But she couldn’t keep them forever. Kaylin thought it likely that this small intervention was going to be costly for the Consort, a woman whose responsibilities all but demanded no obvious choosing of sides in political scuffles. In this case, the scuffle was internal to Mellarionne, and therefore entirely avoidable. To invite the cohort to the equivalent of Helen’s tea was in no way necessary in the eyes of the Court, and by doing so, she had staked out a position in that conflict.
They did not know—and might never know—that the Consort’s discussion had nothing to do with politics.
That would be because you are incorrect.
She didn’t do it for political reasons.
No, she did not.
Which means it’s not political.
Ynpharion’s frustration was almost a balm. The reasons behind an action seldom matter to those who attempt to read beneath the action’s surface. It is a political decision.
But that’s not why she did it!
The reasons make little difference; the results are the only thing Mellarionne will see. As she will never explain the whole of her reasoning, Mellarionne has no choice but to view the invitation as the criticism it was, and is. Do you believe that politics are like your games of cards? That one must consent to play, with intent to win, the game offered? That if one declines, if one refuses to play that game, one is therefore immune to the criticisms and consequences decided by those cards?
Ynpharion already knew the answer.
You use the word politics to denote the actions of the powerful of whom you disapprove. You use it as an accusation or a dismissal.
This was true. It was a way of discussing men and women who were much more powerful, much more significant, than Kaylin herself had ever been, or would ever be.
What you fail to understand is that they are—as we are—all Barrani. They are all people. They have desires that are very like ours, but access to different tools with which to enact those desires. The fact that An’Mellarionne is likely in league with either the Adversary or the outcaste in Ravellon does not mean he has become incomprehensible; his is a desire for power. But people want power because they feel it will make them safer.
Among the Barrani?
I will accept your skepticism. Yes, even among the Barrani. You do not agree with the choices made to gain power. You do not agree with the tools used. But the act of attempting to build a secure stronghold should not be incomprehensible. Especially not to you. The Consort’s desires are different. But her actions are nonetheless explicable. She wished to entrap your cohort not because she believed they were too dangerous, but because she believed that they might accomplish the desire that has been at the heart of her reign. They were, and are, the tools that came to hand.
Kaylin said nothing.
It is not the desire for power that renders us villainous in your mind. It is the tools used to achieve that power. It is how that power is spent. The Consort is powerful. The High Lord is powerful. The Lord of the West March is powerful. An’Teela is powerful. And yes, Lord Calarnenne is powerful; in no other way would he now hold one of the three. Understand that their lives have been defined by their desires. If we all wanted the same thing, if we defined power in the exact same way, things would be simpler. That is, however, a daydream.
When Kaylin failed to respond, Ynpharion continued. Politics is the state of overlapping and conflicting desires between any group of people. It does not require wealth. Nor does it require any absolute measure of power; it requires a measure of relative power. And you should know this. Is it not your duty to assess crimes?
Yes.
And you believe that it is the consequence of the crime, the breadth of its reach, that is the defining factor? Things are political only when they affect many?
Did she? Was that what she believed? No, not when she thought about it. But the uncomfortable truth was yes. Yes, when she didn’t think about it, that was exactly what she felt. People at a distance who had power over her were somehow political. Marcus, who was on the ground with her, was not.
People who were subject to the law, people who couldn’t easily buy their way out of the consequences? They weren’t political, to Kaylin. They were part of her life, part of her job, part of her responsibility. They were within her reach; they were on the ground with her—but frequently doing stupid or angry things.
You are a Lord of the High Court. To the Barrani outside of this city, you are a power. You have what they lack, what they desire, what they are too afraid to consider achieving for themselves. You do not consider yourself a power.
She didn’t.
That is what you have failed to grasp—but grasp it now. Very, very few consider themselves a power; they are objectively powerful because of the tools within their grasp, but they reach for those tools for the same reason mortals reach for daggers. You are a political force, for better or worse. His tone made clear which one he believed it was. Everything that has occurred in the past week, the past two weeks, is political in nature. If you wish to navigate the undercurrents of the High Court, attempt to understand the nature of the fears that inform it. Know your enemy.
Our enemy is the thing beneath the High Halls, she replied.
And not the Barrani who appear to be in league with it?
* * *
The Consort led Kaylin, accompanied by a very martial Teela and a very alert Severn, to her personal quarters. The rooms were guarded, but the guards parted instantly, a living curtain of armor and weapons. The Lady seemed to have gathered weight as she walked, to have pulled gravity toward her until she was its inescapable center. Kaylin found it hard to look away from the Consort’s back.
Ynpharion had taken up the rear, and he was joined, on what felt like a solemn funeral procession, by three more guards. His internal diatribe vanished. She was the Consort, yes, and incredibly important to the Barrani race—but even in the High Halls, she was not safe.
She was safer, Ynpharion said, in your dwelling than she will ever be here. Especially now. It is only in the Hallionne that her safety can be taken for granted; there, guards are merely decorative. Here, we are not.
He didn’t have to tell her the fate of those guards should she be attacked and injured.
Surprisingly, no, I don’t.
