That is unwise, Kaylin.
She nodded. She heard Nightshade’s voice; it was hoarse. She could no longer hear Lirienne. The blood of the green had billowed; the skirts possessed a very, very long train. They had no sleeves, but the fall of fabric had shifted; the silk was both heavier and warmer, the style of dress distinctly different. Only an idiot would attempt to run in skirts like these; Kaylin privately doubted that walking was a possibility.
But she gathered the endless yards of fabric over her left arm, and she made her way to the fountain; the basin was full and clear.
The sky was now a clear azure—and it had a sun. It was a familiar sun. Nightshade’s voice was an echo. She turned, small dragon on her shoulder, to see Teela and ten of the lost children gathered around the fountain. They were talking, but half their sentences trailed off abruptly into either nothing or open laughter. It was as shocking in its way as anything that had happened in the West March.
Allaron lifted Sedarias off her feet and spun her around. Kaylin’s jaw almost hit the floor; nothing about Sedarias implied indulgence or affection. Her expression was fixed, frozen, as Allaron lowered her to the ground—but her eyes were a deep, emerald-green.
They were facing out, away from the fountain’s water. Kaylin saw the water rise; if they did, they didn’t acknowledge it; they were thrumming with excitement, expectation, nervousness, as the green returned—Kaylin understood this now—to the world. Or rather, as the green left it. But this time, it left the Barrani in its wake, its story told.
“You said I found you.”
Yes. He lowered his head, and spread himself more or less comfortably across her shoulders. What am I, Kaylin? The small dragon bit her earlobe. She cursed him in quiet Leontine, which, given the audience was mostly Barrani, didn’t make much of a difference.
What am I?
“Kitling.” Teela’s eyes had lost some of their green.
Kaylin knew why; the small dragon’s wings had grown. And grown. He was still mostly draped across her shoulders, but the wings now covered her like a cape. They were translucent, but caught sunlight in a way that suggested color. She felt them tighten, but they were warm, like the palm of a hand.
She was, she realized, both cold and tired. The sun didn’t feel warm. Nothing did, except dragon wings—and they weren’t wings now; they were too soft, too pliant, too shapeless.
She turned toward the water. It rose in a familiar column, a familiar shape. When it lifted an arm, extending a hand, Kaylin made her way across the very mundane, very solid, heart of the green. She lifted a hand in turn and placed it across a liquid palm.
He is not as we are, a familiar voice said. Her eyes were the color of every patch of water Kaylin had ever seen, simultaneously. They were open, rounded slightly in a way that suggested concern. Concern and stillness.
“I know.”
You must answer his question, Kaylin. The form and the shape he takes now has no mooring. It will be all things at once. All things, and nothing.
“What kind of nothing?”
The water failed to answer. Tell him, she said instead, the stories you tell us in the Keeper’s garden. Tell him what he is to your kind.
Kaylin exhaled. One hand in the water, she lifted the other; folds of translucent warmth rose and fell as she shifted position. Teela was standing apart from her cohort, watching as Kaylin was slowly engulfed in a cocoon that could be more felt than seen. She’d had whole days like this, when bed and sleep and silence were the only options that offered any comfort at all. She didn’t think often of Steffi and Jade; she shied away from it now because it always cut. It always would.
But thinking of them left the same, invisible bruises. Because she knew she’d made the right choice and it didn’t feel right. It felt wrong. All the if-only, all the what-if in her life had come back to this: it was done, and nothing she could do could change it. But...she could have. Because she had him and he could. And she couldn’t grasp the words. No—that wasn’t true. It was a lie. She could have. She could have taken that risk, could have spoken the lie in a way that made some sort of truth of it.
And she hadn’t.
And she wouldn’t.
How did you live with that? How did you look yourself in the mirror without seeing the face of a coward and a liar?
The small dragon bit her ear.
