Terrano did not vanish. That was the good news. The shape of his eyes changed as he regarded Bellusdeo, which was the bad news.
“She’s with me,” Kaylin said. “She’s with me with permission. The Hallionne accepts her as a guest.” She moved to stand in front of the Dragon, without any confidence that it would stop him if he decided to attack. Gestures, however, mattered.
Terrano looked openly skeptical.
“You can ask the Hallionne yourself, if you want. But right now, Orbaranne probably considers you the primary threat.”
She saw his expression ripple, which was an exact physical description. His eyes grew larger, changing the shape, the balance, of his facial features.
Please, please, please, she thought, at the absent Lord of the West March.
Distract him, that Lord replied.
There was only one way to do that. “Can you find Sedarias?” Kaylin asked. And then, because the constant small changes in his face reminded her of bad nightmares about dead people, added, “And can you please stop doing that thing with your face?”
Behind her, she heard a brief draconian snort.
“What thing with my face?”
“If I had a mirror you could actually see, I’d show you—but your face is constantly changing shape and size. Especially your eyes. And it is really, really disturbing.” To her surprise, he did as she’d requested, looking almost embarrassed.
“It doesn’t usually matter what I look like when I’m out there.” He raised an arm and pointed in a random direction. “I don’t talk to people like you much.”
“We don’t talk to people like you much, either. But it makes you look like a—a ghost. Or worse.”
“Worse?”
“A Shadow.”
This time, his limbs wavered, becoming opaque and elongating. Limbs were still better than face.
“Is that what you are, now?” she asked.
He seemed to consider this, his face creasing in an entirely normal, Barrani way. “I don’t know,” he finally replied. It was so not the reply she wanted. “To be honest, I don’t really understand anymore what Shadow is.”
“It’s the thing that kills us or warps us when it comes in contact with us. You must understand it—didn’t you send the forest Ferals to attack us?”
He frowned again. “The dogs, you mean?”
“They weren’t what the rest of us call dogs.”
“They weren’t, no. They were Barrani, but they had the power necessary to transform themselves should they require it. I didn’t choose the shape,” he added.
“No, just the target.”
“The Consort meant to destroy us.”
“She did not.” Bellusdeo’s hand fell gently—for a Dragon, which meant bruises but not broken bones—on Kaylin’s shoulder. It was a warning. Kaylin couldn’t easily shrug it off, and didn’t try. “She hoped to save you. She knew you were trapped.”
“You can’t possibly believe that.”
“I believe it because it’s true. None of you are prisoners. None of you are forced to stay with Alsanis. Not even you,” she added. “All of you are free.”
Terrano almost lost control of his face again, but managed to hold it—and his limbs—together. “Don’t confuse what you wanted with what she wanted.”
“She hasn’t tried to harm you since.”
“Hasn’t she?” He shrugged. “If we’re all free, where are my friends?”
“I have no idea. That’s why I’m here.”
“You.”
“Chosen, remember?” she demanded, lifting her left arm and pulling back her sleeve. The marks were glowing brightly as they were exposed.
He spoke, then. She didn’t understand a word he was saying, but felt that if she listened hard enough, she would. And because she’d had this feeling before, she thought Terrano might be reading the marks somehow, that he might be speaking True Words. None of the marks became physical words; none separated themselves from her skin.
“Look—if you could find them on your own, you would have found them by now, right?” She let her sleeve fall back into place as she lowered her arm.
“‘By now’ signifies nothing. Time is only a constraint for the lesser races.”
“That is not true,” Bellusdeo said, coming out from behind Kaylin. “Time is a factor in a state of emergency. We live forever, all things being equal. But all things are never equal. There are things that will kill us—in our mutual history, usually each other. It is possible that for the cohort, time is in short supply.”
Terrano’s eyes were black again. “You speak good High Barrani.”
“In which case,” Bellusdeo continued, ignoring the observation, “Lord Kaylin is best equipped to offer aid: she is a creature who is wed to time, her existence indivisible from it. What to either of our kin would be insignificant is not to her.”
