Tiamaris and Severn were, as Tara had said, waiting. They were waiting in a room that looked suspiciously like one of Helen’s “isolation chambers,” and they were silent as the company entered the modest door Tara opened for them.
Terrano and Allaron were the first through the door, which took a bit of navigating, because it wasn’t really two people wide—not when one was Allaron’s size. Terrano looked disgusted and demanded that Allaron let go, but as Terrano would not promise not to make a break for it, Allaron didn’t.
Everyone else followed, Sedarias taking up the rear of the line as if she were mother hen and not captain of the cohort. To be fair to Sedarias, both Kaylin and Bellusdeo remained behind her, and although Kaylin wanted to be last through the door, the look Bellusdeo gave her at the implication that Kaylin’s presence at her back would be of aid should anything go disastrously wrong was probably only a little bit cooler than Dragon breath.
So: Bellusdeo entered last, all golden armor, all warrior queen.
Neither Tiamaris nor Severn seemed particularly relieved; they waited as if waiting for the entire cohort were an everyday activity. Tiamaris took on the duties of a host, and did so with grace and wit; Diarmat would have been proud of him. Severn lingered as Tiamaris and Tara led the cohort to less martial looking rooms, and he fell in beside Kaylin as she followed the line.
She stopped walking, allowing the distance between them and the rest of their companions to grow. Turning to Severn, she hugged him. She didn’t have words for him, because important words were often the difficult ones, but then again, he didn’t require them.
“Sorry,” she said, when she pulled away. “I didn’t intend to leave Elantra.”
“I know.”
“Someone should probably let the Emperor know we’re safe.”
“I believe Bellusdeo has asked for permission to do just that. What are you going to do?”
“About what?”
“Everything.”
“I’m going to eat something, and then we’re heading to Helen, where we will hole up and discuss our various options. I think the Consort is going to be angry at me forever.” This last was said glumly, Kaylin’s anger having died somewhere on the long march.
She was surprised to discover that her anger was not the only anger in the room; Severn was angry. None of it showed. No one who was not connected to him the way she now was would have noticed it at all.
“Things will probably be ugly. I think we should skip the meal and head straight to Helen before the High Halls is aware of your presence here.”
“They’re already aware,” she replied, thinking of Ynpharion.
“The Consort professed that she did not want any harm to come to either you or Bellusdeo.”
“You don’t believe her?”
“You do?”
Did she? She knew that she wanted to, and that that desire muddied the waters of objectivity. But Ynpharion had believed it. She nodded almost reluctantly. It was easier not to be upset with the Consort’s anger if she believed that the Consort was somehow her enemy. But she held Ynpharion’s True Name. He could keep things from her, but she was almost certain he couldn’t lie.
But maybe that was wrong. The Consort also held his name, and she was not afraid, as Kaylin was, of using it. Ynpharion had known, when he had offered the Consort his name, that that was what awaited him. He hadn’t offered it to Kaylin.
“I don’t believe she ever intended to harm or cage either Bellusdeo or me.”
“Then I doubt she’ll inform the gathered war band that the Dragon has returned. But the Barrani have eyes everywhere.”
Kaylin nodded. “We’re going to have to sort that out before the Emperor attempts to reduce the High Halls to ash.”
“He’ll probably have help.”
Kaylin winced. “Things have been bad?”
“Bad? That would be good, about now.” He ran his hands through his hair, and she noted the circles beneath his eyes.
“I really am sorry. I wouldn’t have gone without you if I’d had any warning.” She certainly wouldn’t have taken Bellusdeo.
“I know,” he said again. “It was fine until—” He shook his head.
“Until?”
“We lost you. You’ve managed, against all odds, to survive, no matter where you land. But when you cut out, when I couldn’t hear you and couldn’t reach you at all...” Severn, so much better with words, even when he used far fewer of them, abandoned the attempt and again ran a hand through his hair. “I understand why Annarion, Mandoran and Teela became so upset.”
“Is that why you went to Helen?”
He nodded. “I know as much about True Names as you do. I thought Mandoran and Annarion might know more. As it happened, Teela was there to answer questions.”
“What was the general consensus?”