She inhaled. Exhaled. You lived with it the same damn way you’d lived with the deaths and the failure the first time. Badly. Badly, at first. But it was just another thing to hate. Just another thing to survive. She’d done it before, but honestly? She’d been so certain that she couldn’t. She’d been waiting for life to end, too afraid to end it on her own.
And she wasn’t that child anymore.
“I can’t give you words that won’t come,” she told the small dragon, looking up at the face of the water as she spoke. “But I’m not sure they would bind you anyway. I’m not sure they would give you form or shape or whatever it is you need. I’m not a sorcerer. I’m not immortal. I’m nowhere near ancient—although I’m going to feel like I am tomorrow. If I wake up.
“I understand how you relate to my life—my small, tiny life. You’re my dreams. You’re my daydreams. You’re my what-if’s. You’re the way I torture myself at night, when sleep won’t come, or sleep won’t stay.”
The small dragon was utterly still; he might, for a moment, have been made entirely of glass.
“But without some of those dreams, without the pain and the what-if, without the guilt, I wouldn’t be a Hawk. When I was five I couldn’t even imagine crossing the bridge. I stood on the outside of a life I thought I wanted, but I couldn’t make myself walk over the river. I don’t know what’s possible, most of the time. Hells, on a bad day? I feel like walking across the street safely is impossible.
“You’re not hope,” she continued. “Because when I think of Steffi and Jade, I have none. I have the dreams of who they might have been if they were still alive. I have dreams about arriving in time to save them. You know what those dreams are. You saw them. You heard them.
“But you’re the place hope comes from, and sometimes, that’s the only thing that keeps me moving. So. I need you in my life. I need you like fire or water or air or earth. Without what you are, I’d be dead a dozen times over. More.”
The small dragon tilted his head to one side. His eyes were now the size they’d been for almost all of his short life, or at least the part of it that overlapped with Kaylin’s; his wings were not. But they thinned as she watched; she saw them as gauze now, but they were as long as the skirts of the reformed dress.
“I don’t want to live without you, because I don’t think I can. I don’t think anyone can, not even Teela.”
“I heard that.”
Of course she had.
“But I don’t know how to chain you. I don’t know how to cage you. I don’t know how to control you or keep you—”
He bit her ear again.
She briefly considered strangling him. His wings tightened, but they were so thin now, they had no strength. Yet they were warm. She let the water go, and gathered an increasingly tattered cape around her shoulders and her arms, hugging it as if it were fabric and she were a child again.
But she wasn’t a child. She wasn’t surprised to see the wings slowly vanish, but their warmth remained as the small dragon sat up on her shoulder and yawned.
“Kitling.”
She looked up at Teela, whose eyes were now blue. Happiness—no, joy—apparently didn’t last long.
“What is he doing?”
Kaylin frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Can’t you see them?” Teela said something about survival instincts in distinctly uncharitable Leontine. She marched over to Kaylin, her boots striking stone hard enough to break it. She caught both of Kaylin’s wrists. “What are you holding in your hands?”
Kaylin started to say “wings,” but fell silent; she was holding strands of multicolored light. They we
re becoming insubstantial, even as she tightened her grasp. “Mostly...nothing.”
Teela shook her. “Look at your marks.”
She did, and her eyes widened. The marks were no longer the dark, coal-gray they were when they were inactive. Nor were they gold or blue. They were multihued and scintillating; they looked very like black opals; like the eyes of the small dragon.
The small dragon hissed. It was the continuous exhalation that passed for laughter in winged lizards. And he was that now. He looked unchanged.
She poked him. He bit her finger, but not hard enough to break skin. He did hiss at Teela, in an entirely less amused way, when she failed to let go of Kaylin’s wrists.
It was never about names, the water said, from a remove. You are mortal, Kaylin; not even the Ancients could contain the whole of the elemental you hold in your hands. They did not try.
“But what is he now?”
What was he when you found him? He is not less. He is, I think, more. But he has chosen. He has named you.
