Читать книгу Cast In Courtlight - Michelle Sagara - Страница 11

Severn was waiting. He was tucked into a corner of the carriage, and appeared to be sleeping. Or he would have, had she known him a little less well. She watched him for a moment; his closed lids were like fine-veined membranes, round and edged in a black fringe. His hair was actually pushed up over his forehead by a knotted band; she didn’t recognize the knot-work, but it was expensive enough to be official. He looked nothing at all like the boy she’d grown up with.

And yet, at the same time, exactly like him.

She shook her head; too much time spent looking and not enough moving. When she scrabbled up on the bench beside him, he opened an eye.

“Did you offend the mage?”

She snorted. “The mage is probably impossible to offend.” Then, slightly more quietly, “No. I didn’t.”

“Good.”

Bastard. He was smartly attired; he wore dress uniform, and it even looked good on him. His scars made him look like a Ground Hawk in any case; there was probably no clothing so ostentatious that it could deprive him of that.

The door slammed shut.

“Where’s Teela?” she asked.

“She’s driving.”

“She’s what?”

“You have a problem with that?”

Gods, Kaylin thought. This was an Imperial carriage.

It lurched to a start. “Yes!”

Severn managed to grip the window; it was the only reason he was still seated. He glared up through the coach wall. “Never mind.”

“What happened to the driver?”

Severn’s head disappeared out the window, and reappeared just as quickly; the window was not a safe place to hang a necessary appendage if you wanted it attached at the end of the journey. Not when Teela was driving. “He’s the large man in livery with the purple face?”

“I’m not looking,” Kaylin told him.

“Just as well.”

The carriage didn’t stop. Not once. It teetered several times on the large base of its wheels, and Kaylin and Severn tried to balance the weight by throwing themselves in the opposite direction. But Imperial carriages were heavy enough to carry four Dragons; they didn’t tip easily. If she had thought Teela was aware of this fact, it would have eased her somewhat—but she’d been in a carriage that Teela had driven before. Once.

She’d promised herself—and everyone else who could hear—that she’d never do it again. So much for promises.

Then, Tain had been her companion, and he had found the entire journey amusing, especially the part where Kaylin turned green. You had to love that Barrani sense of humor; if you didn’t, you’d try to kill them. Which was, of course, suicide.

Severn was not turning green. As if acrobatics on the interior of a very unstable vehicle were part of his training, he moved in time with the bumps, raised stones, and ruts that comprised the roads that Teela had chosen.

But these passed quickly by, as did the large, narrow buildings that fronted the streets, casting their shadows and shielding the people who were smart enough to get the hell out of the way.

The roads widened, and smoothed, as the carriage picked up speed. Beyond the windows, the buildings grew grander, wood making way for stone, and stone for storeys of fenced-off splendor that spoke of both power and money. The towers of the Imperial palace could be seen, for a moment, in the distance; the red-and-gold of the Imperial standard flew across the height of sky. Only the Halls of Law had towers that rivaled it, and that, by Imperial fiat; no other building erected since the founding of the Empire of Ala’an was allowed, by law, to reach higher.

There were other buildings with towers as high, but they were in the heart of the fiefs, where even Kaylin had not ventured. Not often. They were old, and had about them not splendor but menace; they spoke of death, and the wind that whistled near those heights spoke not of flight but of falling.

She shook herself. Severn was watching—inasmuch as he could, given the rough ride.

“The fiefs,” he said. Not a question.

She swallowed and nodded. The years stretched out between them. Death was there, as well. In the end, Severn looked away—but he had to; the carriage had tipped again.

There was so much she wanted to know. And so much she was afraid to ask. She’d never been good with words at times like these; they were awkward instead of profound, and they were almost always barbed.

Instead, she tried not to lose the food she hadn’t had.

“Remind me,” he said when the carriage began to slow, “never to let Teela drive again.”

She tried to smile. “As if,” she told him, “you’ll need a reminder.” Her legs felt like liquid.

He had the grace not to ask her how she was; he had the sense not to ask her if she would be all right. But as the carriage came to a halt in front of tall, stone pillars carved in the likeness of a Barrani Lord and Lady, he opened the door that was nearest him. He slid out, dragging his feet a few steps, and then righted himself.

She closed her eyes.

His hand touched her arm. “Kaylin,” he said quietly. “Come.”

