“You remind me of myself when I was younger.”
“Thanks. I think. That was supposed to be a compliment?”
“It was an observation,” he said, and if his voice had been any drier, it would have caught fire. “What I had in mind, as usual, is my current assignment.”
“What about your current assignment?”
“The Tha’alani like children, and clearly the children—yours at any rate—aren’t afraid of the Tha’alani. I’d like to use your little excursion in multiculturalism to present that aspect of their culture.”
“Say that again with smaller words.”
He glared. “You’re doing that on purpose.”
“Maybe.”
“I would like to open the play with children—ours—in the Tha’alani Quarter. I’ll probably add an older child, who can be naturally suspicious of the Tha’alani, having heard all the stories about the Tha’alani’s abilities. This has the advantage of not offending the Tha’alani sense of truth.”
“Go on.”
“If we set the visit before the tidal wave, we can have the children in the Quarter when the Tha’alani become aware of the danger. The entire play will of course be set during that time.”
“Rennick—”
“I understand that we’re taking liberty with dates and facts,” he continued. “Welcome to the world of fiction. I will be as true as I can be to the Tha’alani sense of themselves, but I don’t know how they knew about the tidal wave. I’ll have to make that up on the fly.”
“If you’re not damn careful, it won’t matter what else the play says about them—you’ll be adding to their problems.”
“Believe that I’m aware of the danger, Private. But this has the best shot of accomplishing what the play is intended to accomplish. I hate messages,” he added, with a genuine grimace of distaste. “And it can’t be about the message, in the end, or people will fall asleep before it’s delivered.”
“What message?”
“Brotherly love, that sort of crap.”
In spite of herself, she laughed. “If you’d known this was in your future would you have accepted the position?”
“Free room and board and the food’s good. But yes, I don’t completely approve of the job at hand, although I do understand the necessity. I’m basically trying to get a bunch of people to sort out their difficulties with their own inner thugs, but on a large scale. The type of people who have inner thugs are not generally the type of people I’d waste time on, and certainly not a lot of thought.”
“They’re just afraid. Everyone’s afraid of something, Rennick.”
“True. But if everyone tried to burn down an entire Quarter because they were afraid, I think the Emperor would turn the whole lot of us into small piles of ash.”
“Not really,” Severn said, reminding them both that there was a third person present. “The Emperor is something that is more terrifying than the Tha’alani—on a normal day. Or week. Fear can also be helpful when governing.”
“I’m not particularly afraid of the Emperor,” Rennick replied.
“You’re not particularly afraid of Dragons, probably because you’ve never seen one in its native form,” Kaylin retorted.
“And you have?”
Severn’s gaze was mild as he looked at her. There was hardly a hint of glare in it. But the little that was there spoke volumes. Kaylin wanted to smack herself.
“Yes,” she said curtly. “And since I am afraid of Dragons, I’m going to shut my mouth now.”
Rennick raised one brow. “I highly doubt that.”
At the end of the next four hours, during which time Rennick had crosshatched a number of pristine pieces of expensive paper, Kaylin was grudgingly impressed. “I think we can get the little historical lies past the Tha’alani,” she told him. “With some difficulty.”
“We being you?”
“Pretty much. Ybelline has worked in the Imperial Court for years, and she’ll understand why we need to take the liberties we’re taking. She might even be able to point out the dangers that we can’t see that could arise out of our version of events.”
“Good. I’ll just go over and irritate all of the servants now, shall I?”
“You could try polite. I hear it works.”
“Must be hearsay—I can’t imagine you’ve got a lot of experience with it.”
She grimaced. “I have a lot of experience with it,” she told him firmly. “Severn’s my partner.”
Rennick laughed. Severn smiled. It was one of those rare perfect moments in which Kaylin felt she’d done something right. Or at least that it was possible to achieve something good.
But before Rennick could irritate the servants on their behalf there was a knock at the door.
Rennick, frowning, answered.
“It’s for you,” he said, stepping out of the way.
Sanabalis stood in the hall, unattended by anything that wasn’t a wall sconce. “I believe you’ve finished your work for the day,” he said, directing the comment toward Kaylin.
The moment of satisfaction burst, like the fragile and illusory bubble it was. “Yes, we’ve finished,” she said.
“Good. I believe you have other duties to attend. Mr. Rennick.” He offered a brief—and apparently sincere—bow. With Dragons, it was hard to tell. “I have taken the liberty of seconding your services for the evening,” he told Kaylin as she approached the door.
“What?”
“I informed Sergeant Mallory that you will be excused from your verbal debriefing for the evening.”
“I’m not sure you’re allowed to do that.”
“If he wishes to argue, he is free to pursue the argument through the customary channels.”
She looked at Sanabalis’s eyes. In the light from the hall—none of it bright, given that night was on the other side of the many windows—they were orange.
“The customary channels,” she said, almost morosely, “are me.” It was all the argument she was willing to offer.
Sanabalis wasn’t without mercy; he’d arranged food, although he insisted they eat it on the inside of a moving Imperial Carriage.
“I’ve already eaten,” he told Kaylin, eyeing the work of the Imperial kitchens with mild distaste when she offered him some of it.
