Cast in Conflict

by Michelle Sagara

  “I think that’s a qualified yes,” Bellusdeo said, joining Kaylin although she kept her hands to herself. “There,” she added. A cave mouth emerged from the rock face.

  “You brought light?” Kaylin asked Severn.

  The gold Dragon snorted. “I can light the way. You can, as well, and it’s good practice.”

  “I can’t consistently—”

  “The marks of the Chosen. But that shouldn’t be necessary while either I or Emmerian is here.” She stepped past Kaylin.

  Emmerian cleared his throat, a rumble of sound. Nothing Dragons verbalized was ever subtle.

  “You are not here as my guard,” Bellusdeo said stiffly, without looking back.

  “No. I believe the two Hawks are. The Emperor’s Imperial Guard is, with a single exception, comprised entirely of mortals. Allow Lords Kaylin and Severn to scout. It is the duty they’ve been given.”

  “We are not at war. Scouts are not required.”

  “We are always at war,” was the very soft reply.

  Her exhalation was smokeless. Kaylin felt her shoulders inch down her back. “Yes,” the gold Dragon said. “You are right. Hope, I will eat you if anything bad happens to her.”

  Hope sat up—slowly and somewhat reluctantly—and squawked a reply.

  “You know how it goes,” Kaylin whispered. “The only person who’s not allowed to worry about her friends is me.”

  “I heard that. And you are allowed to worry as you please—you’re just not allowed to make it our problem.”

  * * *

  The mouth of the cave was one and a half people wide—if you were Kaylin-sized, and most of the people present weren’t. Mandoran hadn’t drifted down from the heights, either—but he didn’t care if she worried about him.

  “We’re going to need light.” She glanced over her shoulder—the one Hope wasn’t snickering on. Having received Emmerian’s support for scouting, she didn’t want to go back to Bellusdeo and ask her to create magical light. Not when—as the Dragon had pointed out—she could provide illumination on her own. Grimacing, she rolled up one sleeve and stared at her arm.

  The marks that adorned it began to glow. The glow was gold, but the edges of each runic mark were blue, and this time, they didn’t all emerge from her skin to rotate in a pattern around the forearm. She touched the one that looked the most familiar, and it rose, shedding light. She felt its weight as if she were carrying actual gold.

  The mark’s light illuminated curved, roughened cave walls. As it did, the walls transformed, bumps and cracks flattening as if in response to the word Kaylin carried, until they were standing in a regular stone hall, with a taller than necessary ceiling, no obvious windows, and no doors. She couldn’t see the end of the hall and hoped that a door might exist once they reached it.

  Ten yards into the cave that had become hall, she felt a wave of dizziness; it was met in the other direction by a wave of nausea.

  “Are you all right?”

  “This...is a portal passage,” she told him. “I apologize in advance.”

  “I’ll try to stand back if you feel the need to lose lunch.”

  She shook her head, and instantly regretted the motion. “Go get the Dragons and Mandoran if he’s joined them. This is the portal. If they can see and enter the cave, we’re in.”

  * * *

  Kaylin was green and queasy by the time she managed to drag herself to the expected door at the end of the hall. She had managed not to lose her lunch and would have considered that a win if her stomach wasn’t trying hard to even the score in round two.

  “Next time,” Bellusdeo said, looking in Kaylin’s direction, “we are flying to the top of the cliff.”

  Mandoran had not returned.

  “I’m not sure that would make much difference.”

  “You don’t have this problem with Tara.”

  “No. But I have it every single time I’ve ever visited Nightshade’s castle. Tara is taking a risk by skipping the portal part of entry. She’s leaving herself open just to accommodate my stupid magic allergy. Clearly the Tower formerly captained by Candallar isn’t as kind.”

  “Foolish is the word you want,” Bellusdeo replied.

  “I don’t consider it foolish.”

  “You should—she is taking a risk that no Tower should willingly take, except at the command of its captain, and I am absolutely certain that this was not done at Tiamaris’s command.”