She nodded, biting her lip as she opened her eyes and met his gaze. The pillars were perfect in every aspect; Barrani writ large, like monumental gods, the falling folds of their robes embroidered with veins of gold and precious stones. They dwarfed her. They made her feel ungainly, short, squat—and very, very underdressed.

But Severn wasn’t Barrani. He didn’t notice.

He offered her the stability of his arm and his shoulder, and she let him. The sun cast his shadow across her like a bower.

Teela jumped down from the driver’s seat, and rearranged the fall of her emerald skirts until the gold there caught light and reflected it, suggesting forest floor; the skirts were wide and long, far too long for someone Kaylin’s height.

Teela spoke a few words to the horses, low words that had some of the sound of Barrani in them, but none of the actual words. The horses, foaming, quieted. Their nostrils were wide enough to fit fists in.

“Don’t speak,” Teela told Kaylin quietly as she left the horses and approached. She didn’t seem to feel the need to offer the same warning to Severn.

Kaylin nodded. Speech, given the state of her stomach, was not something to which she aspired. She took a few hesitant steps, and mindful of the facade of the building that was recessed behind those columns, stopped. She had once seen a cathedral that was smaller than this. It had been rounder; the Barrani building favored flat surfaces, rather than obvious domes. But it was, to her eye, a single piece of stone, and trellises with startling purple flowers trailed down its face. A fountain stood between two open archways, and water trickled from the stone curve of an artfully held vase. The statue that carried the vase seemed a perfect alabaster woman, half-naked, her feet immersed.

She looked almost lifelike.

And Kaylin had seen statues come to life before, in the halls of Castle Nightshade.

“Kaylin,” Teela said, the syllables like little stilettos, “what are you doing?”

“Staring,” she murmured. Half-afraid, now that she was here. It was almost like being in a foreign country. She had never ventured to this part of Elantra before. Would not, in fact, have been given permission to come had she begged on hands and knees.

Standing here, she knew why; she did not belong on this path. Unnoticed until that thought, she looked at what lay beneath her feet. She had thought it stone, but could see now that it was softer than that. Like moss, like something too perfect to be grass, it did not take the impression of her heavy—and scuffed—boots.

Teela jabbed her ribs. “We don’t have time,” she whispered. It was the most Teela-like thing she’d done since Kaylin entered the Hawklord’s tower, and the familiarity of the annoyed gesture was comforting. And painful; the Barrani had bony hands.

She swallowed and nodded, and Teela, grabbing her by the hand, began to stride toward the left arch.

It was work just to keep up. Kaylin stumbled. Her legs still hadn’t recovered from the ride. But she had just enough dignity that she managed to trot alongside the taller Barrani noble. Severn walked by her side with ease and a quiet caution that spoke of danger.

She noticed, then, that he wore a length of chain wrapped round his waist, the blade at one end tucked out of sight. He had not unwound it, of course; he wasn’t a fool. There were no obvious guards at either arch, no obvious observers, but Kaylin had a suspicion that Teela would have taken it upon herself to break his arms if he tried.

Kaylin wanted to marvel at the architecture, and buildings rarely had that effect on her. She wanted to see Aerians sweeping the heights above, and Leontines prowling around the pillars that were placed beneath those heights, as if they held up not only ceiling but sky. She wanted to stop a moment to look at—to touch—the plants that grew up from the stone, as if stone were mooring.

But she did none of these things. Beauty was a luxury. Time was a luxury. She was used to living without.

A large hall—everything was large, as if this were designed for giants—opened up to the right. Teela, cursing in Elantran, walked faster. Kaylin’s feet skipped above the ground as she dangled.

She saw her reflection in marble, and again in glass; she saw her reflection in gold and silver, all of them distorted ghosts. She couldn’t help herself; Teela kept her moving, regardless.

There were candles above which flames danced; nothing melted. There were pools of still water, and the brilliant hue of small fish added startling life to their clarity. Too much to see.

And then there were doors, not arches, and the doors were tall. There were two, and each bore a symbol.

Her natural dislike of magic asserted itself as Teela let her go. But Teela stepped forward, and Teela placed her palms flat against the symbols. The doors swung wide, and without looking, Teela grabbed Kaylin and dragged her across the threshold.

She didn’t even see the doors swing shut. She saw Severn skirt them as they moved, that was all. She had scant time to notice the room they’d entered.

It was an antechamber of some sort. There were chairs in it, if that was even the right word. They seemed more like trees, to Kaylin’s untutored eyes, and branches rose up from their base, twisting and bearing bright fruit.

