Inside, the Aerie was waiting, and if it was not the utter perfection, in architectural terms, of the High Halls, it was still perfect; the Aerians were flying maneuvers above her head, and she almost tipped over backward, watching them. Severn caught her before she fell. She'd put the shoes on, but still hated them. Those, she was damn well going to burn, Quartermaster or no.
But she moved past the Aerians somehow—Severn pulling probably had a lot to do with it—and made her way to the office that was ruled by a Leontine. By a besieged Leontine with—yes—a fortress of paperwork behind which to hide. If a wind didn't blow it all over.
He knew she was coming; his sense of smell was just as impressive as his hearing. He was up and around the desk before she'd set foot in the office proper, beating Caitlin, who had to rely on her eyes to notice that Kaylin had returned.
Marcus growled and sniffed the air.
"It's the dress," she offered.
"It's formal enough," Marcus replied.
She didn't like the last two words in combination. "Formal enough for what?"
"A meeting," he said, "with a mage of the Imperial Order."
She groaned. "Can't you tell him I'm dead?"
"I could try," Marcus replied, touching her shoulders as if to ascertain that she was actually there. "But—"
"But it is considered less than wise to lie to a Dragon Lord."
She turned; Lord Sanabalis was standing ten feet behind her. "Private," he said. "I am glad to see that your visit to the Barrani High Court has not altered you beyond recognition. I would like to speak with you," he added, and pointed to the West Room.
The bastard made her open the door. And then walked in first. Not really a good start, given that Dragon hearing and Leontine swearing weren't a good combination. He lifted a gray brow as he took a seat.
She saw a damn candle in the center of the table.
After everything she'd been through—well. If he wanted to play games, fine. She started to speak, and he lifted a hand.
"First," he told her quietly, "I would appreciate the return of my medallion. I see you managed to retain it. Given the rest of your records—and the Quartermaster's rather harsh evaluation—I consider myself blessed." He held out a hand.
She removed the heavy gold links and placed them, with the medallion on top, in the curve of his palm. He closed his fingers and smiled. It was a teacher's smile. Which was to say, unpleasant and slightly smug.
"Now," he told her, "the candle."
But she wasn't an idiot. She was tired, and her body ached, and she was about to be a corpse if the Quartermaster had his way, but she wasn't stupid. Her brows rose. And fell.
"The fire—"
"Ah. Yes." He offered her the lazy smile of a cat. Or a very, very large lizard who was sitting on a warm rock in the sun.
"It was yours."
He shrugged. "It was not, as you so emphatically put it, mine. It was, however, augmented." He shook his head. "Students are often lazy," he told her, "and prone to believe in their own brilliance unless corrected by a firm hand."
While she did her best imitation of a fish, he studied her face. His eyes were gold, but he lidded them. "I believe that I was incorrect."
"That has to be a first," she said sourly.
"The High Halls have left you changed. But not," he added, feigning disappointment, "in a way that is of use. You will be able to light the candle, Kaylin. You know the word. But saying it without my power to guide the shape will be vastly harder, and what you achieve will be less… reliable.
"I am aware that you called the fire," he added. "Three times."
She nodded.
"Given that you are still alive, and no formal war has been declared, I am going to assume that you did so at need, and in a way that did not displease the Lord of the High Court." His eyes changed shape and shade; they were orange now. "There is a new Lord of the High Court?"
Her brows rose again. And lowered. She did her very best not to swear. Which, given she was in the Halls of Law, wasn't enough to stop her.
"You know," she finally said.
And his expression was, for a moment, a Dragon's expression; it wasn't a comfort. "I was here, at the founding of the Empire," Sanabalis replied, and his voice was a Dragon's voice, loud and rumbling. "And I know why the city of Elantra was founded in this place.
"But the High Halls still stand, and that is all that is required." He paused. "Of the Barrani. You, however, have other work ahead of you."
"But I want to—"
"Learn magic."
"Seen enough of that to last a few, oh, decades."
He looked pointedly at the candle, and she wilted. "Kyuthe to the Lord of the West March," the Dragon said, "and friend to the Lord of the High Court. You've done well, Kaylin Neya. If faith and risk were bound together in you, you have begun to unwind the strands.
"You might be the last pupil I take," he added, his voice softening until it sounded almost human. "And if this is the case, you must be a memorable one. Students are in part our legacy."
"Tell that to my teachers."
He chuckled. "I have. They were not pleased with the observation." He lifted his medallion and set it around his neck before folding his hands on the tabletop.
Epilogue
The Lord of Castle Nightshade sat upon a throne in the Long Hall of Statues. Silence and stillness were gathered here, as if they were scarce and rare, and therefore to be hoarded. Where statues stood, movement, however instantly captured, suggested life; none of the statues were of the Barrani. Nor, of course, the Dragons. What remained, mortal all, would pass—was passing—into age and decay, with time.
But one Barrani Lord was present, and he waited upon one knee, his head bent, before the throne upon which Lord Nightshade sat, casting no shadow.
"Lord Andellen," Lord Nightshade said, "rise."
Andellen unfolded slowly.
