Kaylin entered the foyer. She wasn’t particularly surprised to see Mandoran at the height of the stairs that led, in the end, to the rooms all of Helen’s tenants and guests occupied. He was usually the bridge between Sedarias and everyone else.
“If it weren’t for Teela’s reaction,” he said, folding his arms and half sitting on the stair railing, “no one would be concerned. Whoever Azoria was, she isn’t the only person to own human domiciles.”
“And by person, you mean Barrani.”
He winced. “Yes, I did. Sorry.”
“Never mind. When you say Sedarias is concerned, I take it you don’t mean she’s sitting in her room fretting.”
“Oh, she is. But that’s not all she’s doing.”
Kaylin very much wanted Sedarias to be Teela’s problem. Or anyone else’s. She and Sedarias didn’t have business which overlapped often, and at the moment, Kaylin was grateful for that.
“She wasn’t in her room this morning. Two guesses where she went.”
“Can I maybe have the rest of this discussion in the dining room? I’m hungry.”
“Fine.”
The dining room was almost uninhabited; the table was therefore much smaller than it was when the cohort—or those parts that could be bothered—were in full attendance. Mandoran and Terrano had joined Kaylin.
“Teela’s on the way,” the latter said cheerfully.
Mandoran rolled his eyes.
“Is Teela on the way to speak to me, or Sedarias?”
“Does it matter?”
“Kind of—I have to work with her.”
“Both, I think. She’s not happy.”
“Figures. I want to note for the record that I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Neither has Sedarias,” Mandoran said, his tone more serious than Terrano’s. “She visited the Mellarionne rooms in the High Halls, and spoke with a few of her family’s supporters.”
“This would be after Teela’s surprise?”
Mandoran nodded. “Teela didn’t wish to discuss Azoria An’Berranin. Sedarias did. She therefore chose to approach those who serve her line with a request for information. Those she tasked with investigation weren’t familiar with the name.”
“But Teela is.”
Mandoran nodded.
Kaylin chewed on both food and thought for a bit. “Which means Azoria is old.”
“Very, in my opinion.” This was Terrano. “I don’t think Sedarias was counting on ignorance. Now she’s annoyed.”
“Annoyed?”
“She dislikes being ignorant of significant events, and Teela’s reaction made clear that some significant event surrounds this Azoria. Don’t worry—if Teela won’t talk about it, we will.” He winced. Sedarias clearly didn’t agree.
Neither did Teela.
Although Teela wasn’t one of Helen’s guests, she’d stayed with Helen before, and she was part of the cohort. It would never occur to Helen to keep Teela out. Nor would it occur to her to give much in the way of warning, given the presence of Mandoran and Terrano.
The Barrani Hawk walked into the dining room. Before she took a seat—if she intended to—she said, “Drop all parts of the investigation that have anything to do with Azoria.” When Kaylin failed to answer, she amended her previous demand. “Drop the investigation entirely.”
Mandoran grimaced. “Not the way to go about asking, Teela.”
Teela ignored him, her gaze welded to Kaylin’s as Kaylin leaned back into her chair and folded her arms.
“I can’t.”
“It’s a cold case—a very cold case, given the age of Records. It’s not part of your job. It’s not a duty assigned you. You can drop the investigation, and it’s in your best interests to do exactly that.” Had anyone else spoken the words, they might have been a threat. There was no threat in Teela’s voice.
“I can’t,” Kaylin repeated. “The ghosts are children.”
Teela raised a single brow. “Children who are already dead.”
Kaylin nodded, as they wouldn’t be ghosts otherwise. “They’ve been trapped in Mrs. Erickson’s house since before Mrs. Erickson was born. She saw them when she was a baby, a child, and an adult. She saw them after her husband died and she was left a widow. She’s old, and she’s the only person who could see them, until now.”
“Until you.”
Kaylin nodded. “I think it’s the marks, but it doesn’t matter. They can’t leave the house, and I’m not moving in there when Mrs. Erickson dies. Jamal—the kid who can physically throw things when he’s having a tantrum—hates visitors because he knows Mrs. Erickson isn’t going to be around for much longer, and he wants whatever time she has left.
“Part of the reason she visits the Halls of Law is to have stories about her day she can tell the kids. And I think the reason she’s afraid of dying is the kids. They’re trapped there.
“Look—I have these marks. I’ve seen a dead person before. I think the marks freed him. I think the reason I can see the kids is...I’m meant to free them. And it would bring Mrs. Erickson peace of mind, which she deserves.”
“Fine. That has nothing to do with Azoria. Figure out how to free the ghosts. Leave Azoria out of it. Azoria is dead. Her entire line was excised.”
Terrano whistled, which did nothing to lighten Teela’s mood.
“Dead? You’re certain?”
