“Whatever.” Kaylin was afraid, for one long moment, to let go.
“Oh, I’m here,” Teela told her grimly. “I’m glad you think that breathing is optional.”
Kaylin let go. Her arms, however, had stiffened, and her hands were shaking as she tried to pry her fingers off Teela.
“You cannot leave well enough alone, can you?”
“It wasn’t bloody well enough, okay?” Kaylin got to her feet. She was shaking, and she thought she might never stop. Teela’s color hadn’t improved any. “How many?”
“Pardon?”
“How many did you absorb?”
“I wasn’t counting.”
“Don’t give me that look. If you want to commit suicide, you’re going to have to do it when I’m not standing right behind you. Here.” She put an arm around Teela’s back, shoving herself under the Barrani’s left arm and levering them both off the ground. “I don’t know how long the path from here is, but we need to walk it. If we have to walk it in the dark, fine. We’ll do that.”
“Remind me to strangle Nightshade if we somehow manage to survive this.” Light flared in the tunnel. It was a familiar tunnel, of rough rock, low ceilings, and unpredictable widths. “You’re certain that your presence here—so soon after you got ejected—is not going to anger the green?”
“No.”
“Do you understand the reason such an escape is so seldom used?”
“Yes.”
“Then—”
“Are we dead?”
“Kitling.”
“Are you?”
“Demonstrably not.”
“Then we’ll deal. One step at a time.” She wanted to scream at Teela. Or swear. She contented herself with a few Leontine phrases, but her heart wasn’t in them and they sounded pathetic, even to her ears.
“You’re shaking.”
Kaylin said, “So are you.”
Teela chuckled. “We make quite the pair, don’t we?”
Kaylin didn’t reply.
* * *
The tunnels were the tunnels that Kaylin remembered, which was good. The first branch, on the other hand, reminded her that this was like a coin toss on which your whole life depended—which was bad.
“No, I don’t know which way to go,” Kaylin said, before Teela could insert a sarcastic comment. “Save your breath.” She meant it, too. Teela’s breathing was labored. Teela, who could sprint across the damn city and back without breaking a sweat. “If you want a say, stay awake.”
“You understand that we’re judged in entirely different ways by the green, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You may accept the green’s judgment. You may leave. What if the green doesn’t choose to release me?”
“I’m not leaving without you.”
Teela laughed. “I wish you could have met them,” she whispered.
“Given Barrani attitudes toward mortals at the time, I’m not sure it would have worked out well—for me.”
“There is that. But I think you would have liked them. Well, maybe not Sedarias, not immediately.” She closed her eyes. Opened them, but not all the way. “Allaron would have liked you. He liked small, helpless creatures. Of all of the candidates, he was the most inexplicable.”
“What do you mean?” She knew, in cases like this, it was important to keep a person talking.
“Most of my kin are of a height, as you’ve complained about on any number of occasions. We are of a height, of a general build, our weight is roughly the same. There is far less variance among my kin than there is among yours.”
“He was really tall, right?”
“Yes.”
Kaylin nodded. “I think he was the second statue. But the thing about the statues—to me—is that they all looked very individual. Most of the Barrani look the same, at least on the surface. It’s like you’re twins, except, you know, more numerous.”
“Allaron was large. He was stronger than most of the children his age. He was capable of astonishing feats of strength—but he was often quiet. Of the twelve of us, he was the most reticent. He would have liked you. He wouldn’t even have complained much. You don’t see our young,” she added. “The children are very seldom raised in the city; they are kept away from the High Court until they are of an age where they might survive it.”
“You were—”
“Yes. I was raised at Court. My father was a very powerful man; not for my safety would he deny himself the strategic arrangement of his place at Court. I spent some time in the West March with my mother, and he allowed it—at the beginning.
“But not at the end. He distrusted the Vale; he found the people of the West March rustic. None of us, once the plans were set in motion, were allowed to spend our childhoods in the more traditional environments. We were meant to excel in all things. We began our training early, and we were kept at it.
“Allaron was, as I said, strong. But all of his ferocity was in appearance. My father despised him.”
“His own father?”
“His own father hoped that exposure to the rest of us would toughen his son up. I believe that’s how mortals would express it.” Teela closed her eyes again, and this time, the light that made the path navigable faltered. “Which way?”
“Right.”
“The other right?”
Kaylin cursed. “Fine, left, then.”
“Terrano had a sense of humor that you might have appreciated. He was—what is the Elantran word again? Clown?”
“A clown, but yes.”
“He laughed a lot. He found things constantly delightful or amusing. Sedarias found Terrano very difficult to deal with—she had less of a sense of humor than Tiamaris.”
“Did he have the typical Barrani sense of humor?”
“He had not yet developed the more refined edges, but he was Barrani.”
“What did Terrano say to you?”
“They regret leaving me behind. It confused them, I think. They were changed. I was not. They felt that they had betrayed me, in some fashion, by abandoning me.” She grimaced. “And I felt that I had done the same.”
“You didn’t—”
“My mother died in the greenheart. My father and his kin killed so many there.” She closed her eyes again, and this time, it took her a lot longer to open them. “Blood is forbidden in the heart of the green.”
