Cast in Peril

by Michelle Sagara

  “It was not; it was a rune of containment.”

  “And the headstone just a convenient shape?”

  “A reminder.” The dragon hovered in front of his palms. “What will you do?” he asked it, as if he expected an answer. His eyes widened, which implied that he’d even received one. “Kaylin, your familiar—”

  “I don’t know very much about him,” she replied quickly. “He can’t talk to me.”

  “Can you not hear his voice? Can he help as he claims?” There was open anxiety in the question. Fear, she thought, but not a fear of the small dragon. “I cannot hear his thoughts unless he desires it.”

  “I can’t hear them—at all.”

  “Can you not?” His eyes rounded. “But he is yours.”

  She owned him, she thought, the way most people owned cats. She didn’t bother to say this, because she hadn’t seen anything like a small pet in any of the Hallionne and didn’t relish having to explain the reason for their existence. “What did he say he could do?”

  “Speak,” he said softly. “Speak with my brothers.”

  She stared at the hovering small dragon; he reminded her of a gigantic glass hummingbird. “He doesn’t completely trust the Hallionne,” she said. “But he can interact with them in some way.”

  He said nothing, staring at the small dragon so intently, Kaylin suspected that if the Barrani attempted to assassinate each other right now, he wouldn’t notice. “Does he not trust us?”

  “No. He’s never let me cut my hand and offer the Hallionne my blood.”

  This caused him to look away from the small dragon, a brow raised. “But you were granted entry?”

  She nodded. “He…bit…the tree.”

  “Hallionne Sylvanne. He bit the Hallionne, he survived, and you gained entry?”

  She nodded. “The Hallionne recognized me thereafter.”

  “Yes,” Bertolle said to the small dragon. “If you will do this, yes, I will take the risk.”

  She didn’t ask him what he was risking. She didn’t understand this graveyard, these headstones—one of which was now a cool, moving liquid—or the Hallionne. She understood, however, the strength—and the fear—of his hope.

  The small dragon landed on Hallionne Bertolle’s wrist, just above where the stone lay pooled. He then inhaled.

  Kaylin’s eyes widened. “Hallionne Bertolle, there is a danger—”

  But the Hallionne said, “He cannot harm me, Lord Kaylin, and I have chosen to take the risk.”

  The small dragon exhaled. A stream of white smoke left his lips, glinting and sparkling in the dampened light of the graveyard. She had seen what the inhaled smoke had done to the hunting pack that had loped out of the forest. But…liquid stone couldn’t inhale or ingest. If it changed, could the change actually be inimical?

  It wasn’t the stone that was her chief concern—it was the heart of the building in which she was now standing. If something happened to the Hallionne, assuming she survived… Her imagination was not up to the task of offering scenarios for their possible doom. Nor did Bertolle offer any; for the first time since she’d entered the building, so much of his attention was focused on one thing he appeared to have none left for the smallness of her thoughts and worries.

  The stream of oddly reflective smoke hit the puddle that had once been carved headstone.

  Kaylin watched, breath held, as the two combined. It was a visually striking joining of two disparate elements; the stone absorbed the smoke, but the smoke absorbed the stone as well, gas bleeding into liquid and becoming something other. The other had a texture and a form that was neither stone nor gas; it expanded, changing shape, as the Hallionne opened his hands and let it spread.

  And when it was done, Bertolle’s hands were suspended in front of his chest in a loose cup that looked almost like the nerveless plea of a beggar at sundown, hands empty, eyes—oh, his eyes. She had to look away. She looked instead at the emerging form of what had once been the marker over a figurative grave.

  Arms grew, and legs; a face emerged, cloud and stone merging to form an alabaster expression. It was, in length of chin, height of cheekbones, and complexion, a Barrani man’s face. But his hair was the gray of stone, although in length, it matched Bertolle’s or Nightshade’s. He had the same full lips of the Barrani, but his eyes were gray, and if they changed in color, the range was not Barrani; gray was Aerian. He grew no wings, although it wouldn’t have surprised her to see them. She thought, at this moment, nothing would.

