Cast in Ruin (16 page)

“I don’t think there’s enough room in the bed for you, me, and a fragile egg,” he replied. He was smiling; she could hear it in the words, even if she couldn’t see it. “How is the egg?”

“It’s—I think it’s harder. Or rougher. I’m not sure.”

“You should take it to Evanton.”

“In my copious free time, I’ll be sure to do that.” She began to peel off clothing; the night was cool. Tonight, because Severn was standing there, she actually folded it as neatly as she could in the dark and left it in a small standing pile near the foot of the bed. Then she curled up on her side around the egg, wrapping her arms across it just before she pulled the blankets up beneath her chin.

“I’ll come by in the morning,” he said. “With food.”

“Bracer?”

“If it’s come home by now, I’ll leave it. I’m tired of water stains on my furniture.”

“I promise I’ll stop throwing the damn thing into the Ablayne.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She drifted off even before she heard the click of the door’s lock.

CHAPTER 11

Red was punctual. Since Severn was absolutely true to his word and had shown up with food at the crack of dawn—if you could call something as dark as that dawn—so was Kaylin. Her sleep had been the usual broken affair. It was why she valued exhaustion so highly; if she fell over face-first the minute she hit the bed, she was likely to sleep like the dead for at least four hours. It was seldom that she slept for longer without waking from dream or nightmare.

On the other hand, the last week had pretty much been one waking nightmare after another; if this kept up, her dreams wouldn’t have the power to terrify her.

“Here,” Red said, handing Kaylin one very heavy leather bag. Its handles were worn and shiny. “Be useful.”

Some minor changes in Red’s uniform were hastily made before they picked up the carriage in the yards and headed toward the bridge that led to Tiamaris.

“Sergeant Kassan requested that we mirror the Halls when we arrive. I take it we
can
mirror the Halls from wherever it is we’re going?”

“We can.”

“Good. I think his sleep has been poor enough that he regretted yesterday’s decision; I thought I wouldn’t make it out the doors. We’re to mirror when I arrive, when I leave, and if I find anything significant. If there’s trouble crossing, he’ll send Swords to meet us on the way out.”

Kaylin groaned. “Just what we need.”

“He also asked me to remind you that you have an etiquette lesson tonight. He doesn’t care if we discover the probable end of the world—Corporal Handred and I can stay.
You
can’t.”

Tara was gardening. Morse was standing a couple of yards away from where Tara was moving clods of dirt around, trying to look useful. She even looked grateful at the arrival of the carriage, because it gave her something to do.

“Lord Tiamaris is waiting for you. Lord Sanabalis arrived half an hour ago.”

“Was he supposed to be here? He told me he doesn’t enter the Tower—”

“He doesn’t. I didn’t ask.” Morse gave Red the once-over, but didn’t give him trouble; instead, she sauntered toward the Tower’s door. Red, to his credit, didn’t spend much time gawking. He walked up to the door, lifted his hand, and looked confused. Kaylin wanted to laugh.

“This door doesn’t have wards,” she told him.

“I…can see that.”

“Tiamaris’s a Dragon; no one’s going to waltz in and steal stuff. Even if they did, they wouldn’t get far; the Tower would probably eat them before Tiamaris could.”

Tara suddenly poked her head up from whatever patch of dirt held her attention. “Oh, I would never do that,” she said as she unfolded and began to wipe her hands on an apron that was already mostly dirt. “Not without my Lord’s permission.”

“Red,” Kaylin said. “This is Tara. She’s the Avatar of the Tower. Tara, this is Red.”

“He’s the coroner?”

“Yes.” To Red, she said, “She can sort of read stray thoughts, so you’ll probably want to keep yours relatively clean.”

“Relative to what?”

“Oh, Morse’s.”

Morse told them all what they could do as Tara laughed. She made her way to the doors—which were still closed—and offered Red a not very clean hand. Red enveloped it, anyway. “I don’t meet many friends of Kaylin’s,” she told him. “Besides Severn, I think you’re the first family member she’s brought to visit.”

“Uh, we’re not exactly related—”

“You’re a Hawk, no?”

“Yes, but—”

“Tara’s just confused about family,” Kaylin said in a rush. The doors began to roll open, which would hopefully save her any other embarrassment.

Tiamaris stood ten feet from the doors. He wore armor— Dragon scale—and a tabard; he was prepared to fight. But he raised a brow. “Red.”

“Lord Tiamaris.” Red didn’t skip a beat. “Lord Sanabalis?”