“Why are you even here?” Terrano demanded. And Kaylin remembered the reason the twelve children had been surrendered to the ceremony in the green: the Draco-Barrani war. The High Court had decided to imbue the twelve children with the power necessary to defeat their ancient enemies. Those enemies, of course, being the Dragons.
“She lives with us,” Kaylin said quickly. “With Annarion and Mandoran. Mandoran doesn’t really like her,” she felt compelled to add, “but Annarion does, and so does Teela.”
“Teela?” This was said with open scorn. “Teela fought in the war. There’s no way—”
“She goes out drinking with Teela and Tain.”
“...And they get along?”
“Yes. Or at least no one’s reported them to the Halls of Law yet, and they all return home without wounds or burns.” She folded her arms.
Terrano seemed outraged. “I leave them alone for a little while, and they forget everything.”
“Sedarias forgets nothing.”
“She’s obviously forgotten how to use the portal paths.”
“I see that you have more in common with Mandoran than the rest of your cohort,” Bellusdeo said, voice cool.
The ground buckled beneath the Dragon’s feet. Since the Dragon could more or less fly with a brief change of shape, this was only a minor inconvenience. For her. Kaylin, however, couldn’t. She didn’t want to leave Bellusdeo’s side, because she was pretty certain that her presence was the one thing that kept Terrano from going all out.
“Not your presence alone, no,” Hallionne Orbaranne said. This time, she appeared in the center of the room, her Avatar form girded with armor that seemed made of crystal, and weapons that seemed made of night sky. Her eyes, however, were much like Terrano’s—black, opalescent.
Terrano met the unnatural eyes of the Hallionne with unnatural eyes of his own. He didn’t draw blades; he didn’t turn his physical arms into weapons. But Kaylin thought he could. “Orbaranne. Hallionne. I don’t think he’s a danger—”
“Do you not understand the danger he does pose? I cannot hear the whole of his thought. I can hear fractions of it, but his thought is a multitude of voices, and not all of them are clear to me.”
Kaylin inhaled, remembering the forest Ferals. She exhaled, remembered the rest of the cohort. Especially the three that she knew. “Your eyes,” she said, to Orbaranne, “are exactly the same as his.”
Both Orbaranne and Terrano seemed surprised by this. Terrano was the only one who appeared to feel insulted.
“Is that how you see it?” he demanded. “You think our eyes look the same?”
Kaylin glanced at Bellusdeo; Bellusdeo shrugged. “I said it, didn’t I?”
“And you?” he demanded of the Dragon, which surprised Kaylin.
“They look the same to me. They are not the same shape—the Hallionne seems to have much better control of her physical dimensions than you do—but they appear to be black, with flecks of moving color. I would not hazard a guess as to the physical composition.”
Orbaranne, however, had lowered her swords. She was staring at Terrano as if she were truly seeing him for the first time, but her eyes were unblinking. Kaylin doubted she’d remembered something as trivial as eyelids when composing this particular Avatar.
“They are there,” Orbaranne replied, distracted.
To Kaylin’s surprise, she turned to Bellusdeo. She offered the Dragon a bow—which should have been impossible given the armor—before speaking again. “Your experience of Shadow is greater, in the end, than my own; I have knowledge, but Shadows are unique enough that that knowledge might not be relevant in all situations. What do you see?”
“As I told Terrano, I see what Lord Kaylin sees. When I ruled, I would have considered him a danger, but I would have considered you a danger as well.”
The Hallionne had not looked away from Terrano. The swords she was carrying vanished as she began to speak. Her words shook the floor. They might have shaken the walls; Kaylin couldn’t tell because her body was shaking, too. But Kaylin recognized the language that she couldn’t understand when it was spoken—and it was spoken at a volume that made her instantly cover her ears. Only Dragons spoke this loudly naturally.
Bellusdeo had Dragon hearing; she didn’t even flinch.
But Terrano’s eyes widened. He waited while the Hallionne spoke; her words seemed to continue forever, as if the speaking of True Words nailed them into place, made them solid, real, as eternal as mountain edifices. Only when the words had become echoes, only when the Hallionne’s lips had ceased their motion, did Terrano begin to speak.