Kaylin nodded.
“Do you understand why?”
“No, but I can make an educated guess.”
Teela had the strength to snort, although her breathing continued to be labored. “The reason it’s forbidden is that the will of the dying, expressed through blood, has power in the green. It isn’t about a random life—it’s about your own life. People who are unwilling sacrifices don’t generally have the welfare of the green or its people at heart.”
“Do I want to know how that was learned?”
“Probably not.”
“Your mother died—”
“Yes. My mother, who had the blood of the Wardens in her veins. My mother, who could speak with Alsanis, who was welcomed—always—into his heart. She bled to death on the green. She asked for only one thing, kitling. Only one. That I be preserved. That I be unchanged, untransformed; that I remained myself.
“She was not the only person who died that day. The will of the others was harder, harsher; they wanted to preserve the green against the depredations of outsiders and people who did not live in—and of—it.”
“How do you know?”
“I heard their dying thoughts. I heard their dying wishes. I heard the fear they felt—for us—when we were taken to the greenheart. I heard the hope that the recitation would pass without altering us; we were too young, too unformed. The Vale had no ambitions for us.
“And I heard our parents. We all did. I heard what they wanted. I heard what they desired. I heard their contempt for everything in the green except its power.
“We knew, by that point,” she added. Her eyes were closed
. Kaylin was afraid she wouldn’t open them again. “We knew what the Warden and the Guardian feared. We knew that we were an experiment. If it was successful, we would, of course, be coveted and valued. We were not, in any way, valuable in and of ourselves. They didn’t see us; they saw their own desires.”
“Had we been older,” she continued, “had we been, in truth, adults, this would not have surprised us. It wouldn’t have wounded in the way that it did. Even the Barrani have the naive hope that mortal children know. We do not know it in exactly the same way, but when young, we believe in the promise of...affection. We learn.
“Just as you learn. You don’t have to live with the truth for as long.”
“Did you know?” Kaylin asked, before she could shut her mouth.
“Did I know what?”
“Did you know that your friends would kill every member of the High Court they could get their hands on before the Hallionne shut them in?”
After a long, labored pause, Teela said, “Yes.”
Chapter 19
Kaylin didn’t ask if Teela had tried to stop them, because she knew, as the lights once again flickered and dimmed, what the answer was. She had come to a junction that was not like the rest, and she wanted to shake Teela awake; the Barrani Hawk was shivering. She was cold to the touch. Kaylin had never seen Teela sick before; she’d never seen her with an injury that slowed her down at all. But she knew, from her experience in both Moran’s infirmary and Red’s morgue, that things were bad.
Things were bad and there was no chance of better if they couldn’t get out of these tunnels. She had nothing to give Teela that would add any warmth; she briefly considered the harmoniste dress, but decided against removing it. If the green wasn’t pissed off yet, she didn’t want to tip the balance. She had to keep Teela moving.
There were three paths. One to the right, one to the left, and one that lead up. Kaylin was not at all certain that up was the direction she wanted. It was, however, the first time she had seen such a path.
There were stairs. They were worn in the middle, and shallow. The walls were rough, but they were definitely walls. Teela’s light was now sporadic. Kaylin stopped for a moment and drew a heavy, gold pendant from the folds of her dress.
“What are you doing?” Teela asked. She hadn’t opened her eyes.
“I’m hoping for light,” Kaylin replied.
“You’re going to try to invoke a Dragon’s pendant in the green?”
“Teela—I need some light. There are no windows here, and no torches or stones; if the stairs change, if the walls drop away, we’re not going to make it.” She lowered her voice; the echoes were rebounding off the walls. “You can’t keep the light up. Not now. I probably shouldn’t have asked.” If she made it back to the city, she intended to dedicate herself to Sanabalis’s lessons. Light wasn’t a hard spell. Any mage of Kaylin’s acquaintance could cast it.
And why couldn’t she?
She could blame Sanabalis. The urge to do so was strong. But it wasn’t the truth. She distrusted mages. Every Hawk did, even Teela, who pretty much was one. Kaylin was a Hawk. She was accepted as a Hawk—and that had taken years. She’d worked so hard to fit in. To be taken seriously. She didn’t want to lose that. She didn’t want to be a mage in the eyes of the Hawks. She didn’t want to be an outsider.
In order to remain in the Hawks, she’d been ordered to take magic lessons. So she’d taken them. She’d worked hard to do what Sanabalis told her to do—but not more. She hadn’t asked questions, except the ones wrapped in derision or frustration. She hadn’t tried to learn more. She’d told herself that it was pointless, useless; if the Hawks needed a mage, it gave the Imperial Order something useful to do.
And of course, she needed one now, and the Imperial Order was barely on the same continent. The marks on her arms—the ones that sometimes gave her access to a visceral and almost uncontrolled magic—were flat, dark gray. She couldn’t use them when they were like this, and she didn’t know how to activate them.
Kaylin wasn’t the best of students, but she wasn’t the worst, either, and she could have done much better than she had. She knew it.
