“What, exactly, did he do?”
“He tried to walk through a wall,” Annarion replied.
“Let me guess. He didn’t bounce.”
“No. He did some damage to the wall, and some to himself, but managed to separate the two before more serious injury could occur.”
“Why in the hells was he trying to walk through a solid wall?”
“Curiosity. He’s been playing with shape, form and solidity. We can’t do it outside, at the moment.”
She stared at Annarion. “Are you telling me you can do it inside?”
“I can’t.”
“But Mandoran can.”
“Yes. But Helen says he’s practically screaming look at me while he does it. But louder. He hasn’t tried it outside of Helen’s borders. And he won’t,” he added quickly. “But he wouldn’t have had the mishap if he weren’t trying to do it silently.”
“Why can’t you do it?” Kaylin asked him.
“I don’t want to try, which is considered cowardly by half our cohort, and sensible by the other half.”
“I consider it extremely sensible,” Teela said. “And I’m sitting right in front of you.”
Annarion grinned; Kaylin had no doubt he was passing information to the rest of the cohort, who were across the continent. The grin faded. “My brother will be here later this afternoon. Can I ask you a question?”
Kaylin nodded.
“If he were willing to remove the mark, would you be willing to have it removed?”
“It would make my life in the office a lot easier,” she replied, then hesitated.
“But?”
“I think it’s saved my life at least twice. Maybe more. I don’t know why he marked me. I know it’s the mark an erenne bears, but I’m still not sure what an erenne is. I can’t get much of an explanation out of any of the Barrani I know—but I’m guessing it’s bad, because they hate the mark. Mostly, they’ve gotten used to it, though,” she added, trying to be fair.
“That’s not an answer.”
“I have his Name,” she replied.
Annarion and Teela both rolled their eyes in an identical grimace.
“Would it be easier for you?” she asked him.
“It would be easier for me if he’d never marked you at all. It is comforting to know that it’s only the mark, and not the rest of it; that you don’t really understand what it means. But, Kaylin—he could have made you understand it. He could make you do it now.”
“I have his Name,” she repeated.
“One of the reasons Mandoran is willing—more than willing—to tell you his True Name is that you’re not actually powerful enough to use it.”
Kaylin reddened. “I don’t think it’s about power, per se. And I have used someone’s Name against them, just...not your brother.”
“They were probably trying to kill you.”
“It makes a difference?”
“All the difference in the world, yes.”
“What I was trying to say was that if he needs to find me, he can. We’re connected that way, and as far as I can tell, there’s no way to forget a True Name. I don’t need the mark for that. Did he offer?”
“...No. I just wanted to know.” Annarion rose. “Mandoran is cursing. I’ll go and help Helen before he shrieks the walls down.”
“Not that I want to defend Nightshade or anything,” Kaylin said when Annarion had left the room, “but he had to survive centuries without his brother. He was outcaste. Is outcaste,” she corrected herself. “It’s not possible to be perfect for centuries. I can’t even manage it for a day.”
“An hour,” Teela corrected her.
“You know what I mean.”
Teela nodded, grinning; the grin faded as she considered Annarion. “It’s not enough for Annarion that his brother hasn’t harmed you. You hate the fief of Nightshade and what it meant to you. You particularly hate it now that Tiamaris has set up shop in the neighboring fief. You were afraid of the fieflord when you lived in his fief. You were terrified of the Barrani who served him. You had every reason to be both.
“Annarion is disillusioned. If you believe that that makes no difference to Lord Nightshade, you fail to understand the kinship they had in their youth. It’s not your fight, Kaylin. It’s not your responsibility. Nightshade is guilty of everything that has so disappointed his younger brother. Youngest brother, and only surviving one. So many of us,” she added, voice softening as she fixed her gaze on the flame of a candle at the center of the table, “slip away from the ideals and the dreams of our youth.
“Many of my kin are raised without them. My mother—” She shook her head. “Those ideals, those beliefs—they’re tested. They’re broken. We accept their loss because we wish to survive. And perhaps we accept their loss because they’re onerous, in the end. It is hard to live up to a dream, a daydream. We surrender, then, the beliefs. We tell ourselves that those beliefs were proof of our naïveté, our foolishness. We deride our youthful selves, because we’ve faced the reality, the truth. We all do this. You did.”
“I—”
“You thought that when you crossed the bridge, when you left the fiefs and the Ablayne behind, you would find paradise. A place where everyone was happy, where people were free, where starvation was impossible, where people would be kind and accepting.”
Kaylin flushed and closed her mouth. All of this was true.
“Experience robbed you of that belief pretty quickly.”
Kaylin nodded, squirming a bit in her chair.
“Not all of our early beliefs are simple naïveté, simple daydream. But it is sometimes hard to differentiate which are true, or possible. It is impossible for you to have the world-across-the-bridge that you daydreamed of with such visceral longing, because Elantra is occupied by actual people. People cannot be that perfect, even if every one of them had the same dream that you once had.
