Cast in Oblivion

by Michelle Sagara

  Teela stiffened. Kaylin even understood why. Suspicion was a way of life, for the Barrani. It was so much a way of life that suspicion of bad—or illegal—behavior counted for nothing. If you couldn’t be viewed with suspicion it was because you were already dead.

  But proof? That was often harder to come by. And where proof existed, threat existed. If Evarrim was certain he had proof, no one who was made aware of it—or who could, at any rate, preserve it for later use—was meant to survive.

  “I hope that your companions are worth the risk that we have taken,” Lord Evarrim said to Teela.

  She said nothing.

  “It was at my request that such a risk was taken,” the Consort said. “But if this is what our enemies can cobble together on such short notice, it is far better that the risk be taken now; imagine what we might be facing had they time to truly prepare. It is not my life that is targeted here,” she added.

  Evarrim said nothing. Loudly.

  Lord Evarrim is direct, for a Lord of the High Court; it is considered his signal failing. Your understanding of the situation is correct; his expression makes clear that he does not agree with the Lady’s opinion. He will not, however, speak of it. What she chooses to tolerate, he will tolerate. One could only wish that he could do so competently.

  I’m not sure you’re any better than he is.

  I am far better at dissembling than Lord Evarrim. But I have had to be; I do not have his raw power. Nor do I have his family. You and he are similar.

  Kaylin tried not to take offense, and because she was now worried, she managed to succeed. Mostly. We’re not.

  You are. You are incapable of displaying even the most basic of manners because you feel you are safe from reprisal. You do not care what others might think of you while you are at Court because you are not of the Court in any true sense. You do not believe the consequences will make a material difference in your life. So, too, Evarrim. Evarrim, however, has confidence because he has the power to survive possible consequences.

  “An’Teela,” Evarrim said, tendering her a perfect bow—which might be a first. He did not hesitate. As Teela was standing beside Severn, he added, “Lord Severn.”

  Teela nodded. So, to Kaylin’s dismay, did Severn. “Stay with the Lady.”

  Ynpharion stepped aside to allow Evarrim pride of position as Teela and Severn headed down the hall.

  * * *

  The Consort did not move. “Kaylin, you now have time.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Find Calarnenne.”

  Kaylin blinked. “I’m not sure how—”

  “You have more of a chance of doing so than any other person present.”

  Evarrim was absolutely silent; his eyes were indigo. He opened his mouth and shut it—loudly—before words fell out.

  The Consort forgives much. You are living proof of that. There are some things, however, that she will not forgive. And Evarrim is part of her Court. You have leeway he does not.

  Do you understand their relationship at all?

  No.

  He was lying, or thought he was lying; she could sense that. She didn’t push for an honest answer, because the consequences of pushing—for Ynpharion—would be too high. Ynpharion didn’t appreciate this, but never had. He found it beyond mystifying. It no longer made him deeply suspicious, but it made him uncomfortable because it implied pity.

  It’s not pity, she snapped. Fine. You can’t answer and I’m too cowardly to try to make you. Better?

  It wasn’t.

  Kaylin glanced at Hope, his wings now lofting in a breeze that appeared to be made of light. “Can you find him?”

  “Not on my own.”

  “Can Spike?”

  “Spike cannot operate entirely independent of you at the moment—and we both consider that the wisest, or safest, of choices.”

  “So that’s a no.”

  Hope nodded.

  Kaylin closed her eyes, and the sounds of distant footsteps receded further. She listened. She could sense Lirienne, and was surprised at how close he was. On reflection the surprise was stupid; she was with the Consort, and the Consort was his beloved sister. He was probably at least as worried as anyone else in this hall. More so, because he could not simply arrive, combat ready, from his halls in the West March.

  She was aware of Severn. He was not entirely aware of her. All of his attention was focused on the halls in which he and Teela now played point. Severn could adapt to any partner, but Kaylin couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she should be there, with the two of them, and not here in relative safety.