“...Not particularly good. Mandoran, however, said it was too sudden, too immediate; there was no hint of struggle. He would have expected the voices to die out singly, one at a time, otherwise. Mandoran assumed you’d found the rest of the cohort.”
Kaylin could imagine just how much fun that conversation had been. “Sorry,” she said again.
“Your own death has never truly terrified you.”
“It has. But—not the same way. I mean, I won’t be around after it happens.” She shrugged, uncomfortable now. She understood Severn’s fear—it was the fear that governed and shadowed her own life; the fear that had done so since the day her mother had failed to wake in the fiefs in the barely remembered past. She had nothing to say to that child, that other Kaylin, changed by the fiefs and by Severn and by deaths that she still couldn’t think about without flinching; she had nothing to say to the girl who had run into Barren and become something darker, something far more dangerous.
And she found that she had nothing to say to Severn, either. The difference was that she wanted to. She wanted to say anything that would ease those shadows, visible across the whole of his expression.
Someone in the distance roared. In Dragon.
Kaylin reddened. “I think Bellusdeo wants us to hurry up.”
* * *
A dress had been procured—somehow—for the Dragon. It was not a particularly fancy dress, but it was real, and it wasn’t armor. Her hair had been plaited in a single braid that pulled hair off her face and made her look more severe. Or maybe it was just her expression. Her eyes were orange, but close enough to red to make conversation seem life-threatening.
The cohort were, unsurprisingly, blue-eyed. But the blue varied in shades, and two of the cohort were almost calm. Tara had led the cohort into a large room with various small tables situated across a carpet that absorbed all incidental noise. Terrano was seated between Sedarias and Allaron, but seemed to have given up on sulking; he was talking, in low tones, with the leader of the cohort.
Tiamaris stood at the center of the room, arms folded, eyes orange. “We have informed the Imperial Court that you have made a safe—if unconventional—return to Elantra. The unconventional will of course be a matter of grave concern. Lord Bellusdeo has claimed that the decision to take the path you took was hers.”
“That’s not—”
“Sedarias has likewise claimed the decision as her own. Do you have anything to add?”
“Yes. You’re doing a damn good imitation of Diarmat.”
Bellusdeo was surprised enough to laugh, which lessened the deadly color of her Dragon eyes. Tiamaris grimaced, which, given his demeanor, was unexpected.
“The Dragon Court is in an uproar,” he said. “The Swords have been—I have been expressly commanded to inform you—working nonstop since your abrupt departure.”
“By who?”
“Who else can give commands that I am obliged to obey?”
Ugh.
“Bellusdeo has been granted conditional approval to remain with you—as long as you are situated within your own home. The Emperor trusts Helen.”
Kaylin would have resented this, but given the circumstances, felt it unwise. She also happened to agree, and was being cowardly; she knew the Emperor would be blamed if Bellusdeo resented what might amount to house arrest, and the Emperor was in the Imperial Palace. Kaylin would be living with Bellusdeo under the same roof.
“And everyone else?”
“The Barrani are not the concern of the Dragon Court—or rather, these particular Barrani are not. The war band is. However, one possible benefit of a declaration of war is that the High Court and its lord are not in a position to make racial demands of the Emperor. Discussions and negotiations are tense enough that the Emperor would reject, outright, any attempt to forcibly repatriate your friends.”
“You’re speaking theoretically, right?” Kaylin asked, without much hope.
“He’s not,” Tara replied, before Tiamaris could. “Things have moved quickly, here, but nothing is on fire.” She hesitated, which was unusual for Tara. “Ah, I forgot to mention something. You will not be able to speak with Lord Ynpharion, nor he with you, while you are within the Tower.”
Kaylin folded her arms. “Thank you.” She meant it. “Now that we’re home and as safe as we’re likely to get, we’re going to have to visit Candallar. You’re a fieflord, he’s a fieflord. If you have any way of making that meeting safer, we’d appreciate it. His job as lord of a Tower is to stop Shadow from escaping to eat the rest of the city.” To Tara, she said, “He apparently allowed a Barrani Lord—of the High Court—to enter and leave Ravellon. When he left, he was carrying a passenger.”
