Cast in Flight by Michelle Sagara
“Not convincingly, no. If you insist, however, I will try.”
“Never mind. Evanton’s really cranky in the morning, you know that?”
“I thought you believed he was always cranky.”
“Only at me.”
Chapter 16
The good news for the morning was that the Emperor’s decision to deny the remand had not quite reached the Aerian Caste Court in time for them to really martial their forces of assassination. This meant the walk to work was theoretically as safe as yesterday’s. A remand to the Imperial Courts would probably change that, but Kaylin wasn’t certain how.
It did make her uneasy.
The bad news for the morning was that Evanton was not awake by the time Moran had marched them to his front door. Grethan was, poor sod, but he greeted the guests with both respect and bleary-eyed affection. Well, the affection part was mostly aimed at the familiar, who, as usual, leapt off Kaylin’s shoulder at the first opportunity to land on the apprentice, chattering away in his happy squawk, as opposed to his outraged one.
“Evanton’s asleep?” Kaylin asked, perhaps a shade too eagerly.
Teela and Tain had shown up at the house, as had Severn. They all understood that they were the unspoken bodyguard while Moran traveled to—and from—the Halls. Evanton’s doorway was therefore crowded with Bellusdeo, the Barrani, the Aerian and the two human Hawks. It was practically a racial congress; all they needed was a Leontine, given Grethan was Tha’alani.
“Not anymore,” Grethan replied apologetically. “Normally I’d let him sleep—but he seemed to be expecting someone this morning, and made sure I knew to wake him up.”
Kaylin’s wince was genuine. “I don’t envy you.”
“It’s all right,” was the surprisingly cheerful reply. “I’m not the person he’s going to be annoyed at.”
* * *
Grethan didn’t usher them into Evanton’s unofficial office—the kitchen—because there wasn’t enough room. He left them in the second half of the storefront. It was about as clean as it had been the first time she’d been ushered into Evanton’s presence—some of the cobwebs were old friends. They hadn’t, as far as she could see, accrued more dust over time, but they certainly hadn’t shed any of it, either.
Evanton could be heard clumping his way down the stairs. Which meant he was using a cane. He didn’t always require one, but said he found them useful to maintain his balance when he’d had a particularly trying day—which generally meant he’d been arguing with the wild elements in his garden.
He paused in the doorway. His face, always lined and imprinted with age, was pinched. “I see,” he said, clinging to his cane as if it would help him hold on to his temper. “It’s a busy morning.” He glared at Kaylin. Of course he did. “What have I told you about me and mornings?”
“I’ve come here in the morning before.”
“Not before you start work. This is practically assault, and you’re a Hawk.” To Teela he added, just as sourly, “You, at least, should know better.”
Teela’s smile was genuine; she was amused. Then again, the Barrani didn’t technically require sleep, which made them enormously smug around races that did.
Evanton’s crankiness bounced right off Teela, and hit Kaylin in the side of the figurative head. “You’re not a morning person, yourself.”
She really wasn’t. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“Imagine how much that comforts a tired, exhausted old man.”
“Her imagination is not that good,” Teela told Evanton. “I believe you’re acquainted with everyone currently in the room.”
“You are incorrect,” Evanton snapped. He really was in a mood. Grethan had—as he so often did when Evanton was like this—vanished. He’d taken small and squawky with him.
Kaylin exhaled. “Evanton, this is Moran. Moran, Evanton.”
Moran was staring at the old man, her mouth half-open. She hadn’t spoken a single word since she’d entered his shop. In and of itself, this wasn’t unusual; Moran wasn’t big with words and used them sparingly—unless she was angry, in which case she could curse like a Hawk. She wasn’t angry now.
“Moran? Moran dar Carafel?” Evanton asked. He was good, Kaylin thought. If she hadn’t known better, she would have said he hadn’t actually recognized her.
Moran stiffened at the use of her flight name—no surprise there. “It was my idea to come this early in the morning; please don’t be angry with Kaylin or Teela.”
“I am not angry; I am merely annoyed. And underslept. Kaylin is not notable for her observational skills if there has been no technical crime, or if the crime itself is largely social in nature.” He offered Moran a formal bow, which was a surprise. “Illumen praevolo.”
* * *
Moran returned the bow after another pause, in which her eyes lost their purple and returned to a more natural Aerian gray. With blue in it.
“You wished to speak with me.”
“Yes, I did.” She shook herself free of whatever it was she’d seen to distract her, and returned—with the force of a sergeant—to the job at hand. “One of your clients is a woman named Lillias.”
Evanton gave Kaylin the side-eye, but didn’t deny it.
“I’m sorry—the Emperor wanted to know, and I don’t tell the Emperor to get stuffed.” But that was mostly a lie. Moran had wanted to know.
“Did you not stop to consider that perhaps Lillias did not wish to be known? Did you give her gift to the praevolo?”
“No.”
“I wouldn’t take it,” Moran said, picking up the answer before Kaylin could fumble it. “I haven’t seen Lillias in years. I was told that she had passed away.”
“You did not believe it.”
