As Mrs. Erickson said, the young man was with a young woman. They were both dark-haired, the hair color itself bright and natural; their eyes at this distance appeared to be brown. Were it not for Hope’s wing, Kaylin would have assumed they were oddly dressed but otherwise normal humans. She couldn’t hear them yet—she was uncertain that she’d be able to hear them at all—but could see that Mrs. Erickson had also been right about which of the two was chattier; it was the young woman who was now talking animatedly—she was one of those people who tended to use their whole body, especially their arms and hands, when speaking.
Remembering Mrs. Erickson’s reluctance to reply when alone, Kaylin, face masked in wing—which would probably draw attention here—quickly joined the old woman, standing by her side but a half step back. She didn’t want to frighten the ghosts.
It was clear that the ghosts could see Kaylin, and equally clear that they hadn’t expected to be seen by anyone who was not a friendly old woman; the girl stopped midmotion, which is to say her arms froze, when she glanced in Kaylin’s direction and their eyes met. To Kaylin’s surprise, all conversation stopped, and the young man immediately stepped between Kaylin and the young woman who had fallen silent.
“She means no harm,” Mrs. Erickson said, her voice soft, even soothing. “She’s the person I told you about—she’s the partner. She works for the Halls of Law. Look, you can see the tabard she’s wearing. It’s the Hawk. You might see similar tabards on other officers—usually Swords. It’s only the Wolf you might want to avoid.”
It bothered Kaylin that Mrs. Erickson was, in her gentle way, bad-mouthing the Wolves. If she’d been answering a question the young woman asked, it would be different.
Severn wouldn’t have cared. He certainly wouldn’t have corrected a harmless old woman. Given it was Severn, if his opinion had been sought at all, he might have agreed, or offered that friendly smile that never appeared to be the wall it actually was.
From Severn’s point of view, the Wolves being bogeymen was probably for the best; they were the Emperor’s final resort in dealing with dangerous criminals—criminals beyond the abilities of the Hawks and the Swords to safely and legally handle. The patina of fear or distrust the Wolves often engendered underlined their role: they were the last expedient of an angry Emperor. His executioners.
Except they were called his assassins. They were part of the reason people distrusted the Emperor. Well, that and if the Emperor truly lost his temper, he could set half the city ablaze without breaking a sweat. She considered the latter to be far more of a threat. The Wolves were the option before the Emperor really lost it. As such, they were the thin wall between Draconic fury and the people who, mostly mortal, occupied the city streets. They were valuable.
You didn’t like them either, that I recall. Severn had always been like this.
What, people aren’t allowed to change their minds? Kaylin did care about respect or, more pertinent, lack of respect. She had struggled most of her life to change that, to become more like Severn. So far, the attempts hadn’t been a raging success.
They are. You’re right about everything else. I know what we are and what we do—or did—and I see no reason to demand respect from people who don’t know.
Mrs. Erickson had, in the meantime, turned to Kaylin, a frown changing the contours of the lines time had etched in her face. The frown inched up her face as her silver brows drew together. “What is your pet doing?”
Kaylin lifted a hand to cover Hope’s mouth before the stream of squawking invective started. “He’s not exactly a pet,” she told Mrs. Erickson. “He’s a companion. A partner.” The squawking lowered in volume.
Mrs. Erickson’s expression changed to one of concern, which was ironic, given how often the old woman was on the receiving end of exactly that look. “Why is he holding his wing across your face?”
Kaylin exhaled. “It’s a kind of magical thing. Sometimes I can see things through the wing I can’t see otherwise.”
The old woman’s eyes rounded briefly as the implications sunk in. “You—you can see them?”
“I can see them—but only with the help of my companion.” She then turned toward the two, the girl still halfway hidden behind the young man. “I’m Corporal Neya, of the Imperial Hawks. You are?”
The man looked to Mrs. Erickson, but Mrs. Erickson was momentarily at a loss for words. It was clear he intended to wait until she found them again.
“As I told you, she’s a Hawk. It’s her job to look out for people like me.” Mrs. Erickson’s voice was quavery. “I...didn’t realize she’d be able to see you. No one else has ever been able to see any of the friends I’ve made who are...like you.”
