Cast in Flame

by Michelle Sagara

  The only person—for a value of person that really needed work—who was not put off was the small dragon. He flapped wings once or twice—hitting Kaylin’s nose without apparent malice—and replied.

  Mandoran said, out of the corner of his mouth, “Can you get him to stop? We’re going to be deaf before we reach our destination at this rate.”

  The Dragon ensconced in the middle of the visiting party snorted, a reminder that apparently Mandoran needed. “If this will deafen you, your ears are fragile.”

  “Pardon us for being created with vocal chords designed for actual speech,” Mandoran shot back.

  “I consider it a design flaw; it is not, however, your fault,” was Bellusdeo’s equally friendly reply. Kaylin wanted to kick herself for even thinking that putting Bellusdeo and Mandoran in the same fief was somehow a good idea.

  Clearly, she wasn’t the only one. Teela lifted a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. Mandoran fell silent.

  The small dragon squawked and squawked and squawked. It sounded like he was delivering a lecture. Given Tiamaris’s approaching expression, he probably was.

  Tara, however, laughed.

  Teela looked at her, her eyes narrowing. Annarion and Mandoran, however, were almost gaping. Kaylin cut the distance between the Tower’s Avatar and herself by jogging ahead. Tara opened her arms and caught the Hawk in a hug.

  “I’m very glad you mirrored,” she said, in perfect Elantran.

  “So you could prepare a welcoming party?” She glanced pointedly at the armored Dragon who was still staring at the Barrani as if they were a very tiny war band.

  “Yes,” Tara replied, missing the gallows humor in the question entirely, which Kaylin found comforting. “Are you going to introduce me?” she asked without apparent guile. She held out a hand and very gently scratched the underside of a small, squawky chin; Kaylin’s constant companion not only allowed this, but seemed to somehow feel it was his due.

  “This is...Hope,” Kaylin said, her voice dropping into the whisper range on the last word. Only Tara could fail to find the name maudlin or inappropriate.

  “An interesting name. When did you choose it?”

  “When I was in the West March. It’s a long story, but semirelevant—that’s where I first met Annarion and Mandoran. I’m stuffing this up; I’m terrible at formal introductions. Let me start again from the top. You know Bellusdeo.”

  “Of course.”

  Arm still locked around the Avatar’s, Kaylin turned to face the rest of her friends. “I don’t think you’ve met Teela?”

  “You are correct. I’ve heard a lot about her, though.”

  Teela, being Barrani, had Barrani hearing. She shot Kaylin The Look.

  “She has not said anything bad,” Tara then told Teela directly. “She looks up to you.”

  Annarion and Mandoran raised brows at each other; Mandoran grimaced. “That is not generally a terribly good idea,” he told Kaylin. “She can be a bit headstrong, and she likes to show off. If she knows she can impress you, she’ll—” He stopped speaking abruptly. Teela had not noticeably stepped on his foot.

  Kaylin resumed introductions in a rush to stave off any further embarrassment. “This is Teela. She’s a Lord of the High Court, but we don’t call her Lord Teela at the office.”

  “But she calls you Lord Kaylin at the office.”

  “Yes—but only to embarrass me.”

  Tara now looked confused, and Kaylin wanted to kick herself all over. “Being a Lord of the Barrani High Court is not generally considered embarrassing. Is it?” she asked this of Teela.

  Teela’s lips twitched. “For those who are mortal, it demonstrably is.”

  Annarion and Mandoran, on the other hand, wore expressions of full-on, dumbfounded outrage.

  “It’s not embarrassing,” Kaylin told them both. “But—I don’t deal well with the stuck-up rich. The Hawklord—my boss—won’t send me out on any investigations that require, as he calls it, diplomacy. So—being called Lord Kaylin in the office...makes me look like a hypocrite. Which is why Teela does it. Most of the other Barrani don’t.”

  “None of the other Barrani Hawks are Lords of the High Court,” Mandoran said. The statement tailed up a little at the end, as if it were a question.

