To say that Private Kaylin Neya was out of her element was to master the
art of understatement. Fish out of water had nothing on the groundhawk
whose entire life had been lived within the boundaries of Elantra—either
on the city streets or in the fiefs at its heart.
This had
become obvious the moment she entered the forest, walking between Severn
and Teela and surrounded—literally—by Barrani. Or as she walked through
forest, at any rate, because this far across the known map, it was all
forest. Never an aficionado of fine art, she'd nonetheless seen
paintings, and the occasional diorama of ancient forests, and she had
known what to expect: tall, majestic trees, shade-dappled forest floors
and shafts of brilliant, solid sunlight illuminating strategic patches
of charming undergrowth, with the occasional frail animal thrown in for
good measure. In the paintings, there were no Barrani, no dragons, and
no angry Leontines; there were no drug dealers, no muggers, no frauds,
and no rapists. The artists evoked a sense of peaceful idyll. Hah.
Painters
should have been Court diplomats—men and women who'd mastered the art
of telling pretentious lies with more or less straight faces. For one,
they left out the bugs. On some level, Kaylin didn't blame them—if she'd
had the choice, she'd've left them out, too. Unfortunately, she didn't.
The insects didn't appear to bother the Barrani. She was glad—in an
entirely petty way—that they occasionally bit Severn, because it made
their choice of dinner snacks racial, rather than purely personal. He
didn't appear to take offense as much.
Then again, he had other
things on his mind, chief among them, not tripping over inconveniently
placed tree roots and landing on his face. His left eye had, over the
course of two days, developed a purple-black tinge. He'd taken one wound
to his upper left thigh, and two broad gashes across his left rib cage,
one of which had exposed bone. He'd allowed her to heal the wounds by a
few days' worth, no more.
This was a greater liberty than any of
the injured Barrani allowed her, and she was tired enough not to push
the point. The Barrani version of gratitude for the gift of healing
involved knives—or worse—in dark alleys.
Avoiding Barrani, however, was not an option.
The
Lord of the West March and what remained of his soldiers formed up at
the front—and the rear—of the delegation. To either side, what was left
of the party that had set out from the High Halls walked in single file.
Kaylin wasn't given the option of choosing her position in that
delegation: she was wearing a very fine, obviously magical, green dress,
and the dress demanded respect, even if the wearer didn't.
Travel, some idiot in her office had said, is fun.
Kaylin, surrounded by somber, tense—and deeply blueeyed Barrani—had a few words to say about that.
Teela made clear she could say them with her mouth shut. So Kaylin,
navigating forest, footpaths, and a plague of blood-drinking, buzzing
insects, began to make a list. It was, in her mind, titled Things Not to
Do if You Want to Have Fun During Your Involuntary Leave of (Probably
Unpaid) Absence.
First on the list: avoid making deals for
crucial information with a fieflord. Even if the Halls of Law were
desperate for that information. The particular fieflord in question,
Lord Nightshade, didn't seem to have any trouble navigating the forest,
and the insects avoided him. He wore a tiara with an emerald at its
peak, and robes that looked ridiculously fine in comparison to the
practical Barrani armor that almost everyone else was wearing. She added
a corollary to the first point: do not agree to attend a religious rite
in the West March without first ascertaining that the fieflord in
question did not also plan to attend.
Second on the list: do not
travel with the Barrani High Court. It had seemed both convenient and
smart to accept their offer of transportation; after all, the Barrani
knew where they were going. Kaylin didn't. Her knowledge of Elantran
streets was second to none—or close—but the West March wasn't in Elantra. At the time, because she'd had no idea how to reach the West March, getting there on her own had seemed impossible.
Impossible
couldn't be worse than this. She slapped her arm and squashed an
insect. The chill in the air, as she smeared insect body across the
sleeve of her incredibly important ceremonial dress, could have frozen
moving water.
If the imaginary person for whom the list was being
created had had no choice in either of the first two, she emphatically
underlined point three: if you see a strange dress in a closet that only
appeared after you'd entered the room of your inn, ignore it.
Under no circumstances was such a dress to be worn. Unless you were
Barrani, and maybe not even then. Yes, the dress was a lovely shade of
green. Yes, it was comfortable. Yes, it was suitable for the Barrani
High Court—and it didn't require the help of two strong people to put
on. It was even practical; the skirts were wide enough that Kaylin could
run—at full stride—while wearing it.
