Cast in Fury Read online

  Sanabalis offered Kaylin a smile that was at least as genuine as hers had been.

  On the other hand, if the Emperor hadn’t eaten Rennick, things obviously weren’t as formal as all that, and Kaylin felt a surprisingly strong relief; she was almost happy to have met him. Or would have been, if it were all in the past.

  “This is not like filing,” he added, clearly warming up. He even vacated his seat and shoved his hands into pockets that lined the seams of his robes. “This is not an exact bloody science. Do you have any idea what they’ve asked of me?”

  She had a fairly good idea, but said, “No.”

  Something in her tone caused his eyes to narrow and Severn’s foot to stray slightly closer to hers. But she offered what she hoped was a sympathetic grimace; it was all she was up for.

  “No, you probably don’t. But I’ll tell you.”

  Of this, no one could be in any doubt.

  “They want me to write a play that makes the Tha’alani human.”

  There was certainly a sneer in his expression now, and Kaylin had to actively work to keep her hands from becoming fists. You’ve said worse, she told herself. You’ve said a lot worse.

  Yes, she added, but he’s never going to go through what you did to change your bloody mind. Because she was used to arguing with herself, she then thought, And we’re going to have to do what experience won’t. Oh, god.

  “I am willing to face a challenge,” he added. “Even one as difficult as this—but the Tha’alani themselves don’t seem to understand the purpose of the play I did write. They said it wasn’t true. I told them I wanted a bigger truth. It wasn’t real, but truth isn’t always arrived at by the real.”

  “I can see how that would confuse them,” she offered.

  “And now they’ve sent you. Have you ever even seen one of my plays?”

  “I haven’t seen a play that wasn’t written for children,” she replied.

  This didn’t seem to surprise him. He seemed to expect it.

  Severn, however, said, “I have.”

  “Oh, really?” A voice shouldn’t have legally been able to contain that much sarcasm. And, Kaylin thought, a person shouldn’t be subject to as much sarcasm as this twice in a single day. “Which one?”

  “Winter,” Severn replied.

  Rennick opened his mouth, but for the moment, he seemed to have run out of words. His eyes widened, his jaw closed, and his lips turned up in a genuine smile. Thirty, Kaylin thought. Or maybe even younger. “That was my second play—I wrote it before I won the seat.” He paused, and then his eyes narrowed. “Where did you see it?”

  “It was staged in the Forum,” Severn replied, without missing a beat. “Constance Dargo directed it. I believe the actress who played the role of Lament was—”

  “Trudy.”

  “Gertrude Ellen.”

  “That would be Trudy.” His eyes, however, had lost some of their suspicion. “She could be such a bitch. But she made a number of good points about some of the dialogue.”

  “The dialogue was changed?”

  “Good god, yes. Dialogue on the page is always stiffer than spoken dialogue—you can’t get a real sense of what it sounds like until actors put it through its paces. The first staging of any play defines the play. What did you think of it?”

  “I thought it very interesting, especially given where it played, and when. It was also unusual in that it didn’t feature a relationship as its central motivation.”

  “Starving people seldom have the time to worry about social niceties.”

  Severn glanced at Kaylin.

  “But you might be the first person sent me who’s actually familiar with my work,” Rennick said, picking up the reins where he had dropped them.

  “And as one such person, I have no intention of guiding your work. You know it. I don’t.”

  “And let me tell you—you don’t…Oh.”

  “But the Emperor’s dictates are clear,” Severn continued, into the very welcome silence. “Winter was a work that reached out to people who had everything and reminded them, for a moment, of the fate of the rest of the city. You were chosen to write this for a reason.”

  “I was chosen because they don’t have to pay me more.”

  At that, Kaylin did chuckle. Rennick actually looked in her direction, but the hostility had ebbed. Slightly. As far as Rennick seemed to be concerned, Dragons didn’t exist, and he didn’t bother to glance at Sanabalis.

