Cast in Deception

by Michelle Sagara

  There was only one way to do that. “Can you find Sedarias?” Kaylin asked. And then, because the constant small changes in his face reminded her of bad nightmares about dead people, added, “And can you please stop doing that thing with your face?”

  Behind her, she heard a brief draconian snort.

  “What thing with my face?”

  “If I had a mirror you could actually see, I’d show you—but your face is constantly changing shape and size. Especially your eyes. And it is really, really disturbing.” To her surprise, he did as she’d requested, looking almost embarrassed.

  “It doesn’t usually matter what I look like when I’m out there.” He raised an arm and pointed in a random direction. “I don’t talk to people like you much.”

  “We don’t talk to people like you much, either. But it makes you look like a—a ghost. Or worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “A Shadow.”

  This time, his limbs wavered, becoming opaque and elongating. Limbs were still better than face.

  “Is that what you are, now?” she asked.

  He seemed to consider this, his face creasing in an entirely normal, Barrani way. “I don’t know,” he finally replied. It was so not the reply she wanted. “To be honest, I don’t really understand anymore what Shadow is.”

  “It’s the thing that kills us or warps us when it comes in contact with us. You must understand it—didn’t you send the forest Ferals to attack us?”

  He frowned again. “The dogs, you mean?”

  “They weren’t what the rest of us call dogs.”

  “They weren’t, no. They were Barrani, but they had the power necessary to transform themselves should they require it. I didn’t choose the shape,” he added.

  “No, just the target.”

  “The Consort meant to destroy us.”

  “She did not.” Bellusdeo’s hand fell gently—for a Dragon, which meant bruises but not broken bones—on Kaylin’s shoulder. It was a warning. Kaylin couldn’t easily shrug it off, and didn’t try. “She hoped to save you. She knew you were trapped.”

  “You can’t possibly believe that.”

  “I believe it because it’s true. None of you are prisoners. None of you are forced to stay with Alsanis. Not even you,” she added. “All of you are free.”

  Terrano almost lost control of his face again, but managed to hold it—and his limbs—together. “Don’t confuse what you wanted with what she wanted.”

  “She hasn’t tried to harm you since.”

  “Hasn’t she?” He shrugged. “If we’re all free, where are my friends?”

  “I have no idea. That’s why I’m here.”

  “You.”

  “Chosen, remember?” she demanded, lifting her left arm and pulling back her sleeve. The marks were glowing brightly as they were exposed.

  He spoke, then. She didn’t understand a word he was saying, but felt that if she listened hard enough, she would. And because she’d had this feeling before, she thought Terrano might be reading the marks somehow, that he might be speaking True Words. None of the marks became physical words; none separated themselves from her skin.

  “Look—if you could find them on your own, you would have found them by now, right?” She let her sleeve fall back into place as she lowered her arm.

  “‘By now’ signifies nothing. Time is only a constraint for the lesser races.”

  “That is not true,” Bellusdeo said, coming out from behind Kaylin. “Time is a factor in a state of emergency. We live forever, all things being equal. But all things are never equal. There are things that will kill us—in our mutual history, usually each other. It is possible that for the cohort, time is in short supply.”

  Terrano’s eyes were black again. “You speak good High Barrani.”

  “In which case,” Bellusdeo continued, ignoring the observation, “Lord Kaylin is best equipped to offer aid: she is a creature who is wed to time, her existence indivisible from it. What to either of our kin would be insignificant is not to her.”

  “Why are you even here?” Terrano demanded. And Kaylin remembered the reason the twelve children had been surrendered to the ceremony in the green: the Draco-Barrani war. The High Court had decided to imbue the twelve children with the power necessary to defeat their ancient enemies. Those enemies, of course, being the Dragons.

  “She lives with us,” Kaylin said quickly. “With Annarion and Mandoran. Mandoran doesn’t really like her,” she felt compelled to add, “but Annarion does, and so does Teela.”