  So was Kaylin. “There are a lot of ways to be more secure. Most of them are illegal.”

  “Tiamaris—as are all fiefs—is considered a sovereign state. He gets to make the rules.”

  “If he were the type of lord to be neglectful, like Nightshade or Candallar, I don’t think Tara would have accepted him.”

  “Why not? You’ve said she was desperate. And lonely.”

  “Because she’d already suffered the loss of a lord who just lost interest and wandered away? I don’t think she was looking to repeat the same mistake. And Tiamaris...”

  “Yes?”

  “She’s his hoard, as you well know.”

  “You think that’s what she needed?”

  “I think she knows how Dragons feel about their hoard—but he didn’t seem insane and destructive about it. She didn’t have a lot of time to make the decision. What he wanted, she wanted to give. Or to be given.”

  “She wasn’t a Dragon.”

  “No, and Karriamis was. Or is. You want me to open the door?” she asked of Severn.

  “No. It’s warded.”

  “I don’t see a ward.”

  Silence.

  “Bellusdeo? Emmerian?”

  “I see a door ward,” Bellusdeo said. Emmerian nodded.

  Great. This was not the ideal start to their first visit to a Tower. She turned to Severn, who nodded; she then borrowed his eyes, or at least his vision, through the True Name bond. The True Name that Kaylin shouldn’t have had, because she was mortal and mortals could live perfectly fine without them.

  There was a ward on the door, at the height of Kaylin’s head. Or rather, there was a mark on the door that would—on normal but more expensive Elantran doors—have been a door ward. It was strangely shaped; it didn’t bear the usual structural form of the marks that adorned over half her skin.

  “I don’t think the ward is a word,” she finally said.

  “It is,” Emmerian replied. He glanced at Bellusdeo, who was frowning. After a pause, she nodded. Kaylin hadn’t known that Dragons even had a written language; none of the official documents were written in it. Imperial documents were Barrani all the tedious, long-winded way down.

  “Writing was not something actively pursued except by the dedicated or the obsessed,” Bellusdeo added. “It is not necessary for a race with almost perfect memory, and it would not hone our ability to fight. But...I recognize it.”

  “Do you know what it means?” Kaylin asked.

  Bellusdeo shook her head slowly, as if reluctant to expose ignorance in this place. Emmerian said, “It means flight.”

  “Like—flying, flight?”

  “Yes.”

  “But weren’t your military units called flights?”

  “Yes, in Barrani.”

  “Was it used on doors?”

  “The Aerie had very few doors,” he replied. “But some arches had been constructed, and this was the keystone to one.”

  “And if there was no written language, how did the Arkon—the chancellor—ever come to be what he was?”

  “There was a written language. My greatest pity at the moment is reserved for Sanabalis, who must now learn the parts of it he did not learn in his youth. And no, Lord Kaylin, I did not learn it, either. I was young, strong, healthy, and there was a war. But this particular word was used in the presence of those of us who could both fly and walk as you no
rmally walk. It was above arches that were meant for people our current size to pass through.”

  “Did they have a different word for those who couldn’t?”

  “Children. If it helps,” he added, at her expression, “Bellusdeo would not have been allowed through that particular arch.”

  “I was.”

  “Passing through it doesn’t imply permission. Your test was different.”

  “It wasn’t a test.”

  “No? Perhaps not in your Aerie. In ours it was a declaration of adulthood: we found, for ourselves, the duality of name that defines us as adults, and we did not lose that knowledge. The one side did not overwhelm the other. Only those who could transform could fit beneath the arch.”

  Meaning males. Females could have walked beneath the arch from birth. “So...you think this is meant for you two? For Dragons?”

  Emmerian nodded.

  “Then why can Severn see it?”

  “That is a reasonable question; I cannot answer it. The ward, such as it is, is meant for us.”

  “For you,” Bellusdeo replied.