  Kaylin did. The Dragon’s eyes were a placid gold. Clearly, he had met Rennick before, and for some reason, he had decided not to kill him then.

  “Look,” Rennick added, running his hands through his hair as if he would like to pull it all out by its roots, “Winter wasn’t meant to be a message. It wasn’t meant to tell the audience anything about the state of the poor or the starving. I loved Lament—I wanted to tell her story in a way that would move people. Talia Korvick was the first Lament—I’ll grant that Trudy did a better job, but Trudy wouldn’t touch my unknown little play for its first staging.”

  The idea that Rennick cared about moving anyone in a way that didn’t mean out of my sight surprised Kaylin. Almost as much as the fact that he would admit it.

  “You achieved that—but you also made people think about what her life entailed, and how her life might have been different.”

  “Yes—but that was incidental. I don’t know how to make people think differently. And the Emperor appears to want me to…to educate people. With characters that are in no way my own creations. It’s dishonest,” he added.

  Given that he told lies for a living, this struck Kaylin as funny. Sanabalis, however, stepped on her foot.

  “Lament wasn’t a real person but you made her real. The Tha’alani are real in the same way that the rest of us are—and Lament was human.” Severn frowned slightly, his thinking expression. “Have you been out in the streets since the storm?”

  Rennick frowned. “Not far, no.”

  “People are afraid. Frightened people are often ugly people. The Tha’alani—”

  “From all reports, they tried to kill us.”

  Kaylin didn’t care at that moment if Sanabalis stepped on her foot and broke it. “By standing in the way of the tidal wave? They would have been the first people hit by the damn thing!”

  Rennick actually looked at her, possibly for the first time. After a moment, he said, “There is that.”

  “Look, I don’t know what you’ve heard, and I don’t bloody care—they tried to save the city. And if this is what they get for trying to save it, they should have just let it drown.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I was there—” She shut her mouth. Loudly. “I’m the cultural expert,” she told him instead.

  “You were there?”

  “She was not,” Sanabalis said, speaking in his deep rumble. “But she is a friend of the Tha’alani, and as much as anyone who was not born Tha’alani can, she now understands them. Mr. Rennick, I am aware that you find the current assignment somewhat stressful—”

  “The Imperial Playwright writes his own work,” Rennick snapped. “This is—this is political propaganda.”

  “But what you write, and what you stage—provided any of the directors available meet your rather strict criteria—will influence the city for decades to come. It is necessary work, even if you find it distasteful.”

  “In other words,” Kaylin added sweetly, “The Emperor doesn’t care what you think.”

  Severn glanced at Kaylin, and his expression cleared. Whatever he had been balancing in the back of his mind had settled into a decision. “With your leave, Lord Sanabalis, we have duties elsewhere.”

  “What?” Rennick glared at Severn. “You definitely haven’t outlasted the previous assistants.”

  “Our presence has been requested by the castelord of the Tha’alani,” he continued, ignoring Rennick—which might, to Kaylin’s mind, be the best policy. “And if you think it would be of help to you, yo
u may accompany us.”

  Hard to believe that only a few weeks ago, Kaylin would have skirted this Quarter of the town as if it had the plague. Fear made things big; her mental map of the Tha’alani district had been a huge, gray shadow that would, luck willing, remain completely in the dark.

  Now, it seemed small. It had one large gate, and way too few guards—usually one—between it and the rest of the city. The only people who left the Quarter for much of anything were the Tha’alani seconded to the Imperial Service—and like many, many people in Elantra, they hated their jobs. Of course they did their jobs to prevent the Emperor from turning their race into small piles of ash, but they didn’t make this a big public complaint.

  And they still liked the Hawks. Kaylin privately thought that was crazy—in their situation, she wouldn’t have.

  Lord Sanabalis had arranged for a carriage, but he had not chosen to accompany them to the Quarter. This was probably for the best, as a Dragon wandering the streets could make anyone who noticed him nervous. On the other hand, people were already nervous, and if they wanted to take it out on something, Kaylin privately had a preference for something that could fight back, although she conceded that this was a fief definition of the word “fight.”

