Cast in Conflict

by Michelle Sagara

  “They’re not afraid of you, Sedarias. They haven’t been afraid of you for a long time. Afraid for you isn’t the same. Yes, I agree, they probably traded names because they thought you were a threat. And I know that one: you give the dangerous people what they want so they don’t notice you and you don’t die. But you’re always waiting for the moment you can flee.

  “Not fight: flee. And you know this. You can’t avoid knowing it. That’s what you’re afraid of: the flight. You’re afraid that they’ll leave because they’re not afraid anymore and they don’t need you.

  “You’re afraid that’s already what’s happening. Serralyn and Valliant. Mandoran.”

  17

  As she spoke the names, the members of the cohort who owned them appeared, just as Terrano had done. It was a calculated risk on her part; she knew, intellectually, that they weren’t physically here.

  Ah.

  That’s why Helen had had difficulty preserving Severn.

  “Yes, dear. You are here the way the cohort is here. You just don’t realize it. You are not part of them; you could not be here at all if you weren’t part of me.”

  Serralyn said, “I’d prefer not to sit on the ground, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Sedarias said nothing. Loudly.

  Serralyn exhaled and sat practically on top of Terrano. Valliant said nothing, but joined her; they’d sat this way in the dining room, admittedly with more pillows and a rug.

  Kaylin was surprised to see Teela, and by her expression, so was Sedarias. She was warier, but that made sense: Teela had killed her father, had taken her family line, and had obliterated its name. She wielded one of The Three. She had fought in the wars that had been the sole reason for their exile in the West March, wars the rest of the cohort hadn’t seen. She was a power. She was recognized as a power, even by the former An’Mellarionne. No one messed with An’Teela unless they had a death wish.

  She was what Sedarias saw herself as.

  Was there envy? Probably some. And that was the thing with the cohort: they saw and heard it all. There was no privacy, and they’d grown up together in such a way that privacy was almost foreign.

  Except for Teela.

  Sedarias met her gaze, held it, and did not tell her to sit on the floor. Kaylin scurried out of the chair she occupied because she wasn’t certain that Sedarias making a chair specifically for Teela wouldn’t cause problems for the rest of the cohort.

  Teela took the chair Kaylin had just vacated.

  “I did not mean to endanger Kaylin,” Sedarias said.

  “No. I know. So does Kaylin. If Kaylin weren’t so compulsive, there would have been no danger.” She spared Kaylin a side glare, but most of her attention remained focused on Sedarias. “I apologize for my absence; it took me a while to find a way in, and I had to have Helen’s aid—aid she was not immediately free to give me.”

  Kaylin said nothing much more quietly.

  “She was taking care of Severn, because someone brought him in here,” Terrano said.

  Kaylin was pretty certain Teela already knew this. She really wanted to kick him, though.

  “Please do,” Sedarias said. “It will save me the trouble.”

  “We’d welcome being kicked,” Terrano shot back, “compared to what’s been happening for the last several hours.”

  Mandoran had taken a seat beside Terrano, and he nodded, but said very little. If Terrano accepted this as business as usual, Mandoran didn’t.

  Neither did Teela.

  “This is where you need to be,” Teela said softly. “Not the rock and the remnants of a battlefield. You must see that.”

  Sedarias said nothing.

  “I didn’t grow up with you,” Teela continued. “Perhaps that’s why I can see it more clearly. I did not give you my name out of fear. I was not afraid of you, then. I am not afraid of you now. You might believe it’s because of what I’ve achieved in the interim, when you all went on without me and I could no longer hear your voices, even if I knew you were still alive.

  “You would be wrong. I did not have Mellarionne. I had my mother’s family, considered irrelevant and insignificant in the High Court of the time. They were not my father’s family; they were not Mellarionne. My father would have approved of—did approve of—Mellarionne. He was wary, of course, but he considered them powerful and therefore worthy of respect.

