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“She is mortal.”
Kaylin nodded, and apologized for the interruption, which caused Nightshade to raise a brow. This time, the smile that turned the corners of his lips up was not so cold, and not so cutting; it held no satisfaction. It did not, however, appreciably change the lines of his face.
“To the west,” he said softly, watching her face, “is Barren.”
She was silent for a full beat. “And Barren is ruled by?” she asked.
“Barren is purported to be ruled by a human male.”
“Purported? You’ve never met him?”
“I may, indeed, have had that privilege.”
“But you’re not certain?”
“No.”
“How can you be certain that you’ve met Liatt?”
“Liatt is Liatt,” he replied softly. “Just as I am Night-shade.”
Tiamaris cleared his throat. Dragons had a way of clearing the throat that made earthquakes seem mild; it wasn’t a roar, but it implied that a roar might follow severe inattentiveness. What followed a roar was generally considered death, even by the optimistic.
On the other hand, the Barrani and the Dragons had had centuries—at the very least—in which to thumb their figurative noses at each other’s subtle threats. Nightshade turned.
“Are you implying that the fieflord of Barren does not hold the fief?” the Dragon asked.
“He rules it,” was the quiet reply. “But it has long been my suspicion that he is merely clever, canny, and adept.”
“Merely?”
“He understands how to hold the territory he has claimed as his own. But it is a claim with no substance.” He turned to Kaylin, lifted a hand, and trailed the tips of his fingers down her cheek. The mark glowed faintly as he touched it. “I knew Liatt,” he told her softly, “because the fief knew Liatt. Barren’s name had no such resonance.” He let his hand fall away. “But my experience with the fief of either Liatt or Barren is small. Yours, however, might be more germane.”
Words deserted her for a moment. She glanced at Tiamaris; she couldn’t help it. If he was surprised by Nightshade’s words, the surprise didn’t show. She wondered if he was, or if he knew. He was part of the Dragon Court.
The mirrors rescued her; Nightshade gestured, and the view zoomed in, losing the boundaries of Liatt and Elantra.
“Lord Tiamaris understands,” Nightshade said softly.
Kaylin, frustrated, tried not to grind her teeth. Tiamaris had a head start of possibly a few centuries of experience and knowledge—but she resented being the person who had no clue.
Then learn, Nightshade told her.
“Hold that image,” Tiamaris said, above the quiet, private words.
The image froze.
“Kaylin, did Barren have more of a problem with ferals than Nightshade? Do you recall?”
She hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. “The fief had more of a problem with both ferals and the occasional other creature. It was why most of Barren’s men were stationed near the border. The interior border,” she added.
“You saw this?”
“No. I was told. I didn’t visit the fieflord at night. None of us did.” She drew a sharp, cutting breath. “I was thirteen, Tiamaris. It was for six months. I wasn’t—in any way—capable of becoming one of his lieutenants. Not then. What I have is rumor, and a bit of experience. It’s not a lot to judge a fief by.”
“But the ferals, at least?”
She nodded, thoughtful now. “Have you met the other fieflords?” she asked Nightshade.
“No. I have met only those whose borders touch mine. There is some blurring, although it is not extreme.” His smile was cool. “Why?”
“You said Liatt ruled from the Tower. The Tower?”
He nodded. “As I rule from the Castle.”
Tiamaris failed to hear the exchange. He had walked up to the mirror, and he now examined the image in some detail. “How long?” he asked Nightshade.
Nightshade did not pretend to misunderstand him. “The current fieflord of Barren has ruled for ten years. Perhaps nine. They are mortal years, in the reckoning of Elantra.”
“How?”
“I am not privy to even rumor. But the former fieflord—Illien—was not human. The fief lost its name along the border. I do not hear it.”
“But you hear Liatt?” Kaylin asked.
“When I touch the boundaries of my realm, I hear Liatt.”
“Would I?”
“You, perhaps. Lord Tiamaris would not.”
She didn’t ask him why, but she touched the mark upon her cheek almost reflexively.
“Was Illien alive?”
Nightshade said nothing.
“Ten years,” Tiamaris said softly. “I would have said that was impossible. Ten years of rule without—” He shook his head, drawing the words back before they were spoken. Kaylin successfully fought the urge to slap him. “The borders here—can you magnify them? They are not clear.”
“No, Lord Tiamaris, they are not. As I said—and as I imagine you suspect—the boundaries between fiefs are somewhat unstable. What the mirrors show you now is what I see. Do you understand?”
The Dragon Lord offered the fieflord a very graceful nod. “You honor us.”
“It is expedient for me to do so at this time. It is also,” Nightshade added, “no risk to me. What I see, you cannot see without my aid, and could you, you could do nothing with it while I lived.” His smile was slight and cool.
“But here—”
“Yes. I see more and less clearly than I would otherwise see if Barren was stable. But what you see along the blurred edge is accurate. The shadows of the interior have changed shape over even the past decade. They have been on the move—slowly—into the fief of Barren.”
Kaylin frowned.
“You’ve had word from the fieflord of Barren, have you not?” Nightshade asked her softly.
She glanced at Tiamaris, who didn’t seem to be surprised, and gave up. “Yes. But I didn’t understand why. And I still don’t understand why now.” The words sank into the silence that followed them. “It’s gotten worse,” she said, voice flat. “Recently.”
Lord Nightshade said, “It has, as you guess, recently become much more unstable.”
“Do you know why?”
“No. The interior is completely invisible to both my magic and my information network.”
“Do you think it has something to do with the Outcaste Dragon?”