  She shook that regret off.

  Nightshade.

  Silence.

  Calarnenne. The silence continued. “Lady.”

  The Consort glanced over her shoulder.

  “I’m not sure I can find him from here.”

  “Find him, if you can. It is not merely a matter of sentiment,” she added, her voice cool, her expression remote. “He bears one of the three, and if he is lost forever, it will be lost with him.”

  Evarrim actually chuckled; the set of his shoulders softened. “Meliannos has had other wielders, but there is only one Meliannos. I will protect the Lady in your stead should you find it necessary—or possible—to extract him.” He did not mention Nightshade by any of the names he used.

  Kaylin called Nightshade again. There was no answer. She expected no answer. “Is Teela far enough away that she can’t see us?”

  “Unless she has eyes in the back of her head, yes. Her attention is not upon you except in a very desultory way; she is attempting to make certain that you will be safe while you traverse the halls ahead.” Evarrim was no longer looking at Kaylin.

  “Good.”

  Kaylin bowed her head, lifted her hand and touched her cheek, her fingertips grazing the mark that Nightshade had left there. It was like a tattoo, but the ink in which it had been drawn was magical in nature, and indelible; nothing smudged it, nothing caused it to fade. Nightshade’s thugs—or guards, if she was being charitable, and as she’d grown up in the fiefs, charity toward them was low—called her erenne. She understood the mark had significance to the Barrani; it had enraged Teela and Tain when they’d first laid eyes on it. The existence of the mark was one of the deepest sources of conflict between Annarion and Nightshade. Teela and Tain had gotten used to it. So had Kaylin. Annarion had not. He didn’t comment on it. He didn’t ask about it anymore. But it was always there, in the background.

  She understood that it was a binding of sorts, a claim that implied ownership or intimacy—neither of which were based in fact.

  She also understood that it was not a binding based on, or rooted in, name. It couldn’t be, because when he’d laid that mark on her cheek, she hadn’t had one. She had taken a True Name for herself during the test of the Tower—a test that the cohort were entangled in, even now. In theory, the Barrani needed names to wake, to come to life; Kaylin certainly hadn’t.

  She thought, now, that Nightshade had marked her as a way of bridging a distance made of gender, race, age—or perhaps it was a backup. He had chosen to reveal his True Name to her, after all. Even now, struggling to find him along the binding strands of that name, she didn’t understand that choice.

  She understood that the name itself was not the bridge she needed. And she wondered, as she shifted her attention away from it, what the silence would feel like if he had died. She wasn’t certain that Teela was right—maybe Barrani experienced it differently. She had no way of knowing for certain, because she was human, and would remain so.

  She pressed her fingers into the mark, more for luck than for effect. She had never tried to speak using the mark; she’d always considered it lesser than the name itself. But the mark on her cheek warmed to the touch. She thought it might be her imagination, because she was worrying it with her fingertip
s, as if it were a scab or a bruise.

  “No,” Hope said quietly. “It is not your imagination. What do you hope to achieve?”

  “I want to find Nightshade. Shut up and let me concentrate.”

  “Do you know what you intend to do?”

  “No, of course not. This is a thing we call seat-of-the-pants, Hope. Now, hush.” She concentrated on Nightshade. She formed an image of him in her mind, which was surprisingly difficult; there were too many. She had no idea what he was wearing now, and no idea of what his surroundings were; the image that came most easily to mind was the audience chamber in Castle Nightshade, and that was definitely the wrong locale. She could see Meliannos, though. It wasn’t a simple long sword; it was too large, too visually unwieldy, for that.

  His eyes were blue. His hair was Barrani black. His skin was pale and, unlike Kaylin’s, unmarked, unblemished. He was death. He was death for anyone who lived in the fiefs who dared to treat him without appropriate respect. His was the shadow that Castle Nightshade cast. No, she thought. But she couldn’t shake the image, the visceral acknowledgment of all her childhood fears.