  But then he opened those lips and he spoke. His voice was not a Barrani voice. It wasn’t a mortal voice in any way. It was…a song. It was, she realized, very like the song that Nightshade and the Consort had sung to wake the Hallionne—but the song came easily to his lips. The Consort had struggled; the construct showed no sign of effort at all. But there was no harmony to carry what sounded like a melody missing a few notes.

  The small dragon did a pirouette in the air and then returned to Kaylin’s shoulders. She was silent. Bertolle was not. He opened his mouth on a word and a song, and it was the song that took flight. She thought he would sing harmony, but he didn’t; he changed the melody, dragging this newly wakened creature with him. Their voices were so much alike, in the end, she couldn’t separate them, couldn’t tell them apart. She listened. She watched.

  Music had substance here. Notes were physical. The form of the stranger solidified; it gained color, texture, and weight. Strands of hair began to move as stone gave way to something softer and more delicate. Even the gray of his eyes deepened into an almost endless night. She thought they might sing forever, and felt a visceral sense of loss when the last attenuated notes faded and they closed their lips in concert.

  Hallionne Bertolle was crying. He wasn’t sobbing; silent tears trailed the length of his face, unheeded. He spoke a single word—a word of many syllables that somehow sounded to Kaylin’s ears like a whole, cohesive sound.

  She expected the former gravestone to melt or dissipate or vanish; he didn’t. But he spoke as well, softly, syllables blurring as if he had multiple voices, not one. Only when the two fell silent could she speak and feel she wasn’t interrupting something so personal she should have fled in embarrassment instead.

  “Are they all like that?”

  The nameless Barrani—who was not in any way truly Barrani—was examining the palms of his hands. “They are like I was,” he said, each word annunciated as if with difficulty, or as if the language itself was utterly foreign.

  “It is,” Bertolle said softly. “He learns it now from me, but he finds it—”

  “Confining,” the stranger finished. “Have they returned?”

  “No,” Bertolle replied. They spoke Barrani now. It was vastly less musical, and for a moment, it sounded as thin to Kaylin’s ears as it must have sounded to theirs.

  She glanced at the small dragon. He looked exhausted. And smug. He looped his tail around her neck as he yawned.

  “He wasn’t dead.”

  “No, Kaylin. He was…asleep. This is the only place that they sleep quietly.”

  “I don’t understand.” She frowned. “You called them brothers.”

  “I did.” He hesitated, which was unusual for the Hallionne. “Your familiar, would he be willing to wake them all?”

  She glanced at the small dragon, who exhaled heavily. It sounded like a sigh. But he rose again, loosened his tail, and began to flutter toward the next headstone in this hallowed graveyard.

  * * *

  When it was over—and it seemed, to Kaylin, to take a long time—the awakened numbered six, not including the Hallionne. They spoke among themselves, and they did odd things with their hands and legs, as if testing the limitations of their forms. Sadly, their forms weren’t as limited as a regular Barrani’s, and at least one took about five minutes to readjust the arm he’d elongated to three times its original length.

  While she watched, she listened; some of their words were as foreign to Kaylin as Barrani appeared
to be to them. The small dragon was flopped across her shoulders and had made it clear he had no intention of moving again in the near future.

  Bertolle approached her and offered her a perfect bow. He held it a long time. When he rose his eyes were brown. They looked almost like her eyes. “I am in your debt.”

  She shrugged. “You’re in his debt,” she said, indicating the small dragon with her chin. She was by now completely familiar with the Barrani attitude toward debt and wanted no part of it—or as little as she could shoulder. “Were you like them?”

  He was silent.

  “Before the Lords of Law, were you like them?”

  “I…was.”

  “They weren’t created by the Lords of Law.”

