Cast in Conflict

by Michelle Sagara

  Where are you?

  I am, oddly enough, in the Academia. I have an appointment with the chancellor in less than an hour.

  Have you ever met Durant?

  No. I have encountered Liatt once.

  “Have you talked to Liatt?” Kaylin asked Bellusdeo.

  “No, not yet. I have spoken with Farlonne at length; she is the only fieflord to make herself instantly and readily available.”

  She would, Kaylin thought. Bellusdeo was a Dragon. But that was unfair. Farlonne clearly took the reason for the Tower’s existence seriously—as seriously as Bellusdeo herself did. If Bellusdeo’s first war with Shadow had ended in failure, there were still lessons to take from that failure. Farlonne was probably willing to learn them.

  What was Liatt like?

  Surprising. I feel I should offer a warning, however.

  What warning?

  You expect that Liatt and Durant—both human—are mortal as you are. Ah, no, as most of the Hawks are. You will find that this is not necessarily the case. Go back to Records, and look at the fief demarcations. In at least one case, were Durant to be like your Hawks, he would be well over eighty years old. Liatt would be...older.

  What? Wait.

  I am not, at the moment, going anywhere. I like the Academia. It is surprising to me. It reminds me of my youth. The better parts of it, he added. And I confess that I am very pleased with the chancellor. Killian, however, keeps his distance. Yes, he said, before Kaylin could even think the words, he is not so distant with you. He has reason to trust you, just as Helen or the Hallionne did.

  He doesn’t trust you? This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Kaylin.

  We use the word trust in different fashions. Killian is Barrani, or close; I am Barrani. The cohort is not, in Killian’s eyes. We do not insult each other by open trust. Trust is given to those who cannot harm us—although it is still a risk. It is far simpler for the cohort to trust you than it would be for them to trust me. Or any Lord of the High Court. Regardless, what you are is not what I am; Killian interacts with me as if I am Barrani. And as if he still is.

  Killian doesn’t think I’m harmless, Kaylin pointed out.

  It is entirely possible you are correct, Nightshade replied, which was like agreement on the surface.

  “Kaylin.” Bellusdeo’s voice was a quiet snap of syllables.

  She left Nightshade wherever it was one waited for an appointment to speak with the chancellor and gave the Dragon her full attention. Bellusdeo indicated a group of people walking down the street in a loose pack. One glance at Hope indicated that he was ready for trouble, but not anticipating it yet; he was standing on two legs, but he wasn’t rigid with tension.

  “This looks promising,” Bellusdeo said.

  Kaylin said nothing. She wasn’t wearing her tabard, and briefly regretted it.

  “I am deputized to speak on behalf of the Academia,” the Dragon added. “I am certain that Durant has some questions.”

  “He may—but there’s no guarantee that he’s one of the group walking to head us off.”

  “No.”

  Kaylin thought it highly likely that he wasn’t. If Bellusdeo was deputized to speak with Durant on behalf of the chancellor, these people were likely to be deputized to speak with intruders on behalf of Durant. Fieflords didn’t generally join patrols like these. At least not in Nightshade or Tiamaris.

  Maggaron drew the eye from a distance, but it wasn’t Maggaron who attracted most of the attention; it was, as expected, the Dragon wearing gold plate armor. Lack of visible weapons in her hands didn’t really change the attention she received. Maggaron didn’t help, but Kaylin and Severn were practically invisible.

  Maggaron had weapons, but hadn’t drawn any of them, and he stood behind his Dragon, waiting; Bellusdeo had come to a stop in the open streets. The windows above street level seemed mostly unoccupied, and as Bellusdeo wasn’t patrolling, Kaylin ignored the exceptions. Had she lived in a building with an actual window that wasn’t on the verge of collapse, she’d’ve been peeping out the windows in Nightshade as well.

  Severn was slightly more cautious, but agreed.

  A woman was at the head of a loose, triangular formation, and she detached herself from the group as the Durant people also came to a halt. She crossed the distance between the Dragon and what Kaylin assumed were her guards.