“Oh, I believed it.” Moran’s eyes were definitely blue now. “Death might have been kinder.”
“Might it? You yourself cannot fly, or so I have been told. Would you prefer death?”
“On some days? Yes.”
Silence.
Evanton cleared his throat. “You are younger than you look, praevolo. If you desired flight, I am certain that Kaylin could heal your wing. She has healed more difficult injuries before, and the healing is harder the farther out from the original injury. You have not elected to do so.”
Moran said nothing.
“Why do you wish to speak with Lillias?”
Moran said more nothing.
“If you cannot answer that simple question, I am afraid I will send you on to your day’s work, while I go back to bed.”
* * *
“She saved my life,” Moran said. The words sounded as if they were being pulled out of her mouth by main force. “She saved my life when I was young. I should have died. I would have died. My grandmother did.”
“Ah.”
“I wasn’t old enough to understand the politics. I wasn’t old enough to understand the need for adoption. I wasn’t old enough to understand legitimacy, or more precisely, illegitimacy. I’m not sure I truly understood what had happened. Lillias grabbed me and flew.”
“To where?”
“To the ground. To the ground far beneath the Southern Reach. I want to speak with her because—” She paused. “I want to apologize to her.”
“For that, I will not break my own rules of good business.” He was frowning at Moran as if she were Kaylin in disguise. “You will have to do better, Sergeant.”
Moran looked almost as helpless in the face of Evanton as Kaylin felt in the face of most of life. It didn’t last. She shoved her inner sergeant to the forefront, straightened her back, her shoulders, the fall of her wings—even the injured one—and said, “I want to thank her.”
Evanton smiled then. “For?”
“For all of the obvious reasons. For saving
“In order for that to have value, you must consider your own life to have worth. Do you understand?”
She exhaled. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. As you can imagine, I cannot snap my fingers and immediately produce Lillias. But if you will return to my store at closing time she will be here—if she is willing to meet you at all.” As Kaylin drew breath to speak, Evanton said, “Lillias accepts what was done to her, inasmuch as she can. She can pass for human if she is calm, and she has managed to do so. But she avoids Aerians; she wants neither their pity nor her own fear of being lesser, being mutilated.
“Your sergeant is the Aerian she most reveres; to appear before her when she herself is wingless will take a great deal of determination and courage—and I am not entirely certain she has either in her. She would consider it humiliating.”
Moran flinched over different words in Evanton’s sentence. “She shouldn’t,” was her flat reply at the end.
“No, she should not. But if a Hawk loses his or her right arm—or leg—they are no longer fit for active duty. Although they once shared the same responsibilities and risks as the rest of the Hawks, they might consider being with Hawks to be an emphasis of everything they have lost.” He was looking at Kaylin as he spoke. “Some people will see what they aren’t. They will pity them for it; they will see nothing but the loss.”
He meant Kaylin.
“And some people pretend that they’ve lost nothing,” the private countered.
“Indeed. And that is difficult in a different way. Why? Because neither of them involve seeing the actual person as he or she is now. I am not saying that it is a simple problem; it should be, but people complicate everything they’re involved in. Lillias has lived a great deal of her life on the ground. She has not committed suicide. She has lost the use of her wings—as you yourself might, Moran, if you continue to be stubborn—and the loss was an experience that devastated her. She chose, as she could, to heal.
“I will not have you consider her as only the sum of her injuries. Do you both understand?”
Kaylin froze. Moran said nothing.
To Kaylin, Evanton continued, “Your mother died when you were five. Five years old in the fiefs, I believe?”
Kaylin nodded. She wasn’t certain where this was going, but could guess that she probably wouldn’t like it.
“If every single human you met looked at you with horror, called you a ‘poor dear’ and treated you like an orphaned child now, would you be fine with that?”
“No!” She stopped. “...No.”
“You will probably be more of a disaster in that meeting than your sergeant. Your sergeant’s sense of guilt and responsibility is too personal, true, but she is older. You have daydreamed of having wings—and flight—since I first met you. Understand that these are daydreams. You have also daydreamed of great wealth—but you do not pity those that are not greatly wealthy. Do not pity those who cannot fly, even if they once could. Flight did not make them safe. Flight is not, in and of itself, ennobling—as I am sure you are discovering in the current, somewhat charged political arena. And now, I am going back to bed.”
He put action to the words and left them all in the store without another word.
* * *
They made their way to the Halls of Law. Kaylin was silent as she considered Evanton’s words—and his particular example.
“What are you thinking?” Teela demanded, elbowing her in the ribs to get her attention.
“I’m thinking that you almost knocked me over.” Which was true. She righted herself as her familiar started to chew her hair. “And I’m thinking that Evanton was right. Or is right.”
“Oh?”
“This grown-up thing? It’s hard.” Teela looked both amused and slightly surprised. Kaylin latched on to the latter. “Is there something on my face?”
“No. It’s just the first time I’ve ever heard you imply that you’re not a grown-up. Tain?”
“There’s a first for everything.”
