Cast in Conflict

by Michelle Sagara

  Kaylin understood it.

  “Yes, dear. Because you would have done the same thing—but with far poorer results, in my opinion.”

  “He burned down part of the house!”

  “He caused damage that was, in the end, trivial to repair. I am not sure you would have survived—and I consider that far worse.”

  Fair enough. Emmerian might not have spent all of his adult life fighting a war—a losing war—but he was still a Dragon.

  “Teela isn’t angry with him. She understands the reaction.”

  “And the rest of the cohort?”

  “Are in the dining room.” Meaning, Kaylin could find out for herself. As there was no point in going back to bed—she wouldn’t sleep anyway, and if she did, she’d mess up her first day of new duties—she headed toward the open dining room door.

  All of the cohort, with the exception of Serralyn and Valliant, had taken up chairs in the dining room. The cohort often just occupied a large corner of the floor, their arms, legs, and bodies overlapping like a puppy pile; they were all seated at the table, as if this were a council of war.

  They were silent until Kaylin entered, but that certainly didn’t mean they weren’t talking. Or arguing, given the thunderous expressions and deeply blue eyes of half of them.

  Mandoran was not among that half, and Terrano was at the foot of the table—as far from Sedarias as it was physically possible to be. He was emotionally close to Sedarias—Kaylin privately believed she was one of the people he’d missed the most when he’d chosen total freedom—but that didn’t mean he enjoyed her anger.

  A chair appeared for her at the table. Given the color of the sky, it was an hour before breakfast, and breakfast had never been a full-house affair. Plates began to appear on the table.

  Everyone turned to look past the food at Kaylin.

  “I didn’t say anything!”

  “It’s Helen,” Terrano said. “You don’t have to say anything. Why are you always hungry, anyway?”

  “It’s not that I’m always hungry, it’s just that I learned to eat when food was available.” Because mostly, it hadn’t been.

  Sedarias looked at the plate set in front of her as if it was a cockroach. She didn’t complain that it was there. In true Sedarias fashion she accepted its presence as Helen’s prerogative. She didn’t eat, though.

  Teela, blue-eyed, did. Although she was no longer in residence officially—she’d moved in for the duration of the preparation for the Test of Name—she’d been spending time in the rooms Helen had created for her use. In theory, she’d moved out after the cohort had, as a collective, passed the Test of Name. Given Emmerian’s presence tonight, Kaylin was grateful for the difference between theory and practice.

  Kaylin also ate. Among other things, it gave her something to do with her hands. It also gave her an excuse not to talk, as she’d finally mastered the art of chewing and swallowing before she opened her mouth. This had been surprisingly difficult.

  The sound of only Kaylin chewing and swallowing filled the silent room. Kaylin put down her fork. “What exactly happened earlier?” She spoke to Teela.

  “You pretty much saw it yourself,” Terrano began.

  “Fine. Don’t talk about the parts I saw.” She was still looking at Teela.

  Teela was silent.

  “Teela.”

  “Yes?”

  “You drew your damn sword.”

  “I considered it wise, but it was purely precautionary. I made no attempt to injure either Lord Emmerian or Bellusdeo.” Teela also set her fork down, swiveling in her chair to face Kaylin.

  “Emmerian didn’t go full Dragon for no reason.” Kaylin folded her arms. She had never liked it when Teela’s eyes were this color, but she wasn’t thirteen anymore.

  “He is unaccustomed to the cohort. I don’t believe Bellusdeo felt threatened by the turn the argument took.” She exhaled. “Lord Emmerian is generally levelheaded, but Bellusdeo is important to the Dragons. I believe he overreacted. I had no desire to harm him. I merely wished to show him—”

  “That you could?”

  “That it would be costly were he to attempt to kill us—any of us—yes.”

  Fair enough. Even Emmerian had said he’d lost his temper. “Why, exactly, did Bellusdeo go full Dragon?”

  “That is not a question to ask of us.”

