Cast in Deception

by Michelle Sagara

  “We found him outside of Alsanis and did something to free him.”

  “Ah.”

  “He came from Ravellon.”

  Silence. Thoughtful silence. “When you say we do you mean you?”

  “Yes.”

  Terrano cleared his throat. Loudly. “When she says we, she means me.”

  “Language is tricky. I see.” He spoke again, but this time, Kaylin didn’t understand the words.

  Her familiar squawked. He had removed the wing from her face, and she could no longer see either Spike or the thing that pursued him, but she didn’t look; she was too busy running and trying to squeeze a few words out of increasingly overworked lungs.

  “Lord Kaylin, we believe that the predator might have originated in Ravellon.”

  “How? Something that size can’t leave the fief. Unless...” Spike was from Ravellon. And Gilbert. And the Dragon outcaste. “Never mind.” She asked the more important question next. “Why do you think that? What can you see that screams Ravellon?”

  Winston’s answer was unintelligible, but he appeared to be speaking to Kaylin. She frowned.

  “I didn’t understand a word of that.”

  He tried again. And a third time. When enlightenment failed to appear on Kaylin’s face, he shifted his gaze to the familiar. Winston could run and rotate his head in a full circle, which was both disturbing and expected, at this point.

  The familiar’s squawking response was longer and louder this time.

  “He’s going to have to explain it to you later,” Winston said, raising his voice over the familiar’s. “But not here.”

  * * *

  They reached what Kaylin assumed was Hallionne Kariastos without further incident or pursuit. Kaylin recognized their end point because it was a shimmering, standing arch. That, and Winston’s brother had come to a full stop, finally condescending to change the shape of his body to better reflect the people he was escorting. Winston seemed relieved. He approached the portal and stuck his head through; half of his body seemed to disappear.

  It reappeared more or less in the same place, but Winston’s face now sported a frown, and his eyes had lost some of the Barrani cohesion.

  “Is this the wrong place?” Kaylin demanded.

  “It is the right place,” Winston said, in the wrong tone. “The Hallionne, however, is not responding.”

  “Can we enter the portal?”

  “I am not certain it is wise.” He turned to his brother and spoke their unknown language, and his brother immediately returned to running form and headed back into the unknown.

  Sedarias and the cohort were blue-eyed to a man, with the possible exception of Terrano.

  “Do you think the Barrani could do to Kariastos what was attempted in Alsanis?” Kaylin demanded.

  It was Terrano who said, “Yes. And they’d have more of a chance of success. Alsanis was accustomed to us. He couldn’t keep pace with me,” he added, without a trace of obvious pride, “but he was never that far behind. I’m not sure any of the other Hallionne would have the same experience.”

  “Terrano, you are going to tell me exactly what was done to enter Alsanis. Now. The Consort is there.”

  “The Consort will be safe,” Sedarias interrupted. “If the portal is still standing, Kariastos is not yet undone.”

  “We need to do something—Winston thinks there’s something wrong.” She headed toward the portal, but Sedarias grabbed her by the shoulders, and met her gaze. “You don’t understand the Consort’s power. There’s a reason she came to the Hallionne in person. A reason she came to this one.” She turned to Terrano. “Can you find the way in?”

  Since they were standing in front of the way in, the question made no immediate sense. Kaylin caught up with its meaning a beat after Terrano did.

  Terrano did not look comfortable. Given Sedarias’s blistering glare, this was not surprising; Kaylin didn’t feel comfortable, either. “Kariastos isn’t Alsanis. There’s a reason we didn’t come here the first time.”

  “And right now, that’s good. But something’s wrong, and we need to fix it,” Kaylin told them both. Terrano looked at Sedarias. Sedarias looked at nothing for one long moment.

  “Mandoran was right,” she finally said. She looked at Kaylin as if she were an insect who had finally demanded her full attention. All of the cohort were now turned toward her, as if she were gravity and they were falling.

