“Carpenter things,” she replied vaguely. “I think.”
He raised a brow. “I believe I am capable of recognizing some of the loads. What I meant was, what is the intended destination?”
“Gods know. Tiamaris planned on constructing a Dragon’s version of a ‘proper’ market somewhere in the fief.”
“Some rumor about the reorganization of the fief has, of course, reached Nightshade,” Andellen said, as he turned away from the bridge and toward Kaylin. “But I highly doubt that the mortals are donating these materials out of the goodness of their hearts.”
He spoke the last phrase in Elantran, and Kaylin laughed. The Barrani had no similar phrase, and even saying the words in Barrani would probably have completely slaughtered all of their meaning. She shrugged and turned, as well. “Who knows? I’m not a financial genius.” It wasn’t something she would have said, had Severn been in earshot; she was still stinging from the lecture about budgeting. “But he’s clearly getting it from somewhere.”
“And you don’t apparently disapprove.”
“Possibly because I don’t know where,” she said with a grimace. “But it’s not just the outsiders who are working. He’s got his own citizens working on the various projects, as well.” She hesitated again, and then added, “This fief lost a lot of people to the Shadows. It’s as secure as it’s going to get now, but whole buildings melted into something other than stone or ash nearer the interior border—with all the people in them. At least we’ve stopped finding corpses,” she added.
“‘We’?”
She shrugged. “This way.”
The Tower rose at the junction of the newly renamed Avatar Road and the equally newly renamed Garden Row. While Kaylin could understand Avatar—which had been Tiamaris’s choice—she privately thought the Dragon Lord should have overruled Garden Row. It might work in the outer city in certain districts, but in the fiefs it just felt wrong. Tiamaris had not, however, overruled the Lady, as she was called.
She and Morse had an ongoing bet about how long it would take for the Lady to ask for anything that he’d either deny or overrule. So far, there were no winners, but as Morse had bet Never, it wasn’t really something Kaylin could collect on, anyway.
Andellen, however, didn’t blink when Kaylin grudgingly acknowledged the names on the very prominent street signs erected so close to the Tower.
“I don’t know how much Nightshade—”
“Lord Nightshade.” He offered the correction while his gaze traveled up to the Tower’s impressive, pale—and faintly shiny—height, where a flag struggled against the wind.
“Lord Nightshade, then. How much did he tell you?”
“Very little. It may come as a surprise to you, Private Neya,” he added, in a perfectly serious tone, “but I seldom cross the bridges—or the walls—into other fiefs, nor do most occupants of other fiefs enter Nightshade. Information about Tiamaris would not, therefore, be useful. We will never be at war.”
“Well,” she said, as she turned up the walk, with its singular absence of surrounding fences, gates, or a gatehouse, “try not to step on the carrots or the tomatoes, and try not to bring up the subject of gardening. At all.”
“Carrots?” he said, and this time his brow did ripple in confusion.
“The Avatar thinks gardening and farming mean more or less the same thing. Or thinks they should.”
“The Avatar.”
“Yes. I call her Tara. But everyone else calls her the Lady. If Tiamaris gives you permission, and you take a look at what he’s been building around the fief, you’ll hear her name. A lot. They think she has eyes everywhere.”
He raised a brow.
“I didn’t say they were stupid.”
Andellen stepped on nothing, of course. Even though his feet were larger than Kaylin’s, he still managed to avoid the great, messy leaves that were already encroaching on the path to the blessedly normal doors—and he did it without breaking stride. Catching her expression, he smiled.
“I spent many years in the West March,” he said, as if that explained something. When the explanation had obviously failed to enlighten, he added, “There are groves in the interior of the West March that you do not so much as breathe on. Stepping on any part of any plant would generally be considered suicide.”
“To the Barrani?”
He nodded.
“I never want to see their trees.”
