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Kaylin winced. “And since there are Shadows, of an unspecified and subtle nature, running around the fief—”
“Very good. You now understand most of the difficulties.”
“I do.”
“But?” He used the Elantran word for this.
“I don’t understand why it requires your presence in the fief. The fief of Tiamaris demonstrably already has a Dragon Lord of its own, and from all accounts he’s a damn sight more effective at scouring the streets for Ferals and other nightmares than any of the previous fieflords before him.”
Sanabalis nodded. “Your point is taken,” he said, rising. “I have one meeting before I am free to leave the Palace. I will leave you both here, and return when I am able to depart.”
“He didn’t answer the damn question,” she said—but only after the door had been closed for a good five minutes. Even Dragon hearing had its limits.
“You noticed.” Severn was frowning, but it was a slight frown.
“What?”
“I don’t think he thinks your presence in the fief of Tiamaris is necessary.” Before she could speak, he held up one hand. “I think he wants you there. Why?”
She grimaced. “I’d like to think I was necessary or useful.”
“But?”
“Diarmat also asked that I be seconded to the Palace. To him, directly, for more intensive lessons.”
“This occurred at the same time?”
“If I had to guess, Sanabalis actually wrote out his request first. But…he probably had some idea of what Diarmat would demand. You don’t know what he’s like, Severn.”
“I have a very good idea of what Lord Diarmat is like.”
“Is he still alive only because he’s a Dragon and they’re so bloody hard to kill?”
“Probably. We’re going to need to change,” he added.
“Why?”
“Fiefs.”
“They’ve got a Dragon for a fieflord. He’s trying to institute reasonable laws—and install the people who’ll enforce them. I don’t think the Hawk is going to matter one way or the other.”
He folded his arms across his chest, and Kaylin grimaced. “All right, I’ll ditch the tabard, but I’m not ditching the armor until I have a better idea of what we’re likely to be up against.”
Severn rose and headed toward the window view that Kaylin liked so much. From the slight angle of the back of his head, Kaylin guessed that he was looking at the Halls of Law, or at the flags that stood atop each of its three towers. But after a minute, he turned.
“We haven’t talked,” he said after a long pause.
“About what?”
He didn’t dignify the question with an answer, which was fair. Kaylin shifted in her chair in a way that was suspiciously like squirming. She hesitated, glad that there wasn’t much in the way of food; the only time she had trouble eating was when she was nervous, and a life of near starvation hadn’t managed to kill that response.
Severn said nothing, not with words. But he watched, gaze almost unblinking. It was hard to meet that gaze, and the floor suddenly became a whole lot more interesting.
“I don’t—” She wasn’t one of nature’s natural liars, and Severn deserved better than that. Plus, he’d know. He always did. “I almost can’t remember most of what happened when I was trapped in the…Other. No, that’s not what I mean— I remember it, it just doesn’t make sense. Here,” she said, thumping the ground heavily with her foot, “things are solid. The wood is hard. The carpet is soft. There’s wind and the noise of the street. Well, the halls, but you know what I mean. There’s food. There are people.
“There are no elements wandering around. There are no true names floating in the air like signposts. It’s normal—it’s normal, but it’s less—”
“Clean?”
“Maybe. Less simple. Everything there was absolute. To speak to any of it—elements, emptiness—I had to be as absolute as I could. I didn’t have time to be afraid.”
“You were afraid.”
She grimaced. “Yes, but on most days I have a half-dozen different fears pulling me in different directions; I balance them.”
“So, you’re afraid?”
“No!” She paused and looked up at his face again. “…Maybe.”
“Can you tell me what you’re afraid of?”
“On the wrong day? My own shadow.” It was a dodge, and he knew it. “…I’m not good at this. I suck at talking about anything really important.”
“You asked me why I love you.”
She nodded; she could hardly forget that.
“Can I ask you the same question?”
“Severn—”
“Why do you love me?”
She wanted to lie then. It was such a visceral reaction, her mouth was open and words were almost falling out. But she held them, offering different words in their stead. “Because you’ve always been there for me. Even, apparently, when I didn’t know it. There’s nothing you’ve got that you wouldn’t give me if I asked for it. You know me. You understand me. You’ve seen me at my worst, and you’re still here.” She sucked in air. “You’ll never ask me to do anything I can’t do. You’d never ask me to do anything that would hurt me. You’re stronger than I am, Severn. You always have been.
