Cast in Courtlight

by Michelle Sagara

  Teela was dressed down. As in, almost like a Hawk. Except without the actual Hawk to grant her authority. Her hair was a flat fall from head to waist, and she wore a wide sash in place of a belt. She carried no obvious weapon. This, however, wasn't a problem; she didn't need them. Even the staff she favored was hardly necessary to her in a fight.

  She eyed the Barrani with disdain. That was Teela all over. "Kaylin." She shortened both syllables into something that defined curt.

  "Where's Marcus?"

  "He's with the Hawklord."

  "Why are you here?"

  "I'm off duty. Does it matter?"

  "You tell me. Where's Tain?"

  "He's in his office."

  Which was usually a bad sign; Tain liked his cubicle about as much as Kaylin liked palm-magic. Or less.

  "This is High Court business?"

  Teela's smile was all teeth. It should have had fangs. "I'm just making a casual report," she told Kaylin. "Someone's imported Lethe flowers."

  Kaylin's jaw slowly unhinged. "Here?"

  Teela reached into her pouch and pulled out the crushed and obvious white blossom. Lethe was deadly, in large enough doses. Then again, so were Leontines. What Leontines couldn't do, however, was destroy memory and identity slowly. Or quickly.

  "I'll get—"

  "No. You won't."

  "But Moran should see—"

  "I've been to Moran. It's potent."

  "This doesn't have anything to do with the Festival, right?"

  "You're off duty anyway. I did ask," Teela added with something that sounded suspiciously like pity.

  "Teela—"

  The Barrani's eyes were a shade of blue that looked a lot like black. Kaylin took a step back. Lethe didn't work as well on humans as it did on Barrani, and from the Barrani point of view, destroying a few decades of memory wasn't a great crime anyway.

  Hawk's eyes narrowed. "Was this used on the Lord of the West March?"

  Teela said a very significant nothing. "You've got a meeting," she added quietly.

  Kaylin wilted. In all, she looked a lot like the crushed flower. She turned smack into armor, and cursed in healthy Leontine as she rubbed her nose. "You two," she said, when she could talk again, "leave me a little space, okay?"

  She left the guards on either side of the door to the West Room. They looked as if they would argue, but she smiled, held up a hand, and said, "Dragon Lord, okay?" in her most cheerful voice. If this didn't have the desired effect, it did encourage obedience.

  Lord Sanabalis was waiting, the candle on the desk between his hands. His hands were pale, and finely veined, but they didn't look old. They looked, to Kaylin's eyes, like common hands that had seen their share of honest labor. Then again, Kaylin had met a lot of soldiers in her time among the Hawks, and they had similar hands. Honest labor was a matter of perspective.

  The Dragon Lord bowed his head as she entered and took a seat. "Private," he said quietly.

  "Lord Sanabalis." She offered formality for formality, and only when she met his eyes—his dull orange eyes—did she realize how wrong it sounded.

  "What," he asked her, his eyes a shade darker, "is the shape of fire?"

  And she thought of Lord Evarrim's robes in the sunlight. Of the color of Dragon eyes. "I don't know."

  "Light the candle, Kaylin."

  She sighed, and forced herself to look at what was there. Wax. Wick. Brass beneath both, and tarnished brass at that. But the candle was a different color; it was a russet red. The wick was long, and pale, but it seemed, to her eyes, to be yellow.

  Because she was incapable of schooling her expression, her brow furrowed. "This candle—"

  "Yes."

  "It's not the same—"

  "Is it not? How clumsy of me."

  She stared at it now, the Hawk in her gaining ground. What had seemed flat and unremarkable brass resolved itself in subtle ways into something less ordinary. The plate was covered in thin runes that circled the candle base. Some were faded; the lines were too fine to be read. Others were darker and clearer, but even these defied her ability to read. They weren't Elantran, Barrani, or Aerian. They certainly weren't Leontine.

  They weren't, however, old magic as she understood it. If she couldn't read what had been written on her body, she could recognize the shape and thickness of the curves. These were not the same.

