magic, but his protection didn’t work at a distance.
The familiar squawked. It was a surprisingly quiet sound, given that he was sitting so close to her unprotected ear.
“Severn.”
He shook his head without looking back. He carried both blades; the chain was slack between them, traveling around his back. He shifted position. The links of chain made no sound as he did so.
* * *
The possible assailant did not pause to summon guards of any kind. Kaylin heard exactly zero footsteps; if he was moving—and the growing ache of her skin heavily implied that he was—he was moving silently. As silently as Severn would were their situations reversed.
Bellusdeo muttered something Kaylin didn’t catch. That should have been a clue. The Dragon did not mutter. But she felt the sharp sting of new magic in the silence that followed.
“I never enjoyed magical studies,” Bellusdeo said. She didn’t bother to lower her voice; she might have raised it a notch. She walked past Kaylin, but remained—barely—in the periphery of the familiar’s possible protection.
The ostensibly invisible Barrani who had the ability to fall well, if not fly, rounded the corner. He came to a stop, framed by the corners of the two buildings that formed the alley’s walls. His hair was a long drape of black that framed his face and fell out of sight down his back. His eyes were, as Kaylin expected they would be, blue.
Kaylin moved to stand beside the gold Dragon, rather than behind her.
Severn, who was closer to the alley’s mouth than either of them, did not move at all.
“So,” the Barrani said, “it is true. There is a Dragon among the Hawks.”
* * *
Kaylin knew the moment the Barrani chose to drop his invisibility; the familiar lowered his wing. But the motion caught the Barrani’s eyes, and they rounded. When his glance returned to Bellusdeo, they instantly narrowed again. “He is yours?” he demanded, of the Dragon.
The familiar squawked.
The man blinked. Barrani were famous for their composure under duress, and he seemed to recall this as he once again focused on Bellusdeo. “Magic was used to great effect in the wars against your kind.”
“Oh, indeed. But magic wasn’t required against yours.”
He stiffened. Bellusdeo was already pretty stiff. Kaylin, familiar notwithstanding, was irrelevant. Severn was apparently irrelevant, too. The Barrani had not once looked in his direction.
Not once...
Yes, Severn said. I am, while I remain still, effectively invisible. It doesn’t last.
It just lets you get the drop on your enemies.
Yes. If necessary.
It’s not necessary yet.
No. I’m uncertain who will break the law here first: Bellusdeo or the outcaste.
Kaylin was silent for another long beat, even on the inside of her own head. What do you mean, “outcaste”?
You don’t recognize him?
How could I? I’ve never seen him before. If he’s a fugitive, he hasn’t been captured in Records, at least not in the last five years. She’d made a furtive study of the Records that involved Barrani, Barrani crime, and the law. There hadn’t actually been that many available to an official mascot. Severn, who is he?
When he is addressed at all, I imagine he is called Candallar.
She frowned. Candallar? That’s one of the fiefs. And stopped. And looked. She’d asked, of course, before she’d come out on patrol. She’d had suspicions. But suspicions, apparently, weren’t visceral enough.
She knew what a fieflord could do in his own fief. If Severn was right, he wasn’t in his fief now. He was separate from the power that made him fieflord. Then again, so was Nightshade when he visited, and she would never consider his power insignificant.
She reached out and touched Bellusdeo’s regulation sleeve. “I think we should have this conversation somewhere else.”
“Oh?” the Dragon replied—without looking away from the Barrani. “Where did you have in mind?”
“Someplace less instantly flammable.” Before Bellusdeo could answer, Kaylin stepped forward, and then in front of her. Bellusdeo was taller, but not by as much as Teela or Tain. The tabard of the Hawk was front and center, and it grounded Kaylin. She understood it was nothing to hide behind—not safely—but it had never been about hiding, to Kaylin.
“Private Kaylin Neya,” she said, to the man Severn had named fieflord. The familiar squawked. “And this is my familiar.” His eyes did widen again, and it took them longer to revert to their less surprised shape. “You aren’t a citizen of Elantra.”
“In as much as citizens of any power are required to swear allegiance to the Eternal Emperor?”
“Yes.”
“It may come as a surprise to you, officer, but yes. Yes, I am.”
Bellusdeo snorted. There was smoke in it, which wafted across the back of Kaylin’s neck without charring anything.
Candallar’s gaze was pure Barrani condescension. “You presuppose I am not a member of the Barrani Court, or possibly the Barrani race. The supposition is correct: I am not. But my vow of allegiance to the Emperor—forced on me many years ago, I might add—has never been broken. I believe that I would still be considered a citizen of Elantra. The discretion would, of course, be the Emperor’s. And given politics, it would be difficult were he to accept me as a citizen of his empire when my own people do not acknowledge my existence at all, except perhaps as a blood sport.” His smile was slender, cold, and very sharp.
Bellusdeo snorted again. This time, Kaylin heard irritation, not threat, in the sound. She moved.
“The Dragon, however,” the Barrani said, “is not technically a citizen of Elantra.”
Kaylin was aware that she’d started this line of reasoning. Marcus had often said she was too clever for her own good, and too lacking in wisdom for anyone else’s. “Neither are most mortals, if citizenship