He had said nothing.
But Sanabalis did. He turned, his speech not faltering. His eyes were a color so close to glowing white that she took a step back; she had never seen a similar color in any of the races she’d met.
It was as if his single glance were a bridge that could be crossed. Without thought, she took a step forward, and then another. The third was interrupted by Severn, his arm around her shoulders heavy and at the same time almost otherworldly. “Kaylin,” he whispered, his lips tickling the lobe of her ear.
She wanted to nod. She wanted to pay attention. Or to tell him that he was tickling her.
But she moved again anyway, drawn to Sanabalis.
Drawn, she realized, to what had been said, to what was being said now. And when the light moved, when the words, so ghostly and so strange, suddenly turned toward her, she thought she would never move again.
But she did.
Sanabalis continued to speak, but as he did, he lifted a hand. It looked…like his hand. But it looked, for a moment, like a Dragon’s claws, like a Leontine’s paws. It was both solid and changing, as if shape were as fluid as language.
And he clearly meant for her to take that hand.
She lifted her arm. It was the hand that Severn held, and there was a moment of awkwardness—of something stronger and more desperate—before he let go. Before he moved to her side, and gently engaged her other hand.
She was almost afraid to raise the hand he had surrendered; she was afraid to see in it what she now saw in Sanabalis. But she only knew one way of conquering fear, and that was to charge into it, blindly.
If charging could be this hesitant, it was what she did now. She placed her hand, palm down, across his. It looked like a child’s hand in the hand of a large man.
Then Sanabalis continued to speak, and after a moment, she realized that he was once again at the center of the words and their odd, moving light. So was she. They drifted past her upturned face, swept across her cheeks, touched strands of her hair. She could feel them, moving around her. And across her skin.
She opened her mouth, and it opened to silence; she could feel her lips move, but nothing escaped them. Here, there was no need for her words. Her words, as she had said to Severn, were imperfect, flawed vessels that explained so little.
But she wanted them anyway: her words, her own voice.
Even when Sanabalis looked down at her again, with his pale, platinum irises, so much like the whites he almost seemed to have no eyes.
His hand was Dragon scale beneath hers; it was callused skin; it was hard, ebon claw—all and none of these things.
And hers? She thought it was just her hand. There was no hidden form waiting to leap out, no other self to call on.
No feathers, she thought. No flight feathers. No freedom from gravity: just Kaylin. But she hadn’t always been just Kaylin. She had been Elianne, in the fief of Nightshade. And elsewhere.
She waited until Sanabalis was finished.
It seemed to take forever. It seemed over too quickly. Caught between these things, she was silent.
But when his voice stopped, the words stopped as well, melting in sunlight, in a morning in the streets of Elantra, as so much magic did—with the added bonus of there being no corpses.
“So,” the Dragon Lord said, speaking in measured High Barrani again, his voice the voice of her teacher. “I believe I told you to remain in the carriage.”
“I tried,” she said quietly, the more so because she realized how stupid it sounded.
“And you failed.”
“I heard you,” she told him. “I heard…the words. I—”
“She was moving before she realized she was moving,” Severn said, as if he had not just interrupted her flail for a better excuse.
“So,” Sanabalis said again, heavily. “What did you hear, Kaylin?”
“You. Speaking. I didn’t recognize the language.”
“No.”
“But it sounded as if I should.”
His brows drew together in a furrow that changed the lines of his face. “And what did you see?”
She shook her head. “Words,” she said, aware of how lame that sounded. “But the Leontines—”
The Leontines had, at last, moved to make way for the Elders that Severn had caught a glimpse of, when perched at the height of a carriage she could clearly make out over the heads of the crowd. The horses were nervous, but they were Imperial horses all, and the driver kept them as still as one could expect.
Adar was at the head of the approaching delegation, his fur tinted ivory by sunlight. The golden Leontines stopped before they crossed the threshold of the ruin; the gray-furred Leontine stopped just within its boundaries. But Adar, white furred, blue eyes the color of sky, continued to walk. As if a Dragon Lord held no fear for him.
As if he owned the Quarter, which, technically, he couldn’t. He was, however, the racial version of a castelord, and if the Leontines didn’t live like the rest of the populace, she was fairly certain he understood the laws that overlapped.
She was surprised when he bowed.
“First Son,” Sanabalis said gravely.
“We welcome you.”
“It has been long indeed since I have walked among your children,” Sanabalis replied, his voice still grave and level. “And I have missed their company.”
“And we have missed yours, Eldest, and with greater cause. These two,” Adar added, indicating Severn and Kaylin with a minimal movement of his head. “They are yours?”
“She is my student,” the Dragon Lord replied. “And as is the case with so many of the young, she sees leashes and cages where there are none.”
The Leontine made a sound that was kin to a chuckle—but with more growl and fang in it.
“And she came to our Quarter at your behest?”
“She came without my knowledge.”
“Ah.”
“Therefore no regrets for your treatment of her—whatever it was—should be offered. But had she not come, First Son, things would have gone ill.”
