Cast in Deception

by Michelle Sagara

  “Through a less well-traveled entrance.” Teela smiled. It was not a very encouraging expression. “You’re probably not going to like it much, unless your constitution in this regard has improved.”

  * * *

  Kaylin didn’t like it at all.

  Teela exited the carriage at the incredibly impressive entrance, mounted the stairs and took a sharp turn at the leftmost giant statue. That statue had seen some recent damage; there were cracks in the stone base, and those cracks extended, like webbing, up the statue’s height. Magic held the pieces in place for the moment, or at least Kaylin assumed it was magic, given the way her arms turned to goose bumps beneath her shirt.

  She had taken off her bracer and left it on her desk; although it looked valuable, it couldn’t be stolen. No matter where she dumped it—and sometimes, in a fit of frustration, she pitched it into the waters of the Ablayne—it returned to its keeper, who was standing beside her looking sympathetic.

  The sensation of magic grew stronger as she followed Teela’s brisk march—a march that suited the Hawk Kaylin wore, not the dress Teela had chosen. Barrani Court clothing had full skirts that allowed for running, kicking and weapon wielding. They probably only worked for Barrani.

  The High Halls sported guards, but those guards were in theory unaligned; they served the High Lord. She could feel Ynpharion’s frustrated contempt at her naivete and told him, I said in theory.

  Since in his opinion the theory was at best questionable, his frustration didn’t abate, but that was fine, because Kaylin recognized what Teela was leading toward. It was a portal. Portals that functioned as doorways made Kaylin literally sick, and she was doubly grateful that she had not reconsidered her choice of clothing.

  “It’s possible,” Teela said, “that both you and the Corporal can enter the halls the normal way, if that’s your preference.”

  “It’s my preference, but we’ll take the portal.”

  “You’re certain?” Teela’s reply defined the word dubious. It also implied that she would have no patience with Kaylin’s postportal whining, if there happened to be any.

  Kaylin nodded.

  “You won’t be much use to me in a fight after you’ve just gone through a portal.”

  “You don’t think I’m much use to you in a fight, period.” This pulled an almost reluctant smile from the Barrani Hawk. “And if I’m not useful, Severn will be.”

  Teela nodded. “Brace yourself,” she added. “This is not like a normal portal.”

  As far as Kaylin was concerned, there were no normal portals. But Barrani structures used portals as defensive measures. The Hallionne all had portal entries. The Towers in the fiefs, with the single exception of Tara, Tiamaris’s Tower, had portals. Helen would have had a portal entry if they didn’t make Kaylin so profoundly nauseated.

  And nausea, while bad, was not nearly as horrible as the possibility of losing a friend to internal Barrani politics. Barrani politics involved death as a matter of course; it was almost as if no game was worth playing if the stakes weren’t high enough. Kaylin personally preferred her bets to be payable in cash.

  This particular portal was small in shape and almost, but not quite, invisible. The delicate outline of a door frame—a Barrani door frame, which was more work-of-art than pragmatic—stood out in relief against a flat, pale piece of stone. The interior of that carved and chiseled doorway was the portal. Teela approached it quickly.

  Severn waited on Kaylin, and Kaylin approached it as if it were a wall, because that’s what it looked like. “I really hate this stuff.”

  “So does Teela,” Severn said, without much sympathy. “I’d offer to let you wait outside, but without you, we don’t have an appointment.”

  “I know, I know. But if I’m going to do it anyway, aren’t I allowed to complain?”

  Severn shrugged, and Kaylin, taking that for his answer—it was a fief shrug—took a deep breath and walked into the wall.

  * * *

  The wall did not immediately become permeable; Kaylin cursed in mild Leontine as she whacked her nose against stone. While Teela wasn’t known for her practical jokes—and why were they called practical anyway?—the wall did dissolve. But it dissolved as if it were loosely packed sand, and at that, really damn cold sand.

  The familiar squawked loudly and bit her ear, but the sand that also surrounded that ear was cold enough she almost couldn’t feel his teeth. The nausea that normally hit crept up more slowly than usual, because everything seemed to slow, except the cold.