  This was not all that Nightshade was, but it was truth. Nightshade—like any living, thinking person—was capable of more than one truth.

  Her cheek grew warmer, and the skin beneath the flower symbol began to ache. It was like, and unlike, the pain magic caused the rest of her skin. Or maybe it was exactly the same thing: the mark itself a more mundane magic than the rest of the marks on her skin caused a more extreme reaction when it was activated.

  She was aware of the exact moment when her skin began to blister from the physical heat of the mark; she had no mirror but she was certain the flower was glowing. The light caused heat. The heat caused injury. Annarion was going to see it and lose all his hair—at best. Maybe she should have considered that before making the attempt.

  Thinking of Annarion, she reformulated the image she had built, detail by detail, in her mind’s eye. Nightshade entering the foyer of her home. Nightshade speaking with Helen, whose eyes had flickered into obsidian. Nightshade speaking with Annarion, Annarion’s stiffness barely masking pain and the anger that came from it.

  Annarion, his brother. Annarion, the family member for whom he had become outcaste because he would not surrender his search. She could not see Nightshade as Annarion did; she had no memories of the man Annarion thought was buried beneath the rubble of experience and time. Had he been like Teela? No. Like Sedarias? Probably more likely.

  But...no. No. Sedarias loved the cohort, even if love was not a word she would condescend to use, because it implied weakness. She had no idea what a young, idealistic Nightshade might look like; no idea what he might sound like. In Kaylin’s mind, the word idealism was just a condescending way to say stupid. She’d heard it a lot.

  What she knew, what she was certain of, was that Nightshade had loved his brother. And that her Nightshade, the man who could kill someone for failing to bend head quickly enough, retained that love, that affection. It hurt him. She couldn’t fail to notice the pain—no one who lived in the house could. When the two clashed with words, their voices carried everywhere; it was impossible, even with Helen’s intervention, not to hear some of the argument.

  Not even Nightshade was proof against the pain love caused.

  No, she thought, it wasn’t the love that caused pain. It was the expectations. The hopes and dreams that surrounded it. The breaking of those dreams.

  Kaylin understood the allure of dreams: they were hope. But she understood how those hopes broke in the face of reality. She’d experienced it herself, because she’d truly, viscerally, believed that crossing the bridge, that standing on the other side of the Ablayne, would free her. She would walk into a magical world where people didn’t starve and weren’t so constantly hungry and desperate they would eat anything that didn’t move—even if they had to make sure it didn’t move first.

  And she’d learned.

  The dreams weren’t real, because on either side of the Ablayne, the streets were occupied by people. A perfect world didn’t exist because perfect people didn’t exist. There were crimes here—some of them horrific. There was poverty; the warrens were practically the fiefs in miniature, but without the advantage of an obvious fieflord, an easily found source of power.

  Nightshade wasn’t a nightmare; he was a person. Annarion wasn’t the beloved child of Nightshade’s memories. He was a person. Kaylin had seldom seen Nightshade as a person before. Maybe she hadn’t looked. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to look. Knowing too much was a straight passage to the death that guaranteed silence.

  But even if he had marked her for his own purposes—and of course he had—not all of those purposes were malignant. He thought he could use her. He thought he could use the power of the Chosen to somehow free his brother. And she had.

  But that led to this, in the end. Nightshade didn’t want to be seen. He didn’t want to be understood. He didn’t want to be vulnerable. Kaylin understood this, as well. It was what passed for survival, in the fiefs.

  It wouldn’t pass muster here.

  She pulled her hand from her cheek, grimaced at the trace of blood on her fingertips. She could heal this with the only power of the Chosen she could voluntarily and deliberately use. But before she started, she stopped. Now was not the right time. She reached for Nightshade, literally lifting her hands and opening the one that didn’t contain a dagger, turning her palm to the ceiling and to the light.

  In the distance, casting a very short shadow that implied he was standing directly beneath the source of that light, she could see Nightshade.

  * * *

  “Where is he?” she asked of Hope.

