Cast in Flame

by Michelle Sagara

  The two Barrani men were first to sit at the table. Kaylin joined them; they were speaking to each other, but not with actual words—or at least not words any of the rest of their companions could hear. Seeing Teela’s pursed lips, she revised that thought.

  Eventually, when they were all seated at the table—except for the small dragon, for whom a place hadn’t been set—the older woman joined them. She didn’t sit at the head or the foot; she chose a chair opposite Kaylin’s, in the middle. “Please, help yourself,” she told her guests. “I will pour tea, but I’m afraid I’m a bit clumsy at the moment. Young man,” she added, speaking to Severn, “if you could carve the meat, I’m sure we would all be grateful.”

  Severn did as she asked. The entire meal was so unexpected and so unpredictable, Kaylin quietly pinched her thigh.

  “Why would you think you’re dreaming, dear?” the old woman asked. “Perhaps this isn’t the right venue for a meeting?”

  Kaylin hurriedly said, “No, no, it’s fine!” in part because she didn’t want the food to vanish. But she noticed that Teela wasn’t eating. Neither were Bellusdeo or Maggaron. Severn, raised in the streets of Nightshade, would have started had he not been responsible for cutting the meat. The landlady didn’t, however, look at any of the other visitors; only Kaylin.

  Kaylin swallowed. The food didn’t make her arms ache; there was nothing magical about it that she could see. Possibly because at this point, she didn’t want to. She just didn’t want to. Food had always been a blessing. Any food. Hunger made it all seem good. She hadn’t gone hungry for years, but she’d never reached a point where food, freely offered, didn’t seem like a gift.

  “I’m pleased to meet you all,” the landlord told them, folding her hands in her lap. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Helen. This is my home. It’s a bit large, as you’ve seen. I used to live alone—but it was so easy to get lost in the emptiness.”

  Kaylin chewed and swallowed. “I’m Kaylin. Kaylin Neya. I work at the Halls of Law, with the Hawks. The young man is Severn Handred; he’s a Hawk, as well.”

  Helen beamed. “And your friends?”

  “Teela is the Barrani woman at the head of the table. She’s a Hawk; that’s where I met her. The two men on either side of her are Annarion and Mandoran.”

  “Ah, yes. They’re new to the city?”

  “Very. This is Bellusdeo, and her Ascendant, Maggaron.” Maggaron sat at the foot of the table, towering over the food. Kaylin noted that the chair in which he was sitting was actually the right size—for him. He looked extremely uncomfortable in it anyway.

  “And what brings you to my door?”

  Since she’d already mentioned Evanton—with her mouth closed—Kaylin hesitated. Clearly the question didn’t refer to how she’d found the place. “I’ve been looking for a new place to live.”

  The woman frowned. It was, like everything else about her, a delicate frown, but for the first time, it implied displeasure or disapproval. The food, however, didn’t disappear; the lights didn’t gutter; the garden didn’t suddenly rear up in shadow tendrils.

  “Of course not, dear!” Helen replied, looking shocked.

  Teela and Bellusdeo now looked much, much more guarded; Annarion and Mandoran, more cautious. Severn, however, continued to eat. He’d glanced up at the small dragon on Kaylin’s shoulder, who was upright, but not terribly interested in his surroundings.

  “Do not bite that,” Kaylin told him, trying to rescue the stick that kept her hair in place before he yanked it out. “I’m sorry. I forgot someone. This is—” She winced. “This is Hope.”

  The small dragon’s name was clearly not as embarrassing to Helen as it was to Kaylin; nor did she seem to find it snicker-worthy. “Hope. Such a simple word, to hold so much. I like it,” she added. “I think it’s appropriate. There is never a guarantee, where hope is concerned; hope touches the edge of dream, but it is not a simple dream. It wants work, and sometimes it is bitterly painful—but no life is lived for long without it.”

  The small dragon had given up on the stick; he favored the old woman with his unblinking attention. “Did you choose her?” she asked him directly.

