Cast in Conflict

by Michelle Sagara

  “You should not have come.”

  “No. If it’s possible to safely leave this place, we’re going to leave. But...Mandoran was being pulled here.”

  “It’s not my fault,” Mandoran said.

  “I didn’t say it was.”

  Bakkon coughed. It was much louder than Mandoran’s prior cough but had the same meaning.

  “Can you help us leave?”

  “No. If I leave, this space will collapse and everything in it will be lost. I have been asleep here, waiting, since the madness began.”

  “Will you be safe if we leave?”

  This was not the question he had been expecting. It was clearly not the question Mandoran had expected either. “I do not understand the question.”

  “We fell into your space. Into the library, I mean. And we need to leave it. I assume the doors lead out. But if we open the doors, will your library be at risk?”

  “The doors lead out of the library; they do not lead out of this space. I no longer know what you will find if you open the doors; they have not been opened since the fall.”

  “Why can’t you leave your space and come back to it? Starrante could.”

  “It is too complicated a question to answer; I would have to teach you much about my kin in order for you to understand it. And I do not wish to risk the whole of the collection. It is not mine—but it is my duty to preserve the knowledge here.”

  “What is the knowledge here?” Mandoran asked.

  The Wevaran lifted a leg and Mandoran fell off the wall, landing easily and gracefully on two feet.

  “Our history,” was the soft reply.

  “The history of the Wevaran?”

  “No—our history. You will not understand it. You will never live it. You will never see its like again.” Each word wavered. Kaylin had heard this before, as well, and it hit her far more strongly than the fear of spiders could.

  “We have to leave. Our allies are fighting the Shadows that have flown out of Ravellon.” This wasn’t strictly true, but she too felt she would have to explain far more for it to make sense. “We can’t stay here. You could come with us.”

  Mandoran grimaced but said nothing.

  “You could come with us, and you could visit Starrante.”

  “I cannot leave this place.” He disengaged his limbs, allowing Kaylin free motion once again. She was loath to remove her palms; the marks that now floated in front of her face—three in all—were still glowing. Something should be done here; she wasn’t certain what.

  Lifting a hand, she touched one of the three marks; felt its immediate weight as it lost buoyancy. The new mark on her palm became instantly heavy as well, as if the two words—old and new—were now interacting or merging to form a single whole.

  She didn’t know what either meant, but she could guess, given the Wevaran’s reaction to the new one. Somehow, the new mark encapsulated what she had heard—what she had tried to hear clearly. Her attempt to do so had brought her to this place.

  Kill me. Free me.

  As if death and freedom were the same thing. And she knew that one too well. On the day she had first entered the Hawklord’s Tower, they had had the exact same meaning to her: death was the only freedom she was allowed. There was no other way to escape from...herself.

  From the truth of what she had done and been. From the future that stretched out, endless, before her: more of the same. More killing. More failure. More death. If she had died as she had intended, she would have rid the world of one more ugly thing it didn’t need.

  And yet, death wasn’t what had awaited her there. Death wasn’t what she’d been offered. The horror that she had turned her life into was not the only life she could live; it was perhaps the first time she had truly seen that since she’d fled Nightshade.

  Her life had become more than pain and self-loathing. She had done everything she could—everything, no matter how resentfully—to walk a different path. To seek a different end. To live a life that had never seemed possible. It was a life she had wanted. A life she still didn’t believe—on the bad days—she deserved. She was arresting people who had done far less than she’d done in Barren.

  But she was grateful to the Hawklord. To the Hawks. To the life they had offered someone who didn’t deserve it. She was grateful to see the foundling hall, the midwives’ guild, the Leontine quarter. Even the Tha’alani.

  She knew that death was not the only freedom she was allowed.

  And she knew that death was the freedom that voice—thrumming through Mandoran’s body—wanted. Had she followed it, had she desperately listened for it, because of her personal experience? She wanted to tell whatever was whispering or shouting those words that there was another way. A better way. A different way.

  Harder, she thought, but better.

  As if he could hear what she did not put into words—and given her experience with people who built and owned the spaces they occupied, she thought he might—he said, “You are not the same. You are mortal, child. There is an end to you. There is an end to your words, your voice. There is an end to the words that you might speak with any truth or strength.”

  “And there’s no end for you.”

  “Not that way. Time itself is not an enemy. It is not a friend.” But speaking, he looked at the word she now carried in her hand.

  “Do you see it?” she asked, because she was now aware that others didn’t see what she saw when she looked at her marks.

  “I hear it,” was his quiet reply. “I hear what you are saying, even if you do not. I wish you had fallen through a different wall—and that is unlike me.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Is that really the question you should be asking?”

  Kaylin shrugged. “Probably not.” Most of the training she had received when it came to asking questions involved crimes, possible criminals, and general interrogation. “But I’m not sure how long this space will last.”

  “The instability is unusual,” Bakkon replied. “It will not last.” The entirety of the Wevaran’s body shook, as if he were a wet cat who had come in out of the rain. All of the many eyes closed as Kaylin withdrew.