  “Teela?” This was said with open scorn. “Teela fought in the war. There’s no way—”

  “She goes out drinking with Teela and Tain.”

  “...And they get along?”

  “Yes. Or at least no one’s reported them to the Halls of Law yet, and they all return home without wounds or burns.” She folded her arms.

  Terrano seemed outraged. “I leave them alone for a little while, and they forget everything.”

  “Sedarias forgets nothing.”

  “She’s obviously forgotten how to use the portal paths.”

  “I see that you have more in common with Mandoran than the rest of your cohort,” Bellusdeo said, voice cool.

  The ground buckled beneath the Dragon’s feet. Since the Dragon could more or less fly with a brief change of shape, this was only a minor inconvenience. For her. Kaylin, however, couldn’t. She didn’t want to leave Bellusdeo’s side, because she was pretty certain that her presence was the one thing that kept Terrano from going all out.

  “Not your presence alone, no,” Hallionne Orbaranne said. This time, she appeared in the center of the room, her Avatar form girded with armor that seemed made of crystal, and weapons that seemed made of night sky. Her eyes, however, were much like Terrano’s—black, opalescent.

  Terrano met the unnatural eyes of the Hallionne with unnatural eyes of his own. He didn’t draw blades; he didn’t turn his physical arms into weapons. But Kaylin thought he could. “Orbaranne. Hallionne. I don’t think he’s a danger—”

  “Do you not understand the danger he does pose? I cannot hear the whole of his thought. I can hear fractions of it, but his thought is a multitude of voices, and not all of them are clear to me.”

  Kaylin inhaled, remembering the forest Ferals. She exhaled, remembered the rest of the cohort. Especially the three that she knew. “Your eyes,” she said, to Orbaranne, “are exactly the same as his.”

  Both Orbaranne and Terrano seemed surprised by this. Terrano was the only one who appeared to feel insulted.

  “Is that how you see it?” he demanded. “You think our eyes look the same?”

  Kaylin glanced at Bellusdeo; Bellusdeo shrugged. “I said it, didn’t I?”

  “And you?” he demanded of the Dragon, which surprised Kaylin.

  “They look the same to me. They are not the same shape—the Hallionne seems to have much better control of her physical dimensions than you do—but they appear to be black, with flecks of moving color. I would not hazard a guess as to the physical composition.”

  Orbaranne, however, had lowered her swords. She was staring at Terrano as if she were truly seeing him for the first time, but her eyes were unblinking. Kaylin doubted she’d remembered something as trivial as eyelids when composing this particular Avatar.

  “They are there,” Orbaranne replied, distracted.

  To Kaylin’s surprise, she turned to Bellusdeo. She offered the Dragon a bow—which should have been impossible given the armor—before speaking again. “Your experience of Shadow is greater, in the end, than my own; I have knowledge, but Shadows are unique enough that that knowledge might not be relevant in all situations. What do you see?”

  “As I told Terrano, I see what Lord Kaylin sees. When I ruled, I would have considered him a danger, but I would have considered you a dange
r as well.”

  The Hallionne had not looked away from Terrano. The swords she was carrying vanished as she began to speak. Her words shook the floor. They might have shaken the walls; Kaylin couldn’t tell because her body was shaking, too. But Kaylin recognized the language that she couldn’t understand when it was spoken—and it was spoken at a volume that made her instantly cover her ears. Only Dragons spoke this loudly naturally.

  Bellusdeo had Dragon hearing; she didn’t even flinch.

  But Terrano’s eyes widened. He waited while the Hallionne spoke; her words seemed to continue forever, as if the speaking of True Words nailed them into place, made them solid, real, as eternal as mountain edifices. Only when the words had become echoes, only when the Hallionne’s lips had ceased their motion, did Terrano begin to speak.

  It didn’t surprise Kaylin that he spoke the same tongue, although he spoke it as if it were his native language.