  The familiar’s squawk grew louder, but his teeth didn’t grow any sharper. Kaylin opened her eyes, which was not as bad an idea as she feared; she could see, and her eyes didn’t immediately sting the way they would have had they been full of what she’d thought of as sand.

  It wasn’t sand.

  To her eyes, it was almost worse. As if someone had taken visual, solid images and broken them into their component parts, reality swam in her field of view, blown this way and that by her actual movements. She couldn’t see Teela, but that was fair; she couldn’t see anything but random colors, gathering and resolving into partial shapes. There was no road here, no path to follow, no sense of forward that wasn’t the direction she was pointing.

  She almost jumped when a hand touched her back; had she not been constrained by the atmosphere she would have pivoted. As it was she stiffened, opened her mouth, sucked in particles and coughed.

  But the hand was warm, and after a disoriented pause, she recognized it: it was Severn’s. Her own, she could barely feel. She bent her head, closing her eyes again, and began to move forward, pushing everything aside as she did, although her feet ached and her knees almost locked.

  Brace yourself, Teela had said. It was no bloody wonder she didn’t use the damn portal on her usual visits.

  * * *

  Had she not been afraid of the ground, Kaylin might have crawled the rest of the way, however long that ended up being. She had done it before, in portal passage. Endurance was more important than dignity. The portals, which were in theory instant, were a type of unreality that caused everything in Kaylin to rebel. She was afraid she’d sink beneath whatever was under her feet, and end up buried here.

  She was still thinking in Leontine when she emerged. It was sudden, startling; one minute she was pushing through an almost solid storm of intermittent physical color, and the next she was running, almost full tilt, into a wall.

  She put her hands out so that her nose didn’t take a second—and much harder—hit, and was shocked at how warm that wall was. Wood was never as cold as stone, but it felt almost alive beneath her frozen palms.

  Teela was leaning, arms folded, against a closed door looking blue-eyed and rather bored. She raised one black brow as Kaylin coughed, loudly and repeatedly.

  “What in the hells was that?”

  “I told you it would be difficult.”

  “It was like walking—and breathing—in sand!”

  Severn did not have the same forward momentum that had introduced Kaylin to the wall. He didn’t even look cold; Kaylin’s teeth were still chattering.

  “Didn’t you feel the cold?” she demanded.

  Severn shook his head. “It had a different feel than Nightshade’s portal.”

  “It would. The High Halls are not a Tower or a Hallionne. They are not like Helen is, or was. The portal itself is not created by the building.”

  “How was the portal created?”

  “It’s not covered in training classes,” Teela replied. “And it is, at the moment, irrelevant.”

  “Did you make it?”

  Teela opened the door. “We are going to be late.” She left the room. The room was small, almost bare; the walls were wooden. Brass lamps hung three quarters of the way up those walls. That was it. There were no chairs, no tables, no side tables, no paintings or adornm
ents. This was not a room in which any actual living was done.

  She heard Teela bark—as if she were a sergeant—on the other side of the door and scurried to catch up. Small and squawky was spread across her shoulders as if he had just done an enormous amount of unappreciated work. The one-eyed glare he shot her implied that he resented it.

  * * *

  Four guards, wearing something that was the Barrani variant of a tabard, formed up around them—two in front and two in back. Teela, dressed for Court, looked every inch a Barrani High Lord. Kaylin didn’t have Barrani hearing, but understood from the half-heard words that at least one of these guards had tactfully suggested that four was cutting it too close; he wanted to increase the number.

  Teela was not impressed by this and the suggestion wasn’t repeated. Nor did any of the other guards chime in with support. She commanded, brusquely, and they obeyed.

  This was not the first time that Kaylin had been in Teela’s personal rooms within the High Halls, but she felt less overwhelmed—in part because she wasn’t wearing an awkward, expensive dress that made her feel a bit like a clown—and she paid slightly more attention.

