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She swallowed, remembering the great, black Dragon, his name so large and so intricate that she could not even begin to say it, although she could see it clearly. “Yes.”
“Good. Tiamaris, Sanabalis.” He nodded curtly, and this time, she didn’t call him back.
“Lord Sanabalis or Lord Tiamaris, however, may feel free to enlighten you.” He glanced at both of them. “I assume at least one of them was paying attention.”
Tiamaris’s grimace waited until the door had closed; Sanabalis’s expression, however, did not change.
“I think I like him,” Kaylin told them both, as she settled back into her chair. “What were his misgivings about me?”
The two remaining Dragons exchanged a glance. “The Outcaste,” Sanabalis said quietly, “went to Ravellon. What he found there changed him. He was not without power. He is not without power now.” They both hesitated. Kaylin marked it.
“Why did he want you two to talk about this? He could—”
“He dislikes caution in speech.” It was Tiamaris who replied. “And he dislikes politics. His definition of politics involves anything of consequence that occurs outside the boundaries of his library.”
“Oh.”
“There are matters that the Eternal Emperor does not consider suitable for public consumption. Public, in this particular instance, involves anyone who lives or breathes that is not Dragon and does not serve him.”
“Meaning me.”
“Meaning, indeed, you.”
“So…there’s something they’re worried about, and whatever it is, he can’t tell me because I’m not a Dragon.”
“No. There are many things that are discussed. A few of them have bearing—at least at this juncture—on our duties in the fiefs. But sorting out which of those things can be touched upon and which can’t requires the type of conversational care that the Arkon finds taxing. Left to his own devices, he would not emerge from his library at all, and his concerns would lead him to discuss certain historical issues which the canny—and you are that, at least—would then dissect.”
Kaylin made a face. “Just tell me what I need to know.”
Sanabalis chuckled. “It’s a pity you’re human. I believe you would find some sympathy in the Arkon, otherwise.” Fingers playing through his slender conceit of a white beard, he watched her in silence. After a moment, he said, “Tiamaris.”
She recognized the tone of voice; she might as well have been locked in the West Room with an unlit candle in front of her face. Tiamaris grimaced.
“He was always like this?” she asked him.
“Always,” the Dragon Hawk replied. “Understand that the Arkon and the Outcaste were, in as much as any two beings can be, friends. It is hard to surrender an ancient friendship, no matter how dire the circumstance. Even the Arkon is not immune to some trace of sentiment.”
Clearly the Dragon word sentiment didn’t really intersect the human one in any significant way. Kaylin managed to keep this thought to herself.
“It was the Arkon who noted the change in the Outcaste upon his return from the heart of the fiefs. He did not immediately make his concern clear.” There was another hesitation, and it was longer and more profound. “In the end, however, it was the Arkon who was left to confront the Outcaste, because it was the Arkon who possessed the only certain knowledge we, as a race, held.”
Kaylin frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” Sanabalis replied quietly. “And after a brief pause for comprehension, you will once again resume all appearance of ignorance. This will not, one assumes, be difficult.” She grimaced.
“The Arkon,” Tiamaris continued, as if Sanabalis hadn’t spoken, “has never said this explicitly, even when pressed. The Emperor has never commanded him to speak,” Tiamaris added. “Not even the respect the Arkon commands could stand in the face of his defiance of a direct order, and the Emperor does respect him greatly.” He glanced at their mutual teacher once more. Sanabalis nodded evenly.
“But we believe that they were brothers in all but blood, the Outcaste and the Arkon. We believe,” he added, lowering his voice, “that the Arkon knew the Outcaste’s name.”
Given the way the Barrani guarded theirs, and given the significance of the name itself, Kaylin understood why the Arkon had been loath to speak. If Dragons or Barrani had souls—and Kaylin had her doubts—they were entwined in the name; knowledge of the name was so profoundly intimate no human experience approached it.
But she frowned. “If—” And then she stopped.
The silence went on for a long time.
“Yes,” Sanabalis said heavily. “He attempted to use the name, to bespeak the Outcaste.”
This time, it was her silence that weighted the room. It passed for thought, but she didn’t need much time to think; she only needed the time to choose her words. Normally, she didn’t bother, but she had a strong feeling that was about to change, and like it or not, she would live with that.
“He didn’t answer,” she finally said. As word choices went, it wasn’t impressive.
But Sanabalis nodded anyway. “No.”
“Sanabalis—”
He waited, as if this were a test. Or as if all conversation from this moment on would be one. She really, really hated this type of lesson; it was all about failing, and interesting failure often didn’t count for part marks. She glanced at Tiamaris, and saw no help coming from that quarter, but he was as tense as she was. And why? It was only conversation.
