Cast in Wisdom

by Michelle Sagara

  “Why do you think those laws were created?” Teela continued as Kaylin opened her mouth.

  “Does it matter? Sedarias doesn’t understand why the laws are so complicated—”

  Kaylin snorted. “That’s rich, coming from a Barrani. You might not know it, but most of the complicated laws are written in High Barrani. The Emperor felt it was the perfect language for them.”

  This didn’t slow Sedarias. Which meant Mandoran kept talking. Neither Allaron nor Annarion had anything to add. “Sedarias says the Emperor is a Dragon. He’s powerful enough that he gets to make the laws. We’re weak enough—for the moment—that we have to follow them when he’s looking in our direction. Hawks exist to be the eyes that are looking in all directions when the Emperor can’t. They’re meant to enforce the more powerful person’s will.”

  “That’s not the purpose of the law,” Kaylin snapped.

  “Then what is?”

  “We’re there to enforce the law so that people without the Emperor’s power are safe from people who have attitudes like yours.”

  Mandoran snapped his jaw shut on whatever he’d been about to say.

  “Told you,” Teela said quietly.

  * * *

  It was Annarion who caught up with Kaylin. The Barrani and the Dragon weren’t far enough behind that they couldn’t catch up with little effort, and even a hunting pack of Ferals was unlikely to reach Kaylin before her friends could.

  “Sedarias doesn’t mean to upset you. She is honestly trying to understand.”

  Kaylin said nothing.

  “There are so many people who have no power. So many people who would be considered weak. Among our own kin. Among the mortals. Especially among the mortals. If every single person who is weaker than you somehow becomes your personal responsibility, it will kill you. You would never have a moment’s peace, a moment’s rest. Your needs and wants would be subsumed in their entirety by the needs of others.”

  “If the world were more just, more fair, they wouldn’t be.”

  “Even with the laws you support and uphold, the world’s not a just or fair place.”

  “But it could be.”

  “Possibly. But in the end, it’s power that decides and power that rules. If you want to make changes, you need to have power. What you do with the power is then up to you, because you’re powerful.” He switched to Elantran, although he was often more comfortable speaking his native tongue. “Sedarias isn’t saying that the powerful should do whatever they feel like at the moment; she is saying that they can.

  “You can’t save everyone. It’s not possible. And there will always be people who need more than you and have less. Always. Even in your perfect world, unless you somehow imagine that everyone in that perfect world will all be the same. We’re immortal. We have time. You don’t. Would you make all mortals immortal? Attempts to do that have never worked well. Would you make all immortals mortal?”

  “No.”

  “Sedarias wants to know what you think your ideal world would look like.”

  “Sedarias can drop dead.”

  Silence. And then, because Sedarias had not dropped dead, “If you removed the fiefs, if you reformed them as Tiamaris is attempting to do, what will you do with your warrens? They are not, she infers, any safer for their occupants than the fiefs were for you.”

  “They don’t have Ferals.”

  “No; they have thugs who rule the warrens with more efficiency and more intelligence—or cunning. Your rule of law, your laws, haven’t prevented the warrens from existing.”

  “Annarion, please stop passing on Sedarias’s opinions. I don’t want them, and they’re not relevant to what we’re trying to do here.”

  “She points out—”

  “I mean it.”

  He fell silent. When he spoke again—and he did—he said, “I don’t agree with Sedarias, except in one way: if you feel responsible for everything, you’ll have no life of your own. If you can’t do everything—and not even you believe you can—then what is the point of anger or guilt? It’s like you’re feeling guilty, and that makes you angry, and then you’re angry at...what? The universe? The world? The people who abuse the power they do have?”

  “The people who don’t care.”

  “If we can’t change things, not caring is a way of surviving. Because caring or not caring has the same effect. Yes, perhaps we could say ‘but we care,’ but...if it doesn’t change anything, what does it even mean?”

  “That part where I said stop?”

  “Sorry. We find your worldview very, very confusing. Mandoran probably understands it best, but he’s having trouble explaining it and he thought you’d do a better job.”

  “Mandoran is an idiot.”

  For the first time since they’d left Helen, Annarion cracked a smile. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was there.

  “If it makes much difference, Teela pointed out the midwives and the foundling hall.”

  “In what context?”

  “Well, they don’t pay you. And you’ve saved lives.”

  Kaylin shrugged. “Did it make a difference to Sedarias?”

  “Not really. But Sedarias’s family is—Well, you’ve seen her sister and her brother.” He hesitated. “You’ve been happy with the changes Lord Tiamaris is making in his fief.”

  Kaylin nodded.

  “They make pragmatic sense to Sedarias—if your people are starving, they’re going to be useless—but at heart, the world is like the fief. This one,” he added, with a trace of bitterness. “If you’re at the bottom, you’re dependent on the largesse of the powerful. In order to stand on your own, you have to be a power. She understands ties of affection and obligation—but she doesn’t understand a sense of obligation where those ties are nonexistent.

  “Helen’s tried to explain it. But Sedarias thinks Helen has no choice but to think what she thinks because that’s the way she was built.”