“Does the Emperor know where you’re going?”
He lifted one silver brow.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“I don’t think you understand the magnitude of the difficulty,” he replied, “although in this case, your ignorance is to our advantage. There are some things you would avoid, if you had any wisdom.” He lifted a hand before she could speak in her own defense—and to be fair, she was about to embark on just such a speech. “I am doing you the courtesy of assuming that if you understood, I would not now be here.”
“Why is that, exactly?”
“You would have been unlikely to enter the Quarter on your own, and were that the case, you would have had no use for an unaffiliated mage.”
“Is—is this going to get back to Mallory?”
“It is not a matter for the Halls of Law,” Sanabalis said. “Not at present. The Emperor has taken a personal interest in the case, and the Caste Courts have not yet abandoned their resolve to keep the matter within their jurisdiction.”
“They intend to let you examine the body.”
“Yes.”
“But that makes it a case for the Imperial Courts.”
“No.”
“Sanabalis—”
“The Emperor makes law, Kaylin. I do not completely understand your reaction to this case. I do not want to understand it. Is that clear?”
She considered the options. Nodded.
“Good. You have another five minutes to finish eating. I’d suggest you take it.”
“I won’t bring the meat to the Castelord.”
“Very good. Don’t bring anything else either.”
“Yes, Sanabalis.”
Adar was
waiting. There were no lamps. The moonlight was clear and bright, and the air was heavy with humidity. Summer, in Elantra, was very slow to let go, and even the cool of night and sea breeze didn’t drop the temperature enough.
But in the absence of lamps, there were torches on long poles that appeared to be stuck into the ground. Adar gleamed ivory and gold in the mixed light; he wore long, pale robes—they might have been gray or blue or white. He stood in the center of a semicircle comprised of Leontine men. They wore robes as well, but it was harder to see them; they were seated at Adar’s feet.
Their whiskers twitched as Sanabalis approached, but nothing else moved. They didn’t lift their heads; they didn’t greet him. They rose only when Adar gestured, and they stepped away from him as he stepped forward, becoming part of the shadows that night was.
Sanabalis approached Adar and stopped a few yards from where the torches burned. He inclined his head but did not bow. His robes were the dark blue of the Imperial Court, the rich hue bleeding to black.
Kaylin and Severn wore working clothes. Tabards, chain shirts, regulation boots. They had not been required to leave their weapons behind—if there was a behind—because there were no guards to make that request. Guards of the type that they’d met the first time were not capable of this solemnity.
And, Kaylin thought, it’s not as if the weapons made that much of a difference. Old or not—and these were, in her opinion, the Elders—the Leontines gathered here wouldn’t have too much trouble with two humans if they felt the need to fight. They would, on the other hand, have a great deal of difficulty with a Dragon.
Adar did not kneel. He lowered his head gravely and spoke in Leontine. Kaylin understood almost nothing that he said, and she understood most Leontine.
Sanabalis, however, replied in High Barrani. “Yes. I will examine the body here. I trust Private Neya and Corporal Handred, and even if I did not trust them, I believe it necessary that they bear witness.”
Adar didn’t exactly jump for joy, but he didn’t argue either. “Eldest,” he said, speaking in the growling cadence of a Leontine who in theory spoke Barrani. He gestured, and the Elders stepped forward.
They were carrying a stretcher.
From this distance, the smell was almost overwhelming. Severn moved toward Kaylin, and caught her arm. “They don’t have mages,” he told her, his voice quieter than a whisper, but clearer somehow. “They have no easy way of preserving the corpse.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t burn it.” Or eat it.
“I believe they were waiting for the trial,” he replied.
The scent of rotting flesh in the humidity of Elantran night made Kaylin really regret the meal she’d rushed through on the way.
But she’d seen worse. She tried to remember that. The Elders laid the stretcher with care at Sanabalis’s feet and withdrew. Sanabalis bent, crouching just above the corpse’s chest. His hand hovered over it.
Kaylin waited, watching him for signs of familiar magic. He lifted his head. “First Son,” he said quietly, “step back, and tell the Elders to join you.”
There was murmuring now, but it was low, too low to catch. The First Son hesitated for just a moment, and then he obeyed what was barely a request.
Sanabalis rose, and gestured. It was not, to Kaylin’s eye, a familiar magic at all—but it was clearly magic. The ground absorbed the glow that emanated from Sanabalis’s hands, swallowing it as if it were liquid. He began to speak, and when he did, he dispensed with the pretense of frail mortality: his voice was a Dragon’s voice.
Kaylin glanced involuntarily over her shoulder. Sanabalis was loud enough to wake every sleeping Leontine in the Quarter. He was loud enough, she thought, to wake the dead.
And, to her horror, he did.
CHAPTER 15
“Do not move,” Sanabalis said, in harsh Leontine. He didn’t turn to look at the Elders; his attention, as Kaylin’s, was on the corpse.
She heard Severn’s weapon leaving its sheath; heard the clear, soft sound of the chain at his waist being unwound. He backed toward Kaylin. She couldn’t see what he was doing, and didn’t look; he wasn’t the danger here. Her daggers were in her hands, and her knees were slightly bent.