  “I did not believe that you could control me. I did not give you my name because of that fear. I did not believe you could kill me—although we must be grateful that was never put to the test.

  “I cannot speak for the others.”

  “You can.”

  “I can’t. You know what they remember. You know what they felt. But what I have discovered about memory is this: it is selective. If we truly look, we can see the truth, but we revisit the memories that we choose to visit.

  “You remember the fear. But you remember it in a slanted fashion. I was not afraid of you.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because I wanted hope,” Teela replied. “I wanted to believe it was possible to trust others of my kind. I wanted to choose a future that my father would never have chosen for me. It was a pathetic act of defiance.” She looked around the table, met Terrano’s gaze and nodded.

  All of the cohort materialized. Annarion. Allaron. Torrisant, Fallessian, Karian. Last came the physically distant Eddorian.

  “I was afraid,” Serralyn admitted, although her expression was far too sunny to contain fear now. “I haven’t been afraid of you for centuries. I admit I’m a bit afraid of this, but that’s because I’m sane.”

  Sedarias turned toward her, and then, at last, toward Mandoran.

  Kaylin realized they had all spoken out loud. All of them. “Teela came back for you,” she said quietly. “She had everything she was supposed to want—everything you’ve said you wanted—but she came back.”

  “You’ve never tried to use our names against us,” Serralyn continued, when Sedarias remained silent. “Until now.”

  Kaylin closed her eyes. Closed them, and then forced them open again. It was wrong. It was wrong on every level. But Sedarias wasn’t trying to do that now. She offered no defense. She offered nothing.

  No, Kaylin thought, they were still in this odd garden and not on the plane of stone and rock.

  “It must be hard,” Kaylin finally said. All of the cohort turned toward her. “There are days when I hate my job. Days when I want to strangle my coworkers or scream at Marcus. There are days when I want the midwives’ guild to just leave me alone and let me sleep.”

  Sedarias raised a brow.

  “I can keep all of that to myself. I don’t have to act on any of it. What defines me isn’t how I feel on those days. It’s what I choose to do. Emotions aren’t a choice. They’re emotion. They’re a response. Maybe I’m hungry. Maybe I’m exhausted. Maybe I’m angry at myself because I made a stupid mistake and other people are going to suffer for it.

  “I have privacy. None of you do. You’re more like the Tha’alani in that regard. But the Tha’alani were raised—from birth—to seek the Tha’alaan. To trust it, to find comfort from it, and to seek knowledge in it. Not to own it. There is no chance that they’ll leave it. No chance that it will leave them.”

  “They don’t have any choice,” Sedarias said, but her voice was a whisper.

  “Neither do any of you. There’s no way to let go of a name. If there was, I’d’ve done it. I asked. If I can’t kill the person in question, we’re bound for life.”

  “Do you think they’d all be here—” they, not we “—if they had any choice? You’ve seen what I’m like. You know what I’m like. You know—she just told you—what I tried to do.”

  Kaylin exhaled again. It felt like all she did was exhale here. “Severn tried to take control of me.”

  The silen
ce that fell in response to those words was almost the entire reason she had never, ever mentioned it to anyone but Helen—Helen, who wouldn’t judge Severn by anything but Severn himself.

  Teela’s eyes were blue, but they hadn’t descended into midnight. “Why?” The word was a demand, a command.

  “He wanted to stop me from doing something he was certain would kill me.”

  “Was he right?”

  “I don’t know. I understand a bit more about myself and my marks and the way I move through the world now. It was instinctive—it was like grabbing my shoulder or arm to pull me back or keep me still.”

  “They aren’t the same thing at all—as you well know.”

  “He couldn’t reach my arm or shoulder—he wasn’t there.” She looked down a moment, remembering. When she lifted her chin she said, “He was angry at himself for weeks. He avoided me for weeks after. Because he’d thought to manipulate me. It wasn’t me he was angry at. He didn’t try to justify it.

