Cast In Secret. Michelle Sagara
Praise for
MICHELLE
SAGARA
and The Chronicles of Elantra series
Cast in Shadow
“No one provides an emotional payoff like Michelle Sagara.
Combine that with a fast-paced police procedural, deadly
magics, five very different races and a wickedly dry sense of
humor—well, it doesn’t get any better than this.”
—Bestselling author Tanya Huff
“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
“A fast-paced novel, 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 fourteen novels since 1991, when her fi rst 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-changingThe 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 fi nds in the books she loves.
She will talk about writing, bookselling and books forever if given a chance. You’ve been warned.
Cast in
Secret
Michelle
Sagara
AUTHOR NOTE
I always wonder at people who tell other people to get a life, because, for all accounts and purposes, I have one. It’s a good life, but there are times when it’s overwhelming, and at times like that I seek a little bit of escape, and a little bit of something that’s larger. I find it in different places—I adored Buffy, especially the first two seasons, adored beyond reason Firefly, read novels, manga and play video games.
I do all these things because they entertain me, and when I decided to write THE CHRONICLES OF ELANTRA books, I wanted to return some of that entertainment, to capture some of its essence. It was a bit of a departure for me—the stories are structured a little bit more like the beloved television shows mentioned above; each volume has some hint of a larger arc, but should be self-contained in the events. I went for a modern sensibility, because the world itself is strange enough. I wanted to be able to make other people laugh, or to move them, because that’s what I want when I seek escape.
Cast in Shadow introduced Kaylin Neya, a young officer of the Law who’s still trying to sort out who she is and where she fits in. Cast in Courtlight threw her headfirst into politics, which is not one of her strengths. In Cast in Secret, I wanted to reintroduce the Tha’alani—the City’s native telepaths. They keep to themselves as much as possible because most of the citizens of Elantra fear and shun them—after all, how many of us want to be surrounded by people who can, at will, examine all our petty or ugly truths?
Kaylin certainly doesn’t. But in Cast in Secret, she has no choice, and I hope the consequences of that lack of choice give back some of what I’ve found in books, manga, anime and movies through the years.
In October, don’t forget to look for Cast in Fury, which deals with the aftermath of this story—and more about the Tha’alani!
This one is for my kids—and peers—
in Makaveli, on Shadowsong
/bonk
/hug
/love
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My long-suffering husband, Thomas,
kept home, household and the peculiar space
authors often need safe, as always, but also
found time to read the work in progress, even
when the progress was agonizingly slow. My
parents, Ken and Tami; my children, Daniel
and Ross; John and Kristen Chew and their
children, Jamie and Liam, kept my house
lively. Terry Pearson read this in all stages,
and offered the usual commentary, and the
incentive to keep going.
Mary-Theresa Hussey proved saintly in her
patience, and invaluable in the way editors are
when the author is still too much in the book to see it as a book. (And Adam Wilson sent helpful and cheerful reminders, which were, as it turns out, entirely necessary.)
CHAPTER
1
Private Kaylin Neya studied the duty roster, and given how little she studied anything that wasn’t somehow involved with a corpse, this said something.
The official roster was like a dartboard, except that people threw pencils at it instead. Sometimes they hit a bull’s-eye anyway. Lined up in columns by day, and color-coded for the more moronic—or hungover—by district, it told the various members of the branch of law enforcement known as the Hawks where, exactly, they were meant to either find trouble or stay out of it. Kaylin could easily make out her name, although some clod with lousy aim had managed to make a giant hole in it.
If it was true that the roster could never make everyone happy, it was somehow also true that it could make everyone unhappy. Sergeant Marcus Kassan, in charge of assigning duties on a monthly basis, had a strong sense of fairness; if someone was going to suffer, everyone might as well keep them company.
As the