  “Do not do that here,” Winston said, his voice sharp. “We are not yet safe.”

  Sedarias laughed. In a bitter voice, she said, “There is no safety. Kaylin is mortal. If she can build safety, it only has to last decades. But you know, as well as we, that safety is an illusion. Trust is a lie we tell ourselves.”

  “Why lie?” Kaylin asked.

  “Because if we didn’t, we’d kill everyone in sight. If there is no safety, there are still variations on acceptable danger. Do you know what trust is, Lord Kaylin?”

  Kaylin waited, lips compressing. It kept words from escaping.

  “Trust is what we have when we believe the people surrounding us are harmless. It is the comfort we take when we are certain that we will survive anything they might do to hurt us. Do you understand?”

  Winston looked confused.

  Kaylin, however, was not. As if Sedarias were her thirteen-year-old self, she met the Barrani’s blue-eyed glare. “You’re wrong.”

  “Decades. Only decades.”

  “I’ve lived that way. I did it for the longest six months of my life, and at the end of that six months, all I wanted was death. Mine,” she added. “I had nothing to offer anyone except death. Or worse. I looked at the future before me, and all I could see was pain and isolation and fear. I told myself that if I survived, I could change my life—and only if I survived. I did things to survive that I will never, ever forget. And on the bad days, if I could go back in time and eradicate myself, I would.”

  Silence. Sedarias finally broke it. “You’re a Hawk.”

  “I went to the Halls of Law to assassinate the Hawklord.”

  “Teela says you are lying.”

  “She’s wrong. It happens.” Kaylin exhaled. “Fine. I went to make the attempt. I didn’t expect to succeed. I expected to die. I expected to die, and if I’d had the strength, I would have saved everyone the trouble and drowned myself in the Ablayne. I didn’t. I didn’t want to live, but I couldn’t end my own life.

  “If survival were the only thing that mattered, I wouldn’t be a Hawk. I wouldn’t know Teela. I wouldn’t understand the laws. I wouldn’t understand that no one is perfect; that the laws can be both good and inadequate at the same time. I do my best. My best changes from day to day. But I want the Hawks. I want people who struggle to do more than just survive. I want people I can believe in.

  “I always wanted it.” Kaylin inhaled. Held her breath for five seconds and exhaled. “I trust Teela with my life. According to your definition, I can’t.” She glanced at Winston, who seemed to have calmed down a bit. “But...you wanted it as well.”

  Sedarias folded her arms.

  “If you hadn’t, would you know the names of the cohort? The True Names?”

  “I did that, you foolish, foolish child, because it was the only way I could render them harmless. I did it because my will is the stronger, the greater, will. If I knew their names, I could defend myself against any possible attack. I did it because I had confidence in my own power.”

  Allaron placed a hand on Kaylin’s shoulder. She glanced at him, and he shook his head.

  But no. No. “Then why,” Kaylin said, as Allaron’s hand tightened, “did you attack the green? Why did you attack us when we went to perform the regalia? You almost destroyed an entire race—mine, incidentally.”

  “We did not—”

  “Fine. Your advice and your plans almost allowed total
idiots to destroy an entire race. Some of those idiots are part of that race. I’m not going to quibble specifics.”

  Terrano held up a hand. “Please talk more slowly.”

  Kaylin wanted to shriek. She wondered, then, what the inside of Sedarias’s head sounded like. Hers was unusually quiet. “Fine. Why did you attack the green? Have you forgotten? Has your stay in Alsanis these past months damaged your Barrani memory?”

  Silence.

  “Because if it has, I remember. You wanted to change the past. It was impossible. It was always going to be impossible. But you did it anyway. Do you remember why?” None of the cohort spoke. Kaylin therefore turned to Terrano, the only member on the outside. “Terrano?”

  His glance skittered off the ice of Sedarias’s expression. “...To save Teela.”

  “Teela who abandoned you and returned to her home?”

  “She didn’t abandon us,” he snapped. “You know what happened—why are you even talking about this?”

