“Do you know what he’s doing?” Severn asked her. He’d wound the weapon chain around his waist, and didn’t bother to arm himself; he did, however, take up position closest to the door. Teela had done the same.
Kaylin nodded. “I don’t know how, so don’t ask.”
It seemed particularly fitting that the sphere itself began to elongate; she recognized the shape it took. It was an egg. It was a giant egg.
“Do you think baby Dragons also come out of eggs this size?” she began.
“No. And before you ask, yes, I’ve seen one, and yes, it was during the war,” Teela replied.
The egg cracked. Kaylin was grateful. She knew that Teela had centuries upon centuries more experience with war—but she was cowardly enough to want to think of her role in that war as brave and heroic. She did not want to think of it as slaughter or baby-killing.
But she knew that Bellusdeo had value to the Emperor—to her entire race—because she was the last of the female Dragons. And she wasn’t the last because the rest had up and committed suicide.
Bellusdeo had flown to the High Halls. She was fighting to protect the Barrani there, regardless of what had occurred in the past. People could change. Kaylin had.
The crack in the egg travelled from its peak to the floor, joined by smaller cracks on its way down. Those cracks forked, and forked again, covering the surface until no more of the surface remained. At the center of what had once been egg, folded awkwardly into an egg shape, was the not-very-small dragon.
He stretched his wings out first, shaking their tips too damned close to Teela’s face. Teela had one of the best poker faces in the Halls; she didn’t even blink. She did curse him in loud, clear Leontine when he knocked her off her feet with a lazy swish of tail, though.
He brought his wings in, lifting and elongating his neck. End to end, there wasn’t enough room in the tower to contain him—not fully stretched. He snorted in Kaylin’s direction, but didn’t roar. She was grateful.
“We’ll be back,” Kaylin told Helen, as she climbed up the side of her familiar. “Ummm—it’s okay with you if we do come back?”
“I think you had better, dear. I imagine someone will need to prevent me from strangling Mandoran.” She headed toward the door.
“If I haven’t strangled him yet,” Teela replied, leaping with far more grace onto Dragon back, “I’ll resent it if you do. It will mean all my prior effort at self-control was wasted.”
“And that is not the lesson we wish to teach, clearly.” There was no threat in Helen’s voice. Before Kaylin could ask, she added, “Annarion is not nearly as...difficult. He has a much better sense of responsibility. Probably too much better.” She left the tower by the door, which would have been totally normal—if she’d opened it first.
Severn didn’t immediately join them; instead he cleared his throat. When the familiar swiveled to face him, Severn asked permission. A small hint of smoke cleared large dragon nostrils; Severn correctly interpreted this as a yes.
“Remember,” Kaylin said, as the familiar’s body tensed to leap, “that none of the rest of us can fly.”
* * *
Kaylin loved to fly. Or rather, she loved to hitch rides with people who could. In this case, people was a bit of a stretch.
The familiar, however, was not a small aerial footprint. This wouldn’t have been a problem on most days—not at this time of night. But she could see the telltale tunics of the Halls of Laws’ Aerian division. The Aerians wore magical clothing when they went on sky patrols; the cloth glowed. The cloth didn’t have to glow; activation depended on circumstances.
Kaylin wanted to tell them that these were the wrong circumstances for light; it made them trivial targets. She remembered that the Dragon Court was probably melting streets by now, and reconsidered.
“Teela—can you see Clint?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell him to pull our forces back?”
“You want him to know that we’re here and we failed to respond to the emergency call-up?”
“No—but I’d rather get docked pay than lose them all!”
“And if you were their commanding officer, I’d be happy to comply. You’re not. You don’t get a say.”
“Then find me the Hawklord!”
“Not worth the effort,” Teela shouted back. She had to shout. The Dragons were roaring. “We’re obvious enough. He’ll find us.”
“I’d like him to find us before the mages decide we’re an incoming threat!”
