Cast in Conflict

by Michelle Sagara

“Half the time, I agree with that impulse.”

  Mandoran rolled his eyes.

  “The war is important to me. Your war is important to you. Where I can, I will aid you. And you—all of you—will have a home here if you need it. I can’t offer more than that.”

  Sedarias exhaled slowly. She closed her eyes. Nodded.

  “You don’t have any say in this?” Mandoran asked Karriamis.

  “Not apparently.” He did not seem displeased.

  “I would like to return to Helen,” Sedarias said. “We should tell her that Kaylin has—yet again—survived. But we would all like to visit, even those of us who are currently resident in the Academia. Would that be acceptable?”

  “More than acceptable. I will have to return to Helen myself—but not today.”

  Sedarias smiled, then. “I didn’t ask,” she said, in Elantran.

  Bellusdeo matched her smile and her language. “I guessed.”

  EPILOGUE

  It was dark by the time Kaylin made her way home. She didn’t arrive alone; the cohort—those who still remained beneath Helen’s roof—accompanied her, as did Severn and Emmerian.

  The cohort was mostly silent. In fact, so were Severn and Emmerian; she could think of funereal marches that had been more lively. If the cohort didn’t have their True Name bonds, she was certain the walk would have been louder, and decided, given their expressions, that silent had advantages.

  Severn didn’t return all the way to Helen; he peeled off toward his own apartment. Kaylin was almost tempted to follow—but if the conflict between the various members of the cohort got out of hand, she wanted to be with Helen. Hope, having intervened as much as he felt he was allowed, was now sprawling across her shoulders like a dishrag.

  You’re worried about Emmerian, Severn said.

  Just a little. I don’t understand why he didn’t stay with Bellusdeo and Karriamis. Karriamis seemed to expect it.

  Did Bellusdeo?

  She didn’t know. She could understand why the cohort felt no pressing desire—or even interest—in remaining beyond the time a celebratory meal demanded. And Karriamis had shown himself equal to Helen in hospitality—when he chose to offer it. But Bellusdeo was pale, Emmerian was pale, and Mandoran actually looked exhausted.

  In fact, the only two people in that Tower who had seemed cheerful were Karriamis and Bakkon. They chittered and roared and spoke Barrani, switching seamlessly between the three languages depending on whom they were addressing, and Karriamis even left them all alone to take Bakkon on a tour of something or other. Since Towers could alter their interiors at will, Kaylin considered this symbolic. At best.

  She thought Bellusdeo was the one who should be given a tour, but Bellusdeo was decidedly uninterested in doing so.

  “I’ll have to come back for Maggaron,” the gold Dragon said. “I have one or two things I would like to bring with me—but very few.”

  “You’ve got the court dresses.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay with all this?”

  “No matter how blighted my childhood, no matter how unnatural my coming of age, I am a Dragon. The moment I accepted the responsibility of the Tower—for whatever reasons—it became mine. I could not be here if I hadn’t accepted it.”

  “That’s not what she means and you know it,” Mandoran said, his voice quiet, his expression almost forlorn.

  “No?”

  Mandoran snorted. “She wants to know if you’re happy with the decision.”

  “Why don’t you explain it to her on the way home?”

  “Because she hasn’t asked me if I’m happy with it?”

  Bellusdeo snorted, with steam. “There was no other choice,” she finally said. “I did not think Kaylin could preserve Emmerian. I’ve seen similar...attacks before. And this may sound strange, but I wasn’t looking forward to killing him.”

  “That’s why you did it—but...”

  “Perhaps it is Karriamis to whom you should speak. Had he made his decision earlier, we would not have been in as dire a position. I was always willing to take command of the Tower; he was the one who hesitated.” She glanced at the silent—and notably stiff—Emmerian, and Kaylin remembered just how much immortals of her acquaintance appreciated being in debt.

  “Should we send Maggaron?”

