LITMIR.BIZ

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Startlingly beautiful to the eye, they were cold as crackling ice to the ear, and their tall, slender bodies radiated that I-can-kill-you-before-you-can-blink confidence that was, in fact, no act.

      Evanton, to his credit, had been neither offended nor frightened. In fact, his first words had been, “Yes, yes, I know the drill, Officer.” And his second: “You’re on the young side for a Hawk. So take my advice, for what it’s worth. You should pay more attention to the company you keep. People will judge you by it, mark my words.”

      He generally had a lot of words he wanted marked.

      Which had caused Teela to grimace. And Tain, her beat partner, to laugh.

      As for the enchantment, he’d approved of it. “Most people who come here want something to make them look prettier,” he’d said, with obvious contempt. “Or younger. Or smarter. This, this is practical.”

      She had never asked Evanton if he had ever belonged to the Imperial Order of Mages; there wasn’t much point. If he had, he’d managed to get out the unusual way—he wasn’t in a coffin. Although to Kaylin’s youthful eye, he looked as if he should have been. His hair was the color of blinding light off still water, and his skin was like wrinkled leather; he was almost skeletal, and his work—or so he said—demanded so much attention he was continuously bent over in a stoop. She had been certain, the first time she saw him, that he would break if she forced him to straighten up.

      But still … she liked him. So she frowned. “What kind of a disturbance?”

      “That, I think, is what you’re there to ascertain.” He paused. “Are you waiting for something?”

      “No, sir.”

      “Good. Get lost.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Corporal?”

      Severn nodded.

      “Make sure that she understands that ‘get lost’ in this case isn’t literal.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “What I want to know,” Private Kaylin Neya said, not quite stomping her feet as she marched down the streets, “is why no one calls you Lord Severn.”

      The corporal—which rank still annoyed Kaylin, and yes, she knew it was petty—shrugged. “Because it doesn’t bother me,” he replied.

      “It didn’t bother me when the Barrani called me Lord Kaylin,” she said sourly.

      He laughed. He kept an easy pace with her march, given the difference in the length of their strides, and her mood—which could charitably be described as not very good—seemed to cheer him immensely.

      “What’s so funny?”

      “It bothered you enough to cause you to point out that no one called Teela Lord.”

      She waved a hand dismissively. “It wasn’t the Barrani,” she insisted. “But when Marcus started—”

      “The entire office, you mean?”

      “The entire office follows Marcus’s lead, except when he’s chewing through his desk.” Which was only partly a figurative description of an angry Leontine officer. Leontine fur, when it stood on end, was impressive; Leontine jaws, massive, boasted teeth that were easily capable of rendering most throats not quite useful for things like breathing—but most of the danger they could offer came from their massive, and usually sheathed, claws.

      Marcus’s desk was a testament to how often he lost his temper.

      “If you give it a few days,” Severn told her, “it’ll pass.”

      She snorted. “Sanabalis started it.”

      “Lord Sanabalis.”

      “That’s not what I call him.”

      “It is, however, what everyone else calls him, and what you’d like to call him at the moment would be … ill advised. You’re his student, he has graciously agreed to continue to tutor you, and you both know that your career depends on whether or not he decides to actually pass you.” He didn’t add that in this case career and life were the same thing. He didn’t need to. Kaylin had a magic that not even the most august of the Imperial scholars understood, and if it had been a weak magic, it wouldn’t have mattered—much. But it was strong enough to withstand the full breath of a dragon in his true form. Strong enough to make a hole in a thick stone wall that was wider across than Severn. Strong enough to heal the dying.

      And the Emperor was in possession of all these facts, and more. Kaylin’s glance strayed a moment to her arms; the length of her sleeves all but hid the dark marks that were tattooed there, in whirls and strokes, as if she were parchment, and they were the scattered telling of a story that was ancient before history began.

      Her powers and these marks had arrived almost at the same time, in the winter world of the fiefs, where only the desperate and the criminals lived. Funny, that the fiefs should lie so precisely at the heart of the city.

      “Kaylin.”

      She looked up, and realized that Severn had been speaking. Dragged her eyes from sleeves that weren’t all that interesting, anyway, and nodded.

      “Lord Sanabalis might be unusual for a Dragon, but he is a Dragon.” He paused a moment, and as Kaylin realized she was losing him and pulled up short, he added, “He meant it as a gesture of respect, Kaylin.”

      “I don’t need that kind of respect. And anyway, no one else means it that way.”

      “Well, no. But they’re Hawks. You expected different?”

      She started walking again. “What are the odds?”

      “Which betting pool?”

      “Mine.”

      “Four days,” he said cheerfully, “before you lose your temper and try to break something over someone’s head.”

      “Any bets as to whose?”

      “Some.”

      “Name names.”

      He laughed. “I’ve got money riding on it.”

      “Figures.” She almost paused at the stall of a baker who was known to be friendly to the Hawks or the Swords. Almost. The coin in her pocket would probably last her another three days if she didn’t bother with food. And less than the afternoon if she did; if the baker was friendly, she wasn’t stupid.

      “If you’re betting on the Sharks,” Severn said, stopping by her side, “it’s no big surprise you’re always so broke. Good morning, Mrs. Whitmore. We’d like a half-dozen of the buns.”

      Hunger versus pride wasn’t much of a struggle; she let Severn buy breakfast, because that was what it was. She’d been keeping company with the midwives the past two nights and it showed. The circles under her eyes accentuated her mood. But it was a good sort of bad—no one had died, no mothers, and no babies. And she had spent time helping to lick the fur of a sole Leontine cub clean.

      She still had hair in her mouth. But she was aware of the singular honor offered her by the mother: the willingness to let a stranger near the helpless, mewling cub. It was a gesture not only of trust, but of respect, and it was also a request that Leontine women seldom made.

      The mother had watched as Kaylin’s entirely inadequate human tongue had, in a ritual way, licked some of the birthing fluid from the cubling’s closed, delicately veined lids. Kaylin’s stomach was not up to the task of more, but more wasn’t required; she handled the infant with care, marveling at the fine, fine hair that covered him. It was a pale gray, with a spattering of white streaks—these would fade into the Leontine gold she best knew with time. But the birth colors were considered important to the Leontine. And these were not bad colors.

      It wasn’t all that often that she was called into

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