  The mark, however, remained suspended in the air between them; the rest once again came to lie flat against her skin, their light dimming. She opened her hand to see that the new mark was also flattened against her right palm.

  “How important are these books to you?”

  “They are not more important than my life.”

  She thought of Starrante. And then of the Wevaran who comprised Liatt’s Tower. And last, of the baby spiders devouring each other. This time, it was Kaylin who shook, as if to clear her head.

  “Your life won’t be in danger if you stay?”

  “I do not think it matters,” was the thin reply. “Mandoran, I must ask you to refrain from touching the books.”

  “I wasn’t touching them. I was brushing off webs. Are you ready to go?” he added, in Elantran.

  “I don’t think we should leave him behind,” Kaylin replied in the same language.

  “If he’s like any other librarian you’ve ever met, I don’t see how you have a choice.”

  The Wevaran headed toward the books that Mandoran had been dusting, for want of a better word.

  “I think—if we can leave here at all—we can take him with us.”

  “I think that’s about as good an idea as enraging a Dragon.” Mandoran grimaced. “You’re worried because he was crying.”

  She nodded.

  “You don’t even know why he was crying. And no, I’m not asking him. Or her. And I’m not sure we can leave.”

  “I’m sure we can—the outcaste and his deformed Aerians did.”

  “You can’t fly.”

  This was true. “Candallar’s Tower let the Barrani carrying Spike pass throu
gh the border. He wasn’t flying, either.”

  “And that doesn’t make you more suspicious?”

  She exhaled. “It makes me worried, yes. But the Towers didn’t stop us from reaching the streets. I think, if we can return to those streets safely, we can make it out. I’m worried,” she added.

  “Which would be smart if you were worried about yourself. Or us, even.”

  “What if someone else gets hit by one of those spears?”

  “None of the cohort will. Not now.”

  “They’re not the only people there.”

  Bakkon cleared his throat. The sound was very loud. “Perhaps,” he said, in the Barrani neither Kaylin nor Mandoran were using, “you might have the rest of this discussion when someone who cannot understand it is not present. In my day—which clearly far precedes yours—it was considered rude to speak a language that all people present could not understand.” The ground shook beneath their feet, but Bakkon didn’t sound angry.

  Kaylin could see the mark that had detached itself from her body; it floated—very slowly—toward Bakkon.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Mandoran said—in Elantran.

  “As much as I ever do.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “Apologies for my terrible manners,” she then said, to the Wevaran, and in Barrani. “We were discussing the chance that we make it out of here alive. Ummm, what are you doing?”

  “I am gathering volumes of particular interest.” Which is what it looked like he was doing. He paused to spit a glob of webbing. From here, it looked almost opalescent. “There are books here that you will find nowhere else—not even in the vaunted library girded by the Academia.”

  Her heart, such as it was, sank. If he had simply pulled a couple of books off the shelves, she would have been fine—but if he intended Kaylin and Mandoran to carry these, they’d be staggering down streets heavily overburdened. Running would be out of the question. She opened her mouth. Closed it.

  “He doesn’t mean for us to carry those, does he?” Mandoran asked, in Elantran.

  “You could ask him,” she replied—in Barrani.

  The Wevaran began to move more quickly, scuttling up the sides of shelves to pluck a single book or two from the heights; he vanished around the corner without bothering to come back down to floor level.

  “What’s happening now?” Mandoran whispered.

  “I have no idea.” She glanced, once, at the word that had separated itself from her skin; it was growing in size. This, too, she had seen before—but not usually in someplace as physically solid, as real, as this.

  “There is no reason to shout,” Bakkon said, his voice carrying from wherever it was he had scuttled toward.

  “I was not shouting,” Kaylin said, raising her voice. “Bakkon—what are you doing?”

  “I am, as I said, collecting those books that are unique, now. I will not be long.”

  The ground shook again. This time, Kaylin could hear a steady, slow thump, as if the stone of the floor had been situated above a giant who intended to physically join them. She almost said, Can you hurry? but stopped the words from leaving her mouth. “Can we help?” she asked instead.

  “I highly doubt you can help with the collecting. You do not strike me as a scholar, and it is highly unlikely that you have spent enough time in libraries that you might immediately recognize those books that are singular. There is history in the knowledge, but I do not imagine you would, in the time you are allotted, gain enough knowledge to be of use in an emergency.”

  “Never mind. Can Mandoran help?”

  “I would rather he not touch the books. Some are delicate and some are...not books as you would understand them. He is, to my eyes, unstable; he could be injured, or the books might be damaged.” It was clear which of the two was the primary concern.

  Mandoran rolled his eyes but said nothing.

  * * *

  This continued for what felt like hours.

  But she was more concerned with the floor than the books or the librarian. The tremors had become much stronger, the floor buckling and cracking beneath her feet. Mandoran was no longer on the ground; Kaylin, impeded by gravity, had to struggle to remain standing. She eventually crouched.

  “Are you sure that’s wise?” Mandoran asked, as she pressed her hand—her left hand—against the stone.