“His name,” she said quietly.
“Yes?”
“His true name.”
Sanabalis nodded again.
“It was different.”
The Dragon Lord closed his eyes. “Yes,” he finally said. “We believe that something in the heart of the fiefs changed the very nature of his true name.”
“And when the Arkon spoke it—”
“He did not, and could not, hear it. Not as we hear the truth of our names when they’re spoken.”
She was silent, then, absorbing the words and letting them sink roots. “I don’t understand,” she finally said.
“No. No more do we.”
Hesitating, she glanced at the carpet. It was safest. “When I went to the Barrani High Court—”
“Speak carefully, Kaylin.”
“I’m trying.” And so much for the effort. “When I went to the High Court, I saw—I learned—how Barrani are named.”
“Yes.”
She glanced at him. Rock was more expressive.
“Look, Sanabalis—I was born mortal. I was born the usual way. We don’t have true names. We don’t even understand them.”
“No. You are not bound by them, either.”
“But—the Barrani don’t wake until they’re named.”
“No.”
“Do the Dragons?”
He failed, deliberately, to answer.
“From what I understand, the name is what they are, somehow. What you are.”
“That is also our understanding.”
“If his name changed, would he be—”
“He is not what he was, Kaylin.”
“Yes—but he remembered everything. He lied, based on that knowledge. He tried—”
“Yes.” Sanabalis lifted a hand. “He did those things.”
“So you can lose your name and still remember your whole life?”
Tiamaris cleared his throat. “Had you a true name,” he told her quietly, “the Arkon would not have been swayed.”
But she did. She had a name. She had no idea what it meant to have one, but she had taken one burning, glowing rune for herself from the waters of Life beneath the Barrani High Halls, and she still bore it. Severn knew it. Severn could call her.
But…he had never tried to use the name against her. She wondered if he even could.
“Wait.”
“Yes?”
“You have a name.” She spoke to Tiamaris.
“Indeed, Kaylin.”
“But—”
“If I am not accompanied by you, I am not to enter Barren,” he replied.
Her eyes narrowed. “You know something you’re not telling me.”
“It does not affect our mission.”
“And your mission,” Sanabalis said quietly, “starts now. Private,” he added, rising, “understand that you are now seconded—as a Hawk—to the Imperial Court. What we have discussed in these rooms is not to be discussed with anyone save a member of that Court. If your Sergeant chooses to demand a report, the report you file must first go through the Court. Lord Grammayre may ask about your progress. You will take Lord Tiamaris to these meetings, and you will let him do the talking. Is that clear?”
“As glass.”
“Good.” He didn’t smile. “Your life depends on it. You have not yet met the Emperor, but that will not save you if you cross the lines he has drawn. Understand this,” he told her quietly. “Because if you do, nothing I can do or say will affect his decision.
“You may, however, question Tiamaris at your leisure, as he is part of the Court and privy to Court matters. If you have any leisure time.” He gestured and the door opened. So much for economical use of power. “You have been given permission to remove your bracer. I suggest you wait until you’ve crossed the Ablayne.”
“Oh, I will,” she told him. Because that was where she usually threw the damn thing.
Tiamaris escorted her out of the Imperial Palace. They’d spent most of the day there, one way or the other, and Kaylin, glancing at the Halls of Law in the distance, grimaced. “Barren.”
“You don’t want to return.”
“No. Never.” She could afford to be that honest with Tiamaris.
“Kaylin—”
“But it just so happens we’re in luck.” She used irony here as if it were a blunt weapon. Against the force of Dragon humor, it pretty much had to be. “I met an old friend of mine on the way from Evanton’s shop.”
He raised a dark brow. “An old friend?”
She nodded. “She expected to see me. I sure as hells didn’t expect to see her. But she had a message for me. How much can we stall?”
“Stall?”
“How long can we hold off our investigation? A day? Two?”
“If there’s reason for it, but—”
“It had better be a damn good reason?” Tiamaris nodded.
“We can probably go there now,” she told him quietly. “It depends on how desperate we want Barren to think I am.”
“Desperate?”
“He’s sending a messenger with a letter for the Hawklord,” she told him, voice flat. “I can either fail to show or intercept the message before it crosses the bridge. If we go now, I have no doubt at all that we’ll be taken to Barren—but if I go now, he’ll know he has the upper hand.
“If I wait, he’ll be pretty damn certain he has it anyway—that’s Barren all over.”
“Does he?”
She swallowed. Glanced at the river that had been the dividing line of her life. “I don’t know,” she finally said.