It didn’t surprise Kaylin that he spoke the same tongue, although he spoke it as if it were his native language.
The Hallionne listened; she listened as if fixed in place, as if she were of stone. But when Terrano was done, she lowered her chin, lowered her arms, and transformed her armor into a loose drape of flowing off-white robe. The cave around them melted more slowly than the armor had, and when shape was reasserted, the color was different. This would be because there was no longer a ceiling; as far as the eye could see, there was sky, a deep blue with a smidgen of cloud.
Where the portal arch had come into being, a round series of concentric circles remained, and there was a splash of brown red that spoke of dried blood.
Orbaranne turned to Kaylin, then. “Lirienne will be with us momentarily. I apologize for my anger and my suspicion.”
“You’re—”
“I was not, as you once suspected, Barrani before I made the choice to become the heart of the Hallionne. I was mortal, as you were. I was young, and new to this world, this place. Suspicion, among our kind, is not an absolute requirement of survival.”
Kaylin shrugged, a fief shrug. “It doesn’t hurt,” she offered.
Orbaranne smiled, then. “Doesn’t it?” And she turned, once again, to face Terrano.
The speech seemed to have drained something out of him; he looked much more solid, much more real, than he had moments—or hours?—ago.
He shrugged, miming Kaylin’s gesture. But when he spoke, he spoke Barrani. “She asked,” he said, glancing toward the grassy plane that had taken the place of stone. “I answered.”
“The Lord of the West March couldn’t answer the way you did. I don’t think most of the Barrani—even the ancient Arcanists—could.”
“No?”
“No.”
Terrano looked away. “You learn a bit when you leave home.”
“That’s more than a bit.”
“Are you sure you haven’t spoken with Sedarias recently?”
At that, Kaylin chuckled. “Can he stay?” she asked the Hallionne.
“Yes. We were negotiating the terms of his occupancy.” Before Kaylin could ask another question, Lirienne entered the circle, as if passing through a door to arrive by their sides.
Terrano once again offered the Lord of the West March a passable bow.
This time, the Lord of the West March returned it. His eyes were a shade of midnight blue that did not suit his expression, and he came to stand by the side of Orbaranne’s Avatar as if he had no intention of ever leaving it again.
“Let us return to the portal pathways after we have had a chance to discuss all that has happened,” Orbaranne said.
* * *
This time, when they repaired to the great hall, it took twenty minutes. Orbaranne apologized profusely for this, although no one complained. Especially not Kaylin. Terrano appeared to be interested in the Hallionne’s interior, and he asked her questions every few steps. This was in keeping with his apparent age, but sadly, Kaylin didn’t understand the questions—or the answers, if it came to that.
Neither the Hallionne nor Terrano were speaking True Words.
“It is not trivially done,” the Hallionne replied, although Kaylin had had better sense than to speak out loud. “True Words are words of power, of intent, of consequence. We do not use them to say ‘have a nice day.’”
“Are there ways to say that, in the language of the Ancients?”
Terrano and Orbaranne exchanged a glance. It was Terrano who answered. “Yes, but...it’s not considered polite. It’s—look, if the Ancients had said it, it would have been a very nice day. Instantly. Completely. They had no way of really asking questions; all words were statements of fact.”
The dining table had shrunk by the time the group reached it. Bellusdeo had not spoken a word; nor had Lirienne. Terrano and Orbaranne, however, made up for the lack. Kaylin was from Elantra; she was accustomed to hearing languages she didn’t know and therefore didn’t understand. In the office, in theory, everyone spoke Elantran. And that was true as far as it went—but everyone also spoke their own tongues: Aerian, Barrani and Leontine. There had been spillover, of course, and all of the Hawks could curse in languages they couldn’t otherwise speak.
She wondered if Lirienne understood Terrano. Decided against asking. Knew that Orbaranne had already heard.
She took a chair; Bellusdeo took the seat opposite her. The head of the table had been clearly reserved for the Lord of the West March; Terrano plopped himself gracelessly in the seat to Kaylin’s right.