  "Dragon," she murmured to herself.

  Sanabalis said nothing. His expression was about as giving as stone.

  Without thinking, she said, "Do you know the word leoswuld?" And added another shade of orange to those watching eyes. They were almost red. And Kaylin was almost out of her seat. She was certainly finding it difficult not to grip a dagger in either hand.

  "Where did you hear that word?"

  "I apparently said it in my sleep."

  His raised brow turned her cheeks the same shade of red as his eyes.

  "What," the Dragon Lord said, in a voice that would have carried across a Festival street without losing anything, "is the shape of fire?"

  As if this were rote. As if he had said it a hundred times, and had come, at last, to the end of his patience.

  "I don't know."

  "Kaylin," Sanabalis said, his eyes still red, his lower membranes inching into invisibility, "you do know. You must know."

  "Why? Why now?" She paused, and then added, "Why are you so angry?"

  His expression shifted slightly. It didn't get any friendlier, but it lost some of its menace as he gathered the folds of his lips into something resembling a frown. A smile, and she would have run screaming.

  "I am not angry with or at you, Kaylin Neya. But circumstances have changed, and the situation has become more difficult. For both of us."

  "You've been my teacher for what—two days? Three? How long did you say it took an apprentice to light a damn candle anyway?"

  "I didn't."

  "Oh."

  "But had I, I would have said half a year. For those with the focus and skill to do so. Some will labor for three years before they manage it, some will never manage."

  "And I'm supposed to do this in three damn days?"

  "You have claimed that you have no love for the classroom. This is the classroom, and there is only one way for you to leave it at the moment. You will light the candle." He reached into his robes and pulled out a large crystal. It was clear, and from the center of its cut facets, light played against the walls.

  She'd seen crystals like it before; had held them, had even been burned by them. "What happens if I don't light the candle?"

  "You will not leave the classroom," he replied. "But the classroom will move."

  Move. That was bad. "To where?"

  "Where do you think, Kaylin? You said—to any of your teachers, even to me—that you want to be out there. 'Out there' is a phrase that has many meanings. You wish to place your life at risk in the service of Elantra. You have even been given the opportunity, several times.

  "You are a fool, but you are not a coward, and time will cure the former, if you survive. To survive," he added, "you will light the candle." He leaned across the table as he spoke, and his hands—the hands that had seemed so common when she'd studied them—elongated.

  She fell over. Or rather, her chair did; she was already rolling along the ground. She came to her feet neatly, without thought or intent. Every movement was instinctive.

  But the hands, longer, nails more pronounced, did not alter further. Lord Sanabalis was still… Lord Sanabalis. She had twice seen a dragon unfold, shedding even the pretense of humanity, and she wasn't in a hurry to do it again.

  She rose on unsteady feet, and found that she had drawn a dagger. Against a Dragon Lord. But the Dragon Lord's red, red gaze did not falter, and her eyes were drawn into its center. To heat, to anger, to a flame that defied death and pain, and offered consumption as its only benediction.

  And at the core of those eyes, she thought she saw, flickering and shifting, the outline of letters. As if
a word were writ there, and it had finally been exposed.

  Not shape, she thought desperately.

  The Dragon had not moved.

  Not the shape of flame. Not the form of flame.

  The name of it. She held on to those moving runes, trying to pin them down, trying to fit them into a shape she could utter. But they were as foreign to her as the runes on the brass candleholder; they weren't in a language she knew.

  And yet… she knew them as language, as part of language. As something old. Old…

  Without thinking, she reached for her wrist; it was free. She hadn't been given the bracer; it didn't contain her, couldn't hold her back.

  She pushed her sleeves up, as Lord Sanabalis watched, and she thought she saw him… wince. But the eyes stayed the same, and that was all the guidance she needed.

  Her lips stopped moving.

  They never moved when she used a name.

  Think, Kaylin. Think. No. Don't think.

  She placed her hands upon the desk, lifting herself from the ground. She forced herself to bend, to pick up the chair. Hands shaking, she put it down, opposite Sanabalis, the man she would never forget was a Dragon again for as long as she lived.

