The Chronicles of Elantra 5 - Cast in Silence Read Online Free PDF

conveniently early to take advantage of him. Couldn’t happen to a nicer man.
    “Well, then,” Morse said cheerfully. “We’ll just be going.”
    Kaylin said nothing for a long moment. Then she turned. “Morse.”
    “I always wondered what had happened to you,” Morse told her. “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to confirm the rumors.” Her eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at Kaylin’s face.
    It took Kaylin a moment to realize what Morse was looking at: her mark. Nightshade’s mark. It was so much a part of her by this point she could forget it was there. But Morse had never seen it.
    “You haven’t changed much,” Morse told her, her expression replacing the harsh edges with growing distance. “Except for your cheek, you almost look the same.”
    “Why did you come here, Morse?”
    The woman shrugged. “I told you, I’m running an errand.”
    “Is it legal?”
    “I live in Barren. You haven’t been gone so long that you don’t remember the definition of law, there.”
    “You’re not there now,” Kaylin said, shading the words differently this time.
    Morse hesitated, the way she sometimes did when she was about to say something serious. “I am. In any way that counts. You’re not.” She looked as if she would say more, but one of the men with her approached them, and the moment, which was so thin it might cut, broke. “Yeah, legal. Unless running messages breaks Imperial Law these days.”
    “Depends on what’s in the message.”
    “Judge for yourself, Eli.” Morse shoved a hand into her shirt, and came up with a flattened, squished piece of paper. Or two. “It’s for you. Obb,” she added, “get your butt out of the damn glass. We’re heading back. We’re late.”
    Kaylin took the letter and stared at it. Then she glanced at Severn, whose hands were still on his blades. She flinched at his expression, but she didn’t—quite—look away. She managed a shrug.
    “I’ll come by later for the reply,” Morse told her.
    Don’t bother, Kaylin almost said. But she couldn’t force the words out of her mouth. What came out, instead, was “Later.”
    Morse nodded, and walked away; the others trailed after her like a badly behaved shadow. Only when they’d turned a corner a few blocks down the street did Severn relax enough to approach her.
    “Kaylin?”
    She looked at him, and then shook her head. Bent down to pick up a small slab of glass.
    “Leave it,” he told her, catching her wrist. “Margot can clean it up. She’s got the money for it at the moment, and it’ll employ someone for a few hours. If she fails to clean it up, you can charge her with littering.”
    She nodded, stood and looked down the street. Morse. Here.
    “I knew her,” she told Severn, without once looking up at his face, “when I lived in Barren.”
    He was silent. He didn’t ask her when that was; he wasn’t an idiot, he could figure it out. What he said, instead, was “Did you meet the fief lord of Barren while you were there?”
    She nodded, almost numb.

CHAPTER 3
    For the rest of the day—admittedly one shortened by two hours in the elemental garden—Kaylin didn’t bump into another offensive sandwich board. Severn assumed the street-side stretch of their patrol. He didn’t speak, and as Kaylin didn’t have much she wanted to say, the rest of their round was pretty damn quiet. By the end of it, she was mostly dry.
    So was the letter she was carrying. She wanted to read it. At the same time, she wanted to burn it or toss it into the nearest garbage heap. Elani was fairly tidy, on the other hand, so the garbage heaps were not that close to their patrol route.
    Morse, she thought. She glanced once at Severn, and remembered walking different streets, with an entirely different goal, beside Morse. Morse who could talk you deaf or cut you without blinking. She hadn’t been so scarred, back then. She hadn’t looked as old.
    But she’d always looked as dangerous.
    “Dinner?” Severn asked, as