“If what Starrante has said is true—and I believe it,” Kaylin said quickly, because she did, “they were fundamental in the finding of the many worlds, in the doors that led to and from them. At the height of Ravellon’s golden age, before its fall, they were the heart of the movements between those worlds.”
“They can’t spin like that now, at least not in the fiefs.” It was Robin who supplied this information. “The Towers prevent it. I think the Towers will always prevent it—it’s too dangerous. To allow the webbing—I mean, it’s not webbing, but that’s the word we’ve got—to take hold anywhere in the fiefs is to allow one of the greatest threats purchase in our lands.”
Kaylin’s frown deepened. “That’s not true, though.”
“Oh?”
“Aggarok is—or was—Wevaran. Liatt’s his captain, now. And I’d bet any money you want that Liatt travels her own fief with the use of those portals, those webs.”
“Maybe she can trust Aggarok because he is a Tower?”
“Or maybe she can trust him to tell the difference—I don’t know. But at a guess, I’d say he volunteered because he could. Starrante was an Arbiter before the Towers rose. You’d probably have to ask him.”
Robin brightened. “I will. He likes it when I ask interesting questions,” he added, as everyone swiveled to look in his direction. “And this would be an interesting question—I’m sure of it.”
“We’ll leave that to you, then,” Kaylin told the boy. She’d been eating throughout. “I think Bellusdeo is getting ready to leave, and we have to follow her.” She turned to Terrano. “Please don’t do anything stupid.”
“Killianas is like Helen,” Serralyn said, when Terrano failed to answer. “I’m pretty sure he can protect the Academia from any of Terrano’s acts of stupidity.”
Kaylin had been certain, but Androsse’s reaction had unsettled her more than she wanted to admit. She nodded anyway.
* * *
“We have Liatt on board,” Bellusdeo said, when they met up outside of the dining hall. “Durant. Tiamaris and Nightshade.”
“Farlonne?”
“Farlonne was not only on board, but happy to be so. The little details—timing, number of meetings, forms of communication—are still being worked out. Most of the Towers have very, very little mirror capability. Even Tara confines all such communications to one room. If Tiamaris was not in part dependent on mirror use, I highly doubt she would have that capability at all.”
“Helen’s the same.”
“There are enough incidents on record of disasters with the mirror network that I consider them both to be wise.”
Kaylin nodded. The Dragon was orange-eyed; Mandoran, silent, was blue-eyed. Severn was himself.
“Candallar,” Kaylin said.
Bellusdeo exhaled. “The fief that was formerly Candallar, yes.”
“The Tower’s core was provided by Karriamis.” It was Mandoran who said this, which surprised Kaylin, although he’d been present for the whole of the conversation.
“You think that gives me an advantage?”
“Not really,” he surprised them both by saying. “I’m sorry to say this, but—if you were Emmerian, I think it would.”
“I do not believe Lord Emmerian has any interest in captaining a Tower,” she replied, her lips crooked in the left corner in something that was midway between a grimace and an actual smile. “You refer to my gender?”
He nodded. “I didn’t think it would be as much of a problem, but...”
“Arbiter Kavallac did not approve.”
He failed to answer, and Bellusdeo turned to Kaylin. Kaylin hesitated. “She didn’t approve, no. But—she can’t leave the library, and I think she’d be happier to have children than you’d be.”
“And you think she would hate it.”
“I think what she wanted was the library. I don’t think it’s her hoard—I mean, she has to share it with Androsse and Starrante—but it was the thing she was willing to devote the rest of her life to. But...she’s also a Dragon. Being a librarian didn’t change that. I also think she’d have children if she could.”
“And I can.”
“I think that’s what she believes, yes.”
“And you?”
Kaylin clamped her teeth together. The silence lasted for at least fifteen seconds. “I don’t get why it’s such a big deal right now. I mean, I get it with us—with mortals—because we’re going to age and die. We’ve got decades. You’ve got forever. Does it matter right now?”
“She could die,” Mandoran said quietly. “Immortal doesn’t mean invulnerable. And Dragon families—well, Aeries—are not like mortal families. They’re more like Barrani families.”
“Even that is inaccurate,” Bellusdeo said, but softly.
Barrani often considered their closest relatives their most dangerous enemies. Kaylin cringed because in her limited experience with Barrani families, this had proven true.
“Given that there are no others who can bear clutches, the lack of a clutch, even now, is a threat to the race.”
“But they did just fine when Bellusdeo wasn’t here.”
Mandoran and Bellusdeo exchanged a single glance.
“I just... I don’t get it. They’ve been where they are for a long time now. Centuries, right? And they’ve been fine. But now that she’s here she’s supposed to drop her entire life and have babies—”
“Eggs,” Mandoran said.
“Whatever. Babies. Eggs. She’s supposed to just have them all right now when she doesn’t even have a father in mind? She’s got time.”
Mandoran glanced at Kaylin. “Coward.”
“What?”
“You just want this entire fight and its decision to happen sixty years from now, when it won’t be your problem. You think like a mortal.”
“I am one. How do immortals think?”
Mandoran shrugged. “I think it’s up to Bellusdeo.”