  And she spoke the word.

  Fire erupted in the air above the candle. Fire danced along the wick. It should have melted wax and flesh. It should have turned table and chairs—and Kaylin—into liquid or ash.

  But it didn't. It hovered above russet wax, yellow wick, and as the wax took heat, as it took flame onto itself, it began to gleam, as if gold were its heart.

  And the candle itself grew red and bright as it absorbed the whole of the fire's mass. She was blind for a moment. All she could see was that small dancing leap of flame, of burning candle. She didn't immediately notice that the crystal to one side of the candle now held red light at its heart. But she did notice; she was a Hawk, after all.

  The Dragon's eyes were shading toward orange, but it was a deep orange, and a hot one. He raised his lower membranes, to shield her from their color.

  "Done," he said softly. Wearily. "Congratulations, Kaylin."

  "Does this mean I pass?"

  "This means," he said softly, so softly she had to strain to catch the words, "that you have some chance of surviving." He gestured, and the fire guttered.

  "And I don't need a tutor?"

  His laugh was a roar. "You need far more than that, Kaylin Neya. You will not be free of my guidance for some time yet."

  "Then—"

  "But you will," he continued, rising, "bear the symbol of the Imperial Order of Mages."

  Chapter Nine

  The words made no sense. And because they made no sense, they could be slotted into a category that made Kaylin uneasy at the best of times.

  "This is political, isn't it?"

  "In a broad sense," Sanabalis replied coldly, "everything is political."

  "This is political the way wars are political."

  "Ah, yes. That shade. Or close." He reached out for the candle. She saw it, for a moment, as something that bore only the facade of wax, and didn't ask him anything more, aware of the crystal by his side. Aware that she'd already said too much. His nod, still curt, was a small benediction.

  Which she needed. She was trembling. Curling her hands into fists to prevent it from being obvious was an old habit, and like all old habits, it died hard. She watched him.

  He watched her. And then, with a weary smile that did not, in any way, alter the color of his eyes, he loosened the collar of his robe slightly and lifted a chain from around his neck. It was gold, and heavy, and far too long, its links forming not so much a chain as rope. "It is mine," he told her gravely, "and I value it. It was given me by a mage long dead. He taught me much. Wear it until I give you a replacement." He stood there, chain in his hands, waiting.

  She stared at him.

  His expression soured. "Come here," he told her. "The young everywhere lack any sense of ceremony."

  She did as bid, partly because the command itself was Dragon in tone and depth, and partly because the comment that followed it hinted at the type of lecture she ran a four-minute mile to avoid hearing. He set the chain over her head and around her neck; the medallion hung at her waist, and after a moment, he frowned, pulled the chain up, and knotted it. As knots went, it stunk. "It will do," he told her.

  "Ummm."

  "Yes?"

  "It's got a Dragon on it."

  "Ah. An oversight on my part," he replied in a tone that implied the opposite. "As I said, it is my personal medallion."

  "But I'm not—"

  "No. You are not. But it is older by far than you, and it will be recognized where you travel."

  It was warm. The knot he'd added to the chain had raised the medallion so that it rested just below her breasts; she felt it as if it were another heart. She reached out, lifted it, looked at it.

  "It is not a coin, and I advise you not to bite it to ascertain its metallic composition. You will not like the taste."

  "Will I still have my teeth?"

  "Doubtful." He frowned. Orange was still the high color of his eyes, but gold was beginning to make itself felt. "Do not let others handle it," he told her quietly. "Even if you trust them. Trust is not an issue with this medallion."

  "What is?"

  "Fire," he whispered. An echo of red.

  "What if I hadn't—"

  He lifted a hand. "Yours is an odd magic," he told her softly. "And a wild one. But it comes when you call it."

  "It didn't any of the other times."

  "You didn't need it then. There was no urgency to your call, no life in the balance."

  "So you—the hands—the eyes—"

  "No, Kaylin. Those were—and are—genuine. I did not, however, have to terrify my previous students into their power."