  The Hallionne listened; she listened as if fixed in place, as if she were of stone. But when Terrano was done, she lowered her chin, lowered her arms, and transformed her armor into a loose drape of flowing off-white robe. The cave around them melted more slowly than the armor had, and when shape was reasserted, the color was different. This would be because there was no longer a ceiling; as far as the eye could see, there was sky, a deep blue with a smidgen of cloud.

  Where the portal arch had come into being, a round series of concentric circles remained, and there was a splash of brown red that spoke of dried blood.

  Orbaranne turned to Kaylin, then. “Lirienne will be with us momentarily. I apologize for my anger and my suspicion.”

  “You’re—”

  “I was not, as you once suspected, Barrani before I made the choice to become the heart of the Hallionne. I was mortal, as you were. I was young, and new to this world, this place. Suspicion, among our kind, is not an absolute requirement of survival.”

  Kaylin shrugged, a fief shrug. “It doesn’t hurt,” she offered.

  Orbaranne smiled, then. “Doesn’t it?” And she turned, once again, to face Terrano.

  The speech seemed to have drained something out of him; he looked much more solid, much more real, than he had moments—or hours?—ago.

  He shrugged, miming Kaylin’s gesture. But when he spoke, he spoke Barrani. “She asked,” he said, glancing toward the grassy plane that had taken the place of stone. “I answered.”

  “The Lord of the West March couldn’t answer the way you did. I don’t think most of the Barrani—even the ancient Arcanists—could.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Terrano looked away. “You learn a bit when you leave home.”

  “That’s more than a bit.”

  “Are you sure you haven’t spoken with Sedarias recently?”

  At that, Kaylin chuckled. “Can he stay?” she asked the Hallionne.

  “Yes. We were negotiating the terms of his occupancy.” Before Kaylin could ask another question, Lirienne entered the circle, as if passing through a door to arrive by their sides.

  Terrano once again offered the Lord of the West March a passable bow.

  This time, the Lord of the West March returned it. His eyes were a shade of midnight blue that did not suit his expression, and he came to stand by the side of Orbaranne’s Avatar as if he had no intention of ever leaving it again.

  “Let us return to the portal pathways after we have had a chance to discuss all that has happened,” Orbaranne said.

  * * *

  This time, when they repaired to the great hall, it took twenty minutes. Orbaranne apologized profusely for this, although no one complained. Especially not Kaylin. Terrano appeared to be interested in the Hallionne’s interior, and he asked her questions every few steps. This was in keeping with his apparent age, but sadly, Kaylin didn’t understand the questions—or the answers, if it came to that.

  Neither the Hallionne nor Terrano were speaking True Words.

  “It is not trivially done,” the Hallionne replied, although Kaylin had had better sense than to speak out loud. “True Words are words of power, of intent, of consequence. We do not use them to say ‘have a nice day.’”

  “Are there ways to say that, in the language of the Ancients?”

  Terrano and Orbaranne exchanged a glance. It was Terrano who answered. “Yes, but...it’s not considered polite. It’s—look, if the Ancients had said it, it would have been a very nice day. Instantly. Completely. They had no way of really asking questions; all words were statements of fact.”

  The dining table had shrunk by the time the group reached it. Bellusdeo had not spoken a word; nor had Lirienne. Terrano and Orbaranne, however, made up for the lack. Kaylin was from Elantra; she was accustomed to hearing languages she didn’t know and therefore didn’t understand. In the office, in theory, everyone spoke Elantran. And that was true as far as it went—but everyone also spoke their own tongues: Aerian, Barrani and Leontine. There had been spillover, of course, and all of the Hawks could curse in languages they couldn’t otherwise speak.

  She wondered if Lirienne understood Terrano. Decided against asking. Knew that Orbaranne had already heard.

  She took a chair; Bellusdeo took the seat opposite her. The head of the table had been clearly reserved for the Lord of the West March; Terrano plopped himself gracelessly in the seat to Kaylin’s right.

  “We’ll find them,” Kaylin said quietly.

  He said nothing. Loudly. When he finally spoke, it was grudging. “The Hallionne thought that I might be responsible for the disappearance of my kin.”

