Cast in Peril

by Michelle Sagara

  “Lord An’Teela,” he replied, rising. “It is always a pleasure to see you.”

  That was pushing it.

  “Forgive my boldness. It has been long indeed since I have traveled with the High Court; it reminds me of younger days.”

  Teela nodded; it was cool and much stiffer than her normal nod. “When did you become aware that you would be the Teller? I did not see you in the Hallionne on our first night.”

  “No. I did not, as you might expect, travel with the High Court at the time.”

  Kaylin noted that he hadn’t answered the question, and he glanced at her, reminding her that any mental notes taken were like large sandwich boards in his view.

  “Indeed,” he said, although she hadn’t spoken. Teela and Severn both turned to look at her as she reddened. “To answer your question, Lord An’Teela, I knew before I set out.”

  Teela froze. She wasn’t one to fidget much to begin with, but even the movement of breath seemed to stop.

  Nightshade’s smile grew an edge. “It is interesting, is it not? I woke to find the crown within my castle. I did not, however, have any knowledge of who the harmoniste would be.”

  “But you knew there would be one?” Kaylin asked.

  “I did. There is never a Teller without one. There are recitations at which there are neither. Consider the recitations an event of varying difficulty. At times, if the difficulty is considered great, the green grants the Lord of the West March a harmoniste. But if the recitation is to be very difficult, a Teller is also chosen.”

  “How does the green, whatever it is, decide?”

  “No one knows for certain. As the position conveys both honor and stature, were it understood, it would be contested.”

  “I bet. I’d also bet that every High Lord here, with the possible exception of the Consort, is trying to figure out how you managed it.”

  His smile was deeper and less cold. “Yes, they are. But if I were you, I would not be so quick to dismiss the Consort’s curiosity.”

  Kaylin hesitated again.

  “Yes,” he replied, although she still hadn’t figured out how to ask the question. “The Consort and I are well acquainted. She was not happy when I was forced to depart the High Court; she is not displeased that I am—even in a very limited fashion—at Court once again.”

  “Lord Kaylin,” the Consort said from the table’s head. “Lord Nightshade.”

  Nightshade turned toward her and bowed instantly.

  “We will depart.” The Consort’s voice was cool.

  “Lady,” Nightshade said.

  The Consort turned from them both, and then she turned back, her eyes on Kaylin’s face. Or on, Kaylin thought, the mark that adorned her cheek. She said nothing, offered nothing, before she once again turned away.

  * * *

  The same standing arch opened in the dining hall, some yards away from the head of the table over which the Consort presided. This time, however, the Consort did not leave first; she indicated that the Lords of the Court were to precede her. They were graceful in their acquiescence; they stepped through the arch and vanished instantly.

  As Kaylin, Severn, and Teela were at the foot of the table, they joined the progression at its tail and approached the Consort only after the room was all but empty.

  The Consort turned to Lord Nightshade. “Lord Nightshade, the rules that govern the taking of an Erenne are clear, and the High Lord has chosen to uphold them. You will not attempt to enforce your hold upon Lord Kaylin while you are in this Court.”

  “I am already Outcaste, Lady,” was his neutral reply. “There is little incentive for me to obey such strictures now.” He bowed again and, without another word, walked through the standing arch.

  * * *

  Kaylin approached the arch; Severn and Teela waited by mutual—and silent—consent. When her toes were on the edge of what she classified as inside, she raised both her hands in mimicry of the Consort, cupping her palms. “Come on,” she told the shining light. “I’d really rather you didn’t give me a concussion.”

  Teela snorted in a very un-Barrani-like way as the light began its descent.

  “What?” Kaylin demanded, not taking her eyes from the soft, round glow.

  “You make even the mystic mundane.”

  “Easy for you to say—it wasn’t your head it smacked the first time.”

  * * *

  The third day of travel wasn’t any kinder than the first two, and at the midday break, Kaylin was sore. The idea that she could be this sore when she’d done no walking, running, or drill work had come as an extremely unwelcome surprise. Severn smiled when he saw her expression. “It gets easier.”

