LITMIR.BIZ

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I also need to eat, and feed my family.”

      “Clint—what are you talking about? Why are you saying this?”

      “Because the people you will now be dealing with will not be Old Ironjaw. And if you don’t deal carefully, you won’t be a Private. It’s as simple as that.”

      “W-what happened?”

      “There was an incident,” he continued carefully. “Involving the Leontine Quarter.”

      “What happened, Clint?”

      “We’re not entirely certain. Teela and Tain are trying to ferret out information, but any information we get is going to come to us when we’re off the payroll. Understand?”

      She nodded, although she didn’t.

      “Marcus has been stood down. He’s been relieved of duty.”

      “On what grounds?”

      “Kaylin—we don’t know what happened. But the case has been referred to the Caste Courts, not ours.”

      “What case?”

      “Someone died.”

      “Pardon?”

      “A Leontine from a prominent clan died. He was killed by another Leontine. That much, we do know.”

      “How?”

      “The death didn’t occur in the Leontine Quarter. However, none of the witnesses were harmed, and remanding all investigations involving that death to the Caste Courts is well within the dictates of the Law.”

      “But—”

      “Marcus was present at the scene of the crime.”

      “What do you mean, present?”

      Clint closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they were clear, and his face had hardened into lines that Kaylin hated to see there. “He is currently in the custody of the Caste Court, awaiting a trial on murder charges.”

      For once, Kaylin had no words to offer. A million questions, yes, but they were jammed up in the tightness of her throat.

      “Corporal Handred?”

      “Here.”

      “You’ve been instructed to report for duty to the acting Sergeant.”

      “The acting Sergeant? Clint!”

      The Aerian to his left was an older man that Kaylin recognized. There wasn’t an Aerian on the force that she didn’t know by name, because there wasn’t an Aerian on the force who hadn’t been begged, pleaded with and cajoled by a much younger Kaylin. They could fly—they could carry her with them.

      “Breen?”

      Breen had clearly decided to let Clint absorb all the heat of this particular conversation, but his dusky skin, pale brown to Clint’s deep, warm darkness, looked a little on the green side.

      “To whom am I to report?” Severn asked.

      The hesitation was almost too much to bear. But when Clint finally spoke, it was worse.

      “Sergeant Mallory.”

      CHAPTER 4

      Severn did not take Kaylin with him when he went to report for duty to the new acting Sergeant. He did not, in fact, report for duty immediately; instead, he grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her from the steps atop which the two Aerians stood. It took her about two minutes to realize that the dragging had a purpose: he was taking her home.

      And she was exhausted enough to let him.

      “I know what you’re thinking, Kaylin. Don’t.”

      “What am I thinking?”

      “That you should have been there.”

      She winced. But she’d always been obvious to Severn.

      “What you were doing affects an entire race. What we’ll be doing when we’re not dealing with the ugly fears of a mob will affect a much, much smaller group of people.”

      “The Hawks.”

      He nodded quietly.

      “Why did he ask for you?” She couldn’t bring herself to actually say Mallory’s name out loud.

      “I don’t know. I’ve met the man once.”

      “You ran interference for me when we went to Missing Persons.”

      Severn nodded. “But given his feelings about you—and he was quite clear on those—I imagine that he won’t find my role as a Hawk much more to his liking.”

      “He probably doesn’t know where you’re from.”

      “Then he hasn’t done his homework.”

      “Doesn’t seem likely.”

      “No, it doesn’t. I imagine that Mallory knows quite a bit about the Hawks at this point.” He stopped. She stared at the street, and he pushed her gently up the few steps to her own apartment door. She’d gotten a new key, and it worked, but it took her three tries to get the damn thing into the lock.

      “You’re tired,” he told her, when she cursed in Leontine. “Tired and Mallory are not going to be a pretty combination. Sleep it off. But understand that when you walk into the office in the morning, the rules will be different and everything will change. You wanted to be a Hawk,” he added. “Be one. Tomorrow.”

      “I want to talk to the Hawklord.”

      “Do that tomorrow as well.” He paused, and then added, “We couldn’t have talked to the Hawklord without speaking to Mallory first. I imagine he’s guarding the tower. Kaylin, he’s made it clear from the start, if I understand things correctly, that you should never have been a Hawk. Nothing would give him more pleasure than correcting an obvious error in judgment. But if he is a vindictive man—and I don’t discount it—he also appears to play by the rules.

      “Don’t give him the satisfaction. Do nothing that he can use as an excuse. He’ll have his own worries,” Severn said.

      “What worries?”

      “His disdain for Marcus was widely known, and Marcus was popular.”

      “Is.”

      “Is what?”

      “Is popular.” She began to stumble up the narrow stairs to her rooms. “Don’t talk about him as if he’s dead.”

      “Is popular,” he said, gentling his voice as he followed her. “Most of the department knows how Mallory regards the Hawks under Marcus, and if Mallory is to succeed, he can’t afford to further alienate them. But if you give him an excuse, he’ll use it.”

      She opened the door to a darkening room, the shutters wired into a safe—and closed—position. She might not have cared much for Rennick, but she shared his view about morning. And still got her butt out of bed on most days.

      “I’ll be good,” she told him in the darkness.

      “Tomorrow.”

      She nodded again and walked across the room, stepping around the piles of debris that littered it. She removed the stick that held her stubborn hair in place, and sank, fully clothed, into bed.

      “Sleep,” he told her. Just that.

      She wanted more. She wanted him to tell her that the bad dream would vanish in the sunlight, that she would wake up and the city would be sane, and Marcus would be chewing his lower lip and creating new gouges on his desktop while he moved offending paperwork out of the way.

      But she’d grown up in the fiefs, after all, and she knew that what she wanted and what she got had nothing, in the end, in common. She didn’t

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