Tara’s eyes were obsidian.
“You let us in. You had that option. Could you let me walk into Ravellon and come out carrying Shadow?”
Tara’s skin turned to stone. Literally. “No.”
“Well, that’s what the Tower of Candallar seems to have allowed.”
“Impossible.”
So not the word Kaylin wanted to hear. Before she could continue, Tiamaris lifted a staying hand. “We have been informed—by Corporal Handred—of Candallar’s possible collusion with both assassins and...something at the heart of Ravellon.”
I told him what you knew. If Shadows are leaving Ravellon and entering Elantra that way...
Kaylin relaxed. Marginally.
Tara said, “We are also investigating. My lord has begun the process of—”
Tiamaris coughed. Very, very loudly. Tara subsided.
Interesting, Nightshade said. Clearly not all Barrani had been forbidden communication.
“No,” Tara said. “Lord Nightshade is a fieflord, and the possible problems with Candallar might affect us all. But you are tangled in too many names, and at the moment, we deem the information flow problematic. Lord Ynpharion and the Lord of the West March cannot hear you here; nor can you speak to them, unless it is absolutely necessary. We have not impeded the communication of your cohort.” In a different tone, she added, “It is more complex, and the process would be more complicated; I am not entirely certain I would succeed. Has Helen tried?”
“I really wish you could visit and talk to Helen; I think you’d like each other. And no, I don’t think she’s ever tried. The cohort are part of Mandoran and Annarion. Losing that connection would be like losing a limb. She’s not big on causing harm to her tenants.”
“No. But her imperatives are not the same as the ones which bind me.”
Tiamaris watched her, but said nothing, and Kaylin thought that if Tara wanted to make the same adjustments that Helen had made to her own words, he might be willing to allow it.
“He would,” Tara said, in a much softer voice. “But we were built where we stand for a reason, and while Ravellon exists, no such adjustments would be safe. I would not risk the fief he is building. I would not risk him.” And she walked across the room to join him, losing, as she did, the armor with which she had greeted the cohort. Her clothing settled into the familiar, baggy gardening clothes that Kaylin privately thought of as the garb of her true self, and to everyone’s surprise, Tiamaris gently laid an arm around her shoulders, and drew her toward him.
It was hard to tell if he was her support, or she his, and Kaylin watched with something that was almost envy. Almost.
* * *
“This place stinks,” Terrano said, as they headed across the Ablayne. “It smells terrible.”
Given the expressions of the cohort, most privately agreed, and Kaylin remembered Mandoran making a similar comment. Clearly, Mandoran was speaking to the rest of the cohort now. Severn was wearing his tabard. Kaylin was not wearing hers, as she had gone to visit Evanton after work hours. Although Tara could make clothing suitable for the Emperor himself, none of it persisted beyond the boundaries of the fief.
Kaylin did fall in beside Severn, regardless. He was alert. So was she. So was her familiar, who had perked up as they left Tara, and was now watching the streets like a hawk. There were no obvious threats; indeed, the threat seemed to emanate from the cohort, and Kaylin remembered, as a patrol of mounted Swords approached, that the Barrani war band had caused the Swords to go on full alert.
Severn, however, was uniformed, and was able to negotiate with the Swords; the cohort were not notably armored or armed. Their crime, such as it was, was being Barrani in highly concentrated numbers—and that was not, as Severn pointed out, against the edict of Imperial Law, which they all served.
The Swords did form up around the Barrani, more for the sake of the much more nervous onlookers than the Barrani themselves, and the cohort therefore had a more or less official escort through the rest of the Elantran streets. Kaylin found herself scanning windows in the taller buildings, but the usual street thieves and beggars stayed well away from the Swords, and as the neighborhood began to shift toward the high-end mansions that were common around Helen, they ceased to be even a passing concern.
I will inform the Consort that your lunatic plan was successful, Ynpharion said, the chill in his voice deeper than its usual frigid disdain.
You do that, Kaylin snapped back.
She points out that your dinner invitation is still viable.
Kaylin almost dropped her jaw. You have got to be joking.
No, Lord Kaylin, I am not. If you wish to withdraw that invitation—
I already did!
