Cast In Courtlight Read Free Page A

not even the men and women who were nominally his equals in rank – wanted to be in the wrong kind of debt to a Barrani.
    Still, it didn’t stop them from betting. She prided herself on being the person who had introduced the office to this pastime; it was one of the few that she’d enjoyed in her childhood. Then again, anyone who grew up in the wrong part of town – the huge neighborhood known colloquially as the fiefs in the right parts of town – enjoyed gambling. There wasn’t much else about the life
to
enjoy.
    Certainly not its brevity.
    She shrugged and made her way to Tain. “You won?”
    “It looks that way.” His teeth were chipped; they made his smile look almost natural. They also made him obvious to anyone who hadn’t known the Barrani for months. They looked so much alike, it was hard for humans – or mere humans, as the Barrani often called them – to tell them apart. Much malicious humor could be had in mistaken identity – all of it at a cost to the person making the mistake.
    His smile cooled slightly as his gaze glanced off her cheek. There, in thin blue lines that could be called spidery, was the mark of Lord Nightshade – the Barrani outcaste Lord who ruled the fief that Kaylin had grown up in. The mark meant something to the Barrani, and none of it was good.
    If she were honest, it meant something to her. But she couldn’t quite say what, and she was content to let the memory lie. Not that she had much choice; Lord Nightshade was not of a mind to
remove
the mark, and short of that, the only way to effect such a removal also involved the removal of her head. Which, according to Marcus, she’d barely miss anyway, given how much she used it.
    In ones and twos the dozen or so Barrani – well, fourteen, if she were paying close attention – that were also privileged to call themselves Hawks had been brought by either Tain or Teela to look at the mark.
    In one or two cases, it was a good damn thing Teela was there; they were almost unrestrained once the shock had worn off, and the restraint they did have was all external.
    Kaylin had gotten used to this.
    And the Barrani, in turn, had grown accustomed to the sight of the offending mark. But they didn’t like it.
    They didn’t like what it meant.
    Kaylin understood that the word they muttered under their breaths was something that loosely translated into
consort
. Very loosely. And with a lot more vehemence.
    Pointing out that marking a human in this fashion was against both Barrani caste law
and
Imperial Law had met with as much disdain as Kaylin ever showed the Barrani.
    “Fieflord, remember? Nightshade? Not exactly the biggest upholder of Imperial law?”
    But she didn’t take offense. It was hard to; they
were
Barrani. A Barrani who wasn’t arrogant was also not breathing. And in a strange way, it was a comfort; they were enraged
for
her.
    Of course, there was a tad more possessiveness in that anger than she’d have ideally liked, but beggars couldn’t be choosy.
    “Where’s Teela?” she asked Tain. The two were often inseparable.
    Tain’s silence had a little of the Hawklord’s grimness.
    “Either you’re not going to answer,” she said carefully, “or you are, and I won’t like it.”
    “Why would you be displeased?” he said.
    “You are.”
    “It is a matter that concerns the Barrani.” Cold and imperious.
    “This means you won’t answer.”
    “No,” he said, the word measured and stretched thin, given it was only a meager syllable, and that, in Elantran. Elantran was the default language of the Hawks, because everyone spoke it. Unfortunately, the labyrinthine paper trail of the Law itself was written in Barrani. He could have spoken his mother tongue, and she’d have been able to follow it with the ease of long practice, Barrani being one of the few things she’d been able to learn while locked in a classroom and chained to a desk, metaphorically speaking.
    “You’ve looked at the duty roster?” he