Kaylin was lucky that eye-rolling did not cause muscle sprains. Her familiar was sitting on her shoulder, but his wings were folded, a sign that he considered any danger to be contained entirely by what Kaylin could naturally see.
She felt Ynpharion stiffen when the familiar’s wings rose. Since he’d plastered a wing across her eyes on the way to the High Seat, Kaylin wasn’t instantly panicked. When he pushed himself, squawking loudly, off her shoulder, she made up for lost time.
Severn did not freeze; he unwound his weapon’s chain, pulling blades from their nearly invisible sheaths. Teela was a step behind. Kaylin had assumed that she’d carried the blade—Kariannos—to make a statement to the rest of the High Court. This was, even on the face of it, a stupid assumption. What the cohort faced, Teela intended to face at their collective side. She wanted the most powerful weapon she owned at her disposal.
But they weren’t anywhere near the Tower or the heart of the cage it formed; they were at the very edge of the Consort’s chambers. Hope flew, his wing clipping the Consort’s pale, perfect hair as he veered to avoid the back of her head.
Spike became a heated, weighted presence in Kaylin’s hand, and as he did, she bled on the perfect, spotless marble—if the stone was marble, which was Kaylin’s generic word for shiny stone floors—beneath her feet. Spike, like Hope, separated himself from her for the first time since she’d reached the High Halls. He rose, wingless, his body pulsing, his spikes shrinking and growing as if the beat of their shape change were as close to wings as he could come, and followed in Hope’s wake.
The world sounded unnaturall
y loud to Kaylin’s ears. This close to the chamber in which very private audiences were held, Kaylin could hear the attenuated sound of crying, of screaming, of words that were inaudible, but only barely. This was the sound of the height of Barrani power, because in this chamber, the sound could not be dimmed. It bled up through the floors, causing subtle vibration in the walls, a storm of accusation and pain.
Kaylin would have gone out of her mind with it—and with what it said about her lack of power, her inability to help—within a week. If that.
But the High Lords and their Consorts were not, had never been, Kaylin. And maybe, she thought, heading as quickly as she could toward Hope and Spike, this was why the Barrani had to be callous. Caring too much would break them.
“Lady!” one of the guards shouted.
The Consort was frozen in place, but as Kaylin reached her side she saw no fear in the Consort’s expression. No anger, either. Just a moment of weariness. She couldn’t see what Hope or Spike could see, but clearly it was close by; both the familiar and Spike had stopped ten feet from where the Consort stood, casting shadow in the opulent lights of her own entryway.
Kaylin’s arms were glowing. She was used to that. They didn’t ache, however. She could—and did—draw daggers, but lifted an arm as she heard footsteps come from behind. Ynpharion stopped just short of her.
What do they see? he demanded; she could feel the hilt of his sword in his hand, as if that hand were her own.
“Lord Kaylin,” the Consort said quietly.
Hope inhaled.
“Please give us permission to defend you,” Kaylin said in a rush that left almost no room between the words.
“You have my permission,” the Consort replied, although she didn’t take her eyes off the familiar. Or Spike.
Kaylin raised her voice. “Spike, Hope—the Consort is the most important person in this room. Do whatever you have to do to preserve her.”
Teela’s sword gleamed in a way that didn’t imply the light was reflected; the sword itself seemed to glow. Kaylin could make out the traces of runes across the flat of the blade. She joined Kaylin, her eyes so dark they might have been all pupil.
The floor ruptured.
No, Kaylin thought, that was the wrong description. The stone itself seemed to groan beneath the collective weight of the Consort and her companions, straining against something invisible to Kaylin’s eyes. Hope might have changed that, had he stayed on her shoulder, but whatever the familiar had seen had caused him to leave her in a furious rush. His squawks were louder, and the high-pitched squeak that seemed to adorn them had deepened.
Hope exhaled a stream of opalescent, pale smoke. Where it hit floor, the stone melted; the melting gave off no heat. But the breath itself spread across the floor, and the floor shifted in a large circle around Hope. Hope, however, wasn’t finished. His wings widened, his neck thickened. Kaylin was afraid that he was about to go full Dragon in a room that hadn’t been designed for the draconic form.
He didn’t. In some ways, that might have been better.
He lost transparency as he transformed; his foreclaws became hands, his spindly legs, arms; his hind legs became actual legs. Had he been clothed, it might have been better, but even as she thought it, the rising mist that had, moments ago, been an expulsion of opalescent cloud swirled around him, solidifying in layers as they watched. He looked almost like an Aerian—but no Aerian had wings of feathered glass.
“There is danger,” he said in perfect Elantran.
Kaylin glanced at the Consort, who appeared to be staring at her feet. Or at what remained of the stone beneath them.
“The ground was...compromised. It will remain solid now.”
Severn—can you see Hope?
Yes.
What does he look like to you?
A larger cloud.
“Kaylin,” Hope said. “Ask the Consort to remain where she is for the moment. These rooms have been compromised; they are not currently habitable. Not for her.”
“You can’t tell her yourself?”
“It would be better coming from you.”
“But the Barrani understand what you’re saying, most of the time!”