  “I don’t believe it. At this point, I’d feel better if I ran after the damn carriages.”

  Food on the road wasn’t the complicated and intimidating fare that it was during the dinners and breakfasts that bookended the day; it was almost normal. “Are we the only ones eating?” she asked Severn as she plunked down on a patch of ground beneath one of the larger trees in the clearing.

  “Probably.”

  “Why?”

  “In case it’s escaped your attention, the Barrani don’t ‘grab a bite.’”

  Teela sauntered over and almost sat in Kaylin’s lap, her way of indicating that Kaylin should move over. She also held out a hand, and Kaylin, sighing, broke off half her sandwich and placed it in the Barrani Hawk’s open palm.

  “Most Barrani,” Severn amended.

  “I haven’t noticed them holding back in the mess hall.”

  “There’s less food in the mess hall.”

  “And most of it’s terrible,” Teela added. Her eyes were a shade of green that looked normal; Kaylin, even surrounded by Barrani Lords, felt herself relaxing. “You’ve started a storm of discussion.”

  “You mean gossip.”

  “I feel ‘gossip’ is an unkind word.”

  “Says the Barrani Queen of the cutting, sarcastic rejoinder.”

  Teela laughed, which did attract attention. It was a different kind of attention than it usually attracted.

  “What have I done this time?”

  “The second illumination. I don’t think we’ve ever had a harmoniste take two this early in the voyage.”

  Kaylin’s hunger dwindled, and not because she’d eaten enough. “How could they even tell? Does it show?”

  “Demonstrably.” Teela was enjoying herself. It was annoying, but it was better than rage. Kaylin, eating her diminished lunch, forcefully reminded herself of this.

  “Severn?”

  He shrugged a fief shrug. “It’s not visible to me.”

  Great.

  “Don’t make that face,” Teela told her, rising. “And finish up. We’re about to start moving again.”

  “We only just stopped!”

  One black brow rose. “We have a long way to go, kitling.” The smile smoothed itself off her face. “And we’re nowhere near the West March yet. There are four small stations in the next few days. They won’t cause you problems, because they don’t confer illumination; they merely offer safety. They are not as complex.” She examined her skirts for crumbs. “Corporal.”

  Severn lifted his chin and met a gaze that was darkening.

  “No matter what you see, now is not the time.”

  He nodded as she turned and made her way toward the carriage, where the horses were—damn it all—being strapped back in.

  * * *

  So it went. For the next four days, the stations were, as Teela had implied, smaller and less overtly impressive. The rooms, for one, didn’t magically appear and disappear; the dining hall didn’t change shape or lose doors. The flooring in the halls did light up, and rooms were still not a matter of personal choice, but they always led to either Teela or Severn, and Kaylin was comfortable now with both.

  Nightshade was cool and remote; the mark on her cheek didn’t even warm in his presence. The only time he physically approached Kaylin during the four days—
and the fifth—was when Evarrim was also on the way. Even then, he left after he’d headed off Evarrim.

  The Consort was unfriendly, but Kaylin expected that.

  Familiarity with the small dragon didn’t diminish Barrani interest in his existence, but given Nightshade and the Consort’s chilliness, the Lords—with the single exception of Evarrim—were content for the moment to maintain a strict look-but-don’t-touch approach.

  * * *

  On the fifth night from the cliff station, the Barrani caravan paused by the side of a river. It was, in Kaylin’s opinion, wide enough to be called a lake, but Teela insisted this was not the case. The Barrani Hawk was quiet in a way that suggested reflection as she stared at the slowly moving water. Kaylin was staring, too—at the total lack of anything that looked like a bridge. Or a barge.

  The Lords began to congregate on one large, flat rock on this side of the river as Kaylin watched. “How are we supposed to cross that?”

  “You’ll see,” Teela replied. “Come. The Consort is moving into position now.”

  The small dragon actually perked up at the words, lifting his head and blinking as if he’d emerged from a long, long sleep and couldn’t quite get it out of his eyes. Kaylin was reminded of just how sharp his tiny claws were when he dug them through layers of priceless green cloth as he began to bob up and down. “I think he’s excited.”