These, Teela passed.

They had walked a city block, or two, in Kaylin’s estimation; everything was sparse and empty.

The chamber passed by, and they entered one long hall. This was older stone, and harsher. It was rough. There were no plants here, and no flowers, no gilded mirrors and no pools. Weapons adorned the walls instead; weapons and torch sconces of gleaming brass.

But the weapons were fine, and their hilts were jeweled. If the gems were cold, they added the fire of color to the hall itself. “Don’t touch anything,” Teela said in curt Elantran.

At the end of this hall was a single door. Kaylin stopped walking then. Teela didn’t.

“Kaylin?” Severn asked. It was hard for him not to notice that her feet were now firmly planted to the floor.

“The door—” She looked up at him, trying not to struggle against Teela’s grip. She hated to lose, even now. Animal instinct made it hard; she did not want to pass through that door.

“Teela,” Severn said, curt and loud.

Kaylin’s ineffectual struggle hadn’t actually garnered the Barrani’s attention; Severn’s bark did. She stopped walking and looked back at him.

Kaylin’s gaze bounced between them a couple of times, like a die in a random game of chance. “The door,” she said at last, when she came up sapphires. Teela’s eyes.

Teela frowned, and those eyes narrowed. But she asked no further question. Instead, she turned to look at the door. It was a Hawk’s gaze, and it transformed her face.

Her cursing transformed her voice. It was short, but it lingered. “Step back,” she said. She turned back down the hall and dragged a polearm from the wall. It was a halberd.

“Farther back,” she added as she readied the haft. Severn caught Kaylin by the shoulders, frowned, and then lifted her off her feet. He ran back the way they’d come, leaving Teela behind. Kaylin could hear his heart. Could almost feel it, even though he wore armor. Funny thing, that.

“What are you—”

Teela threw the halberd. It wasn’t a damn spear; it shouldn’t have traveled like one. But it did.

The door exploded. It shattered, wooden shards the size of stakes blowing out in a circle. The halberd’s blade shattered as well, and a blue flame burned in its wake.

Without a pause, Teela grabbed another weapon from the wall. It was a pike. She set its end against the floor and stood there, hand on hip, as if she were in the drill circle in the courtyard of the Halls of Law.

“What’s it look like now?” she asked Kaylin.

Severn set her down gently, but he did not let go of her.

“It looks like a bloody big hole,” Kaylin replied.

“A scary hole?”

“Could you be more patronizing?”

“With effort.”

“Don’t bother.”

The fleeting smile transformed Teela’s expression. It was grim, and it didn’t last long. “Good spotting,” she said, as if this were an everyday occurrence.

“Don’t you think someone’s going to be a bit upset?”

“Oh, probably.” She didn’t put the pike down. “Look at what it did to the frame.” Her whistle was pure Hawk.

The stone frame that had held the door and its hinges looked like a standing crater. The roof was pocked.

“What was that?”

Teela shrugged. “A warning.”

“A warning?”

“Of a sort. I imagine it was meant to be a permanent warning.” She seemed to relax then. “Which means we still have some time.” Then, thinking the better of it, she added, “But not much. Don’t gawk.”

That was Teela all over. Any other Hawk would have had the sense to ask Kaylin why she’d hesitated to go near the door. To Teela, the answer wasn’t important. Which was good. Kaylin herself had no idea why, and extemporizing about anything that wasn’t illegal betting was beyond her meager skills.

“Welcome,” Teela added, her voice so thick with sarcasm it was a wonder words could wedge themselves through, “to the High Court.” And taking the pike off the ground, holding it like she would the staff that was her favored weapon, she walked through the wreckage of the door.

Kaylin noted that Severn did not draw a weapon. And did not let go of her shoulder. They followed in Teela’s wake.

There were no other traps. Or rather, no magical ones. Teela led them through another series of rooms and past two halls, and finally stopped in front of a curtained arch.

“Here,” she said quietly. “There will be guards.” She paused, and then added, “They’re mine.”

Which made no sense.

“In service to my line,” Teela told her, as if this would somehow explain everything. “Loyal?”

The muttered humans was answer enough. Teela pushed the curtains aside and entered the room. It was much larger than it looked through fabric.

There were chairs here, kin to the great chairs she’d seen in the large room, but smaller and paler in color. There was a still pond to the side of the room, adorned by rocks that glistened with falling water. Except that there wasn’t any.