“We dream smaller dreams,” Teela continued. “Nightshade is being reminded, in a way most of us will never be, of what he’s lost. No; of what he surrendered. It is not comfortable. And Annarion is coming face-to-face with that loss, as well. The brother of his memories is not the Nightshade of today.
“But it’s possible that enough of what Nightshade once was remains, somehow; Annarion believes that.”
“You don’t.”
“No, kitling, I don’t. My cohort accepts me because I was their equal, their companion. I was as helpless as they were, and was given as much choice as children generally are in my own future. They didn’t dream of me.”
“They did,” was Kaylin’s soft reply. “Terrano came for you. They were waiting.”
Teela’s smile was pained but genuine. “They didn’t dream of me the way Annarion dreamed of his brother. The way any of us dreamed of our brothers,” she added, remembering. “Annarion practically worshipped Nightshade in his youth. He knew that Nightshade would not abandon him; knew as well of the bitter, bitter fights between Nightshade and his father. Those fights were not enough to free Annarion, of course; Nightshade was much younger then, and much less powerful.
“Annarion isn’t disappointed because Nightshade is outcaste. The Barrani are largely political when it comes to that designation, and some of our historical outcastes have been figures of great drama, great heroics. No, it’s what he chose to make of his life, of the fief of Nightshade and even, in the end, of you. You’re the harshest divide because Annarion actually knows you. He knows that you freed them—us, really—and that you risked your life, multiple times, to do so.
“He knows about your work with the foundlings. He knows about your work with the midwives. And he knows that being a Hawk isn’t just a job for you; it’s a vocation. He knows that you’re Chosen,” she added. “He looks at you, and sees someone who is mortal, but who is tr
ying, constantly, to be more than the sum of her parts.
“And he knows that had his brother asked you, you would have done what you could to help.”
“Asked me?”
“If Nightshade had told you about Annarion, if he had told you that he suspected Annarion was still alive, if he had told you that so much of his adult life involved attempts to reach him.”
“I’m...not sure.”
“Ah. A pity. Your opinion is noted.”
“I mean it, Teela.”
“I’m certain you do. In this, however, I concur with Annarion. Tain?”
Tain shrugged. “Not that I care one way or the other, but Teela’s right.”
“You have to say that—you’re her partner.”
Moran, minding her own business until now, jumped in. “I’m not her partner, and I agree with Teela’s observations.”
“Helping orphans and mothers is not the same as helping a fieflord.”
Teela’s eyes were green. She was both amused and relaxed. “Kitling,” she said fondly, “there is a reason that people actually like you. To go back to my previous comments about daydreams and harsh reality, you want to be helpful. To be kind. You have learned from the things that have hurt you—but you haven’t learned the same lessons that either Nightshade or I learned.”
“When Nightshade was young, there was no Elantra.”
“No.”
“And mortals were pets. Or slaves.” Or worse.
Teela nodded.
“Mandoran still talks about us as if we’re trained rats.”
“Mandoran enjoys baiting Dragons,” Tain pointed out. “If you have to choose a Barrani example of wisdom, look anywhere else.”
Bellusdeo snickered.
“My point is, Nightshade didn’t make my choices. And Annarion wouldn’t have made them either. Whatever he’s done, it’s what the Barrani of that time would have done.”
“Yes. But Annarion doesn’t see you as mortal, not really. He sees you as Chosen, but more. You held what remained of his Name. Of all of their Names. Only mine was absent. And you returned that knowledge without ever absorbing it first. You did what only the Consort could have done. It is difficult for the rest of them. They’re not what they were, and they know it.
“But it’s that flexibility that allows the difference in the way Mandoran views you and the way Annarion does.”
“He’s expecting too much from his brother.”
“Of course. But, kitling, would you rather he expected too little?”
* * *
She had no answer to that. Breakfast finished; the Moran escort formed up: Bellusdeo, Teela, Tain, Kaylin. Severn didn’t show up at the front door. The familiar lounged, as he usually did, across Kaylin’s shoulders.
Only when they were at the halfway point between Helen and the Halls of Law did she answer Teela’s question. “...I think so.”
“You would rather he had lower expectations?”
She nodded, pensive. “It’s the expectations that are killing him. Helen says he’s very unhappy. I know Nightshade’s unhappy as well, but in some ways I kind of feel like he’s earned some of that. I like Annarion. I hate to see him so miserable.”
The usual rejoinder failed to emerge, and Kaylin remembered that Mandoran was stuck in a wall in the basement somewhere.
* * *
Four city blocks from the Halls of Law, the familiar suddenly stiffened. He sat bolt upright, and this time, he spread a transparent wing across Kaylin’s eyes.
“Moran!”
Moran moved instantly. She also tried to lift her wings, and failed with the injured one. It didn’t matter. Kaylin threw her arms around the Aerian’s waist.
Teela drew her sword, and Bellusdeo looked up. The Dragon said, “I’m running out of inexpensive clothing, and I don’t want to work at the Halls in full court regalia.”
“Can you see them?”
The Dragon shook her head. “How many?”
“Three, I think. They’re all Aerians, but...but they look funny.”
“Funny how?”