  Teela chuckled. “He looks it. He really is disarming. Watching the two of you together makes it very hard to take him seriously.”

  The small dragon squawked in outrage. Given the pitch and the volume of his complaint, it wasn’t conducive to being taken more seriously. Even Severn raised a brow and shook his head, smiling.

  Teela led them to the outer edge of the rounded rock that was serving as an impromptu viewing platform. The horses and carriages had been held back. “There’s not a lot here to graze on,” Kaylin observed.

  Teela raised a brow. “Graze?”

  “Well, the horses have to eat something.”

  “You think there’s been enough to graze on in the past week?” The Barrani Hawk shook her head. “You don’t know much about horses, do you?”

  “Not Barrani horses,” Kaylin said.

  “Not about any horses,” Teela replied. “Regardless, no, they’re not being left here tonight.”

  “What are we doing with them?”

  It wasn’t Teela who answered.

  “The horses are a concern. This isn’t a safe patch of forest.”

  Kaylin stared at Severn. While she didn’t know much about forests, and travel so far had involved hours on end in a fancy box stuck on wheels, nothing had struck her as dangerous. “Not safe?”

  Teela and Severn exchanged a glance.

  “These lands were heavily contested during the last Draco-Barrani war,” Severn finally replied. “A lot of magic was used, in both offense and defense. In at least three areas, the magic ran out of control.”

  Kaylin glanced at her arms. The marks were flat, coal-gray; they didn’t itch, and they weren’t glowing. “There’s no magic here right now.”

  “What you’re wearing could be considered magic,” Teela replied, “but it’s not giving you hives.”

  True.

  “If you wander off what passes for road here, you’ll see large patches of land in which nothing natural grows. Unfortunately, at random intervals, unnatural things grow instead.”

  “Why were these lands so contested?”

  “The Hallionne,” Teela replied. “Watch.”

  The Consort was speaking. Her words didn’t carry; her voice did. It was sweet and low, but something about it made all Kaylin’s hair stand on end. In case she missed the significance of this, her arms and her legs began to itch. “I didn’t even know she could use magic,” she muttered.

  “She’s the Mother of the Race,” Teela said, both brows lifting.

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “But?”

  Put that way, it did sound stupid.

  The Consort continued her low, urgent speech. There seemed to be no physical component to her spell at all. But when she stopped speaking, the waters of the river suddenly came to an abrupt halt. It wasn’t as if someone had inserted a long, invisible wall between the two banks; the currents just…stopped.

  The Barrani High Court took a few steps back when the water began to move. It didn’t move in a way that suggested the currents were once again flowing—it roiled; water sloshed up the rock and across the Consort’s feet. She stayed her ground. So, Kaylin noted, did Nightshade. He stood to the right, and a large step back, from where the Consort had begun her compelling speech.

  The small dragon leapt from Kaylin’s shoulders as she watched. He didn’t go far; he flew in tight circles above her head. She was grateful he wasn’t a pigeon or a seagull. The waters, Kaylin noted, were rising. She wouldn’t have been surprised had they lifted themselves right out of their bed.

  Having thought that, however, she was.

  Chapter 18

  Kaylin had, once or twice, watched glassblowers at work. Although the water didn’t have the color or obviously molten texture of semisolid glass, that came closest to what she now watched. The water rose in an orb that caught sunlight. But it also caught moonlight, night sky, and gray dusk, none of which were actually present.

  She watched as layers grew up around this floating orb, taking a different shape, a less circular one. “Those are—those are wings,” she whispered. They were: they were like a watery sculpture of a moving, gliding Dragon. The jaws and the tail were last to form, because the wings seemed to stretch out forever. When it was done, the riverbed was bone-dry beneath the very strange shadow this sculpture cast.

  Its eyes opened.

  “Severn—”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “It’s meant to be a Dragon.” Something about his tone of voice made her tear her gaze away from what the water had formed. His eyes were wide with something akin to wonder, his lips half-parted, his head lifted. Strands of his hair had fallen into those eyes, but he didn’t notice. What he noticed was the Dragon.