“I admire it. I…rely on it, even when I shouldn’t.”
“Kaylin, you think relying on anyone is proof that you’re worthless.”
“No—I don’t. I don’t anymore. I did. It’s true. But…if we can’t rely on each other some of the time, there’d be no point.”
“No point?”
“No point in people existing at all. There’d be just one thing. If what I heard was true, that’s all there was for a long time.”
“Then I don’t see the problem.”
“No, you don’t.” She rose and began to pace. “And I—I’m not good at talking.”
He waited, because he was good at waiting. “Are you afraid of losing me?”
“Yes. But not because you leave. Because you’ll die.” Gods, she hated this. She was squirming, he knew it. “I’m afraid,” she finally said in as neutral a voice as she could manage, “that you want me.”
“Want?”
“Want. Desire.”
He stared at her. This was different from watchfulness. “You’re not afraid of wanting me.”
“…No.”
“But you don’t.”
She walked to the window. Touched it with both her palms, framing the three Towers of Law that formed the triangular structure she called home. “It’s not that I don’t,” she finally said. “But I’m not afraid of what I want. No—sometimes I am, but not in that way. I’m not afraid of what it will do to me.”
“And to me?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have a lot of experience,” she finally said. “But the experience I do have—it’s all bad, Severn.” Swallowing, throat becoming drier by the syllable, she made herself continue, because it was important. “If I had been prettier, if I had been more helpless, I would have been forced into one of Barren’s brothels. If Morse hadn’t found me, if someone else had found me first—
“I know that life. I understand what it means. I understand what sex is between the girls who weren’t as lucky and the men who see them as something to buy. It’s about power, it’s about money, it’s about—sex.”
“Kaylin—”
“No, let me finish, because I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to say this again. For those girls, that’s all it is. If they love anyone, if they can, they mostly love each other because men are just business, or far worse. There’s no room in that for anything else.
“I didn’t have to suffer that.” She closed her eyes, blocking out the Halls of Law—and the temerity of her own transparent reflection. “I had Barren,” she said in a much lower voice. “I don’t—I can’t—talk about that. Not directly. Not yet. But you understand what I mean, right?”
He was silent.
“I didn’t want him. I never did. He was everything ugly to me, everything I feared. Everything I would have run from if I could. I can’t think why I didn’t. I would never be so afraid of him now. But—I wasn’t me, then.
“I remember him so well. I have nightmares about him. But I did what he wanted me to do because he wanted me to do it. I killed people because he wanted it. I—” She wanted to choke. “I can still see his face. When I think of—when I—it’s his face. It’s his expression. I don’t know if it was desire. I think it was. It was certainly about power. His, my lack. It was always about power.” She opened her eyes again. She could see echoes of her face, of her distant, thirteen-year-old face, in the glass.
“…I’m afraid. Of seeing that. Of seeing that desire on anyone else’s face. It’s me I don’t trust.”
“Kaylin—”
“I tried,” she continued, not looking at him. “When I was seventeen. I tried. We’d gone out together, we’d done a little drinking. I was attracted to him. I did want to be with him. He knew it; I knew it. We went back to his place—it was about the same size as mine.
“And he kissed me, and that was fine—it was awkward, but it was fine. But…there was more. I—I froze, and then I…I couldn’t stop myself. I broke his jaw. Teela thought it was funny. I panicked, I—he didn’t speak to me again for two months, and I don’t blame him. It’s just I—it’s what I saw. It’s what I saw in his expression. And he was a nice guy, Severn. He was a nice, decent guy. I knew he wasn’t Barren. I wasn’t thirteen. I wasn’t helpless, and I had a choice.
“But knowing all that didn’t matter. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t see that look on his face, that expression. I just—” She hit the glass hard. Nothing happened. “I don’t want to see that in you.” She turned then.
He was still standing, still watching her. “And Nightshade?”
It was so not the question she wanted to hear. She recoiled from it, as if it were a cockroach colony and she were food. But what she said was, “Ask me again later. I don’t have an answer, and I don’t want to find one right now.”