“But you just argued against it!”
“No, I didn’t. I’m pointing out what Dragons are probably thinking. I figure Bellusdeo can speak for herself. And you’ll note she hasn’t argued with my interpretation. Kavallac’s feelings are immaterial because she can’t affect what happens.
“But Karriamis? He can. If it’s Bellusdeo who wants the Tower and he understands the position his former race—or present race—is in, it’s going to affect his decision.”
“And there’s no way he doesn’t know.”
“No.”
“Candallar probably supported their attempts to kill or smear her.”
“Yes. That is the only possible sliver of light presented. It’s possible Karriamis is far enough removed from the Dragons that it won’t matter.”
“And there’s only one way to find that out, isn’t there?” Bellusdeo said. Her eyes were orange, but flecked with neither red nor gold. The inner eye membrane was up, muting the color. She started to walk away, stopped, and looked over her shoulder at Mandoran. “Thanks.”
* * *
The road that led to the fief of Candallar—as it was currently named on official documents—was in the same state of repair as the road that had led to Liatt. Kaylin thought it a pity that these buildings weren’t occupied, and then pulled back; she had no idea if they were occupied or not. They would have been, when she had lived in Nightshade, wouldn’t they? By people as desperate as she had been when she’d been younger.
But she saw no faces in the windows, and knew that the warnings about the border zones had, and would have, lingering effects. She wondered if Ferals crossed over here, in a way they wouldn’t when she’d been a citizen of Nightshade—if citizen had any meaning in that fief.
That is unkind.
You never cared.
No. He was both amused and very slightly chagrined. Do not look for sympathy or empa
thy from the Barrani; you are bound to be disappointed.
That’s just an excuse, she shot back. Teela. The Consort. Even members of the cohort. None of them would be like you.
Sedarias would, in all likelihood.
That was, Kaylin thought, the core of her problem. She liked individual members of the cohort; she could even truthfully say she liked Sedarias. But Sedarias would, in her view, be like Nightshade and not like Tiamaris or Durant. Maybe he was right. Maybe the Barrani who took power assumed that power itself was the defining social trait, the only one that needed to be respected.
She didn’t know the people of Candallar, but felt she still had more in common with them than she did many of the citizens of Elantra, whose laws she was sworn to uphold.
You are a Hawk. What you might have had in common with the people of my fief has long since been lost.
“Do you think people could live here?” It was Mandoran who asked.
“I don’t see why not. Do you think the Ferals could come here now?”
“I don’t see why not,” he replied, mimicking her tone. “But the buildings of the fiefs provided some protection against them?”
“Some. You didn’t want to be in the streets. But if parts of a wall were missing, you didn’t want to be in the building either—they’d enter through them. They’d scratch doors as well—but they couldn’t bring them down. Or not easily.” She shook her head to clear it. She still had nightmares about Ferals. Even knowing that she walked the streets beside a Barrani and a Dragon didn’t change those.
She could mark the point of transition between the streets that led to the Academia and the streets that had been part of Candallar for much longer. The Candallar buildings, like the Nightshade buildings, hadn’t been preserved in the odd stasis of the border zone; they looked worn and run-down.
Kaylin became less concerned about the buildings and her own history in dwellings that were practically falling down. They’d been empty because they were almost as unsafe as the Ferals themselves to the people who’d abandoned them. They were infinitely safer to people who would otherwise be in the streets when the Ferals roamed.
She looked up as Bellusdeo paused.
“Is...that what the Tower looked like when you did your flyover?”
“No.”
“Do you think someone else got here before either of us could?” Mandoran asked.
“I know as much about the Towers as either of you do. Why would you expect me to have the answers?”
“Tara changed,” Kaylin said. “When Tiamaris claimed the Tower, she changed.”
“Tara and Karriamis were alike only in their determination to protect the rest of the world from Ravellon.” But Bellusdeo looked at this new edifice, frowning.
It didn’t look like a Tower, to Kaylin’s eye; it looked like a cliff face. This was only disturbing because it lacked the bulk of the rest of the cliff; it might have been a standing stone, worn by the passage of many rivers, all of which had long since dried up.
It was as broad at the base as the entirety of Castle Nightshade’s visible grounds, and it seemed to lack something as architecturally practical as a door.
The streets were, predictably, almost entirely empty in all directions—but someone wearing golden plate mail and attended by at least one Barrani was someone to go out of one’s way to avoid. Kaylin would have looked only if she’d been safe above the ground and there were shutters to peer through.
As they stared at the Tower, Bellusdeo frowned.
Kaylin understood why almost immediately; a shadow, moving in the opposite direction of the wind, passed overhead.
If they had had any hope of enticing the fief’s citizens into the streets where they might ask questions, Bellusdeo dashed them. She lifted her face, exposing her throat as she looked in the direction of, yes, the Dragon flying overhead. She roared.
* * *
Kaylin was not a native Dragon speaker or interpreter. The roar meant one of two things: land or go away.
As the Dragon that had cast the familiar shadow landed, Kaylin assumed Bellusdeo had said the former, because she recognized the Dragon: it was Emmerian. He immediately transformed into the person-with-plate-armor form, and dropped to one knee before the gold Dragon. Kaylin then revised her assumption.
