Cast in Conflict

by Michelle Sagara

  It was, to Kaylin’s eye, Barrani.

  “It’s Carmanne’s standard. Serralyn’s family.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “I don’t think this is an entirely physical fight.” He carefully flattened the standard and then rolled it up, as if it were a carpet. “Helen?”

  A small wagon appeared to the left of where Kaylin was standing. Helen herself didn’t speak.

  * * *

  They picked their way across this field of standards; some listed; some were slashed or torn. At each, Severn paused to retrieve the cloth, or what remained of it, and at each, he named the Barrani family that it signified, adding the names of the cohort as necessary.

  Each name added to the weight of Kaylin’s worry, enlarging it. She liked the cohort. As a group. As individuals. Even Sedarias. She liked what they had built; that they had chosen to trust each other, that they were willing to kill and die for each other.

  This was the downside of that. The air fairly thrummed with enraged betrayal.

  She stopped.

  Air did not thrum with enraged betrayal. But she felt it, simmering in the earth beneath both of their feet. This was a battlefield, yes—but Kaylin was almost certain it was a battlefield of one.

  Kaylin spoke a single name out loud. “Sedarias.”

  A hand reached out and clamped itself over her mouth. She drove her elbow backward. Connected with nothing. The hand was disembodied. One of the cohort, then. She didn’t know which one; she’d never taken the time to memorize what their hands looked like. She nodded.

  The hand fell instantly away from her mouth.

  Speaking far more quietly, Kaylin said, “This is Sedarias’s battlefield.”

  “It is.” It was Terrano.

  “I thought you were at the Academia.”

  “I was—and I’d much rather be there. But Mandoran said it was serious.”

  Severn stood, and put another banner in the wagon. He glanced back, but there was no visible sign of Terrano; even the hand had vanished.

  “Are we going to find your family’s banner here?”

  “Probably. Farther in.”

  “Farther in?”

  “This is a large, flat field, like a circle. The edges are all cliff.”

  “She’s down the cliff.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which direction?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  “Where is everyone else?”

  Silence.

  * * *

  “Helen?” No answer. Kaylin wondered if they were even contained in Helen anymore. It was a thought that made her very uneasy.

  “She’s here,” Terrano’s voice said. “But it’s harder for her to communicate with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you brought him with you.”

  “What?”

  “You—you’re not normal, you know that, right? You’re as human as the rest of us are Barrani.”

  “But you are Barrani.”

  “Sure,” he said. It sounded like a no. “I’d tell you to send him back, but you can’t; Helen’s entire focus is on protecting Severn. I think you could do it, but she’s not certain, and she is certain Severn’s death will cause severe fractures in this current iteration of reality.”

  Kaylin wasn’t stupid. “Because of me.”

  “Because you’ll be upset, yes.”

  “Will Sedarias try to kill us?”

  “No.” It sounded like a yes. “Come on, we need to find Mandoran.”

  “He’s here?”

  “Yes.”

  “In Sedarias’s head, for want of a better word?”

  “Yes—but that’s normal for us.”

  “This battlefield is not normal.”

  “Actually, it is. Some of us are better at words than others. Some of us are excellent at words—but only as weapons. Guess who’s the latter?”

  “This is what it always looks like?”

  “To me, yes.” Terrano exhaled. “You need to remember something—both of you need to remember it. I don’t see what you see. But I see what Severn is doing. It’s complicated. We’re looking at the same things, but...we’re not interpreting them the same way.”

  “If vision were interpretative, the law would be in serious trouble when it came to witnesses,” Kaylin said.

  “Most people don’t have the flexibility to even see what you’re looking at now. We’re seeing what Sedarias sees. There’s no way to tell you how to interpret if you...can’t already do some of that on your own.”

  “So, can we fly here? Because jumping down the side of a cliff isn’t likely to be healthy.”

  “Tell me about it,” Terrano said, a note of resignation in an otherwise tense voice. “You don’t have to jump. I’m sure there are stairs somewhere.”

  “In a cliff?”

  “Somewhere. I’m taking the fast way down.”

  “We’re going to look for safe.”

  He snorted. “It’s Sedarias. You’ll be looking for a long damn time.”

  * * *

  When Terrano was gone and the rest of the banners had been collected and carefully placed in the small wagon, Kaylin poked Hope. He was seated, not draped across her shoulders, but didn’t look particularly alert.

  “We need to get down to wherever Sedarias is.”

  He nodded.

  “Can you help?”

  I can.

  “Will I have to sacrifice something for it?”

  No. This is something you could do yourself.

  Without stairs or wings, Kaylin didn’t see how.

  Hope snorted. He pushed himself off her shoulder, hovering in the air for a moment in front of her face. Here, those marks have a greater weight and meaning. Remember that.

  “Hope—I don’t even understand where here is. If Helen is somehow stabilizing things so that Severn survives here, we’re obviously still in Helen somehow. But Terrano seemed to think that this was all Sedarias. Those two things don’t line up to my pathetic, tiny, mortal mind.”

