“She accepted Spike.”
She did. It is why I have some hope for her. But she is distraught about the High Halls. Mandoran explained what happened—using “small words”—and she is not at all certain that an extremely dangerous enemy has not been loosed in the middle of the city.
Kaylin exhaled. “Neither am I.”
No. What will you do, Chosen?
“Talk to Spike.”
Bellusdeo spoke, a rumble of sound that was almost an expression of movement. The hair on Kaylin’s arms stood instantly on end; she winced. Bellusdeo didn’t appear to notice. Given the color of her eyes this close to the border, Kaylin kept any complaints to herself.
It wasn’t hard. The question of a Tower’s compromise now occupied most of her thoughts. While she liked and trusted Tara, her first encounter with the Tower that Tiamaris now called home had not been good, and the odds that she would survive it, not high.
Castle Nightshade was a different beast. She trusted it only because Nightshade was its Lord, and even then the trust was mired in echoes of her childhood and the specters those raised. But she couldn’t imagine that Nightshade’s Tower could be compromised the way Tara had almost been compromised.
She didn’t understand how Towers chose their lords. She knew that Barren could not be Lord of the fief that had nonetheless taken his name. She didn’t understand the mechanics well.
And would you take Candallar, if you could? Nightshade asked.
No. Helen is my home. She exhaled. I was just thinking that Dragon fieflords would work out better.
There was genuine amusement in Nightshade’s internal struggle. Yes, you were. But Kaylin, that is only true for you because you have seen so few of Dragonkind. Were you to have the breadth of experience that those who fought in the wars possess, you would understand why I find the concept amusing. Those Dragons you have met, those Dragons about whom you have knowledge, were those who could accept the Eternal Emperor.
She nodded as Bellusdeo breathed a plume of fire across the stones nearest the Ravellon border. The Dragon barked a single, curt word in Elantran, and Kaylin obeyed; she followed in the Dragon’s wake. Severn, weapons in either hand, did the same. He wasn’t tense or angry in the way Bellusdeo was, but he was on high alert.
Hope, Kaylin reflected, made her sloppy.
I hardly think it fair to blame that on the familiar, Nightshade observed. Are you familiar with the method of investigation Lord Bellusdeo is now employing?
Not really. I’m not sure it’s something that she can teach the rest of us. The Norannir have their own way of guarding against Shadow. Tiamaris trusts them.
Yes. But his is the position of strength in that fief; he can afford to trust.
* * *
The Candallar border was judged secure by Bellusdeo, although her eyes remained a dark red as she gazed past the barrier and into the Shadow lands that had destroyed the home she had built. Kaylin’s immediate fear was not of Shadow; she watched the skies for any sign of dark wings, black body—any hint of the rising of the Dragon outcaste.
Bellusdeo’s angry roars had not summoned him. The Dragon had nothing to fight, and Kaylin thought a fight would be viscerally welcome—if incredibly dangerous—to Bellusdeo. Kaylin kept an eye on the buildings that were closest to the border. Those closest were unoccupied by anything that was larger than a rat; some were missing roofs, and the walls were slanted.
Not even the desperate sought shelter here, so close to where the Ferals started, and ended, their evening hunts. No one would have done so in Nightshade, either. But in Tiamaris, the Norannir had peopled the border, and buildings very unlike these were in the process of being erected. They feared the Shadow, yes—but they hated it, as Bellusdeo hated it.
If they had lost their home and their world, they were grim guardians against the possibility of a similar fate in this one.
“Where are you going?”
Kaylin looked away from the buildings and the hints of scuttling mice.
Bellusdeo, golden scales muted as clouds rolled across the sun’s face, said, “The border zone.”
* * *
Given Bellusdeo’s mood, questioning her was a bit of a gamble, and not the kind in which a stroke of good fortune enriched the questioner. Kaylin had always been silent in the presence of those with superior power, in the hope that she wouldn’t draw their attention or their ire. She knew Bellusdeo wouldn’t hurt her, but old habits were hard to shake.
Instead, she thought about why Bellusdeo wanted to enter the border zone here. “This leads to Durant.”
“Indeed. We have visited the border zone between Tiamaris and Candallar, and I would like to see how it shifts—if it does—between other fiefs.”
“Why?”
“Because Lannagaros’s reaction implied information that he did not choose to share with me.”
“Maybe he didn’t think it relevant?”
“Unlikely.”
“Maybe he was afraid if he did you’d do something reckless on your own. Like, say, fly across all the fiefs and enter the bloody border zones!”
A large Dragon could shrug in a very fief-like way. “It is all information he would find useful, and I will share it with him.”
“After he coughs up the rest?”
Apparently enormous, heavily toothy Dragon jaws could imply a smug grin. “You understand.”
Try to talk her out of it, Kaylin told her partner. She’s way more likely to listen to you.
There’s a trick to that, he replied in a resigned tone.
What is it?
Give her advice she’d be likely to follow anyway. She’s going to do this—but I’ve been across the border zones before. It’s not the border zones that are the problem. She can walk into the zone from Candallar; he knows she’s here, and for the moment, he’s willing—barely—to let her be.
