Cast in Conflict

by Michelle Sagara

  “Bellusdeo!”

  Her arms—or the marks across them—began to glow a blue that implied lightning in an otherwise clear sky. She raced across the shaking stone and saw, as she drew closer and closer to the Dragon’s side, that a glimmering of red, like cracks, had started between the scale’s plates, running down Bellusdeo’s side like bright blood.

  She had healed a resentful Dragon before.

  Her hands, palm out, reached for Bellusdeo’s side, and she was instantly lifted off the ground before she could make contact.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” a familiar voice shrieked in her ear.

  Mandoran had arrived.

  * * *

  She couldn’t see him. She could feel his hands, hear his voice; he was undeniably solid, just...invisible.

  “Listen to her!” she shouted, as Bellusdeo continued to roar. “We have to do something!”

  “Yes, we do—but not you.”

  “I’m Chosen, damn it—my marks are glowing! I can survive it!”

  “Personally I’d be willing to drop you, but Teela would murder me. And possibly the rest of the cohort.”

  “She can’t. Helen would never allow it.”

  “And as long as we can stay inside Helen for eternity, we’d be safe. But if we could do that, we wouldn’t have sent me here, and frankly, I resent the hell out of it.” He dropped Kaylin almost directly on top of Severn, who caught and braced her rather than getting out of the way.

  She still couldn’t see Mandoran.

  She could hear him, though. Because he roared. He roared at the top of his lungs, but his roar had syllables in it.

  “Was that native dragon?” she shouted at Emmerian.

  He nodded. His hands, which had been resting by his side, were now firmly clasped behind his back.

  “Can you see him?”

  He shook his head. “I can hear him,” he said softly. “If I did not know who—or what—he was, I would have mistaken him for a kinsman.”

  Bellusdeo, however, didn’t. She turned instantly in the direction the voice came from, her eyes blood red, her inner membranes down. Fire filled the empty air; a Mandoran shape didn’t emerge from the heat.

  “Seriously,” he shouted, from beneath a different part of the vaulted ceiling, “that’s the best you can do? Gust of hot air?”

  The next breath was hotter; Kaylin felt as if it should have singed her hair, and it was now pointing in a direction that didn’t include her.

  Bellusdeo crouched low; she reminded Kaylin, oddly, of a cat that had decided it had a solid chance of taking a bird out of the air from the ground. Mostly, this failed.

  Emmerian finally broke down, the stiff neutrality of his posture instantly realigning itself with the blurry mess of transformation; blue plates became blue scales. He didn’t immediately take to the air.

  “He’s not trying to hurt her!” Kaylin shouted.

  “I know.” His voice was lower, a rumble of sensation over words that Kaylin understood. “But she is trying to hurt him, and she’ll regret it forever if she manages to succeed.” He, too, bent into his knees, stretched his wings, or at least did something with them, and leaped into the air.

  * * *

  The blue dragon hit the gold dragon. The gold dragon was close enough to the ground to be thrown off course; she landed on all four feet and roared in rage. Emmerian roared back.

  So did Mandoran.

  Kaylin looked to Severn, breath held. He wasn’t worried.

  He’s right. She’ll regret it if she manages to hurt him in her frenzy.

  So it’s fine if she hurts Emmerian? Because that’s what’s going to happen.

  And we can prevent it how?

  They couldn’t. She poked Hope.

  I can interfere, Hope said, his voice eerily free of screech. But you will pay the price for the intervention. This is not something you could naturally do with greater effort or more time. It is something I could do—but not for free.

  Kaylin exhaled. She hadn’t been willing to make the sacrifices Hope would ask for—not even when it would have saved the lives of fellow Hawks. Hope understood this. She wondered if there would ever be a time when she would be so desperate, the sacrifices would seem a reasonable cost.

  She hoped not.

  And she understood, watching the Dragons she could see, and inferring the presence of Mandoran, who she couldn’t, that this was something Bellusdeo had to deal with. Somehow.