  "But you—"

  He lifted a hand. "Nor," he added in a more severe voice, "did I allow them to harry me with questions. Ill-thought questions, at that. I will answer perhaps one more."

  "Why did you bring the crystal?"

  "You are a Hawk, child." She bridled. Even coming from an ancient Dragon, the word still rankled. "You see well. The crystal is a memory crystal. It will retain the truth of this meeting, and this lesson."

  "You're a mage. You could tamper with it."

  He frowned. "That was not a question."

  "I could rephrase it—"

  "Don't. This is Imperial crystal." He frowned. "Kaylin, you will pay attention if you are ever returned to a classroom. I waste time here, and it is your time, although you do not understand this fact yet. Imperial crystal cannot be tampered with by lesser magic. By greater, such tampering identifies itself. Its mark will be seen and felt by any who hold the crystal.

  "And now, I must leave you. I will see you shortly."

  She shook her head. Had to. It was almost spinning. "Did I mention that there are no Imperial mages in the Hawks?"

  "I believe you did."

  "Then I don't want to wear this—"

  "But there are no laws against recruitment of such mages. Not within the ranks of the Hawks. Lord Tiamaris was trained by the Imperium. I believe that there are no mages because the Lord of Hawks does not trust them. He did, however, cede the Hawk to Lord Tiamaris, and he was, I assure you, aware of the particulars of Tiamaris's long past."

  "But he didn't—"

  "Kaylin. Be quiet."

  The door opened. Lord Grammayre stood in its frame, and just beyond him, the Barrani guards Nightshade had sent. Behind them stood Teela. And she was wearing a damn dress. Again.

  "Kaylin," Lord Grammayre said quietly. He entered the room, and Teela followed. The guards remained where they were standing as the door was shut. The Hawklord's gaze went to the Dragon Lord; they stood thus for an awkward moment.

  "She passed," Sanabalis said quietly.

  This did not ease the Hawklord's tension. Given his expression, very little would. He looked at Kaylin, and his eyes were slate-gray
. He frowned. "The medallion—"

  "Yes. It is a symbol of the Imperium."

  "It is a symbol of—"

  Lord Sanabalis lifted a hand. "Of the Imperial Order of Mages," he said more slowly. At any other time, Kaylin would have snickered, having been on the receiving end of slow explanations more often than she could easily recall. Somehow, it wasn't funny at the moment.

  "Lord Grammayre."

  "Lord Sanabalis." The Hawklord turned to Kaylin and frowned. "The Quartermaster, it must be noted, is ill pleased with you."

  She groaned. "I haven't lost anything—"

  "No. But he is unaccustomed to dealing with seamstresses, and they are unaccustomed to dealing with him. I believe they have not yet escalated their negotiations to a point which would make all dealings impossible, but the guildmaster has been summoned to mediate."

  Guilds, bad. Guilds pissed off at the Hawks, worse. The rest of his words took time to sink in. "The seamstress guild? Why?"

  "They do work for us, as you know," he replied. "Or would if you paid attention. Your surcoat is not forged."

  "They're not arguing about a surcoat."

  "No."

  She looked at Teela. Teela met her gaze, blue-eyed, and then turned away. No one was in what could even optimistically be called a good mood.

  "You are a Hawk," Lord Grammayre told her quietly, "but you will not be wearing the Hawk. The Quartermaster feels that his budget does not extend far enough to cover what you will be wearing, and he is a practical man, not given to ostentation."

  "I'm not going to like where this is going."

  "I believe you will be foolish enough to like it more than any other person standing in this room."

  "The High Halls." She turned to stare at Lord Sanabalis. "You—" She held her tongue; his hand passed over the crystal, and the light dwindled slowly, leaving the suggestion of fire in its wake.

  "You knew."

  "The suggestion made its way to the Imperial Court

  ," the mage replied. "I came in haste. I was not, therefore, privy to the rest of the discussion. And no, before you waste more time, I am not about to share the content of the discussion I did partake in."

  Dragons.