And Durant won’t be?
I don’t know.
* * *
The border zone between Candallar and the fief of Durant was similar, in the end, to the zone between Tiamaris and Candallar, or between Nightshade and Tiamaris. That was Kaylin’s first impression. Her second impression was slightly different. Although the same washed-out hues of gray were the predominant colors in the zone, and the buildings appeared to continue from the border itself, the length of passage felt shorter.
It’s not just you, Severn told her. The zone here is, like the zones between Nightshade and Tiamaris, amorphous; it shifts. But the elasticity of the space seems to have harder bounds. It did when I traversed them the first time.
Can I ask why you did it?
You can ask. I can’t answer.
Sometimes Kaylin resented the Wolves, which was petty. She struggled to set resentment aside, and managed to keep the actual words to herself. Harder, when they were on the inside of her head.
Severn’s hands tightened on his weapons, but the three emerged into the fief of Durant without conflict or difficulty. Then again, Bellusdeo was traversing the zone closest to the Ravellon border all fiefs shared. Kaylin considered this risky; it was, in theory, here that the Towers’ attention was focused.
But it did mean that no civilians, and no fieflord thugs, were in easy reach of a disgruntled gold Dragon, and Kaylin considered the risk worth the avoidance. Not that she had much love for fieflord thugs, but any situation in which she could avoid random killing, even in self-defense, was always the better one.
Bellusdeo, annoyance aside, had probably made the same decision. Or perhaps not. It was not just the border zones that she wanted to inspect; it was the border that each fief held with the shadow at the center of these separate lands.
* * *
The course of the day was about that border, and it wasn’t exactly short. While Bellusdeo inspected the Durant border, Kaylin looked at the buildings. Durant was a walled fief
; it wasn’t the river that separated the fief from the rest of the city, for the most part. There was a bridge, but the wall itself occupied most of the city-facing border.
The buildings here were in better repair, which surprised Kaylin. If they were occupied, the occupants had chosen to stay away from open windows, and for the most part, those were rare; shutters ruled here, not glass, but the shutters were firmly closed. Or as firmly as warped wood could be.
Above the buildings—all of them, near or far—a Tower rose. It was unadorned, and it certainly wasn’t white, as the Tower of Tiamaris had become; it was a very workmanlike stone, a Tower that, on the exterior, could have been built by mortal hands, and not the hands of a resident almost-deity.
“What the hell is that?” Kaylin murmured, her eyes narrowing.
Severn glanced in the direction of the Tower. “Durant’s decor is a bit unusual.”
“A bit? Is that supposed to be a word? Two dots and a curve?”
“No, I don’t believe so.”
“What is it?”
“I believe it’s supposed to be a rudimentary representation of a smile.”
“A smile.” She turned to catch Severn’s expression. “You’re serious. Have you ever met Durant?”
“No. I’ve entered the fief before, but nothing I’ve been searching for has ended up in Durant.”
She looked at the smile again. “I can’t imagine why.”
Bellusdeo snorted. “You are discomfited because you feel that a smile is somehow welcoming.” She smiled. Given the size of her jaws, it was not in any way friendly.
“Durant’s doesn’t have any teeth in it.”
* * *
The Ravellon border in the fief of Durant showed no cause for alarm, or at least no sign Bellusdeo was willing to share. The occupants of the buildings that faced the dangerous border were, like the occupants in every other zone the Dragon had strolled across, entirely absent. Evidence suggested that they existed, but this was not the time of day to find anyone who had much choice in the matter at home.
Kaylin almost regretted it. She could well imagine that a giant...smile...could come under some fairly harsh mockery, and she almost wanted to ask a Durant fiefling what their fieflord was like.
Bellusdeo’s concern was more immediate. She cared about fieflords only as it pertained to the responsibilities of their Towers. She didn’t have Kaylin’s visceral and instinctive animosity because she didn’t have Kaylin’s experience. She couldn’t have had it; Dragons couldn’t be hunted by Ferals unless they wanted to be, and in the end, it was the Ferals who would suffer.
Dragons had wings; they could leave the fief anytime they wanted to. Even now, Bellusdeo couldn’t put herself in danger here unless she ambled into the Tower.
Kaylin pulled her thoughts up short. While they were all true, they were irrelevant. Bellusdeo had not had Kaylin’s life—but the life she’d had, the life she’d lost, was in some ways worse. Part of the reason Kaylin hated the fiefs was that they made it so easy to slide back into patterns of thought that she hated. Envy was the worst of it.
That life had led to this one. This one, she wanted. What other people had—or did not have—was irrelevant.
Bellusdeo didn’t take to the skies again. Although she retained her more martial form, she now walked from one end of the Ravellon border to the other. “We cross the border zone here,” she told her companions.
* * *
The border between Durant and Farlonne was, as zones went, similar to the zones they had already crossed. Shades of gray leeched color out of buildings that otherwise seemed a continuous stretch of low-rent dwellings. Bellusdeo had, in her other forays into that zone, moved away from Ravellon; this was the first time she had entered the border zone that skirted its edge.