  He squawked. A lot.

  “I see.”

  Kaylin was torn. She couldn’t understand the small dragon’s words—to her, they resembled angry crows. But she was going to have to learn, somehow, because so many other people did.

  “Oh, I see. Isn’t that a bit extreme?”

  Squawk.

  “Well, then.” She smiled at Kaylin. “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to be rude. It has been a very long time since I’ve spoken with your friend. He does find the lack of clear communication frustrating; I have reminded him that you are mortal, which he knew before he chose you. It’s not reasonable to expect people to grow extra arms just for the sake of one’s own convenience. But I interrupted you.”

  “I’m looking for a new place to live.”

  “And you came here?”

  Kaylin exhaled. “I won’t be living here alone. Bellusdeo would be my roommate.”

  “She would be part of the arrangement?”

  “She’d be living with me—but the place would be mine. I’m not sure—neither of us are sure—how long she’d be staying.”

  “And the Norannir?”

  “Most of the buildings in the city are too small for him, but if—yes. If we seemed like an acceptable risk to you, he’d be living here for as long as Bellusdeo does.”

  Bellusdeo was surprised. Kaylin noticed only because she’d lived with the Dragon for weeks; it didn’t change the color of her eyes much. Maggaron, however, had practically swelled two feet in height.

  Helen smiled. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “Yes. But you’ve probably heard it by now anyway.” Kaylin’s appetite finally deserted her. She looked up at the frail old lady and felt like one of the criminals she spent her life discouraging. “We need a new place because my old place was destroyed.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Destroyed?”

  “I don’t know how familiar you are with our version of magic, but my former apartment met an Arcane bomb. It was meant—we think it was meant—for Bellusdeo. It didn’t destroy her. It did destroy my apartment.”

  Kaylin always tried to be pragmatic. She tried to be practical. She tried—and most days it was a real effort—not to take life personally. But it was still hard to think about the loss of what was, stripped down, a slightly run-down room with warped shutters and creaky floorboards. The bed and the armoire that had been a secondhand gift were splinters and shreds. The basket Severn had given her that kept food fresh had likewise been destroyed. The clothing she’d owned—and there hadn’t been a lot of it that had still been in one piece, because she was hard on clothing—was gone.

  The paintings Caitlin had brought to put up on her walls, and the scarf—scratchy, rough wool in Kaylin’s opinion—that Caitlin had knit for her. The mirror she’d partially paid for. The chair that served as the closet on long days. Oh, hells, on most days.

  All of them, gone.

  Teela had a key. She still had a key. Tain had a key. Caitlin had a key. Any of them could walk in and out of her apartment when they felt like it, although Caitlin had always mirrored ahead if she was coming. The keys still existed; they just didn’t open anything anymore. There was no place that Kaylin could be found at home. There was no home.

  The apartment had been the first home she’d chosen, and the first she’d really had since her mother’s death. She couldn’t even hate the man responsible for its loss because most of his mind had been destroyed and what was left was...pathetic and hopeful and naive.

  “Kitling.”

  She swallowed and blinked. To her surprise, Helen was blinking as well, which made Kaylin rise in
near-panic. “I’m sorry!” she said, almost knocking her chair over as she ran around the table.

  Helen rose as well, and held out both of her hands; Kaylin took them almost without thinking. “My dear,” she said—and tears trailed down her lined cheeks, “you do realize that home is the place that ties you down?”

  It wasn’t what Kaylin expected to hear. Then again, she wasn’t certain what she’d expected. She swallowed again. “Home,” she said, her voice less steady than she wanted it to be, “is the place you return to. It’s the place that’s waiting. It doesn’t have to be perfect—mine wasn’t. But...it was mine. I could offer my friends a place to crash. They could eat with me, or sit with me, or—”

  “Listen to you complain?” Teela asked.

  “Or that. In my space.”

  “Go on, dear.”

