was one cub, and only one. The pregnancy, she had been very quietly told, had been labored and difficult, and it was thought—many times—that Arlan would lose the cubs.
Losing the cubs and not losing her life were not things that Kaylin would normally be consulted about. This time was different, but she wasn’t certain why, or how.
“It’s important,” an exhausted Arlan had deigned to inform her, “that I be able to bear cubs.” She did not say why, and Kaylin, seeing the almost subconscious flick of claws at the end of the pale golden fur of Arlan’s hands, had known better than to ask.
“I will name him Roshan,” his mother had said, and then added, “Roshan Kaylarr.” She’d nodded, then, to Kaylin, and Kaylin had understood that, in as much as a Leontine could be named after her, this child was.
If she had been human, this indomitable and ferocious Leontine woman, Kaylin would have asked what the father thought of the name; in the case of the Leontine males, this was pointless. They loved their kitlings—but they knew when to stay out of the way.
They had wives, plural, and the wives could fight like, well, cats when the need arose—but the pridlea was also a unit unto itself, and where husbands were concerned, they formed a wall of solidarity when it came to protecting their own.
“Kaylin?” Severn said, and she hastily swallowed a mouthful of pastry that thankfully tasted nothing like the salty skin of newborn cub. Shook her head. He backed off, but with a slight smile.
“Where are we?”
“Almost there. Pay attention?”
“I was.”
He nodded with the ease of long practice. “Pay attention to where we actually are, hmm?”
“Trouble?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“You’re going to trip over your own feet, and stone isn’t the best cushion.” He paused, and then said quietly, “And I have something for you.”
She grimaced. “The bracer?”
“It was on my breakfast table in the morning. I thought you’d been with the midwives, and I kept it for you.” He took it out of the satchel he carried by his side. It gleamed gold and sparkled with the caught light of sapphire, ruby and diamond. It was her cage.
And it was, in its fashion, her haven. This, this cold, gleaming artifact, could contain the magic that Sanabalis, the heartless bastard, was trying to teach her to control. It was the only thing that could, and without it—without its existence—she would probably be dead by Imperial order.
It had come from the personal hoard of the Emperor, and it was ancient, although it looked as if it had been newly made. It took no dents or scratches, and no blood remained across its golden surface for long. Its gems didn’t break or scratch, either.
“Put it on,” he said.
She nodded, her fingers keying the sequence that would open it. Sliding it over her wrist, she thought of making some feeble protest—but she was with Severn, not Marcus, and Severn understood.
“You think I’ll need it?” she asked softly, as it clicked shut.
“I don’t know,” he said at last, but after a pause that was evasive. “You know you’re not supposed to take it off.” As she opened her mouth, he added, “By the Hawklord’s orders.”
She bit back the words for a moment, and when they came, they came more smoothly. “You know I can’t help the midwives if I wear it.”
“I know.”
“I can’t heal—”
“I know. I told you, I thought you might have been with the midwives when I saw it this morning.”
The other property of the bracer that would have been the envy of the stupid because it looked so very expensive was that it was impossible to lose. She could take it off if need be, drop it in the nearest trash heap, and it would find its way back to its keeper—that keeper not being Kaylin. For seven years, the keeper had been the Hawklord.
And for a month now, it had been Severn. He never asked why it came to his hand—which was good, because no one, as far as Kaylin could tell, had an explanation—and he never asked, except obliquely, why it wasn’t on hers. He simply gathered it and brought it back to her. And waited.
As a Keeper, he was a lot less onerous than the Hawklord.
“Severn—”
“It’s Elani Street,” he replied with a shrug, “and if you hunt long enough, you’ll find magic here.”
“I know where to find—” But she stopped, catching her words before she tripped over them with her tongue. “I hate magic.”
He stopped walking, turned suddenly, and looked down at her from an uncomfortable height. His hands caught both of her shoulders, and slid up them, trailing the sides of her neck to cup her face, and she met his eyes, brown and simple, dark with a past that she was part of, and a past that she didn’t know at all.
“Don’t,” he told her quietly. “Don’t hate it. It’s part of what you are, now, and nothing will change that. It’s a gift.”
She thought of the ways in which she had killed in a blind fury; thought of the stone walls that had parted like curtains of dust when the magic overwhelmed her. “A gift,” she said bitterly.
And he said, “You have fur on your tongue.” In almost perfect Leontine.
And a baby’s name—did race really matter?—like an echo in the same language, waiting to be said in affection and wonder, even if she were never again there to hear it.
He let his hands fall slowly away from her face as if they had belonged there, as if they were drawn there by gravity.
“Severn—”
He touched her open mouth with a single finger. But he didn’t smile, and he didn’t say anything else.
Elani Street opened up before them like any other merchant street in the district. If you didn’t know the city, you might have mistaken it for any other merchant street. It was not in the high-rent district—Kaylin’s patrols were somehow always designed to keep her away from the rich and prosperous—but it was not in the low-rent district, either. It hovered somewhere in the center. Clearly the buildings were old, and as much wood as stone had gone into their making, but they were well kept, and if paint flaked from signboards and windows had thinned with time, they were solid and functional.
The waterfront was well away, and the merchant authority didn’t technically govern the men and women who worked here for some complicated legalistic reason that had a lot to do with history and nothing to do with the law, so the Hawks and the Swords were the sole force that policed the area. And everyone was happy that way. Except for the Merchants’ Guild, which sent on its annual weasel report in an attempt to bring Elani under its jurisdiction.
Once or twice things had gotten ugly between the Merchants’ Guild and the Elani Streeters, and blood had been shed across more than just this part of town. This was practical history, to Kaylin, so she remembered it better than the codicils on top of codicils that kept the Merchants’ Guild at bay.
They had—the Guild—even tried to set up trade sanctions against this small part of town, and while everyone in theory agreed with it, in practice, they’d come anyway, because there wasn’t any actual evidence that they’d been here. You didn’t exactly bear a brand saying Fortunes Have Been Read Across My Palm, Look Here when you left. The sale of love potions may have dropped a tad during that embargo, however.
No, the rents weren’t high here, but the take was high enough that the vendors could usually fend off the more powerful guild with effective political sleight