  “Does it matter? You have found him. Call him now.”

  Nightshade. Nothing in his stillness implied that he could hear her.

  “I can make myself heard,” Hope told her. On the surface, the words were an offer, but beneath the surface, they were a warning. Kaylin was not one of nature’s optimists. She shook her head.

  “Can Spike see him?”

  Spike clicked.

  “Can you reach him?”

  He clicked again, but whirred a bit, as well.

  “He is uncertain that that will produce the results you desire.”

  “In Elantran, Hope.”

  “He believes that Nightshade will attempt to destroy him. He does not believe that Nightshade will succeed—but he says the sword is dangerous to us.”

  Us. “Fine.” She bowed her head, and once again concentrated only on Nightshade’s mark, her blistered cheek and the pain it caused. If Nightshade died, the mark would vanish, or so she believed. But the mark of the erenne didn’t convey the same information that the binding of names did. And if it conveyed an echo of the control or compulsion, it was strictly one way. Nightshade was not adorned with a similar mark on any of his own perfect cheeks.

  “Tell Teela,” she said, raising her voice without turning, “that I’ve found him. He’s alive. I haven’t figured out how to catch his attention, but I can see him.”

  “Noted,” the Consort replied.

  The Consort asks that you not take any foolish risks at this time.

  Then she shouldn’t have asked me to find him.

  “What are you trying to do with the mark?” Hope asked, a thread of concern in the question.

  “I’m...not sure.”

  “Perhaps you should stop. You are bleeding, and it is, as your attachment to Spike must indicate, unwise to bleed in the deeper spaces.”

  “I’m not trying to bleed.”

  “No. I am aware of that. But whatever you are attempting to do is having that effect, regardless.”

  She was extremely frustrated. Extremely. Because this mark was worse in all ways than the marks of the Chosen for which she was otherwise known. “Can anyone tell me exactly what the erenne�
�s mark is supposed to do? Because no other binding appears to work here.”

  A surge of revulsion came through the name bond she shared with Ynpharion. Revulsion and fear. Kaylin spun, cheek bleeding, in the direction of the Consort; the Consort had not moved. She appeared to be waiting for either Kaylin, or Teela and Severn’s return. Ynpharion, however, had turned toward her; his motions were stiff and unnatural.

  As he met her gaze, revulsion and fear gave way to anger. At Kaylin, of course.

  What are you doing?

  He didn’t answer. He made an effort not to answer. Or perhaps he was now fighting on two fronts. One of those collapsed as he approached. “Forgive me,” he said, his words so clipped and conflicted it sounded as if he had failed to correctly translate Barrani to Elantran.

  Spike whirred. Kaylin said, “Don’t hurt him. He doesn’t want to be doing whatever he’s doing, either.”

  “You are,” Hope said in a tone that sounded suspiciously indulgent, “merciful in a very particular way. I have grown very fond of you. If you change your mind, should we disregard you?”

  Kaylin had taken a step back. Ynpharion’s eyes were a deep blue.

  You do not have the Lady’s will, he told her, but in this one case, I would appreciate it if you attempted to exert control. His interior voice was rigid with emotion, none of it positive.

  Why?

  Because, Chosen, you asked that question. The words sounded to Kaylin as if they were being spoken through clenched teeth. He came closer; she stepped back. It was Hope who caught her, his chest pressed against her back, his wings spread to either side of his current form like a wall.

  She knew, as Ynpharion stepped in, what he intended, and she locked her arms to keep them by her sides; her hands shook.

  Kaylin? Severn. Severn’s voice.

  I’m fine. It’s fine.

  You are not—Severn stiffened.

  Don’t—don’t pay attention. This is my fault.

  Something in Severn rose then; concern became fear, fear became anger. She closed her eyes because she had to close them. I am honestly fine, she told him. Nothing is threatening to kill us here. Keep your eyes on the hall. No! I mean it! You can’t leave Teela without a partner!