  “No. As I said, I’ll come collect him. I would like to speak with Helen again, and I’m not sure that’s possible from the Tower.” She lowered her head briefly. When she lifted it, her eyes were copper-colored.

  Emmerian stood when food faded from the table, the dishes slowly becoming transparent as they watched. His eyes were orange-gold, although when they met Bellusdeo’s they also shaded toward copper. He offered her a perfect, Imperial bow—a bow reserved, to Kaylin’s knowledge, for use in the presence of Emperors.

  Bellusdeo said nothing.

  When they were at the door, Karriamis appeared. “I would like to have further words with you, Chosen.”

  “I’m beat,” she replied. “I need to go home and fall over.”

  “Ah, you misunderstand. I merely mean I hope you will visit again. Soon.”

  “That’s up to Bellusdeo.”

  “No, Lord Kaylin, it is not.” His voice was soft. “She was queen once; queens do not beg. She will, I am certain, accept a visit from you at any time you choose to do so—but she will not ask. It is not, yet, in her.”

  Kaylin exhaled.

  “You are thinking I will not be much company.”

  She’d been thinking exactly that. “She gets bored and restless pretty easily.”

  “She will be far less bored, now. This is what she was meant to do. Ah, no, not the captaincy of a Tower, but rather, the war against Shadow. Against the outcaste. She will have less time to fret here, and less time to feel...helpless or without purpose. But even so, I believe you have been good for her. She was safe within your domicile; she will be safe within my borders. As will you. But return in a day or two.”

  Kaylin nodded. And left.

  * * *

  “You have had a very, very eventful day,” Helen said, when Kaylin reached the front door of her house. This would be because Helen was standing in front of it.

  Kaylin nodded and allowed Helen’s arms to enfold her.

  “Yes,” Helen said softly, “you will miss her. She will miss you. I believe she will miss Mandoran as well.”

  “I knew she couldn’t stay here,” Kaylin said, into Helen’s shoulder. “But I thought she’d leave later. Years from now.”

  “She is not dead, and she is not very far away.”

  “She probably won’t come to work with me anymore.”

  “No, dear. I believe she will have duties of her own, now. And those, she has always required. Come. It’s late.” She drew Kaylin out of the door and the cohort filed in.

  “You think they’ll be fighting?” Kaylin asked, when they had disappeared.

  “More than they are now?”

  “Something like that.”

  “No. Not tonight. Not all of the cohort were attached to Bellusdeo, but some of them were, and they understand the sense of loss because they can all feel it, even if they don’t agree.

  “They don’t like goodbyes.”

  Neither did Kaylin.

  “I know. I know, dear.” She looked up. “Lord Emmerian. Please come in. I assume you’ve also eaten?”

  “He didn’t eat much,” Kaylin murmured, by which she meant, he hadn’t eaten at all.

  “I see. Will you join us?”

  Emmerian nodded, and Helen disentangled herself. “Come in, dear.”

  * * *

  Kaylin wasn’t surprised to see Maggaron in the dining room, although he seldom joined them without Bellusdeo’s express demand. He occupied the table, given his size, and looked
up almost anxiously when they entered.

  “We’re not supposed to tell you anything,” Kaylin said, when he turned his enormous—and worried—eyes toward her. “She wants to surprise you.” The words shifted the worry from one spectrum to another; he winced. “Yes, she’s fine. I’m not sure she’s any less angry, but she’s fine.”

  He rose, scuffing the legs of his necessarily heavy chair across the carpet.

  Emmerian, however, cleared his throat. “Would you do me the favor of remaining?”

  Maggaron resumed his seat with much more hesitance.

  “I see,” Helen said. “Do you think you’d like a drink if you aren’t quite up to food?”

  Emmerian nodded, unperturbed by Helen’s ubiquitous ability to hear the quiet parts.

  Kaylin looked at the Norranir and the Dragon and decided this was probably a more personal talk than she was ready for. She started to rise—a much less cumbersome and obvious motion than Maggaron’s.

