“What do you mean?”
“When we first encountered her…she was also, in form, entirely animal.”
Sanabalis closed his eyes.
“No, Sanabalis,” Kaylin said urgently. “She had the ability to shift her form, yes—but she wasn’t somehow changed by shadow, I’d swear it. She was herself.”
Marcus’s oldest wife turned to Lord Sanabalis and said, “The child is as you see him. An infant, and scrawny at that. I understand the danger, Eldest—but my heart does not.”
Kaylin felt some knot inside her suddenly unravel. She sat again.
“Would you risk your Pridlea by allowing the child to live?”
“You are speaking to the first wife of the only Leontine to labor in the Halls of Law,” was the quiet reply.
Kaylin held the child calmly now, remembering something. Some small detail that she hadn’t had time to pick at, she’d been so busy not dying. “Marai said—Marai said that he—that Orogrim had tried to sneak the baby out of their home. That she’d stopped him, and that she didn’t trust him. She said he wanted to take the child somewhere.”
A pale brow rose. “He didn’t say where?”
“No, but I doubt she would have liked the answer, and he probably knew it.” Kaylin turned to face Sanabalis. “The baby’s not a danger yet.”
Sanabalis was silent for just a little too long for comfort. “It goes against my better judgment,” he said at last. “But I admit I have a mild reluctance to kill you all.”
“Thank you,” Kayala said, as if he were talking about a mild aversion to nasty weather. “We were not ourselves…entirely certain of the wisdom of Kaylin’s decision. But, like you, we are fond of her. She is our only adopted daughter. It is hard to betray trust, even when it is unreasonably given.”
He stood. “Kaylin, I would like to speak with you.”
They left the rooms that the Pridlea was to occupy. Severn came with them, and followed where Sanabalis led; Sanabalis accepted his presence as if he were a natural extension of Kaylin, a shadow, something that couldn’t be separated from her.
He led them to rooms that were familiar, and opened the door in silence, indicating the chairs he wished them to occupy. When they sat, he said, “Where has Orogrim gone?”
Kaylin opened her mouth to say I don’t know, and closed it before the words could come out. She was tired and sore and dirty, and she wanted to go home to a bed, drop a trail of clothing from the door to the mattress, and fall over. But she looked at Sanabalis, whose eyes were a steady amber, and said, “The fiefs.”
He nodded. “I think that must be the case. I will speak with the Elders in the morning, but I don’t think they’ll have much to say that will be of use to us. They don’t track their own kin, and Orogrim, from all accounts, was respected in the community.”
“Maybe by the men,” she said with a snort. “The women think he treated Marai abominably.”
“That would be my second question,” Sanabalis continued. “Where has Marai gone?”
“If she was pursuing him, probably to the fiefs.”
There was a long silence. Sanabalis looked out the window, turning his back upon them before he spoke again. “I have not been entirely forthcoming,” he said at last.
“How not entirely do you mean?”
The silence was heavy. “Kaylin,” Sanabalis said at last, turning toward her as if he had reached some decision. “You remember the Outcaste.”
“The Outcaste? Oh, you mean the Dragon?”
Sanabalis nodded.
“It’s hard to forget a ton of black Dragon who wanted to murder children in the city in order to somehow control me,” she replied. Then, seeing the shift in his expression, she added, “Yes, Sanabalis,” as meekly as she could. Given it was Kaylin, it wasn’t very meek.
“He did not die when you encountered him. He retreated. He was injured,” Sanabalis added, “and he left the field of battle. Lord Nightshade’s men pursued him as carefully as they could, but they did not cross the boundary of their fief.”
“That would cause a war,” Severn said. “And a war in the fiefs is at best unpredictable.”
“Indeed, so I have been led to believe.”
Given the amount of ancient and little understood magic that lay fallow in the fiefs, unpredictable was a gross understatement. “There’s no way he’s in Nightshade,” Kaylin said curtly.