  Kaylin was offended on Helen’s behalf, and tried to squash it; Helen wouldn’t be offended. She exhaled. “Can we drop it?”

  Annarion nodded.

  “But tell Sedarias that I go to the foundling hall because it’s like seeing a bunch of little Kaylins who won’t be terrified of Ferals, won’t face starvation, and won’t be without protection. It’s like it helps me imagine a life that wasn’t mine for kids who might not survive otherwise. I survived because I was lucky. And because I had Severn.”

  But that led to darker thoughts, and she shied away from those.

  “You’re not worried about my brother.” The last word rose slightly.

  “Not yet.”

  “No?”

  “We bumbled our way out of trouble. I’m guessing Nightshade knows what we did and how we did it. He won’t get stuck the same way we did. I’m more worried about Terrano.”

  “Oh?”

  “He’s more of a trouble magnet than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  Annarion coughed.

  “What?”

  “Sedarias suggests you find a mirror.”

  “I don’t go looking for trouble. I just trip over it.”

  “Sedarias also says: fair enough. Is that the border?”

  Kaylin glanced at Annarion; his eyes were narrowed. She hesitated, and Bellusdeo said, “Yes, that’s the border. What do you see when you look at it?”

  “Fog. Or smoke.” Mandoran and Allaron joined him as they slowed their walk. Kaylin didn’t see fog. Hope was hanging across her shoulders like a shawl, looking distinctly bored. He didn’t sit up and didn’t slap a wing across her eyes. Whatever she saw appeared to be good enough.

  She didn’t see what Hope saw.

  “Teela?”

  “I see streets continuing into what I assume is visually Liatt.”

  “Bad assumption,” Bellusdeo then said. “Crossing t
hat street doesn’t take us to a street that looks similar in Liatt.”

  “You experimented?”

  “For much of the day. I’m not sure why the Towers choose to present an illusion of streets continuing—but if we take that street and turn around the moment we enter Liatt, the street doesn’t align properly.”

  “It’s not the same street on both sides?”

  “Not always, no. You see street?”

  “I see what both you and Kaylin see. Allaron, Annarion and Mandoran don’t. But if Kaylin had lost all contact with her name-bound, we’d know the silence was a simple effect of the border zone. Clearly, that’s not the case. She could speak to the name-bound who were with her in the border zone.”

  “You think they found what they were looking for?”

  “I think it likely.”

  “How do you guys want to do this? You need a rope-line?” Kaylin asked the cohort.

  “Nah. We’ve got Teela. We’ll just use her eyes.”

  Teela looked about as thrilled as Kaylin expected she would.

  * * *

  They entered the border zone from the Nightshade side, given that was the fief they were standing in. To Kaylin, the evening gave way to a twilight of gray and washed-out color, but the buildings in this light were clearer; Nightshade didn’t believe in lighting all of the streets. To be fair—and this was grudging—Nightshade’s streets were empty of all but the desperate and the drunken at night; the Ferals kept the streets clear.

  Kaylin frowned as she studied the street they were standing on; it seemed to continue for a few blocks. She guessed that those blocks were illusory and they would exit the street to a change of environment in Liatt.

  Teela didn’t take the lead, and Bellusdeo, while impatient, didn’t want it, either. Kaylin headed toward Liatt. “It’s a proof of concept,” she told her companions. “Let’s see how long it takes us to get out.”

  The answer was three blocks. Liatt opened up to late night on the other side; the mist or fog cleared for the cohort as they reached it. Turning immediately, Kaylin looked down the street through which they’d just walked. It was different, or rather, the buildings were.

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  “A good one?” This was Mandoran.

  “Probably not. It shouldn’t be dangerous—or not more dangerous than entering the border zone.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “We’re going to let you guys lead.”

  “We can’t see much.”

  “Exactly. If we want to explore the border zone here, it’s harder for the rest of us—we can see the street, we follow the street. I’d like to know how Nightshade or Terrano navigated when they were in that zone.”

  * * *

  Entering the border zone from Liatt showed Kaylin a different street with different buildings. Mandoran’s view was the same as it had been on the other side: a lot of fog and little visibility. This time, however, Kaylin decided to try a shortcut, passing between buildings to see if she could find another street. She used Mandoran’s vision—or lack of vision—to skirt the border zone. The first time, she turned toward Elantra and emerged, eventually, at the boundary between Nightshade and the city—which would be the Ablayne.

  The border zone could not be entered from the Elantra side of the fiefs. They couldn’t see it; they couldn’t cross into it. It appeared to exist as a function of the fiefs themselves. She wondered if the entry from Ravellon was just as impossible, but doubted it, and didn’t ask because it was exactly the kind of question that would make Bellusdeo go red-eyed.

  They entered Nightshade and started again; this time close to the Ablayne. Kaylin began to follow the border, using the cohort’s lack of clear vision as a guide.

  “You don’t think Terrano would have been foolish enough to enter Ravellon by accident?” Bellusdeo asked.