  “Fine. Why did you—or most of you—disincorporate?”

  “Face full of angry Dragon,” Terrano muttered. He then winced.

  “No, please do continue,” Sedarias said sweetly. Sweet, it was clear, was a poison, and possibly a deadly one. “Since this was entirely started by you.”

  “I just wanted to settle the question of the Tower and the fiefs. And it was better to do it here than do it on the actual site.”

  Kaylin had no argument with that. Her guess as to how things unfolded was probably right: the cohort’s reason for wanting the Tower would offend the hells out of Bellusdeo, the only person present who had firsthand experience with what Shadow could and would do to an entire world if given its freedom.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve decided to step back?” she asked Sedarias.

  Sedarias said a cold, loud nothing.

  Severn’s arrival saved them all from a conversation that was going to be entirely pointless.

  * * *

  Bellusdeo did not leave the house early; she remained in the parlor with Emmerian while Helen escorted Severn back to the questionable safety of the dining hall. Helen had a chair waiting for him by the time he entered the room, and breakfast as well.

  “Didn’t you already eat?” Terrano asked, as Kaylin joined him.

  “When we head out for the day, we’re often forced to skip lunch,” Kaylin replied. “This is lunch.”

  Terrano rolled his eyes. “I can’t sit here and watch you do nothing but eat.” He rose.

  “You’re not coming with us.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “Helen can.”

  “Not easily.”

  “I can,” Sedarias said.

  No one was stupid enough to argue with that.

  “Mandoran is coming with us.” Kaylin offered this as a concession.

  “Given the Dragon’s mood?” Mandoran said; he’d been almost entirely silent, which was unlike him.

  “I’m going out with her, and she’s probably taking her mood with her.”

  “You’re getting paid.”

  She had better be. And even if the current special assignment tripled her pay, Kaylin wasn’t certain it was worth it. Since Imperial Command meant do it or be out of the job you otherwise loved, it wasn’t about the money. Well, not entirely about the money; here, pay was the consolation prize. She would also be much, much happier to have none of the cohort with them, given the events that had pretty much thrown her out of bed in a panic.

  Mandoran groused, but when Kaylin and Severn rose to leave—at Helen’s less than subtle prompting—he rose as well. His eyes were very blue, but that wasn’t necessarily because of Bellusdeo.

  * * *

  Bellusdeo started the rest of her day—which involved the expected incursion into the fiefs—in Dragon armor. Kaylin stared at it. She opened her mouth once, but words failed to emerge.

  “I have already destroyed another dress,” Bellusdeo said, answering the words Kaylin hadn’t said. “And there’s no guarantee I won’t be forced to fight. I see no reason my possible emergencies should deplete the Imperial coffers further.”

  “Did Emmerian—Lord Emmerian—leave?”

  “He is currently speaking with Helen. And no, I do not believe they require interruption. If, however, you don’t intend to accompany me, please feel free to join them.” Her smile was very toothy.

  She was going to attract a lot of attention on her way to the fiefs. She wa
s going to attract even more when she was in them. Kaylin exhaled; Severn offered a brief grin, but no words.

  * * *

  Maggaron accompanied Bellusdeo, looking far taller than he normally looked on the rare occasions he chose to leave his own rooms. Mandoran kept to one side of Kaylin, which was the side Bellusdeo wasn’t occupying. Severn fell in beside Maggaron. This wasn’t as hard as it might have been otherwise, given the differing lengths of their respective strides; Maggaron was used to walking far more slowly when he accompanied his Dragon.

  “Look,” Mandoran said, breaking an unusual silence. “I’m personally sorry about what happened last night.”

  Bellusdeo glanced at him.

  Whatever Emmerian and Bellusdeo had discussed had caused her eyes to ramp down into a more normal, cautious orange.

  Mandoran’s remained blue. When Bellusdeo failed to answer his peace offering, he changed the subject. “So...where are we going today?”

  “That will have to be a surprise,” the Dragon replied, and this time she did smile.