  Kaylin thought she wouldn’t be surprised if it spoke.

  But she jumped two feet back when it roared. She’d heard a lot of spoken Dragon in the past few weeks—most of it the discussions between Bellusdeo and Diarmat—and this? It was a Dragon’s voice. It shook the stone beneath their collective feet.

  “This always happens?” she whispered to Teela when the Dragon paused for breath.

  “Yes.” Teela’s expression was grim.

  The small dragon rose higher, and higher again, until he was at the level of the water Dragon. He was also almost invisible; the light of the day passed through him, and he didn’t have the warped and wavering colors of the rest of daylight’s spectrum to lend him visibility. But even at this distance, she heard what passed for a tiny dragon’s roar: a squawk. It was the sound chicks daydreaming of being Dragons would make.

  But comical or no, it caught the Dragon’s attention.

  Teela’s breath was sharp enough to cut. “This,” she said in a grim tone that matched her expression, “on the other hand, is different. Call him back.”

  Kaylin stared. The Barrani Hawk pivoted to face her. “Kaylin, this is not a joke. Call him back now.”

  She didn’t even have a name for the small, inconvenient creature. “It’s not like I tell him what to do,” she said between clenched teeth. “Hey! Come back here!”

  Teela’s eyes, which were blue, almost fell out of her head.

  The water Dragon roared, its voice deeper, louder. It was the sound of a tidal wave crashing into ships and buildings. Kaylin’s mouth went dry. But the small dragon squawked and squawked in reply—if it was a reply; she had the impression that he hadn’t shut up once, deafening Dragon notwithstanding. He seemed remarkably unimpressed, and given the way the entire Barrani Court—Consort and Nightshade

  included—now turned to stare at her, she wanted a little of his self-confidence.


  Or a lot.

  Severn stepped nearer, wonder draining from his expression. What was left was familiar: he had her back. Teela, by her side, didn’t budge—although she still looked outraged and annoyed. “I do not believe this,” she said in evenly spaced Aerian. She could have spoken in Leontine, but an appropriate Leontine phrase sounded too much like “I’m going to rip out your vital organs and eat them while you are still alive—and watching.”

  The water Dragon opened its jaws and sucked in air. Something made of water shouldn’t have been able to inhale so loudly that everyone on the ground beneath it could hear the sound.

  “Hey!” Kaylin shouted at the small dragon, hands to either side of her mouth. “Get back down here!”

  The water Dragon exhaled. A plume of what looked like smoke left its wide, almost transparent jaws. Folds of roiling mist enveloped the small dragon, who seemed intent on having a staring contest with its opponent, while hovering in place and making pathetic noises.

  Kaylin held her own breath as the larger Dragon’s slowly dissipated. She started to breathe again when she saw her own small dragon still hovering in the air; whatever the water Dragon had chosen to throw at him hadn’t killed him. It had, however, annoyed him; she saw the small creature suddenly dart toward the water Dragon.

  “I have a really bad feeling about this,” she said to Severn and Teela, both of whom were watching the skies. Turning, she sprinted toward the Consort. “I don’t know what you’re doing,” she said, voice low, syllables crunched together, “but call the water Dragon back. Call it down if you can.”

  The Consort turned to look at Kaylin. “Call it back?” she said, voice cool.

  “I know he’s small but he—”

  Nightshade said, “Lady. If it is at all possible to accede to Lord Kaylin’s request, I feel it wise.”

  “I am not responsible for the shape the water takes, as you well know.”

  “Is it important it stay in the same shape?” Kaylin asked, hoping the small dragon was stupid enough to just bite the bigger one. She was afraid he would breathe instead, and she remembered the hanging, opalescent cloud in Castle Nightshade. It had been a small cloud; she was certain that a large cloud was beyond the small dragon. But…she wasn’t certain what the small dragon’s breath could do. If it were in any way related to the Shadowstorms that were darker but similar in texture, it didn’t have to be large.