Kaylin cursed in Leontine. The three looked down on the city streets, and their formation—and they had been flying in formation—changed. “You know those nets you dropped?” she asked Moran.
“Yes. I need to breathe,” she added.
“They’re flying with something that looks like those nets. You can’t see them?”
Bellusdeo growled. In Leontine. She said something sharp, harsh and syllabic without speaking actual language. The hair on Kaylin’s arms and neck stood on end. Magic.
“They’re not those nets,” Bellusdeo said. “We’ve got to run.”
“What are they?”
“Shadow,” the Dragon said.
* * *
It was impossible to run while looking up. It was impossible to run while holding on to someone’s waist, if that someone wasn’t under the age of two. Kaylin shifted her grip on Moran, holding her hand rather than her torso. She made it a block before she realized that the net itself had elongated as the Aerians had moved. That kind of precision flight-in-place was difficult. Whoever the three were, they were damn good.
She could see that Clint was on the door with Tanner; she could see that the doors were open.
And she could see that the net itself was going to fall regardless. Bellusdeo had said it was Shadow, somehow. It didn’t seem to be sentient, or at least it didn’t seem to be the type of Shadow that would consume the Aerians holding it.
But those Aerians, she saw now, were wearing some of that Shadow across their arms and chests, as if it were armor.
“Bellusdeo, fly?” she asked of the golden Dragon.
“Run.”
The small dragon pushed off Kaylin’s shoulders; the minute he did so, she lost all visual impressions of the Aerians and their dark, dark net, as he hadn’t left his wing behind. She could, however, see him. He squawked.
Kaylin let go of Moran’s hand. Without the small dragon, she had no protection against magic to offer, and Moran, wingless, could still run.
“What is he going to do?” Moran shouted as she sprinted toward the doors of the Halls, and the theoretical safety they provided.
“Hells if I know!” Kaylin shouted back. Teela could outpace her, as could Tain. Bellusdeo deliberately pulled up the rear, and Kaylin let her. She was displaced, yes—but she was a Dragon. A single Dragon was more than a match for anything the Barrani could do; Kaylin suspected she was more than a match for anything Shadow-enhanced invisible Aerians could do, as well.
She hoped.
Clint and Tanner let them in; Tanner headed in after them. “What’s going on?” he demanded—of Kaylin, of course.
“We’ve got invisible assassins,” Kaylin replied. “Aerians. Three, in the air.” She started to add more, but was cut off by the very audible sound of screaming. This was fine, because the very audible screaming caught Tanner’s attention in a stranglehold, and he headed back out.
Clint was cursing in Aerian. “Sergeant!”
To Kaylin’s surprise, Moran turned immediately.
“We’ve got Aerians in trouble.” He pointed.
Two of the three Aerians were visible. And they appeared to be injured enough that flight was causing them difficulty. The third, however, was nowhere in sight.
Moran, tight-lipped and incredibly grim, watched them falter. “It’s Caste Court business,” she said, voice flat and hard.
Clint opened his mouth. Closed it.
“I mean it, Clint. You call out the Hawks to aid in any way, and you’re interfering in Caste Court politics—which is far, far above your pay grade.” She looked out the open doors, and added softly, “And if you bring them in here, you’ll probably be causing a breach o
f integrity in our security that will bust you down to an even lower pay grade.”
Tanner, however, had done whatever it was that the guards on door did when they needed backup right now. Aerians filled the sky directly in front of the Halls; they saw immediately what Clint had seen.
Moran bowed her head in resignation. “Private. Lord Bellusdeo.”
“Infirmary?” the Dragon asked.
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” the Dragon replied. “There are two possibilities here. One: they did not consent to the use to which they were put. Two: they did. I’ll agree with you on one thing, though: I wouldn’t have them brought into the Halls. You might want to speak to whoever’s in charge. Now.”
* * *
Moran went to the infirmary. What she’d said to Clint was true, and it was all steel, all iron will. There had been anger in it. But the Hawks had flown to the aid of the Aerians, and the Aerians had been injured; they would bring them—bar interference—to Moran.
And Moran, Kaylin understood, would hold her nose and help. It wasn’t her job. The infirmary was for Hawks, not random civilians of any particular race or political stripe.
“I don’t see why we have to help them when they were trying to kill you.”
“We don’t know that,” Moran said, voice stiff. “The rest of the Hawks didn’t see what you saw. Hells, I didn’t see it, either. They saw injured Aerians—”
“Who appeared out of nowhere?”
“Carrying Shadow nets as an act of benevolence and aid,” Teela added, with just as much sarcasm as Kaylin felt.
“I’m not sure the nets were meant for me.” Moran cast a guilty glance at Bellusdeo. It bounced off.
“I’ll be back,” Kaylin told them.
“Where are you going?”
“Hawklord.”
* * *
The Tower doors were open by the time Kaylin had run up the stairs, which was unusual but appreciated. The Hawklord was standing in the Tower; the Tower’s aperture opened to morning sky. Even from the door, Kaylin could see Aerians flying in numbers too great to be simple patrols.