Cast in Flame

by Michelle Sagara

I would not trade my freedom, he said, cold fury adorning every mental syllable, for the lives of my Lord and the Lady.

  Do you understand what Teela’s talking about?

  Frustration warred with humiliation; frustration won. No. But she has made clear that she considers this to be as much of a threat as the Dragon Flights once were.

  Bellusdeo said nothing for a long, long moment. She then turned to Helen. This was not going to be a banner night. “I will retreat. Can you arrange a different exit?”

  Helen frowned.

  “I will not walk out into the contested streets, Helen.”

  Helen’s eyes brightened. Literally. “You will fly.”

  Bellusdeo nodded.

  “You take a risk, Bellusdeo. There is a reason that the moonlight is obscured, at least for those of you who stand upon the ground.”

  “I am not particularly fond of the denizens of the High Halls,” the Dragon replied. “But I have become fond of this city. I will call upon the Dragon Court, and we will attempt to head this creature off before it enters the Halls.”

  “But not,” Teela asked, “before it reaches them?”

  “The Halls themselves are protection against invaders that the rest of the citizens of Elantra do not have; the Emperor will not risk a fire fight in those streets unless there is no other option. Our fires are unlikely to melt your stone halls; they are likely to raze any other building.”

  Kaylin let Ynpharion go, inasmuch as that was possible. “If anything happens to you, the Emperor will turn me to ash.”

  “Yes.”

  Kaylin opened her mouth; Bellusdeo raised a hand. This one didn’t cause Kaylin pain. “If this creature stops to destroy parts of the city on its walk toward the High Halls, I have the greatest survival chance of all present. I would say Helen has greater, but she cannot move. I can. It is not to the aid of the Barrani I fly, Private Neya.”

  Kaylin closed her mouth.

  “I will take Maggaron with me.”

  And opened it again in a rush. “Maggaron is mortal.”

  “Yes. But he will not remain behind, and it would pain me greatly to injure him by throwing him off the heights of a tower.” She turned, once again, to Helen. “I assume there is a tower.”

  “Yes, Bellusdeo. And yes, I will lead you there if you are determined.” She turned to the three Barrani. “You will not last long against him once he breaches the walls; not in your current state. You have advantages—well, you boys do—that are unusual. Do not listen long to his speech if he makes the attempt to speak.”

  Without another word, she turned and left the dining room. Bellusdeo and Maggaron followed.

  * * *

  “Do you two have any idea what she’s talking about?” Kaylin demanded, when the door had closed.

  “No,” Teela said, before either Annarion or Mandoran could answer. “They don’t. And for the record, neither do I. I wish I had brought my sword.”

  “You have a—”

  “My real sword. This is for mortal play, at best. It is not without use, but it has no true power. When Helen said ‘walls’, did she refer to the fence?”

  “I think so.”

  “Hardly comforting.” She glanced at her two friends. “Are you going to hide behind me,” she asked, “or prepare yourselves?”

  Mandoran snorted. Annarion failed to acknowledge the question, but he drew a long blade. It looked out of place in the cheerful, large dining room. He didn’t join Teela as she stood by the window, looking out. “Kitling?”

  Kaylin nodded. She turned to the small dragon; he snorted, but obligingly lifted one wing so that it covered her upper face—and, most important, her eyes. The howls of Ferals were so close Kaylin knew they were less than a block away. But that was a fief block.

  All right, Helen, she thought, as she moved to stand beside Teela, let’s see what you’ve got. She turned to look out the window and froze.

  * * *

  The translucent, dragon-wing mask revealed what Kaylin’s normal vision couldn’t. The grounds of the Ashwood Street house seemed as wide at the front as they had when she’d walked up the path.

  “Hey, watch where you swing that,” Mandoran snapped.

  Kaylin almost turned, but didn’t. She’d found what looked—and felt—like a fence from the outside of the property, and she was certain, if the small dragon withdrew his wing, it still would. At the moment, it looked like a glowing, pale wall of thick glass. The wall was taller at its height than the fence had been, and although she thought of it as glasslike, she could not see the streets she knew lay beyond it.

