“Yes. I understand it, as well. But Kaylin—I won’t see her sacrifice everything she is for the sake of the rest of the Dragons.”
“No,” was the fond reply. “You wouldn’t. That’s why you’re here. You know that she’s already sacrificed everything once—to fight the Shadows with you. To protect the world.” Her world. And in the end, she had failed. “You know everything about the life she actually lived for centuries—and I think she needs someone who does. I don’t. I understand it in theory—but I didn’t live it with her. I can’t be part of that history. Stay here. She’ll ignore you, but she’ll at least be aware that you are here, for her. I should go talk to Helen. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to sign something or not.”
* * *
She was lying, of course. There were no signatures necessary to codify their agreement. Kaylin wanted a home—but the type of home she could make here couldn’t be built on legalities. She found Mandoran and Annarion in the dining room, of all places. Mandoran had his feet on the table.
Helen was at its head; if Helen didn’t tell him to remove his bloody feet, Kaylin didn’t feel she could—although that took work. Both of the Barrani boys looked about as cheerful as Maggaron. It wasn’t much of a housewarming.
Helen looked up as Kaylin entered the dining room. “We’re having a bit of a discussion about the current difficulty,” she said, smiling. She was the only person in the room who was.
Kaylin took a seat. She was tired. No—she was beyond tired. “Mandoran,” she said, looking across the table at an obviously dejected Barrani, “no matter what else comes out of this, you saved us all.”
The dark circles under Mandoran’s eyes implied hangover from the hells. The bruises didn’t help.
“We’re going to find Nightshade,” she told Annarion, when neither spoke. “But...before we even make the attempt, we need to understand what you can do. And you need to understand what you’re doing. Tara said that the Shadows in the fief could hear you; we can’t even approach the Castle if we can’t figure it out and get it—get it under control.” She exhaled. “Mandoran, how did you know how to reach Helen’s heart?”
“How do you know how to reach the dining room door?”
Kaylin frowned. “I can see it.”
“Exactly.”
“I can’t see through walls and floors.” She was too tired to be diplomatic. “Can you see it now?”
“...Yes.” Staring at his reflection on the pristine table surface, he said, “You don’t know what it was like. We were trapped in the Hallionne for a long time. We couldn’t leave. The Hallionne rearranged itself to be a tasteful jail—but it was a jail. We could speak to each other, but we couldn’t, for a long time, meet. We couldn’t reach Teela, either. We tried.” He exhaled and changed the subject. “Barrani don’t sleep the way mortals sleep.”
Kaylin nodded; she knew this.
“Hallionne do. We had traveled through the Hallionne on the way to the regalia. We understood that they were not awake. But they were present. They were aware. They could influence their surroundings unintentionally. They could influence them according to the needs of their...guests.
“We were those guests, and we were bored. We experimented. Well, Terrano experimented. But what he saw, we saw; what he heard, we heard. We could not follow Terrano—not at the beginning. We couldn’t see ourselves the way he was willing to see himself.
“But he showed us how to communicate with the Hallionne. To learn...was hard. We couldn’t hear the Hallionne to begin with. He didn’t speak to us. We had to listen. We had to turn our full attention to listening. Even for us, it was hard. I’m not sure Teela could learn. She doesn’t understand half of what we say, and it frustrates her.”
“And you?”
“It makes the rest of us feel guilty,” he replied. “Don’t tell her that.”
“Do I look like an idiot?”
Mandoran was silent. Annarion was loudly silent.
“We never had to worry about secrecy. We listened, and when we could finally hear, we struggled to speak. To the Hallionne. We weren’t Terrano; he learned more, and quickly. I think he was ready to abandon everything. He grew to love the cage so much it stopped being a cage, for him.
“But the rest of us were too anchored in our early lives and our regrets and our anger. They held us in place. What we did when we communicated with the Hallionne wasn’t like speech. But it was a constant—and we think it still is. It’s why Tara could hear us. And the Castle. And Helen.”
“And the water.”
Mandoran nodded. “We’re not doing it deliberately. Stopping—it’s like holding our breath. We can—but we have to breathe sometime. What I saw when I lead you to Helen’s heart looked almost like the rest of the building to me. It’s—” he frowned. “Subtext.”
Kaylin stared at him.
Mandoran turned to Helen. “Is that the wrong word?”
“No, dear.”
“Pretend I’m as stupid as you think I am,” Kaylin said, trying not be resentful, “and explain it to me.”
“If you tell stories about your life in the fiefs—and Teela says you do—you’re talking about yourself. But someone listening could infer that you feel that anyone who has power is evil. The inference would be the subtext. It’s not what you’re trying to say—but anyone listening can hear it beneath the words. Buildings—buildings like Tara or Helen—are like those stories. They’ve got a lot of really loud subtext. We don’t see it unless we look, but it’s not hard to see.
“And once we see it, it becomes part of their story. We can move around in it the same way you move around the dining room. You can tell your stories in different order, right? You can mix it up, or forget something and come back to it? That’s what we do.”
“And the outlands?”
Mandoran looked at Annarion. “Your turn.”
She almost expected Annarion to say why me?