  “No, dear,” Helen said, before Kaylin could straighten her knees. “I think he’d like you to stay.” She sat.

  Both Kaylin and Maggaron looked toward Emmerian; he had taken a chair and now seemed to be staring at his reflection on an otherwise empty table.

  “I want to talk about Bellusdeo,” he finally said, his expression heavily implying that the words were harder to push out than the Shadows had been.

  Maggaron didn’t tense, to Kaylin’s surprise. She did. Neither spoke, and eventually the Dragon took silence as assent.

  “You have said that she wishes to surprise Maggaron, which makes the discussion somewhat more difficult, but not, in the end, impossible.” To Maggaron, he said, “I would dedicate my life—my personal life—to her if she allowed it. I have no desire to harm her. I have no desire to cage her—and even had I, it would now be rendered irrelevant for reasons you will discover shortly.”

  Kaylin expected Maggaron to be confused; he wasn’t. “I have served her all my life,” he said, his voice gravelly. “And were she to allow it, were things in this tiny city to be more hospitable to my kin, I would never leave her side. But this city is...not what my city once was.” He spoke slowly, and he spoke Barrani. “I would only get in her way, here.

  “You can blend in, Lord Emmerian. But...what you want is not what I wanted. I was her Ascendant—I was chosen for that role. I spent the entirety of my childhood focused only on being worthy. She is...difficult. Her humor is...” He shook his head, and Kaylin remembered the time Bellusdeo had transformed from Dragon form into a decidedly naked mortal form—and insisted on staying that way because it embarrassed Maggaron.

  “I have seldom seen her sense of humor; I have certainly heard her sarcasm. I believe I could survive it.”

  “What is it you desire?” the Norranir asked. “I could tell you stories of her humor.”

  Kaylin lifted a hand. “I think we can skip the humor, for now.”

  They both looked at her; they both shrugged.

  “I could tell you stories of her valor.”

  Emmerian shook his head. “I have seen that, more than once. And I believe I understand her anger quite well.”

  “I cannot tell you very much. I am mortal, as Kaylin is mortal. You are not. The earliest of stories about her life in the Aeries of this world I have only heard secondhand; she talks very little about them. If there are secrets you do not understand, they are not my secrets to tell.” Maggaron hid nothing. He did not dissemble, ever. It was one of the things Bellusdeo liked best about him.

  “No; I would never ask you to betray her confidence—even if I thought it possible.”

  Maggaron nodded as if he believed this—which made sense, because Kaylin did. She’d seen people in her office fall in love before; she understood that “fall” wasn’t entirely a decision. Once or twice, she’d seen older and wiser people attempt to intervene; sometimes it worked and sometimes it failed spectacularly. From the outside, it had always looked like a type of fevered insanity that crossed boundaries and caused trouble.

  Emmerian didn’t resemble the Hawks. She doubted that he could. But even thinking that, she remembered that he had entered her house in something close to raging panic because he was worried about Bellusdeo. He knew that Helen was a sentient building; that Helen could keep Bellusdeo safe. But the knowledge hadn’t prevented the panic.

  And, to be fair, that was often Kaylin’s impulse as well. Teela hated it, and Kaylin had learned the hard way to sit on that response. Emmerian didn’t have Teela looming over his shoulder like a deadly older sister; the Emperor was decidedly unlike the Barrani Hawk.

  “I think the war with Shadow has consumed some part of her,” Maggaron finally said. “But I did not see her before the war.”

  “It consumes her,” Emmerian said, his voice softer. “But it has defined her, as well. Karriamis was concerned about that. I believe he thinks her sense of failure is so profound she cannot look beyond it; if she were to succeed here, the lack of war would merely allow the sense of failure to envelop—and possibly destroy—her.”

  Kaylin was surprised.

  Maggaron, however, was not. His nod was grave; it made him seem older and more certain of himself than Kaylin had ever seen him. “That has long been my fear—but it is a distant fear. I am not certain the war will ever end.”

  “Karriamis was also uncertain that the desire for vengeance would not cause harm.”