  “It’s not that home means safety—if it did, I wouldn’t be looking for a new one. But—if it’s my space, I can be myself in it. I can be—be at home.”

  The hands that were holding hers tightened, but not in a way that was uncomfortable; they were too frail for that. “You are looking for a home, then?”

  Kaylin nodded. She wanted to weep—and hated herself for it. This was not the way to impress a possible landlord.

  “Not another landlord, perhaps,” Helen said. “Do you know what I look for, dear? Here, give me back my hands and let me pour; I have been shockingly remiss.” She returned to the table, leaving Kaylin with empty, but warm, hands. There, she bustled in place, pouring tea which seemed at odds with the plethora of dinner foods.

  “People look for places—as you called them—to live. It is considered, by most, a necessity. They want different things from those places, of course. You are not the first person to enter my home since my last tenant passed away. You are the first to remain at the sight of his body. You surprised me, dear. You laid him to rest. It is not, I’m certain, an activity you undertake often.

  “He fretted terribly in his final days and hours. He did want to meet the tenants who would replace him. He wanted to give them his advice, you see. To explain what he considered my eccentricities. He didn’t want to leave.”

  “You didn’t want him to leave.”

  Her smile was gentle, now. “No. It is always hard when someone leaves home for the last time. I wanted to find tenants before he died because it would have given him peace—but that is not, sadly, the way I am built. There are many people who would choose to live here if they could. Not all of them can reach me; not all the people who can are suitable. There are people who would like to rearrange my grounds and change my fences and open up my drives and renovate my exterior. They want to live here not because I am me, but because I am in the right place.

  “There are people who are fleeing—sometimes from your Hawks, dear—who are looking for a place to hide. There are people who are looking for a change of venue—something more exciting or interesting to spice up their lives.

  “None of these are innately bad.” At Teela’s lifted brow, Helen smiled. “Yes, dear, perhaps running from the Law would be considered bad in present company; that was not a well-chosen example on my part, but if you’ll forgive it, I’ll continue.

  “These people have their eyes upon their futures, whatever those futures might be, and they will not be tied down by an old woman. Nor should they be. They need a place,” she continued, frowning at the word—just as she’d frowned when Kaylin herself had used it. “I’m sorry, dear. I understand—I truly do—that this is simply one part of your brief, mortal lives.

  “And often, the people who do want a home have a dream of home that is ideal. It is perfect. I am not, perhaps, as worn out as your previous home—but I am far from perfect. Nothing living can be. I do try,” she added, slightly self-consciously.

  “Why—why do you choose mortal tenants, then?” Kaylin asked. “If you find the tenant that’s perfect for you, he—or she—is going to die. And you won’t.”

  “Ah, now that is a good question. It is rather a long answer, though. Your tea might get cold.”

  “Believe that the rest of us are quite interested in the answer,” Teela—who had not touched her tea—told her.

  “Well, then.” Helen smiled. “I suppose an interview does work in both directions. You have answered—perhaps unintentionally—the questions that are closest and most important to my own heart. I will try to answer yours.

  “Immortals—like your fellow Hawk—do not use the word home the way you do. What they own, they own.”

  Kaylin frowned. “Tiamaris—”

  “There will be exceptions, of course—but I could not be home to a Dragon unless he had chosen to dedicate himself to me, as your Tiamaris has done with your Tara. His Tower is his hoard. He owns it; he claims it; he protects it. But—he treasures it, and defers to it, and speaks with it; it is not a simple place into which he has moved and over which he presides. It is not something that denotes hierarchy or personal power. The Tower—to Tiamaris—is alive. He owns it and is owned by it. It is not a simple exchange. Yes, he is Lord of the Tower. Yes, if he chose to do so, he could enforce every single one of his desires. It is, in part, what a Tower is designed to allow of its Lord.