“Then decide, Kaylin. You have the advantage of personal experience. I don’t.”
She nodded, grateful to him for at least that. If Barren thought he had the upper hand, he wasn’t likely to be careless; that level of laziness would never have kept the fiefs in his hands.
Finally, she exhaled. “We’ll take the risk. I’m not sure how I’m going to explain you, though. I don’t suppose you’d care to wait?”
“I would be delighted to wait,” he replied, in a tone of voice that was clearly the effect of serving, however briefly, with the Hawks. “I would not, however, survive it should it come to light.”
“Figures.” She shrugged and began to walk. “Let’s see what we’re up against.”
A Dragon brow rose over bronze eyes. “Please tell me,” he said, as he fell in step beside her, shortening his stride so he didn’t leave her behind, “that that is not the extent of your ability to plan.”
“I don’t generally make plans when I have no information.”
“Or at all?”
She shrugged. “I don’t see the point of planning everything when things could change in an eye blink. Let’s see what Barren’s got. We can plan then.”
“It is a small wonder to me,” Tiamaris replied, although he didn’t stop moving, “that you’ve survived to be the insignificant age you currently are.”
“Stand in line.”
CHAPTER 8
The Ablayne moved through the city in what was almost a circle. Kaylin, who had never been outside of the city, thought nothing of it; Tiamaris, who had, explained why. She tried to listen. But as she passed the bridge that connected her to Nightshade, and the part of her past that she wasn’t ashamed of, his words joined the buzz of the street’s crowds.
Although the merchant market was not located on the banks of the Ablayne, enterprising independents—who were often forced to move damn quickly, by tolls, Swords, and legitimate merchants—often set up small stalls near the river. Why, she never quite understood, but there was traffic.
She didn’t walk quickly and Tiamaris, while a Dragon Lord, wasn’t stupid. He stopped at the midpoint between the two bridges.
“Kaylin.”
She glanced at him.
“The Imperial Court knows what the Emperor knows,” he told her quietly. She nodded.
“There is nothing to hide, not from me.”
“It’s not about hiding,” she told him, although she wasn’t certain she wasn’t lying. “Barren,” she said, swallowing, “is different. Look, it doesn’t matter. We’re going.” She started to walk, and she walked quickly. This wasn’t her beat; she didn’t have to fall into the steady, quiet walk that could take hours.
“What concerns you, now?”
She almost said nothing. But he was going where she was going; he had some right to know. “I don’t know what he wants from me. I don’t know what he knows about me. He implied he knows a lot, but that was always what he did. Imply knowledge, let people assume you know everything, and then pick up what you didn’t know from what they let slip.” She paused and then added, “He knows why I went to the Hawklord’s tower. He knows I’m not dead. He doesn’t know what happened.
“But there are only two conclusions he can draw. The first, that I tried to carry out his orders. The second, that I turned on him immediately.”
“The latter is the concern.”
“Let’s just say he’s a fieflord. You don’t get to keep your title—if it’s even that—if people can turn on you without consequences.”
“And you’re afraid of him?” Tiamaris’s brows rose. Both of them. He placed one hand on her shoulder. “You were thirteen years old when you left Barren. By the reckoning of your kind, you were barely out of childhood. You are not that child, now.” He glanced at her wrist, and she grimaced.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I almost forgot.” Opening the bracer and tossing it into the nearest trash heap or stretch of moving water was one of life’s little luxuries; today, it just didn’t seem to matter. She pressed the gems along the inside of the wrist in sequence, and waited for the familiar click of freedom. When it came, she pulled the bracer free, exposing, for just a moment, the blue-black lines, swirls, and dots of the marks that encompassed over half her body.
“I had these marks, then,” she told him softly, pulling her arm back and tossing the bracer in a wide, glinting arc that ended with an audible splash. “I thought they would kill me.”
“They may, yet,” was his reply. From his expression, she thought it was meant to be comforting. Dragons had pretty damn strange ideas of what passed for comfort. He began to walk; it was clear he knew the way to Barren.
“How many other fiefs did you visit?” Kaylin asked him.
“Pardon?”
“You entered Castle Nightshade, before you met me.”
“Ah.”
“Did you go to Barren?”
“No. I went, however, to Illien in its time. The borders are largely the same. Or,” he added, “they were.”
“And the others?”
“Some of the others.”
“Why?”
This particular nothing stretched out for a while. Which meant he wasn’t going to answer. She obligingly changed topics as the bridge across the Ablayne came into view. It was a narrower bridge than the one that crossed from Nightshade.
Standing on the other side of the narrow bridge, lounging against the rails, was a figure she recognized.
Morse.