"The Lord of the High Court?"
"He is well."
"And the ceremony?"
"It was completed."
Nightshade nodded gravely. "I heard the horns," he said at last, looking toward—and beyond—the Ablayne, where the High Halls stood behind the statue of the first High Lord and his Consort. That a wall stood between them—several, in fact—counted for less than nothing; he knew where the High Halls lay.
Andellen nodded. If there was any desire or regret in the room, it was—as much as it could be—hidden. "I was not present when they were sounded."
"No." The Lord of Castle Nightshade rose from the throne's stone confines. "Who now sits beneath the first tree?"
The silence was hesitation; Lord Andellen showed none. But after a long pause, he said, "The man who was once Lord of the Green."
Nightshade closed his eyes a moment. "And the Lord of the West March?"
"He will return to the West March," was the quiet reply. "And he will bear word."
"What did she do, Andellen?" High Barrani shaded into Barrani. Inasmuch as two such complicated men could be, they were friends.
"Kaylin Neya? She proved herself worthy," was the quiet reply.
"Of the High Court?"
"No, Lord Nightshade. That was never in doubt."
"Then?"
"Of you."
Nightshade smiled; it was a weary smile. "That," he said softly, "was never in doubt to me. But she is changed, I fear."
"She must be. I confess, however, that I saw little sign of it."
Lord Nightshade began to walk toward the doors, and Lord Andellen fell in beside him; they sounded like one man by the fall of their step.
"She found the tower, as you predicted she would."
"And passed its test."
"And passed. If I had doubts, I have none now."
"Less than none… you are guarded, Andellen."
"Lord." Acknowledgment; no argument. No lie.
"Did she see what lies at the heart of the Halls?"
Footsteps lost their perfect synchronicity. And
ellen regained composure, but slowly for a man of his power. "Yes," he said at last.
"You were with her."
"Yes."
"Good. And what will she take from it?"
"I… do not know, Lord Nightshade." A pause. But it was not followed by question; nor would it be. "She has power, and even the will to use it—but the will is entirely mortal."
"And to what use, in the end, did she put the power of which you speak?" The fieflord smiled. There was no amusement in it, and no warmth. "Guard your secrets, Lord Andellen. You are capable of such caution. Kaylin Neya is not.
"Or was not, when she left. When the time comes, she will speak of what she saw. I heard the voice of the Lord of the West March," he added softly, "when he offered her the chance to be free of my mark. No," he added, although Andellen had not asked, "I was not with her. She did not call me. But he touched the mark, and he spoke through it—I heard his challenge clearly.
"Yet she bears the mark, still." The smile that had briefly moved his lips was gone; his eyes were a pale shade of blue-green. "She is unwise, to the end, and in time, she will come to me."
"And when that time comes, will she be Erenne?" Lord Nightshade said nothing for a moment. When he spoke at last, he did not choose to answer the question. "Tell me," he said instead, "of Severn."
Severn left his home when the light of the sun was shading toward evening; the sky was still blue, but in an hour, its edges would be crimson. Three days after the close of the Festival season, the day was still long. Long enough to encompass hours of beat duty, and the beginnings of three different investigations into the murders that the passing of the season often left in its wake.
Kaylin watched him from a safe distance—across the street, in fact. She was wearing the Hawk, and her old boots. Her pants were new. She had chosen to braid her hair, for lack of anything she could stick through a top knot, and she looked slightly younger than she was, and vastly older than she felt.
He started down the street, toward the tavern in which he so often ate—they saved him a table—but he stopped before he passed her.
Her smile was cautious as she approached him; his frown was more pronounced. "What," he asked her succinctly, "are you doing here?"
"Minding my own business," she replied.
"You have business that brings you here?"
She shrugged. "Maybe. I thought I could, you know, walk with you for a bit."
"On patrol?"
She shrugged. "I'm off duty."
"And the mage?"
"Still not annoyed. Pretty damn annoying, though."
"Law of conservation," Severn told her.
"I don't know that one—can it be broken?"
"If it can, it'll be by you." He ran a hand through his hair. "Kaylin—"
She put a hand on his arm.
"You've been waiting here every day for three days. What are you waiting for?"
She met his eyes and bit her lip. "You," she said at last. She thought he would shake his arm free of her, and he almost did, but he stilled at the last moment, and met her gaze. His narrowed. "What are you carrying?" He looked pointedly at the bulging satchel by her side.
"Just stuff."
"Why?"
She shook her head. "Where are you going?"
"The Spotted Pig."
"Liar. You ate there half an hour ago."
He raised a brow. "And you know this how?"
"I asked. After you left."
"You're getting better at following."
"You didn't know?"
His turn to shrug. It was a gesture that bounced between them, a deflection they were both expert at.
"You watched me for seven years," she told him quietly. "You can live with me and a couple of days."
"I was quieter."
"You always were."
"Kaylin—"
"I want to go with you," she told him quietly.
His expression suggested about a hundred replies, and she guessed most of them weren't considered polite in any company. But none of them made their way past his lips, which were closed in a pinched frown.