“But—”
It is not a name in the Barrani sense of the word, no. But the story you told him was the story he chose. He will not be what he almost became, she added softly. His power is dependent upon yours, and you are...mortal. But while you allow it, he will remain with you.
“If I ask him to leave, will he leave?” He bit her ear.
I have one task to perform for the green. There is one other mortal who waits in the greenheart; he waits for you. Tell him to come to the waters of my fountain.
“Why?”
He will understand. Or perhaps he will not; the greenheart is not what it was when last he ventured into it. She lifted a hand again. Come home. Ybelline is concerned.
“About me?”
No, Kaylin. But she will speak to you if you approach her. It is time.
* * *
Kaylin walked out of the heart of the green, and into the heart of the green, Teela by her side. “I’m fine,” she told the Barrani Hawk. She even gave her a shove in the direction of the rest of her kin. “I’m honestly fine. There’s nothing that can hurt me here.”
Teela snorted, but it was a halfhearted sound; she wanted to join the others. After a short while, she did.
Nightshade wore the crown of the Teller and the Teller’s robes; they were unchanged. Kaylin’s dress was not. It was still green, but the skirt hadn’t shrunk any. She grabbed the train and bunched it in her arms.
The Lord of the West March stood by the side of his Consort, his eyes blue. The Warden stood between Nightshade and Lirienne, his eyes even darker. Ynpharion stood behind the Consort, his hand on the hilt of a sheathed sword. His eyes were the usual blue of caution. The Consort’s eyes, however, were the color of Kaylin’s dress.
Annarion was speaking with Nightshade. The others were loosely grouped around them. Kaylin glanced at Severn; Severn was watching, but he kept his distance from every other person in the clearing. He smiled as Kaylin stepped into view.
Where’s Iberrienne?
I believe he chose to retreat.
To where?
The Hallionne Alsanis. It wasn’t entirely his idea; the eagles came.
Kaylin swallowed, and Severn offered a wry grin. He is invited to remain in Alsanis with his brother. I may visit if I so choose.
You can’t kill him in the Hallionne.
No, was the grave reply.
She shouldn’t have been happy. She was. Oh. You’re to go to the fountain.
She expected confusion; what she got instead was surprise. Surprise and hope. He kept them mostly to himself as he approached the basin into which clear water ran. Kaylin followed, dragging material. She could see nothing in the fountain itself but water.
Severn, however, didn’t have that problem. He reached into those waters, and when he pulled his hands clear again, he was carrying two familiar blades.
“The green,” Lord Barian said, “favors you, Lord Severn. I admit that I was ill-pleased when the blades chose their wielder the first time you made your way to the heart of the green.”
“And now?”
The Warden’s smile was soft; the blue faded from his eyes. He looked up at the bowers of ancient trees; he looked down at the waters of a fountain which was no longer dry. “The green works in mysterious ways. My blessing is not required, but if it brings a measure of peace, you have it; were it not for your willingness to surrender what you had once been given, we would not now be here.”
He turned, then, to Kaylin. “Let the train down, Lord Kaylin. Let it be. It is the green’s way of making clear that you have told the tale the green would tell if it could speak as we speak. The Vale will see. The Vale will know.”
But Kaylin shook her head. She glanced over her shoulder at the sound of laughter—Barrani laughter. “I think the Vale would know anyway.”
Chapter 28
Kaylin woke to snoring. This wasn’t unusual, but usually, the snores were hers. Tonight, they belonged to a delicate, translucent dragon. He hadn’t spoken a word since she’d left the green. She’d spoken several—to him, in Leontine, and they’d had the usual effect.
The room itself was large, but it was cool and quiet; it had windows—and these windows, at least, reminded her of home. Of her old home. They weren’t glassed or barred; they opened to air and breeze. The fact that neither of these—air or breeze—appeared to come from the West March in which the building was situated no longer bothered her; she was in a Hallionne, after all, and the Hallionne had a very tenuous sense of place.