“He was injured, when he retreated from our previous encounter,” Nightshade replied, his voice completely neutral. “The injuries he sustained were not insignificant, and unless he were capable of healing them quickly—” his tone made clear that he thought it highly unlikely “—it is doubtful, to me.”
She slid her hands to her hips, and then let them fall back to her sides. “Nightshade, please—”
“When the tainted Leontines ran into the heart of the fiefs,” he told her softly, “it is just possible that their need and their voices woke something that should not have been woken. This is conjecture, on my part, no more, and for that reason I am hesitant to offer it.”
She swallowed. “I-it can’t be them.” The shakiness of her words failed to convince even Kaylin, and she’d said them. She looked at Tiamaris.
The Dragon Lord said, quietly, “The Eternal Emperor and the Dragon Court have decreed that the child of the tainted is not to be killed. They will not destroy him when they receive word of Lord Nightshade’s conjecture, Kaylin. That much, your service has bought the infant.”
That much, Kaylin thought. She tried to ignore her fear, but fear was hard that way. Swallowing it, she turned back to the mirror. Wondering what might wake in the shadows and the darkness of something that had looked, at first glance, like the rest of the city.
“Tiamaris, what happens if Barren somehow falls?”
“Falls?”
“If the shadows—if the heart of the fief—somehow expands to fill it?”
“You’ve lived in Nightshade,” was his quiet reply. “Your life was informed, in some ways, by the presence of those shadows, whether you knew it or not. The Emperor will hold the city,” he continued, after a pause.
Lord Nightshade raised a brow, but did not comment.
“But it will know ferals, and possibly worse. The Imperial Palace is not what Castle Nightshade is.”
“The High Halls—”
“The Barrani High Halls,” Tiamaris said.
She winced.
“You see the difficulty.”
She did. But she plowed on, regardless. “Could the High Halls hold out against the—the shadows?”
“Almost certainly, given the change in rulership. But it will not happen while the Eternal Emperor still breathes. He will not surrender an inch of his established domain to the Barrani.”
Lord Nightshade nodded. “I can enter Barren,” he told her quietly. “But it is not, then, safe for Nightshade. Not now; there is already too much instability and too much weakness.”
She had lived most of her life under Nightshade’s rule. In no way could she call it either just or fair. But the shadows—in the fiefs, and under the High Halls—would be far, far worse, and she accepted this. Because, she thought bitterly, she lived on the outside, where his law and his casual cruelty had no purchase. For just a moment, the bitterness of that hypocrisy caused her throat to thicken. She swallowed it anyway. Time to move on.
“What borders Barren on the other side?”
“Understand that what I tell you is not fact in the way that Liatt is fact; the fief does not border me. But if information gathered in the fiefs in the usual way can be trusted, Candallar.”
“Will Candallar hold?”
Nightshade said nothing. It was not helpful.
Tiamaris bowed to Nightshade. “I must leave,” he told the fieflord.
Nor did the fieflord appear surprised by the abrupt announcement. “Will you allow the Private to remain for a few moments?”
“I cannot leave without her; the orders I were given were quite…explicit.”
This, too, did not appear to surprise Nightshade. Kaylin felt his amusement, but also his annoyance; they were almost perfectly balanced. His eyes, however, were the emerald green of Barrani calm, with perhaps a hint of blue to deepen the color. “Then escort her,” he told Tiamaris. “She will return.” He offered the briefest of bows to the Dragon Lord. “The information I can surrender in safety, I will. If anything changes along the borders, I will inform Private Neya; she may then inform the Emperor.”
Tiamaris nodded and turned to leave the room, but Lord Nightshade had not quite finished. “Kaylin.”
“Yes?”
“I will not surrender you to Barren.”
Tiamaris did not run back to the bridge. Dragon dignity was good for something. He did, however, walk quickly, and the difference in their relative strides meant that Kaylin’s dignity had to suffer; she had to jog to keep up. Only when they had crossed the bridge itself—with a distant crowd of witnesses who were too curious to clear the streets and too damn smart to approach—did he turn.
“We go to the palace,” he told her.
She nodded; she’d expected that much.
“You are not yet relieved of your duty for the day. Accompany me.”
She nodded again, not that he noticed. “Tiamaris—” she began, as he stepped into the street.
He failed to hear her, which was probably deliberate. Dragons didn’t flag a carriage down; they simply stood in the way and waited for it to stop. This was, in Kaylin’s experience, a risky proposition, but on the other hand, Dragons were built in such a way that if the risk played out poorly it didn’t exactly kill them.
“Tiamaris,” Kaylin said, as she climbed into the cab, “if you’re going to make a habit of this, station an Imperial carriage by the bridge.”
He ignored her advice.
“I mean it. We have enough trouble with the Swords as is—I don’t need to file a counterreport to explain a small riot or a large panic if we don’t luck out with a decent driver.”
When they reached the palace gates, guards met the cab. They didn’t lead it into the courtyard, but they did clear the path as Tiamaris emerged. His eyes were a shade of orange that looked a little too deep, and none of the Imperial guards could fail to understand what that meant, but just in case, he lowered his inner membranes, so the color was much more pronounced. If they noticed his tabard—or Kaylin’s—they failed to be offended by it.
She followed Tiamaris into the Great Hall, and then stopped as he lifted a hand. “Wait here,” he told her quietly. “I go in haste to the Emperor, but even in haste, your poor understanding of Court etiquette would not be excused.”
She started to argue because it was automatic, and snapped her jaw shut before the words left her mouth, settling in to wait. Waiting in these halls, with the stray glances of guards who were no doubt paid triple what she earned was a bit intimidating, but she didn’t have to wait there long; Sanabalis emerged from the doors at the far end.