  “You wanted to save Teela. Teela who was cut off from you. Teela who was no threat to you, and could never be a threat again. Teela, who you’d known for, what, months? At most?”

  Allaron’s hand tightened again. Kaylin turned her head and said, “I have no intention of shutting up. Give up. Or break my arm.”

  He actually reddened, but removed his hand.

  “I understand who you say you are. I understand who you think you are. But there’s more. You came back for Teela. You meant to escape—I don’t know to where—but you didn’t want to abandon Teela, the last of your number.” She exhaled. “Nightshade never gave up on Annarion. Iberrienne never gave up on Eddorian. You all know this. Iberrienne almost destroyed us because he could be approached, could be manipulated. Why? He wanted his brother back.”

  “I am certain Nightshade is having regrets.”

  Kaylin’s smile was almost a wince. “Possibly. He wouldn’t go back, though. I don’t know what family was to you,” she continued, once again speaking to Sedarias. “But you could not have built this cohort if you hadn’t desired more than the constant political struggle to survive. If the family you were born into was nothing but that, you wanted more. You made more.

  “I trust Teela. She won’t do what I tell her. She doesn’t obey me. She doesn’t serve me. We’re not one person or one mind. But...neither are you. I know the cohort argues; Mandoran whines about it. I know that you’ve been arguing with Annarion at a distance. And I know that you’ve never even tried to exert the force of your will on his True Name. Could you? Yes. You could try.

  “But it would break something, and you know it.”

  Sedarias glared at Kaylin. She transferred the glare to Eddorian, and then bounced it back. No, Kaylin thought, Sedarias’s head was not a quiet place right now.

  “I wanted,” she finally said, “what Terrano wanted. I wanted to leave. I wanted to find a place that was not this one.”

  “But you stayed.”

  “I stayed because the majority of us wanted to stay. I knew what awaited me, and you are right: I did not want it.” She exhaled and seemed to dwindle in size, although her anger was rawer and harsher. It would be. It was now pointed inward as well as outward. Or perhaps, Kaylin thought, it was always pointed in both directions. She knew quite well what that was like. “I was the one who suggested the exchange of names.”

  “You weren’t,” Terrano said—because he had to say it out loud.

  “I was.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “Who was, then?”

  “Annarion.”

  The silence that followed was obviously an argument, but again, it was inaudible to anyone who was not a member of the cohort. Kaylin glanced at Bellusdeo, who had withdrawn entirely from all conversation. The Dragon shook her head as she met Kaylin’s gaze; the motion reminded Kaylin of Allaron’s.

  “I agreed to it,” Sedarias said, the majority apparently having gone against her, “for the reasons I stated. They were strangers, to me. We were twelve. We were meant to gain power, to become more useful tools for our families. In my house, we were not abandoned to the green—we were chosen for it. We understood the possible advantages. And we were people who desired power, because power was as close to safety as we could come.

  “I won what was, in human terms, a very crooked election in my family line. And it was meant to be: we were meant to hone our power. We were meant to prove our worth.” Every word was bitter. “Most of what you call the cohort were abandoned. They were not chosen as I was chosen. They were sent because of the chance—but their families valued their children in some fashion; they therefore sent those who would not otherwise be missed should the regalia fail. As it did.”

  Most, Kaylin thought. She wondered who the exceptions were, but didn’t ask.

  “We voted,” she continued. “We had already started to form small alliances, but we had not yet hardened our lines of conflict. If it was not my idea,” she continued, “I was the first to offer my name.”

  This, no one argued against.

  “Why?” Kaylin asked.

  “There are risks one takes. It was...a dare, if you will. I believed then—and believe, even now—that my name cannot be used against me.” Even saying it, Sedarias did not look entirely comfortable. “I was first. But everyone took that risk. Everyone was willing to take it.” She closed her eyes. “Yes. We came back for Teela. We knew what the regalia had cost her. I did not understand her mother. I did not therefore fully understand Teela. But I understood Teela’s truth.

