But he didn’t move, and after she’d finished putting her shoes on, she walked over to where he stood. “Was I talking?”
He nodded.
“In Elantran?”
“No. And that was odd.”
“Aerian?”
“No.”
“Barrani.”
“Yes. High Barrani. Do you know what leoswuld means?”
She frowned. Shook her head.
“Were it not for the expectations of Lord Sanabalis, I would not allow you to leave the castle,” Lord Nightshade said quietly.
“It’s a bad word?”
“It is not a word that I have heard spoken by my kin since—” He smiled. It was a sharp smile. “It is, as you suggest, a bad word. Do not repeat it.” His frown deepened, and the shade of his eyes were a blend of blue and green, both too deep for comfort. “But it would explain much.” He lifted a hand. “Do not speak of it. It is death for outsiders.”
She wasn’t certain she could.
But she knew he was worried, and anything that actually worried a fieflord was probably something that could eat her alive and spit out the chewy bits without pausing for breath. Or, even worse, political.
“Tender my regards to Lord Sanabalis,” Lord Nightshade said as he moved to one side. “I will see you out.”
Seeing her out, as it happened, meant walking her to the banks of the Ablayne. The skiff was waiting for her there, and Andellen was once again its makeshift captain. “You will retain the services of Andellen and Samaran.”
“I can’t take them into the Halls of Law—they’re—”
“If it is necessary, they will wait outside. Without breaking any of the laws you hold so precious.”
“They’ve already broken at least sixty that I can think of, just by serving you!”
“They will not be an inconvenience.”
She looked at his face. “I take them or I don’t go?”
He shrugged. “There is always a choice.”
She swallowed the words that automatically suggested themselves. They were all Leontine. And she suspected that he would understand every one of them.
“Andellen.”
“Lord.”
“Do not lose her.”
“Lord.”
Nightshade turned from the banks. “I have much to see to,” he told her quietly. “And people of my own to gather.” The day did not diminish him, but it made him seem far more distant. Which was a good thing.
Which should have been a good thing.
He approached her slowly, and in front of his waiting men, he lifted a hand to her cheek, to her unmarked cheek. His lips brushed her forehead before she could move—if she even wanted to; the touch was surprisingly soft. And warm. “I do not know when I will next see you,” he told her quietly. “But I do not doubt that I will. And while you are away, I will be preparing.”
“For what?”
He said nothing in exactly the wrong way, and let his hand fall.
Kaylin stepped into the boat, hating the way it wobbled. The river wasn’t wide, and she’d half a mind to just ford the damn thing—but dripping on the carpets in the Halls was heavily frowned on, unless it was blood, and it would take her boots days to dry out. She disliked squelching on principle.
Six Barrani guards waited by the banks when the skiff reached the opposite side. They did not seem to notice the shift of boundaries. Like all Barrani, they owned whatever piece of ground they happened to be standing on. Or in.
Andellen and another guard, who she assumed was Samaran, followed her up the incline. They wore swords. All of the fieflord’s Barrani guards did. She wondered why the Barrani Hawks chose staves instead. Even at their gods-cursed High Court, the weapon of choice seemed to be a long sword.
But she didn’t ask. Instead, she turned toward the high city, shading her eyes from sunlight. It was warm on the back of her hand, and she gained warmth of a different kind from the sight of the three flags that flew above the distant Halls. “Let’s go,” she said without thinking.
But they followed without comment or annoyance.
And to her surprise, she was allowed entrance to the Halls with this strange escort. They elicited no surprise, no weapons checks, and no loud cries for help.
The first person she met in the office, once she’d cleared two sets of guards, was Teela. She almost failed to notice, but mornings did that to her; her brain didn’t seem to acknowledge that the rest of her was awake until near lunch.
Andellen and Samaran noticed for her, however. They formed a metal wall between Kaylin and her fellow Hawk. She could have kicked them. Even considered it. But pockets of the office were now watching her, and she hated to make money for anyone who hadn’t invited her to join in the betting.
Teela was dressed down. As in, almost like a Hawk. Except without the actual Hawk to grant her authority. Her hair was a flat fall from head to waist, and she wore a wide sash in place of a belt. She carried no obvious weapon. This, however, wasn’t a problem; she didn’t need them. Even the staff she favored was hardly necessary to her in a fight.
She eyed the Barrani with disdain. That was Teela all over. “Kaylin.” She shortened both syllables into something that defined curt.
“Where’s Marcus?”
“He’s with the Hawklord.”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m off duty. Does it matter?”
“You tell me. Where’s Tain?”
“He’s in his office.”
Which was usually a bad sign; Tain liked his cubicle about as much as Kaylin liked palm-magic. Or less.
“This is High Court business?”
Teela’s smile was all teeth. It should have had fangs. “I’m just making a casual report,” she told Kaylin. “Someone’s imported Lethe flowers.”
Kaylin’s jaw slowly unhinged. “Here?”
Teela reached into her pouch and pulled out the crushed and obvious white blossom. Lethe was deadly, in large enough doses. Then again, so were Leontines. What Leon-tines couldn’t do, however, was destroy memory and identity slowly. Or quickly.
