LITMIR.BIZ

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Aerie—”

      Moran lifted a hand. “Those Aerians are already collateral damage.”

      “I think they had some choice in the matter.”

      “Do you?”

      Kaylin started to speak. Stopped.

      “Did you have a choice when you were thirteen?” Moran continued.

      Silence. Kaylin hated the reminder of the life she’d left behind. She hated the reminder of the harm she’d done in both desperation and fear. The only thing she’d seen was the need to survive, and survival had been brutal and ugly. Only when she’d given up entirely on survival—when life itself had become so crushingly ugly she believed she was better off dead—had she changed.

      It hadn’t been an act of courage.

      It had been the ultimate act of despair. And even then she hadn’t had the determination to end her own life. She had come here, to the Halls of Law, with every expectation that her life would be ended for her.

      “...No,” Kaylin finally said. “Not if I wanted to survive.” She wanted to turn and leave—it’s what she would have done a handful of years ago. She was awash in that particular form of self-loathing that was guilt. But she shouldered the weight; she’d started this, even asked for it in some fashion. “I expected better of the Aeries than the fiefs.”

      At that, Moran sucked in air, and Kaylin winced; she’d spoken the truth, but not with any particular care. “Frightened people,” the older Aerian eventually said, “are the same everywhere. It looks different, but it’s not.” She turned away. Turned back. “But your point is taken. If my leave of absence is granted, I’ll remain with Helen.” She then looked past Kaylin to Severn. “Are my services going to be required?”

      “The assailants don’t appear to be injured. According to Private Neya, there were three; only two are currently in captivity.”

      “The third?”

      “He must have escaped. I don’t know what happened—small and squawky flew up, and two of them fell down. The third, he might have missed.”

      “What did he do?”

      “...I don’t know.”

      “The Hawklord’s going to demand an answer. How does ‘I don’t know’ generally work out for you?”

      Not particularly well. “It’s the truth. It’s going to have to do. I don’t know. I didn’t see what happened. If I had to guess, I’d say that two of the Aerians are naturally close to flightless. Magical alterations were made—somehow—that allowed them to fly. The familiar did something to dispel that magic.”

      Squawk. The familiar was bouncing on her shoulder, having abandoned the lazy sprawl.

      “If that’s the case, it implies that Aerian number three didn’t require alteration in order to fly. He or she merely required it to be invisible.”

      Squawk squawk squawk.

      “Your familiar agrees,” Bellusdeo said quietly. “You’re making your thinking face.”

      “It’s just...”

      “Yes?”

      “If I’m looking at them through his wing, the wings look whole. They look healthy. They don’t look like little extensions of Shadow or whatever it is. The net they were holding? That screamed Shadow. But the wings don’t. I think that the physical container for the power of flight was created, but it doesn’t depend on Shadow to work.”

      “Meaning?”

      “I think they could fly again. But I don’t understand how. The lack of relevant parts in their natural, normal wings is real, it’s physical. This is like—it’s like someone found the phantom arm that people who’ve lost an arm feel, and they figured out how to make it temporarily solid.”

      Moran said a lot of nothing.

      Kaylin wasn’t certain what she would have said if given enough time, because the mirror went off. The infirmary had a rather large one. It was not quiet.

      “Sergeant!” An Aerian appeared in the mirror, in a poorly lit room. Light was incoming, and behind him, Kaylin could see the dark red of blood.

      Moran’s eyes shifted to blue. Not purple. She wasn’t surprised at all. But she was bitterly, bitterly unhappy. Kaylin, who had just felt the uncomfortable, ugly rush of guilt, recognized it when she saw it on another face.

      All the things that she could tell herself but couldn’t quite believe rushed up, because if she said them to Moran, they would be true. Nothing in Moran’s expression allowed for any attempt at comfort. Kaylin’s jaw snapped shut.

      Moran’s assistant entered the infirmary in his on-duty clothing. Kaylin wondered briefly where he’d been. She didn’t like any answer she could come up with, and didn’t ask. Moran waited for the assistant—a lowly private, just as Kaylin herself was—to pick up a large, heavy bag.

      She looked far more like Red going out on a premorgue assignment than she did a doctor. Red, on the other hand, carried his own bag; he considered privates in general too careless.

      * * *

      The holding cells were crowded. The Hawklord had either not returned to his Tower, or had descended from it again. Barrani Hawks—Teela and Tain among them—were on guard duty. The only Aerians present were the Hawklord and Moran.

      And the bleeding Aerians who had been deposited here.

      Moran’s Leontine was impressive, but she didn’t slow down for it; she sped up. Her private, understanding instantly, sped up as well; Kaylin and Severn stepped out of the way to let them pass.

      Kaylin almost couldn’t understand what she was seeing. Almost.

      But when she’d been fourteen—or fifteen, the years blurred a bit—and a mascot, not an actual full-fledged private, the Hawks and the Swords had, between them, managed to capture a Barrani criminal. He was wanted for a number of petty crimes, mostly involving drugs and prostitution. He had been taken to the holding cells, and he had been restrained; Barrani had been sent to guard him because mortal guards wouldn’t cut it.

      He had died.

      Restrained as he was, he could have put up a struggle against mortal guards, excepting only Leontines, and since there was only one of those and he was a sergeant, he was definitively not on guard duty. He’d had no chance at all against Barrani.

      It had caused the ugliest rift in the Hawks Kaylin had, until that point, seen. She’d seen impressive rivalries for things ranging from chairs, desks and pencil acquisition—but those rivalries had been, at base, friendly. The death of the Barrani prisoner—the helpless Barrani prisoner—had changed that. It had driven a wedge of fury, contempt, and not a little fear, between the Barrani Hawks and their mortal counterparts; it had made race an issue even if, in theory, they were all equal when serving the Imperial Law.

      Not everyone was upset about the death—but enough were. Enough had been.

      Petty Barrani criminals weren’t Aerians. Kaylin held her breath, reaching for her wrist. She’d already removed the bracer. She didn’t look to the Hawklord for orders. She didn’t look to Moran. She particularly avoided looking at Teela and Tain. She was certain they hadn’t killed the Aerians. And she was certain the Hawklord already knew who had. After the death of the Barrani, Records captures became mandatory for each of the holding cells that were in use.

      “Private,” the Hawklord said.

      Kaylin ignored him. She knelt across from Moran and her infirmary assistant. One Aerian was dead. Just...dead. His throat had been cut, and he’d been stabbed in the chest, close to, if not through, his Aerian heart.

      She placed her hands on the forehead of the second Aerian. He was—barely—alive. Everything was on Records. Everything. And that didn’t

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