Because he was Severn, he nodded. He didn’t ask about their future; didn’t ask if they even had one. He didn’t ask her for empty words or for promises that she couldn’t make or wouldn’t keep.
Sanabalis took forty-five minutes to return, and if there had been any doubt about why he’d left, the distant, booming roar of Dragon “discussion” shook the floors. It was far enough away that Kaylin didn’t try to cover her ears. She wondered if it was possible to learn the language without being deafened.
Sanabalis, however, returned in different clothing. It wasn’t armor exactly—Dragons didn’t wear any armor that wasn’t natural. The wearing of their own armor in human form, however, made actual clothing difficult. He nodded his brief approval when he saw no obvious sign of the Hawk on their clothing. “A carriage will be waiting for us in the yard.”
The carriage took them to the Ablayne, no farther. Given that it was an Imperial Carriage, Kaylin understood why. Dragons were touchy about their personal land. Even Tiamaris. She glanced at Sanabalis.
“I’m surprised,” she finally said, when they stood at the foot of the bridge that led into the fief of Tiamaris.
“What surprises you?”
“You’re coming with us.” She glanced at Severn; Severn was content to leave the conversation in her hands for the moment.
“Oh?”
“You’re a Dragon. He’s a Dragon. It’s his territory and you serve the Emperor, which would be, for his purposes, the wrong Dragon.”
Sanabalis lifted a brow, and then a faint smile moved the corners of his lips. Not by much, though. “It is, as you surmise, tricky. I have been Lord Tiamaris’s teacher, and I am definitely his senior; I am his superior in most areas of knowledge. He, however, has always possessed better information about the fiefs as they are now than any of the rest of the Dragon Court. I do not serve Lord Tiamaris.
“But Lord Tiamaris serves the Emperor as a member of the Dragon Court. Therefore accommodations can be requested.”
“I’m surprised Diarmat allowed it.”
“Lord Diarmat is not the Emperor. He is, as you’ve no doubt surmised, the most conservative member of the Court, and not without reason. Lord Tiamaris accepted the Emperor’s request that I oversee some of the resettlement. The Emperor is concerned.”
Kaylin nodded and led the way toward the Tower automatically. Sanabalis, however, shook his head. “Lord Tiamaris is not currently at the Tower; he is waiting near the interior border.”
“Why?”
“There have been some difficulties. And no, before you ask, I will not elaborate. This is his domain, Kaylin; he will tell you what he wishes you to know. The etiquette that governs my presence here is of necessity more strict than any etiquette that governs yours.”
The walk to the border took longer than the walk to the Tower. The streets weren’t empty—but they were empty compared to the stretch of beat that Kaylin and Severn normally covered. Here and there, some obvious reconstruction was already under way, and in those locations, there were more people; they were busy enough that three strangers passing by didn’t elicit panic, although it did elicit the usual suspicious looks that were at home on the face of fief citizens anywhere.
Sanabalis paused when Kaylin did, and resumed walking when Kaylin did; he didn’t make any comment or otherwise attempt to interact with people. He did, however, pause in front of the small gardens that seemed to front most of the buildings along the streets.
“It’s Tara’s experiment,” Kaylin told him. These gardens, unlike the usual streetside fare, were entirely practical, and given to the growing of food. “I think some of the more damaged areas now have no buildings; they have larger gardens—small farms, really.”
“And the former occupants?”
“They lost a lot of people before Tiamaris took the Tower. And even if they hadn’t, no one would be stupid enough to complain to the fieflord about something as inconsequential as having a place to live.” She didn’t even attempt to keep the bitterness out of her voice, although she knew that particular fear was no longer warranted in this fief.
“You are wrong,” Sanabalis said. It surprised her.
“People complain to Tiamaris about having no roof over their head?”
“Ah, no. They do, however, speak to the Lady.”
“They have to get through Tiamaris first.”
“No. Apparently, they don’t. She hears them regardless.”
Kaylin smiled. “She’s nowhere near as terrifying as Tiamaris.”
“No, and that is strange to me; Lord Tiamaris has the hearing that all our race are born with. He cannot hear the words the people speak if they are judicious about their location; the Avatar can. She can also see what she chooses to see, if she bends her will toward it, no matter where within the fief’s boundaries it occurs. But she invokes a very strange awe in her people, and very little dread.”
