“What borders Barren on the other side?”
“Understand that what I tell you is not fact in the way that Liatt is fact; the fief does not border me. But if information gathered in the fiefs in the usual way can be trusted, Candallar.”
“Will Candallar hold?”
Nightshade said nothing. It was not helpful.
Tiamaris bowed to Nightshade. “I must leave,” he told the fief lord.
Nor did the fief lord appear surprised by the abrupt announcement. “Will you allow the Private to remain for a few moments?”
“I cannot leave without her; the orders I were given were quite…explicit.”
This, too, did not appear to surprise Nightshade. Kaylin felt his amusement, but also his annoyance; they were almost perfectly balanced. His eyes, however, were the emerald green of Barrani calm, with perhaps a hint of blue to deepen the color. “Then escort her,” he told Tiamaris. “She will return.” He offered the briefest of bows to the Dragon Lord. “The information I can surrender in safety, I will. If anything changes along the borders, I will inform Private Neya; she may then inform the Emperor.”
Tiamaris nodded and turned to leave the room, but Lord Nightshade had not quite finished. “Kaylin.”
“Yes?”
“I will not surrender you to Barren.”
Tiamaris did not run back to the bridge. Dragon dignity was good for something. He did, however, walk quickly, and the difference in their relative strides meant that Kaylin’s dignity had to suffer; she had to jog to keep up. Only when they had crossed the bridge itself—with a distant crowd of witnesses who were too curious to clear the streets and too damn smart to approach—did he turn.
“We go to the palace,” he told her.
She nodded; she’d expected that much.
“You are not yet relieved of your duty for the day. Accompany me.”
She nodded again, not that he noticed. “Tiamaris—” she began, as he stepped into the street.
He failed to hear her, which was probably deliberate. Dragons didn’t flag a carriage down; they simply stood in the way and waited for it to stop. This was, in Kaylin’s experience, a risky proposition, but on the other hand, Dragons were built in such a way that if the risk played out poorly it didn’t exactly kill them.
“Tiamaris,” Kaylin said, as she climbed into the cab, “if you’re going to make a habit of this, station an Imperial carriage by the bridge.”
He ignored her advice.
“I mean it. We have enough trouble with the Swords as is—I don’t need to file a counterreport to explain a small riot or a large panic if we don’t luck out with a decent driver.”
When they reached the palace gates, guards met the cab. They didn’t lead it into the courtyard, but they did clear the path as Tiamaris emerged. His eyes were a shade of orange that looked a little too deep, and none of the Imperial guards could fail to understand what that meant, but just in case, he lowered his inner membranes, so the color was much more pronounced. If they noticed his tabard—or Kaylin’s—they failed to be offended by it.
She followed Tiamaris into the Great Hall, and then stopped as he lifted a hand. “Wait here,” he told her quietly. “I go in haste to the Emperor, but even in haste, your poor understanding of Court etiquette would not be excused.”
She started to argue because it was automatic, and snapped her jaw shut before the words left her mouth, settling in to wait. Waiting in these halls, with the stray glances of guards who were no doubt paid triple what she earned was a bit intimidating, but she didn’t have to wait there long; Sanabalis emerged from the doors at the far end.
“Private,” he said as he approached her, making clear what the tone—at least in front of the guards—would be, “please follow me.”
She hesitated, aware that any other guard here wouldn’t have.
“No,” he added, when he noticed she wasn’t immediately dogging his footsteps, “I am not leading you to either an execution or a meeting of the Imperial Court.”
Since they would probably amount to the same thing, Kaylin relaxed and trailed behind the Dragon who was, truth be told, her favorite teacher, not that this said much. He led her to the rooms he used to meet with individuals, and she paused by the large, leaded windows that looked out at the Halls of Law. They seemed distant and remote to her, and she didn’t like it.