  “Us. I have no intention of becoming the Tower’s lord; I have sworn my oaths of allegiance, and I will not break them for anything less than the hoard I have not yet found.”

  “The Tower could not expect that all Dragons seeing this would understand it.”

  “The former Arkon couldn’t expect that either. You will note it never stopped him.”

  Bellusdeo’s grin was brief, but genuine. “I don’t think that’s what he expected from me.” She spoke Elantran.

  “No, and not for the reasons that occupy others,” he continued in Barrani.

  “If I had to guess,” Kaylin said, almost sorry to interrupt them, because what Emmerian had said was important with regards to Bellusdeo, “I’d say if this is a door ward, it’s meant for Emmerian to open.”

  13

  Emmerian considered this, and nodded. He stepped forward, an odd shadow of a smile on his lips, and placed his left palm across the ward, the gesture almost possessive, as if he were claiming it for himself.

  The door didn’t open; it vanished, fading from sight beneath Emmerian’s palm.

  It was therefore Emmerian who led the way in. If Bellusdeo resented this, it didn’t show. Hope squawked loudly, his screechy, almost birdlike tone filling the room beyond the door. It was a very, very tall, very wide hall, and it reminded Kaylin of the High Halls in its construction, except for one thing: while the floors, ceilings, and pillars were stone, they appeared to be made from a single piece; there were no seams, nothing that implied this had been built by people who had to rely on experience and tools.

  The superficial resemblance to the High Halls ended; although pillars supported the vaulted ceilings above, there were no statues, no paintings, no tapestries, on any of the walls. There was an arch, not a door, at the far end—which she had to squint to see, the room was so vast. She had walked beats smaller in her time as a Hawk.

  “One could fly in this room,” Bellusdeo said softly.

  Emmerian nodded. “The door ward implies it.”

  “And simultaneously implies the inverse: one can, but should not.”

  Hope’s squawking had taken figurative wing, and now rebounded off uncarpeted stone, from floor to ceiling. If the Tower could hear and understand Kaylin’s familiar, it gave no sign.

  “Hello?” she said, joining what she hoped was her familiar’s attempt to greet or otherwise converse with the core of the Tower.

  Emmerian added Barrani words of greeting.

  Bellusdeo, however, added draconic. Her voice was loud enough to cause tremors in the floor on which they all stood.

  None of these attempts reached the Tower. Kaylin didn’t think the Tower was like Killianas; it wasn’t so shuttered or injured that it couldn’t, or didn’t, hear. The door ward had been placed; the cave and the tunnel leading to it had been created as unspoken permission to enter.

  Or to risk entering.

  Tiamaris had, long ago, said something about visiting the Towers; he didn’t consider survival—in the absence of a neutral lord—to be guaranteed.

  Tiamaris’s Tower had had no lord. And...Tara was not the Tower’s name. She had had a name. She had forgotten it. And she had offered Kaylin the opportunity to give her a name that real people would use. Not that Tiamaris wasn’t a real person—but he was lord, not citizen. He was not what Kaylin had once been.

  The Tower had reminded Kaylin of every wrong she had ever committed in the fief of Barren. Every wrong, every mistake she couldn’t fix, every death she couldn’t atone for. She bowed her head.

  Bowed her head and lifted it.

  It was true. It was all true, just as it had been when Tara had pushed her. But there were other truths, and she had chosen to live by them, no matter how difficult it became. She hated to be judged, it was true—but the judgment that mattered here, if one didn’t include fire-breathing Emperors or Leontine sergeants, was hers. And the only thing she had offered it, and could offer it now, was never again.

  She wondered if either Emmerian or Bellusdeo were now experiencing what she had experienced her first time in Tara.

  Bellusdeo roared; Kaylin wasn’t given enough time to cover her ears, given proximity and the silence the Dragon broke. She roared again, and this time, she began to transform in a hall that was large enough she could.