—feel free to send a message to the High Halls. Or better, deliver it in person.
There is no way that she is coming here right now. We’ve just arrived, and she’s already tried to harm the cohort. There is no way.
Silence. She would have berated Ynpharion further, but sensed that he was no happier with the message he had conveyed than she was. If she wanted to shout at the source of her actual anger, she couldn’t do it through Ynpharion.
* * *
She breathed again as they approached the gates that were Helen’s actual boundaries, and smiled when the gates rolled open without assistance. Although this type of magic was not unheard of in the city, it was definitely unusual. But unusual, according to the mostly silent Swords, was the word of the very, very long day. Only when the cohort had been delivered to the property line did the Swords peel off and return to their regular patrol route.
Helen’s doors were open long before the cohort reached them, and Kaylin noticed that the cohort became more martial, not less, with the loss of the Swords. She didn’t tell them Helen was safe. If Mandoran and Annarion’s experience hadn’t made that clear to the cohort, nothing would. But she felt a bit bad for Helen, because Helen was social; she liked people, and liked guests.
Kaylin walked directly to Helen as Helen opened her arms, enfolding her in a hug that was simultaneously soft as comfort and rigid as armor. She looked past Kaylin to the cohort; Kaylin couldn’t see her expression, but could hear it in her voice, anyway. “Welcome. The boys—I’m sorry, that’s what we often call Mandoran and Annarion—are waiting for you in the dining room.”
“Teela’s not here?”
“Teela received a summons,” Helen said, her voice flat and neutral, “and chose to honor it. She left some thirty minutes ago, heading to the High Halls.”
Because if she went to the High Halls immediately, she could truthfully fail to answer most of the questions posed about the cohort’s arrival.
“Yes, dear,” Helen said. “I believe that was exactly her thinking on the matter.” She paused. “Terrano?”
Kaylin withdrew and turned toward Terrano, who was pretty much holding hands with Sedarias and Allaron. Or at least they were holding on to his.
“I will not detain you or cage you. You are a guest, and in this house, guests are not prisoners. I won’t deny that cages do wait—metaphorically speaking—for those who enter without invitation or permission, but you are not one of them. Ah, speaking of which,” Helen added, “I believe you have a different visitor.”
“Who?”
“I would tell you his name, but I don’t think you could actually hear half of it. But I believe he said you named him Spike?”
She’d forgotten Spike.
“He apologizes,” Helen continued, “but he could not follow you into the Tower; he could not approach it following the path you took.”
“Wait, did you just say he’s in a cage?”
“It is a comfortable cage, but yes. I have the ability to make decisions of my own, and his story, while very chaotic and jumbled, seemed to me to be true. He explained how he met you. I was slightly uncertain until he told me the name you gave him.” She looked mildly disapproving.
“He—his form here—is a kind of floating, spiky ball,” Kaylin explained.
“I’ll let him out, then. He seemed to feel that you wished his company, and he owes you a great debt.”
“Debt? Ummm, is he Immortal, by any chance?”
“I believe you would consider him so, yes. Why do you ask?”
“Because Immortals hate debt or obligation—it’s practically a threat.”
Helen smiled and drew Kaylin into the house, where she was no longer blocking the door. As the cohort filed into the foyer, Helen said, to Bellusdeo, “The Arkon has been using the mirror almost continuously. I believe he is concerned.”
Bellusdeo snorted.
“And Maggaron is quite unhappy, at the moment.”
The Dragon sighed. “Let me go talk to him. I shouldn’t have left without him, but it might have entirely depleted the elemental water if he’d come as bodyguard.”
Helen froze in place. Her eyes went the shade of color-flecked obsidian that was natural when she forgot to put effort into maintaining her appearance. “Have you spoken with the Keeper?”
“We’ve kind of been busy,” Kaylin said. “Have you?”
“Teela and Severn did, separately. The Keeper did not, as we hoped, ask the water to intervene. Nor did the Tha’alani. The water acted entirely on its own.”
Kaylin knew this.
“Understand that the Keeper exists for a reason. I do not know if all worlds have a Keeper, but I have often imagined they must. The Keeper harmonizes the elements; it is because they exist in his garden that the world is stable. Were they to range free, they would destroy each other, or try, and in the process, we would perish.”