“Lord Tiamaris has made a preliminary report,” Sanabalis told her, as he sat heavily in an armchair designed to take the weight of a Dragon. “Some research is now being done by the Arkon, which may give you the luxury of a small break. I suggest,” he added, gesturing at the food that had been laid out on the small round table in front of him, “that you use it.”
The Arkon was the palace’s version of a librarian. He was also the oldest Dragon at Court, and technically not called Lord, and his hoard was the library. Kaylin’s understanding of the Dragon term hoard wasn’t exact, but time had made clear that it meant “touch any of my stuff and die horribly.”
She nodded and took the chair opposite Sanabalis. She even picked up the large sandwiches that had been made for her. Sanabalis never seemed to eat, and he deflected most of her questions about Dragon cuisine. Then again, he deflected most of her questions about Dragons, period, which was annoying because he was one, and could in theory be authoritative.
“Do you understand the significance of what Lord Nightshade revealed?” he asked her, coming to the point while she chewed. His tone of voice made clear that he expected the answer to be no.
She grimaced, wiping crumbs from the corners of her lips. “There’s some strong connection between a fief and its Lord,” she finally said.
He nodded.
“Liatt, a fief lord, rules the way Nightshade does. Barren doesn’t.”
“Do you understand why?”
“No. I’m not a fief lord. It’s never been one of my life ambitions, even when I thought I’d live there forever.” Seeing the stiffening lines of his face, which weren’t all that significant, and the slight darkening of the gold of his eyes, which was, she added, “I can infer that there is a building in each fief that is similar to Castle Nightshade.”
The color didn’t exactly recede, but it didn’t darken to orange. Sanabalis was not, by any stretch of the definition, in a good mood.
“If there’s a building like that in Barren, Barren doesn’t own it. He’s not its Lord or its master.”
“Did you know this?”
“Sanabalis—I was thirteen.” She spread her hands, one of which was full of sandwich, in a gesture of self-defense. “I’d never been inside the Castle—how the hell was I supposed to know it was significant? It was where Nightshade lived; the only chance I was ever going to see it involved death by cage. In public.”
“And in Barren?”
“More of the same,” she said.
He said nothing for a long moment, and it was Kaylin who looked away. “Not the same,” she said, and the food turned to ash in her mouth. “But I didn’t know that Barren wasn’t like Nightshade. I didn’t know—” She stopped. Swallowed. “What I knew doesn’t matter.”
Sanabalis nodded, conceding the point. “Do you understand what alarmed Lord Tiamaris?”
She nodded. She did. “Barren is unstable,” she said quietly. “And whatever lies at the heart of the fiefs isn’t contained anymore. If we can’t stabilize Barren—somehow—that will spill across the Ablayne.”
“And into the Emperor’s city, yes.”
“But Barren’s held it—”
“For ten years. Much longer,” Sanabalis added softly, “than we would have suspected was possible. We don’t know what’s changed,” he added, a note of warning in the words, “but something has.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
He spread his hands across the knobs at the end of his armrests. “What am I going to do? At the moment, very little.”
She snorted. “Fine. What am I going to do?”
“A more s
alient question. You are going to accompany Lord Tiamaris to the fiefs to investigate the difficulty. Think of how you’re going to approach this,” he added, as he rose. “If you require entry into Barren—”
Kaylin lifted a hand. “I know how I’ll get in,” she told him curtly. Then, trying to smooth the edge out of her voice, she added, “I have no idea how to do it with Tiamaris tagging along.”
“Tiamaris,” Sanabalis replied, “is not optional.”
Sanabalis left her abruptly, but his departure wasn’t the usual mystery; a Dragon roared, the palace shook, and when the tremors had died down, he was already out the door. She thought the voice sounded familiar, but it was hard to tell; the roar had momentarily deafened Kaylin.
She ate in silence, although she did so from the ledge of the window, watching the flags atop the Halls of Law. If she had sneered at those Halls as a child—and she must have, being a fief ling, although she honestly didn’t remember it—she felt no similar disdain now; the Halls served a purpose. One only had to cross the Ablayne to see the effects of the districts beyond their reach. Yes, the law wasn’t perfect; yes, its officers and representatives made mistakes.