  You need to have more faith in the friends you have chosen.

  They don’t.

  Yes. It is much harder for some to have faith in themselves than it is to have faith in others. But that faith can be of critical import.

  Emmerian was driven back, into a pillar. The pillar cracked.

  Mandoran proved he hadn’t been injured. “Come on! You came all the way to the Tower to lose your temper and destroy it? What is wrong with you?” His words didn’t come from a single fixed location; parts of the sentence—the first parts—came from far too close to angry dragon, but the rest, from behind. Kaylin wished she could see him.

  Hope obligingly lifted one translucent wing. He didn’t even smack her across the face with it.

  Mandoran didn’t have wings. He looked, at this distance, like himself. But he appeared to be walking—to be leaping—on air, his feet touching nothing, his legs bunched to aid his momentum. She couldn’t see the color of his eyes at this distance, but could see his expression; he was concentrating, his brows slanting inward, his gaze bouncing around the room as if seeking the right spots on which to land—and instantly leap away.

  Emmerian couldn’t see him; he could see Emmerian. He didn’t consider Emmerian a threat.

  She wondered if this magic, this almost-flight, had been used by the Barrani in their wars with the Dragons; if it had, she had never heard of it. Maybe she’d just never listened.

  “Breathe,” Severn said, far more loudly than he usually did.

  She nodded. She knew the cohort had abilities that the normal Barrani—even Arcanists—didn’t. In this gigantic room, it was Mandoran she watched.

  Emmerian didn’t attack Bellusdeo. He shouted at her, just as Mandoran had, but made no attempt to hurt her; Kaylin wished Bellusdeo was half as aware of the harm her own actions might cause. The gold Dragon landed sideways against a different pillar. This one cracked as well. The ground was shaking with the reverberations of angry Dragon words. Kaylin looked down the hall, and then up, to the heights; she wasn’t certain the pillars would remain standing, and she didn’t know enough about architectural structure to accurately guess how many pillars the hall could lose before the ceiling came down on their heads.

  The three who were in an odd dance of not-quite-combat would survive. She and Severn might not.

  He nodded, although she hadn’t spoken a word, and began to head toward the arch that implied exit on the far side of a room that was three city blocks in length.

  But when the third column cracked, Mandoran shouted, “You’ll kill Kaylin if you keep this up!”

  Bellusdeo turned, then, her gaze finding the ground that Kaylin and Severn had only just deserted.

  Blood red eyes snapped shut as the largest person in the room came fully, and finally, to a halt.

  * * *

  Emmerian landed immediately, and shed the draconic form just as quickly; Mandoran, however, remained in the air, looking down. He met Kaylin’s gaze and nodded, but his expression remained strained; the cheeky grin that was so at home on his face it seemed permanent was nowhere in sight. He looked exhausted, to her eye—and no wonder. His eyes returned to Bellusdeo.

  The mortal form failed to emerge from the draconic one, but Bellusdeo’s eyes remained closed. “Lord Emmerian?” she said in Barrani, the words a rumble of sound that didn’t threaten to deafen people with normal ears. Or
Kaylin’s ears, at any rate.

  “I am uninjured,” Emmerian replied. “You?”

  Bellusdeo inhaled, a long, loud rasp of sound. Kaylin tensed—anyone who had seen a Dragon breathe fire would have—but the tension was unnecessary. What Bellusdeo exhaled was air and a small amount of smoke, normal when she was irritated.

  “I believe the room has been structurally impaired,” Emmerian continued, when she failed to speak. “If you feel it is safe to do so, we should leave this hall.”

  She nodded. She did not, however, resume her usual form.

  * * *

  The hall was easily wide enough and tall enough to support a Dragon walking down it. Emmerian chose to walk by Bellusdeo’s side; Kaylin and Severn were shunted to the rear. Bellusdeo clearly now felt that the Tower itself, or the intelligence behind it, was a threat; allowing the Hawks to serve as scouts was off the table. Kaylin’s attempt to put it back on the table was dismissed without a single word.