“We’ll find them,” Kaylin said quietly.
He said nothing. Loudly. When he finally spoke, it was grudging. “The Hallionne thought that I might be responsible for the disappearance of my kin.”
“He is not,” Orbaranne added, in case that was in doubt.
“Not even accidentally?” It was Bellusdeo who asked. Given that Terrano’s eyes were no longer Barrani eyes, they didn’t shade to the expected dark blue.
“They’re more like me than you,” Terrano answered. “Yes, I’m certain.” He continued to stare.
“Blink,” Kaylin told him.
“What?”
“Blink. Try to look less like a living statue and more like a person.” She exhaled on a grimace as he obliged. Badly. “Never mind.” To the Hallionne, she said, “We need to speak with the water.”
“The elemental water has dispersed,” Orbaranne replied. The words were stilted, the expression that accompanied them, troubled. “Water was never used as a conduit, a method of travel.”
“It was,” Kaylin said, thinking of boats. “It still is.”
“No. Travel by boat is predicated on the existence of rivers or larger bodies of water—but there is no river between the Keeper’s garden and the Hallionne. At least, not that I’m aware of. I have been troubled by your appearance.”
“Because it should have been impossible?”
“In many, many ways, yes. The Keeper’s garden exists to restrain the will of the wild elements. The elements are necessary for life—even my own. But when free to interact—”
“They try to kill each other, fail, and kill everything around them instead.”
“Yes.” She seemed relieved not to have to explain this. “It is possible that the Keeper is finally failing in his duty.”
“I’m pretty damn sure the water wasn’t responsible for the loss of the cohort.” Kaylin folded her arms.
“You are sentimentally attached to the water, and that is inadvisable. Understand that the element itself, like any living creation, is not all of one thing or all of another. It is possible that the element could both destroy—or attempt to destroy—the cohort and simultaneously desire to preserve it. But...the voice of the water is silent, here. Your arrival required all of its substantial power.”
“Has this happened before?”
“Never here, and not in other Hallionne, to my knowledge. The fire has been used as a conduit before—but only by ancient Dragons.” She bowed her head. “You are not the only people to come to me with inquiries about the cohort.” She had adopted Kaylin’s name, but would: it was what they called themselves, now.
Terrano stiffened.
“Were the others Barrani?”
This time she did not answer. Kaylin understood; she turned to face the Lord of the West March. “Was it you?”
“I asked the Hallionne to monitor them. I also asked the Hallionne to house them. Any evaluation of their abilities or their intent could not be carried out were they to remain outside of the Hallionne’s boundary.” Kaylin opened her mouth. The Lord of the West March, however, had not finished. “I wished to know,” he continued, “if Orbaranne would recognize them. Once one has been accepted as a guest in a Hallionne, one will be accepted as a guest in future. The grant of blood—in most cases—is almost definitional.”
“Outcastes?”
“The Hallionne do not recognize outcastes as outcaste unless exceptional circumstances arise. Once the Hallionne has accepted the responsibility of hospitality, it will always be extended. There is a reason Lord Severn could travel these pathways, even with the marked disapproval of the High Court. The...changes, the alterations, in the group you refer to as the cohort, are changes that would be impossible for any others of my kin.”
Bellusdeo said, “I did not give blood.”
“No. Nor will you be asked, but your circumstances are unusual.”
“The water?” Kaylin asked.
Bellusdeo snorted smoke. “The Consort,” the gold Dragon said, although the question had been asked of the Lord of the West March. To Orbaranne, she said, “Was the Water’s decision to bring us here influenced by the Consort? ”
Something wordless passed between the Hallionne and the Lord of the West March. It was the latter who replied. “Not in my estimation. My sister is not without power, but the power necessary to command the Water to do what was done—at great cost to the Water itself—is not power she possesses.”
Or not power Lirienne was aware she possessed, at any rate.
No, kyuthe. It is not an ability she possesses. Even the potential for power of this kind would have been noted.
“She probably thought I’d arrive with the small Dragon, not you,” Kaylin told the large Dragon.