“Have you met Tara?”
“I have.”
“And you don’t understand why she doesn’t terrify them?”
“No, I do not.”
“Was she wearing her gardening clothing?”
“I fail to see what her clothing has to do with the subject at hand.” Dragons.
It was fairly easy to find Tiamaris, when all was said and done. From about two blocks away—where blocks in this case were mostly defined by the charred remnants of what had previously been some of the sturdier buildings in the fief—Kaylin could see the strangers. They didn’t walk the way the rest of the mortals in the fief did; they walked as if they owned, or intended to own, the streets. They bristled with weapons, and although their armor wasn’t in the best of repair, it was a damn sight better than what the rest of the citizens were wearing.
Not that there were any “rest of” anywhere in sight.
If, however, the strangers had suddenly decided to become meek and terrified, it would still have been easy to find Tiamaris at this distance because he was, at the moment, a very large Dragon. She glanced at Sanabalis, who didn’t appear to have noticed.
“Is he always like this?”
“Frequently. The Dragon form is more robust.”
They made their way down the street, which attracted attention. It was easy to see why; they were the only more or less human-looking people who were actually approaching. “Please don’t tell me that they’re serving as his personal guard.”
“It is…an informal guard.”
“Great.” The very large sword that was being lowered in their general direction sure as hells didn’t look informal. It did, however, make Kaylin and Severn stop much farther away than guards or thugs usually did; whatever Barren had managed to scrape off the streets had seldom been an actual threat. She lifted both hands, and turned them, palms out, toward the two men who had lowered their weapons; Severn did the same, although his hands were closer to his weapons. The two eight-foot-tall giants exchanged a few words and started to head toward the taller outline of Tiamaris.
Sanabalis, however, had decided that waiting wasn’t in the cards. He roared. The two men stiffened, which gave Kaylin a moment of petty satisfaction. Tiamaris turned.
“You’ll have to teach me how to do that,” Kaylin muttered.
“If it were even possible, I would still refuse,” Sanabalis replied. “Lord Diarmat would find it…impertinent.”
Tiamaris parted the crowd of armed strangers by turning. They didn’t rush to get out of his way; they moved. For all their apparent bulk, they moved quickly. As they cleared enough street for a Dragon with folded wings, Kaylin saw Tara. Tara was, in fact, wearing her gardening clothes, and Morse was walking by her side, looking about as happy at this new set of guards as Kaylin felt.
Morse had been a lieutenant of the previous fieflord, but she’d made the transition to Tiamaris without much trouble. Beside Tara, she looked like a thug in the true sense of the word; her hair was still a very short, shorn crop, and her face still bore scars from earlier fights. When she smiled at all, it was a grim, black smile, and it usually meant someone was about to die. Or it had meant that. She did smile at Tara, but usually only when she thought no one else was watching.
Tara broke into a wide grin as Kaylin met her eyes. Kaylin knew that Tara could be aware of her presence the instant she set foot on the right side of the Ablayne, but she often seemed so surprised and delighted, the thought held no weight. She broke into a run, which ended with her arms around Kaylin, and Kaylin’s arms around her.
“Lord Sanabalis said you would come,” Tara said when she at last stepped back. “Hello, Corporal Handred.”
Severn also smiled, and it was an unguarded smile. “Lady,” he said, bowing to the fief’s title, and not the name Kaylin had given her.
“Did he explain the difficulty?” Tara asked.
“No. Now that the fief is Tiamaris’s, he feels any information has to come from Tiamaris.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m not a Dragon.” She did add when she heard Sanabalis’s snort, “I think it’s something to do with the etiquette of hoard law. Dragons are, by simple human standards, insanely unreasonable about their hoards.”
“Ah. It’s possible that he is entirely correct then.” She turned and smiled at Sanabalis, who appeared unimpressed with Kaylin’s description. “Thank you.”
He bowed to her. He bowed damn low.
Kaylin raised a brow at Morse, and Morse responded with a pure fief shrug. “What’s happening?” Kaylin asked Morse, stepping to the side to add a little distance between them and anyone who might be listening.
“We have three thousand eight-foot-tall people who can’t speak Elantran and have no place to live. They also have no sense of humor.”