  “I know all of our truths.” Speaking thus, she looked to Terrano; he met, and held, her gaze. “I want us to be safe—and I don’t believe in safety. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  Kaylin shook her head. “I don’t believe in safety, either. But I do believe we can build something better. I didn’t. For a long time, I didn’t. I was afraid of having something to lose. I’m afraid of losing what I have, now. But...I’m willing to fight for it. I’m not willing to destroy it by pretending it doesn’t exist.”

  “Teela says you’re constantly willing to destroy it because you overestimate your ability to survive.”

  “Tell Teela that I’m not dead yet.”

  “She considers this proof of the miraculous.”

  Kaylin nodded, but continued. “If you feel this way about the High Court and the Barrani, why are you going to the High Halls to take the Test of Name?”

  “Because Annarion is going,” Serralyn said. It was the first time she’d spoken out loud, and her answer overlapped Terrano’s, but without his eye-rolling disgust.

  “Annarion chose,” Sedarias said, confirming Serralyn’s words. “He was always more tied to this world than I. He wants his family line back. He wants his ancestral home. And he wants his brother free of the fiefs.”

  “I don’t think his brother wants to be free of the fiefs.”

  “Not noticeably, no. I didn’t say he was smart; I said it was what he wanted. It’s what he feels his duty is. His upbringing was faulty,” she continued. “He won’t survive in the High Halls, even if he passes that Test.” She winced. “I have not been idle since your departure from the green. My own contacts are a shambles, but I have sources of information; I have a better understanding of the current political structure, and I believe with our aid, he might survive.”

  “You seem to be more of a target than Annarion.”

  She inclined her head. “My sources will, of course, have other contacts as well.” Her smile was slender and cold. “The sister I killed was not the head of our family, as the family is currently constituted, but she was not working on her own. I did not expect that she would be foolish enough to willingly take on Shadow elements in order to increase her power.”

  “For all the good it did her.”

  “For all the good it did her,” Sedarias agreed. “We do not inten
d to disrupt the High Court; we intend to see Annarion through the Test of Name, and pass it ourselves. Becoming Lords of the High Court will provide us with options, should those options be required.” She held up a hand as Kaylin opened her mouth. “We are aware of the risks. With the help of Alsanis, we have been taking the same lessons Helen has been forcing Mandoran and Annarion to take. We’re aware of what happened with the ancestors; we’re aware of what happened with the Shadows. We have been trying, with very limited success, to hear what the Shadows hear.

  “And yes, Lord Kaylin, we’re aware that whatever was sent into the outlands was sent hunting us. We believe they expected to find us as easily as they found Annarion and Mandoran. But Helen is a good teacher, if perhaps a bit too lenient; we could have walked these pathways without detection. We did not expect—I did not expect—to encounter either my sister or the High Court here. We did not expect to encounter a war band—I will confess that I am impressed.

  “We certainly did not expect the Consort to come to the Hallionne. We did not expect—oh, many things.” She then turned to Terrano. “We didn’t expect to see you, either.”

  He was silent.

  “We were happy for you,” Sedarias continued, voice soft and almost—almost—pensive. “But there is a silence you once occupied that we cannot, quite, fill.”

  “I heard you.”

  Sedarias smiled. “You were listening. That would be a first.”

  “I gave you my name,” he said.

  She nodded. “And now, the risk is rendered irrelevant; you did not resume that name; did not choose to remain, bound and chained, to the world of your birth.” She spoke in a tone that implied envy or yearning. “You should go. We can’t take you with us. I didn’t resent your decision. I didn’t consider it a betrayal. What you wanted, you always wanted. We could see it. I can still see it now. It’s bright, Terrano. It’s shining. You at least escaped this.”

  “You could.”

  Sedarias shook her head. “Not anymore. Sometimes we are only offered one chance.”

  Winston was fidgeting. In his case, that meant lengthening his fingers and tying them into literal knots.