  To Kaylin’s surprise, she offered Bellusdeo a crisp—if brief—bow. Bellusdeo returned a nod, but no one expected people wearing plate to be able to bow with any competence. That Dragons were exceptions to this practical expectation was perhaps less well known, given how often Dragons were forced to bow to anyone but each other.

  “We’ve been expecting you. I am Marshalle. You are Lord Bellusdeo?”

  “Bellusdeo. I am a Dragon, but I am not an official member of the Dragon Court.”

  “Ah.”

  Kaylin, beside Bellusdeo, glanced at the Dragon; she was smiling, and her eyes were orange, but shading now away from red. “I have not made an appointment to speak with Lord Durant.”

  “Durant,” the woman then said, her own smile evident. “No. But we’ve received reports that a Dragon—a gold Dragon—has been seen in the air above the fief in the past week, and we’re aware that a Dragon has been landing in Farlonne. If you will take the risk, Durant is more than willing to meet with you.”

  Kaylin watched the guards; they seemed relaxed. They, like Maggaron, were armed, but hadn’t drawn weapons either.

  “I would be both honored and delighted.”

  “And your companions?”

  “Maggaron is my Ascendant—my personal guard. He has been with me since childhood. His,” she added, in case this wasn’t obvious. “To my left is Corporal Kaylin Neya. To her left is Lord Mandoran of Casarre, and behind, Corporal Severn Handred. Kaylin and Severn are Imperial Hawks—and they are well aware that Imperial Law is neither enforced nor observed in the fiefs. They have been ordered by the Emperor to accompany me.”

  “And you accept this?”

  At this, Bellusdeo’s smile deepened. “One of the corporals is my—what is the Elantran word?—roommate. Lord Mandoran also shares that distinction.”

  “Clearly things are more interesting across the wall than we realized. Please follow me.”

  * * *

  Durant’s streets were in decent repair; the roads themselves had some ruts, but nothing that would cripple a wagon if the wagon was unlucky. The buildings were a mix of wood and stone, and if the stone was aged, cracked or chipped, it wasn’t in danger of crumbling. Windows were a mix of shutters and glass—and it was the glass, which was definitely not new and probably in need of some serious cleaning—that was most surprising. To be fair, there were glass windows and elements of finery in parts of Nightshade as well, but they were parts of Nightshade that everyone who lived there knew to avoid like the plague.

  She had assumed—until Tiamaris—that all fiefs were the same.

  But Farlonne was not. And clearly, neither was Durant.

  Durant wasn’t Tara—his Tower wasn’t girded by vegetable gardens. There was a gate and a gatehouse similar in form to Helen’s, and probably just as practical. But Marshalle walked up to the gatehouse, a man left it, and the gates opened.

  Kaylin turned to face Bellusdeo. Bellusdeo’s eyes were a more martial orange; she didn’t need to be told that entry was a risk.

  “What do you counsel?” the Dragon asked the Hawk.

  Kaylin exhaled. Flight—of the turn around and retreat variety, not the draconic one—was the smart choice here. She glanced at Marshalle; the woman’s attention was shifting between Kaylin and Bellusdeo, as if assessing both Kaylin’s role and the Dragon’s intent.

  “I would prefer our first meeting to be somewhere more neutral,” Bellusdeo finally said.

  Marshalle’s easy smile faded.


  “Gestures of trust are acts of confidence when any two strangers first meet,” the Dragon continued, voice soft. “And only a fool displays such confidence when the place of meeting is inside the territory of a building such as a Tower. There, all martial prowess and experience are reduced by the building, should the building desire it, to utter irrelevance.

  “For reasons that I trust are obvious, some minor caution is desirable on my part. I am willing to speak with Durant in any other building of his choosing in the fief of Durant. The fief of Durant is still a place of power for him, but the power is less absolute; should I desire it, I can escape.”

  “Or kill him?”

  Bellusdeo did not smile. She did not respond at all.

  Kaylin did. “Bellusdeo, more than anyone except the Norranir, has reason to respect the Towers and their function. The last thing she would do, given any other choice, is attack the fieflord.”