  Severn glanced at Hope, who seemed to be waiting for something. “Helen creates the rooms for her tenants and guests; those rooms are a merging of what Helen is, at base, with what they need. There’s already a lack of distinct separation in our interactions. This is...more difficult.”

  “Sedarias has taken control of some part of Helen?”

  “Or Helen has, for reasons of her own, ceded that control to Sedarias in this space. It’s probably a containment measure.”

  Hope squawked. He then landed.

  “Can we take that control back from her?”

  “I wouldn’t try it unless we had no other options.” He watched Hope as Hope began to transform.

  * * *

  Hope’s adoption of the draconic form—that’s the way Kaylin thought of it—was not similar to watching either Bellusdeo or Emmerian. Hope seemed to expand, rather than transform. His body was already translucent, glass-like in appearance; it was far less disturbing to watch a familiar face warp and extend—almost as if it were stretched to a breaking point that never quite arrived.

  Hope’s transition seemed far less painful, far more natural.

  Climb, Hope told them both. I will carry your wagon.

  Kaylin scrambled up on his back; Severn took a seat behind her. True to his word, he carefully grasped the wagon in much, much larger feet, and lifted his bulk into the air with the movement of enormous, translucent wings.

  “Can you see Sedarias?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Terrano?”

  “We couldn’t see him when he spoke to us.”

  It was a fair point. She couldn’t ask Hope to place a wing across her face; he’d flatten her. Terrano had said the rise of the plain that looked very much like a bat
tlefield after a war had been fought was at the height of a flat peak; that it was cliff all the way down. Seen from the air, he was right. What she didn’t see, as Hope circled this edifice of rising stone, was anything at all that resembled stairs.

  Terrano—and Mandoran—had ways of reaching the ground; the landscape itself wouldn’t otherwise try to kill them. But it was going to be work, regardless.

  “Can you see Mandoran?” She couldn’t. “He’s likely to be where Sedarias is.”

  “No sign of Mandoran. I’d wait on Terrano’s signal.”

  “You think he’ll remember to signal us?”

  She could feel Severn’s nod from the inside; she couldn’t see it because she didn’t have eyes in the back of her head.

  Hope felt no need to land quickly, possibly because the peak was so high. Rock was the landscape, all the way down; Kaylin couldn’t see an end to the drop. There was no distant patch of greenery, nothing that visually implied that life existed anywhere but the flat plain they’d left. There, at least, evidence of plant life remained, even if much of it had been destroyed.

  Severn’s eyes had always been better than hers; she wasn’t surprised when Severn said, “There. Start there.”

  “What’s there?”

  “A river.”

  Hope turned, slowly, to the right, still intent on descent.

  * * *

  The river was much wider than it had looked from above, which wasn’t hard; from above, Kaylin hadn’t seen it. As they approached, it seemed to widen and lengthen, rushing in a way that made swimming or rafting guaranteed suicide. Rocks and wood had been carried in the current, and rocks had worn away at the stone that served as its partial tunnel; there was no shore here.

  Hope flew in the direction of the current, following the water so closely the spray dampened his passengers.

  Kaylin glanced once over her shoulder; the peak could no longer be seen.

  She thought of the portal paths, their natural gray emptiness, the nothing that was somehow the potential out of which the Towers could create everything. Sedarias had done that here. But Terrano’s reaction implied it wasn’t deliberate; it was a state of mind.

  Why had the battlefield been placed at the top of a peak? It was the highest standing peak in this bleak landscape. She understood the symbolism of the fallen banners: Sedarias felt betrayed by those who had been, and who were, the only family she had ever known.

  Family, in the sense that Kaylin defined it. Kaylin had tried to build a family in the absence of the one she was born to; she’d been drawn to people who would, or could, provide her with some of what she had desperately missed.

  Sedarias hadn’t had any of that; her upbringing—given her sister and brother—had been a deadly version of every man for themselves. She had killed both of them in the end, not for reasons of politics or power, but survival. But she was now An’Mellarionne, and power came with the title, if she could survive long enough to hold it.

  She’d been taught not to trust; most of them had. Annarion, however, had never stopped trusting his brother, which is why his anger at his brother’s behavior cut him so deeply. Teela had killed her father because she loved her mother, who had died at his hands.

  Family, Barrani family, was complicated.

  Maybe there was no other way to express it than the way Sedarias had chosen to express it: as a war, a battlefield, a place of conflict and only conflict.

  She realized then that she didn’t know what Severn’s childhood had been like; that it had never truly occurred to her to ask.

  “You did,” he said, proof that her thoughts were heard, even if they weren’t voiced. “But you were young, when we first met. In your memories I was always there. I was part of your family.”

  And now was not the time to ask. She therefore dutifully bit back a flood of questions and turned her thoughts, once again, to Sedarias. What did Sedarias want? What had she wanted when she had first offered eleven strangers the power of her True Name?