  Rennick was silent for the most part, which came as a bit of a shock. He stuck his head out the window once or twice when something caught his eye, and he frequently stuck his arm out as if writing on air, but Severn said nothing; clearly Rennick was not of a station where babysitting was considered part of their duties.

  But he pulled both arm and head into the carriage when they at last began the drive up Poynter’s road, because even Rennick could tell that the bodies on this particular street were on the wrong side of “tense.” They were like little murders waiting to happen.

  “Don’t they have anything better to do?” she muttered to Severn.

  He said nothing.

  It was Rennick who said, “Probably not. They don’t want the Tha’alani to leave the Quarter, and they’re making sure that they don’t. Hey! That man has a crossbow!”

  Kaylin had seen it. The fact that it was still in his hands implied that the Swords had far more work than they should have, and it troubled her. But not enough that she wanted to stop the carriage, get down and start a fight.

  Because it would be a fight, and it would probably get messy.

  “They’re frightened,” she said, surprising herself.

  “Funny how frightened people can be damn scary,” Rennick replied. But he looked thoughtful, not worried.

  “How many?” Kaylin asked Severn.

  “A hundred and fifty, maybe. Some of them are in the upper windows along the street. I imagine that the Tha’alani who serve the Emperor are being heavily escorted.”

  “Or given a vacation.”

  He nodded.

  “Has there been any official word about the incident?” Rennick asked quietly.

  Kaylin shrugged.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Right up until one of those idiots fires his crossbow or swings his—is that a pickax?” Severn nodded. “Swings his ax,” she continued, “it’s not Hawk business. It’s Sword, and the Swords are here.”

  And they were. Kaylin had thought they’d send twenty men out; she was wrong by almost an order of magnitude. She thought there were maybe two hundred in total—no wonder the Halls of Law were so damn quiet.

  But while they lined the street, they hadn’t built an official barricade, they did meet the carriage in the road, well away from the gatehouse, and they did tell the driver to step down. They also opened the doors, and Kaylin made sure she tumbled out first.

  “Private Neya?” said the man who had delivered the curt instructions. He was older than Kaylin by about fifteen years, and the day seemed to have added about a hundred new wrinkles, and a layer of gray to his skin, but she recognized him. “Max—Uh, Sergeant,” she added, as he looked pointedly over her soldier. “Sergeant Voone. You’re out here?”

  Max wasn’t retired, exactly, but he spent a lot of his time behind a desk. He appeared to like it a great deal more than Marcus—but a corpse would have given that impression as well. And Max looked tired.

  “Most of us are, as you put it, out here. I know why we’re here—what are you doing in a fancy box?”

  “Oh. Uh, we were sent here.”

  “By?”

  “Lord Sanabalis.”

  He whistled. “To do what?”

  “Not to step all over your toes, relax.”

  His chuckle was entirely mirthless. “We’ll relax when these people remember they have jobs and family.”

  “I’m thinking they remember the family part,” Kaylin replied. “People go crazy when they think they’re protecting their own.”

  “Tell me about it. No, strike that. Don’t.”

  “When did it get this bad?”

  “There was an incident two days ago.”

  “Incident?”

  “It was messy,” he replied, his voice entirely neutral. “The Swordlord made it clear that there will be no more incidents. The Emperor was not impressed.”

  She winced. It wasn’t often that she felt sympathy for the Swords. But while she resented the easy life the Swords generally called work, she liked them better than the people with the crossbows down the street.

  “You know they’re armed?” she asked casually.

  “We are well aware that they’re armed. And no, thank you, we don’t require help in disarming them. They’re waiting for an invitation. Let them wait. At that distance.”

  She looked at Severn as Severn exited the carriage. Rennick tumbled out after him. “Sergeant Voone,” Severn said, before the sergeant could speak, “Richard Rennick. He’s the Imperial Playwright.”

