Cast in Flame (32 page)

The hall that led from this door was longer; it was made of right angles. It didn’t quite suggest dungeon to Kaylin; it almost suggested jail. The small dragon stirred and squawked.

“Is he complaining?” Kaylin asked Bellusdeo, as the Dragon leveled a less than amused expression at her left shoulder.

“He does that. A lot.”

Kaylin shrugged, which got another squawk. “I probably set a really bad example.”

“You do,” Mandoran agreed, from somewhere in the hall. “But at least your complaints are amusing. I definitely like the first rooms better,” he added.

“I’m not sure our preferences are relevant.” The hall led to stairs, and since the stairs went up, Kaylin was willing to climb them. She hadn’t been kidding about basements. Bellusdeo said very little. She paused once to examine the two posts that fronted the stairs; there were no rails, because they were framed on either side by walls.

The walls banked to the right and left as they reached the landing. To Kaylin’s surprise, it was well lit; there were windows here. The lower edge of those windows was at the height of her nose. They weren’t open. In fact, Kaylin wasn’t certain they could be. The center portions of each of the three windows were clear, solid glass; those sections were surrounded on all four sides by panels of colored glass. None of the public areas of the Imperial Palace boasted windows like these; if the private areas did, Kaylin hadn’t seen them yet.

She glanced at Bellusdeo again. Maggaron was hovering, but he said nothing.

“Severn?”

He understood what she wanted him to do; he had both height and reach. He peered out the window and said, “It’s a city view.”

“Ours?”

Teela snorted. “Ours.”

Kaylin noted that neither the hall nor the landing forced Maggaron to crouch. The same couldn’t be said of most of the buildings in the fief he now called home, the exception being the Tower—Tara’s Tower. Newer buildings were being constructed for the use of the
Norannir
on the borders of Tiamaris, but Maggaron spent most of his sleeping hours in the Tower.

Kaylin could read nothing from Bellusdeo’s expression. Maggaron’s, however, was almost painfully hopeful. He turned to the left, abandoning Bellusdeo to the windows through which she absently gazed. He approached a very tall door; there was one on the right of the stairs, as well.

He had no difficulty moving the door. Looking at it, Kaylin thought she might; it was thick and the hinges creaked. He entered what looked, from a brief glimpse, to be a small room, or perhaps rooms. She started to follow and then turned back to Bellusdeo; Teela had come to stand on her right. The Barrani Hawk said nothing; nor did Bellusdeo.

But Mandoran and Annarion kept a distance that seemed almost respectful.

Severn slid an arm around Kaylin’s shoulder; she stiffened and then, slowly, leaned into him.

They’ve all lost their homes,
she told him, not daring to speak the words out loud, because Immortal hearing was so damned good and Immortal pride was...prickly.
All except maybe Teela.

Severn said nothing.

Do people always lose their homes? I mean, we did.
He knew Kaylin; he knew the question was rhetorical. She was thinking it through and had no easy answer, but expected none.
Maybe home is something we have to make, and remake, over and over. But it’s hard to make things when you’re afraid—or you’re certain—that they’ll just be broken.

You try.

Yes. And it kills me every time. Even thinking about my old place makes me feel like I’m falling. But—I was happy there. I was so surprised when Caitlin took me to find a place of my own. I thought she was just trying to get rid of me. But—she gave me dishes, and the old rug. She told me I could make my own home be whatever I wanted.

She didn’t tell you not to give out keys.

Kaylin snorted, and glanced at Teela’s back.
Wouldn’t have made a difference.

No. You didn’t really want to shut her out.

“Kitling, if you’re worried about
me,
don’t be. I’ve had just as long a day as you have, and I don’t have the patience for it.”

Bellusdeo glanced at Teela’s profile, and then at Kaylin, one brow lifted. One brow and the corners of both lips. Her shoulders relaxed as she turned to face the mortal Hawk; she moved away from the window.

“You recognize this place.”

“I recognize the rough layout, yes. You’ll note the height of the doors and the windows? This isn’t the Aerie of my childhood.”