This didn’t seem to comfort the young man; the young woman, however, had inched out from behind his back and was now more visible. What Kaylin heard in the older woman’s voice, she also heard, and her expression was complicated. If the young man didn’t care all that much for Mrs. Erickson, it was clear his friend did. She turned to look at Kaylin.
“I’m Amaldi,” she said quietly, in soft High Barrani. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Kaylin could hear her. Her voice was soft and yet somehow deep; if aural tones had been something as mundane as money, hers would have been worth a fortune, it was so rich in texture.
“I’m Corporal Neya, as I said.”
The man turned to look back at Amaldi, the line of his shoulders tense and slightly drawn in.
“Please,” Amaldi said, more edge in her tone. “If we had never been willing to take risks at all, we wouldn’t have Mrs. Erickson as a friend.”
“Mrs. Erickson obviously means us no harm.”
“Yes. And she brought the corporal to meet us.”
“Oh, no, dear. I didn’t expect she would ever be able to see you. The corporal wanted to ask a few questions, and she offered to accompany me. I was meant to be an interpreter or a translator—but I see I’m not needed.”
“What did she want to ask?” This was the young man again, his voice deeper than Kaylin would have expected, given his appearance—and exactly as friendly as he appeared, otherwise.
“I told her about the young man.”
Both Amaldi and her friend stiffened.
“I mean, I told her that you were worried about him. Corporal Neya is his partner. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the Hawks always have a partner. Hers is Corporal Handred. She seemed surprised that I knew who he was.”
Amaldi’s expression had shuttered, as if windows had been closed to fend off a coming storm. But she met Kaylin’s gaze and held it. “He is a...friend?”
“He’s my partner. Mrs. Erickson is right. Hawks don’t operate solo outside of the Halls of Law.” Instinctive trust warred with learned caution for one long breath. “Mrs. Erickson was the reason I came. When she was talking about my partner, she described his weapon chain as a belt. That’s fair—from a distance it looks like a decorative belt. It’s not normal beat issue for a Hawk.”
“I would hope not,” the young man snapped, entering a conversation he clearly thought should never have taken place. “Do people honestly think of it as a belt?”
“If they’ve never seen it in action? Sure they do. What else could it be?”
Amaldi winced, but this time, she stepped on her companion’s foot. It was an extremely familiar gesture. “You were concerned for Mrs. Erickson, then?”
“Yes. Mrs. Erickson made clear that what she saw when she looked at that belt wasn’t what anyone else sees. It’s clear she sees a lot of things that other people can’t, but I don’t want to get her involved in things that might be dangerous.”
“Then turn heel,” the man snapped, “and go back to wherever it is she found you. Leave this entire line of questioning alone.”
Amaldi’s expression was grim, but there was no fear in it; she was annoyed. “Darreno.” The syllables were a snap of sound that would have been at home in a sergeant’s throat—even Kaylin’s Leontine sergeant. “Please forgive my friend. He is concerned for Mrs. Erickson as well, but he’s entirely too clumsy when it comes to expressing it.
“It is true we noted your partner. We cannot, as we are, commit crimes that would be of concern—or even of note—to you. Or so we assumed. Mrs. Erickson is, we thought, singular. And if we have each other, it is hard to exist as a simple observer. There are advantages to our...condition, but we have had time to dwell on the disadvantages.
“We did not expect that any of you might be able to see us. But...Mrs. Erickson could. And she could speak with us. We took an interest in her because she could. She’s the only friend we have made...” She trailed off. Kaylin noted that the young woman’s Barrani was accented, but she couldn’t pin down the woman’s original language, assuming ghosts had one. She was definitely human in form.
Mrs. Erickson said, “It’s very difficult to be unseen. It’s difficult to see what no one else can see—on bad days, it makes me feel a bit dotty.” Her smile, however, belied that. “And you’ve always been so pleasant, dear. I think I might have felt lonely and entirely irrelevant if not for meeting people like you.”
The young woman turned to Kaylin. “Please accept my apologies for my companion’s manners.”