“Because, idiot, you left Helen and went to fight the ancestor.” Clearly, Annarion had performed to expectation, just not where Kaylin could hear it.
“I do not see things the way Mandoran does. He is probably closest to Terrano. When I look at the ancestor, I see what you see—but I see more. It is very much like the shadow you cast when you stand in light, at least to your eyes. I think. I have the same shadow, and it moves independent of me in the same way.”
“So...nothing at all like the shadow I cast.”
Annarion frowned, staring at Kaylin’s shadow. He didn’t disagree; he looked thoughtful. “I could follow the movement of his shadow. I could hear the voice with which his shadow spoke. I could become more like my own shadow to follow him.”
“By switching places with it?”
Annarion looked as frustrated as Kaylin felt. “No. I don’t know what you saw in the outlands. I don’t know how you knew I was becoming absorbed in their narrative, their shape. I don’t know what you saw when you found me in my brother’s Castle. I know what Teela saw. It was...disturbing, to see it through her eyes. What I saw wasn’t...what she saw. Helen is trying to teach us how to put the two together.
“But she says the listening we learned in the early years in the Hallionne isn’t actually listening; we’re shouting. We’re demanding to be heard and seen. And we’re not doing it the way you do. She thinks any Tower, any Hallionne, we entered would wake. They would see us as a possible threat because we’re speaking to them in ways their intended inhabitants can’t.
“A wakeful Hallionne or Tower can hear the rest of our thoughts; they can read our intent. Helen thinks of us as children.” He said this last with a very pained expression. “But she says we have to learn to hear the subtext without making it part of the narrative—because we’re changing the narrative and the nature of the story if we can’t. And that...is hard.”
“
If you hadn’t done what you’d done, we’d all be dead,” Kaylin told him. “Both of you.”
“If I had not lost my temper at my brother, we would never have been at risk,” Annarion countered. “And I want to go back to the Castle now. Would it alarm you to know that I could see the path there while fighting the ancestor?”
Kaylin shook her head. She rose. “No. I just don’t think you could have come back to here if you’d left to follow it.”
“Lord Kaylin?”
She exhaled and sat down again.
“What Helen cannot explain—and what none of us understand—is how you could come to my aid. You are mortal. You are not of significant power.”
“She is Chosen,” Helen pointed out.
“So you’ve said. But that is not an explanation. How can you wander between the states without losing yourself in them?”
Kaylin reached up and wearily poked the small, limp dragon.
Squawk.
“I don’t think he agrees,” Mandoran said.
“Well, there’s not a whole lot of other explanation. I’m not the one who can turn himself into a giant dragon and zip around the skies like a sparrow.”
“No. But...if you can do this, you could possibly instruct us. You could teach us how to safely navigate between the states without being lost to any of them.”
“I am not certain it will be as simple as that,” Helen replied, before Kaylin could. “What Kaylin perceives is, I think, translated into what she is capable of perceiving in this world. Even if you look at the same thing, her view of it will be intrinsically different.” She turned to Kaylin and added, “I really think you should send Maggaron to bed.”
“I really think he won’t go, and I’m lazy enough not to want to waste the colossal effort.”
“You’re probably right. I’ve never had a Norannir beneath my roof before. Are they all as he is?”
“If you mean as earnest, no. They’re all about the same size when fully grown, though.”
Helen frowned, eyes narrowing. “I would appreciate it,” she told Mandoran, in as severe a tone of voice as she’d yet used, “if you stopped playing with the doors.”
“I’m not doing anything to the doors,” was his sullen reply.
“Anymore,” Annarion added, which didn’t make Mandoran any happier. “I think,” he added softly, “you have guests.”
“At this time of night?” Kaylin asked. She rose and headed out of the dining room. “I’ll get it.”
“I think it’s for you anyway,” Mandoran added.
“Teela?”
“Teela is going to be in debriefing until doomsday,” Mandoran replied. This did, on the other hand, cheer him up. Kaylin was certain he’d pay for it later.
“Probably Severn, then.”
“Severn and Tain are going to be keeping Teela company. So is your Sergeant. He looks ridiculous without facial hair.”
“Avoid telling him that if you like your throat where it is. He’s going to be in a foul mood for the next week. Or two.”
“Until it grows back?”
“Some of the things we lost today won’t. Grow back.”
Mandoran’s smile dimmed. “No. Apologies, Lord Kaylin.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The small dragon lifted his head. Or tried. He made a meeping noise that sounded truly pathetic. Kaylin sighed and removed him from her shoulders, curling him carefully in cupped palms as she walked toward the door.
“Who do you think is visiting?” she asked. “Because if it’s Barrani and ancient, I’m not going to be thrilled. I may scream in your ears.”
Small and squawky covered his head with one wing.
Kaylin reached the door in the small foyer. She wondered, looking at it, if this had been the shape Helen had taken for Hasielle. It was far fancier than anything Kaylin had ever called home, because the Imperial Palace had never been home.
She opened the door.
Two men stood on the other side of it. One was older, and bent slightly with the weight of age; his hair was sparse, and his long beard white with a touch of gray. His eyes were orange. In spite of the bruising and the gash across his forehead, she recognized him instantly. “Arkon?”