Unfortunately, the Barrani
didn't respect or revere it because it was practical. They revered it
because it was the manifestation of the will of the heart of the green.
Some poor sucker, shoehorned into the dress, was meant to serve in a
primary role in the recitation of the regalia—the very rite that a smart
person would have gone out of their way to avoid attending if they were
paying attention to point one.
Fourth on the list—although
technically, it might be better placed between points two and three:
avoid Barrani inns. The Barrani version of an inn was known as a
Hallionne. Or the Hallionne, in plural. As inns went they were creepy,
in part because they were alive and sentient—and mind-reading. Best not
to forget the mind-reading part. They reminded Kaylin of nothing so much
as the Towers or Castles in the fiefs, and no one with two brain cells
to rub together voluntarily lived in either. She felt a twinge of guilt
at this because she counted Tara, the Tower of Tiamaris, as a friend.
But it had been a long two days—it was a very minor twinge.
Because
the Hallionne were sentient, they were able to do things that normal
inns couldn't—like, say, choose the rooms in which their guests stayed.
Want a different room? Too damn bad. You could stay in the room the
Hallionne chose for you—or you could sleep under the trees, where the
forest version of Ferals would eat your liver for a midnight snack. The
Hallionne also had a pretty broad idea of physical shape and changed it
apparently at whim.
The small dragon perched on her shoulder tilted his head, and after a pause, squawked in her ear.
Point
five, which might also be point zero: do not take large, strange eggs
home with you. They hatched into delicate, small dragons. Not that the
actual dragons of Kaylin's acquaintance thought so—but honestly, the
little guy had miniature dragon breath. Except he didn't spew flame; he
spewed…clouds. That could melt steel without heating it first. That
could kill Ferals. That could bypass the usual magical wards placed on
doors.
Squawk.
Or maybe point five should be: do
not have a dragon for a roommate. Because dragons for roommates
attracted assassins the way Kaylin was currently attracting insects—and
if you were planning on killing a dragon, you'd need enough magical
conflagration to destroy a city block.
Or two.
And that
much magic had certainly been enough to destroy the only home Kaylin had
ever truly owned. Or rented. On the other hand, if your life goal was
to live in the Palace, dragon roommates who just happened to be the only
living female of the species were definitely the way to go.
The small dragon squawked again.
"All
right, all right. Scratch that. Unhatched eggs are good." Especially
since the act of hatching seemed responsible for the fact that
Kaylin—and Bellusdeo, the maligned dragon roommate in question—were
still alive. That was not the usual outcome when an Arcane bomb exploded
in your face.
He squawked.
"They're bad?"
"Lord
Kaylin," Severn said. She glanced at him. "Is there some difficulty?"
His words were both High Barrani and stiff as boards. They reminded her,
immediately, that she was surrounded by Barrani Lords who were just as
stiff, but probably less friendly. You could get some warmth out of most
boards by burning them; at this point, Kaylin wasn't so certain the
same could be said of the High Court, or at least its present members.
Only Nightshade looked amused.
Amusing Nightshade was not high on
her list of things to do, although it didn't quite make the list of
things not to do she was composing.
Let's see. Six? Six: if a
Hallionne offered to let you stay in his special, safe space, and the
space looked like a haunted graveyard, don't do it.
She
was aware, as she stubbed her toe for the thousandth time, that she was
being more than a little unfair. But the imitation graveyard had been a
bedroom, of sorts. In the heart of the Hallionne, his brothers slept.
Small
and squawky dragon sidekick had breathed on their tombstones, which had
caused them to wake. The waking had been disturbing. The brothers
themselves, disturbing as well but in a different way—they'd adopted the
forms of Barrani Lords, but the minute they'd opened their collective
mouths it was clear they had very, very little in common with the
Hal-lionne's most frequent guests.
Seven: if the Hallionne offers
to let you take the portal paths through the outlands to the West
March, say no. Loudly. Le-ontine optional. In theory, the portal paths
were risky. Theory and practice aligned, but not in the ways she'd been
told to expect.