“He can apologize himself if he cares. I don’t find his protectiveness or caution offensive—I said a lot worse in my childhood.”
“I am not a child,” the man snapped.
Kaylin offered a very Hawk-like nod in response, which didn’t seem to improve his mood any. She hadn’t intended the comment to be an insult, but could see why he’d take it that way—and frankly, she wasn’t overly concerned. What was he going to do? File a report?
Mrs. Erickson cleared her throat in that particular way that immediately reminded Kaylin of Caitlin in the Halls. To the man Kaylin said, “I’m sorry. That didn’t come out the way I thought it would. I don’t think you’re a child; I only meant that I’ve done worse so I won’t take offense.”
He seemed to relax at what was, on the inside, a very grudging apology.
Kaylin understood why Mrs. Erickson felt self-conscious talking to ghosts in public, because Kaylin was drawing the kind of attention that usually caused people to give a person a very wide berth. Then again, some drew closer because of the familiar. On Elani street, the regulars had grown accustomed to Hope, and those that approached usually had money in hand in an attempt to buy him. They went away disappointed—or in one case, in high dudgeon because the young woman had offered so much money to a grubby Hawk, which had both angered Kaylin and slightly amused her.
Here, no one would likely have that kind of money to front; they might be thinking of stealing Hope. That wouldn’t work out well for them, and Kaylin had been told, in no uncertain terms, that even if the attempt was made it was Kaylin’s job to make certain they didn’t die after trying. She thought it unfair, but Marcus had made clear that petty theft wasn’t a capital offense. Kaylin privately thought that stupidity was—but she wasn’t in the fiefs, now; she was in Elantra.
The young man was staring at the familiar, youthful brow creased with lines that would melt away when his expression shifted. Almost against his will, he said, “What’s that?”
“His name is Hope, and I’ve been told he would have once been called a familiar.”
The young man blanched.
The young woman, however, frowned. “May I approach?” she asked, voice soft.
Kaylin, curious to see whether or not ghosts had the ability to actually touch anything, nodded. Hope squawked loudly in her ear, but it was a grumpy or annoyed squawk. More or less an echo of the many voices in her daily world, except he didn’t bother with actual syllables.
Amaldi walked through someone. They didn’t notice. She didn’t appear to notice much either, she was so focused on Hope. Darreno, had he required breath, would have been on the verge of passing out, he seemed to have held it for so long. He watched as she reached out, very slowly, to touch Hope.
Hope squawked again, and when her hand was in range, he bit her finger. She gasped and instantly drew back. Hope had drawn blood.
As far as blood went, it was about as deep a cut as a cranky cat who hated to be touched would make. Kaylin, however, knew that cat bites could cause a lot of problems for the bitee.
“I’m sorry,” she said, immediately lifting a hand to hold it between Hope’s small jaws and anyone else’s appendages. “He doesn’t usually do that.”
Amaldi smiled. She turned to her friend. “Darreno, look!”
He hadn’t looked away once. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’m bleeding!” she repeated, in an entirely different tone. Maybe being dead drove people crazy. She sounded as if she’d just been given an unexpected and miraculous gift. Darreno gave her a look that probably matched Kaylin’s.
The crowd that had gathered—moving slowly as if minding their own business—also stared at Amaldi.
Mrs. Erickson noticed immediately. “Amaldi,” she said, her voice just above a whisper.
Amaldi caught it anyway, and turned.
“People are staring. At you.”
Amaldi blinked, her arm frozen in midair, the shock of being bitten—and the delight in it—suspended. She blinked rapidly as Darreno rushed to her side, stepping in front of her as if to protect her from the curiosity—or the hostility—of strangers. No one could see him. Kaylin considered telling Hope to bite him as well, but Hope had never been the most compliant of companions.
If Kaylin thought the slowly moving stream of witnesses were surprised—and annoyed—by Amaldi, it was nothing compared to what happened next. Hope, with no word from Kaylin, withdrew his wing; she could no longer see Darreno, but could still see Amaldi clearly. She could therefore see the moment when Amaldi began to shimmer in place, limbs becoming translucent, transparent, and then nonexistent, followed swiftly by the rest of her body. People shouted, some screamed, and if milling witnesses were a bit annoying, panicked witnesses who now tried to run away through the rest of the people were far worse. She wasn’t a Sword, and technically, she wasn’t a Hawk either, being off duty and without a partner.
