Kaylin grimaced.
“I’ll take that as a yes, and you knowfull wellwhy that is beyond foolish.”
“I’m not sure he’ll make it without some kind of serious intervention,” Kaylin countered, deflecting thewhy are you being stupidcomment. “I intended to do what I could to keep him alive and pull out before things got too entangled.”
“Because you have so much practice with that.”
Kaylin shrugged. It was true. She didn’t start healing to half-ass it. She poured power into the injured body until the body was no longer injured.
“I couldn’t actually connect with his body at all. I could touch the skin, but even then, it felt as if a layer of something was between that skin and my hand.”
“Could you possibly do something about your cheek? The mark is bleeding.”
Kaylin nodded, aware that she usually healed quickly. “Helen, can you put a normal mirror in this room?”
Helen’s reply was action: a mirror appeared on the wall farthest from Nightshade’s bed. Kaylin headed to look at her face.
As practically everyone she’d encountered today had said, her cheek was bleeding. To Kaylin, the Erenne mark had become part of the geography of her face, an awkward tattoo. The Marks of the Chosen caused far more discomfort, far more consistently.
The mark didn’t hurt, but it was bleeding along the lines of its nightshade shape, tracing the edges of the flower in a dark red, as if the mark were etched into her skin, and blood ran along slender runnels. She touched it with her fingers; she was definitely bleeding.
And that was enough of the mirror for now. She turned back to Teela as her arms started to break out in goose bumps. Teela was now examining Nightshade.
Terrano joined her, flying—almost literally—into the room. Kaylin winced; he’d already adjusted the shape, size, and color of his eyes; they took up a third of his face, almost merging into each other across the bridge of his nose. She knew it didn’t cause him pain, but she was always going to find it disturbing.
“You said he hadMeliannosin a tight grip when he fell?” Teela’s question was all Hawk in tone.
“Yes. Andellen resheathed it before we fled here—Tiamaris had to carry him in his claws.”
“I find no obvious external injuries. You examined him?”
“Not his entire body, no. Just exposed skin and the fabric of his clothing. I thought it might be poison until I tried to heal him.”
“And now?”
Kaylin’s eyes narrowed as she met Teela’s. “...possibly magic. Magic—not Nightshade’s, according to Andellen—was used over a wide area; it was an invisibility sphere. But it had a large signature.”
“You are certain.”
Kaylin nodded. “I know Arcanist tiaras contain accessible power—if an Arcanist is present and chooses to use it. But this spell had a sigil.”
“Did you recognize it?”
“No.” She didn’t addof course notbut felt it should have been obvious. The spell was definitely Barrani in origin, given the war bands, and the Hawks pretty much never investigated Barrani-on-Barrani crimes. The Hawks had zero legal authority in the fiefs, even if the Barrani crimes might theoretically fall under Imperial law had they occurred in the city proper.
“You sense no similar sigil anywhere near Lord Nightshade.”
Kaylin shook her head. “Whatever affected him doesn’t trip my magic allergies. Unlike what you’re doing now.”
“Helen?”
Helen materialized. “Yes, dear?”
“Do you sense magic emanating from Nightshade? Or internal to him?”
Helen was silent for a long beat. “Yes,” she finally said.
04