It was Moran who said, “You weren’t the only one he was disappointed in, and I don’t have half your excuses.” Her smile was wan. “I think he meant to imply that what I want from Lillias is absolution.” At Kaylin’s expression, she added, “Forgiveness. My mother died. My grandmother died. I thought Lillias had died. All of them, because I exist. My mother and grandmother have nothing left to give me, no matter how much I think I need it. Lillias might—but Evanton’s right.” She grimaced. “It’s been years since I’ve been lectured like that. I felt like I was four years old again.”
“Me, too.”
“So—it is hard, this grown-up thing, yes. But the alternative is not acceptable, either.”
* * *
The discussion of their relative immaturity stopped by unspoken agreement well before they reached the Halls of Law, but Kaylin looked up frequently. The Aerian Hawks were on the move; they were flying in tight formations, practicing aerial drills. They didn’t appear to notice the people passing beneath them, but Kaylin figured there’d be a test at the end of the day. They couldn’t be Hawks and fail to note the significant things.
Then again, she’d never been directly under an Aerian corporal or sergeant. Moran’s infirmary was staffed by Hawks, which made it part of the Hawks—in theory. In practice, the Swords used it, as well.
Clint and Tanner were on duty at the door. Clint said something inaudible—at least to the mortals present—to Tanner, set his polearm against the nearest stretch of wall and then leapt down the stairs in a bound that used wings.
He landed in front of Moran. He landed almost on one knee. It was impressive, and Kaylin wondered if any of the Aerians learning their drills above them had seen it, noted it, marked it.
Moran said something in Aerian. Kaylin didn’t actually recognize the word or phrase. Although she understood most day-to-day Aerian, she knew she was missing something cultural. And knew as well that it wasn’t taught in racial integration classes.
Clint replied. He replied, however, in Elantran. “Praevolo. We are yours to command.”
“Technically,” Moran replied, sliding into Elantran as well, “you’re the Hawklord’s to command. When I walk through those doors, I’m a Hawk.” She didn’t tell him to stand. She spoke to his bent head.
He raised that head and met her gaze. “While you wear those robes, you are praevolo.”
“I’m praevolo regardless,” Moran countered. “You’ve always known it.”
Clint shook his head. “You were born with the wings. You were not—you were never willing to acknowledge what that means. Until now.”
“It changes nothing,” Moran told him.
Clint’s eyes were a pale, steady blue. They weren’t angry blue, though; in the light, if one weren’t careful, they’d seem closer to ash gray. “It changes everything.”
“It doesn’t. The risk to you—and to your families—remains the same. In the current climate, it isn’t safe.”
“If it was safety we wanted, we would never have joined the Hawks. We would never have sworn to surrender our lives in the attempt to uphold and enforce the Emperor’s laws. You are praevolo, now. Even those who doubted before have fallen silent. You are our flight.”
Moran motioned, and Clint rose. “I don’t want anyone to sacrifice their lives in anything but pursuit of the law.”
“That decision is not yours to make,” he countered.
“If you are mine to command, yes, it is.”
He grinned, his teeth a slash of even, perfect white. “How long have you been a Hawk? You understand exactly how command works behind those doors.”
Kaylin shrugged. Clint was right. Marcus was technically in charge; the Hawklord was technically the ultimate authority. But Hawks since the dawn of time, or at least the star
People, she thought, just were not good at blind obedience.
Moran surprised Kaylin; she smiled. It was rueful, but genuine. “Fair enough.”
* * *
The tenor of Aerian interactions within the Halls of Law had changed; Clint wasn’t the only one who seemed affected by Moran’s decision. The very colorful dress that Moran wore looked entirely out of place in the office; even with the Hawk’s tabard hanging over most of it, it couldn’t be disguised. Nor did Moran make that attempt. She was as good as her word; when Bellusdeo preceded her into the infirmary, she shooed the rest of her unofficial bodyguard away.
The familiar screamed.
Moran stared at him, her eyes beginning to widen, as Kaylin, obeying instincts she hadn’t realized she’d developed, turned back toward the Aerian sergeant, and leapt—literally leapt—the distance that divided them. Her hair had time to stand on end, and her skin felt as if it were being flayed from the rest of her in one damn piece.
As the door opened and the world exploded in a flash of painful, painful color, Kaylin’s ridiculous first thought was Marcus is going to be so pissed off.
* * *
The familiar’s golden bubble extended to cover only Severn and the Aerian. Bellusdeo was beyond its range, as were the Barrani corporals. They were thrown back—Bellusdeo into Kaylin and Moran, Teela and Tain down the hall. There was a moment of silence—the kind of silence that happens in the wake of something loud—and then noise returned, at a remove.
Teela was already on her feet, her eyes midnight blue. Tain was half a step behind her—but Teela had always had the best reflexes on the Barrani side of the department. Their tabards and their leathers were going to need either major cleaning or repairs.
Bellusdeo’s clothing was going to require complete replacement. She shed it without much regret, armoring up instead; the scales that adorned her Dragon body became small plates behind which the human form could shelter. All Dragons could do this—and were generally forced to it if they’d chosen to adopt their Draconic shape without enough preparation or warning.