He nodded.
“You look awful.” She pushed the door out of the way and almost offered him an arm. Some sense of self-preservation prevented this. “Come in.”
“I am, as you have so kindly pointed out, exhausted. I do not think I have been this tired in centuries. I am here as exalted page.” The Arkon made no move to enter the building.
“Page?” She frowned. “Oh, wait—you mean the kids that run around the Palace opening doors and telling people how to get places?”
“Indeed.”
She froze. His eyes lost some of the orange at her expression. No one—no one—asked the Arkon to serve as an errand runner. And if the owner of the Royal Library was running errands, as he’d just claimed, there was only one person the silent man standing to his left could be.
She looked up at him; she had to look up. He was not the tallest non-Norannir she had ever met, but he was easily the tallest Dragon. His hair was the black of Barrani hair, but the light from the foyer suggested blue highlights. It was currently pulled back; she thought it braided but didn’t have the temerity to check. His skin, while pale, wasn’t flawless; it sported a white and obvious scar that cut from the left of his nose, skirting lips and ending at the line of his jaw. His eyes were a pale orange.
“You understand,” the Arkon said. “Or perhaps you do not. Let me introduce my friend. He does not spend much time in the streets of Elantra, and he is not, perhaps, as cognizant of its many customs as you yourself would be. He is a Dragon; I trust you will both recognize this, and attempt to treat him with at least as much respect as you treat...Lord Diarmat.”
“Can we settle for Lord Sanabalis?”
“No. You treat him with appallingly little respect.”
“I treat him with vastly more respect than he treats me—and vastly more respectfully than Bellusdeo.”
“Indeed.” He turned to the man by his side. “This is—”
The Dragon stepped forward. “I am Dariandaros.”
Kaylin stepped back to let him enter the house. “I want to make one thing clear,” she said, her voice more wobbly than she would have liked. She could hear the Arkon’s sharp intake of breath in the background. The coward wasn’t going to come in himself.
“And that?” The Imperial voice was very much like Diarmat’s; it radiated death and a distinctly chilling lack of warmth.
“I’m Bellusdeo’s friend. She’s my roommate. This house is as much hers as mine. She’s not a Hawk. She’s not a Lord of the Imperial Court. She is a hero. And I won’t have her attacked or cornered or intimidated while she’s here.” She exhaled.
The Dragon’s brow had risen ever-so-slightly into his hairline. To her surprise, the color of his eyes hadn’t shifted. She wondered if all the bad PR—about eating people or turning them into ash—was wrong.
“There is a reason,” he said, although she hadn’t spoken out loud, “that I am here as Dariandaros, and not as the Eternal Emperor. Understand, Private Neya, that as Emperor, I have responsibilities to the title itself. If I falter, if I am seen to lack confidence or direction, if I am seen as an object of scorn, and not a man worthy of both obedience and respect, the Empire stumbles.” His smile was thin. It was not warm. “And I admit a personal predilection to be treated with the respect due an Emperor.” He looked around the foyer. “This is to be Bellusdeo’s new home?”
Kaylin looked out the door. The Arkon had vanished.
Squawk.
She froze and slid a hand up to cover the small dragon’s mouth. “You didn’t even bring any of your guards.”
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“I am aware that the Halls of Law and the Imperial Guard do not always see eye-to-eye; I am uncertain why, but I accept it as observable fact. I did not choose to bring Palace Guards. If I am to interact with you as a citizen, if I am to speak to you as if I were not Emperor, I cannot be seen as Emperor. So. I am here.”
* * *
She led him to the right of the foyer, where she hoped to whatever god listened to the unrepentantly irreligious that she would find some kind of—of sitting room. The rooms she shared with Bellusdeo in the Palace had one.
And Helen apparently had one, as well.
“I don’t—we don’t have cooks,” Kaylin said, feeling stupid. “And we haven’t really moved in yet. We kind of just agreed in principle and then—and then the ancestors arrived. So—our, umm, hospitality—”
One brow rose. It was an expression she might have seen on the Arkon’s face.
She entered the room; it was large, with slightly faded furniture—three chairs with high backs, one long couch with a slumped central pillow. There were blankets—Caitlin called them throws for some reason—draped across the top.
Kaylin chose one of the chairs. She didn’t particularly want to risk sitting beside the Emperor.
The Emperor, without apparent similar concern, also chose one of the chairs. He sat straight-backed and stiff, as if it was extremely unusual for his knees to do something trivial, like, say, bend.
Kaylin felt awkward and ridiculous.
Severn, she whispered. I don’t want to panic you, but. Umm. Never mind.
For some reason, this did not fill Severn with instant comfort. What is it? What’s happened?
I’m at home. She tested the word in her thoughts, and some of the stiffness in her shoulders eased. Yes, she’d faced ancestors and true words and the magic that still made her arms and legs ache—but this was where she was going to live for the rest of her natural life. She had found a home. She had found a home in which Dragon paranoia wouldn’t offend the landlord.
Or maybe it would, but at least the landlord wouldn’t turn her out.
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