  “Not that I know of. But I didn’t know Teela was, either, for at least the first six years. She didn’t exactly demand to be called Lord—and none of the Barrani Hawks do it.”

  “The Hawks, if Tain is indicative of their general demeanor, are slightly unusual,” Mandoran said. He turned, then, and offered Tara a perfect, elegant bow; it looked almost like a dance move, not that Kaylin had seen many dances. “None of them are Towers. I am Mandoran,” he added. “Of—”

  “The Line of Casarre.”

  Kaylin held her breath; she expected Mandoran to be slightly put-out or defensive. He wasn’t. His smile was brilliant and open. “Yes. You know of my family line?”

  Tara nodded. “It is old enough that I am familiar with it. It was a prominent Barrani family in my distant youth.” She turned to Annarion. “Your family was no less prominent; it was more unusual.”

  Annarion was not Mandoran. If such a thing as unfettered joy existed in his life, he was far too careful to visibly expose it. He didn’t seem suspicious of Tara, on the other hand; his caution was almost entirely due to the Dragon who ruled the fief. Bellusdeo caused Annarion far less annoyance than she did Mandoran.

  Tara now offered Bellusdeo an obeisance that was as perfect as Mandoran’s to her, if a little stiffer. “Should I tell Maggaron that you’ve come to visit?”

  Bellusdeo considered this for all of five seconds. “Yes. It is possible that you will have much to discuss with your new guests, and they might find my presence stifling.”

  “Oh, they’re not too worried about you,” Tara replied. “It’s Tiamaris that’s unsettling them.” As she spoke, she smiled. The smile was an unusual one on her face; it had a bit of an edge. “If it makes you feel at all comfortable, my Lord was not notably happy that you chose to visit. He is at his most cautious, now. You understand that the fief is his hoard?”

  Mandoran nodded. Annarion said nothing. Teela, however, snorted. “We absolutely understand that, but even if we did not, we are aware of the import of the Towers; we understand their function. Not even as a Lord of the High Court could I openly interfere with that function without censure. We mean neither disrespect nor harm.”

  Tara nodded. “I believe that without reservation. You are Kaylin’s kyuthe.” She had slipped into High Barrani. “But your companions are not.”

  “We understand why Teela is fond of her,” Mandoran offered.

  “Even were you to be as fond of her,” Tara replied, “you are not what Lord Teela is.”

  Both young men stiffened.

  “And you, Mandoran, must learn how to be silent. Beyond my interior borders, the Shadows are waking at the sound of your voice.”

  * * *

  That fact, Kaylin thought, in the silence that followed Tara’s genial advice, would pretty much explain the armor and the color of Tiamaris’s eyes; it pushed Bellusdeo’s and Teela’s further into their orange and blue range as the information settled and took root.

  Tara said, to Bellusdeo, “He is not, of course, attempting to communicate with the Shadow deliberately; I was concerned when he first crossed my border. He believes he is exactly as he appears.”

  “And you believe him to be what?” Teela all but demanded. Mandoran had lost about four inches of height, and the easy good humor had shriveled. His eyes, quite dark blue, looked bruised, and he cast his glance toward the stones beneath his boots as if they were anchored.

  “Mandoran,” Tara replied. She turned to Tiamaris. “I believe we will be much safer if we are in the actual Tower; I can only partia
lly limit the range his voice carries while I am in the streets.”

  “Very well.” Tiamaris shot Kaylin a glare—which might be deserved, given Tara’s observation, but still felt entirely unfair—before he turned to lead the way to the Tower of the fief he had claimed as his personal-reason-to-continue-existing.

  By the time they had arrived, Tara had shed her exquisite gown for a familiar apron. Annarion walked to her left, Mandoran to her right, and if they were conversing in a private, silent way, the conversation Kaylin could hear was on Tara’s favorite subject: farming.

  To her surprise, it was a subject to which both men took readily and completely, and entry into the Tower took about forty-five minutes longer than it should have, given the rest of them were practically standing at the front door. Tara lead Annarion and Mandoran into carrots and onions and potatoes, and then from there into things that grew on trees.