  “Rumors indicate that Candallar may be without its captain,” Marshalle replied.

  Kaylin offered a fief shrug. “Bellusdeo had nothing to do with that death.”

  “You are so certain?”

  “I am. I was there.”

  Marshalle’s brows rose. “Who, then, was responsible for Candallar’s death?”

  “In my opinion? Candallar himself. He attempted to destroy the foundation of the Academia. His death occurred because only his death would prevent it.” She’d fallen into High Barrani.

  To her surprise, High Barrani didn’t come naturally to Marshalle; she seemed to be concentrating on Kaylin’s actual words.

  She therefore slid into Elantran again. “The new chancellor of the Academia had to kill him or he’d have murdered all the remaining students. And us,” she added. “I’m not sure he was all that worried about us, either.”

  “Durant has questions about the...Academia.”

  “Neither of us,” Kaylin said, indicating Bellusdeo as well, “can really answer them. I mean, we can try, but there’s probably going to be a lot of hand-waving. Have any of you actually tried to visit the Academia?”

  “We’re not, frankly, certain what it is,” Marshalle replied. “Anyone living in the fief has noticed the lack of the border zone by now. Is that because of the Academia’s rise?”

  “It’s complicated. I really think you should talk to the chancellor.”

  “Very well,” the gates said.

  Since gates couldn’t normally converse, Kaylin assumed the Tower had an Avatar somewhere else—but no. The gates rolled open, as if they were normal gates, and a man stood between them.

  “I am Durant,” he said. He offered Bellusdeo a nod, not a bow. Human eyes didn’t shift color; they had to use the rest of their face to express emotion, if they wanted to take that risk. Durant hadn’t, but as he met Kaylin’s eyes, he did smile. “You appear to know more about this Academia, this lack of a border zone, than we have currently discovered.

  “If you are willing to accept my escort—and my guards, of course—I would like to visit it, or at least see it with my own eyes. We might talk while we walk,” he added, addressing Bellusdeo.

  Bellusdeo’s eyes were once again orange with flecks of gold, not red. “I believe I would enjoy that.”

  08

  Kaylin wasn’t certain what she had expected of Durant, given the fact that his Tower looked as if it could have been built by perfectly normal architects, with its brick and stone face, its shorter, squatter size, and its unusual wall adornment. Her expectations, given the shape and size of his Tower and her prior experience with fieflords, had been mixed.

  He wasn’t Tara; he wasn’t dressed in gardening clothing, and his front yard hadn’t become a large vegetable-and-food garden. But Tara was the Tower; it was Tiamaris who was lord.

  Durant was not particularly tall—Severn was visibly taller—and not particularly striking; his face was round in shape, lacking the Barrani length and angularity. His beard was not the impressive beards of the Dragons who chose to grow them—if grow was even the right word. Had she met him on patrol, he might have blended in well with most of the citizens on her beat.

  But she would have given him a second look, or even a third. If he lacked Barrani slenderness, he also lacked the coldness, the reserve, the innate arrogance, with which the Barrani girded themselves. Even thinking this, her eyes flicked to Mandoran, whose eyes were a steady Barrani blue.

  She couldn’t pinpoint Durant’s age, but thought him a man in his midthirties, perhaps early forties; his hair had not yet grayed, but lines had worn themselves into the corners of his eyes. He wasn’t a small man, even given his average height, his hands square and solid, his eyes a pale brown. His eyelashes seemed absurdly full as they framed those eyes.

  “Do I pass muster?” he asked, as he held out a hand.

  She took it. Some people tightened their grip, as if handshakes were a gesture of dominance. Durant didn’t. Nor did he simply brush palms as if Kaylin were a possibly contagious disease or petty criminal.

  “Sorry,” she said, half meaning it. “You’re the first mortal fieflord I’ve met.”

  “You’ve met others?”

  She nodded. “Tiamaris, Nightshade, Candallar. I’ve seen Farlonne but haven’t really spoken to her.”

  “You’re taking a tour of the fiefs? You left the best for last?” He grinned.