Kaylin nodded, because this was more or less her understanding.
“The water clearly feels that the danger is great enough to threaten them all.”
“So: we have a Barrani war band, the threat of war, a High Court in revolt, Barrani Lords in collusion with a fieflord to enter Ravellon, and an elemental water that’s terrified enough of something that she grabbed me and threw me at the West March. And at the heart of it all: Ravellon.”
“Yes, dear. You forgot the cohort.”
“No, I really didn’t.” Kaylin headed toward the dining room, followed by a quiet Severn. Bellusdeo, true to her word, had gone to apologize to her Ascendant.
* * *
The dining room was not silent, but Kaylin wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she couldn’t hear a majority of the conversation. Allaron had released Terrano, and had pulled up a chair at the table; his posture was far more like Annarion’s than Mandoran’s. The table was the centerpiece of the gathering, but that was fair; it was the centerpiece of most of the discussions that took place while Kaylin was at home.
She was surprised to see that the cohort were very physical; there was almost always contact between the various members, even Sedarias. The stiff and very proper demeanor was shed in the presence of Mandoran and Annarion, and she sat beside Mandoran, an arm around his shoulders, her head tilted almost into his.
But she wasn’t the only one. Two of the cohort were sharing a chair; several were holding hands or arms. They could have comfortably occupied half the space because they didn’t seem to have any hesitation about how much they overlapped. Terrano was included in their number, but Kaylin noted that, after the brief hug he had offered a smiling Mandoran, he had pulled his chair to the side, out of easy reach of any of the rest.
She wondered, then, how much Mandoran and Annarion had adjusted their behavior as Helen’s guests. Wondered if, when she wasn’t in the room, they overlapped or huddled like this. This didn’t look like a Barrani gathering; had Kaylin’s vision been poorer, she might have assumed these people were Leontine kits, huddled in a pile near the hearth.
And she wondered if Teela’s propensity for casual physical contact had been a memory of this, something she had lost for centuries—and that she had thought lost forever. She couldn’t imagine Teela entwined with this mass of the cohort, though. And she grimaced when she thought of Tain’s reaction.
Helen came to stand beside her as she lingered just on the inside of the doorway.
“They won’t consider your presence a disturbance,” Helen said. “If they need privacy, it comes built-in.” Her smile was slender but warm. “I think they are surprised at how much they missed each other. They’ve relied on their names for so long, their names are like the Tha’alaan to them. But the physical presence has weight, as well. They are happy.”
“I think Alsanis will miss them.”
“I am certain, in a fashion, he will. They did not resent him, in the end. He did what he could for them, for as long as he could. But Kaylin, they are all aware that you carried them for the last stretch of that road. You are not of them, but they consider you one of theirs. It is part of the reason Annarion has been so aggrieved.”
“Nightshade wanted me to do what I did. I mean, he didn’t know precisely what it would be—but he wanted to rescue his brother.”
“Yes. And I believe Annarion understands that. But you know better than anyone that there are some prices for rescue that you are not willing to pay.”
Kaylin fell silent. Severn glanced at them both and then waded into the room. He pulled out a chair at the less crowded end of the table and took it, relaxing slowly into a seated posture that was very similar to Terrano’s. On Severn, however, it didn’t look unnatural.
Kaylin was about to join him when Spike came careening through the hall, like a ball thrown by an angry drunk. He came to a staggering stop inches away from Kaylin’s face. Helen cleared her throat. Loudly. The familiar, however, looked bored and tired; he lifted an eyelid, looked at Spike, and let it close, his entire posture suggesting that nothing about this was an emergency.
“I am here,” Spike said, as if the obvious needed to be stated. Kaylin stared at him, trying to figure out what he wanted. In the end, she lifted a hand—the left hand, because she was still capable of some caution—and let him settle into her palm, spikes and all. The spikes, however, didn’t hurt, and he weighed next to nothing. She could probably injure herself if she closed her own hand, but Spike didn’t seem intent on making her bleed again.
“He injured you?” Helen asked. Except that her voice was colder and harder, and the question came across as a demand.
