Michelle Sagara (7 page)

She is not a Lord of the High Court, as her questions tonight made clear.

Will I seem too obsequious if I call her Lord Avonelle?

No. You have chosen to grace her son with a title that you are not, by etiquette, required to use; extending the same courtesy to his mother would not seem obsequious.

She caught the hidden currents behind that thought and grimaced. Even for the Lord of the West March, fawning respect from mortals was not considered pandering; it was considered inevitable. The Barrani Hawks didn’t expect it. But with the single exception of Teela, none of them had a place in the High Court.

Tanniase?

He
is
a Lord. I understand that you absent yourself from both the Court and its unfortunate politics, but you must learn who comprises that Court. It is relevant, even in the West March. It cannot be irrelevant when the High Halls stand at the heart of your city.

She made a mental note to ask Teela for this information when she had the leisure time to memorize it. She was unlikely to forget Tanniase, however.

Chapter 6

Before she departed for the Warden’s so-called humble halls, she excused herself. She didn’t offer to change, since she was afraid to insult the dress; she did want to let her hair down—literally—because it was so tightly bound it made her scalp hurt.

Severn also excused himself to change; he wasn’t wearing clothing that was demonstrably more valuable to everyone present than he himself was. This left Teela serving as her unofficial escort.

“I guess they didn’t call a council meeting,” Kaylin said as Teela led her to the rooms she’d have had a hard time finding.

“As you surmise. I consider the Warden’s offer of hospitality to be at least as dangerous, but there was no politic way to refuse his offer. I’m surprised you realized that.”

“I wasn’t worried about being politic,” Kaylin replied. “He stuck up for me; I owed him one.”

“I have warned you in the past about naïveté and optimism, haven’t I?”

“Every other day. And no, that’s not an exaggeration. Do you think the Warden is playing some kind of game?”

“Yes. It may not be a game of which you will disapprove. Do not needlessly antagonize him.”

“Or his mother?”

“I fear it is late for that. Avonelle is the Guardian of the green; she has held that title for centuries. The Warden, in theory, has more power, but theory is always tenuous. Understand that Lord Barian was not her only son; he is merely the only one to survive.”

“Did the rest fail the test of name?”

“No. She lost one son in the last war; the other made the journey to the High Halls and failed to return. Barrani mothers are not mortal mothers; mortals feel that immortality, such as it is, is the continuance of their line. The Barrani do not age; we assume that we will exist for all of eternity. We might therefore bear a child every few centuries, if we so choose.”

“I saw her at the table, Teela. I know what I saw.”

“Yes. It is rumored—and it is only rumor—that she had ambitions for her youngest son; it was he who chose to take the test of name. His brother has not made the same choice; he is the last of her sons. His line is the line of Wardens, through his mother; if he is lost in the same way, it spells an end to the Wardens of her blood unless she bears another son.”

“Is it like the position of Consort?”

“No. But there are some similarities.”

“Can anyone become Lord of the West March?”

“It is a hereditary title—but yes; the green does not privilege the politics of either Court. The Lord rules, but the Warden serves. It is therefore the position of Warden that the green husbands.”

“Teela—what is the green?”

Teela smiled. “I do not know. Perhaps if I knew, I would understand why I alone, of the twelve gathered here, was spared.” She hesitated, and then added, “Avonelle was my mother’s sister.”

* * *

The Consort had not wakened; nor had she moved in her sleep. She was a color that Kaylin associated with death. “Is she—is she breathing?” she asked.

Lord Lirienne inclined his head, his expression grave.

“Should I try to wake her?”

“I am not my sister.” It was stated as if it were a reply.

Kaylin understood that this man was the Lord of the West March; that he had power and rank; that he was immortal. But she couldn’t find the fear that would have forced her to be cautious. “Can I pretend I asked that question again?” She spoke Elantran.

He raised a brow. “To wake her, you will attempt to heal her.”

“Not necessarily. I can’t heal her if there’s nothing physically wrong with her.”

“And how would you determine that?” When Kaylin failed to answer, he said, “I will keep watch tonight. If there is any deterioration, I will summon you.” He placed his palm over his sister’s hand.

* * *

Avonelle was not waiting when Kaylin returned to the Warden and his men. Severn was. He glanced at her and she shook her head once. She didn’t feel a great desire to discuss the Consort’s health in front of total strangers.

The Warden’s home was not, by any stretch of the imagination, humble—at least not as mortals understood it. It was as tall and imposing as the building that housed the Lord of the West March; it was not, however, built the same way.