“Then you should have thought of that sooner.”
“What? You didn’t!”
“Yes, kitling, I did. I just don’t care about anything but getting to the High Halls as fast as possible. I assumed you had the same thought.”
“Incoming,” Severn said, raising his voice. It was going to be an evening of raised voices.
The familiar, however, was watching rather than listening; he was on the move before the lightning that was traveling in the wrong direction—ground to sky—unfurled in full magical glory. The familiar immediately headed toward the High Halls. He roared, and Bellusdeo, grounded, looked up; she roared back.
“Drop me off there,” Teela shouted. She indicated Bellusdeo, but the familiar didn’t have eyes in the back of his head—and he wasn’t all that keen on following anyone’s orders anyway.
The Hawks were not yet thick in the air, but they were present.
Kaylin craned forward to see if she could catch a glimpse of the ground just beneath the massive body of the mostly translucent dragon. She saw people. Many of them were running away from the combat zone, which was more sense than a lot of the citizens of Elantra usually displayed.
Some people, on horseback, were riding toward it.
The familiar flew over them all, folding his wings as he approached the High Halls at speeds that should have made landing impossible. Teela’s hold on Kaylin’s waist tightened as Kaylin ducked. The familiar crashed into the High Halls.
But he didn’t hit them.
And he didn’t, apparently, absorb much in the way of shock—none of his three passengers were thrown clear. Only two of them were cursing. He wheeled, flapping to gain speed and momentum, and when he had enough of it, he headed right back to the High Halls.
Kaylin could see what he was doing: he was ramming the barrier. The barrier, like the dragon, was translucent—but it was thick. He had chosen to attack it from the heights.
“Couldn’t you breathe on it?” Kaylin shouted.
The familiar roared.
“Fine. Shutting up now.”
The third time the full force of his very large body struck the barrier, it cracked. Or it sounded like it cracked; nothing apparently changed. The familiar then paused, hovering, until the Barrani poured out of the High Halls, gleaming in the magical light.
Ynpharion—the barrier is down.
She felt his acknowledgment. He was too busy for actual words, since apparently condescension took effort. The familiar reached dirt, briefly; Teela slid off his back and ran toward the Halls. Kaylin, on the other hand, ran toward the golden Dragon with the obviously scorched wing. The wing was bleeding.
Maggaron was standing by her head, waving a monstrosity of a weapon—one which Kaylin didn’t recall him having for any other part of the evening. She didn’t ask. She was just grateful that he had it.
“What,” Bellusdeo demanded, in her angry, rumbly tone, “are you doing here?”
“Being useful,” she replied. She placed a palm against smooth, golden scales; they were almost uncomfortably hot to the touch.
“I am not dying,” Bellusdeo snapped.
“I’m willing to take this crap from Teela,” Kaylin shot back. “But I can see one gaping, bleeding hole in your right wing. If you die here, the Emperor i
s probably going to torch the entire city in a rage.”
“Maggaron, get rid of her.”
Maggaron effected not to have heard, and given his ears were closer to the speaking parts of the golden Dragon than Kaylin’s, that took effort.
“Even your Ascendant thinks it’s necessary.”
Smoke came out of flared nostrils. “He is like a cat, except for the parts of him that remind me of puppies. Fine. I would never have allowed this in my own kingdom—there’d be far too much in the way of politics and security at stake. Here, I do nothing of worth or value, so it doesn’t matter what you know.”
A pillar of radiant, white fire shot up from ground to sky; it seemed to travel forever, and it burned whatever it touched. The air was filled with the sound of Dragon pain.
* * *
Bellusdeo surged to her feet, and Kaylin, without another word, clambered up her back. What Bellusdeo had said was true: she looked terrible. This would be because she felt terrible. Her arms were shaking, and her legs were unsteady. But she’d easily located the Dragon’s injuries, and she’d set about healing them.