  “They were not created solely by the Lords of Law, no. Understand, harmoniste, that life as you conceive of it did not evolve in the hands of only one creator. They were multiple, and they worked in different fashions; no two, even among the Lords of Law, had the same paradigm of creation. No Lord of Chaos, either, although perhaps that is a given.

  “But those of us who were alive—in a fashion you would not understand—knew death. We could be unmade. We could, if pressed, unmake. We understood the need to preserve the form and the shape of the world. I was not forced to assume the role of Hallionne; I accepted the request.”

  “They couldn’t have chosen a Barrani?”

  Both of his brows rose toward his hairline in an entirely un-Barrani way. “You have some familiarity with the Barrani. How many of your acquaintance could contain multitudes and rearrange themselves to provide both protection and shelter?”

  “Zero.”

  “Exactly. I admire your tenacity in the face of your limitations, but feel that your ability to assess and observe requires work.”

  She couldn’t help it; she laughed.

  “That is amusing?”

  “Not intentionally, no. I didn’t expect a lecture in a graveyard at the heart of an ancient, wild building.” As her laughter faded into a smile, she asked, “What will they do?”

  “My brothers?”

  She nodded.

  “They will accompany you on the portal paths.”

  That scrubbed the rest of the smile off her face. “Pardon?”

  “Was I unclear? They intend to travel to the West March.”

  The Consort was going to strangle her.

  Bertolle raised a brow. “If she does,” he said, “she will wait until after the regalia, and she will not attempt it here.”

  “I wasn’t being literal.” Mostly.

  “Why will she be concerned?”

  “Six unknown companions, who look like Barrani but demonstrably are not, are going to accompany us to the West March, passing through the other Hallionne on the way. She has no idea who they are or what they want, and they owe her no fealty or obedience. We’ve already taken injuries, most of which would have been fatal if not for—” She exhaled. “If not for intervention. You’ve been compromised, and—”

  “Yes. Were it not for you, I might have fallen.”

  She stared at him. “I didn’t do you any favors, did I?” It had never occurred to her that the attack itself might possibly be welcome.

  “You did,” was his soft reply. “I cannot be what I once was, before my days as Hallionne. I was…reborn.”

  “And them?”

  “They came, after my ascension, to…keep me company?”

  In a graveyard.

  “Yes, although it has a different meaning for my kin than it does for you; there is no finality.”

  The small dragon yawned, nudging Kaylin’s chin with the underside of his head. “I’m sorry,” she told the Hallionne, “but I really need to sleep. And I’m not one of your brothers—I don’t want to do it underground.”

  “No, of course not. You would die. I did not bring you here to wake the sleepers; I did not even guess it could be done. I brought you here because it is here that you are safest. If, however, you prefer, I will ask my brothers to accompany you; they are otherwise unoccupied for the moment.”

  They looked like children playing with a new toy. Sadly, it was their bodies, and it was very disturbing to watch. Noses and ears shouldn’t do that. “No, really, I’m fine.”

  “Then you will remain within my sanctum. I do not understand your dislike for the decor, but at this point, it is meaningless. I will house you as you desire.” He gestured, and the six odd non-Barrani men looked up, as one, toward him, their eyes bright with curiosity.

  She knew they could kill her. She even thought she knew how. But they seemed very unlike the Barrani Lords who had lived for centuries within the political mesh of the High Court; they were almost like puppies or kittens.

  Bertolle laughed. His laughter was like an earthquake; it shook the ground, causing Kaylin to stagger. “I will,” he told her, “keep that to myself. It is interesting. If asked, you would say you are without power, but you see the world in a way that suggests the opposite.” He pointed toward a small stone building in the distance. “There,” he told her.

  She walked quickly toward it, her legs shaking because the tremors beneath her feet hadn’t exactly stopped. The door was, to her surprise, a little warped; the doorknob looked as though it had seen better decades, although that might have been a trick of the light, which wasn’t good. It was like street light, she thought, after sunset, although there were no streetlamps to cast it, because there were no streets.