But the alternative was so much worse. She’d lived it; she knew.
She had avoided the fiefs for over seven years now, approaching them solely at the request of her superiors in one Hall or another. It wasn’t simply cowardice or distaste; it wasn’t a desire to separate herself from her roots or her past. She was afraid of what the fiefs contained.
But if she let that fear govern her, unspoken and unacknowledged as it so often was, the fiefs would come to her. They would eat away at Barren, and if Barren himself deserved it, the people who eked out a miserable living in his fief probably didn’t; they did—as Kaylin had done in Nightshade—what they needed to, to survive.
She couldn’t judge them; didn’t even want to. That wasn’t her job.
The door opened, and she turned slowly to see Tiamaris—and the Arkon. Sanabalis, slightly shorter, stood behind them.
The Arkon lifted a slender, wrinkled hand. “Private Neya,” he said.
She slid off the ledge, and offered him a full bow. If it wasn’t a good bow, he didn’t appear to notice. Neither did Sanabalis, but she could see that in his case, it took effort.
“I am prepared,” the Arkon told her, as he entered the room, surveyed the chairs, and took the one Sanabalis habitually occupied, “to discuss Ravellon.”
CHAPTER 7
Kaylin had once been warned not to ask the Arkon about Ravellon if she valued her life, or at least having all her limbs attached. She reminded herself that she hadn’t asked as she took the nearest chair that would support her weight. Given the room was a hospitality suite for a Dragon Lord, that would be any of them.
“Lord Tiamaris, if you will be seated?” the Arkon said, in a tone of voice that made Marcus’s commands seem polite and obsequious.
Tiamaris, in this, was Kaylin’s superior; he apologized instantly for his inattentiveness, and he took his seat in perfect silence.
“Private Neya, it has come to my attention that you spent some time in Barren recently.”
She opened her mouth. Tiamaris stepped lightly—for a Dragon—on her foot. “By recently, of course,” Tiamaris told her, “the Arkon refers to anything that happened during the course of my lifetime.”
“Oh.”
The Arkon raised a white brow. “Understand that our knowledge of the fiefs is…incomplete. What understanding we have is not entirely reliable. The fiefs are not hospitable to those who are not their masters.”
She nodded.
“Was our information accurate?”
“Yes. I was in Barren seven years ago.” She spoke quietly, and without her usual confidence. “I don’t know much about the fief that anyone who lives there every day wouldn’t know.” This was not entirely the truth, but it was enough of the truth, if you narrowed the definition of everyone slightly.
The Arkon didn’t appear unduly suspicious. “Did you ever have cause to meet with the fief lord there?”
Her silence was more pronounced. But Dragons lived forever, absent things that were actively hostile; time meant less to them. “Yes. Yes, I met Barren.”
“Good. What can you tell me about this fief lord?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Is he human?”
She nodded. “As human as I—as—”
His lips curved in a smile. “As human as most of the citizens of Elantra?”
“As that, yes. He was older than I was. He’s probably forty now, maybe a little older. Possibly a little younger. The fiefs tend to age people.”
“Where did he come from?”
“Come from?”
The Arkon glanced at Sanabalis. “I believe I asked the correct question?”
“Yes, Arkon.”
“I—I don’t know. He was the fief lord. I didn’t exactly ask.”
The Arkon frowned. “And he did not choose to enlighten you?” Even the Arkon could read the silence that followed his question. “Very well. The fief of Barren—as do all fiefs—border the heart of the fiefs themselves. We cannot pierce the shadows there,” he added. “By any means save entering them. The Aerians can fly over the edges, but in the center, flight falters.”
“How do you know?”
“How do you think we know?”