“I’ll get—”
“No. You won’t.”
“But Moran should see—”
“I’ve been to Moran. It’s potent.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with the Festival, right?”
“You’re off duty anyway. I did ask,” Teela added with something that sounded suspiciously like pity.
“Teela—”
The Barrani’s eyes were a shade of blue that looked a lot like black. Kaylin took a step back. Lethe didn’t work as well on humans as it did on Barrani, and from the Barrani point of view, destroying a few decades of memory wasn’t a great crime anyway.
Hawk’s eyes narrowed. “Was this used on the Lord of the West March?”
Teela said a very significant nothing. “You’ve got a meeting,” she added quietly.
Kaylin wilted. In all, she looked a lot like the crushed flower. She turned smack into armor, and cursed in healthy Leontine as she rubbed her nose. “You two,” she said, when she could talk again, “leave me a little space, okay?”
She left the guards on either side of the door to the West Room. They looked as if they would argue, but she smiled, held up a hand, and said, “Dragon Lord, okay?” in her most cheerful voice. If this didn’t have the desired effect, it did encourage obedience.
Lord Sanabalis was waiting, the candle on the desk between his hands. His hands were pale, and finely veined, but they didn’t look old. They looked, to Kaylin’s eyes, like common hands that had seen their share of honest labor. Then again, Kaylin had met a lot of soldiers in her time among the Hawks, and they had similar hands. Honest labor was a matter of perspective.
The Dragon Lord bowed his head as she entered and took a seat. “Private,” he said quietly.
“Lord Sanabalis.” She offered formality for formality, and only when she met his eyes—his dull orange eyes—did she realize how wrong it sound
ed.
“What,” he asked her, his eyes a shade darker, “is the shape of fire?”
And she thought of Lord Evarrim’s robes in the sunlight. Of the color of Dragon eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Light the candle, Kaylin.”
She sighed, and forced herself to look at what was there. Wax. Wick. Brass beneath both, and tarnished brass at that. But the candle was a different color; it was a russet red. The wick was long, and pale, but it seemed, to her eyes, to be yellow.
Because she was incapable of schooling her expression, her brow furrowed. “This candle—”
“Yes.”
“It’s not the same—”
“Is it not? How clumsy of me.”
She stared at it now, the Hawk in her gaining ground. What had seemed flat and unremarkable brass resolved itself in subtle ways into something less ordinary. The plate was covered in thin runes that circled the candle base. Some were faded; the lines were too fine to be read. Others were darker and clearer, but even these defied her ability to read. They weren’t Elantran, Barrani, or Aerian. They certainly weren’t Leontine.
They weren’t, however, old magic as she understood it. If she couldn’t read what had been written on her body, she could recognize the shape and thickness of the curves. These were not the same.
“Dragon,” she murmured to herself.
Sanabalis said nothing. His expression was about as giving as stone.
Without thinking, she said, “Do you know the word leoswuld?” And added another shade of orange to those watching eyes. They were almost red. And Kaylin was almost out of her seat. She was certainly finding it difficult not to grip a dagger in either hand.
“Where did you hear that word?”
“I apparently said it in my sleep.”
His raised brow turned her cheeks the same shade of red as his eyes.
“What,” the Dragon Lord said, in a voice that would have carried across a Festival street without losing anything, “is the shape of fire?”
As if this were rote. As if he had said it a hundred times, and had come, at last, to the end of his patience.
“I don’t know.”
“Kaylin,” Sanabalis said, his eyes still red, his lower membranes inching into invisibility, “you do know. You must know.”
“Why? Why now?” She paused, and then added, “Why are you so angry?”
His expression shifted slightly. It didn’t get any friendlier, but it lost some of its menace as he gathered the folds of his lips into something resembling a frown. A smile, and she would have run screaming.
“I am not angry with or at you, Kaylin Neya. But circumstances have changed, and the situation has become more difficult. For both of us.”
“You’ve been my teacher for what—two days? Three? How long did you say it took an apprentice to light a damn candle anyway?”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh.”
“But had I, I would have said half a year. For those with the focus and skill to do so. Some will labor for three years before they manage it, some will never manage.”
“And I’m supposed to do this in three damn days?”
“You have claimed that you have no love for the classroom. This is the classroom, and there is only one way for you to leave it at the moment. You will light the candle.” He reached into his robes and pulled out a large crystal. It was clear, and from the center of its cut facets, light played against the walls.
She’d seen crystals like it before; had held them, had even been burned by them. “What happens if I don’t light the candle?”
“You will not leave the classroom,” he replied. “But the classroom will move.”
Move. That was bad. “To where?”
“Where do you think, Kaylin? You said—to any of your teachers, even to me—that you want to be out there. ‘Out there’ is a phrase that has many meanings. You wish to place your life at risk in the service of Elantra. You have even been given the opportunity, several times.
“You are a fool, but you are not a coward, and time will cure the former, if you survive. To survive,” he added, “you will light the candle.” He leaned across the table as he spoke, and his hands—the hands that had seemed so common when she’d studied them—elongated.