  “I think I’m done with surprises for now.”

  “Optimist.”

  Kaylin wanted the answer to Mandoran’s question as well, but left it alone. It’s not like they weren’t going to find out anyway. It would just take longer.

  And she really didn’t want to set off either Mandoran or Bellusdeo in the city streets. Maggaron was already enough of a visual draw that people were staring, moving, or on the edge of panic.

  * * *

  Bellusdeo chose to cross the bridge over the Ablayne into the fief of Tiamaris. There were other bridges—and other gates—but Tiamaris had two advantages. One, its fieflord was currently still a member of the Dragon Court, and therefore beholden to the Emperor in a way no other fieflords were, and two, even if it was constantly under construction in one way or another, the construction spoke of hope, not despair.

  There was more foot traffic into Tiamaris than Kaylin thought normal—but normal for the fiefs, or at least Tiamaris’s fief, had been steadily increasing ever since he made the Tower his own.

  Kaylin mulled. Tiamaris hadn’t taken the Tower because it was a necessary bastion against the incursion of Shadow. She’d never actually asked why he’d done so; at the time, it was perfectly clear that he had made his choice, and only death would change it—no, that was wrong. Death would render it irrelevant.

  Sedarias’s desire to have a Tower of their own made sense to Kaylin. In the early days of her childhood and youth, she would have wanted the same thing.

  It was entirely possible that the person who the Tower accepted would be like Tiamaris or Sedarias, not like Bellusdeo. The decision, given Kaylin’s limited experience, seemed to be in the hands of the Tower, not the Dragon or the Barrani. And that made sense because it was the Tower who was going to have to live with the captain. If the Towers weren’t sentient, it wouldn’t matter.

  But Tara with Tiamaris was happy.

  Tara without had been on the point of breakdown.

  “You’re thinking,” Bellusdeo said, once they’d crossed the bridge.

  “I’ve been told it’s helpful.”

  “To who?”

  “Me, according to every pissed-off teacher I’ve ever had.”

  “How did that work out for them?”

  “Well, I told them what I was thinking and apparently that didn’t qualify as thought. So, probably not as well as it should have.”

  Bellusdeo grinned. Tiamaris was a comfortable place for the gold Dragon. For one, draconic form was not illegal here, and for two, Bellusdeo could therefore fly. The airspace was smaller than it would have been over the city proper, but she’d break no laws if she chose to do so. Mostly, she didn’t, but she chafed at Imperial expectations, and here there were fewer of them.

  In general, she respected—possibly even admired—Imperial Law. But forbidding Dragons their draconic forms was like forbidding them half of their selves. Kaylin understood the reasoning for it, and the Swords, if asked, would trumpet the importance of that denial for as long as it took to be heard. But their job was crowd control when citizens were panicking; Kaylin’s wasn’t. People were people everywhere—they strongly disliked anything that added more work to their desks.

  Because Kaylin knew a lot of the Swords—as lunch companions if not beat partners—she had some sympathy for their position. Their position was guided by Imperial Law, nothing else. And people would panic.

  Bellusdeo believed that if Dragons were allowed to be Dragons everywhere, panic would go away; it would become a mundane event, much like wagons in the streets.

  Kaylin, as a non-Dragon, couldn’t agree. She understood why Bellusdeo hated it; she understood that, in Bellusdeo’s world, Dragons had been better than Shadow; they’d become a sign of comfort, rather than a sign of impending death. But Elantra wasn’t that world. Not yet, and hopefully not ever.

  Kaylin had no idea what the laws that governed the Academia were; it hadn’t occurred to her to ask. “We’re not going to visit the Arkon?”

  “Lannagaros, or, in your case, the chancellor, and no, not immediately. I have nothing to report yet.”

  “Yet?”

  Bellusdeo turned down the street that led from Tiamaris to the Academia, where she said she wasn’t going. “I have one potential meeting today, possibly two if the first meeting is brief.”