Maggaron came out of the door; he walked immediately toward the only other door on the landing, and opened it. It was just as creaky. He disappeared into that room, and again, no one followed.

“Is this where Maggaron grew up?”

“It is not exact, of course—the windows are not enchanted, and they are far too ornate.” Her smile faded. “Maggaron was sent to the Ascendancy as a child. He wasn’t raised by his tribe; too many of them had died. He didn’t love being a child there—but I don’t imagine you would have, either. Tara offered to recreate his rooms,” she added.

Kaylin hadn’t heard that.

“He said no. If she asks again, I’m going to kick him in the shins until he says yes.” Her smile was sad, but very affectionate. “Look at him. Let me drag him out of here.”

Kaylin almost told her to leave him be. But they still hadn’t found either landlord or exit, and it made more sense to stick together as a group until they did.

* * *

There was no cave in this hall—but it wouldn’t have surprised Kaylin to see one. There was a series of small, rounded rooms, with apertures very like the one in the Hawklord’s tower, although they were shut. There were rooms in which the Tha’alani could be at home, and rooms which resembled Marcus’s residence—the only doors there were the ones that separated the rooms from the main hall.

The most run-down apartment was, of course, the apartment marked with an icon that was probably meant for humans. The ceilings were significantly shorter; Maggaron had to crouch to get through the door, and he couldn’t quite straighten up to his full height. The floorboards were worn; the shutters to the windows were open. It was a larger space than the one Kaylin had lived in—it had a separate bedroom, for one—but it wasn’t in any way upscale.

Kaylin exhaled. She turned to Mandoran and said, “Are we any closer to the landlord?”

He glanced at Annarion, who said nothing. Mandoran nodded.

“What do you suppose her rooms look like?”

“Anything she wants them to?”

“It’s not a trick question. Or a test.”

Mandoran laughed. “All life is a test—weren’t you taught that? All a test, and you only get to fail once.”

“Oh, I’m certain you’re capable of failing far more often than that—as long as you survive.” Teela looked down the hall to the only doors they hadn’t opened. “It’s not failure or success that’s defining: it’s whether or not the tests are interesting.”

The small dragon yawned.

“Shall we?” Teela asked.

Kaylin nodded.

* * *

The stress of discovering a dead man—and the physical work of actually burying him—had diminished as Kaylin had inspected the rooms that lay beyond the various doors. She had no doubt at all by the end that the building was similar to the Hallionne or Tara, but the windows in the various rooms opened to Elantra. The view was roughly what she’d expect, given the orientation of the doors. She thought the apertures in the Aerian rooms would probably open to the actual sky, rather than an amorphous, shifting otherworld.

The size of the rooms themselves was unpredictable. Kaylin was fairly certain they didn’t line up with the shape of the actual building as seen from the street—but at this point, she didn’t expect it. What did she expect?

She glanced at Severn; he was alert. Although he was still armed, he no longer looked as if he expected attack from any quarter. There’d been a quiet about the rooms they’d seen so far that suggested peace, not death. They were empty, but they didn’t feel impersonal. They felt almost like a greeting.

“Are we looking for a way out, kitling, or a way in?”

Kaylin blinked. “Sorry, I was thinking.”

“And given the rarity of that, I shouldn’t interrupt you.”

“Very funny, Teela. I want to run Records through Missing Persons to see if we can identify the man we just buried.”

Teela nodded. “You want to know if he remained missing.”

“I want to know if his absence was ever reported, yes. I want to know if, when he walked through those doors, he just elected to stay here because he had no choice. I want to talk to his neighbors—”

“Not a good idea.”

“Fine, I want
someone
to talk to his neighbors to see if any of them were aware that he lived here. I mean, the grounds are in decent repair and the external building—in evening light—doesn’t appear to be falling apart, so the building looks occupied.”

“All of which requires that we exit the building.”

“I know.”

“You just had an evil thought.”

“Not
exactly
evil.”

“Share.”

“I’m imagining what the Dragon Court will say if they insist on the right to inspect the building as part of Bellusdeo’s security detail.”