  Emmerian, however, did not. He was grim, his eyes a steady, darkening orange. Whatever Bellusdeo had heard, he had heard, but he let her take the lead. Kaylin thought he might let her take the lead for the rest of eternity, his involvement in the household argument an error he was determined never to repeat.

  She couldn’t tell if Bellusdeo had been threatened; she could tell the Dragon was angry; her eyes were red.

  Red, Kaylin realized, with growing horror, and weeping.

  It was the answer to the question she’d been way too smart to ask out loud. Yes. At least one person present was being tested and prodded. She liked it no more than Kaylin had. But Kaylin’s anger wasn’t a Dragon’s anger, or rather, the outcome of the two angers differed. Dragons could cause a lot of damage when they went on the rampage. Maybe that’s the reason there was no art in this room. Just the pillars themselves, standing between floor and ceiling.

  Kaylin looked to Emmerian; he hadn’t taken his eyes off Bellusdeo, but his lips were a compressed, white line.

  Severn kept his distance as well.

  Kaylin poked her familiar, who squawked softly. It is her choice, he said. She will endure.

  “I don’t want her to have to face this alone.”

  You did.

  “I wasn’t alone.”

  She is not alone in the same way you were not. I do not understand. The Towers test. As did I.

  “You didn’t.”

  He squawked in frustration. I did. The Tower will do the same.

  “Tara did this to me, and she didn’t want me as lord. And not because I failed her tests; I didn’t. There was no point to it, in the end.” Lifting her face, she glared at the ceiling. “Are you listening, Karriamis? This is pointless—it’s just proof you can cause pain. You’re a Tower; you’re a sentient building. We already know.”

  Emmerian placed a gentle hand on Kaylin’s shoulder.

  “You can’t think this is right?”

  “It is not a matter of right or wrong,” was his soft reply. “You know the generalities of the war she fought—and lost. If you pause to think, you will understand many of the probable events and consequences. You know that that war and its loss affect her daily.

  “But the choice you made in the High Halls, Bellusdeo could not have made, not then. You believe that she is right for the Tower because of her dedication to fighting this war—continuing this war—with Ravellon. But think: Candallar’s Tower allowed a shadow to be
removed from Ravellon. Candallar’s Tower, if I understand the chancellor’s view correctly, preserved the Academia—and there were risks in that. It was an outlay of power that was not turned toward, devoted to, its reason for creation.

  “Were I Karriamis, I would need to know what I believe he is attempting to learn.”

  “And what would you do with what you think he’s learning?”

  Emmerian shook his head. “You cannot hear him. You can’t help but hear her, but you can’t understand what she is saying.” His eyes were a dark, dark orange, but he had lifted his inner eye membrane to mute the color. To Kaylin’s lasting surprise, he turned to Severn. “It is not as easy as you make it look.”

  Severn’s lips tightened in a grimace.

  “What? What’s not as easy?”

  “Staying at a distance,” Emmerian replied. “Allowing the pain to infect and influence someone that you care about.”

  She blinked. “That you care about? Is that what you just said?”

  He failed to reply.

  You heard him. This is a good time to pretend you didn’t, Severn said.

  Kaylin shook Emmerian’s hand off. “We can’t just let her—” The words, the rest of the words, were lost to the sound of Bellusdeo’s voice as it cracked. The Dragon screamed.

  * * *

  Maybe, Kaylin thought, as she practically knocked the much heavier Emmerian off his feet in her haste to cross the room, they were right. Severn. Emmerian. Maybe this was a test that Bellusdeo had to pass on her own.

  But she couldn’t just ignore her. Not when the pain in the strained, loud cry was so obvious. Kaylin was certain that nothing physical could cause the Dragon to scream like this.

  And what are you going to say? Hope squawked, in clear agreement with Severn and Emmerian.

  Something is better than nothing, she replied, and shoved him off her shoulder. He held on by virtue of claws now digging through cloth into her collarbone.