  Kaylin frowned. “I’m not sure Terrano would see what the others are seeing. Teela doesn’t, except secondhand. They’re both outliers when it comes to the cohort. Terrano is pushing the limits in one direction, and Teela is—”

  “Boring,” Mandoran supplied.

  “Incredibly tolerant and forgiving,” Teela said.

  Kaylin snorted. She’d gone out drinking with Teela and Tain.

  “We have lower standards for both,” the Barrani Hawk added when she caught sight of Kaylin’s expression. “What are you looking for?”

  “Streets.”

  “In backyards?”

  “The visible—to the non-cohort—street follows the street from the fief. I want a street or two that goes parallel to the fief, rather than perpendicular, in the border zone. I think there has to be one—but we weren’t looking when we left Killian behind; we just wanted to get out.

  “Killian’s building looked like a town hall, but bigger. And the exit didn’t run in the same direction as the border zone streets generally run. We turned right, onto a street, and followed it out.”

  “And couldn’t get back.”

  “More or less.”

  “Could you see it from above?” Teela asked Bellusdeo.

  “No—but Kaylin wasn’t keen on aerial exploration.”

  “That’s odd—she usually loves flying.”

  The Dragon reached out and grabbed Mandoran by the arm. “I could see. You can’t. Don’t even try it.”

  “I could probably trace an area of the fog zone from above. I want to know what the border zone looks like from above. Is it all just fog for days or can we rise above it?”

  Bellusdeo glared.

  Mandoran was immune to that, as he saw it all the time.

  “He’s kind of tethered to the rest of them,” Kaylin pointed out.

  “You think it’s safe?”

  “Not really. But I don’t think it will kill him.”

  “He’s one of the few members of the cohort who possess a sense of humor. I’d hate to lose that.”

  “When you’re not trying to turn me to ash?”

  “A sense of humor doesn’t imply a good sense of humor. It’s still better than nothing.”

  Maggaron, who had been so silent Kaylin could forget his presence—which said a lot, given his height—cleared his throat. “I do not think I see what you see.”

  They all turned to stare at him.

  Chapter 12

  Bellusdeo was first to speak. “What do you see?”

  “I see buildings,” he finally said. “I see the street.”

  “Which is what we see.”

  “I do not think I see the same buildings.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because the buildings I see are buildings that would house my people, not the people of this city. The doors are taller. The ceilings are higher.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because Kaylin said that the buildings looked the same in the border as they do in the actual fief. That is not what I see. When we enter the border zone, although the street appears to be a continuous line, the buildings themselves are...empty, deserted remnants of one of our cities, to me.”

  They turned to look at Maggaron; Kaylin then transferred her silent question to his Dragon.

  “They look like mortal buildings to me. I see, I believe, what you see, not what Maggaron sees.”

  “Can you change your height?” Kaylin asked. “I mean, if Maggaron’s people—”

  “No. It is nowhere near as simple as that.”

  Mandoran spoke next, as if making a decision. “Let me go up above the clouds. I’ll go straight up; I won’t attempt to wander the line of fog. I have the others here; they can tell you what I see.”

  Bellusdeo rumbled, her wordless annoyance at odds with her appearance. She glared at Kaylin but offered the Barrani a grudging nod.

  Mandoran’s feet left the street. Since he cou
ldn’t see the street, it probably wasn’t as unsettling to him as it was to Kaylin. She watched him rise above the two-story buildings, looking at almost nothing else, as if her gaze could somehow be an anchor.

  Annarion and Allaron didn’t watch, but didn’t have to; Teela’s gaze, like Kaylin’s, was fixed to Mandoran—or the bottom of his feet. He didn’t drift toward either the city or Ravellon. As he’d promised, he attempted to rise in a straight line.

  “Something’s strange,” Annarion said, eyes closed.

  “Is he above the fog line now?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s strange?”

  “All he can see is fog, in any direction. There’s no visible fief on either side of where he’s standing.”

  Kaylin had a very bad feeling about this. “Tell him to come down.”

  “He wants to look at something.”

  “Tell him we look with our eyes,” Kaylin snapped.

  “Barrani children are not raised with that phrase,” Teela told her. “It won’t have the same weight it does in the office.”

  Bellusdeo’s rumble enclosed the words, “Stand back.” Kaylin had seen this transformation often enough that she had a good idea of how much space “back” meant; Teela caught Annarion and Allaron and pulled them out of the way. Maggaron didn’t move.

  “This is a bad idea,” Kaylin told the gold Dragon.

  “Really? Why?”

  “That’s unkind to Kaylin,” Teela said, before Kaylin could dredge up an answer that wouldn’t make things worse. “You know well why.”

  Bellusdeo shrugged, a ripple of motion that traveled the length of her back. “You’re not trying to stop me.”

  Teela shook her head. “I like you. I don’t generally care for Dragons for obvious reasons. If the Dragon species has been whittled down to five—six, including yourself—it makes no material difference in my life. If the species remains at that number for the foreseeable future, it will not upset the balance of power.

  “Some might argue that your disappearance here would be to our advantage in the long term. If you choose to be careless, if your decisions put you in the way of harm, it might prove useful.”