Adar bowed his head. When he lifted it, he squared his shoulders. “I was not vigilant,” he began.
Sanabalis lifted a hand. “Let us repair to your seat, and discuss what must be discussed there. There are too many ears in this crowd.”
“You had but to ask, Eldest, and they would have cleared the streets at your command. But you told the oldest of our stories, and they listened.”
“Yes,” Sanabalis said, passing a hand over his eyes. “And it was long in the telling, and tiring. Forbid them this site,” he added, “and leave me for a moment. We will join you when we have finished our work here.”
The very Leontine bark that cleared the streets caused Kaylin to grimace in recognition. It wasn’t a familiar voice, but the words were familiar words. The fact that they were obeyed more or less instantly—any crowd contained stupid people and stragglers—would have made Marcus green with envy. Or whatever color it was Leontines turned when envious.
But when they had gone, Sanabalis sat down heavily on the burned-out flooring. “That was unwise of me,” he said. “And no doubt word will travel. It has been a very, very long time since I have attempted to speak the language. I’m surprised they recognized it.”
“If they heard what I heard—”
“They heard only part of what you heard, if I’m any judge,” he said. “And I told you to wait in the carriage.”
“Yes, Sanabalis.”
“Meek doesn’t work on me unless it’s consistent.”
“Yes, Sanabalis.”
He frowned. “For what it’s worth, I’m grateful that you handed me this difficulty.”
“Because of the Leontines?”
“Yes, but not in the way you think.” He ran his hands over his eyes again, after which his eyes were orange, but ringed with dark circles. She had never seen Sanabalis look so tired.
“Have you seen this done before?” he asked Kaylin as he pushed himself off t
he ground. Soot clung to the back side of his robes, but Kaylin didn’t fancy her chances of surviving the simple act of brushing it off.
“About a hundred times.”
“Good. Did you pay attention?”
She nodded briskly. “We needed the information.”
“What did you see?”
It wasn’t the question she was generally asked. “Me?” I’m not a mage started and died on her lips. “I don’t think people generally see anything,” she said, punting.
“I didn’t ask you what other people saw—or did not see. I asked what you saw.”
She hesitated, and then surrendered. “A sigil,” she told him. “Like a mark or a thing made of fire—but it wasn’t fire and it wasn’t light.”
“Was it always the same?”
“No. But if it did look the same, the magic was performed by the same person.”
“Always?”
“Always.”
“You neglected to mention this to your superiors.”
“Hells no. I told the Hawklord,” Kaylin said.
“Ah. I imagine he has that discussion in his personal records.”
“He usually does.”
“Very well. You’ve seen the magic performed.”
She nodded.
“And you’ve seen the results,” he asked.
She nodded again.
“Watch now,” he told her quietly, “and tell me what you see.”
“But you’ll see it—you’re the mage.”
“Ah. No, Kaylin. What you saw on those occasions is not what the mages saw.”
“But—”
“And what you saw today is not what I saw. Not what the Leontines saw.”
She said, “It’s the marks again, isn’t it? The ones on my skin.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he twisted one hand suddenly in the air. Since every mage of Kaylin’s acquaintance worked differently—some in big ways and some in small—it didn’t surprise her. But he nodded after a moment and began to walk farther into the wreckage. He touched nothing that he wasn’t stepping on, and he made an effort to step on very little.
“Here,” he said at last. She half recognized the room from the layout of the floor. It was the baby’s room. She felt a twinge of unease, then, but said nothing.
He gestured again, and ran his fingers through his beard. The beard adopted black marks which he didn’t seem to notice.
They waited. And waited. And waited.
Kaylin finally said, “I don’t think this is the right spot—” She stopped. Because the black mess on the floor was not simply the charred remains of rug and broken wood. She hadn’t seen it clearly at first because any symbol she had ever seen had emerged from thin air, as if it were a butterfly pulling itself out of a cocoon.
This…was different.
Strands of soot slowly began to rise from the floor, taking shape as they twisted upward in a billowing spire. She had thought it black, but black was a color her eyes could understand, and this suggested the absence of color. Nor did it take a form, a sigil she could clearly recognize or remember—it swayed as it rose, and it seemed to Kaylin that it tried and discarded many shapes, before any single shape was fully formed.
Moving, amorphous, it was fascinating. And it was hard to look at, hard to look away from. It could devour the attention. It could, she thought, devour more.
CHAPTER 12
“So,” Sanabalis said quietly. She tore her gaze away from the growing sigil—to look at the Dragon Lord. His gaze was upon her, and only her, as if her reaction contained all the information his spell sought.
“I don’t understand.”
“No, I imagine you don’t.” He turned to Severn. “What did you see?”
Severn shrugged, but it was a brief, terse movement, shorn of his usual grace. “Kaylin?”
“Shadow,” she told him. “It’s not…it’s not a sigil. Not the way they usually form. It’s—it won’t stick to a single shape, a set of lines. But…”
“You’ve seen it before.”
“How do you know?”