Mrs. Erickson was almost sent flying by someone who had come too close to Amaldi; Kaylin caught her before she went down on the cobbled street. She kept an arm around Mrs. Erickson while raising her voice.
I’m on it, she heard. Severn was close.
Hope replaced the wing across Kaylin’s eyes—this time without smacking her face with it first. Darreno had an arm around Amaldi; she was pressed against the side of his body, and he was glaring out at a world that could no longer see her.
As the crowd had been small, panic had lesser immediate effect. Kaylin’s tabard—and Severn’s—had more of one. They weren’t Swords, and they hadn’t had the Swords’ extensive training in crowd control, but Severn’s voice and presence had an almost immediate calming effect, something Kaylin’s hadn’t managed to achieve on its own. She tried not to resent this, which wasn’t as hard as it might otherwise have been, because she was thinking about how much trouble she was going to be in if things got further out of hand.
Hawk starts riot.
Amaldi’s utter absence wasn’t noted by newcomers or people who had failed to see her momentary solidity, and panic was replaced by a lot of head scratching and mutters about kids these days, even if some of the runners had been old enough to be Kaylin’s grandfather, whoever he was.
Severn came to stand by Kaylin’s side; he was also wearing his tabard. “Sorry I took so long.”
“Meetings always run long.”
He shrugged. Not a meeting he could discuss, then. He turned to Mrs. Erickson and extended a hand. She took it, but her expression was four parts worry to one part good manners, as she called them.
It was clear why. Both Amaldi and Darreno had frozen in place, as if so afraid to draw Severn’s attention they had chosen to mimic statues in the hope of being overlooked. He couldn’t see them.
“What happened?”
“I came to ask a few questions of Mrs. Erickson’s friends.”
His expression was perfectly neutral, as if Mrs. Erickson’s friends weren’t a matter of Halls of Law gossip. And Records.
“I came with her,” Mrs. Erickson said, as if attempting to defend Kaylin from Severn’s ire. Kaylin would have found it amusing had the older woman not looked so strained.
“She had to come. I can’t see her friends. Or I couldn’t without Hope.”
Something in the focus of his gaze changed. “You can see her friends?”
She nodded. He could, if necessary, see what Kaylin saw; he could listen—and clearly he had, because he’d come to join her. But she was never certain that he knew what she knew, the way the Barrani whose names she held did or could. “I can’t see anything if Hope removes his wing.”
There’s more, she added, afraid to spook the two not-actually-ghosts.
I know.
I think they recognize your weapon.
He nodded. “Have you asked the questions you came to ask?”
Not yet—I don’t think they’d answer anything even if I did. They seem terrified of you.
He didn’t find this as surprising as Kaylin had. It made her wonder what he did in the meetings he couldn’t talk about.
The two ghosts weren’t going to be engaging in dialogue now. She recognized the look; they were afraid of Severn. It was normal—if not useful—to have people be afraid of Hawks, especially if those Hawks were Barrani. The Barrani Hawks did play by the rules the Halls of Law set out—but no one trusted Barrani, and if Kaylin were honest, she considered this rational and intelligent. But Barrani in Hawk tabards were Hawks first, Barrani second.
Regardless, they viewed Severn as if he were Barrani, and at that, a powerful Barrani Lord with the usual regard for the lives of others.
Kaylin exhaled. “He can’t see you. He can’t hear you. He can’t touch you.”
Hope squawked.
“Fine. He can’t touch you without deliberate intervention on the part of my familiar—an intervention I give you my word will not happen again without your consent. My partner’s not here to hunt ghosts. He’s not here to...do whatever it is you’re afraid he’ll do. He’s mortal, like I am, and like you appear to have once been.
“I came here because Mrs. Erickson knows Severn is my partner. We’re both Imperial Hawks. We work at the Halls of Law. The Halls of Law enforce Imperial Laws. If the law is broken, there are consequences.”