Bellusdeo snorted. Her eyes, however, did shade to gold. “Can we send Diarmat instead of Emmerian?”

“I wouldn’t wish Diarmat on
any
building of my acquaintance.” Kaylin came to a stop in front of the only double doors in the hall. They were also the only doors whose center section was composed of plain panels of thick wood.

She caught the left handle in her left hand, out of habit; since door wards at their best sent a shock of pain up her arm that tended to make the hand useless for half an hour, she avoided using her dominant hand just to open them. These doors, unlike the others, failed to open.

Kaylin grimaced and tried the right handle, to the same effect. She then thought about how she approached her previous landlord on the rare occasions she needed to do anything but pay him, and she knocked.

When the doors rolled open—without any obvious help—she had the grace to redden. In no other prospective residence would she have just opened up random doors and done a walkthrough. Then again, in most other buildings, the doors would have been locked, and there would be understandably alarmed people on the other side of them.

The room on the other side of the doors was only barely a room, in that it had a door that led to it. The floors were not wood, they were stone; the ceiling was not roof, it was sky. The sky at the moment held a very familiar two moons—and they were the same two moons that had illuminated the sky on the trek here. It was not, however, an exit.

There were pillars where walls would generally be; the door appeared to be framed by two. This was more in line with her expectations of the interior of a sentient building. She liked it a lot less—but understood as she entered that these rooms weren’t meant for her. She very much doubted that the dead former occupant had lived in them.

But given the quality of the clothing he’d been found in, she doubted he’d lived in the nominally “human” rooms, either.

Annarion and Mandoran entered the room less cautiously than anyone else, except Kaylin. She was fairly certain they saw what she saw, but it didn’t surprise them; if anything, they seemed to relax.

“Lord Kaylin,” Annarion said, ignoring her cringe. “Can you hear her?”

Since no one besides Annarion was speaking, Kaylin shook her head. “You can?”

He smiled. The smile was shorn of anxiety and guilt; it made him look young. “Yes. We can hear her—but it’s not to us she wishes to speak. She will be present shortly.”

But Kaylin guessed that. The stones beneath her feet began to emit a pale light, and the light—like faint starlight—could be caught more readily from the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t
see
words engraved or painted on the ground, but she sensed they were there.

This was, in part, because her arms began to tingle—or at least the skin that bore the marks did. One day, she thought, as she began to roll up her sleeves, she was going to accept that they were a permanent part of her body, and she’d give up on trying to hide them.

On the other hand,
most
landlords would find them the opposite of impressive or appealing.

As the tingling deepened, the light on the floor brightened. Severn held out a hand; she fiddled with the magical studs on the bracer she wore by Imperial fiat, and the bracer clicked open. She handed it to him, since the bracer’s sole purpose was to dampen the magic she could—and did—draw from the marks themselves.

Bellusdeo’s eyes were orange; Maggaron was hovering, and she clearly found it irritating. Given his height, Kaylin thought she was being a bit unfair; at eight feet, he couldn’t really stand beside her and
not
hover.

Then again, Maggaron was so earnest and so straightforward, he probably hadn’t learned the art of hovering protectively without appearing worried. Severn, she noted, had. He didn’t stand between her and possible danger; he didn’t throw backward glances to make certain she was still safe.

Severn started to speak; she shook her head. The hair on the back of her neck was now standing pretty much on end—but that didn’t mean danger; it meant magic of a fairly particular type.

The stones beneath Kaylin’s feet were now bright enough they shimmered; the floor looked almost like the surface of a vast, still pond. It didn’t, however, reflect moonlight.

Nor did it reflect anyone standing on it except the two young Barrani men. She could see both Annarion and Mandoran in the floor. She glanced up to make certain they were still standing near Teela; they were. If they noticed their reflections at all, it didn’t show.

I don’t see their reflections, either,
Severn said, speaking, as he seldom did, internally.

“Teela, does the floor cast any reflections that you can see?”

“It’s stone, kitling.”

“I’m aware of that—I’m standing on it.”