The Chronicles of Elantra 5 - Cast in Silence (56 page)

It changed nothing.

Kaylin drew breath before she turned to Tiamaris. “No,” she said quietly. “His life’s not mine to take.”

“Very well,” Tiamaris replied. “You are free to leave.” He reached out with one hand and caught Severn’s shoulder tightly. “You will not hunt in my domain.”

Barren’s eyes widened.

“We are given leave to hunt where we will,” Severn replied.

“Indeed. But I will be forced to kill you, an act which I would regret. If you need to hunt him, you will hunt him after he leaves the fief, not before.”

Severn was silent for a full minute before he nodded. Until he nodded, Tiamaris didn’t release him. But Severn wasn’t stupid; he wasn’t impulsive. He would not try to kill Barren in the fief. Not now. She didn’t have to worry about Severn.

So Kaylin watched Morse instead. Morse’s expression didn’t change at all when Tiamaris refused Severn his arguably legal right to execution. Morse understood that Severn was a dead man if he even tried; you didn’t piss off a Dragon and survive, not when he was standing fewer than ten feet away.

Barren turned to the four men in the room. Nodded curtly. They formed up around him, like a small human shield between Barren and the Dragon. Morse joined them, standing slightly apart the way she usually did. She didn’t look at Kaylin.

Barren didn’t waste breath arguing with Tiamaris, and he had never been fool enough to meet him head-on. Even if he’d still had the magic Tara had drained from him, he wasn’t that type of stupid. Which, Kaylin though, was a bitter disappointment. But she’d made her decision, and if it was bitter, it was still hers; she’d live with it.

And who will die because of it?
There were whole days she hated having anything that resembled a conscience.

But sometimes, it asked the right question at the right damn time. She barely saw Morse move. One minute, she was walking in her cautious, cocky way toward the double doors to one side of Barren’s back, and the next, she was at his side, the flash of steel in her hand brief, the blood that gushed from the whole of his suddenly open throat less so. He didn’t even have the chance to turn, to face her; he toppled backward, the whole of his body crashing to the carpet as if it were already in rigor.

But it jerked there, his eyes glazed and unblinking.

The four men froze; Morse killed one before he’d managed to turn to face her. That was Morse. The other three closed on her, and Kaylin started forward; Severn caught her, dragging her back, as Tiamaris roared. There was fire—literal fire—in the breath that left his mouth. He wasn’t particularly careful about the floors or the carpets, but then again, he’d already said he was going to burn the building to the ground.

He was only slightly more careful about Barren’s men. At least one of them screamed. Morse was out of the fire before it hit her would-be assailants, but she didn’t even try for the door. She watched Barren. She watched Barren die.

“Tiamaris,” Kaylin said, urgent now, “take Tara—”

But Tara shook her head. “This is the one who hurt you,” she said to Kaylin, in a voice as cold as any Kaylin had ever heard her use.

Great. She had made friends with an overprotective and somewhat cold-blooded Tower.

“I will watch him die.”

It wasn’t for Tara’s sake that she wanted Tara out, and Tiamaris turned to her, raising one dark brow to make clear that he understood.

“Severn, let me go.”

“Kaylin—”

“Please. I won’t do anything stupid.”

He bent slightly and whispered a single word in her ear.
Don’t.
Then he let go.

She walked quickly toward Morse, putting herself directly between Tiamaris and the woman who had, for better or worse, found her in the streets and taken her home. But she stopped just shy of her, because she had never seen Morse like this before. Her face had gone from cool neutrality to blank, and her eyes were almost as wide and glassy as Barren’s. Her hands were red and wet; the blood hadn’t even gone sticky yet.

But Morse, like Kaylin, couldn’t just be touched. She couldn’t be hugged. There was no easy way to offer her comfort. No way at all, really, but this. “Morse.”

She looked up at the sound of her name.

“He’s dead.”

Morse nodded, but it wasn’t a fief nod—it was too automatic, too empty, for that.

“Morse—”

“Will the Dragon kill me, now?” Morse asked, in the ghost of her former voice. Something had left her; Kaylin wondered if it would ever come back.

“No,” she replied, with more certainty than she felt.

“He should.”