  She was accustomed to seeing Teela within Helen’s boundaries. And before that, in her apartment, or in a tavern. She now had familiarity with Teela as a High Lord, and she was less uncomfortable with the concept than she had been. It’s true she wanted Teela to be all Hawk, all the time, but she had come to accept that the fact that Teela had a life outside of the Halls didn’t make her any less Teela.

  Outside of the vestibule, for want of a better word, the walls were adorned with both hangings and paintings; there were small statues in stone alcoves between stone frames that otherwise housed wooden doors. One of those doors was warded; the others were not. There were carpet runners of a deep, deep green, with dark blue embroidery that seemed to seep up in a pattern. Edged in ivory and gold, they implied a forest at night. Or a forest of night.

  “These are enchanted,” Kaylin observed.

  “They are. I apologize if it makes you uncomfortable. Almost anything of value within these rooms has rudimentary enchantments; some are passive, some active.”

  “And if I ask how they’re active?”

  Teela failed to reply.

  * * *

  Leaving Teela’s personal chambers, once the outer doors had been reached, was a journey through forbidding, almost martial, stone. Where the entrance to the High Halls boasted light, magnificent statues, and pillars at least three times Kaylin’s height, these halls spoke of blood and death and war for succession—any succession, any line. There were weapons, not hangings or paintings, as decorations; some had chipped blades or worn grips.

  To Teela, they were irrelevant; it was the people in the halls—dressed, Kaylin assumed, as servants—that were not. Although Teela didn’t appear to actually see them, Kaylin wasn’t fooled. No Barrani Hawk had eyes that blue when they weren’t on high alert.

  The guards formed an outer layer of protection, but Teela was at its heart. She had not chosen to wear the Dragonslaying sword, and Kaylin wondered, as the halls became slightly more crowded, if that had been smart. The weapon was almost a symbol of rank and power within the High Halls.

  Kaylin wasn’t terribly surprised when her arms began to ache. The High Halls, like the Imperial Palace, was meant to be relatively secure. Security meant magic. While Teela’s gaze swept the Barrani in the halls, Kaylin’s was focused on the walls, the floor, the small alcoves, and once, on the beams of a transitional ceiling. What Teela couldn’t take down in personal combat would flatten Kaylin without difficulty; she was therefore free to practice magic recognition, such as it was.

  Most magic just gave her hives. But some magic was more powerful, and to Kaylin’s vision, the casting of the spell left a weave of telltale sigils in its wake. The sigils were unique to the caster; if there were three sigils, it meant that there were three different enchantments in place. Sometimes it meant three mages had worked in concert, but more often, it meant they worked in sequence. Sigils did not decay with the passage of time; they decayed with the passage of the magic itself.

  Teela had once been a member of the Arcanum. Kaylin knew this, but did not know anything else, like, say, when. Or why. Or why she’d quit. Teela was sometimes like a closed book and sometimes like a bloody vault. The part of her history that involved the Arcanum was in the vault. As a result, Teela had the ability to see and recognize magic; she didn’t have the ability to do so without preparation and time.

  It was therefore Kaylin who said, “Stop!” in Elantran.

  Teela stopped instantly. “Where?” she asked, in the same Elantran.

  “Straight ahead. Maybe another ten feet.” Kaylin poked the familiar. He chirped like a bird. An angry bird.

  “You’re frowning.”

  Kaylin nodded. “I can see one strong, sharp sigil. It’s almost like it’s been carved in the air itself—and it’s not like a door ward. It doesn’t seem to be embedded in anything.”

  “Do you recognize the sigil?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean much. I can say without doubt that it’s not one of Evarrim’s spells.”

  “Lord Evarrim.”

  “Whatever.”

  “This,” Teela replied, as she lifted her hands, “is why I prefer to leave you at home.”

  “If it helps, I don’t use Dragon titles, either.”

  “Or table manners. Although, to be fair, yours have improved markedly in the past month. Manners, however, are particularly useful among my kin. They are tools of diplomacy when used correctly.”