“He is in the morgue. Follow.”

“Is there a mirror I can use there?”

“Yes. Briefly.”

Marcus couldn’t actually be seen when the mirror activated, but he could be clearly heard; he was growling around syllables.

“Seven bodies, Sergeant. This may be awhile. But there were no incidents on the way.”

“Good. Mirror before you leave. If you need any assistance—”

Lord Sanabalis lifted a hand, and then let it drop, since Marcus couldn’t see it anyway. “Sergeant Kassan,” he said in a deep rumble that was probably the Dragon equivalent of growling, “I will personally escort your coroner back across the Ablayne when he has finished his duties here to
my
satisfaction. The Emperor expresses his gratitude at your understanding during this difficult time.”

After which, Marcus had very little to say. The mirror went flat, shivered for a second, and then became reflective. Sanabalis then turned to the coroner. “The Emperor also wishes to convey his approval of funds to hire—and train—appropriately skilled apprentices to work in the morgue in the Halls of Law. While he understands the pressures facing the Halls at this time, he requests that such training be expedited.”

Red bowed. He didn’t, however, respond.

Instead, he began to set up in Tiamaris’s morgue, opening his bag and spreading his tools across the only flat surface that wasn’t a slab. He almost never left the Halls, but it wasn’t the first time Kaylin had seen him do off-site inspections. In general, though, Red went off-site when there wasn’t
enough
of a body to bring back to the Halls. This was clearly not one of those times. He donned a large, white apron, tying it loosely behind his back.

He frowned as he began to walk down the small aisle made by two large slabs and seven bodies. He paused in front of one body, and took a mirror out of one of his generous pockets. “Records.” The mirror was a very small one. It wasn’t generally useful for communication, except in extreme emergencies, but it could record conversation and small images, which would later be archived in the Halls.

“Magical scans have already been done,” Tiamaris told him.

“Who was the investigating mage?”

“I was,” Tiamaris replied.

Red nodded. “The results?”

“The only enchantment indicated involved the eyes.”

“How so?”

“The color of the eyes.”

“Preservative?”

Tiamaris shook his head. “Illusion.”

“On a corpse? Why?”

The Dragon Lord didn’t answer; Red was an old hand. He took the hint. He did open eyelids, and he did the same cursory examination on all the corpses. This took no time. While he worked, with the occasional aside to the mirror, he asked Tiamaris questions; Tiamaris answered. He then walked over to the table on which his various tools lay. “This,” he said, “is
not
going to be a short day.”

“Will it require more than one?” Tiamaris asked.

“If it doesn’t require another three, it’ll be a miracle. Not a small one, either.”

“And that,” Tiamaris said, turning toward the door, “is our invitation to leave.”

“Where’s Maggaron?” Kaylin asked Tara after the impromptu morgue’s doors were firmly shut behind them.

The Avatar blinked, and then said, “He is in his room.”

“Awake or asleep?”

“It is hard to tell. I believe he is awake; he is neither moving nor speaking, but his eyes appear to be open.”

“What color are they?”

“Blue.”

She glanced at Severn. “Are you
certain
it’s safe to leave him here?”

“Yes.” Tara frowned, and then added, “Perhaps I should ask for clarification before I answer. Safe for him or safe for us?”

“Either.”

“It is safe for us. The Shadows cannot breach this Tower.”

“His name?”

“Even if they find purchase here through use of his name, you’ll sense the struggle. If you’re too far away to intercede—and Lord Tiamaris feels that no point in the City is too far away, regardless of fief boundaries—it will not be safe for him, because I will have to kill him. Neither I nor my Lord will be in any significant danger.”

“Then I’m going to leave him here.”

“I believe Mejrah wishes to speak with you about him.”

“Can it wait until tomorrow?”

“Why?”

“Because we’re in theory here to investigate the deaths of those seven women, and I’m much more confident of being useful there than I am of talking to strangers near a border that’s teeming with Shadow.”

“You were of critical use yesterday.”

Tiamaris, however, said, “It can wait one day. You, however, will be on your own. I will take Lord Sanabalis and Morse. If you require a map of the fiefs—”

“We don’t, if there’s mirror access within the fief.”

“There are…very few mirrors in much of the fief.”

Tara said, “If you will come this way?”

Not even Sanabalis stayed behind. Sanabalis, however, chose to wait outside in the Tower grounds, and headed there immediately, asking only Tiamaris’s permission to do so. Kaylin found the interactions of the two Dragon Lords interesting; Sanabalis was obviously still fond of Tiamaris, but he was not quite at home in the Tower; he was willing to enter it—after receiving an almost formal invitation each time—but he was never going to be a visitor who outstayed his welcome.

