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

they headed back to the Halls.
    “Will it come as much of a surprise if I say I’m not hungry?”
    “Actually, it would.”
    She grimaced, dredging a small smile out of somewhere. Where, given her mood, she honestly couldn’t say.
    “Did you figure out what was bothering you?”
    “Probably not. On the other hand, whatever it was couldn’t be as bad as what’s bothering me now. ” She hesitated. Glanced at him as they reached the steps that lead into the building. “Severn—”
    “We can talk over dinner. We can not talk over dinner, as well. You did a pretty good job of that on patrol.” His smile was slight, and it was shadowed, but he offered it anyway. “I told you, the past is the past. I don’t care to know what you don’t care to tell me.”
    She nodded. She knew he meant it. But he didn’t know what she knew. She’d tried to tell him, but only once. Now, she had no desire to even try. Telling him about the past was one thing; telling him about the past when it had crept, unwelcome and unexpected, into the present was another.
    What had she expected?
    When she’d crossed the bridge over the Ablayne, when she’d stepped foot on the cobbled and patrolled streets of the Emperor’s city, she had never truly expected to stay here. She hadn’t come to escape.
    “Kaylin?”
    “Sorry, did you say something?”
    He grimaced. “Not much. Lockers. We can file a nonreport in the morning.”
    She nodded and fell into step beside him; they’d managed to make it to the Aerie without any conscious awareness, on her part, of passing through the doors. She remembered the first time she’d come in through the front doors. She remembered the first time she’d arrived at the Halls of Law. They weren’t the same.
    For a moment, the Halls of Law looked so insubstantial she could almost see the street through the stonework. But the streets she saw weren’t the streets of Nightshade; they weren’t the streets of the city whose laws she had vowed to give her life enforcing. They were darker, grayer, devoid of even the hope she’d felt in Nightshade at Severn’s side.
    Barren.
    “Okay,” Severn told her. “Stay here a minute.”
    She shook her head and dredged up what she hoped was a smile. Judging from his grimace, it was a pretty pathetic one. “I’ll go get changed,” she told his retreating back.
    She walked into the locker room, found her locker and leaned her forehead against its door for a minute.
     
    “Hey.”
    She jumped back from the locker door, wondering whether or not she’d fallen asleep standing up. Having done it on one or two occasions, she didn’t wonder if it were possible, but it was never anything like good sleep, and it usually ended abruptly with the unpleasant sensation of falling, and the even less pleasant sensation of landing.
    “Teela?”
    Teela grinned. Barrani didn’t smile or laugh much as a general rule, and when they did, it was usually at someone else’s expense. “You look like crap,” she told Kaylin. “Come on, get changed. We’re not going out if you’re dressed like that. Iron Jaw would have our hides pinned to the dartboard by morning. If he waited that long.”
    Kaylin’s body started to obey; she stripped off her tabard and her armor, taking care to set Morse’s letter on the inside of her locker. But her brain caught up, and she stopped, tunic halfway over her upper body. “What do you mean, we’re going out?”
    “Severn seems to think you need a drink.”
    “I’m not going to get a drink if I go out with you!”
    Teela’s shrug was lazy. “Tain’s been bored all day.”
    “Oh, no, you don’t. I am not going out drinking with Tain. Not when he’s bored.”
    Teela, stripping off her own gear, laughed. “We’re not going to cause too much trouble. Your Corporal is going with us.”
    “You’ve gone drinking with officers and you’ve managed to wreck half a tavern!”
    She shrugged, her lazy smile spreading across her full lips. “They