“I believe it is immaterial. What she asked for, the Hallionne granted. I am with you, not the familiar. But that is not the question. How did she know to ask? If she does not, herself, have the ability to command the Water to do her bidding, how was she aware that you, at least, would be here at all?”
To Kaylin’s surprise, Lirienne chuckled. Although his eyes remained blue, there was some hint of green in their shade. “Were it not for Lord Kaylin, they would not have emerged from the green as they did. Two of their number now dwell within Lord Kaylin’s home. If my sister was aware that the cohort encountered unknown danger, she can be forgiven for expecting—or suspecting—that Lord Kaylin would immediately become involved.”
Bellusdeo raised a brow. “And also for assuming that she would be accompanied by someone who had not yet ventured into the Hallionne?”
Silence. It was edged, sharp, suspicious.
Kaylin rushed to fill it, although Bellusdeo was right; neither of them would get answers from the Lord of the West March, and there were other things that were, in the end, more pressing. “Someone found the cohort on the portal paths.” It wasn’t a question.
“Demonstrably.”
“What are the probabilities that their difficulties were caused by non-Barrani?”
The Lord of the West March did not answer.
Terrano, however, snorted. Loudly. He really did remind Kaylin of Mandoran; it made her wonder why Mandoran had stayed. On the other hand, the universe was probably safer for it.
“If not the Lord of the West March, and not the Consort, then who?” Kaylin turned to Orbaranne’s Avatar. “Did any other Barrani Lord come to you with a request or a query?”
Orbaranne looked to Lirienne, who shook his head. Unsurprisingly, the Hallionne failed to answer.
“It wasn’t me,” Terrano said.
“You’re not a Barrani Lord.”
Terrano shrugged. “Neither are my friends.”
“No. But they’re descending on my city—or they were—because they’re going to take the Test of Name. If they pass, they’ll be Lords of the High Court.”
Terrano brightened at the thought. As he considered her words, his smile widened; in the end, he was laughing.
The Lord of the West March was not. “Lord Kaylin.” He rose. “I ask that you speak with Terrano about the experiences of Annarion and Mandoran as they intersect with your city. I will retire for the evening.”
* * *
“Everything has changed,” Terrano said. Neither he nor Bellusdeo had eaten much. They retired to what Kaylin assumed was her room, given that Bellusdeo was in the Hallionne as an adjunct. Orbaranne, however, had allowed Terrano to enter as well, not a given in a Hallionne, whose duty was to keep guests safe, usually from each other. He flopped, chest down, across the nearest bed.
“You better not have your boots on,” Kaylin told him.
“Why?”
“Dirt.”
“You don’t have to clean it.”
“And it’s rude.”
“Rude.”
“That’s what I said.”
Bellusdeo took a seat on the lounge chair by the wall, content to let Kaylin and Terrano maneuver for space. Only when they were done—for a value of done that had Terrano take off boots that Kaylin was almost certain were not actually real—did she speak.
“I want you to talk to Lord Nightshade about what happened in his Tower. Don’t make that face,” she added, which was technically hard to say in Barrani. She tried Elantran, and Terrano’s face remained blank. Mandoran and Annarion had picked it up from Teela.
“Why him?” he asked.
“Because I have his name.”
Terrano whistled. “I wouldn’t have thought that was safe. I guess I underestimated you.”
“He gave it to me.”
“...Or severely overestimated him.” Before she could speak, Terrano added, “Look we all knew each other’s names. It’s not about sharing names. It’s about who you share them with.”
“You knew him?”
“No. But we heard a lot about him from Annarion, who practically worshipped him.”
Kaylin grimaced. “Not anymore. And believe that my house would be a much happier place if he did.”
“They argue?”
“They argue in my house, yes.”
“Why?”
“Because arguing in Nightshade’s castle almost destroyed the High Halls.” And before he could ask, she told him what had happened, or as much of it as she could clearly remember.