“Probably my fault,” Kaylin said quickly. “I asked him if he could find me again. We kind of—never mind. You can just read my mind.”
Helen presumably did. Her eyes had gone obsidian again, but nothing else about her appearance changed; she was staring at Spike as if vision alone would answer any remaining questions she might have.
“Oh, it won’t,” Helen replied, although Kaylin had said nothing.
“I’m not sure why he cut me. I kind of wish he’d cut my hand, instead; I can patch up the shirt, but...” She shrugged. She was lying; she’d given up on salvaging this particular shirt, but had not yet done the math that would allow her to afford a new one.
“I understand why he cut you,” Helen said. “He wished to be certain that he could find you again.”
“And he can find anyone he—”
“Whose blood he has consumed, yes. He, by the way, is perhaps not the appropriate word. And no, he does not consume it the way your vampires would.”
Kaylin flushed.
“He is evaluating the metrics of the blood itself in a way that means he can be completely certain of his identification.”
“You don’t do that.”
“No, but it is not required. I have other methods of identifying you that Spike does not. If you would not mind, I would like to converse with Spike.”
“Go ahead.”
Helen’s voice shifted; she lost words, or rather, words as Kaylin understood them. Here or there she caught a syllable, but in the end it became almost painful to listen to—it was like the droning buzz of a bee hive, except that as more words were added, more bees arrived. In the end, Kaylin lowered her hand from the underside of Spike’s body, covered both ears with her hands, and retreated to the dining room.
She figured Spike wouldn’t find the retreat insulting; she covered her ears whenever Bellusdeo spoke in native draconian—or at least she did if she had two free hands—and Bellusdeo didn’t.
But the cohort were now craning their heads toward the door as Kaylin entered.
“Can you understand what they’re saying?” Kaylin asked, as she retreated to the wall farthest from that open door.
Sedarias shook her head. “But I think, with time and Spike’s input, we probably could.”
“Can you ask for lessons when I’m outside of the house?”
Mandoran laughed.
Sedarias, however, took Spike’s presence as a sign. It was time to get serious. Kaylin watched the transformation of the cohort’s expressions. “Teela is at the High Halls,” she said, which was not what Kaylin had expected.
“Is she under house arrest?”
“No. At this late stage, they would not dare. They are, however, very interested in our arrival.”
“Interested in an aggressive way? Or politely, politically, fictively interested?”
“Our method of arrival has not been disclosed; questions are, of course, being asked, and possible explanations given.”
“There are no good explanations.”
“That just makes the proceedings more entertaining.”
“Is Teela the one making stuff up?”
“No. Teela is very angry, and when she is angry she is on her best—her most exquisite—behavior.”
“Is Tain with her?”
“Tain is with her. As one of four guards. He is not present as a Hawk, and he has no standing in the High Court. Teela is there as a Lord, and she is surprisingly adept at it.”
“Surprisingly?”
“Teela was always unusual.” Sedarias turned to the cohort, although it wasn’t necessary. “But while we were away, she grew. She’s angry,” Sedarias repeated. “And it’s never completely safe for Teela to be angry.”
“Safe for who?”
“Anyone, but mostly Teela.”
Mandoran turned to Kaylin, his expression unusually grave. “We’re here for her. We’re here for each other. When our families threw us away—”
“I wasn’t thrown away,” Sedarias said.
“When the rest of our families threw away people too sane to demand the right to go to the regalia, we found each other. Teela doesn’t want Annarion to take the Test of Name because she can’t go. She’s a Lord of the Court.”
Kaylin frowned. “But that means—”
“Yes. You can’t go, either.”
Helen came into the room, Spike floating by her left shoulder. “I think,” she told the cohort, “I should show you to your rooms. At the moment, Annarion and Mandoran are sharing. I was uncertain whether or not you would want to do likewise.”
“Not if you let Mandoran design the room,” Serralyn said, pulling a face. But the cohort rose almost as a single person, and followed Helen as she led them out of the dining room and to the room which would become their temporary home.
Terrano did not follow. He watched until the last of the cohort—Sedarias, as it happened—had exited the room. Only when she was gone did he sag in his chair, as if he’d been fighting to hold himself upright. Or together. Kaylin had no idea what to say to him; she only knew that she should say something.