  What she could see, clearly, were the Ferals. It was a full hunting pack; she counted six. Seven. Eight. When the Ferals hunted, their voices could be heard across the fief. Only when they fell silent was it safe to risk a glance out of a window—and only then if you happened to be high enough above the ground. She had never stayed in the window long enough to count eight.

  They weren’t running, now; they stood in a line on the other side of the wall, visible, their eyes oddly luminescent; they turned their heads toward the center of the line, as if waiting on the actions of the pack leader.

  She looked as well, because it was impossible not to. In the strange glow cast by the fence, stood a Barrani man.

  * * *

  Barrani sometimes walked the streets of Nightshade; they were Nightshade’s men. They didn’t patrol the streets to keep them safe; Kaylin had no idea what they did on those forays from the Castle, or if they did it at the fieflord’s command. The Barrani were, like Teela, unimpressed by the Ferals; they didn’t consider them a danger. To the Barrani, the Ferals were very like dogs gone wild.

  They did not, however, command them; where the Ferals were not cautious enough in their choice of victims, they died.

  “Teela—”

  “What do you see?”

  “I see Ferals. They’re standing in a line; there are eight. Four to each side of a single Barrani male.”

  “He is not Barrani.”

  “His hair is longer than yours. Longer than Nightshade’s. It’s—darker, somehow. And his skin looks white.” She hesitated, and then continued. “White like alabaster. He doesn’t look alive, to me.”

  “He looks dead?”

  She shook her head. “No. He looks like a sculpture.”

  “A statue?”

  “Yes—like the statues that serve as pillars across the entry to the High Halls. He’s like—like an artist’s interpretation of a Barrani man. There are no flaws.”

  “Sounds boring,” Mandoran said.

  “Stay away from the window,” Teela replied.

  “I wanted to see this paragon of unearthly beauty.”

  “Why? Jealous?”

  “Skeptical.”

  Annarion grabbed Mandoran’s right elbow; Mandoran laughed. The laughter banked abruptly because Bellusdeo roared. The man standing before the wall in the center of a line of Ferals looked up at the sound of her Dragon voice. And then he smiled.

  The smile stopped Kaylin’s breath. “Helen!”

  He lifted an arm as if in graceful, lazy greeting, and black shadow gathered around his fingertips in a nimbus of anti-light.

  “Helen!”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Helen!”

  “Kitling—” Teela fell silent.

  Everything Kaylin knew about Towers she’d learned from Tara and the Hallionne. They’d been built for different reasons, and operated by rules that served the builders’ purposes; those rules were their foundations. She had no idea what Helen could—or could not—do. But she was certain the wavering, thick barrier was an extension of Helen’s body.

  “Helen!”

  Light traveled through the undulating, thick barrier,
drawing to a white, bright point in front of the stranger who seemed, for the moment, occupied with Bellusdeo’s aerial escape.

  “Be prepared,” Helen’s disembodied voice said, “for difficulty. This will not be without cost.”

  “We’ll deal with the cost—save Bellusdeo!”

  The wall fell on the ancestor, moving like a tidal wave, and landing with enough force that it crushed the four Ferals closest to him; Kaylin could practically hear the sound. It didn’t crush the stranger. It didn’t seem to hit him. But he brought his arm down as the wall heaved most of itself on his head, raising a palm as if to catch its weight.

  He did. He caught the weight that would have turned him into a dark smear on the street, in the center of the other dark smears. That left four Ferals and one significantly more dangerous creature. Who did look, to Kaylin, like the idealized paragon of Barrani power.

  “You’ll need to be very careful,” Helen told them. She still hadn’t appeared. “Only at the height of my power could I contain one of his kind. I could not destroy them without causing irreparable damage to myself.”

  “How could you destroy—”

  “She let them in,” Mandoran said.