Morse smiled. The scar that marred the line of her upper lip stretched as she did, whitening. Morse’s smile could scare a much larger man into silence. Kaylin had seen it happen. “You’re tricked out,” she said, nodding at the surcoat.
“You’re not.”
“Not more than usual.” Morse ran her fingers through the short brush of her dark hair. The ring that pierced her left eyebrow glinted in the sun, which was near its height. “Had some word that you might be by,” she added, still lounging.
Kaylin shrugged. “I bet. I’m here.”
“And not that happy about it?” Morse rose, then. “Happens. Who’s your friend?”
“A Hawk,” Kaylin replied. It was always touch and go, with Morse, unless the seven years had changed her a lot.
“No kidding.” The smile deserted her face. “We don’t need groundhawks on this side of the border, if you take my meaning.”
“Fine. Tell Barren that.” Kaylin folded her arms across her chest.
Morse was silent for a long moment, and Kaylin watched the ring that pierced her brow. It was—it had been—a decent indicator of Morse’s moods, which could turn on a half-copper without warning. If it dipped or it rose too rapidly, you were on shaky ground. If it stayed steady, regardless of the words or the threat, you probably had a few more guaranteed minutes of life.
It was steady, now.
Kaylin? Not so much.
And if Kaylin had learned to read Morse seven years ago, Morse had also learned to read Kaylin. “Eli,” she said quietly, the word completely neutral. “He should never have sent you across the river.”
Kaylin said nothing. Nothing much to say. But she didn’t correct Morse’s use of her name, because to Morse, she was Elianne. Not more, not less.
“Why did he?” Kaylin heard herself ask. She almost bit off her own tongue, because she realized it was the only thing she could do that would stop it from flapping.
Morse shrugged, and turned her glance toward the sluggishly moving waters of the Ablayne; it had been a dry season, so far. “Ask him,” she finally said.
“I don’t care what he thinks,” Kaylin replied. The part of her that was shouting shut up was seven years too old. “I want to know why you let him.” The part of her that was seven years too old didn’t matter. “Let him? Have you forgotten who’s the fieflord and who’s the grunt here?”
That should have shut Kaylin up. It should have. But an anger that she hadn’t felt in years was burning her mouth, and the only way not to be consumed by it was to open that damn mouth and let it out.
“I was thirteen, Morse. I was stupid.” How old had she been before she finally realized that it was just a setup, just a way of killing her at a distance? Fourteen? Fifteen? Twenty?
“You were one of his best, even then.”
“Doesn’t say much about the rest of his recruits, does it?” Kaylin spit to the left. It was the Barren equivalent of Leontine cursing. She did not, however, aim at Morse; that was the Barren equivalent of telling the Emperor to shove off. “I wasn’t good enough to do what he ordered me to do. I could’ve spent another decade, and I would never be that good. He couldn’t have expected me to succeed.” Her voice rose in the stillness. She tried to throttle it back. But her hands were shaking.
You thought you didn’t care, she told herself in bitter fury. You thought it was all in the past. It was done. You could walk away. And she had. She’d walked. Now she was walking back. Funny, how the fires you didn’t put out the first time were there to burn your sorry butt when you returned.
“You thought you could.” Neutral. The ring hadn’t budged.
Kaylin, however, was past caring. Stung, she said, “Yes, I thought I could. You told me I could, and I believed it.”
“You wanted to believe it,” Morse said, and for the first time, the brow ring did shift—it went down. “You always did. You always wanted some damn thing to believe in. ‘Am I good enough, yet? Am I ready? Will I ever be ready?’” The mimicry was harsh.
And it was deserved. Kaylin, white, stood on the rise of the narrow bridge, looking down at Morse and trying to remember how to breathe.
“If he wanted me dead,” she said, when she’d remembered as much as she was going to be capable of, “why didn’t he just tell you to kill me?”
Morse was utterly silent.
It was the wrong type of silence. “Morse?”
The world was shifting beneath Kaylin’s feet. It wasn’t just the boundaries of Barren, it wasn’t the shadows of the past. The past never truly died anyway; you just boxed it up and put it in storage, hoping it wouldn’t come back to bite you later. But it did, and sometimes you bled.
“You weren’t the only one who was young and stupid,” Morse finally said. “Seven years, Eli. A lot can change in seven years.” She shoved her hands into pockets, and away from the hilts of her very prominent daggers, as if that was all that kept her from drawing them. “You coming, or what?” She turned and stepped off the bridge. Morse hadn’t been big on symbolism; a dagger was a dagger, a fist was a fist and a corpse was a corpse, although admittedly she took some joy in creating them in the right situation.
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