  What had she tried to do with the power of theirs?

  Ah. Yes. That was the question.

  “Family is difficult,” she said aloud.

  “All the best,” Severn said quietly, “and all the worst. Sedarias’s birth family offered nothing but the worst by our standards. To the Barrani, it might have been considered best.”

  It was not. Kaylin was surprised to hear Nightshade’s voice. She couldn’t tell if this was because Helen let him in—which she sometimes did—or if Helen was so distracted the basic securities had been loosened.

  I believe it is the former. She is aware that she is not Barrani, and her experience of Barrani was not...what yours is. Sedarias’s family would be considered extreme by many of our kin. All comments of weakness aside, your own understanding of her in the context of her cohort might prove more valuable than the opinion of her people. This is impressive, he added, the texture of the interior voice changing.

  Impressive?

  It is a wilderness as harsh as any we have had to endure. I have never attempted to create something of this scope within Castle Nightshade. I admit I am tempted to try. But you are now speaking to the wrong person.

  Who should I be speaking to?

  Terrano, but I perceive he is not present. He was not, however, the person I meant to suggest.

  Please don’t say Ynpharion.

  Silence.

  He only ever talks to me when the Consort insists on conveying information, or when he thinks I’m an idiot. He’s not going to want to talk to me about Barrani happy families.

  No. I doubt very much he will desire to talk about unhappy families, either. But I believe he may have information that would be of use.

  And not you.

  And not me, no. I had very little conflict with either my mother or my father, while they lived. With my cousins, with my aunts, yes—but they were not considered family unless we were at war.

  Kaylin sagged in place. Ynpharion won’t want to talk to me about this.

  No. But you might infer some of it from his general attitude.

  Which is judgmental.

  Yes. It is, however, similar to Sedarias’s—or to what Sedarias would be had she had neither true power nor the cohort. She took a risk. But Kaylin, Ynpharion took a risk, in the end, as well. As the one who has knowledge of True Names you have never been a threat. But the Consort? She is Barrani.

  She loved her brothers. They loved each other.

  And still does, yes. But Ynpharion is not her brother. Perhaps, in time, the risk will—as you say in Elantran—pay out. Regardless, he took that risk. And in my estimation, there is some pride for him in that.

  He didn’t do that for me.

  Nightshade said nothing for long enough, Kaylin thought he had withdrawn. No. But you needed to be in contact with the Consort; it was a matter of importance to the High Halls, and he knew it. He could talk to you, but he could not make decisions, and admitting that a mortal held his True Name would have been a public humiliation beyond his fragile endurance.

  And you don’t care.

  And I do not care. There was amusement in those words. Unlike those who wish they did not, it is of little relevance to me. I am outcaste. I have nothing at all to lose.

  But Nightshade was a power.

  Was? a familiar voice snapped. Calarnenne is a power. He wields one of The Three. He was known for his prowess in war, and none who rose to challenge him survived it. In his fashion, he shares renown with An’Teela.

  How long have you been listening?

  Subjectively? Decades. Ynpharion was frustrated. This was almost a comfort, because Ynpharion appeared to have only one state: frustration.

  That is not true.

  Fine. Anger and resentment, too.

  You have never understood.

  I’ve always understood, she s
napped back. You’re not a power. Fine. I spent all of my life until I arrived in the city being even less of a power than you. Maybe it’s a shorter period of time—but my whole life is a short period of time compared to yours. I know what it’s like to be terrified that I won’t even survive. But I also know what it’s like to fear starving to death—to be so damn hungry there’s almost nothing I wouldn’t do for food. Do you?

  Silence.

  You don’t.

  You’re Chosen, he finally said, the words a grudging acknowledgment of the truth.

  Now, yes. And that cost me. It cost fourteen children their lives.

  More silence. It occurred to Kaylin, as the waves of anger began to abate, that this was not what Nightshade had had in mind.

  Anger, Ynpharion said, is better than fear. If you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. I had my life. I wanted to keep it.

  Kaylin was silent. I didn’t, she finally said. I didn’t want to keep mine.

  Ynpharion added a new emotion: surprise.

  I wouldn’t throw it away, now. I like the life I have, the life I’ve found. But I didn’t build it—I tripped over it. And kept tripping. I didn’t know Helen. I didn’t know the cohort. I didn’t know Bellusdeo—or Nightshade, if it comes to that. I didn’t have Teela or the Hawks.

  Is that what you believe?

  Yes, because it’s the truth.

  If the cohort has taught you nothing, it should have taught you this: truth is mutable, flexible, dependent on context. I was never Sedarias. Never.

  Because you see her as a power.

  Because she is a power. She always was. You think that her centuries-long fate somehow negates that truth. We know better.

  Who is “we”?

  Her people. The Barrani. She lived the life I lived, but she—

  You survived it. So did she.

  Silence, this one larger and louder. So did you, Ynpharion finally said.