She was unprepared for the strangeness of the Dragon’s actual body. She’d never been allowed to heal one before—and frankly, in Elantra, where there were Dragons, the need for healing usually went in the opposite direction. There were very few fights that involved Dragons to begin with, and when there were, she wouldn’t bet against them no matter what the odds were.
Bellusdeo’s body was not a single thing. It wasn’t a harmonious whole; it was a duality. The human form—or what Kaylin thought of as the human form—wasn’t actually human in any way; it was inextricably wed to the draconic mass. Both of these things were like—like skin or armor; the Dragon could choose which of the two it wished to face outward.
“Bellusdeo—don’t even try to fly. Not yet—I’m afraid I might—”
“Afraid you might what?”
“—turn you back into your human shape. I don’t—I’ve never—”
“Honestly, if you weren’t on my back, I’d bite off one of your arms. Maggaron, get on.”
Maggaron replied in Norannir. Kaylin knew only a little of the language, but she understood what he meant, even if the words were foreign: no freaking way. He was usually polite and painfully earnest and deferential; here, the earnest was on display. The rest? Not so much.
Bellusdeo roared.
He stood his ground.
Kaylin gritted her teeth and clung to golden back—it was warm, if nothing else—and tried to guide the Dragon’s insane physical body back to something that resembled its normal, healthy state. She wondered if this would be any easier if she were a Dragon herself, but kind of doubted it. It might have helped if the Dragon weren’t expending so much energy having a hissy fit.
But when the column of white turned bloodred, expanding to fill the street and to destroy the grounds of the buildings on either side, she understood exactly why Bellusdeo wanted to be up in the air.
Flying in, low to ground, and approaching that deadly magical pillar, was another Dragon. He was a shade lighter in color than Bellusdeo, but it didn’t matter; there was only one Dragon missing.
The Arkon had arrived.
* * *
“All the rest of the Dragons are in the air,” Kaylin shouted, kicking the patient because she happened to be on her back. “You’re powerful, yes—but you’re one Dragon. One injured Dragon.”
“The rest are not in the air,” Bellusdeo countered. “Diarmat and Emmerian have landed.”
They hadn’t landed anywhere near Kaylin.
“If you want to be helpful, find them and heal them.” They wouldn’t let Kaylin anywhere near their injuries—and Bellusdeo knew it.
“It’s different.”
“Because I’m the precious, singular girl?”
“Because I’m not living with any of the others.” Kaylin was so tired. What she did not need now was to fight with her roommate. But this wasn’t enough of an explanation, and she knew it. “And because none of them—except maybe Tiamaris—are actually my friends. You are. So you have to put up with it.”
“Teela doesn’t.”
“Teela’s never had most of her arm blown off. And yes, she would put up with it. She might not speak to me for a week, but she’d accept it.” The wing was mostly closed. It was tender. Kaylin hadn’t even tried to replace lost blood; from bitter experience, that type of healing flattened her completely.
At the moment, even healing the easy injuries was painful; Bellusdeo was almost in a frenzy of panic and fear—because the Arkon had arrived, and because the idiot had chosen to land in the street. Kaylin was—although she’d never admit it—fond of the Arkon; her own panic was hard enough to deal with.
Bellusdeo’s was—like everything else about her—larger and deeper and more visceral. Kaylin got all of it, because of the healing.
Kaylin understood that the Arkon, of all the Dragon Court, meant something to Bellusdeo—he was her only link to the past, to her childhood, and in the end, to the world that she’d unintentionally left. He was, inasmuch as a cranky old man could be, her friend. He was the only one of the Dragon Court with the seniority to criticize the Emperor.
And he was right to criticize the Emperor.
Kaylin slid off Bellusdeo’s back. Bellusdeo was either going to fly or she wasn’t—but Bellusdeo couldn’t do what the familiar, still waiting on a lawn that would probably be blackened, scorched earth in a few minutes, could.
She ran to him; he was pawing the ground with very, very sharp claws. The claws, like his teeth, were the only solid parts of his body; everything else was translucent.