  One Norranir brow rose. “Does Karriamis speak for you as well in this?”

  “Possibly. I see her when she fights; there has never been any hesitation in her transformation. You did not see the wars of old—the wars between the Dragons and the Barrani—but had you, you would understand that very, very few could hold a candle to her. She forged herself into a weapon, and she is perfect.

  “But she did not lose sight of you. She did not lose sight of the people she fought for, or the people she needed to protect. Until the end, until she herself was almost irretrievably lost, she tried to keep her people safe. I do not know how she ruled—but I believe she was not unlike the Emperor.” At Maggaron’s wince, Emmerian smiled. “I have never said that to her.”

  “I think it unsafe. But she is not used to being ruled; she is used to ruling herself. And that control slips when she encounters the outcaste. He is the one thing that draws the two worlds—and the one war—together.”

  Emmerian nodded.

  “What do you want from Bellusdeo, Lord Emmerian?”

  “I want... I want her to be happy.”

  Maggaron’s smile was soft; it was also sad. He did not reply.

  “She doesn’t see herself,” the Dragon continued. “She doesn’t see what I see. And no, this is not about the future of the race. At this particular moment, I do not give a damn about the future of the race.”

  “She understands that responsibility,” Maggaron said after a long pause in which he seemed to be choosing his words more carefully.

  “So do I—I am a Dragon.”

  “And you do not care?”

  “No. At this juncture, it is entirely secondary. I think her children would be a wonder—and an agony. But I am not certain that it is the right thing for her.”

  To Kaylin’s surprise, Maggaron smiled. She wondered, then, if she had seen him truly smile before.

  “I have always thought,” the Norranir said, “that she would be a good parent—but perhaps too protective. But it was never a possibility before. I will not be here forever,” he added, the smile dimming. “And she will not have another Ascendant; I am a relic—is that the right word?—of a lost world. But you—you will live forever. If you are cautious,” he added. “You will see what I will not.

  “Do you intend to father her clutch?”

  Emmerian’s jaw snapped shut.

  “Not yet, I see,” the Norranir said, rising once again from his chair. “You are right.
She does not see herself clearly; she sees and hears only the echoes of her failure.” These words were spoken much more smoothly; Kaylin suspected that Helen was helping him translate. “She wishes to expatiate on that failure; it is what she wants, right now, more than anything else.

  “I do not consider her a failure. None of my people did. She never surrendered. She never gave up. She never quit. It was because of her that we did not quit, either. Even when the world was lost. What remains of my people are here, on the borders, ever watchful.”

  “Waiting for her?”

  “Perhaps. I have seldom returned to them. She has seldom returned. She understands that this world has an Emperor, not a queen. She does not despise him,” he added, voice softer. “But they are two heads and there is one crown. What do you want for yourself?”

  “Her.”

  “And the Emperor? You are sworn to serve him. You are a lord of the Dragon Court.”

  “I believe I can do my duties to the Emperor regardless; it is what most of humanity does.”

  Maggaron nodded. “See her, then. See her clearly. Hear what she cannot say, what she will not say. It was always, always best to allow her to come to you.” He turned toward the door; Emmerian did not attempt to stop him. But at the door, he turned again. “I wish you well, Lord Emmerian. Of the Dragons, I believe you understand her best.”

  “Lannagaros understands her best.”

  “No. Lannagaros sees her as the child she was in the long-lost Aerie. He sees her past. And perhaps that is why she values him: he sees the potential he once saw; he sees her as the mischievous child she once was, with the world awaiting her maturity. He does not expect her to be what she expects of herself, does not see her failure as she sees it.

  “He offers her the comfort he might have offered when she was a child. It is with him that she can be naturally more...joyfully difficult. And she desires that comfort, in a fashion—but she cannot be wed to it, cannot be bound by it. She will see you, Lord Emmerian. In time, she will see you as clearly as you see her; you see what she is, and it is what she is that the future will be built on.”