The Warden had repeated his offer of hospitality, of course, once they’d left the green. But even offering it, he gazed—with green-eyed longing—at the facade of the Hallionne Alsanis. The Hallionne itself no longer appeared to be made of shadow-mired crystal; nor did it look like a tree, a cliff, a river, or a patch of random, grass-covered dirt. It was, it seemed, made of stone and glass, and its spire—for it had one—ascended to neck-cramping heights.
Which didn’t stop Kaylin from looking.
The Guardian—Lord Avonelle—had been waiting for them. Her eyes were blue and her expression was as friendly as winter. The bitter, killing kind. But she’d offered the Teller and the harmoniste a perfect obeisance. Kaylin privately thought it almost killed her. She then offered them a phrase so archaic Kaylin only barely recognized it as High Barrani.
The Warden’s eyes remained a cautious blue; they didn’t verge into gold. But he was utterly still. Absence of movement often meant surprise, in the Barrani. Of course, it often meant “you’re about to die if you don’t move,” as well.
Lord Avonelle’s eyes were a shade darker when Teela joined the Teller and the harmoniste; they were a color that Kaylin couldn’t describe when the rest of the lost children, save only Terrano, followed. She only barely offered the Consort a correct gesture of respect; Kaylin thought the snub to the Lord of the West March wasn’t actually deliberate. He didn’t seem to care.
He looked—as Barian did—to the south, where a spire Kaylin had never seen stretched toward the clear sky.
“Alsanis.”
* * *
Kaylin couldn’t think of the lost children as children; it was patently ridiculous. They were older than she was, at least chronologically; they were taller, stronger, and more confident. They smiled, yes, and sometimes they laughed outright; they were slightly more demonstrative than most Barrani—but then again, everyone was.
Regardless, they left the green. They offered the Consort the obeisances that Lord Avonelle had given strictly for form’s sake, and they held them—as Kaylin had once done—until she bid them rise. She took her time.
She is cautious, Lirienne said.
Kaylin understood why. She knew she should be as cautious, but it was much harder for her. Teela trusted these people.
We trust, when we are young, Lirienne replied. And when trust is broken—and it is, Kaylin; that is the nature of our kind—we learn caution. We learn wisdom. The gaining is never pleasant. There
is not the insignificant fact that they intended to destroy the Lake of Life.
She started to argue, and stopped. It was true. They wouldn’t do it now.
That is my suspicion. It is the Lady’s suspicion, as well. If she is to trust the truth of your supposition, it will take time. The young, he added, are infamously impatient—but these were considered our best and our brightest. They will wait.
Lord Avonelle didn’t bow to the cohort. Her expression made the Consort’s long pause seem friendly and thoughtful in comparison. She did, however, say, “Alsanis offers his hospitality to all who return from the green.”
Sedarias nodded stiffly, a regal, downward tilt of chin. “We have already been thus informed, Guardian, but we appreciate the courtesy you have shown us.” She broke away from the group and approached Nightshade. “Lord Calarnenne.”
“Sedarias.”
“Escort us to Alsanis. If there are to be guests and the halls are to be open, we hope to be better prepared than you have found us.” She held out one commanding arm.
Kaylin felt her jaw drop when he smiled ruefully and accepted what was only barely a request.
She does not do it for his sake, Lirienne said quietly, but for Annarion’s. There will be trouble there, I think, but not yet. Tonight, tomorrow, there will be only celebration, only joy. Joy comes seldom, kyuthe, and where it does, it must be savored.
Kaylin glanced at Avonelle’s shuttered face. She felt Lirienne’s very real laugh in response. The laughter stopped abruptly as Severn stepped into Lord Avonelle’s view. If your Corporal is wise, he will avail himself of Alsanis’s hospitality for the duration of his stay.
He’s been—
She is aware of what he now carries. She is aware that the green has granted him what her kin have been denied, time and again, when they abased themselves in the heart of the green. What she herself has been denied. It is only barely acceptable when she is passed over for a Lord of the Court.
Which, technically, he is.
Yes. Technically. He is not what you are.