LITMIR.BIZ

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of the Tha’alani, and she hated it. It was different in all ways from the distant observation of the Hawklord; it was full of terror, of pain, of the inability to acknowledge or deny either.

      She stumbled in the streets, and her arms ached; she was carrying something. No, he was, whoever he was. He stumbled along the busy streets; the sun was high. Some people watched him from a distance, open curiosity mixed with dread in their unfamiliar—blessedly so—faces. None approached. None offered him aid with the burden he bore. And when his strength at last gave out, when his knees bent, when his arms unlocked in a shudder that spoke of effort, of time, she saw why; saw it from his eyes.

      A body rolled down his lap, bloody, devoid of life.

      He screamed, then. A name, over and over, as if the name were a summons, as if it contained the power to command life to return.

      But watching now as a Hawk, watching as someone trained to know death and its causes, Kaylin knew that it was futile.

      The boy—ten years of age, maybe twelve—had been disemboweled. His arms hung slack by his sides, and she could see, from wrist to elbow, the black tattoos that had been painted there, indelible, in flesh.

      She had seen them before. She knew that it wasn’t only his arms that bore those marks; his inner thighs would bear them, too.

      She screamed.

      And Severn screamed in quick succession as she inexplicably lost contact with the gem.

      Her hands were blistered; her skin was broken along the lines of the rigid crystal. And so were Severn’s. He dropped the crystal instantly and it hit the table with a thunk, fastening itself to the wooden surface.

      She thought it should roll.

      It was a stupid thought.

      “What are you doing?” She shouted at Severn, the words ground through clenched teeth, the pain in her hands making her stupid.

      “Prying the gem away from you,” he snapped back, composure momentarily forgotten.

      “Why?”

      He shrugged. The shrug, which started at his shoulder, ended in a shudder. “You didn’t like what you were looking at,” he added quietly.

      “And it matters?”

      “Yes.”

      “Why?”

      He didn’t answer.

      “That was brave,” Tiamaris said, speaking for the first time. “And very, very foolish. The Hawklord must have gone to some expense to create this crystal. It is … obviously unusual. Kaylin?”

      She shook her head. Actually, she just shook. She wanted to touch the gem again, and she wanted to destroy it. Torn between the two—the one an imperative and the other an impossibility—she was frozen.

      Tiamaris said quietly, “I owe you a debt.” The words were grave. His eyes had edged from red to gold, and the gold was liquid light.

      “Debt?”

      “I would have taken the gem. It would have been … unwise. It appears that the Hawklord trusts you, Kaylin. And it would appear,” he added, with just the hint of a dark smile, “that that trust does not extend to his newest recruits.”

      But Severn refused to be drawn into the conversation; he was staring at Kaylin. His own hands had started to swell and blister.

      “Did you see it?” she asked him, all enmity momentarily forgotten. He was Severn, she was Elianne, and the streets of the fiefs had become that most impossible of things: more terrifying than either had ever thought possible.

      He shook his head. “No,” he said, devoid now of arrogance or ease. “But I know what you saw.”

      “How?”

      “I’ve only heard you scream that way once in your life,” he replied. He lifted a hand, as if to touch her, and she shied away instantly, her hand falling to her dagger hilt. To one of many.

      He accepted her rejection as if it hadn’t happened. “I was there, back then,” he added quietly. “I saw it too. It’s happening again, isn’t it?”

      She closed her eyes. After a moment, eyes still closed, she rolled up her sleeves, exposing the length of arm from wrist to elbow.

      There, in black lines, in an elegant and menacing swirl, were tattoos that were almost twin to the ones upon the dead boy’s arms.

      She was surprised when someone touched her wrist, and her eyes jerked open.

      But Tiamaris held the wrist in a grip that could probably crush bone with little effort. Funny, how human his hands looked. How human they weren’t.

      She tried to pull away. He didn’t appear to notice.

      But his eyes flickered as she drew a dagger out of its sheath with her free hand. She’d moved slowly, and the daggers made no sound—but he was instantly aware of them.

      “I wouldn’t, if I were you. Lord Grammayre is not known for his tolerance of fighting among his own.”

      “Let go,” she whispered.

      He didn’t appear to have heard her. “Do you know what these markings mean?” He asked. His inner eye membrane had risen, lending opacity to the sudden fire of his eyes.

      “Death,” she whispered.

      “Yes,” he replied. He studied them with care, and after a moment, she realized he was reading them. “They mean death. But that is not all they mean, Kaylin of the Hawks.”

      “This isn’t—this isn’t Dragon.”

      “No. It is far older than Dragon, as you so quaintly call our tongue.”

      “Barrani?”

      His lip curled in open disdain.

      “I’ll take that as a no.” She hesitated. These patterns had been with her since she had gained the age of ten, a significant age in the fiefs. Not many children survived that long when they’d lost their parents.

      “Where did you get these?”

      “In Nightshade,” she whispered.

      “Who put them upon you? Who marked you thus?”

      It was Severn who answered. “No one.”

      “Impossible.”

      “I saw them,” Severn replied. “I saw them … grow. We all did. They started one morning in Winter.”

      “On what day?”

      “The shortest one.”

      Tiamaris said nothing. She wanted him to continue to say nothing, but he opened his mouth anyway. “I saw the bodies,” he said at last. “And the tattoos of the dead did not just, as you say, ‘start.’ They were put there, and at some cost.”

      “Not hers,” Severn said quietly.

      Tiamaris frowned. “There is something here,” he said at last, “that even I cannot read.”

      “Do you—do you know someone who can?”

      “Only one,” Tiamaris replied, “and it would not be safe for you to ask him.”

      “Why?”

      “He would probably take both arms.”

      Severn said, “He could try.” And his long dagger was suddenly in his hand.

      Kaylin looked at it. Looked at Severn. Understood nothing at all. “How do you know how to read this?” she whispered.

      “I am considered a scholar,” was his cautious reply. “I dabble in the antiquities.”

      Which meant magery. She didn’t bother to ask.

      “Let

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