"It was my choice," he told her at last. Some of the rawness slipped into the words.
"I know. Let me make one, too." She was not above pleading with him. But pleas in the fiefs had often been silent. And Severn? He'd never been good at saying no to her. She wasn't that child, but she had been. Nothing would change that now.
And if Severn had changed, he was not unlike the first tree; he had grown from roots that were planted in the same fief as Kaylin's. He turned away from her, but he said nothing, and she still had his sleeve in her grasp.
He began to walk—as she had known he would—toward the bridge across the Ablayne. She didn't so much follow as cling. She wanted to talk. About anything. About work, because it was safe. About the High Halls, because in its way, that was almost safe, as well.
But she couldn't quite force the words past her lips; idle chatter seemed wrong here. The day seemed wrong, as well. She had lived in the upper city for seven years, and night had slowly shifted in meaning. It was the time for sleeping—and the occasional emergency call from the midwives guild.
Yet she felt, as she stepped across the first plank of the bridge, that it should have been night. That the streets should have carried the threat of ferals, that they should have been empty. It was not yet close enough to evening that they were; people filled them.
Curious people. But curiosity in the fiefs had a different tone. They were watched, but they weren't approached. The Hawks emblazoned across their surcoats glittered, caught light, hinting at flight. At hunting. At a freedom that was beyond the men and women who labored here.
She wanted to ask him where they were going. But she knew him well enough to know that she wouldn't get an answer. She gazed out at the streets instead, walking with the ease of long practice as if she owned them. As if the Laws of the Dragon Emperor meant something, even here.
And they did—but only to Kaylin. Severn had made it clear that Wolf or Hawk, he was still Severn. She didn't deny him that truth; she had survived because of it.
The streets narrowed. The buildings grew older and far less stately; repair was a thing that was done haphazardly and without the proper materials. Doors sagged in frames that were weathered and old. Windows—shuttered or open—gaped above them like open mouths. There was glass in the fiefs, but it was rare. And it wasn't found here.
She remembered this street. There was a tavern here, and the four corners were just a few blocks away. She wondered if he would go there, and followed in silence, holding his sleeve as if it were a talisman that just happened to come attached to the rest of him.
"Severn?"
He shook his head. They passed the four corners, and the attention they garnered slowed them a moment; one or two of the older people almost seemed to recognize them. But if they did, the armor and weapons they carried were a moving wall, a sign that said keep away. In the fiefs, such signs were generally obeyed. Arms were the force of law most respected here.
But he kept walking, past those corners, and past buildings damaged enough by time that no one lived in them anymore. Not even the desperate orphans that Kaylin and Severn had been. "You're going—you're going to the watchtower."
He nodded.
"We found Catti there."
And nodded again.
So much stiffness in that gesture.
"But how did you—"
He lifted a hand, and she fell silent. So many secrets, she thought. They had never had secrets worth keeping, when they had lived here. Not from each other. Not more than once.
Once? It was enough.
Her fingers were frozen, although it wasn't cold. She could think of the past, walking in the present, and it didn't enrage her. It numbed her instead. But numbness and fear were not the same. The High Halls had tested her. But they had tested Severn, as well.
He came to the gates, to the black, pocked metal of a fence. They opened
inward, creaking as they did, and she saw the hole in the rounded wall of the watchtower. She wondered what it had been used for, when it had first been built. It was not like the Castle, not like the High Halls. Round, it went up several storeys, and ended in a roof that probably couldn't even keep sunlight out. She was sure birds nested there.
But not Hawks.
She slowed as they passed through the gate, and slowed again as they walked the flat ground. Weeds grew here, although the lack of rain had turned them a golden brown that fire would consume in an instant.
No fire she could call.
"Here?" she asked him, hating his stiffness. Hating her own.
He nodded. "It was the only place," he added softly, speaking from a place that she could almost reach, if she had the courage.
Courage was a funny thing. Like gods, it came and went at its own pleasure, and at the moment, it had deserted her so entirely she could hardly remember its presence.
The only place, he had said, and it was true. The fiefs themselves were often crowded, and very little grew here. The watchtower was surrounded by a small field of weeds, tended by seasons, and no other hand.
And yet, he led her through them. They were higher than her waist in some places, and no lower than her knees, and they bent when she stepped on them, folded when she pushed them aside.
He came at last to a place beyond the wall, nearest the eastern part of the fence. And in the weeds, he knelt, searching a moment. It wasn't a leisurely search, although it wasn't a desperate one; he expected to find something here.
And she saw it before his hands touched it: a stone. A large stone, uncut and uncarved. It bore no names, no symbols, and no traces of human craftsmanship. It was just… a rock. A large, bare rock.
He closed his eyes, and knelt in front of it, and she almost left him then, because she could see his face clearly in the daylight. This is why she had desired night and night's shadow, even a night that contained ferals.
Because ferals weren't the threat they had once been, and this—this absolute surrender—was worse.
She had let go of his sleeve when he had begun his search in the weeds, and she didn't dare to take it back. Instead, after a moment of silence, she twisted her satchel around so that it fell into her lap when she knelt.