There was a table, but it was small; a mirror, but it, too, was modest.

Beyond all of these things was a large bed, a circular bed that was—yes—canopied. Golden gauze had been drawn, but it was translucent. She could see that someone lay there.

By the bed were four guards. They were dressed in something that should have been armor, but it was too ornate, too oddly shaped. Master artisans would have either wept or dis-dained such ostentation. Teela tapped the ground with the haft of the pike.

As one, the four men looked to her.

“This,” Teela said, nodding to Kaylin, “is my kyuthe. She honors us by her presence.”

Kaylin frowned. The word was obviously Barrani; it was stilted enough in delivery that it had to be High Barrani. But she didn’t recognize it.

The guards looked at her. Two pairs of eyes widened slightly, and without thinking, Kaylin lifted a hand to cover her cheek. It was the first time she had remembered it since Severn had helped her out of the death trap that was otherwise known as a carriage.

“Yes,” Teela said, her grip on her weapon tightening. “She bears the mark of the outcaste. Even so, you will not challenge me.”

There was silence. A lot of it. And stillness. But it was the stillness of the hunter in the long grass of the plains.

Kaylin started to move, and Severn caught her arm in a bruising grip. He had not moved anything but his hand. But she met his eyes, and if human eyes didn’t change color, if they didn’t darken or brighten at the whim of mood, they still told the whole of a story if you knew the language.

Seven years of absence had never deprived her of what was almost her mother tongue. She froze, now part of him, and then turned only her face to observe Teela.

The Barrani Hawk was waiting.

Kaylin couldn’t see her feet, and wanted to. She’d learned, over the years, that Teela adopted different stances for different situations, and you could tell by how she placed her feet what she expected the outcome to be.

But you couldn’t hear it; she was Barrani, and almost silent in her movements. She looked oddly like Severn—waiting, watchful. She did not tense, and the only hint of threat was in the color of her eyes.

But it was mirrored in the eyes of these four.

Hers, she’d called them. Kaylin had to wonder if Teela’s grasp on the subtleties of Elantran had slipped.

The room was a tableau. Even breathing seemed to be held in abeyance. Minutes passed.

And then Teela turned her head to nod at Kaylin.

One of the four men moved. His sword was a flash of blue light that made no sound. He was fast.

Teela was faster. She lowered the pike as he lunged, and raised it, clipping the underside of his ribs. Left ribs, center. The pike punctured armor, and blood replied, streaming down the haft of the weapon—and down the lips of the guard.

Almost casually, the wide skirts no restriction, Teela kicked the man in the chest, tugging the pike free. Her gaze was bright as it touched the faces of the three guards who had not moved, neither to attack nor defend.

The Barrani who had dared to attack fell to his knees, and then, overbalanced, backward to the ground. Teela stepped over him and brought the wooden butt of the pike down before Kaylin could think of moving.

“Kyuthe,” Teela said. “Attend your patient.”

Kaylin was frozen. Severn was not. He guided her, his arm around her shoulders; even had she wanted to remain where she was, she wouldn’t have been able to. There was something about the warmth of his shoulder, the brief tightening of his hand, the scent of him, that reminded her of motion. And life.

She had seen Barrani in the drill halls before. She had seen them in the Courtyards. She had seen them on the beat, and she had even seen them close with thugs intent on misconstruing the intent of the Law. But she had never truly seen them fight.

Teela wasn’t sweating. She didn’t smile. She did not, in fact, look down. She had spoken in the only way that mattered here. And the three that were standing at a proud sort of attention had heard her clearly. They showed no fear; they showed no concern. The blood on the floor might as well have been marble. Or carpet.

Kaylin tried not to step in it.

She tried not to look at the Barrani whose throat had so neatly been staved in.

“Do not waste pity,” Teela told her in a regal, High Caste voice. “There is little enough of it in the High Court, and it is not accorded respect.”

Severn whispered her name. Her old name.

She looked up at him, and he seemed—for just an instant—so much taller, so much more certain, than she could ever hope to be. But his expression was grave. He reached out, when she couldn’t, and he pulled the curtains aside.

There was a Barrani man in the bed.

His eyes were closed, and his arms were folded across his chest in the kind of repose you saw in a coffin. He was pale—but the Barrani always were—and still. His hair, like his arms, had been artfully and pleasantly arranged. There were flowers around his head, and in the cup of his slack hands.