“Kitling,” Bellusdeo said—a warning. Kaylin understood why. If the Emperor knew—if the Emperor understood—why the ancestors had attacked the High Halls, killing anyone that stood in their way...Annarion and Mandoran would be in trouble. The empire was his hoard. But there was no way that the Hallionne would speak with the Eternal Emperor. They were safe.
And Terrano needed to understand. He listened, his eyes luminous although they were still obsidian. “They should have left with me,” he finally said.
“Annarion didn’t want to leave.”
“Sedarias didn’t want to leave. If she’d made a different choice, most of the others would have followed.”
Kaylin hesitated.
But Bellusdeo said, “Sedarias, of all of your cohort, was probably the one least changed.”
“All of us were changed.”
“What you could—and can—do changed, yes. But Sedarias, from all accounts, thinks like a Barrani Lord. Even now.”
Terrano buried his head in the crook of his arms. “What’s the point?” he asked, his voice slightly muffled. “What’s the point in thinking like that?”
“She is Barrani.”
“What does that even mean? Her family abandoned her, same as ours. They were willing to throw us away because we might—might—become powerful. They thought they’d own us, if we did. And you know what?” He lifted his head. “We did become powerful. We are way more powerful than any of our parents. We’re powerful enough—” He stopped. Kaylin didn’t think he was finished, and waited. “Does she want to go home? Does she want to retake the lands that should have been hers?”
“I think,” Bellusdeo said, her voice quiet and entirely free of emotion, “she wishes to reclaim the lands that should have collectively belonged to all of you.”
“But why? We don’t need them. They’re no use to us, anymore. We don’t need to sleep. We don’t need to eat. We don’t need to breathe—well, not the way you do. We don’t need to hide under tall stone roofs. Or wooden ones. We don’t need any of it!”
“Terrano,” the Dragon said, when he once again fell silent, “why are you here?” It was the question Kaylin had asked, and the question the Lord of the West March most wanted answered, but the way she now asked it transformed the words. There was a softness to them, a different kind of assumption—it wasn’t suspicion, though.
He didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t. She was a Dragon.
“I was born between two wars,” she told him.
He looked up, then.
“We might be the same age. I was one of nine sisters in an aerie of grouchy Dragons. We were considered young for our age, and of course, fragile. We were fragile because—”
“You were female.”
Her brows rose briefly before she nodded. “You know that much.”
“Of course I do.”
“Kaylin didn’t.”
He snorted. “Mortal. You can’t expect any better.”
The smidgen of sympathy Kaylin had almost started to feel vanished. But Bellusdeo merely nodded. “I was born on this world. But the aerie was lost to Shadow, and when we emerged—my sisters and I—we emerged to different stars, a different sky.”
He lifted his head, placing his chin on his arms, arrested.
“I was not as you were. We were not sacrificed on the altar of war. But we were lost, regardless. We—none of us—were adults. We were as helpless as Lord Kaylin. And I lost my sisters, one by one, to the Shadows. I lost them, we lost each other, searching for our names. I lost some because, in finding names, their center could not hold. They could not maintain cohesion of one form or the other.
“Understand that Barrani make outcastes for political reasons, for personal gain. Dragons don’t.”
“Oh?”
“If we want political power, we kill our enemies.”
“We do that, too,” he said, quickly.
“We don’t look for consensus. We don’t attempt to gather armies. We try to kill our enemies. Or they try to kill us. I believe one of your historical High Lords called us barbarous savages, better than animals only because we were Immortal.” She shrugged. “Our outcastes are therefore above politics, or beneath politics; opinions differ. Enemies are personal. Outcastes are like terrifying natural disasters. One might feel threatened by an earthquake, and one does what one can to survive it—but one cannot take revenge against the earth.”
“I think it’s been tried,” Terrano said. His animosity had faded; he was looking at Bellusdeo as if he’d only just seen her and didn’t quite understand what it was he was seeing.
“Had my sisters and I remained in the Aerie, we would have come into our power naturally. We start out as the feeblest of the children; effort must be taken to preserve us. It is not an effort that is made for the males, because it is not required. When we do come into our power, however, we have far less difficulty controlling its use. I am curious about your Sedarias.”