The home of Lord Lirienne boasted a large amount of stone; it contained the central courtyard with its fountains, and also played home to a theoretically natural source of hot water. The home of the Warden reminded Kaylin of the Hallionne Sylvanne, at least from the outside.

The door was a large tree.

Many of the homes in Elantra were made of wood—but that wood had pretty much stopped growing, on account of being cut down. The doors that led to those homes also boasted things like hinges. And handles. Here, she stared with some dismay at the bark of a very wide tree, glancing nervously at the small dragon.

“I don’t have to bleed on this door, do I?”

Severn winced, and she realized she’d fallen straight into her mother tongue in the presence of the Warden of the West March. He didn’t wince.

“No, blood isn’t necessary,” he replied, in Elantran. “You visited the Hallionne Sylvanne on your journey here.”

“I did.”

“My hall is not sentient. What peace exists within it, I preserve. The door is warded.”

Why had she thought this was a good idea? “I have a little problem with door wards.”

“How so?”

“Sometimes they object to my presence. It’s not all door wards,” she added, as he looked down his nose. “But—the ones in the Imperial Palace, and at least one in Lord Lirienne’s home—” She grimaced. “It’s harder to explain than to demonstrate.”

“It will not harm you?”

“No. Not directly.”

“Does it harm the ward?”

She should be so lucky. “It hasn’t harmed any of the wards so far.” She lifted her left hand, and placed the palm firmly against the midsection of the trunk. It was a guess; there didn’t seem to be much in the way of obvious markings.

But the small dragon considered it all boring; he didn’t hiss, leap up, or bite her hand.

The door opened, in a manner of speaking; the tree dilated, the bark folding back in wrinkles, as if it were cloth. Usually Kaylin would be grateful for the lack of fuss; today, it was slightly humiliating.

“It appears that my wards do not consider you a danger to my home,” Lord Barian said. If he was amused, he kept it to himself. He entered and turned to offer her an arm; he nodded at Severn, and the four men Kaylin assumed were his guard stepped back to allow Severn entry.

The interior of the Warden’s home matched the exterior in many ways; the halls were as tall as the High Halls, but they weren’t made of stone—or at least the supporting beams weren’t; they were trees. They grew, evenly spaced; their branches formed the bower of a ceiling. Through the gaps in wood, Kaylin thought she could see stars, but she had a feeling that rain, when it fell, didn’t penetrate the branches the way light did.

He caught the direction of her gaze, because she had to tilt her head and expose her throat to see it. “Does it worry you?”

She shook her head. “This is what I imagined the dwellings in the West March would look like.”

“Why? The High Halls are marvels of architecture, and they are all of stone.”

“The High Halls are in the heart of a city. There are roads and neatly tended lawns and spaces in the inner city where very little that isn’t weeds grow. The West March is in the heart of a forest. I could walk for days—maybe weeks—and not meet or hear another living person.” She hesitated, and then added, “I thought forests would feel like this: grand and ancient and hushed.”

“They did not meet your expectations?”

“There were a lot of bugs and a lot of the transformed. I didn’t really get a sense of peace.”

He smiled. “There is peace here, at the moment. Come. If you wish sight of stars, we might speak in the bowers above.”

* * *

This was not a place for the old or the exhausted. The bowers above involved a walk around the central pillar in the hall—a tree which was fitted with a narrow, spiraling staircase. It was as tall as the Hawklord’s tower, but the stairs were all filigree from the looks of them; Kaylin could see the ground beneath her feet. The Barrani didn’t feel a great need for something as practical as rails, either.

But the stairs did exit onto a platform that seemed to be part of the tree. A bench girded the trunk; it, like the branches, was not shaved of bark. There was something about it that felt natural, rather than unfinished.

The branches here rose; they offered an unimpeded view of the West March—at this height, it appeared to be mostly trees—and the night sky.

“This dwelling is considered rustic,” he said softly. “But it is the seat of the Warden; it has been my home for all but a few decades.”

“Were the rest spent in the High Halls?”

“Yes. In the shadow of a Dragon, surrounded by a sea of mortals and the specter of failure.”

She glanced from the sky to the Warden; no trace of humor touched his expression.

“I hated your city. I hated the noise, the smell, the lack of peace; it is
never
silent unless one is encased in the stone of the High Halls.”

“You found them suffocating,” Kaylin guessed.