“The Hallionne knew I had the medallion,” Kaylin told Teela. “They never made me leave it behind, and they did let me in.”
“This isn’t a Hallionne. This is the heart of the West March. These are the lands that have never fallen to Dragons—or any other enemies—for all of our long history.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Kaylin replied, because she did. “But I don’t think the Hallionne or the green really care about the Dragons. Or the wars. Not the way the Barrani and the Dragons do. I don’t think they care about me, and the mark of Dragon ownership—me being the owned—is probably irrelevant to both.”
“You’re betting on it.”
“Yes. This one’s a bet I’m willing to make. Now shut up, you’re distracting me.”
“That was the point.” Teela fell silent as Kaylin took the medallion in her free hand. It was warm to the touch—but it would be, given that it had spent most of its time against her skin. She didn’t know if there was a word for light, if light itself had a name. She’d learned only the name of fire. But the elemental fire—even Evarrim’s—had failed to burn her.
Sanabalis’s medallion amplified her own meager power. She had used it only once before, in a much more obvious emergency. And a much less terrifying one, in the end. Monsters were simple: they either killed you or they didn’t.
Loss? It lasted forever. She didn’t intend to let go of Teela while Teela was still breathing, because this was all she had. She didn’t have immortal, perfect memory. She couldn’t go back.
She searched that imperfect memory for the name of fire, for the now of it, and it came to her in grudging syllables. They were figuratively oiled; they slid from her grasp before she could lock them in place, avoiding her mental touch, rearranging themselves as if to hide. All names were like this. All. Even Ynpharion’s.
But if Kaylin had been a name, she’d’ve probably done the same thing. She didn’t. She didn’t have eternity, either—but right now, she didn’t need it. What she needed was light. What Teela needed was warmth.
And fire answered her call.
* * *
It came not as a candle flame, nor as bonfire; it took, instead, the form and shape of a man. His features were chiseled in lambent, orange-gold, his hair was like Barrani hair, each strand a hazy glow. He wore robes of flame, although they were the color of his skin. But it was his eyes that caught and held her attention: they were black, but hints of opalescent color caught light, shimmering and winking out of existence as if they were faint stars.
Kaylin.
Teela pried her eyes open. She exhaled and said something in Leontine. It was quiet enough Kaylin only caught half of it.
Kaylin, however, sagged in relief.
Why are you here? You are not in the Keeper’s garden.
“You knew that. I spoke to you in the outlands.”
The fire regarded her for a long moment.
“Do you know where we are? We need to find a way out.” She glanced at Teela, who’d managed to keep her eyes open, even if they were slits. “Do you know this place?”
Yes. He frowned. It is dark. He gestured and fire spread in a thin, thin sheet from his hands. It passed around them; it burned nothing, not even a strand of stray hair. In the folds of this translucent, burning blanket, darkness evaporated. Kaylin was surprised to see the color of the walls: almost white.
The fire looked at Teela, his expression shifting. She is cold.
“She’s not dead.”
No, Kaylin. Let me carry her.
Kaylin opened her mouth.
I have carried you, Chosen.
“Teela, he wants to carry you.”
“Do you trust him?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Let him carry me for as long as you can sustain him.”
The fire slid an arm around the back
of Teela’s neck and the backs of her legs. Kaylin hovered; in the narrow staircase, this took work.
Where do we go?
“Up,” Kaylin said.
He said nothing else. She found the fire confusing at times. In the elemental garden, the fire didn’t use words. He seemed, to her admittedly prejudiced mind, almost childlike; he asked for stories; she told them. His idea of stories tended to lack things like character or narrative; he wanted stories about fire. About lighting a fire. About what fire did, what it was used for, and even how it saved lives.
But outside of the garden, fire had a different voice.
It is a smaller voice, he said.
Kaylin didn’t consider it all that small.
No, but you are very, very small, Chosen. In the garden, it is hard to hear your voice at all; everything makes too much noise. He paused. It is hard here, as well. You should not be here. It was said in a tone that implied concern, but Kaylin found it forbidding anyway.
* * *
Without Teela’s weight, climbing was trivial; the stairs went up in a straight slope. After the first dozen stairs, Kaylin stopped worrying that the fire would accidentally char Barrani skin, and she looked straight ahead. There wasn’t much else to look at; the walls failed to sprout windows, doors, or other hallways.
“Kitling?”
“I’m here. I’m here, Teela.”
“We’re almost out.”
Since the stairs and the hall that contained them continued for as far as Kaylin could see, she frowned and briefly placed the back of her hand on clammy Barrani brow.
“Remind me not to break your arms when I have the strength to do so. You know how I feel about your worry.”
“Why do you think we’re almost out?”
“I can hear voices.”
Kaylin could hear nothing. Even the fire was absent its usual crackle. “Do you recognize them?” she asked.
“Yes.”
This didn’t make Kaylin feel any safer. She could guess, from Teela’s expression, who she thought she could hear, and the last time anyone else could hear them there’d been a whole mess of injured and near-dead in their wake.
Kaylin couldn’t hear them—but Kaylin hadn’t seen the nightmares, either. “Tell me if you see them?” she whispered.
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