The corpse rose as if it were liquid falling upward. The jerky, stiff movements that were the delight of zombie stories everywhere were nowhere in evidence. The bloodless gashes across the dead Leontine’s chest and throat—the wounds that had probably killed him—were gaping, wide, the only graceless thing about him. She knew his fur wasn’t black, but in the night, with only the primitive torchlight at his back, he looked all of one color.
“So,” Sanabalis said, in the thin voice that she thought of as “normal.”
The dead Leontine leaped. He had been looking around, his body tensing—but the leap itself was in the wrong direction. He sailed over Sanabalis, and landed in front of the Leontines.
They were standing, tense, behind Adar, and Adar…folded his massive arms. From this distance it was hard to tell, but Kaylin thought his pale fur was standing on end. He did not move. He did not leap to the side; he stood and bore witness.
She wasn’t sure that she could have done the same.
Sanabalis cursed and turned, but the dead Leontine was hampered by the magical barrier that Sanabalis had erected between the corpse and the Leontines. She knew this because he jumped toward Adar and bounced.
For a moment, the corpse staggered, awkward as it fell away, as if the force that animated it had been dislodged. But it was only a brief floundering. He turned to Sanabalis, and Severn swept in, his hands on chain pulled taut by the spinning movement. The Leontine corpse gestured, and lost his hand.
It didn’t slow him down at all.
“You!” it said, its voice a hiss. “Do you think you can stop us forever?”
But if Sanabalis was not a Dragon in form, he was a Dragon. He opened his mouth and roared, and with the roar came a plume of flame that was wider and taller than he was.
Fire enfolded the corpse and the corpse burned. It wasn’t the slow burning one would see on a pyre. It was sudden, hot. The flames, orange at the edges, had a white heart, a blue core.
The creature screamed in fury and, burning, it grabbed hold of Sanabalis, its jaws opened unnaturally wide to lodge themselves in the Dragon’s chest. The handless arm flailed; the other did not.
The head rolled free as Severn leaped up behind the body, and shadow gouted, like blood, in the air.
Where it touched ground, where it touched the ground that Sanabalis now occupied, it sizzled, black flame, and only black.
Bodiless, the jaws still worried at Dragon flesh. This was the thing Kaylin most hated about the undead—nothing stopped them. They didn’t need to be attached to their limbs.
Beneath her boots, she ground the hand Severn had cut off, and felt it struggle to get a grip on her heel. Cursing—in Leontine—she reached out and yanked a pole from its moorings and shoved the torch end into the hand, watching as flesh smoldered. She wasn’t a dragon and she wasn’t a mage—but the hand itself didn’t seem to care much for burning. She held it in place, and black smoke—the greasy smoke of flesh charring—rose heavily in the still, humid air.
Sanabalis had pried the jaws from his chest. They were red with his blood, but the loss didn’t seem to faze the Dragon. He grunted as he tore the bodiless head in half and tossed it aside. Then he reached down and pulled the claws from his chest; they were longer; there was more blood.
He shoved the body away and pointed one hand. Blue light flew from his finger, enveloping what remained of the headless, handless corpse.
Sanabalis’s robes were a mess.
“Corporal,” he said heavily. “Private.” He turned to Adar, whose arms were still folded across his chest. “So,” he said quietly.
Adar nodded.
Kaylin turned to Sanabalis. “What the hell was that?”
“What you suspected, Private Neya.”
“No. What I suspec
ted was that the mage—the Leontine mage—had somehow possessed him. I’ve seen a possession in Records,” she said, “and it bloody well wasn’t like this.” She added a few colorful Leontine phrases as the fingers that weren’t charred struggled with the torch.
“Very well, allow me to be more specific. What you saw is what I expected to see.”
“Sanabalis—”
He gestured her forward. She gave the corpse’s hand another savage stomp and joined him. “Do not touch me,” he said, quietly. “I am not in danger of expiring.”
Since she hadn’t intended to heal him—for one, she was wearing the damn bracer—she frowned. She would have added words to the frown, but he lifted a hand. It was red and glistening.
“Do you understand what you’ve seen?” he asked.
“No.”
“Corporal?”
Severn said nothing.
“Very well. The story you first heard me tell,” he said, looking at Kaylin, “was only one such story. There is another, and it was told to this Leontine.”
“It killed him?”
“No. Your Sergeant did that—and were the death not intended, I think, to entrap him, he would have had much less success. We do not understand why some of the Leontines are more susceptible to…changes…than others. But they are all susceptible to it in some fashion. It is why the only race that was born in this fashion is the Leontines. The Old Ones did not choose to take that risk again.
“They were, creator and corrupter, all Old Ones. All Ancients. And what they did, for good or ill, no Dragon and no Barrani could hope to achieve.”
“But you told them—”
“I told them what they are,” he replied. “There are very, very few alive who could tell them that story.”
“But—”
“This, too,” he said, gesturing at the burning pieces that remained of the corpse, “is part of what they are. It is part of what all mortals are. This one could not contain enough of the chaos to tell the story to another. No more could the Elders who stand beyond you.”
“Adar?”