  She accepted it. She understood. Protecting people—no, protecting weaker people, which currently meant Kaylin—was something Bellusdeo could cling to; it was normal. It was the type of normal that often frustrated Kaylin, but not today. Today, she was almost willing to go full pathetic, just to help the gold Dragon cling to sanity.

  I would not suggest it. It was Nightshade.

  Did you see everything?

  No. But the area you are now in allows communication. I would guess it is entirely the prerogative of the Tower. Bellusdeo will know that you are acting, and she will find it insulting. Insulting a Dragon has never been wise.

  No kidding.

  She will take it very poorly if you express your current worry.

  I know that.

  He chuckled. You know it, yes. But you know other things as well, and they vie for dominance until one becomes expressed in action. I merely wish to add weight to what I believe the wise course of action to be.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to follow the Barrani idea of wisdom. Hope smacked her face before she could reply. Mandoran had finally landed. Not only had he landed, but when Hope lowered his wing, Kaylin could still see him.

  “You’re a reckless idiot,” Bellusdeo said, as she slowly pried her eyes open. They were orange with deep flecks of red in them. But...they were orange, which was as good a sign as could be hoped for.

  Mandoran shrugged. “How long have you known me?”

  “It feels like centuries.”

  Mandoran’s eyes were a midnight blue; they lightened slightly as he chuckled. “Right back at you. I’m always reckless, at least according to anyone who isn’t Terrano.”

  “Terrano doesn’t think you’re reckless?”

  “Mostly he thinks I’m timid; sometimes he thinks I’m a coward.”

  “Terrano is reckless,” Kaylin said.

  “He’s disagreeing. Sedarias still won’t give me permission to give you my True Name,” he added. “And it would have been hugely helpful, here.”

  Kaylin both agreed and disagreed. But Sedarias—and in this case probably a good number of the rest of the cohort—held far more influence than she did.

  She glanced at Bellusdeo. Mandoran had been part of the cohort for, realistically, all of his life. He’d known Bellusdeo for months. But...he understood her, and in the end, he’d risked his life to save her from herself.

  Bellusdeo knew it, as well. She made no further attempt to harm Mandoran, and Kaylin doubted she would. Whatever she needed to bring herself under control, she’d managed to find it. She was rigid and draconic; she was probably still struggling.

  But Kaylin had had days—even weeks—with that struggle. She’d once, when much younger, believed that people who didn’t lose their tempers just...didn’t have a temper. They didn’t get angry, because if they did, they’d be breaking things, too. She’d come to understand—probably because she spent so much time around people whose eye colors shifted with mood—that this was wrong.

  People did get angry.

  And they did lose their tempers—by which she meant, lose control of their own actions when rage was too intense. Sometimes it wasn’t a choice. But...most of the people she now knew understood that it should be. Bellusdeo understood it. And although it had been really, really hard when Kaylin had first encountered the Hawks, it was easier now. Not easy, but...easier.

  What hadn’t become any easier was the guilt. Kaylin’s terrible choices had destroyed lives—literally destroyed them—when her fear and her own desperate attempt to survive had been the only driving forces in her life. Bellusdeo’s mistakes had allowed a world to be destroyed.

  She was queen, or had been. The responsibility was therefore hers.

  Tara’s testing had invoked the worst of Kaylin’s guilt and self-loathing; she had no doubt at all that Karriamis’s testing—aimed at Bellusdeo—had done the same. And Kaylin could only barely accept her own dark past, her own guilt, her own responsibility. She could not imagine living under the weight of Bellusdeo’s.

  And yet, the Dragon shouldered it constantly.

  “Yes,” a disembodied—and unfamiliar—voice said. “That is the weight of rulership.”

  Kaylin turned; there was no physical accompaniment to the voice.

  “I should not have let you in,” the voice continued. “You are Chosen; your duties are already marked. You cannot captain a Tower, and in the past, the Towers would have been ridiculed for choosing to allow you to do so.”