  “This is not a good time for sightseeing,” the Sword said to Rennick.

  Rennick looked him up and down, and then shrugged. “It wasn’t my idea.” But he was subdued, now. He lifted a hand to his face, rubbing the scruff on his chin.

  “You can call the Hawks out,” Kaylin continued. “At least the Aerians—”

  “We’ve got Aerians here. They’re not currently in the air,” he added. And then he gave her an odd look. “The Hawks have their own difficulties to worry about. I was sorry to hear the news.”

  “What news?”

  His whole expression shuttered, not that it was ever all that open.

  “Voone, what news? What’s happened?”

  “You came from the Halls?”

  “The Halls don’t usually have access to Imperial Carriages. What happened?”

  “No one died,” he replied, and his tone of voice added yet. “But you might want to check in at the office before you head home.”

  She wanted to push him for more, but Severn shook his head slightly. “Ybelline.”

  There was no Tha’alani guard at the guardhouse. That position was taken up by a dozen Swords. They wore chain, and they carried unsheathed swords. You’d have to be crazy to rush the gatehouse.

  Kaylin approached it quietly and answered the questions the Swords asked; they were all perfunctory. Voone escorted them to the squad and left them there, after mentioning her name loudly enough to wake the dead. She noted all of this and tried to squelch her own fear. Severn was right, of course. They’d come here for Ybelline. But the sympathies of Voone made her nervous.

  The Swords hadn’t entered the Quarter; they were met by Tha’alani guards. Four men in armor. Their stalks swiveled toward her as she entered.

  She saw that they, too, bore unsheathed swords, and it made her…angry. Those weapons just looked wrong in Tha’alani hands; she wondered if they even knew how to use them.

  But using them wasn’t an issue. They bowed to her, almost as one man. “Ybelline is waiting for you,” one told her quietly.

  “At her house?”

  “Not at her domicile. Demett will take you to her.” The man so identified stepped away from his companions.

&nbs
p; “Where is she?”

  “At the longhouse” was his reply—spoken in the stiff and exact cadence that Tha’alani who were unused to speech used. He obviously expected her to know what the longhouse was, and she didn’t bother to correct him.

  She followed him, and it took her a moment to realize why the streets here felt so wrong—they were empty. Usually walking down a Tha’alani street was like walking in the Foundling Hall—it was a gauntlet of little attention-seeking children, with their open curiosity and their utter lack of decorum.

  She didn’t care for the change. Hell, even the plants were drooping. Rennick walked between Severn and her, and made certain that there was always at least one body between him and the nearest Tha’alani. He wasn’t overly obvious about it, but it rankled. Even when Kaylin had been terrified of the Tha’alani, she wouldn’t have tried to hide. One, it wouldn’t have done much good and two—well, two, she didn’t casually throw strangers to fates she herself feared.

  It was not going to be easy working with Rennick. She spared him a glance every so often, which was more than any of the Tha’alani did. They hadn’t even questioned his presence. It would have been convenient if they had. He’d be on the other side of the gates, where he’d be marginally less annoying.

  The guards walked past the latticework of open—and utterly empty—fountains; past the blush of bright pink, deep red and shocking blue flower beds that bordered them; past the neat little circular domes that reminded Kaylin of nothing so much as hills. And if those homes were hills, they were approaching a small fortress that nestled among them. It was two stories tall, and the beams that supported the clay face were almost as wide as she was, and certainly taller. It was larger by far than the building in which Ybelline, the castelord—a word that didn’t suit her at all—chose to live. It was almost imposing.

  It was also bloody crowded.

  It boasted normal doors—rectangular doors, not the strange ones that adorned most of the Tha’alani homes; these doors weren’t meant to blend with the structure. They stood out. And they were pulled wide and pegged open. Which, given the number of people on the other side of them, made sense—closed doors would have made breathing anything but stale air and sweat almost impossible. As it was, it was dicey.