  She almost reached for a key, and really, that should have been a hint. Shaking her head, she opened the small door and froze in its frame.

  Turning to Bertolle she said, “Why?”

  “Because,” he replied, “it is your home.”

  And it was. It was the apartment that she had found with Caitlin’s help. It was the first home she could truly call her own and the first in which she’d lived on the city side of the Ablayne. She entered the room, with its unimpressive, low ceilings and its creaky floorboards. Even her rug was here, worn and patchy. The small vestibule contained a mirror—her mirror. The one she’d paid for, admittedly with a partial grant from the Hawks. Across the room were the warped shutters that kept rain—mostly—out; she could see the string with which she had to tie them shut.

  Her chair was between the door and the bed, and it had clothes strewn over its back. Her bed was tiny compared to every other bed she’d seen in the Hallionne; tiny, with a crappy pillow and sheets that were a little on the threadbare side.

  She swallowed. Walked into the small kitchen, with its scratched table. Severn’s basket was on the floor. She lifted its lid and saw that the cheese she’d bought was still nestled against its enchanted weave. She closed the lid, lowered her chin, and struggled with tears. She was mostly winning, too, but the Hallionne said, “Why?”

  She shook her head, because speaking would have caused the tears to fall.

  “You are not in the company of your enemies. You are not surrounded by your rivals. Not even your friends are here to witness.”

  “It’s only a room,” she managed. “It’s—it’s only a room. It’s a building; it’s not even alive.”

  He quirked an eyebrow at her, and in spite of herself, she laughed. “It’s a building made by men. It’ll rot. It doesn’t speak and it doesn’t read minds and it can’t defend itself—it’s got no mind, no heart, no—” She swallowed. “Do you mind going to talk to your brothers?”

  He understood that she meant him to leave her, and did.

  She crawled into her bed, still wearing a dress that had never seen the inside of her apartment. Tucking faded counterpane under her chin, she closed her eyes, and she cried the same tears that the Hallionne had.

  Chapter 25

  In the morning, Hallionne Bertolle knocked at the door. Kaylin rolled out of bed, instinctively glancing at the mirror; it was a safe, clean gray. The light across the edge of the shutters meant she hadn’t overslept, and as the rest of her mind caught up with her body, she exhaled. Marcus wasn’t grow
ling at the other end of the mirror; she wasn’t late for work. She wasn’t anywhere near the Halls of Law or any other pressing emergencies of the kind that usually dominated her life.

  Nor did she need to change clothes. Lack of laundering hadn’t affected the long green dress. Given her usual day, this was useful magic. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only magic that came with the dress.

  The small dragon was curled up to the window side of her pillow; he propped up one eyelid as she walked toward the door, well aware that the Hallionne had no need to actually knock.

  “No,” he said as she opened it. “It is a courtesy.”

  “In this apartment,” she replied, “most of the visitors don’t bother.”

  “The Consort is in the dining hall,” he told her, glancing around the apartment, “and my brothers are waiting. We conversed while you slept,” he added, “and I think you will find their behavior less unusual. I have made it clear that they are not to distort their faces or bodies beyond the acceptable norm for Barrani.

  “Come, Kaylin. It is time to leave.”

  She took a deep breath, walked over to the bed, and picked up the small dragon. He opened both eyes this time, but only for as long as it took her to rearrange him like an awkward shawl. “What will you do with this—this room?”

  “Nothing,” he replied.

  “Nothing?”

  “I understand that it is significant to you, and I understand that it is also lost. This place,” he added as he stepped into what was no longer a graveyard but just as elegiac, “is meant for similar things. I will preserve it here, although it is gone in the world you inhabit, and perhaps, should you come this way again, you will visit it.

  “But you will know that it is here, even if you do not. Time will no longer change it. It is safe.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not mine.”

  “Is it not?”