He nodded. “I do not hear the voice of the green when I am in your city.”

“Can you hear it now?”

He did smile then. Kaylin had been cautioned not to trust the Barrani; at times, it was hard.

“Ah. Can you see them?”

She squinted obligingly into the night sky. She could see treetops, the occasional glimpse of a building’s roof, and a lot of stars. She was about to remind the Warden of the marked inferiority of mortal vision when she caught a glimpse of wings.

She glanced at his face; the entirety of the deck was bathed in a gentle luminescence. His eyes, as he watched the eagles, were green. They were the color of the dress she wore. His eyes rounded as the eagles approached; he stood and walked to the edge of the platform. It had rails—but they were decorative, and they were short.

Severn was a shadow on this deck. He had not spoken, and hadn’t moved, since they’d arrived. When she cast a worried glance in his direction, she was surprised; she’d expected him to be wary and watchful. He was the latter, but his eyes were on the approaching eagles, his lips turned up in a half smile that seemed almost unconscious.

When they were close, the Warden held out one arm. “Lord Kaylin, if you would do the same, they will both land.”

She held out one arm looking so dubious that Severn chuckled. “I don’t have arm guards. I have a dress I’m sure it’s an act of treason to damage, and given the Barrani, it won’t matter if the eagles cause that damage. I’m wearing it. It’ll be my fault.”

The first of the eagles landed on the raised arm of the Warden.

The second landed on Kaylin’s left forearm. As it alighted, the marks on her arms began to glow. If she’d had suspicions that these weren’t real birds, it was confirmed; this one weighed no more than the small dragon.

The small dragon, however, sat up. He warbled.

“Well met,” the eagle said—to the small dragon. The Warden turned at the sound of his voice. The eagle on his arm said, “And well met, Barian. It has been long indeed since we have spoken.”

“Too long,” the Warden replied. He lifted his free hand and gently stroked the bird’s head, as if it were the head of a newborn babe. “What does the recitation hold for us?”

The eagle surprised them both. He answered. But he answered in a language that, while tantalizingly familiar in its parts, failed in all ways to cohere. Kaylin turned to Lord Barian. “Did you understand a word of that?”

He laughed. It was a shock of sound, coming as it did from a Barrani. “Perhaps one. I am fond of the sound of it; they spoke it often in my childhood.”

“Your language is confining,” the eagle on Kaylin’s arm said. “But you are a confined people, huddling in your singular shapes; you are easily broken.”

She frowned. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard this. “The Warden calls you the dreams of the Hallionne.”

“He does.”

“But you came from the shadows he called the nightmares of the Hallionne.”

“Did we?”

“Yes. What landed in my hands a few hours ago were shadows. But you emerged from them when—”

“Yes?”

“When the marks on my arms started to glow.” It sounded lame even to Kaylin, and she’d said it.

“Are we, brother?” her bird said to the bird on the Warden’s arm. “Are we dreams or nightmares?”

“They are the same,” the other bird replied. “Dream. Nightmare. They are things done beneath the surface of the world.”

“So...you don’t feel any different than you did when you landed?”

They regarded each other for a long moment, and then turned their beady eyes—and she’d seldom seen eyes that fit that description so perfectly—on Kaylin. “Did we land?”

“More or less the same way you landed just now, but with less feathers.”

They regarded each other again, and Kaylin snorted. What had been a suspicion was hardening into certainty as they spoke. “When I visited Hallionne Bertolle, his brothers woke. I don’t know if Bertolle has dreams; I don’t know what the Hallionne of the West March is called. No one speaks his—or her—name.”

“No one who dwells in this small enclave has ever spoken his name,” the bird replied. “Bertolle’s brothers have woken from the long sleep?”

“They had a little help,” Kaylin said, with sudden misgivings. She was certain she’d have bruised shins if Teela had come with them. “Were they not supposed to wake?”

But the birds now had words for each other, and as they conversed in their odd, melodious language, she turned to Lord Barian, who was staring at her. “What it is that you truly do in the city of Elantra?” His eyes were blue—but they weren’t the shade that meant anger or suspicion.

“I’m a Private. I serve the Halls of Law in that capacity. I hope one day to be Corporal.”

“Truly? You bear those marks, you can speak to the sleeping lost brethren of the Hallionne Bertolle, and you can wake the dreams of Hallionne Alsanis, yet you work as a Private? I recall very little about the Halls of Law; it is an institution that is irrelevant to the Barrani.”