Are you finished? he asked. She nearly fell off her own feet. The surprise of his voice was a welcome gift; it gave her a little boost of adrenaline. It pushed the exhaustion back. She climbed up—with Severn’s help. Tightening shaking legs, she said, “I’m on.”
The familiar pushed himself away from the ground, and gravity let him go, as if he weighed nothing.
Bellusdeo was yards behind; Kaylin could hear her roaring—in her mother tongue—at her Ascendant. But she could flex—and flap—her wing, and Kaylin knew Maggaron would give in; if he didn’t, she’d leave him behind. At any other time, Kaylin would have thought that for the best; what could Maggaron do in the air?
But as she was on her familiar’s back with Severn—both wingless, and both unprepared to fight on the back of a creature whose wingspan was far greater than their reach—she let it go. Bellusdeo teased Maggaron mercilessly—but in the end, some of his words did reach her. And she wasn’t exactly overflowing with good sense of her own at the moment.
“Kaylin!” a familiar voice shouted. Kaylin looked up. Tiamaris was flying toward her. “Get Bellusdeo out of here, now!”
“She’s not exactly listening to me!” Kaylin shouted back. Her voice had nowhere near the power of the Dragons’—but they had better hearing. How, given their native speech, Kaylin honestly didn’t know. “You want her out? You drag her out!”
Someone else roared. Kaylin didn’t understand the language, and she didn’t recognize the voice. Which meant it could only belong to one Dragon. She sincerely hoped the Emperor didn’t attempt to give her the same orders Tiamaris had, because her answer would essentially be the same, and she didn’t have the energy to funnel it through politeness and groveling.
It was Sanabalis who said, clearly, “Support the Arkon!”
She heard other roars, other commands; she thought she could discern the thinner, higher voice of the Hawklord in the mix. But she was on a Dragon’s back, and she could see the only other golden Dragon in the Court. He had landed. His wings were high, and even at this distance, Kaylin thought his eyes were a deep, bloodred—it must have been her imagination; she was too far away to see them clearly.
r /> The ancestor was not. He turned his attention from the sky; he gestured and the rain of Dragon fire that was even now melting stones around him in a wide circle parted harmlessly above his head. His eyes—his eyes were silver. She knew, because he turned as the familiar flew in a straight line toward his head.
His hair was black; it reflected nothing. His skin was alabaster, his lips both perfect and cold as they turned up in a smile of recognition.
She heard roaring, felt wind rush past her, and tightened her legs as the familiar banked sharply; white fire—fire, not lightning—raced from the ancestor’s hands toward the spot the familiar had occupied scant seconds ago. He was, in spite of his bulk and his shape, not a dragon. He moved with the speed of a sparrow. Or at least the maneuverability.
Her arms suddenly began to burn.
Given the magic being thrown around, this wasn’t surprising. But it was new. The Arkon, she thought. She said nothing.
He is important to you.
Yes. He is.
Then tell me what you wish me to do—and what you are willing to sacrifice for it.
Help him, Kaylin said, as white fire sizzled past her hair. Buy him time.
The familiar continued to dodge white fire—and if nothing else, the target he provided spared some of the Dragon Court. Kaylin knew that Diarmat and Emmerian had landed because they could no longer maneuver in the air. A dark shadow cut across her—from above; it was the Emperor. It couldn’t be anyone else.
And the sacrifice?
Kaylin almost said: anything. But there was a gravity to the question, a weight, that gave her pause. The familiar was not an enemy. But he was not, perhaps, a friend, either.
No. I am yours, and I have chosen to serve you—but there are rules in all things, and those rules define both you and my place in your world. I can interfere, Kaylin. As I can, I do. But this intervention is not interference; it is an act, and it is not, cannot be, free. What will you surrender to me in return for the intervention you desire?
Can you stop the ancestor?
Yes.
How?
Silence.