“You recognized it.” It wasn’t much of an answer, but it was also true.
“Sanabalis,” Kaylin said again. “I don’t understand. Why did the shadows appear here?”
“At the height of day?”
She nodded, then shook her head. “No—at all.”
“It is the source of the magic you saw,” he replied evenly. “And it explains much.”
“Not to me.”
“No, but you are not aware of the history of the Leontines.”
“And you are.”
He nodded. “Come. We must speak with the castelord.”
“And what are we going to tell him?”
“We are going to tell him to exhume a corpse. I believe that was what you intended.”
She nodded. “Sanabalis—”
“I will tolerate only so many questions today, Kaylin. I am weary. The telling was taxing, and the spell, more so.”
“It wasn’t a normal spell.”
“Astute.”
“Could anyone else have cast it?”
“Perhaps. Among the Barrani, and the Dragon Court. But it is an old spell, and it is not much in favor at the moment.”
She hesitated again, and he marked it; he was watching her like—like a Hawk. “The stories the Leontines tell—”
“Yes?”
“Well. One of Marcus’s wives has red fur.”
Sanabalis raised a brow. “A bold marriage. I am surprised that the Elders allowed it.”
“They allowed it because—”
“Because they live in a city in which the old tales and the old laws are not valued. Pardon the interruption.”
“He had to promise that he would kill any sons she bore him.”
“Yes.”
“But she’s only had daughters.”
“Then he is singularly blessed. And their fur?”
“Not red.”
“Good.” He began to walk away from the ruins.
“What if she’d had sons?”
“They would be killed.”
“But they’re babies.”
“Yes. But the Leontine you met, Kaylin, was one such child. I am certain of it. You saw the shadows,” he added.
“Sanabalis, you can’t be serious. You don’t expect me to believe that you can know—by the color of the mother’s fur, that a baby is somehow evil!”
“Very well. I can’t expect that.” He stepped into streets that were now deserted. “But in this case, what you believe is not my concern.” He turned to look over his shoulder, and his eyes were a dark shade of orange. “Please,” he said, in a tone of voice that took all cordiality out of the word, “tell me that it is not my concern.”
“It’s not your concern.”
He stared at her for a moment, and then the lower membranes of his eyes went up, hiding some of the fire of his gaze. “I believe I will also visit with Sergeant Kassan’s Pridlea.”
“You can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“You’re male.”
He raised a pale brow. “And the significance of this?”
“Men aren’t allowed in—”
“I am allowed to enter the domicile of any Pridlea that offers its hospitality.”
She thought about the Leontine mob in the streets, captivated by the sound of his voice. “Maybe.”
“We will visit,” he said. “But we must speak first with the First Son.” He looked at the sky. “And I believe you have less than two hours before Mr. Rennick is awake.”
The truth of the matter was simple: Marcus had never shown this kind of awestruck respect to a Dragon. Seven years she’d dogged Ironjaw’s steps, and admittedly for most of those seven there was a comforting lack of Dragons—but still. He’d been actively hostile to Tiamaris.
How was she expected to know the Dragons were somehow venerated by the rest of the Leontines? But clearly, they were. Although the mere presence
of Sanabalis didn’t invoke the same silent wonder that his words had, it invoked almost obsequious manners from males who were used to knocking each other over in the streets. This made the trip to the coliseum seem a lot shorter than it had the first time she’d made it.
And the guards who had gotten into a fight with Severn to establish a pecking order? Suspiciously absent. Sanabalis walked, with gravity and in silence, down the steps to where Adar was standing in just as grave a silence, his arms by his sides.
She glanced at him, and then looked at the cages. Marcus was still on the wrong damn side of a closed set of bars. He was watching Sanabalis, and his expression was unreadable.
Sanabalis made his way to Adar; Kaylin veered off as they reached flat ground.
“Kitling,” Marcus said, his voice a weary growl. “Why is Lord Sanabalis here?”
Something about his voice…“Marcus, did you know what would happen if he came here?”
“He’s Eldest,” Marcus replied after a long pause. He glanced over her shoulder briefly, but she had his attention.
“What are they doing?”
“Bowing,” he replied drily. “You probably have about ten minutes before actual conversation starts. Why is he here?”
“We had a small problem,” she began.
“If he’s here, it couldn’t have been that small. Did you file an incident report?”
“With Mallory? I’d burn in the hells first.”
“Kaylin. He is your commanding officer.”
“He’s acting Sergeant.”
“And therefore deserves the respect due his rank.”
“He wants more than the respect due his rank.”
Marcus closed his eyes and ran his hands over them. She could almost hear him counting to ten, which would have been worse if he’d been on the same side of the cage as she was.
“Why is Sanabalis here? You can use small words if it helps.”
“We had a small problem in the Quarter.”
“And this caused the intervention of the Dragon Court.”
“He’s not technically here as a member of the Dragon Court.”
“It doesn’t matter why he came. He is what he is. The why, however, is of interest. To me.”
“There was magery in the Quarter.”