She fell over. Or rather, her chair did; she was already rolling along the ground. She came to her feet neatly, without thought or intent. Every movement was instinctive.
But the hands, longer, nails more pronounced, did not alter further. Lord Sanabalis was still…Lord Sanabalis. She had twice seen a dragon unfold, shedding even the pretense of humanity, and she wasn’t in a hurry to do it again.
She rose on unsteady feet, and found that she had drawn a dagger. Against a Dragon Lord. But the Dragon Lord’s red, red gaze did not falter, and her eyes were drawn into its center. To heat, to anger, to a flame that defied death and pain, and offered consumption as its only benediction.
And at the core of those eyes, she thought she saw, flickering and shifting, the outline of letters. As if a word were writ there, and it had finally been exposed.
Not shape, she thought desperately.
The Dragon had not moved.
Not the shape of flame. Not the form of flame.
The name of it. She held on to those moving runes, trying to pin them down, trying to fit them into a shape she could utter. But they were as foreign to her as the runes on the brass candleholder; they weren’t in a language she knew.
And yet…she knew them as language, as part of language. As something old. Old…
Without thinking, she reached for her wrist; it was free. She hadn’t been given the bracer; it didn’t contain her, couldn’t hold her back.
She pushed her sleeves up, as Lord Sanabalis watched, and she thought she saw him…wince. But the eyes stayed the same, and that was all the guidance she needed.
Her lips stopped moving.
They never moved when she used a name.
Think, Kaylin. Think. No. Don’t think.
She placed her hands upon the desk, lifting herself from the ground. She forced herself to bend, to pick up the chair. Hands shaking, she put it down, opposite Sanabalis, the man she would never forget was a Dragon again for as long as she lived.
And she spoke the word.
Fire erupted in the air above the candle. Fire danced along the wick. It should have melted wax and flesh. It should have turned table and chairs—and Kaylin—into liquid or ash.
But it didn’t. It hovered above russet wax, yellow wick, and as the wax took heat, as it took flame onto itself, it began to gleam, as if gold were its heart.
And the candle itself grew red and bright as it absorbed the whole of the fire’s mass. She was blind for a moment. All she could see was that small dancing leap of flame, of burning candle. She didn’t immediately notice that the crystal to one side of the candle now held red light at its heart. But she did notice; she was a Hawk, after all.
The Dragon’s eyes were shading toward orange, but it was a deep orange, and a hot one. He raised his lower membranes, to shield her from their color.
“Done,” he said softly. Wearily. “Congratulations, Kaylin.”
“Does this mean I pass?”
“This means,” he said softly, so softly she had to strain to catch the words, “that you have some chance of surviving.” He gestured, and the fire guttered.
“And I don’t need a tutor?”
His laugh was a roar. “You need far more than that, Kaylin Neya. You will not be free of my guidance for some time yet.”
“Then—”
“But you will,” he continued, rising, “bear the symbol of the Imperial Order of Mages.”
CHAPTER 9
The words made no sense. And because they made no sense, they could be slotted into a category that made Kaylin uneasy at the best of times.
“This is political, isn’t it?”
“In a broad sense,” Sanabalis replied coldly, “everything is political.”
“This is political the way wars are political.”
“Ah, yes. That shade. Or close.” He reached out for the candle. She saw it, for a moment, as something that bore only the facade of wax, and didn’t ask him anything more, aware of the crystal by his side. Aware that she’d already said too much. His nod, still curt, was a small benediction.
Which she needed. She was trembling. Curling her hands into fists to prevent it from being obvious was an old habit, and like all old habits, it died hard. She watched him.
He watched her. And then, with a weary smile that did not, in any way, alter the color of his eyes, he loosened the collar of his robe slightly and lifted a chain from around his neck. It was gold, and heavy, and far too long, its links forming not so much a chain as rope. “It is mine,” he told her gravely, “and I value it. It was given me by a mage long dead. He taught me much. Wear it until I give you a replacement.” He stood there, chain in his hands, waiting.
She stared at him.
His expression soured. “Come here,” he told her. “The young everywhere lack any sense of ceremony.”
She did as bid, partly because the command itself was Dragon in tone and depth, and partly because the comment that followed it hinted at the type of lecture she ran a four-minute mile to avoid hearing. He set the chain over her head and around her neck; the medallion hung at her waist, and after a moment, he frowned, pulled the chain up, and knotted it. As knots went, it stunk. “It will do,” he told her.
“Ummm.”
“Yes?”
“It’s got a Dragon on it.”
“Ah. An oversight on my part,” he replied in a tone that implied the opposite. “As I said, it is my personal medallion.”
“But I’m not—”
“No. You are not. But it is older by far than you, and it will be recognized where you travel.”
It was warm. The knot he’d added to the chain had raised the medallion so that it rested just below her breasts; she felt it as if it were another heart. She reached out, lifted it, looked at it.
“It is not a coin, and I advise you not to bite it to ascertain its metallic composition. You will not like the taste.”