“As certain as I can be, yes.”
“How long ago?” Given the ignorance of Sedarias’s Barrani agents, it had to be a while. Which, given her name on Imperial property taxation Records, didn’t line up.
“Long ago,” Teela replied. “Long enough that the second Draco-Barrani war hadn’t started yet.”
“So—when you were a child.”
“Yes.”
“How do you even know the name, then?”
“I was a child in the High Halls,” Teela replied, her expression a wall.
“But I think Azoria is somehow tied into the fate of those children. If not Azoria, then someone who somehow made use of whatever it was she was studying. And I think whatever it was was not good.”
“You are making entirely too many intellectual leaps based on almost no information.”
Mandoran said, “How’s that different from what she usually does?”
“I wouldn’t make the leap at all if it weren’t for two facts. One: Azoria owned 14 Orbonne Street. Not fourteen and a half. Two: number fourteen is missing, Teela. It doesn’t exist. It’s not just the renumbered neighbor’s house on either side. It did exist; it was in the city tax Records. It doesn’t exist now. Instead we have fourteen and a half. Which is where Mrs. Erickson lives. And the children who are ghosts who somehow didn’t die until fifteen years after they theoretically escaped the damn house.”
“They escaped fourteen and a half.”
“We don’t know that. According to Records, fourteen and a half didn’t exist when any of the four were executed. I might be able to ignore things if it weren’t for the disappearance of a house and its lot. But if she was a dangerous Arcanist, and if she was doing her research in the human part of town, then the children may well have had something to do with the ill effects of that research.
“And I can’t do anything until I know whether or not that’s the case. I can’t determine whether or not that’s the case without more information.” Kaylin folded her arms. “And I’m not going to give up or look the other way. If I could think of some way to free those children without any research at all, I’d do it.”
Teela was utterly silent.
Mandoran said, out loud, “She’s the Chosen. You all go on about how she doesn’t do anything with her marks—”
“I heal.”
“—and it seems clear to some of us that this is something she’s supposed to do with the marks. This is part of being the Chosen.” Mandoran grimaced; Teela turned a very dark blue glare on him. He was clearly more comfortable with this than Kaylin would have been. “What? She’s here, and she’s the one it involves and someone won’t let me share my own name with her so we could avoid the whole talking-out-loud-in-person thing. She’s going to keep doing research unless Teela can convince her boss to nix it.
“Even if she can—and I allow for the possibility—she’s just going to move the investigation to her personal time. If the Emperor forbids the investigation, she’ll be stuck—but I’m not thinking the Emperor is someone any Barrani of note is going to approach. It makes more sense for us to help her figure it out—quickly—so that we can put it all behind us.” He turned to Kaylin. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything else you shouldn’t be investigating?”
“Not yet. But some of Mrs. Erickson’s ghosts aren’t actual ghosts, in my opinion.”
Mandoran smacked his own forehead. “Can we forget I asked that question?”
“Kaylin probably can, given a decade. You know the rest of us won’t.” Teela slowly relaxed, the tension leaving the line of her jaws and shoulders. “You might as well tell them the rest, kitling. Terrano—at the very least—will make a pest of himself otherwise.”
“That’s unkind, dear,” Helen’s disembodied voice said.
Teela stayed for dinner. The cohort—those in residence—came down to eat. The table elongating made it clear they would. But the table was silent; the cohorts’ shifting facial expressions made clear that arguments were ongoing regardless.
Teela was perhaps the only member of the cohort accustomed to keeping—and maintaining—her own counsel; she could listen and join in, but her thoughts weren’t immediately on the table, as it were. She turned to Kaylin as dinner was winding down, interrupting the sparse sounds of chewing.
“What are your plans for tomorrow?”
“I’ll be on the front desk, I think. Severn’s almost finished whatever it is that’s pulled him out of the Hawks’ roster.”
“And after?”
“I’m heading to the Academia. I have a couple of questions to ask.”
“You’ve received the chancellor’s permission?”
“Do I need it?”
Several eyes turned in her direction. “Terrano says no,” Teela replied, “if that tells you anything.”
It did. “Helen, can you try to reach the Academia by mirror?”
“Serralyn says you can check in at the desk as a visitor,” Mandoran told her before Helen could respond. “What? That’s exactly what she said.”
Kaylin turned back to Teela. “I’m going to the Academia tomorrow. After work.”
Sergeant Keele was still suspicious when Kaylin—without complaint—volunteered for the public desk again. Unlike most of the Hawks, Keele kept any possible sentiment out of the office. Far enough out, in fact, that most of the Hawks assumed she didn’t have any. She did partake of Mrs. Erickson’s offerings, but only when there were obvious leftovers. And she didn’t forbid the Hawks under her jurisdiction from interacting with the old woman, or checking up on her if she failed to show up.