  “He is not,” Orbaranne added, in case that was in doubt.

  “Not even accidentally?” It was Bellusdeo who asked. Given that Terrano’s eyes were no longer Barrani eyes, they didn’t shade to the expected dark blue.

  “They’re more like me than you,” Terrano answered. “Yes, I’m certain.” He continued to stare.

  “Blink,” Kaylin told him.

  “What?”

  “Blink. Try to look less like a living statue and more like a person.” She exhaled on a grimace as he obliged. Badly. “Never mind.” To the Hallionne, she said, “We need to speak with the water.”

  “The elemental water has dispersed,” Orbaranne replied. The words were stilted, the expression that accompanied them, troubled. “Water was never used as a conduit, a method of travel.”

  “It was,” Kaylin said, thinking of boats. “It still is.”

  “No. Travel by boat is predicated on the existence of rivers or larger bodies of water—but there is no river between the Keeper’s garden and the Hallionne. At least, not that I’m aware of. I have been troubled by your appearance.”

  “Because it should have been impossible?”

  “In many, many ways, yes. The Keeper’s garden exists to restrain the will of the wild elements. The elements are necessary for life—even my own. But when free to interact—”

  “They try to kill each other, fail, and kill everything around them instead.”

  “Yes.” She seemed relieved not to have to explain this. “It is possible that the Keeper is finally failing in his duty.”

  “I’m pretty damn sure the water wasn’t responsible for the loss of the cohort.” Kaylin folded her arms.

  “You are sentimentally attached to the water, and that is inadvisable. Understand that the element itself, like any living creation, is not all of one thing or all of another. It is possible that the element could both destroy—or attempt to destroy—the cohort and simultaneously desire to preserve it. But...the voice of the water is silent, here. Your arrival required all of its substantial power.”

  “Has this happened before?”

  “Never here, and not in other Hallionne, to my knowledge. The fire has been used as a conduit before—but only by ancient Dragons.” She bowed her head. “You are not the only
people to come to me with inquiries about the cohort.” She had adopted Kaylin’s name, but would: it was what they called themselves, now.

  Terrano stiffened.

  “Were the others Barrani?”

  This time she did not answer. Kaylin understood; she turned to face the Lord of the West March. “Was it you?”

  “I asked the Hallionne to monitor them. I also asked the Hallionne to house them. Any evaluation of their abilities or their intent could not be carried out were they to remain outside of the Hallionne’s boundary.” Kaylin opened her mouth. The Lord of the West March, however, had not finished. “I wished to know,” he continued, “if Orbaranne would recognize them. Once one has been accepted as a guest in a Hallionne, one will be accepted as a guest in future. The grant of blood—in most cases—is almost definitional.”

  “Outcastes?”

  “The Hallionne do not recognize outcastes as outcaste unless exceptional circumstances arise. Once the Hallionne has accepted the responsibility of hospitality, it will always be extended. There is a reason Lord Severn could travel these pathways, even with the marked disapproval of the High Court. The...changes, the alterations, in the group you refer to as the cohort, are changes that would be impossible for any others of my kin.”

  Bellusdeo said, “I did not give blood.”

  “No. Nor will you be asked, but your circumstances are unusual.”

  “The water?” Kaylin asked.

  Bellusdeo snorted smoke. “The Consort,” the gold Dragon said, although the question had been asked of the Lord of the West March. To Orbaranne, she said, “Was the Water’s decision to bring us here influenced by the Consort? ”

  Something wordless passed between the Hallionne and the Lord of the West March. It was the latter who replied. “Not in my estimation. My sister is not without power, but the power necessary to command the Water to do what was done—at great cost to the Water itself—is not power she possesses.”

  Or not power Lirienne was aware she possessed, at any rate.

  No, kyuthe. It is not an ability she possesses. Even the potential for power of this kind would have been noted.

  “She probably thought I’d arrive with the small Dragon, not you,” Kaylin told the large Dragon.