In theory, the outlands existed as a kind of
potential space. They were gray and formless in their natural state. An
entire group—such as, say, the group that set out from the High Halls
what felt like months ago—could pass through the arch of the portal
intent on reaching the same destination, but only two people were
guaranteed to do so.
One of them was Kaylin Neya, wearer of the dress that deserved respect.
The
other was Lord Nightshade, wearer of the emerald tiara. Like Kaylin's
dress, the tiara was given to someone chosen to participate directly in
the recitation of the regalia. Unlike Kaylin, Nightshade seemed to
approve.
She'd been surprised to enter the outlands to find the
bowers of normal, if tall, trees. So had the Consort. The Consort.
Kaylin wanted to add an eighth item to her growing list: don't piss off the Consort.
But in this case, she couldn't. Kaylin understood why the Consort was
angry. She also understood that given the same possible outcomes, Kaylin
would stand by the choice she'd made.
She glanced at the Consort
as she thought it; the Consort was dressed in white armor, a gift from
the Lord of the West March. She carried a naked blade, and her hair was
swept off the back of her neck. She was, on the other hand, the only
Barrani to confine her hair. As if aware of Kaylin's attention, the
Consort glanced at her. Her eyes were blue. They were not as dark a blue
as almost everyone else's.
Teela's were certainly darker.
"Honestly, kitling," the Barrani Hawk said, frowning. "I can hear you thinking."
On
most days, the Barrani who worked in the Halls of Law looked both
arrogant and bored. At thirteen years of age, Kaylin had found the
arrogance irritating. The boredom, she understood. Today, she missed it.
"Teela—"
"If
I hear one more word about the insects, I swear I will bite you
myself." She spoke in quiet Elantran for the first time in two days.
The
rush of gratitude Kaylin felt at the sound of her mother tongue should
have embarrassed her. Clearly, from Teela's expression, it embarrassed
one of them. "Do not," Teela continued in the same Elantran, her brows furrowing, "start to worry about me."
"But—"
"I mean it."
"Can I talk about something else instead?"
"I'm
certain to regret it," was Teela's brusque reply. As it wasn't a no,
Kaylin said, "Why do so many Barrani try to divest themselves of their
names?"
"Do they?"
"Illien in Barren. The walking dead in Nightshade."
"Two small examples do not constitute a multitude."
"Well, no. But I think that's what Iberrienne was trying to do."
Teela shook her head. "I think you're wrong."
Kaylin
wasn't so certain. Eighth on her list, then: do not speak the True Name
of a Barrani Lord who you don't intend to kill immediately afterward.
She hadn't planned it. But she had seen Ynpharion's True Name, and she
had seen the substantial shadows it both cast and fed. The shadow had
taken the form of his name, and the shape. It was as if he had two
names, identical in form, but entirely different in substance.
She
didn't understand how. But she was certain that the shadow name—for
want of anything else to call it—had given the Barrani Lord the ability
to transform himself into the Ferals that hunted in the less safe parts
of the West March and its environs. It was as a Feral that he had first
approached Kaylin.
It was as a Feral that he would have killed
her, too. But her dragon sidekick had conferred a type of invisibility
on her. Or on himself. That invisibility had given her the time to
observe, and the time to plan—even if the plan was half-assed and
desperate.
She knew the True Names of both Lord Nightshade and
the Lord of the West March. She understood that in theory, this gave her
power over them. But she now understood that theory was its usual
pathetic mess. Neither Nightshade nor the Lord of the West March had
ever fought against her knowledge. They accepted the threat she might
one day pose. They did not feel threatened by her now.
They had, she understood, gifted her with the knowledge of their names.
But
Lord Ynpharion had not. She'd spoken his name, strengthening its
existence, in an attempt to burn away the shadows that clung to it.
She'd succeeded. But there had been no way to ask his permission because
before she had invoked his name, he wouldn't have given it. He fought
her.
He fought, and he lost. This was a new and painful experience for Kaylin, and it was not one she was anxious to repeat.
Ynpharion
walked to one side of the Lord of the West March, in what should have
been a position of honor. To the naked eye, he was as proud, as focused,
as unflappable as any other Barrani present.
But Kaylin saw
beneath that surface. She saw his self-loathing, his disgust, and his
fury—most of it aimed squarely at her. The only reason he kept it to
himself was his fear of exposure. Kaylin held his name.
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