“Morse—”

Morse shook her head. She pushed Kaylin to one side with no force at all and stumbled over to Barren’s body. There, she knelt, staring at his open eyes, his still face. Kaylin thought, then, that hatred was corrosive, but in some ways, if you had nothing else, it could sustain you. It was poor sustenance, but sometimes poor was better than nothing.

Nothing, however, was what she said. She didn’t ask Morse why; Morse wouldn’t have answered. But she crouched a little distance away from Morse, over Barren’s body, and she waited in case Morse asked for anything.

Morse didn’t. She didn’t cry; that would have been too easy.

Tiamaris walked quietly across the room. Kaylin rose, turning to face him, but his gaze was on Morse, and his eyes were almost entirely gold. Light from the windows cast his shadow across Morse; she looked up as it touched her. Her eyes were dull, almost gray. She said nothing.

Tiamaris seemed to expect that nothing. He turned to Kaylin. “I accept your choice, in this,” he said softly, “but the White Towers must be destroyed if we cannot, in safety, diffuse the changes in its structure.”

“You said—”

“Yes. That was also true. There is not always a single reason to do something—often there are many. Morse,” he said.

She looked up at the sound of her name. If you weren’t watching her face closely, she might have been looking at Tiamaris. “Yeah.”

“Tiamaris—” Kaylin began.

He lifted one hand, and she swallowed her words—which wasn’t hard; she hadn’t quite figured out what to say.

“He is dead.”

“Barren’s dead.” Morse’s voice was wooden, almost without inflection.

“You served him.”

Morse said nothing.

“You killed him.”

She nodded.

“It’s over. What will you do now?”

“Now?” Her eyes focused, slowly, on his face, and as they did, her expression hardened. She shook herself, looked once at Barren, and then stood. But she rose clumsily, as if she were drunk. “I’m done here. You want to kill me for countermanding your orders, you can—”

“You were not under my orders,” he replied quietly. “Or you would already be dead.”

She nodded. There was no display of bravado left in her, although she’d never been one for displays of stupid to begin with. Or maybe she had been, to begin with—Kaylin hadn’t known her, then. Didn’t really know her now, if it came to that. Morse didn’t get close to people. She didn’t let people close to her, either.

It was why Kaylin had been able to walk away, in the end. Maybe that had been Morse’s way of being kind.

“You don’t want me,” Morse told Tiamaris, after a long silence. “I was his muscle.”

“So was Kaylin. She now works indirectly for the Emperor. But perhaps you feel that the change in rulership will not be to your liking. It will be reflected, in the end, at all levels in the fief of Tiamaris.”

“How?”

“I dislike the lack of organization and the lack of basic laws within Barren. I intend to establish both. The laws will follow closely the Imperial laws. You may not be familiar with them,” he added. “But if you intend to remain in this fief in any capacity, you will learn.

“There will be one or two significant departures from Imperial Law, the most obvious of which will be the lack of an Emperor. But there will be a basic core of guards who see that my laws are upheld. I will not require your services in the capacity of assassin. If I believe someone merits death, I will kill them.”

“Just like that.”

He nodded. “I will also see to the ferals.”

“The ferals?” Morse grimaced. “Why?”

“Because the fief is mine, and nothing hunts in it without my permission. If they are not, indeed, dumb beasts driven by hunger, they will learn.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I do not think there is a home for you across the river.”

Morse shrugged. Her body lost its unnatural stiffness as she did. She nodded in Kaylin’s direction. “Because I’m not soft, the way she is?”

“You took her in.”

“I taught her,” Morse snapped, with more than a little heat, “everything she knows about killing. The rest of the shit she picked up came from someone else—blame it on them.”

But Tiamaris was unwilling to let Morse have the point; Kaylin wanted to kick him. He didn’t understand the fiefs. “You were not happy when she returned.”

“Barren wanted her here. He didn’t tell me why. Anything he wanted, he wanted to strengthen himself. And I,” she added, glaring pointedly at his corpse, “had no interest in seeing him strengthened. I was waiting,” she added, and this time her voice lost some of its edge. “I’ve been waiting for so damn long.”

“The fief was falling. The people—”

She shrugged. “If the shadows hadn’t killed them, Barren would have, sooner or later. Killed them or destroyed them and left them standing. He was good at that.”