But she considered Kaylin’s interest to be bordering on the seriously unprofessional; Kaylin was certain Marcus would hear about it.
“If Corporal Handred were let out of the stupid bureaucratic meetings he’s tangled up in, I wouldn’t be here,” Kaylin told the sergeant, with a more or less straight face.
Less, Severn offered.
Keele had the same love of that tangled bureaucracy that Marcus did, but didn’t destroy her desks when frustrated, lacking the very large claws of the Leontine sergeant. “You’re getting too attached,” she finally said. It wasn’t what Kaylin was expecting. “You’re an officer of the Halls of Law. Mrs. Erickson is a civilian. She’s not family. Your responsibilities to her lie in the enforcement of Imperial Laws. Do not forget that.”
Kaylin offered a clipped nod—necessary because she was standing stiffly at what was called attention.
She thought better of her choice after the first four hours of the long morning. Three reports of vampiric activity—in different parts of the city—hit the desk, along with reports of hauntings and in one case, ghostly Dragons. One report of talking buildings—but not the type of talking that Kaylin was familiar with, as the building in question wasn’t so much talking as shrieking.
There were reports of missing people, and those, Kaylin passed—gratefully—to Missing Persons. Most of those reports sorted themselves out without legal intervention; some didn’t. Kaylin was mulling over one of them when Mrs. Erickson arrived at the front desk.
Her face was swollen, and the darker skin implied that the bruise that was coming up would be large. She was, however, carrying her basket.
“Sit down, dear,” she said. “I’m fine. I tripped while coming down the stairs—I hope the contents of the basket aren’t too damaged.”
All of the blood rushed out of Kaylin’s body; she was frozen for one long moment. She had no idea what her expression looked like to the outside world, but it clearly looked bad, because Mrs. Erickson moved quickly, setting her basket down on the front desk, and reaching for Kaylin’s hands. Which were balled in fists.
Blood rushed back in at the contact, and with it, fury.
“You fell down the stairs.” This was not the first time Kaylin had heard this sentence. It wasn’t the first time she’d assumed it was a lie, either.
“Corporal.”
Kaylin froze, years of training coming to the rescue as Sergeant Keele entered the space behind the front desk and the actual office she ran. Mrs. Erickson immediately withdrew her hands.
“Sergeant,” she said, her voice containing a smile that Kaylin couldn’t otherwise see.
Sergeant Keele nodded. “Imelda.”
“You don’t come out of the office much anymore.”
“I’m a sergeant now. Babysitting the Hawks is more than a full-time job.” The tone of Sergeant Keele’s voice pulled Kaylin the rest of the way out of blank, all-encompassing rage; the expression on her face did the rest.
She was actually smiling. Like a human being. At another person.
“They are so lucky to have you,” Mrs. Erickson said, beaming.
“I’m sure Corporal Neya has opinions about that. As do most of my roster.”
“I’ve never heard them speak disrespectfully,” Mrs. Erickson began.
“I hope you’ve never heard them speak about me at all.”
Mrs. Erickson smiled. “Well, now I can’t embarrass you by telling you about the positive things they’ve said. You’ve come a long way since we first met.”
“Since things are slow, what did you bring us today?”
Mrs. Erickson’s smile deepened; she lifted the lid of her basket. “Small cakes,” she said. “I thought the corporal might be tired of cookies.”
“You expected her at the desk?”
“Yes, dear—I know her partner has been on active solo duty.”
Sergeant Keele nodded, and accepted the small cake she was offered. “She told you that, did she?”
“Oh, no—it was my friends. The outside ghosts. The corporal isn’t allowed to discuss her partner’s work.”
The sergeant’s expression barely flickered—but if it was true that Keele had served on this desk when she was a lowly private, she expected to hear about Mrs. Erickson’s ghostly friends. No one who worked the desk expected her to talk about anything else—it was the theoretical reason she visited, after all.
Kaylin decided then and there to go through the reports generated by Mrs. Erickson’s other visits.
“You didn’t report that,” Sergeant Keele said. This caused a different kind of shock: it meant Keele was actually reading the reports Mrs. Erickson generated.
“Well, no. I know we’re not supposed to discuss those things. My friends do because they can’t really interact with other people and they want something to talk about. But I almost never share.”
“Almost?”
“Well, I’m speaking with you right now—and with the corporal.”
“The corporal and I will speak about this after she’s escorted you home today.”
“I hope she isn’t in trouble.” Mrs. Erickson looked, with worry, in Kaylin’s direction.
“Most of my job is this kind of trouble,” Kaylin said, smiling. “Why don’t you take a seat. Tell me what you came to report—you have to have something to tell Jamal.”