  “Probably not. The stone is warm.”

  “I highly doubt it’s stone.”

  “Bakkon—we can’t carry half your library out the door, never mind down the streets.”

  “Of course not.”

  The words she said next were lost to the sudden sound of things hitting the floor. Many things. Kaylin rose and sprinted immediately in the direction of the sound. Mandoran followed, drifting above the stone she had said was warm.

  * * *

  Bakkon didn’t appear to be injured. Kaylin had assumed a book, stuck between too many other books, had caused the Wevaran to pull the contents of a shelf down.

  She was wrong.

  One book remained curled in the folds of a limb; the Wevaran threw it to Kaylin—or Mandoran, as they were both approaching from the same general direction. The volume flew over Kaylin’s head—she’d ducked instinctively; Mandoran caught it and staggered back, coming to ground to gain traction.

  She drew her knives.

  Standing on the other side of the Wevaran, between two very tall shelves that seemed to be bowing inward, was a Shadow.

  26

  The creature was not like the Ferals of Kaylin’s childhood. Ferals—like Barrani and apparently Aerians—could leave Ravellon to hunt in the streets of the fiefs that surrounded it and return.

  This creature was what Kaylin thought of as a one-off: it couldn’t breach the barriers erected by the Towers unless something was badly, badly wrong with the Tower itself.

  She was aware that a year ago—maybe less—she would have assumed that Bakkon and Starrante were pure Shadow. But even entities that couldn’t leave Ravellon on their own had surprised her: Gilbert. Spike.

  She tightened her grip on the daggers, moving toward Bakkon. Bakkon flicked a limb in her direction, holding it up so that it was almost in front of her face. She knew this was probably the same gesture, in a spider’s body, that she might make if she wanted people to stop moving—but she stiffened as the small claws that comprised fingers flexed in front of her face.

  Looking past those claws, she studied the Shadow from what she hoped was a safe distance. It wasn’t—but Bakkon was a living wall.

  Without thinking too much, Kaylin reached up and grasped those claws, surrendering the dagger in her left hand to do so. She wanted to tell the Wevaran to be careful, but didn’t. The advice was ludicrous on its surface; she had no idea what the Wevaran could do in battle, and the Wevaran’s knowledge of the creatures of Shadow was like an ocean compared to her puddle.

  “Do not get involved in this,” the Wevaran now said.

  She looked at the Shadow. She couldn’t see Gilbert in him. Couldn’t see Spike. What she saw was a large mass of darkness, Shadow roiling beneath invisible skin. Its feet were smoke and dark mist, colors sparkling within its moving folds.

  It had three eyes roughly positioned where a face might have been; in some ways it was less disturbing than the Wevaran. It had no discernible limbs, but even thinking that, she could see blobs extend from its middle. They appeared almost jelly-like.

  Bakkon lifted a second leg in Kaylin’s direction. In its claws, he held a small, pale bag. Kaylin blanched as it reached her; it was the color of his webbing. The Wevaran coughed; Kaylin thought it was an unsubtle nag. It wasn’t; he was spitting web in the forward direction.

  The jelly-limbs...burst.

  Dark liquid fanned out in a spray. Bakkon’s webbing caught it, preventing it from reaching his face or body. The fluid
flew in a circular arc, hitting the shelves to either side of the Wevaran’s webbing.

  The books began to dissolve. Kaylin grabbed the small sack from Bakkon’s back leg.

  “You must leave,” the Wevaran said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I am not your concern.”

  Mandoran reached out and grabbed Kaylin by the shoulder. “This is not the time to argue.”

  “He wants us to leave him—”

  “We stand no chance against that creature, and he knows it.”

  As books melted to the left and right of the Wevaran, she looked at the web he’d constructed. It was uneven, but the substance that had melted through books—and the shelves on which they sat—hadn’t hit Bakkon. Regardless, she wasn’t certain Bakkon could survive this either.

  Wasn’t certain that he wanted to survive.

  She had touched him with both hands; she had studied—briefly—the shape of his body, the composition of organs, had felt the beat of a heart, or hearts, and the movement of something that might be lungs. The Shadow had not apparently touched the Wevaran himself.

  You won’t survive this, she told him—because she could. She was connected to him by touch. It was the reason the Barrani considered healing an act of hostility.

  Bakkon clicked, spitting web as he did. The web was pale, a white-gray color. Starrante’s, by the end, had been pink.

  Do not worry about my survival, the Wevaran said, as the creature he faced elongated, and a new round of jelly-like limbs began to protrude from the column of its otherwise featureless body. Bakkon’s front legs moved so quickly they were a blur; it was the shape of the web that made clear that his limbs were moving.

  Come with us.

  I cannot leave this library. I cannot leave this space.

  It’ll destroy the books.

  Yes. If I cannot stop it. And I regret that. But I cannot leave the library—not with you.

  Why?

  Because I will become what they have become. I will become grief and rage and pain, absent will. I am not what they are—but I remember what they were, in ages past. This has been my sanctuary. It has been my cage. I should not have allowed you to enter.