“Not mine.”
Bellusdeo’s smile was brief, but genuine. “I confess I am fond of Annarion. I understand him. I understand his goals. I do not understand Mandoran.” She exhaled a bit of smoke. “But were they Dragons, both would be outcaste.”
Before Terrano’s outrage could express itself in words—or worse—Bellusdeo continued. “To the Dragons, I believe I would be considered a borderline case; were I not female, were the Dragons not so few in number, safety would probably dictate my death.”
“If they could kill you.”
Her smile was deeper, and something in it implied serious fangs, although at the moment, she didn’t have any. “Indeed. I would not lie down and expose my figurative throat; I feel that I have as much right to exist as they do. But I would, wouldn’t I?”
He nodded. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because the Barrani do not, and did not, do as the Dragons have done throughout our history. Barrani wake to one name. They live their lives, spend their existence, with that name. There are apparently those who attempt to divest themselves—deliberately—of their names. But absent that attempt, they are a single, indivisible whole.
“Dragons are not. They come into the world with a single name, but that single name is half of what they require. They have the capacity to hold a duality of names—but they are not considered Dragons if they cannot meld the duality into a single whole.
“Those who cannot are not considered dangerous. It is those who can that are.”
“But...you all can.”
“Yes, if we are adults, we can. But there are those who do not contain that duality. It is the foundation for their attempt to take more, to build more, to be more.”
And Kaylin suddenly remembered the one time she had seen the outcaste Dragon’s name. It had been far more complicated than any other True Word she had ever seen. It had reminded her, not of Barrani, but...of a world. A small world.
“You think we’re like that.”
“No. I was, I admit, concerned. I do not know the names of your kin; I do not know the names of my own. But they are alive because of those names.”
“And I’m not.”
Silence again. “I did not find my adult name on my own,” Bellusdeo said. It sounded like a confession. “But it is mine, regardless.
“But you did not return to your name. I do not know what you are. Because the Barrani are political, they will accept your cohort as Barrani, at least in public speech and interaction. But they know—as you do—that that is now only a small part of what they are capable of being.” She exhaled more smoke. “The world I grew up in, the world I ruled in its twilight, was destroyed by Shadow. And I see that Shadow in you.”
He sat up.
“But I see it in your Hallionne, as well. And it is...possible...that my understanding of Shadow is too narrow.”
Kaylin’s jaw dropped.
“Do I have something on my face?”
“Uh, no.”
“Gilbert was of Shadow to me. Everything about him proclaimed him Shadow. He himself didn’t deny that he was from, and of, Ravellon. But—you were right about him.” She exhaled puffs of flame. “Understand, kitling. I lost everything to Shadow. Shadow that mimicked life, Shadow that was clever, subtle. We all made mistakes—because we hoped, or because we took risks that we should not have taken. It made me very, very risk averse, the costs were so high. And it’s possible—barely—that I destroyed people who might have been like Gilbert.”
“And that bothers you?” Orbaranne asked, which surprised Kaylin. The Hallionne had been silent enough that she could forget she was in the room. Her Avatar materialized in such a way that she, Terrano and Teela formed the points of a triangle.
“No one wants to think of themselves as a murderer,” Bellusdeo replied. “I could justify it. If I think about it now—and I do—I mostly do justify it. But there’s a reason Kaylin Neya is a private and not a queen.”
“My risks don’t have the same cost.”
Orbaranne said, “you are Chosen. Some of the risks you take might be very, very costly.” The Avatar bowed her head, and when she raised it again, her eyes looked like normal human eyes. “But some of the risks you’ve taken have saved us before. I...would like to be able to take risks.”
But she couldn’t, Kaylin thought. Because she was what she was made to be; she was what she’d promised to be.
“Yes, Chosen. You see Shadow in my eyes, but I am not a scion of Shadow; it was not Shadow that created me. It might break me, in some future. But it is not what I am.”
“Is it part of what you are?”
“Not in a way I understand. But...I see some of what you see because you see it. And Lord Bellusdeo, I...cannot think you are wrong.”