  No one but Kaylin turned to stare at him, and her gaze bounced back to the window. Her arms began to glow.

  The small dragon squawked.

  “No, I need your wing where it is. You can drop it if the bastard breaks through.”

  He bit her ear lobe; she cursed in Leontine. Raising a hand to provide a less delicate target, she stopped. Her arms were glowing; the light could be seen through the fabric of her shirt. But the light was solid, and as she watched, her sleeves began to bulge.

  Cursing increased as she rolled her sleeves up, shoving them into crinkles above her elbow. Runes were, once again, lifting themselves off her skin. This time however, it was only a few. She desperately hoped that something similar wasn’t going on with the marks on her legs or back; she couldn’t afford to replace the clothing she was wearing; it was pretty much all she had, if she didn’t count her uniform—and she was not about to strip naked before a fight.

  “You’re worried about replacing cheap rags at a time like this?” Mandoran demanded, his brows vanishing into his beautiful hairline in outrage.

  “Unlike some people, I have to buy my own clothing!”

  “Now is not the time,” Teela told them both. She was right. It wasn’t. But until the Barrani either broke through or gave up—and she wouldn’t have taken a bet at any odds on the latter, which said something—they had nothing else they could do.

  Mandoran, however, fell silent, giving Teela the last word. He was staring at the marks that had risen to the level of Kaylin’s eyes. There were six in total, and they cast no reflection in the glass panes of the window. Since it wasn’t normal glass, Kaylin wasn’t too surprised.

  The small dragon squawked loudly.

  “Do not bite me again; I’m paying attention.” She gazed through a gap in the runes to see that the Barrani ancient was staring—at her. Or at the words; at this distance it was hard to tell.

  He lifted a palm and slammed it into the barrier; the barrier undulated. She heard him speak—how, she didn’t know, but she assumed Helen was somehow facilitating—and this time the rest of her body responded; her skin went from tingling, which could be ticklish and uncomfortable, to pain of the sandpaper-on-skin variety.

  Without pausing to think, Kaylin threw herself into Teela; Teela had a size and weight advantage, but she wasn’t expecting danger from her right side. Both women tumbled clear of the windows just before the glass shattered.

  Severn’s weapon chain began to spin.

  * * *

  The small dragon’s wing dropped; he looped his tail around her neck. The tumble hadn’t dislodged the runes—but it seldom did; they were stationed just over her head, like a wreath made of lines, squiggles, dots. She rose and glanced at Teela.

  Lord Kaylin. Ynpharion’s voice. Tell Lord Teela that the High Lord has been informed of the danger. He asks only one question.

  “Teela—do you recognize the guy attacking the house? I mean, recognize him as an individual, not as a general threat?”

  Teela hesitated. “No.”

  Ynpharion didn’t believe her. To make matters worse, neither did Kaylin—but given what she’d said in Castle Nightshade, there was no possible way she could actually recognize the individuals. Tell her what you told me, Ynpharion said, in disgust. Now is not the time.

  She hasn’t seen either of them close-up. That’s probably going to change real soon. It was her turn to hesitate; he caught it. He didn’t have time to push for more, and to her surprise, didn’t attempt to take advantage of the rest of the distractions. The Ferals were howling right beneath the window, at least by sound.

  What are the Dragons doing?

  I’m not anywhere near the Dragons at the moment, Ynpharion.

  Not even your Bellusdeo?

  No.

  Where is she?

  I’m not going to answer that question.

  Listen to what I hear, Lord Kaylin. It will not take much effort or time; I will not fight you. Just—listen. It was almost a plea.

  It wasn’t just sound; the Ferals were beneath the windows. They had always been better jumpers than dogs.

  “Helen—the barrier—”

  “I let the Ferals in,” she replied. “To better focus my defenses on the actual threat. Please deal with them.”

  “Done,” Teela replied.

  “My power extends to the edge of my property—but the only exceptional defenses I have are within the walls.”

  “Meaning, don’t just jump out the window?” Kaylin asked. Helen failed to respond.