Bellusdeo glared at him, but her eyes, although still orange, revealed flecks of gold. “Have you been circling the fiefs since we left home this morning?”
“No.”
“Have you been circling Candallar?”
He grimaced, lifting his head. “It is in Candallar that the greatest threat to your safety would be. Lannagaros has the Academia well in hand, and I doubt occupied Towers would seek to antagonize a Dragon of your stature and abilities.”
“Get up. I dislike the entire bent knee paradigm. It implies that I can’t see respect when it’s offered otherwise.”
Emmerian rose, a single fluid unbending of knee and head and shoulders. His armor, blue to Bellusdeo’s gold, was a statement. If he did not expect that she would encounter difficulty she could not handle, he intended to be her backup.
Just as Severn had been Kaylin’s. Or maybe she’d been his; in the thick of things it was harder to separate. Oddly, watching Bellusdeo’s orange eyes, she thought there was very little chance that the gold Dragon would send the blue one away. But little chance wasn’t zero chance. They all waited, except for Hope, who was once again draped limply across her shoulders.
Bellusdeo finally snorted smoke and turned, once again, toward the Tower of Candallar, such as it was. “Do you imagine that the Tower looked like this before Candallar’s death?” she asked.
“It did not,” Emmerian replied. “Young Tiamaris—ah, apologies, Lord Tiamaris—entered the fiefs. He kept a safe distance from the Towers, but this is not what his report described. I would say the Tower is announcing the lack of a lord.”
Mandoran nodded. “What do you want to bet that the door is on the top of the cliff?” he asked Kaylin.
“Wouldn’t touch it.”
“But you bet about everything!”
“I don’t bet to lose.”
“But you lose a lot.”
“Not on purpose. And yes, this means I think the entrance is at the top.”
“So...made for Dragons?”
“Or Aerians.” She grimaced, turned, and met his blue gaze. “Or the cohort, because I know damn well you can fly.”
“We don’t call it flying.”
“I don’t care what you call it—you would reach the top of that cliff if you wanted, and you wouldn’t be climbing.”
“And you?”
Kaylin glanced at Severn. He shook his head. “I don’t think flight is necessary.”
“You see a door or a portal?” Her expression made clear which of the two was worse.
Severn then turned to Bellusdeo. “We are your escort. Do you wish to fly up to the Tower height?”
“Without you?” Bellusdeo grinned.
“Lord Emmerian is here, and Lord Emmerian can—demonstrably—fly.”
We can’t just let her fly off!
Severn said nothing, waiting.
Emmerian, however, said, “There did not seem to be an entrance at the top of the cliff, at least not in the aerial view. I did not think it wise to land.”
Mandoran, however, began to rise, his feet leaving the cobbled stone that looked so incongruous at the foot of a cliff. “I’ll look.”
The two Dragons exchanged a longer glance. Bellusdeo, however, shook her head. “Lead on, Corporal.”
* * *
It was clear that the corporal in question was Severn. He bowed briefly, a bob of acknowledgment, and turned toward the cliff base. Kaylin followed him as he approached. It looked to be mostly dirt and stone, although weeds also figured into the mess.
A d
oor of the regular kind would stand out like a sore thumb; a door that was a cleft in the cliff face, or possibly a cave entrance, wouldn’t. They therefore looked for gaps of that kind. Although approaching from one side gave the appearance of a solid wall of cliff face, that cliff face was almost circular. What rose, rose in the same space Kaylin suspected the Tower occupied, stretching toward the sky.
Two full circuits failed to reveal an entrance. Bellusdeo was surprisingly patient; Kaylin was not.
“My skin is prickling,” she finally said.
Severn didn’t miss a step. “Magic?”
“Like magic. It’s not painful, yet—more ticklish.”
Severn’s expression made clear this wasn’t good. Kaylin’s skin didn’t react this way to Helen’s magic, or the magic of the Hallionne. Then again, she’d never stood outside of one, desperately seeking entrance.
“Do you think Mandoran will find a way in?” she asked.
“Probably.”
“Could Teela?”
“If she listens to the rest of the cohort, yes.”
“Let me try something.”
He stiffened for the first time. “What?”
She turned to face the patch of cliff in which the remnants of roots seemed to be exposed. Reaching out with her left hand, she touched a gnarled, desiccated root. She cursed.
“What is it?”
“It’s bloody cold. I think my hand might be stuck to it.”
“Good thing you didn’t lick it, then.”
“I was seven years old!”
Bellusdeo snickered. Emmerian didn’t.
Severn reached out to touch the root as well. He nodded. He then touched the dirt in which the root was lodged and shook his head.
Kaylin exhaled. Hand on ice, she said, “Hello. My name is Kaylin Neya. I’m here with friends, and I hope you’re accepting visitors.”
She felt movement in the ice beneath her hand; the side of the cliff seemed to absorb the root whole, changing, as it did, into something infinitely more rocky. She stepped back; the transformation didn’t seem to require contact.
Cast in Conflict Page 20