“It is my suspicion that you will not be overly fond of the insect life, either.” He stopped at the foot of the stairs that led to the double doors, both of which were closed. Kaylin glanced over her shoulder at the visible acres of garden; she was well aware that some portion of the garden was in the glasshouse, and some of it was out of line of sight. But the breeze seemed to be the only thing that was moving the plants at the moment. When Tara was at work in the garden itself, it was impossible to miss her.
Kaylin then strode over to the doors and knocked. Andellen joined her slowly as the doors rolled inward. Tara stood in their center, and she beamed; she was wearing dirty gardening gloves and a kerchief that didn’t look much cleaner. It kept her hair out of her face. She didn’t have to worry about sun, though; they’d discovered that nothing seemed to change her complexion.
“Kaylin!” She ran the two steps and enfolded Kaylin in a hug. Then, arms still wrapped around the Hawk, she glanced at Andellen. “Who’s this?”
“Lord Andellen,” Kaylin said, returning the hug briefly before she disentangled herself. “Lord Andellen, I’d like you to meet the Avatar of the Tower of Tiamaris.”
Andellen stared at Tara for a full minute longer than was comfortable—for Kaylin. Tara had a very odd notion of what was—or was not—polite, and Kaylin had learned to be grateful for it very quickly, as it saved Tiamaris from actually having to eat people or reduce them to ash. Stares did not discomfit her; nor did silences like this one, or their opposite—an endless stream of babble.
She was, in some ways, like a child: she viewed the whole outside world with wonder, and often had to be pulled away from the cracks in the cobbles where weeds grew, or the small birds that congregated wherever there was even the faintest possibility of crumbs. Kaylin wanted to be with her the first time she saw snow.
She stepped back from Kaylin, and then said, to Andellen, “You’re of Nightshade.”
He’d recovered himself enough to bow, and it wasn’t a shallow gesture. “I am, Lady,” he replied, as he straightened.
Her frown was slight, and she turned to the open doors as Morse stepped out into the sunlight. Morse was armed. Kaylin realized, with surprise, that it had been a while since she’d seen Morse holding daggers. “He’s with me,” she said quickly.
“You brought him here?”
“Well, technically, yes.”
“Why?”
“He’s a member of the High Court,” Kaylin replied. “And the High Court has some reservations about Tiamaris.”
“What kind of reservations?” Morse said, in exactly the wrong tone of voice.
“He’s a Dragon. They’ve got a complicated history.” Kaylin shrugged. “But for what it’s worth, I trust Andellen, and I trust Tiamaris, so I didn’t expect it would be a problem to have them meet.”
“It’ll be a problem today, unless you want to head back to the market.”
“He’s out?”
Morse nodded. “We were just about to head out, as well.”
“To the garden.”
“Oh—no.” Morse glanced at Tara’s clothing and cringed. “We’re due at the construction near the interior border. There are still some…difficulties there, and the Lady can always tell where they are, and how far we can safely go. She can also make it safer, so we don’t start without her. Why did you drop by?”
“I’m having a totally different problem,” Kaylin replied. “And I wanted to ask Tara a few questions about it. We can walk with you, if you’re late.” Tara’s sense of time, like Kaylin’s, was not precise. On the other ha
nd, no one threatened to dock the Tower’s pay.
Tara turned to Kaylin. “What problem?” she asked, in her gravest of tones.
Kaylin hesitated, trying to choose her words with care—not so much for Tara’s sake, but for Morse’s. “I was on Elani street—and while I was visiting a friend, I kind of fell out of the world.”
Morse said, “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
But Tara frowned, and her eyes darkened. Although she looked human, her eyes, like the eyes of many other Elantran races, shifted in color as her mood did. “You reached the edge of the world?”
“I don’t know where I reached—it looked like a whole lot of nothing. But I opened a familiar door, entered a—a very large room. When I tried to leave, the door didn’t open into the hallway anymore—it opened into…nothing.”
Tara turned to Morse. “I think,” she said quietly, “that we will be a little late today.” Turning, she waved toward the open doors as Morse muttered something inaudible under her breath. “Come, Kaylin. Lord Andellen?”