“Ah. And you are certain of this how?”
“There’s no way someone with that much power could be in the fief of Nightshade without Nightshade knowing. He might have known of the existence of the black Dragon—he has one of the Dragonkillers in his weapon cache—but there’s no way he’s operating out of Nightshade.”
“You found him in that fief the first time.”
“You might recall that we didn’t exactly welcome him with open arms.”
“A point.”
Severn raised a hand, as if he were in a classroom and Sanabalis was a teacher. “Lord Sanabalis.”
“Yes?”
“When you spoke to the Leontines the first time, you spoke in a language that none of us recognized. Kaylin thought she should recognize it because it sounded familiar to her.”
“Indeed.”
“Can the Outcaste speak the same tongue?”
Sanabalis actually smiled. “Very good,” he said to Severn, as if he had fallen into the teacher role that Severn’s raised hand implied. The approval dimmed, but it had been offered. Kaylin couldn’t decide whether or not she should feel insulted on Severn’s behalf, it seemed so condescending. Sometimes she really didn’t understand him.
Hells, most times. She looked at his profile as he watched Sanabalis like a…Hawk.
“There are forces and creatures older than Dragons who can speak the ancient tongue. They are not, in any sense that you understand it, alive. But they are not dead. Among the living, we are the last of its keepers,” Sanabalis said. “For the most part, it is an antiquity that implies a great deal of power and offers relatively little in return. But the Leontines are special. They were the last race that the Old Ones awakened before their inexplicable departure from these lands. In them, the seeds of our power lie fallow. We can invoke what is there, if we know how to speak, for good or ill.”
“Someone spoke to Orogrim,” Severn said. It was not a question. “Yes.”
“Someone could have spoken to him in Elantran,” Kaylin said sharply, “and it would probably still have been welcome. It’s probably damn hard growing up a pariah. Knowing that at any time, anyone—any Leontine at all—considers it their sacred duty to kill you. Even if he wasn’t inclined to, you know, destroy the whole world at birth, his life up until now would probably make it seem like a good idea.”
Sanabalis frowned. “You are thinking about the child.”
And she was. Of course she was. “It would be easy,” she continued. “He’d be easy to manipulate. He wouldn’t have to hide what he was, or who. He wouldn’t feel that he owes any of his own kin anything, because, in the end, they’re all death to him. His death. He has to know what his fate should have been, by Leontine Law. We all want to survive,” she said, her tone shading into heated bitterness. “We do whatever we have to, just to survive. We might not be proud of it,” she said, thinking back to her childhood, to the years of begging and stealing in the streets of Nightshade, “but we all feel we have the right to survive. And to protect our own.”
“And would you spare him?”
She sensed a trap. “I wouldn’t kill the baby,” she said starkly. “I won’t let you kill the child. I’m a Hawk. It would be murder. And do not even think of quoting Caste Law at me. It’s not just about the Leontines anymore. I’m involved. I’m not Leontine. And I’ll be damned to hell before I turn a blind eye.
“But…Orogrim…I wouldn’t protect. I’m not trying to defend him,” she said. “I understand that he is the danger you fear. I just think…he might not have been. If he had grown up in a Pridlea. If he had had
a family, he would have something to lose—and when we have something to lose, we’re careful. The only thing he has to lose is his life—but that’s always been forfeit. He gains everything if he gains power. He gains freedom, and a sense of…purpose.”
“Destiny?”
“Maybe. But if it’s not a dog’s fault that it’s rabid, it doesn’t make the dog less dangerous. I don’t hate the dog,” she said.
“You did, when you were bitten and you had to submit to Moran’s ministrations,” Severn pointed out.
“The stuff she made me drink and wear was foul, Severn.”
“Just making a point.”
“Stop making points or I’ll start to keep score.”
He laughed.