  “I knew why he’d tried. I think I’d have done the same thing, if our positions were reversed and he wasn’t listening.”

  “I don’t,” Mandoran said.

  “Yeah, me either.” That was Terrano.

  “I think she might have,” Serralyn chimed in.

  “Don’t look at me.” This was Eddorian. “I’ll just say that I’m really appreciating Alsanis at the moment.”

  Sedarias looked to Teela.

  “Kaylin is just idealistic enough, just determined enough, that if she were panicking she might. But I doubt it. You said Severn tried.”

  Kaylin nodded.

  “Did he succeed?”

  “No, he stopped. He stopped himself. But...we both knew.”

  “And you were not angry.” Teela had chosen to speak in Barrani, unlike the rest of her cohort.

  “No—why would I be? I understood why he did it. He was angrier—at himself—than I was.”

  Teela then turned to Sedarias, and as one, they all did. “You are afraid of many things. Becoming your monstrous brother was—no, is—one of them. He would not have hesitated. Had he been in your position, either you or Mandoran would now be enslaved. Mandoran would likely otherwise be dead. You fear many things.

  “So did I. But—we were taught to fear, in the end. We were taught that there was only one way to be fearless. Power. And even that was defined very, very narrowly. My father killed my mother.”

  They knew.

  “I will not become my father, but I am afraid to become my mother, as well. It is why I will never have either spouse or children.”

  Kaylin had never heard this before. “There’s no way you could become either your father or your mother, now.”

  Teela lifted a hand, palm flat, in Kaylin’s direction. “I think it is past time for you to leave.”

  “I vote against,” Mandoran said.

  Both Sedarias and Teela turned to glare at him.

  “...but she could try harder to stay on topic.”

  Terrano snickered, and Kaylin understood that the storm that had been Sedarias had passed. It had quieted.

  “It is not quiet enough, dear, but yes, you are right.”

  “It’s never going to be enough, though,” Kaylin told Helen. “I didn’t really think about it, but: this is all inside all of them. What happens here—it can be unpleasant or terrifying—but...” She stopped, because in answering Helen she had drawn the attention of the cohort. She reddened.

  “You accept things from each other that I would never accept from other people. If someone tried to kill me on a battlefield, I’d assume that person hated me. Or wanted me dead. I’d assume one thing, one motivation. But if I daydream about strangling Marcus, I accept it because everyone does that on his bad hair days. I mean, everyone. No one says it. No one has to say it.

  “But—you have to accept it. Because you’re on the inside of each other’s thoughts all the time.” She turned to Terrano. “It’s why you weren’t surprised, just exhausted.”

  He winced but nodded.

  “Look,” she said, to Sedarias, “I understand your fears. All of them. I’ve had them. I get it. But: they know you. You can’t tell yourself if they knew what I was really like, they’d hate me, because they do know what you’re really like. They’ve known it for centuries. For practically ever.

  “They’re not trying to escape you.”

  “Serralyn and Valliant—”

  “Serralyn was born for the Academia. You can’t not know that. Valliant isn’t as obvious, but my guess is he wants what the Academia offers as well. You didn’t rage at Eddorian when he chose to remain with Alsanis and his brother.”

  “Oh, she did,” Eddorian said.

  “Fine. You raged at Eddorian. But you didn’t try to force him to come to Elantra.”

  “No. She didn’t try to force Annarion and Mandoran to wait, either.”

  “I wanted information,” Sedarias snapped. “They were coming to Elantra. They’d be in reach of the High Halls.”

  Allaron said, gently, “You accepted that as the silver lining. But you didn’t want them to leave until we were all ready, either. Not really.”

  The wind began to move.

  Terrano rolled his eyes, but his jaw tightened.

  “I was right,” Sedarias said, voice low. “I was right.”

  The wind increased in strength; the trees above their heads began to lose leaves. Without thought, Kaylin stepped forward and caught Sedarias by the arm, her own arms glowing a brilliant blue. “Cut it out. Cut it out right now.