“Neither do you.”
“Exactly. Consider the source of the comment.”
Kaylin chuckled—but she also winced. “Sanabalis implied there were other difficulties.”
“That’s how he worded it? ‘Other difficulties’?” Morse spit to one side.
Kaylin frowned. “How bad is it?”
“There are two problems. One, we’re trying to track down, but even the Lady is having some trouble; we’re not sure why.”
“That would be the subtle Shadow that Sanabalis also mentioned?”
“That’s not what we call it, but yeah. You’re here to help with that?”
Kaylin frowned, and then nodded. “That’s my guess. What’s the other problem?”
“The border boundary,” Morse said, voice flat. There were four possible borders that defined the fief of Tiamaris—but only one was a threat to the fief’s existence: the one that faced into the unclaimed shadow that lay in the center of the fiefs.
Kaylin almost froze. “The border’s supposed to be stable.”
“Oh, it’s holding. If it weren’t, we’d all—all—be dead by now. But the freaking Shadow across the fucking border is puking out whatever it can. Nothing small and easily killed, either; apparently the bigger one-offs can survive the ‘transition’ with some of their power intact.”
Kaylin sucked in air. “When the hells did this start happening?”
“Pretty much the same day they did,” Morse replied, jerking her thumb in the direction of the strangers.
“Believe,” Kaylin said after an uncomfortably sharp silence, “that they didn’t bring the Shadows with them.”
“Oh?”
“If I understood what was said correctly, they were fleeing from them.”
“And being followed.”
“I was there, Morse. If great chunks of Shadowy one-offs had followed them into Elani, believe I would have noticed.” But she hesitated. Morse, no fool, noticed. “What?”
“When they arrived, they did this funny thing with a bunch of drums and a lot of loud chanting. It was supposed to be some sort of purification ritual, but the end result? The Dragons—all four of them—took flight over the city while they did it.” Kaylin shook her head, glancing briefly at two of those four: Tiamaris, in full scales and wings, and Sanabalis, in slightly drab but official clothing. “And…the chanting was magical, somehow.”
This admission of the use of magic by obviously dangerous giants did nothing positive for Morse’s mood.
“But…something answered them. Something in the fiefs. If I had to guess,” she added quietly, “something from the heart of the fiefs.”
“What, it was some kind of fucking challenge?” Morse’s brows rose toward the nearly shaved dome of her head. “Are they insane?”
From a fief perspective, there could only be one answer to that question. But…this fief had become, almost overnight, an exception to the rules that generally governed the fiefs. Kaylin glanced at the large huddle of strangers—she’d have to ask Sanabalis what their own name for their race was because “strangers” wasn’t going to cut it—and said, “Not insane. I think they’re used to fighting a war with the Shadows, rather than locking the doors and praying a bunch.”
“Great.” Morse glanced at Tara, who seemed to be involved in a serious discussion with Sanabalis, while Tiamaris, over her shoulder—well, part of his jaw, at any rate—looked on. Severn was beside the older Dragon, listening intently.
Kaylin frowned.
“What?” Morse said sharply.
“There’s something I don’t understand.”
She was rewarded by something that was halfway between snort and grunt; the sarcastic comment that would have usually followed failed to emerge. For Morse, this was a big improvement. “What?”
“Tiamaris is fieflord in a way that Barren wasn’t.”
“You can say that again.”
Fair enough. “Barren didn’t hold the Tower. Tiamaris does.”
“And?”
“Holding the Tower at all should prevent your one-offs from getting through.”
Morse shrugged. “The Ferals get through.”
“I know; they get through everywhere. I’m not sure why.”
“Time to find out?”
“Well past.” Kaylin turned toward the discussion that was even now taking place without them, and as she did, Tara froze. It was a very particular stillness, and it reminded anyone who happened to be standing close by that Tara’s physical form, the form of her birth, was made of stone.
It was warning enough for Kaylin, but if it hadn’t been, there was another one that followed less than thirty seconds later: the strangers began to shout, and weapons began to catch sunlight and reflect it in a way that spoke of movement.
Morse swore. Loudly. But her brief word wasn’t equal to the task of carrying over the cries and shouts—directed, not panicked—of the strangers. “Kaylin!” she shouted.