  She matched it. Had she been on her own, she’d’ve been willing to risk his Tower.

  Hope squawked, with words in it. Too impulsive.

  Since she couldn’t speak to Hope without speaking, she ignored the comment. Durant, however, didn’t. His gaze moved off her face to the left of it, where Hope was standing. If Hope was being critical, he didn’t sense any immediate danger.

  “What is that?” Durant asked.

  “Her familiar.” It was Bellusdeo who replied. She placed a slight emphasis on the first word of the two-word sentence.

  This caused Durant’s grin to deepen. Marshalle, on the other hand, looked unamused. If Durant was at ease, Marshalle was not. Marshalle’s reaction made more sense: there was a gold Dragon, a giant, and a Barrani at the front gates. Durant didn’t seem to care.

  That, Kaylin thought, was why she would have noticed him on any street in the city: there was an ease in the way he occupied this street that spoke of confidence. He had no need to be thought of as a danger, as an important man, as a power. He might have been at home in any of the Hawk beats. She half thought the people in those beats would adapt to him, even if they were in the warrens.

  “You’ve met Tiamaris?” Durant asked, as he began to walk.

  Bellusdeo fell in on his left, Kaylin on his right. Mandoran, however, lagged slightly behind as he stared at the Durant Tower. Hope’s imperious squawk caused him to blink, shake himself, and follow.

  * * *

  “This is where the border zone was.” It was Marshalle who spoke. Durant had come to a halt. His eyes were slightly narrowed as he studied the street—a street that continued, unbroken and unobscured by the mist or fog that had previously characterized that zone.

  Bellusdeo nodded. “The fog has cleared from all of the areas known, in the fiefs, as the border zones.”

  “You’ve visited them all?”

  “Yes. Both before—shortly before—and after. The fog wasn’t visible in the same way from the air before the zone vanished.”

  “We discovered that the border zone affected individuals—or individual races—in different ways,” Kaylin added.

  This was news to Durant, or appeared to be.

  “Maggaron didn’t see the buildings we saw once we entered it; much of what he saw were buildings that conform to his size and his people.”

  “His people?”

  Clearly news traveled poorly between fiefs. “The Norranir. They arrived here from the ruins of another world—and it was a long walk.
They make their home on the Ravellon border in Tiamaris.”

  “Are they all as tall as he is?”

  “More or less. Not the children,” she added.

  “Some of the children are taller than the corporal.” Bellusdeo’s nod indicated which corporal. “You haven’t heard about them?”

  Durant shook his head.

  “And you knew about Candallar because you share a border with him?”

  He nodded again. “I would know if either Candallar or Farlonne fell.”

  “Had you met Candallar or Farlonne?”

  “Not directly, no.” He grinned again. “The fieflords tend to remain in their own territories. Acquisition of land means nothing in the fiefs; the borders are fixed and solid. Or they were.” His gaze once again returned to the nonexistent border zone.

  “Have you spoken to your Tower about the border zone—or its lack?”

  “Some.” It was a noncommittal answer. Fair enough.

  “How long have you held Durant?” Bellusdeo asked, the question casual.

  The lack of answer implied that the answer wasn’t. “Long enough,” the fieflord eventually said, when it was clear that the Dragon was waiting for an answer anyway. “The Academia is this way?”

  The Dragon nodded.

  Marshalle cleared her throat; Durant shook his head, a short no.

  “If it helps,” Kaylin said to the woman who seemed to be second in command here, “Nightshade has visited the Academia multiple times in the past week.”

  “Interesting. Do you know why?”

  Kaylin shrugged. “I think, at heart, he wants what the Academia offers. If he’d had a less Barrani life, he’d probably have made a good student.”

  “Student of what?”

  “The Academia,” Mandoran said, the word almost brusque for Mandoran.

  “I am now deeply curious. Please lead the way.”

  * * *

  He is concerned for me, Nightshade said as they walked. Durant was far quieter for the first two blocks; he observed the streets, the repair of the buildings, the state of the road. There was some calculation in the observation, but Kaylin expected that.