She swallowed and thought of Clint. But she didn’t ask more, mostly because she was afraid the answer would enrage her; she’d always loved the Aerian Hawks. “Why do you think they can’t fly over the heart of the fiefs?” It was a safer question, as comment seemed expected.
His brows rippled slightly, but he didn’t seem annoyed. “One of two possibilities exist. The first: that the heart is magically protected in some fashion, and in a way that defies the expedience of simple geography. It is not the explanation I favor,” he added. “The second is slightly more complex. How far did you proceed in your studies on magical theory?”
When she failed to produce an answer, the brows rose again, but this time, the expression he offered was less benign. “You have studied magical theory? Sanabalis?” Clearly, the shock of her second nonanswer caused him to forget the nicety of something as simple as a title.
“Her studies in magical theory were not considered mandatory for a member of the groundhawks.”
“It is hardly possible to have a conversation with someone who has no grounding in the basics. I might as well speak in my native tongue for all the good it will do.”
“Indeed,” Sanabalis replied.
“Alleviate the difficulty. You are teaching her, are you not?”
“Yes, Arkon.”
Kaylin wilted visibly. She’d long since realized that there were whole days that did not reward getting out of bed; she thought it a bit unfair that whole weeks could also be like that. “Pretend I’m ignorant,” she began.
“It hardly requires pretense,” the Arkon replied stiffly.
Reminding herself that she liked her limbs attached, she swallowed. “Explain it anyway?”
He was very slow to relent, but did. “I am not responsible for your inability to understand,” he told her. “And I therefore am not responsible for any questions that arise from your incomplete comprehension. Tiamaris may answer them in my absence.”
“Arkon,” Tiamaris replied.
“Very well. You have heard the world theory, yes?”
Sanabalis raised a brow. “I think it completely irrelevant to the Hawks and the Imperial Law. It is unlikely that she has been forced to study something considered that esoteric.”
“Very well. There is, in theory, more than one world.”
“More than one?”
The Arkon nodded.
“How many?”
Sanabalis winced. Clearly, this was not the right question.
“More than one. Right.”
“Each world has a magical potential.”
She nodded.
“
And each world has a magical field, if you will, a level of power that permeates the whole. If our own studies are anything to go by, that level of power can fluctuate from place to place. Do you understand the concept of power lines or power grids?”
She wanted to nod, but she didn’t. She could guess how amused the Arkon would be by a simple fib. She could also see that her silence had caused his eyes to shade into a dark bronze. Sometimes ignorance had its appeal.
“Sanabalis, I am entirely unamused.”
“Arkon.”
“Very well, Private Neya. Magical potential seems to form along lines; we are not certain why. Those lines can cross, and in some areas, they will form a grid, in some a knot. Those knots are areas in which magic, when it can be used at all, will be at its most potent. It will often also be at its most wild.”
“Wild?”
“Sanabalis can explain that later. My time is valuable.”
Hers, on the other hand, wasn’t, at least if you went by pay scale. But she absorbed the words, made as much sense as she could of them, and then braved a question. “The buildings in the fiefs—like the Castle—are they on those knots?”
He raised a brow. “Very good. This may be less painful than I anticipated. Yes. They are, as you put it, on potential knots. The magic that defines the boundaries of a fief seem to follow lines that extend from the central knot, and out. But there is some blurring of boundary, as has been discussed elsewhere.
“In the heart of the fiefs, in what was once called Ravellon by the Barrani, we believe potential exists such as exists nowhere else in our world.”
“What does this have to do with other worlds?”
Clearly, this was a bad question. “Nothing. But you bring me to my previous point. Our world has a very high magical potential. It is why we believe the Aerians are capable of flight. It is why they exist at all.”
“But—”
He raised a brow. She closed her mouth.
“In a different magical environment, the Aerians would, in theory, be incapable of sustaining their own weight in flight. They might have wings, but the wings would serve no function, except perhaps in a cultural way. There are sages who have made this study their life’s work. Perhaps you can find one of them to question.”