“The point I’m trying to make is that it wouldn’t take huge amounts of power to convince Orogrim to join…whatever it is he’s probably serving. It wouldn’t take much at all. You could just point out all the ways in which the fear of the Leontines had prevented him from reaching his full potential—you could say a lot of anything. He’d want to believe it.”
“True. It has been long since I was a youth, and driven by fears of that nature. Where is this point leading you?”
“I’m not sure.” She held out her hands, palms up. “You think your Outcaste had a hand in making him whatever it is he’s become.”
Sanabalis nodded.
“I’m saying we all did, more or less. He’s bound to be suspicious,” Kaylin said. “But it’s harder to hold on to your suspicions when you want to believe what you’re hearing.” She rose and stretched. “But I’ll go.”
“Go?”
“Isn’t that what you wanted, from me?”
“It is,” Sanabalis replied quietly. “Go with Tiamaris. Visit the Lord of Nightshade. Discover what you can, and return.”
“I want two things in return.”
“They are?”
“First—Sarabe,” she replied. “I don’t give a shit what the Elders say. I really, truly, don’t. Marcus suspected what he was facing, and he was afraid that they would order her death. Don’t let them.”
“Had she and her sister died at birth…” he began.
“But they didn’t. What ifs are not an issue here. I don’t care about what might have happened. Maybe if she’d been a Dragon—if all this was just about Dragons—I would. I can’t say. But Dragons and mortals are not the same. She’s going to die anyway. The rest of us always do. I want her to die of old age a long time from now.
“I want Marcus back. I want him back, and whole, and he will never serve again if they kill his wife. Because,” she added, “he’ll be dead first.”
“Find Orogrim, Kaylin. Find him. If we can stop him from becoming more of a threat, an argument can be made. And I think I can guess what your second demand is,” Sanabalis said.
“The baby. Roshan.”
“I can argue for Sarabe’s life,” he replied. “But the child’s? His existence is at the heart of the story I told the Leontines.”
“Then tell a different damn story,” she said, her voice rising. “Or damn it all, I will.”
Sanabalis shifted his Dragon gaze to Severn. “Ah. I believe this is a game—what do humans call it? Chicken?”
Severn was silent.
“I will not promise that, Kaylin. If you choose not to visit the fieflord, all that follows from that decision will be in your hands. Hundreds—thousands—of children that you have never met or held may well face death if we do not find Orogrim. And some dozens of children who you have held will face the same fate.
“He will retreat to where his power is strongest,” Sanabalis said. “And he will summon it. What he does with it, I cannot yet determine—but in the past, a child born of the marked could destroy whole countries and feed every living thing in them to the Shadows. It is not a pleasant death, but, as you point out, all mortals are destined to die, one way or the other.”
She swallowed bile. Her body was shaking, and she could not unclench the fists her hands had become. “I’ll go,” she said at last.
“I will summon Tiamaris. There are matters that the Dragon Court must discuss before you depart. It may be loud,” he added, “and you may wish to sleep. If you can.” There was no triumph, no smugness, in his voice or his expression. “Go home, I believe Tiamaris knows where you live, and he will meet you on the morrow.”
“We still have Rennick.”
“Yes. For the moment, he is still your problem.” He rose and opened the door. “I play no game, Kaylin.”
“It’s not a game for me either,” she said bitterly. “If it were, there might be some chance I could win it. But I want at least your word that you will not harm the child while I’m gone.”
“It is not a practical word to ask for,” he replied. “I do not wish to kill you, and the alternatives I see, should you be present, are all unpleasant. But if it will ease you at all, I can make that compromise. I will not harm him.
“I will visit him,” he added. “I will speak to him in the Old Tongue. I will do what I can.”
His tone of voice made clear that he didn’t think he could do all that much.
But hope was stupid like that, and she took it anyway.
CHAPTER 17
Severn walked with Kaylin to the bridge that was a narrow avenue between the fiefs and the city that surrounded it. He was silent as he often was.