  “I was not built for mortals,” she continued, her gaze growing distant, her voice losing some of the frailty that her appearance all but demanded. “But I was aware of their fragile existences. They seldom spoke with power; it was very easy to lose track of their individual voices. My Lord was often away; in those days, the wars were fierce, and they transformed the landscape. I was, of course, safe from such transformations—but many, many things were not.

  “Immortality is not invulnerability; Immortals know death. One day, my Lord did not return. I was left empty for a long passage of years, before another came to take his place. There was so much danger, dear, so much transformation and contamination. I was sensitive to it in a way the Lord was not, and within my confines, there was safety of a type.

  “For him and his people.”

  “Not for you?”

  “I am old, as you know. I was created by the Ancients in a bygone era; the reasons for my creation are lost to history. The Towers may know; I do not.”

  “Did you ever know?”

  “Yes, once.”

  Kaylin fell silent.

  “The Lord was a man of power. I am not sure what you would call him now.” She looked to the left of Kaylin’s face, and a squawk made clear that she’d been speaking to the small dragon. “Ah. Sorcerer, perhaps. He was not an Ancient, but he envied their power; people often envy the powers they perceive they do not themselves possess. I had power. I had been constructed with power. He understood that words lay at the heart of my foundations—and the words themselves allowed me almost limitless control over my own form.

  “He thought, if he could deconstruct some parts of me, he could learn to harness that power and use it outside of my walls.”

  “You didn’t agree.”

  “No. I didn’t. But—he was powerful, Kaylin. I protected what I could of myself; I injured him. In the end, he was destroyed—but not by my hand alone.”

  “By whose?” Teela asked.

  “I was still, in those days, in contact with the Towers that you speak of now. Before I took the most severe of my injuries, I asked for their help.”

  “But they—”

  “Yes. They did not have a mandate to protect each other. Or me. But they conferred with their Lords, and in the end, their Lords chose to leave their Towers to come to my aid.”

  “They probably wanted the power—” Mandoran began. He didn’t finish. Teela’s look implied that he would be if he kept talking.

  “Was he killed?”

  “No. But he was driven out; I do not believe he remained in this world. There were portals at one time that opened onto other vistas.
They are lifeless now—a consequence of his work. I had done what I could to protect my core functions—at least, that’s how I considered them at the time. I do not know what the other functions might have been; they are lost to me, the words riven and destroyed.

  “Yes,” she added, glancing at Mandoran although he hadn’t spoken. “I was left crippled and adrift. I had no Lord, and none would take me; it would mean abandoning their necessary posts at the outskirts of the sphere. I expect they thought someone would come who would. And men did come. Men of power,” she added softly. “But they came to find the Sorcerer’s research and the artifacts of possible power he might have left behind.”

  “We call those thieves,” Kaylin said.

  Teela chuckled. “Don’t call them thieves in their hearing, and understand that their hearing is far superior to yours.”

  “Searching the interior, as it had become, was not a simple task; nor was it safe. They discovered that they could not command me; that I did not conform to their desires as either guests or Lords. They were, in short, quite rude.”

  “If they’d had better manners, you’d’ve given them what they asked for?”

  “I’m not entirely certain, dear. What I was certain of at the time was that they offered me nothing in exchange.”

  “You mean...like rent?”

  “Very like that, although perhaps not in the way that you think. Where was I? Ah. Yes. It was not a trivial task, and it was not short. They came, somewhat as you did, dear, with retainers.”

  Teela coughed. Bellusdeo coughed louder.

  “They’re not my retainers,” Kaylin said; she didn’t need the dramatics as a prompt. “They’re my friends.”

  “Ah, then perhaps they were different. They did not gather friends; they had servitors, servants. Possibly slaves. They had to spend the time here, and as I did not approve, they were forced to feed themselves, and to clean the quarters they’d chosen. They did not,” she added, with a slender smile, “choose to maintain quarters here for long. Only the powerless were left as witnesses, should I choose to change the environment.” She fell silent for a long moment, and then, to Kaylin’s surprise, drank the tea she’d poured herself.