  “You were wrong. I mean, I wish you’d succeeded—I lost friends and compatriots to the Barrani Ancestors when they attacked the High Halls. Even Bellusdeo was badly injured. But you were wrong. They don’t love you less because Annarion came for Nightshade. You knew he would because you know Annarion as well as he knows you. Mandoran only came to keep an eye on Annarion and to back him up if it was necessary.

  “You don’t want the Tower because the Tower protects the rest of the world; you want it because it’s another place you think you can build safety in. You want it because all of you would live there, not here. And there’d be no Bellusdeo there, no me, no Helen—no outsiders, nothing to disturb the family you’ve built.”

  “It’s not family.”

  “To me, in every way that matters, it is. But you don’t need the Tower for that. I don’t know what your argument with Mandoran was. I can guess but I don’t know for certain.”

  “He tried to commit suicide by Dragon,” Terrano then said.

  “He did not. He tried to protect the Dragon from herself. It’s something we all need from time to time—ask Teela about me. No, ask her when I’m not here. Someone like you really needs it. When you can’t completely control the impulse or the anger, having people who love you who can remind you of the truth is a gift. It’s a gift most of us don’t have, or never had.”

  “It’s only a gift if she listens,” Terrano muttered.

  Sedarias stood. “I have had almost enough of you.”

  His grin would have melted ice. He walked straight to where she was shaking, her eyes midnight blue. Ah. Blue. They were blue again. Before she could say anything else, he wrapped his arms around her. “I missed you,” he said, voice soft but still audible. “I missed this. I missed all of it. But I came back because I was worried.”

  “That I would harm everyone else.”

  “That you’d do everything you possibly could to isolate yourself.”

  “I’m not—”

  “You are. You think you’re holding on—but you drive people away by holding on too tightly. We know it. And we know you’d die for us.”

  “I would not be so ineffectual as to die. Dying is for our enemies.”

  “We are never going to be your enemies.”

  Mandoran’s sho
ulders relaxed, but he gritted his teeth as he gazed at the sky. “None of us are afraid you’re going to abandon us for Mellarionne.”

  Sedarias’s head whipped around to glare. “No one sane would abandon anyone for Mellarionne!”

  “But...you want it. You know it’s a risk, and you’re willing to risk everything to take it. To prove something to dead people.”

  Kaylin exhaled. There went peace.

  “Yes, dear,” Helen said softly. “But that is the nature of the cohort. I think it is time you left. Why do you think Mandoran understood the true danger to Bellusdeo? He is an independent person who is nonetheless part of Sedarias. The cost to Bellusdeo would be the same as the price Sedarias, unleashed and enraged, would later pay.

  “Come.”

  * * *

  “That was well done,” she said, as she led Kaylin to the door that had disappeared when she’d entered it. “I am sorry I could not speak; I did not have time to warn you not to take Severn with you.”

  Severn would have listened.

  “Yes. You are not happy.”

  “I just—” Kaylin exhaled. “I remember when I was afraid of how the existence of, the freedom of, the cohort would affect me. I mean—would affect Teela. She’s an important friend. One of my first friends here. I understand Sedarias’s fear. And...I don’t really like it when I look at it from the outside.”

  “No. But you don’t feel like that now.”

  Kaylin snorted. “No. Now I’m just worried about what the cohort will do, period. I was afraid Teela would have less time to—to think about me.” She shook her head. “Sedarias is afraid of the same thing. But I had my mother. I don’t know what Sedarias’s mother was like. I don’t know if she survived, or if her father killed her—or, given her brothers and sisters, someone else in her family did.

  “And I don’t really want to know. But Mandoran likes Bellusdeo—and Bellusdeo has had a really hard life.”

  “It’s not a competition.”

  “No, I know. But I think Mandoran’s been important to Bellusdeo. I mean, she’d never say that; she’d probably die first. But...”