  Only when they were entirely out of immortal earshot did Tiamaris turn to Teela, who had also remained behind. “What are they, An’Teela?”

  “They are children,” she replied, weighing her words with enough care that she spoke slowly, “who were exposed too early to the regalia of my kin.”

  “A true tale?”

  She nodded. “You have some familiarity with the power of those tales. I believe the Arkon is capable of speaking some small part of the tongue of the ancients.”

  Tiamaris grimaced. “He is—but not even the most curious of his acquaintances asked to hear it more than once.”

  “Oh?”

  “It exhausted him. The Arkon, when exhausted, is a particular and special type of foul. Enduring it is not worth the satisfaction of what is, after all, idle curiosity.”

  Bellusdeo chuckled. “At least that hasn’t changed.”

  “You find it amusing?”

  “I do. Lannagaros never visited his foul temper on me or mine.”

  “An advantage to being female I had not considered,” Tiamaris replied.

  Kaylin frowned. Bellusdeo, seeing her expression, laughed out loud. “Remember, Kaylin, that the Dragons as adults have dual forms. The females of the species are born into an almost mortal frailty; the males are not. What could kill me, as a child in the Aerie, could not kill Tiamaris as a child in a similar Aerie. Our laws are therefore quite strict. This does,” she added, laughter fading into a smile that still clung to her lips, “mean that his mood when exhausted must have been as foul as Tiamaris says—otherwise, we would have actually seen some of it.”

  “I am unaccustomed to having my word doubted.”

  She raised a brow; her eyes had shifted to an almost natural gold. “How dangerous are they?”

  He didn’t even blink at this sudden shift in conversation. His eyes had remained orange, but Bellusdeo’s levity hadn’t annoyed them into a darker shade. “If Kaylin had not mirrored ahead, Tara would have done everything within her power to close the borders when they crossed the bridge.

  “Everything within her power,” he added softly, “would cause notable destruction in parts of the rest of the fief. What she observed, when she met them—and you—in person must have mollified her somewhat.”

  “Meaning she knows what Kaylin knows.”

  “Exactly that. Kaylin is not Tha’alani, but for the purposes of Tara, she might as well be. It doesn’t occur to Kaylin that she can hide anything, so she doesn’t even try. Tara now understands as much as Kaylin does about the events that occurred in Nightshade. But those of us who border Nightshade felt something, regardless.”

  “I would guess,” Teela said, glancing at Kaylin, “that Tara now understands far more than Kaylin does.”

  Tiamaris nodded. “Kaylin has no experience being a Tower.”

  “Whatever happened last night, Annarion didn’t intend. I’d bet my life on it,” Kaylin said quickly. She didn’t particularly care for the color of his eyes.

  “You may have already done that. I would not, however, be willing to bet my fief on it.”

  “Yet you chose to do so, in the end,” Teela said.

  “Tara is certain that she can contain the difficulty, or I would not have taken the risk.” His eyes narrowed. “You did not think that Tara would be in danger?”

  Kaylin’s brow creased. “I would never have brought them here if I thought that was even a possibility.”

  “And if your experience was commensurate with your certainty, I would find this a comfort.” He exhaled a small stream of smoke. “I am not pleased.” He didn’t turn her to ash, which was not technically illegal in the fiefs. Instead he offered Teela a nod. “My apologies. My concern has compromised my hospitality, and it is seldom indeed that we have Barrani as guests.”

  At her silence, he offered her an uncharacteristic fief shrug. In Elantran he said, “I’m happy you dropped by.”

  This surprised a laugh out of Teela. Given the color of her eyes, Kaylin would have bet against her sense of humor.

  “Tara is ready to join us. Is there any other warning you care to offer?”

  “They are kin to me. The last time they walked among us, the Dragons had just embarked upon their war.”

  “The first war?”

  Teela shook her head. “The second.”

  “I assume they have been informed of the events that unfolded in their absence?”