“What are your laws?” Darreno demanded.
“Do you have five hours?”
Almost bitterly, Amaldi said, “We appear to have all the time in the world.”
“You’ve been people watching for a long time, haven’t you?”
Amaldi nodded.
“So—you’re aware that you’re a ghost in an Empire—and a city—ruled by a Dragon, right?”
“Ghosts are dead people,” Amaldi replied. “We’re not dead.”
There had been functionally no difference for a long time, in Kaylin’s opinion. But she didn’t argue because Hope had bitten the young woman, and for a single moment, she had been as solid and real as any other citizen on the street. “I wouldn’t have guessed that. Neither did Mrs. Erickson. Mrs. Erickson sees ghosts,” Kaylin added.
“We know. Sometimes she talks to people neither of us can see—but we aren’t sure if they’re...in the same situation we are. We don’t know. And we don’t want to cause trouble for her.”
Kaylin nodded. “You don’t need to eat or sleep?”
“We don’t need to eat. I think we sleep, sometimes? But if we do, time passes beyond us. No, we didn’t know the Empire is ruled by a Dragon.” She shook her head. “That’s going to take some time to get used to—which, as I mentioned, we have a lot of.” As she spoke, she walked straight up to Severn. And put an arm through his chest.
This seemed to satisfy her in some fashion—possibly because it made clear to her that Kaylin’s claim about Severn’s inability to see or interact with them was true.
“Mrs. Erickson was curious about your interest in my partner. She trusts the Hawks, so she didn’t entirely understand it—she thought possibly you were worried for him.” They were clearly worried in the other direction. “What exactly do you see when you look at him? Is it the weapon?”
They exchanged a glance. Amaldi was now offering her words with more care and far less animation. “How long have you known him?” she asked, countering Kaylin’s question with a question.
“I met him when I was five years old.”
“And how old was he then?”
Kaylin’s expression must have made clear that the question made little sense to her. She answered the surface of the words. “Ten. Or as close to ten as any orphan can determine. Why?”
“He was ten? You’re certain?”
“As close to certain as I can be.”
Darreno leaned over and whispered something to Amaldi that Kaylin’s strictly normal hearing couldn’t catch. Amaldi then turned to look at the crowd, which, given it was nearing end of day, was sparser. “Like that?”
“Like that, but a boy, yes.”
“And you saw him grow? The normal way?”
They noticed me for a reason. They’re clearly afraid. I’ve done nothing of note that should scare people I can’t see and can’t interact with.
Mrs. Erickson said they followed you; she asked because she could tell they were interested. I don’t think she realized they were afraid of you; I think she thought they were worried for you.
Mrs. Erickson is a trusting soul. Ask them about the weapon, if you can.
Kaylin wanted to know what in the hells they thought Severn was, but relented, as she’d come here to ask—through Mrs. Erickson—about the damn weapon.
“I saw him grow the normal way, yes. It was the way I grew but I started out younger.” Before Amaldi could speak, she continued, trying to keep the edge out of her voice. “My mother was my only parent. She died when I was five years old. If it hadn’t been for Severn, I’d’ve followed. He kept me safe from Ferals and from lack of a home. We struggled, but we struggled together.” She had folded her arms, and then loosened them.
Amaldi considered Kaylin, her gaze intent. “You trust him.”
“With my life.” Kaylin felt no need to make any possible exceptions clear, and besides, it wasn’t a lie—she trusted him with her life. But there had been things she’d valued more, things she’d have died to protect, and it was her life that had been his concern.
“Did he always have that weapon?”
“Not when we were growing up, no. That came later.”
“Do you know how he came by it?”
“No.”
“And he’s never told you?”
“I’ve never asked. Look—I trust him, but I don’t own him. He has responsibilities that aren’t mine. If he wanted me to know, he’d tell me; if he didn’t want me to know, he didn’t think it would cause trouble for me.”
“Then he hasn’t made something clear to you.”
“I just said—”
“He cannot be what you are and wield those weapons. They were not meant for people like us.”