  “When you say potential, do you mean you have an appointment?”

  The Dragon snorted. With smoke. “You were curious about one of the fiefs when we did our brief pass through it. We are going to that fief in an attempt to speak with the man who owns the Tower with the...happy face adornment that can be seen from the air.”

  * * *

  Durant. Durant was the name of the fief, and therefore the name of the current fieflord. That was the sum total of what Kaylin knew about the fief, that and the fact that the buildings on the Ravellon border were in decent repair. In Nightshade, decent repair would have meant occupied; she was less certain about Durant.

  Durant bordered the Ablayne for a small fraction of its Elantra-facing border length; most of Durant was walled off on the Elantra-facing border. Bellusdeo hadn’t been all that concerned about the Elantra border; Kaylin, a Hawk, paid more attention. The wrong activities near the borders of the city fell squarely into the Hawks’ domain.

  But if things went to hell, it would be a far larger problem than the Hawks were created to handle. The Towers weren’t the Halls of Law, but they were absolutely necessary. On this, both Kaylin and Bellusdeo could agree.

  * * *

  “You use the Academia as a pass-through now?”

  “It seems safest. I am highly concerned with the possible effects of Shadow on its current, solid form; Lannagaros is aware that it might become an issue. The Academia is not under the remit of the Towers, but is somehow engaged with them or linked to them. It is the reason that I have agreed to undertake these...scouting missions for Lannagaros.”

  “What does Killian think?”

  “He agrees that it could be a possible concern. As a sentient building, he accrues knowledge from my visits, and he has also been encouraging. My discussions with Arbiter Starrante have been inconclusive. His racial ability—the creation of portals—is, we all believe, a possible danger or weakness, but he would not do anything to endanger the Academia now. In the future, there may be more experimentation, but Starrante is not necessarily eager to do so.”

  “So the Academia is nothing like the Arcanum.”

  “Nothing at all like the Arcanum. Even were it once, Lannagaros is chancellor. Here,” she added, for no reason that Kaylin could see. “This is the Durant boundary.”

  As they’d been walking through streets that looked entirely normal—if in very solid repair—Kaylin was a bit surprised. “So the streets never change anymore?”

  “They don’t. I
t’s been suggested that it would be of use if the prior border zone effects could—in a much smaller area—be deliberately deployed. Lannagaros is against this,” she added. “His current drive is to open the Academia to students. The border zone made this all but impossible, and until the Academia is much more established...” Bellusdeo shrugged. It was clearly not the choice she would have made, but she understood and grudgingly accepted it.

  * * *

  Kaylin felt no difference in the streets—or no immediate difference—when she crossed what Bellusdeo had labeled a border. Like borders in the city proper, it was a thing of paper and theory for most of the people who traversed the city streets. Not that the paper wasn’t important, because laws cropped up around such papers, but it didn’t materially affect most of the citizens.

  As they entered Durant, conversation stopped. Severn was far more alert, as was Maggaron. Bellusdeo wasn’t, but she didn’t really have to be—nothing that the streets naturally produced was likely to harm a Dragon.

  Hope, draped across Kaylin’s shoulders, shifted position, moving slowly. He, too, was alert in a fashion, but he wasn’t alarmed. Not yet.

  Kaylin resented Nightshade as she looked through these streets. Although none of the buildings here were new, and none as solid as the newly revealed buildings that surrounded the Academia, they were in decent repair.

  “Repairs,” Bellusdeo said, intuiting Kaylin’s reaction from her expression, “cost money. You are employed as a Hawk. What similar employ exists in Nightshade?”

  Kaylin had no answer.

  No, Nightshade said. The answers are not simple.

  You didn’t care.

  I accepted the responsibility of stewarding the borders; I did not accept responsible for the citizens.

  Is this how you would have ruled your own family?

  She felt his amusement. Hated it. Wondered how Annarion would have felt.

  He would feel as you feel, Nightshade replied, as you well know.