Kaylin wasn’t certain this was smart.
“I want to prove something to myself,” the Dragon replied.
“And that is?”
“You’re intelligent; you figure it out.” When uttered by Dragon throat, with its rumble and its accompanying visual signals—mostly orange verging on red—this sounded far more condescending than it should have.
Kaylin bit back any knee-jerk reply and grudgingly did as asked because she did have questions that the Arkon hadn’t answered. She’d assumed he was incapable of answering them. Bellusdeo was vastly more suspicious. Suspicion had once been a way of life. Practically the only way of life.
When they reached the nearest gap between buildings that faced Ravellon, she turned toward the fief that had defined Bellusdeo’s adult life. She saw gray. Gray buildings. A gray street. That street continued into the heart of the last of the fiefs—the one that mandated the existence of the other six.
From this vantage, if she closed her eyes and spun in place, she couldn’t tell that the heart of all Shadow—anchored to every world in existence in some fashion—was Ravellon at all. It might have been the way to Farlonne. She turned to look over her shoulder; the Tower of Durant rose above the gray buildings. In the border zone, it was unaltered, except for color.
There was no similar Tower in the heart of the fiefs. The buildings that led there, in theory, were like the Durant buildings. Or the buildings that characterized the other fiefs.
“What do you think would happen if we tried to walk those streets?”
“You catch fire.”
“Did I forget I was with you?”
“Clearly.”
“Okay. What do you think would happen to someone who didn’t have you as a guard if they tried to walk down that street?”
“I imagine they’d walk down the street and when they passed it, they’d be food for Shadows. In the best-case scenario.”
“Yes, but—”
“Yes?”
“But it doesn’t seem like Shadows have much purchase here.”
“No, it doesn’t, does it?”
“I am not certain that Shadows can travel through the border zone,” Severn said. “I haven’t tested the supposition extensively.”
“Or at all?” the Dragon asked.
“Or at all.”
Kaylin frowned her way through the rest of the border zone, and the expression remained fixed to her face when she entered Farlonne.
* * *
Farlonne was, on the edge of Ravellon, quite different than any of the fiefs they’d seen so far. Where the border in the other fiefs was characterized by mostly deserted, flimsy buildings—with the exception of Tiamaris, and the lack of desertion there was new—Farlonne was occupied by a bristling array of fortified stone. These buildings were occupied, and the occupants did not seem to be terrified of either the Hawk, which was expected, or the Dragon, which was not.
Most of the people who therefore came out of these stone buildings, all too large to be simple dwellings unless their owners were monied, were alert, armed and human. They were, however, accompanied by Barrani. Armored Barrani.
Although Bellusdeo was alert as she all but ordered Kaylin and Severn to stand back, it was the first time since she’d landed that her eyes had lightened; they remained orange, but with a lot less red in them.
“Climb,” she told the Hawks. “We may be forced to leave these streets and this border quickly.”
* * *
There was a command structure that the three dozen men seemed to follow. To no one’s surprise, the Barrani were at the top of it, but the men who were beneath them in the hierarchy didn’t seem to resent it. The Barrani were blue-eyed; the blue was the midnight variety that could easily be mistaken for black at a distance.
“You have entered the lands of Farlonne,” the Barrani who appeared to be in command said.
“Indeed,” Bellusdeo rumbled back. “We came to inspect the Candallar border.”
“You are not in Candallar now.”
“No. We offer our apologies for our t
respass. We come with no ill intent.”
His expression said that he would be the judge of that, but it was a Barrani expression. Turning to another Barrani man, he said something that Kaylin’s hearing couldn’t pick up. The second Barrani then departed, heading back toward a building.
Hope squawked. The Barrani man frowned at the sound—angry birds obviously generally being an indicator of something in the background—and froze. His eyes couldn’t get any darker, and his sword was already drawn. He tensed nonetheless, his expression shifting with the narrowing of his eyes.
“I really think,” Kaylin said, “we should leave. I think the second man is probably informing the fieflord that we’re here.”
“I assume the fieflord is well aware of that. You don’t want to speak with Farlonne?”
“I never want to speak with a fieflord unless I have a very specific purpose. Or an angry sergeant.”
Bellusdeo pushed herself off the ground. “Please convey our apologies to Lord Farlonne,” the Dragon said in a voice that could probably be heard by the absent Lord, although the syllables were High Barrani, “for our trespass. Lord Candallar allowed a man to enter Ravellon from his fief, and his Tower allowed that man, subsequently infested by Shadow, to leave Ravellon.
“We wished to ascertain, in a rudimentary fashion, that the other borders of Ravellon were not likewise compromised.”
“The border of Farlonne,” a new voice replied, “is not compromised.”
A woman in full armor walked out of the building into which the Barrani soldier had walked. The men, gathered in a rough formation around the position Bellusdeo had held on the ground, stiffened. At a single word from the woman who was obviously their commander, they parted, a living wave.
“I would ask,” she said as Bellusdeo had not yet gained height, “that you join me. I accept you at your word.”
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