“You are alive.”

“I know how to stay alive. Always have.” The bitterness, the self-loathing, in the words was so familiar to Kaylin she felt it as her own. It hurt.

“And are you willing to take the risk of keeping other people alive?”

Kaylin sucked in air.
Tiamaris, you bastard.

Morse, however, wasn’t Kaylin. She rallied. “You pay me enough, there’s no damn risk I won’t take.”

Tiamaris smiled. It was a thin smile. “We will have time to discuss your definition of
enough.
Will you serve?”

Morse shrugged. “I have to swear some fancy-ass oath of allegiance?”

Kaylin cringed.

“No. For the moment, the only witnesses present would not appreciate the gravitas of a more formal oath. I will, however, take whatever oath you offer that would be considered binding.”

“Binding?”

“That has meaning to you.”

She froze. “And if I don’t have one?”

“You are free to leave. Provided,” he added, “that no one here has a grudge that would prevent it.” His smile was thin, but there was genuine amusement in it. Kaylin didn’t like it, much.

Morse stared at him for way too long. Then she turned to Kaylin. “How on the level is he?”

“About money?”

“About anything.”

“He was a Hawk.”

“That means nothing to me.”

“You couldn’t bribe him. You couldn’t kill him. You couldn’t get him to break his word unless you managed either the first or the second.”

“You know this how?”

Kaylin shrugged. “He has my back. Any fight we’ve been in.”

“He was in charge?”

“Not always. Didn’t matter. He faced down an older, bigger Dragon.”

“An older—What, they fight?”

“In the fiefs. There’s an Outcaste Dragon in the fiefs.”

Morse tensed. Turned to Tiamaris. “This isn’t over yet?”

Tiamaris said nothing.

“Fuck it. All right, I’m in. If you want me, I’m in. I’m not
good
at keeping other people alive. They don’t fucking listen. They do what they think is fucking
right.
They get themselves killed. I’m not good at it. So you have to know what you’re getting, because I don’t want my ass fried for their kind of stupid.”

Tiamaris raised a brow.

“I’m saying I’ll try. I’m saying I’ll give it what I’ve got. But I’m not swearing any damn oath that says I’ll succeed at it.”

“You’ll uphold my laws.”

“You’re the fief lord. You want to make little old ladies the queens of the street, it’s your go.”

He raised a brow. Kaylin bit her lip to stop from laughing out loud.

“If we have resolved the current issues,” Tiamaris said, after a long pause which pretty much said
I will work with the materials at hand,
“there is some work to be done. If you would all leave the building, your first assignment, Morse, is to escort Private Neya and Corporal Handred to the Ablayne.”

Morse nodded.

“We cleared the streets of obvious danger on the way here,” he continued. “There may be more subtle difficulties that can only be apprehended at street level. Watch for those. You’ve had experience with some of the forms shadow can take. Report anything unusual that you find.”

“Where?”

“Pardon?”

“Where do you want this report?”

“Ah. Take it to my residence. The Tower at which you first found Kaylin.”

Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and then she nodded crisply. It wasn’t quite a fief nod; there was more than just grudging respect in it.

The destruction of the White Towers, however, had to wait, because when they exited the building, taking care to avoid the entire section of a wall that was no longer stone in any way, they came face-to-face with a small delegation of three, standing in otherwise completely deserted streets.

None of them were the Emperor. Kaylin would have known Sanabalis anywhere; she recognized Diarmat. She didn’t recognize the third immediately, although he was also a Dragon. Severn helpfully whispered the name Emmerian. They did not approach Tiamaris; they waited. Tiamaris nodded in greeting, but it was a stiff greeting, and it was silent.

Kaylin walked to one side of the former Hawk; Severn walked to the other. Tara stayed a few feet from the end of the White Tower’s path, watching them all with open curiosity; Morse stayed with her. Which was fair. In a fight between one Dragon and three, any nonimmortals were going to be delicate window dressing at best.

“Lord Tiamaris.” It was Sanabalis who spoke first, which was probably for the best; his eyes were a shade of bronze that looked gold in comparison to the eyes of the other two. Or Tiamaris, for that matter; his were orange.