  Kaylin was afraid, for one moment, that she would be ejected; she had no doubt that the Tower could do it.

  Hope, however, relaxed on her shoulder, which meant he either thought it unlikely, or thought it would be harmless. Physically, if one discounted extreme nausea, it probably would be. But Bellusdeo would still be here, and Kaylin didn’t want to desert her.

  “No,” the voice agreed. “But we can understand much of a person by the friends they choose. I will not force you to leave.”

  Bellusdeo’s eyes had darkened to a more normal red—and even thinking that caused Kaylin to cringe. If the gold Dragon had heard the voice that had spoken to Kaylin, there was no other sign.

  Mandoran’s eyes widened.

  “Is the Tower speaking to you?” Kaylin asked.

  He nodded.

  “Can you see something that serves as an Avatar?”

  “The whole damn Tower is an Avatar,” Mandoran replied. “Imagine what Helen would be like if Helen were a Dragon.”

  Imagination failed.

  “Come,” the voice said again. “I have seen enough that I am slightly curious. If you will forgive the manner of greeting, I would take tea with you.”

  Tea. With a Dragon. Kaylin swallowed and said, “We’d love to.”

  * * *

  The Tower’s Avatar did not emerge, but the voice had reminded her that she was in a sentient building, which meant her thoughts were being read and processed before she could properly hide them. Not that she had ever truly tried; she wondered how Nightshade or Teela managed it.

  “They can separate themselves from the immediacy of their thoughts,” the helpful voice replied. “It is not something that comes easily to one of your race, although your companion—ah, no, partner?—partner is more adept than his age would imply. He is, however, the only one trying at the moment.”

  “Lord Emmerian?”

  “No. He understands what I was, and what I am. He is not interested in putting out effort when he believes that effort to be, at best, futile, and at worst counter to his reasons for being here. And I believe your young Barrani friend feels the same.”

  Kaylin shook her head. “He’s not young, and he’s always like that.”

  “I see. He is Barrani, by appearance. And he has much in common with the race of his birth.”

  She nodded more carefully, suddenly remembering Castle Nightshade’s reaction to An
narion. Remembering it and wishing, viscerally, that they had somehow managed to leave Mandoran at home.

  “I am not Durandel of old,” the Tower replied. “It was always his way to kill first and investigate later—if he could be bothered to investigate at all. But he was both cunning and perceptive, especially with regards to Ravellon. If he considered your friend a danger, it is likely that he was.”

  “Danger to who? He wasn’t doing anything!”

  Severn coughed.

  “Danger to all who might be killed or corrupted by Ravellon. We are not as you are. Nor is Mandoran.”

  She stiffened further, but Mandoran shook his head.

  “I prefer to investigate first; it stops me from making the occasional mistake.”

  “And Durandel doesn’t care?”

  “If you destroy enough,” the Tower replied, “no one will ever know.”

  That didn’t make her feel any better. Mandoran, however, grinned. His skin color was off, and his eyes were too blue, but other than that he was normal. For Mandoran.

  They walked down the large hall, passed beneath an arch, and were suddenly outside.

  * * *

  Kaylin had experience with these shifts of reality when confined in a sentient building, but it was still jarring. What she’d seen while walking toward the arch was another hall, a continuation of stone and austerity. The moment her foot crossed over an invisible line that somehow signaled the end of the first hall, it came down on grass.

  Very short, very well-kept grass. There was a path of laid stones that wound its way through that grass, and Kaylin made haste to step on it instead. Only here did Bellusdeo finally surrender the draconic form, shrinking in place until she looked like a Warrior Queen of old, not the Dragon that the queen was tasked with defeating.

  They followed the path; the Tower offered no further words. At the end of the path was a large pavilion, and seated at a long table was an old man, with a beard that seemed to drape from chin to lap, folding a bit to cover his knees. He wore a crimson robe, but no tiara.