People in pain often had this effect on her, if she cared about them at all. And clearly, she did care about Terrano, which came as a bit of a surprise to her, given how they’d first met.
“It is not surprising,” Helen’s voice said. The sound of it pulled Terrano from his thoughts, and he straightened in his chair again. “You have been living with two of his brothers. You’ve fought by their sides, more than once; they’ve come to your aid, and you’ve come to theirs, when there was no certain guarantee of survival. They are your friends. They are Teela’s family. They live in your house.
“Terrano is one of them, to you.” Helen’s Avatar remained with the rest of the cohort; only her voice was present in the room.
“I’m not,” Terrano said, voice low.
“They don’t believe that,” Helen countered. “They are waiting for you, and Allaron is about to leave the room to remind you.”
“Remind me of what? That he’s a giant, overstrong ox?”
“I heard that,” Allaron said. “Look, I don’t care if you don’t want to stay. Sedarias is set on it. I never did understand why the two of you got along so well—you could not be more different.” He lowered his voice as he approached Terrano who was, to Kaylin’s eye, almost sulking. “You know what she’s like when she’s unhappy. Or maybe you don’t. But she’s been unhappy since you left.”
“I can’t talk to her,” Terrano whispered. “I can’t talk to any of you, anymore.”
“You can. You can’t do it the old way.”
“I can’t hear any of you anymore. I don’t have—”
Allaron’s large hand was gentle as he placed it firmly on Terrano’s shoulder. “You did hear us,” he said. “From wherever it was you went, you heard us. You came back for us. Without you, we would have been swept away. We understand. Sedarias thinks you’ve been listening with half an ear since you left.”
“Half?”
“Well, she thinks you never listened before, so half is still impressive.” When Terrano attempted to pull away, Allaron exhaled. “We are not suffering through Sedarias’s deep, personal pain when we have a host of Barrani Lords bent on our destruction. Even if you can’t speak to us and can’t hear us the way you did before, you’re part of our entire history. We’re here because of you. If you’d never started your experiments, we would never have been free. So you’re staying with us until this part is done. Got it?”
“You know you can’t hurt me.”
“Keep it up and I’ll at least enjoy trying. Come on. Everyone’s waiting.” Allaron leaned down, lowering his voice. “Mandoran wants you to teach him not to get stuck in walls.”
“In walls?”
“Seriously. He’s gotten stuck twice now. Or maybe three times.”
Terrano laughed, then, his expression brightening. “He’s an idiot. I can easily show him that.” And he straightened his shoulders and let Allaron lead him to their room.
* * *
“Well?”
Kaylin blinked. She had forgotten that Severn was in the room.
“You’re worried.”
“There’s a lot to be worried about. The Consort. The Emperor. The Barrani attempt to start a war. The Arcanists who cooperated with Terrano and the cohort before they’d finally been freed. Candallar. Ravellon.”
Severn nodded, raising a brow. Kaylin had practiced raising a single brow for years, and hadn’t become proficient.
“Diarmat’s report. If it’s not at Evanton’s, he’s going to reduce me to ash.” She would have continued, but Severn wasn’t buying any of it, even if all of it was true.
It’s all true, he agreed. But it’s not what you’re worried about.
It’s what I should be worried about.
Yes.
Severn was right, of course. At the moment, she was worried about Terrano. Terrano, who had tried to kill the Consort on Kaylin’s first visit to the West March. Terrano, who had abandoned his name and left his friends behind when Alsanis had finally released them all.
That Terrano occupied none of her thoughts. But this Terrano? He seemed smaller, frailer, and lonely.
“He’s with family. They won’t abandon him.” He rose and held out an arm. “You need sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long day, and if we all survive it, the day after isn’t going to be much better.” He hesitated for one long minute as Kaylin stared at his arm. “I don’t know if Helen’s mentioned it, but I’m staying.”
She stared at him.
“Until the cohort leaves, one way or the other.” He hadn’t asked permission, but that would have just been awkward.
Kaylin exhaled heavily, but nodded. She didn’t ask him anything either, for the same reason.