“If you permit it, Lady, I will accompany Lord Kaylin.”
Tara wrinkled her nose at the title.
“Don’t look at me,” Kaylin said with a grimace. “I don’t think it suits me, either, and I can’t get him to stop.”
Kaylin had spent very little time in the Tower of Tiamaris, not because she disliked it, but because Tiamaris himself spent so little time here. But she did recognize the front foyer, which was very different from that of Castle Nightshade. Some Barrani influences existed, but the Tower belonged to a Dragon now, and that showed. The doors, for one, were very wide, and they were always doubled; the floors were solid stone. In some places, carpets ran the length of the halls—but they didn’t run the length of the hall that Tara now opened, again with a wave of her hand.
This hall was as tall as anything in the Imperial Palace, but it was wider; the walls were largely unadorned. Doors could be seen along either side, and doors lay like tiny statements at the far end. But between that end and the one they now stood in, a Dragon could walk. He couldn’t fly, not here—but Kaylin would have bet every copper she owned that there were vast, vast caverns beneath these halls in which he could.
“There are,” Tara said, cheerfully.
Andellen glanced at Kaylin, who shrugged. “It’s not like I’m not used to visiting fieflords and having my thoughts plucked out of thin air. Are we going to the end of the hall?”
“We are,” Tara replied.
Kaylin hesitated, and Tara marked it.
“There is no danger to you, here,” she said quietly.
“I…might have a bit of a problem with portals, if we need to enter one.”
Tara stopped walking then. “Why?”
“I’m not sure—but I got out of nowhere with the help of Lord Nightshade.”
“Impossible,” was the flat reply. “He cannot travel to where I believe you might have been.”
“He didn’t exactly travel there,” Kaylin replied. “He went into the portal of Castle Nightshade, and he—he made a rip in the world. He pulled me through that. And he didn’t think it was a good idea for me to use his portal, afterward—I don’t think he thought I’d get to someplace I wanted to go. I’m thinking that probably applies to any portals that you’ve made, as well.”
Tara was quiet—and motionless—for what felt like a long damn time. Andellen, taking his lead from the Lord of this Tower as if she were Lord Nightshade, stilled, as well, which left Kaylin feeling distinctly fidgety. “Did he send you here?” Tara finally asked.
“Not exactly. But—he implied that everything about what I did, or what I experienced, is ancient, and it’s ancient in a way that he has no access to. And I thought—you were created when the world was ancient. But you can talk in a way that his Castle can’t. Or won’t,” she added quickly.
“There is a possibility,” Tara replied, without a trace of annoyance, “that you could touch Castle Nightshade. It would not have the same effect it had on me, because the Castle has been awake for centuries with no sense of who, or what, you are—but I believe, if you tried, it would hear you.”
“And I’d survive?”
The Tower’s eyes darkened into perfect obsidian orbs. They even reflected light. “You would survive,” she said, her voice, like her eyes, both dark and cool. It was disturbing, because she was still wearing her smudged and dirty gardening clothing—and none of it actually looked out of place. “I am not entirely certain what such communication would do to the current fieflord, and I assume he has forbidden the attempt.”
Kaylin nodded slowly, remembering—because it was so easy to forget—that the Tower could be damn scary.
“But it is not entirely necessary for you to retreat to the interior of the Tower, and perhaps not wise.” She turned once again and began to walk down the hall. Kaylin joined her and listened to the echoing fall of their steps in the acoustically unforgiving heights until they reached the doors—which were no longer all that tiny. Tara waved them open, a fact which made Kaylin love her even more, and they rolled into a room that was both huge, round, and almost empty.
Almost referred to the large, circular pool of water that lay in the center of the floor. It was surrounded by about ten feet of stone on all sides, and while the walls had no obvious lights and no obvious magic—at least none that Kaylin could feel in the usual aching tingle of her skin—and there didn’t seem to be a window at the top of the curved ceiling, the whole of the room was lit as if it were a public fountain near the Imperial Palace at midday.