  Lord Kaylin.

  Kaylin closed her eyes. She didn’t like and didn’t trust Ynpharion; the feeling was mutual. She wanted to spend as little time as possible being made aware of his existence. If there were any way short of killing him that she could release his name and all knowledge of it, she’d do it in a heartbeat.

  But that wouldn’t have been at all helpful tonight, because he was the only way she had of getting a necessary message to the High Lord.

  I also appreciate the irony, Ynpharion surprised her by saying. I have spent the whole of my life attempting to gain power and to prove my worth to those that have more of it—and I have, in one evening, done more to advance my cause than in the rest of the centuries combined. And all because I am in essence your slave.

  She drew closer to him as he spoke. Close enough to feel the burning edges of his shame and humiliation; it was not nearly as suffocating as it had been when she first made contact with him, even this evening, but she understood how much effort it took on his part. Everything in him screamed to fight; everything except the reason he had made contact with her.

  Her eyes blurred as her vision shifted to the familiar audience chamber—which was mostly forest and a bit of clearing—in the High Halls. She could see the High Lord; he was not seated; she could see the Consort.

  It was the Consort who looked directly at Kaylin. She could hear the formal tones of High Barrani, wrapped in the urgent pragmatism of a war band. For now, for tonight, all bitter political rivalries and plotting would be set aside, as if they were of no consequence.

  “Lord Kaylin,” the Consort said. Kaylin froze. She could hear and see the Consort so clearly she might have been Ynpharion for that moment.

  She didn’t speak, but realized suddenly that she could. Ynpharion had moved aside; he had opened himself up entirely to her intrusion. The Consort spoke again, but her words were drowned out by the roaring of a Dragon.

  No, Kaylin thought, freezing in place. Not a Dragon. More than one.

  Where are they? she asked Ynpharion.

  They have not yet a
rrived. Do you—

  Yes. Bellusdeo is definitely there. I bet she flew straight from here.

  She was with you.

  Yes. We’re in—we’re in as safe a spot as we can be, given the danger. The High Halls are not like the Hallionne or the Towers in the fiefs; we weren’t certain what the—the Barrani ancestor could do. Bellusdeo flew out to rouse the Dragon Court; my guess is she didn’t bother to land. There is no way the Emperor would have allowed her to fight for—and in front of—the High Halls. Not after the assassination attempt.

  She is not alone.

  No—she’s not. I don’t understand Dragon speech; I can feel it more than I hear it. If she’s flying around the High Halls roaring for aid, the Emperor will probably send the entire court. He’ll probably join them. Whatever you do, don’t attack her. Don’t let any of the Lords attack her.

  You will not tell the Consort yourself.

  ...No.

  Even if she is aware of your presence.

  No. Because then everyone will be aware of it. I know this is bad for you. It looks bad. It’s a mark of inferiority. All that crap. But she has to understand your mettle, here. Yes, in theory I could have forced you to carry word. I could have used your name against you. But...I didn’t have to. You were willing to risk the loss of everything you’ve struggled to build in order to save your people.

  You seem surprised.

  I am. Tell her what I’ve said. Bellusdeo will not harm you; the Emperor will not. But—

  Lord Kaylin? Lord Kaylin!

  The wall cracked and a section the width of two men toppled inward.

  * * *

  Kaylin was on her feet before the dust had settled, daggers in hand, small dragon around throat. Severn’s chains were now a sheen of translucent circles, although he held the end blade in his left hand. The Ferals had no need to try to leap in through the shattered window’s frame; a path had just been made for them.

  The Ferals were no threat to Teela. The man—who definitely would be—hadn’t followed the Ferals in through the gaping hole he’d made in the building’s side, and Kaylin risked a glimpse out the jagged opening. He was still on the street-side of the fence. The fence, without dragon wing to translate the visual image, was battered and dented; the tops of the tines which were well above Barrani heads had been damaged enough they now curled—or dripped, which was disturbing—toward the ground.