  “According to Bellusdeo, so is war.”

  This pulled a chuckle out of Teela that Kaylin would have bet wasn’t there. “It is to avoid deploying that tool that manners are frequently best used. Now be quiet and let me concentrate.”

  Severn unwound his weapon chain. If the Barrani guard found this offensive, it didn’t show. Then again, both Kaylin and Severn were wearing Hawk colors, and the Barrani generally considered the Hawks barely worth notice. There were advantages to being invisible.

  There were advantages to being multilingual as well. It meant Kaylin could understand the very quiet, very Leontine phrase that Teela used. “Can you break it?”

  “Not safely—for you.”

  “Severn?”

  “Probably.” He didn’t start the weapon chain spinning, and wouldn’t until the guard formation changed. He looked to Teela for permission.

  “What, in your opinion, does the spell do?” Teela asked.

  Kaylin, however, missed the first iteration because her arms had begun to glow. Although the marks that adorned most of her skin were hidden by long sleeves, the cloth could only mute the light when it reached a certain level. “Nothing good.” She swiveled her head in the familiar’s direction. “Are you willing to risk him eating it?”

  “There are other halls we can take, but they have different drawbacks, the biggest being the height of the ceiling.”

  People had passed through the sigil; it had not appeared to harm them. Kaylin pointed this out, but dubiously. Teela accepted it in the spirit with which it was offered. “The familiar?”

  The small, translucent creature in question lifted a wing and folded it more or less across both of Kaylin’s eyes. This time, it was Kaylin who gave in to Leontine, but hers was louder and more disgusted.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “I’m not completely certain but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s a portal.”

  “A portal.”

  “The sigil seems to sit in the center of what might otherwise be a window—it’s transparent, but it seems to sort of reflect light. Not well,” she added. “But beyond that window, I can’t see the hall at all. I can see something dark, and a flicker of light a few yards in that implies torches. I think there’s stone or dirt floors; I can�
�t see ceiling. Just darkness.”

  “When you say not certain, would you be willing to bet on it?”

  “Definitely.”

  “With your own money?”

  “Yes.”

  Teela was silent for another beat. “Let him eat it, if he can.”

  The familiar then withdrew his wing and launched himself off Kaylin’s shoulder, leaving tiny claw marks in his wake. What Teela could see as a spell by casting a spell herself, he could see without apparent effort. He didn’t look worried. Wings spread, he hovered directly in front of the sigil that Kaylin had first seen.

  His roar at this size had never been terribly impressive, but he roared anyway, and followed it up with Dragon breath in miniature. A stream of sparkling silver smoke left his open mouth. Unlike actual Dragons, it wasn’t smoke created by fire, and the cloud that formed in its wake didn’t burn what it touched. It did, however, melt it.

  “You know,” Kaylin said, as she watched the familiar at work, “this would be a great way to erase magical evidence.”

  “I imagine that’s just one reason why the Arcanum in concert would love to have familiars of their own,” was Teela’s dry response.

  The sigil began to collapse, the solidity of its carved form running like the wax of a poorly made candle. It did not hit floor; it didn’t hit anything. The air seemed to absorb it as they watched. Only when the familiar was done and had returned to Kaylin’s shoulder did Teela signal to her guards.

  “We’re going to be late,” she told them. They walked decisively down the hall, to no obvious ill effect. Teela followed.

  * * *

  The rest of the walk to the courtyard was uneventful. It was longer than it should have been because people who were apparently delighted to see Teela at Court stopped to exclaim, and there was no polite way to shut them up. They were all blue-eyed, on the other hand, and even Kaylin’s inexpert knowledge of manners couldn’t disguise the fact that their delight was dripping condescension—or worse.

  Teela, however, answered graciously, as if their condescension was so trivial she could fail to notice it at all. Kaylin had never been confronted with so many exquisitely perfect and delighted people who nonetheless felt like they were going to war, and by the time they reached the interior forest that led, at last, to the Consort’s chair she was exhausted. Teela was not.