Severn had always been good at silences when Kaylin didn’t have words. It hadn’t happened often, but when it did, he knew when to stay and when to withdraw. He could somehow mute his presence and still be in the same room. Or on the same street. He simply ceased to take up space. There was no edge to his silence, no questions, no demands. No retreat, really. She didn’t need to be alone to have privacy.
She didn’t need to be anyone, to live up to anything. Whatever she was, he’d seen it all. They’d grown up together. Best and worst.
The city streets were likewise quiet as Kaylin and Severn proceeded through them. The magelights were burning, but they always were, and even this close to the river, no enterprising and desperate thief had managed to dislodge them from their high perches. People were afraid of magic, even magic that they saw every day.
That, and it was hard to carry a ladder furtively.
“It always comes back to the past,” she said, listening to moving water against either bank.
“No.” He leaned back on the bridge railing, while she leaned forward, staring at the water without really seeing it. “Had we never been born in the fiefs, we would still be called to them now.”
“I thought I’d escaped them.”
“They’re part of you. Part of me. But they’re not all of what either of us are.”
“I thought if I left them, I’d leave it behind—the helplessness. The guilt.” She shook her head angrily. “Does it ever get better? Does it ever get easier?”
“If it ever does, let me know. I’ll start to worry, then.”
She gave him a rueful grimace. “I thought it would be different. And it is—but at the moment it’s almost worse. We were children,” she said. “I never felt—the choices—they weren’t all mine. But here? I like Sanabalis. I love Kayala and her wives. And it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change their facts.”
“No. But it doesn’t change yours, either. It’s not over, Kaylin. And until it is, nothing’s decided. Go home,” he urged.
She glanced at the side of his face. Just that, moonlight across his cheeks and the line of his nose, the white skin of old scars. “You’re a mess,” she said affectionately.
“I like to blend in with the company I keep,” he replied with a lazy smile. The smile was slow to leave, but it did. “Tomorrow, the Elders will decide what is to be done with Sergeant Kassan. Sergeant Kassan will decide what is to be done with you—from his perspective.” He stretched, leaned back, tilted his head toward the water so many feet below.
“But Sarabe will be safe for the moment. No matter what the Elders decide, she is
now ensconced in the Palace. If I didn’t know better—and Sanabalis is inscrutable—I would say his offer of hospitality was deliberate. They cannot harm her there. They can’t even try—they wouldn’t make it past the Palace Guard. No matter what happens, she’s safe for now. As is the child.”
“But—”
He lifted a hand, and caught hers in it. “‘For now’ is all we ever have. We have the illusion of forever. We have the illusion of stability. We have the illusion of safety—but that’s all it’s ever been. It’s a story we tell ourselves.”
“I want it to be a true story.”
“Kaylin—you used to be good at now. Try to remember what it was like. We have now.” He exhaled. “And we build on it. Come on. It’s time to go home.”
She nodded and led where he followed; it wasn’t hard. He was still holding her hand. “I wanted to tell you something,” she said, in a low voice. “Today. Yesterday. Whenever it was.”
“The past?”
She nodded.
He stopped walking and turned to face her.
And she found she had no words. Saw, from his expression, that he hadn’t really expected them. “Tomorrow,” he said quietly, and she understood by that that he meant, simply, not now. He gave her that much when he wanted to hear what she had almost forced herself to say. And she couldn’t be certain she could give him that much space or patience in return. It wasn’t in her. And for this particular now, she felt humbled by the knowledge.
“You’ll come?”
“No. I don’t think it would be wise. We want information. And Tiamaris will be with you. I’ll run interference at the office.”
“There’s no interference to run—”
“There will be.”
“Sanabalis said—”
“That you were excused from reporting for the evening.”
She nodded.
“Mallory will probably sleep at his desk tonight, waiting for an explanation of why.”
“I won’t be there.”
“No. But I will.”
“Severn—I didn’t leave the fiefs.” The words came out in a rush. “When I ran—I didn’t leave them.”