If it wasn’t Kaylin’s second home, it had joined her list of possible candidates.

“This way” sadly, returned them to a very familiar mirror—a flat, clear pool of water that lay in the ground. Tara smiled in what Kaylin presumed was supposed to be an encouraging away. “We’re not accessing anything that the normal mirrors through the Tower can’t access, so it should be safe.”

Famous last words. Kaylin nodded anyway as Tiamaris, with no warning at all, roared. Clearly he’d woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, although rumor had it that Dragons didn’t actually
need
sleep. She wondered if that was accurate, or if it had been spread by the Barrani. The roar, which left ringing in the ears, also left a shimmering, large image across the whole of the water’s surface.

“You will be familiar with these streets?” Tiamaris asked Kaylin.

Kaylin nodded.

“Good.”

Morse coughed. “Geography’s never been her strong point.”

“She has Corporal Handred, a man known for his competence in both navigation and memorization.” Tiamaris hadn’t looked up, but when he opened his mouth, Kaylin covered her ears.

The bastard grinned and spoke in High Barrani.

The lines on the map began to shift. Or at least it looked that way at first. What shifted, however, was the color in which they were drawn; they went from a bright gold to a rust red. Gold lines then ran across the map, spreading from the central point of the Tower toward the outer edges of the fief. In most cases, the gold overlay the red precisely; in a few cases, it didn’t.

“These would be the street changes?”

“Yes.” Small white circles materialized in what appeared to be entirely random places. “These would be the areas in which the bodies currently in our keeping were found, along with the dates. Red might be able to give us an idea of how much time passed between death and discovery.”

Kaylin shook her head. “I don’t think it’s going to matter.”

“No?”

“What we really need is an idea of how much time passed between the placement of the corpses and their discovery; they could have been killed earlier. I mean, the body found in the well didn’t die by drowning; the corpse found in the half-burned ruins didn’t die by burning or inhaling smoke.” She grimaced. “You see anything like a pattern in the placement of those bodies?”

He frowned. “What do you see?”

“There’s no real pattern. But the corpses that were found earliest
seem
to be slightly closer to the interior border.” She frowned again.

“Kaylin?”

“It’s nothing. Tiamaris, may I?”

He nodded.

“During the breach of the borders, and while you were reestablishing border control, how many storms occurred in the fief?”

“Shadowstorm?”

“Yes.”

Tara lifted her head. Her eyes drained of all color that wasn’t obsidian, something Kaylin always found unsettling. “That information is not complete in records.” She spoke as if she were the voice of the mirror—which, all things considered, she probably was.

“Pardon?”

“Shadowstorm is difficult to capture visually,” Tiamaris replied. “It defies objective comprehension. The large storms you’ve seen resemble regular storms in some fashion.”

Small fashion, in Kaylin’s opinion.

“But not all storms are immediately visible; nor do they all have immediate effect. What I see and what you see will differ. The effects of the storm can be clearly documented; the areas are defined in records by the effects.”

“So, in theory, if there were no effects there was no storm?”

“In theory, yes—as far as the fief records are concerned.” His tone made clear what he thought of the theory.

“I don’t understand why. You can track every single occurrence of Shadow in the fief, and you can track all areas which have been contaminated. Why not the storms?”

“If it wasn’t clear to you yesterday, even the Shadows themselves seem to fear the storms; the storms are not of the Shadows.”

“And our keeping strong borders just gives them another reason to hate us, not that they appear to need them?”

He chuckled. “Something like that, yes. The storms are confined to the interior, where only the Shadows and those that serve them need fear their effects.”

Tara took a step, knelt, and placed her palm against the surface of the water; this caused Kaylin to flinch, although she didn’t look away. Water, unlike the enchanted, silvered glass of most mirrors in the modern world, was more mutable. “You think that these bodies might have appeared because of the storms?”

“I…think it’s a possibility,” Kaylin replied cautiously.

“Why?”

“Because a storm, Tara, is how I first met you. There’s no other way I could have done it.”

Tara nodded slowly. “Do you think she was always a corpse?”

“That’s what we’re hoping to find out. We have an image crystal here; it shows the woman as we think she looked while she was alive. We’re going to hit the streets in the areas where the bodies were found to see if we can bribe anyone into telling us if they saw her.”