Cast In Fury Read Online Free PDF Page B

companions.
    “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.
    “This is the longhouse,” Kaylin said.
    Demett nodded.
    “Demett,” she said, as he turned, “what is the longhouse used for?”
    His face went that shade of expressionless that actually meant he was talking—but only to the Tha’alaan: to the minds of his people, and the memories of the dead. She waited for it to pass, as if it were a cloud; it took a while.
    “Wait for Ybelline,” he told her quietly.

    Ybelline came through the crowd slowly. You could see where she might be moving because her movement caused the other Tha’alani to move, like a human wave composed entirely of bodies. The building was packed. Kaylin thought there might be six or seven hundred people just beyond the open doors, more if the children so absent from the streets were also there.
    But Ybelline did not come alone; the movement of the crowd, the slow outward push, wouldn’t have been necessary to allow just one person through. The people spilled out into the streets, beyond Kaylin and Severn. Rennick’s shoulders curled in, and he brought his hands up once or twice, as if to fend off any contact.
    The Tha’alani in turn avoided him.
    They would. They knew fear when they saw it, especially Rennick’s fear—and his fear was poison to them. They tried just as hard as he did to avoid any contact, but Kaylin had to admit they were more polite about it.
    Ybelline appeared at last, between the shoulders of about sixteen tightly grouped men and women. She wore robes, an earth-brown with green edges; her hair was arranged both artlessly and perfectly above her