Tara’s chin, as she approached the still water without hesitation, began to glow, and Kaylin realized that the light was coming from the water itself. She started to follow, but Tara lifted a hand in the universal gesture for “stop.” Kaylin stopped.
In theory, Tara didn’t have eyes in the back of her head; in practice, she didn’t need them. She could, with very little effort, see most of what was happening anywhere within the boundaries of the fief, let alone the Tower itself. She lifted her head and raised her arms, and as she did, Kaylin saw the faint, translucent outline of delicate wings rising above her shoulders. They really looked odd considering the rest of what she was wearing.
She spoke, and as she did, the stone of the walls began to crumble. It was a slow, delicate crumble, as if rock were being turned to sand—or dust. But it wasn’t all of the wall; it was very selective bits. Kaylin watched as a gentle breeze came and brushed those aside, until what was left was a wall engraved with familiar runes.
“Tara—”
“No, it is not a danger,” Tara replied. But the words felt murky to Kaylin, almost muffled. “These are not what lies at the heart of me. I do not need to show you those,” she added, and her voice softened as she spoke, losing the hard edge of perfect, ancient knowledge, and returning, for a brief moment, to the soft vulnerability of a young girl.
Andellen glanced at Kaylin, raising a brow.
Tara replied, “No, she wrote them. Or rewrote them.”
The Barrani Lord’s eyes widened.
“But they’re not the ones she wants now,” Tara continued. “And even if they were, she can’t read them without help anyway.” She took a deep breath—there was some question about whether this was an affectation or a necessity on her part—and then spoke.
Or sang.
It was hard to tell the difference.
What was not hard to tell was the effect it had. One by one, the newly engraved words that rested within the confines of the circular walls beyond the edge of the glowing pool, began to glow with a bright, azure light.
CHAPTER 10
Show me, Tara said.
Kaylin, staring at the blue light that now blazed across the walls as if it were fire, shook herself and turned to face Tara. Tara had taken two steps to the edge of the pool, lowering her arms to her sides. Her hands, like the runes, were glowing. “Show you?”
Show me the where that you were.
??
?That’s not normally how we say it,” Kaylin replied, joining the Avatar at the edge of the still water. She caught Andellen’s expression, and added, “She wants us to correct her use of what she calls idiom.”
“How would you normally say this?” Tara asked, speaking out loud, as if only remembering that she could.
“We’d say ‘show me where you were.’ Well, actually, only the Tha’alani would be able to say that in this case. The rest of us would say, ‘Tell us where you were.’”
“Show me.”
Kaylin nodded hesitantly. “Uh, how?”
“The water.”
“You want me to touch the water?”
“Yes.”
Kaylin bent and stretched out a hand.
“No! Not like that!”
She stood again, grimacing. Her reflection was perfectly clear. “How?”
“It’s a—think of it as a mirror,” she said. “Like your mirrors. This is one of mine. Just—talk to it, the way you talk to your Records.”
They weren’t Kaylin’s Records, and Kaylin had no idea how most of the information in Records actually got there. It had never occurred to her to wonder. But she nodded, as if information were now contained in…water.
“Just—think at it.”
“Think at it.”
“The way you think at me.”
“I don’t think at you, Tara. You hear what I’m thinking at me.” Then think, the Tower replied, with just a hint of frustration, at yourself. But through the water.
Kaylin nodded, pretending the instructions made sense. “Records,” she said, automatically. Tara had, however, been as helpful as she could in the creation of this place: the surface of the water shimmered, and the light began to break.
“You can’t just skip the water and take it from my thoughts?”
“No. Not as easily. There’s too much and it’s hard to separate what’s relevant from what’s constantly just there. And it’s not only you who will be using my mirror,” she added, with the hint of a sniff. “I’ll need to show you things, as well. Maybe.”