“Yes. But this is not that most. Tell her. Spike and I must enter the interior and secure the rest of the rooms.”
“What, exactly, does ‘compromised’ mean?”
“If she means to lead you to the Adversary through these rooms, you will not arrive at a destination of her choosing. Or yours.”
* * *
Kaylin knelt and touched the cratered floor. “My familiar says that your rooms—or the passageway that leads from them—have been compromised. He and Spike are going to separate from us for the moment and attempt to eradicate the contamination. He asks that you remain here.”
The Consort didn’t even pause; she might not have blinked. Kaylin couldn’t tell because her gaze was on the floor. It felt like marble to the touch, but it certainly didn’t look like it anymore. It resembled melted wax. Her arms had continued their faint marks-driven glow, but her skin no longer hurt. The cratered floor didn’t radiate magic.
“Lady,” Teela said, voice sharp. This dragged Kaylin’s attention from the floor. But the Consort didn’t leave; she merely shifted her position, crouching beside Kaylin to examine the floor. This time, Kaylin did feel the sting of magic. It was a familiar discomfort; it was what she felt when Teela examined crime sites for magical detritus.
Ynpharion, breathe.
What does this so-called contamination entail?
Kaylin bit back the urge to say How the hells should I know. Looking pointedly at the floor, she said, Probably Shadow or Shadow-variant spells. Are you afraid that my familiar can’t handle those?
She could feel him marginally relax, which she knew was the most she could hope for. She rose, as did the Consort, and settled in to wait. Waiting was not her forte.
* * *
The Consort’s eyes were a deep blue; they weren’t as dark as Teela’s—or any of the other Barrani in the room—but they were far from their usual color. “An’Teela,” she said softly. “Have the cohort arrived at the Tower?”
“Yes. They have arrived; they’ve seen the word the Tower chose for them.” She didn’t volunteer the word, and the Consort, being Barrani, would never ask; she’d probably ask about the details of their sex lives first. Kaylin, being human, was curious, but kept her curiosity to herself.
“Have they entered?”
“There was some discussion about the words chosen, but yes. I believe Sedarias found the Tower the safer place to stand. No one who is not an aspirant will be able to approach them from behind.”
“Have they begun?”
Teela actually grimaced. “If you expect them to rush headlong into the unknown without discussion or debate, you have failed to watch them in close enough quarters. At the moment, they are looking at a flight of stairs, which heads both up and down, and they are arguing about the choice of direction.”
The Consort’s eyes lightened, but did not approach their natural green. “They have not been attacked?”
“Not yet, no. There are stairs and they are—” Teela stopped. “Do remind me, kitling, to strangle Mandoran when we get home.”
“Sedarias will do it before you get the chance,” Kaylin replied. “What’s he doing?”
“Never mind. He is bored of discussion, and does not consider direction to be of value, given what little he knows about the nature of the Tower. His suggestion—flip a coin—did not meet with Sedarias’s approval. His obvious boredom, however, annoyed her.”
Mandoran and boredom were a terrible combination.
“He has just discovered that the walls that enclose the stairs are not walls.”
Even Kaylin cringed, but didn’t ask how he’d discovered this, because she kind of knew. “I’ll remi
nd you to strangle him, if he survives Sedarias.” She had no chance to say more, because Hope had returned. His wings were spread, and a dark wispy smoke rose from their tips, heading toward a ceiling that now seemed too low to contain him.
* * *
“Where’s Spike?”
“There has been some difficulty,” Hope replied. “He is assessing the damage and attempting to communicate with the Tower.” Kaylin repeated his answer, word for word. She found it ironic that she could understand him clearly now, because Hope thought no one else would.
“The Tower,” the Consort said softly, “does not speak to us. Not in the fashion that the Hallionne or Helen do.”
“Spike is aware of that; he is not certain if that is due to the damage done in the first war, or if the function of the Tower itself inhibits direct communication. His information in regard to the Tower itself is old.”
“What information?”
“Records,” Hope replied, shrugging slightly. “But he cannot access external information—which he claims exists—for obvious reasons. It is buried or frozen in Ravellon.” Hope stopped speaking and turned to glance over his shoulder. His wings rose; Kaylin recognized the rigidity of the lines. She’d seen Aerian wings break arms—someone else’s—in her time on the force.
“Spike asks for the aid of your companions.”
“Is the floor safe to walk across now?”
“The contaminant has been compressed into one location. It is not, however, a location that can be avoided if you wish to meet your companions.”
“At the rate they’re going, we could spend two weeks magically rebuilding every room in this suite, and we’d still get there before they did.” Kaylin then turned to Teela. “Spike is having a bit of a problem with the Shadow equivalent of hired thugs, and he wants our help.”
“That is not what I said,” Spike told her.
Kaylin didn’t bother to repeat that phrase, because Teela, sword in hand, practically leaped the distance between the patch of floor they’d occupied and the distant doors. She was Barrani; she didn’t have wings. But for a moment, she flew. And when she landed—lightly, on both feet, bending slightly into her knees to balance her returning weight—the runes on the flat of her blade flashed a startling blue-white, and a streak of crackling light, of lightning, flew forward into the doors.
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