  “Yes. I invite you to imagine your reaction should you voyage from the city and return to find the Barrani High Lord ensconced in the Imperial Palace as Emperor.”

  “Understood.”

  “Mandoran finds it particularly difficult; his family lost much to the wars. He did not resent the loss until now. Now, all the sacrifices and all the deaths amount to nothing. Less than nothing; a Dragon is now the undisputed ruler of these lands.”

  “If it helps, we number so few because the Flights would not consent to being ruled by a single Dragon.”

  “It won’t help him. As for me? I lived through the history that is hearsay to them; I understand where we currently are. I have no advice to offer. I admit that my curiosity is not idle.” She hesitated and then added, “I am aware of the honor you do us.”

  “I doubt very much your companions consider it an honor.”

  “Not yet,” was her calm reply. “But they will. If they survive.”

  “I am callous. It is not their survival that now concerns me.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Annarion and Mandoran looked both bemused and far more relaxed as they came round the Tower, following its Avatar. Tara herself looked far less intimidating. It was easy to forget how terrifying and intrusive she could be when she talked about growing food.

  Or maybe it was just in Kaylin’s nature to forget.

  The doors of the Tower rolled open in silence.

  “I ask you not to touch anything unusual without asking first,” Tara told them. “There are protections within the Tower; they are so much a part of what I am I am not always consciously in control of them.”

  “What are they meant to defend against?” Annarion asked.

  “Corruption.”

  “Corruption of what?”

  Tara frowned. She spoke the word in at least three languages that Kaylin understood, and probably a dozen that she didn’t. When Annarion failed to look enlightened, she turned to Kaylin. “Am I using the wrong word?”

  “It’s probably too general.”

  The frown deepened. “Would ‘bad transformation’ be better?”

  “That’s slightly more exact—but the Tower transforms pretty much at your will. Maybe: changes that I don’t institute or control.”

  “Not all change is bad,” Tara said, without much conviction.

  “No. Some change, as we’ve both seen, is necessary and good—if painful to start.” She turned to Annarion, who was following
the conversation as if it were difficult higher mathematics, his brow creased. Mandoran paid attention without the obvious signs of struggle. Whatever they heard, it wasn’t what Kaylin was hearing.

  “No,” Tara agreed, as she entered the large hall that hunkered behind apparently modest doors. “You hear the sounds that I make, and you call it speech. But your friends hear the things that cannot be resolved into simple words.”

  “Then why don’t they understand it better?”

  Tara tilted her head. “What makes you think they don’t?”

  Towers.

  Teela stepped forward. “I do not hear what they hear.”

  “No. You are like Kaylin or Tiamaris. Words are...like a very narrow alley. I have a very wide carriage; it is the width of the alley exactly. Without careful and precise driving, I cannot get the carriage through the alley; it is a long alley, not a short one. Your languages are like that alley, but I am not trying to drive a carriage through it; I am trying to sail a ship.”

  “You can’t sail a ship through an alley, Tara. No water, for one.” Kaylin clasped her hands loosely behind her back.

  “Exactly.”

  Towers had never been particularly good at constructing metaphors.

  “No; it was never required. Only when speaking to those who cannot see or hear all we attempt to show or tell them do we make use of metaphors at all.” She frowned. “I do not consider you pathetic or inferior.”

  Since Kaylin was getting pretty damned tired of just that attitude—which she assumed was behind the words—she had the grace to redden.

  “The Towers require Lords. To the Towers, there is very little difference between Barrani, Dragons, or you. You age and you die, it is true; I will miss you when you no longer come to visit us. But my Lord hears what you hear. Yes, even when I speak to him in the fashion Annarion and Mandoran employ between themselves, he hears as you hear.”

  If Tiamaris found this insulting—and it was clear that Bellusdeo was a bit put out—it wasn’t obvious.

  “He is not less important or less significant because he does not think like a Tower,” Tara said quietly. “He is, to me, far more important because of that fact. If he cannot hear all I say immediately, he listens to what he can hear. So do you. The fact that I am not as you are does not make me less valuable or less important to you.”