“Who is he?” she asked, forgetting herself. Speaking Elantran.

“He is,” Teela replied, her voice remote, her words Barrani, “the youngest son of the Lord of the High Court.”

Kaylin reached out to touch him; her hands fell short of his face. It seemed … wrong, somehow. To disturb him. “What is he called?” she asked, stalling for time. Teela did not reply.

Warning, in that. She reached out again, and again her hands fell short. But this time, the sense of wrongness was sharper. Harsher. Kaylin frowned. Her fingers were tingling in a way that reminded her of … the Hawklord’s door.

Magic.

She gritted teeth. Tensed. All of her movements were clumsy and exaggerated in her own sight.

But they were hers. “There’s magic here,” she said quietly. Teela, again, said nothing.

Kaylin opened her palms, forced them to rest above the only exposed skin she could touch: his face, his perfect face. Now magic crawled through her skin, ran up her arms, burning sharply.

If I explode, she thought sourly, I hope I kill someone. She wasn’t feeling particular.

She forced her hands down, and down again, as if she were reaching from a height. She would have fallen, but Severn was there, steadying her. She whispered his name, or thought she did. She could feel her lips move, but could hear no sound.

No sound at all save the crackle of magic, the fire of it. She kept pushing; it was an effort. Like bench-pressing weight, but backward. Holding on to that because she was stubborn, she continued.

Severn’s arm was around her; she could feel it. She could no longer feel her feet, and even her legs, which were almost shaking with exhaustion, seemed numb. She whispered his name again. It was as close to prayer as she came.

Hawk, she thought. And Hawk she was.

She plummeted as her hands, at last, made contact.

Kaylin had never tended Barrani before. Oh, she’d helped with the occasional scratch they managed to take—where help meant Moran’s unguents and barbed commentary—but she had never healed them. The Barrani did not go to Elantran midwives. Leontines did; Aerians did; even the Tha’alani had been known to call upon their services.

They were all mortal.

The Barrani were not, and they really liked to rub people’s noses in the fact.

Nor had Kaylin tended their young, their orphans. The only orphans in the foundling hall were human.

She had once offered to help a Dragon, and she had been curtly—and completely—refused. She understood why, now.

“He’s alive,” she managed to say. More than that would have been a struggle. Because alive in this case meant something different than it had every other time she offered this assurance to onlookers, many often insensate with fear and the burden of slender hope.

His skin felt like skin. And it felt like bark. It felt like moss, and fur, and the soft silk of Barrani hair; it felt like petals, like chiton, like nothing—and everything—that she had ever touched before. And there was more, but she hadn’t the words for it.

She almost pulled back, but Severn was there, and he steadied her. She could feel his hair brush the back of her neck, and realized her head was bent. Her eyes were closed.

The room was invaded by scent: rose and lilac, honey, water new with spring green; sweat, the aroma of tea—tea?—and sweet wine, the smell of green. The green. Behind her eyes she could sense the bowers of ancient forest, could almost hear the rustle of great leaves.

But here, too, she found silence. The silence of the smug, the arrogant, the pretentious; the silence of concern, of compassion; the silence of grief too great for simple words; the silence that follows a child’s first cry. She found so many silences, she wondered what the use of language was; words seemed impoverished and lessened.

But she did not find the silence of the dead.

Her hands were warm now. The fires had cooled, banked. What they could burn, they had burned, and embers remained. She moved her fingers slowly, and felt—skin. Just skin.

When she had healed Catti, the redhead with the atrocious singing voice, she had almost had to become Catti. Here, she was alone. There was no wound she could sense, and no loss of blood, no severed nerves along the spine. There was nothing at all that seemed wrong, and even in humans, that was unnatural.

So. This was perfection.

Unblemished skin. Beating heart. Lungs that rose and fell. An absence—a complete absence—of bruise, scar, the odd shape of bone once broken and mended.

She wanted to let go then. To tell Teela that this Barrani Lord—this son of the castelord—was alive and well.

But she didn’t. Because her hands still tingled. Because there was something beneath her that she could not see, or touch, or smell, that eluded her. Like dim star at the corner of the eye, it disappeared when she turned to look.

She opened her mouth, and something slid between her lips, like the echo of taste.

Without thinking, she said, “Poison?”

Which was good, because the only person who could answer was Kaylin. Yet poison … what had Red said? Poison caused damage. And there was nothing wrong with this man.

Except that he lay in bed, arranged like a corpse.

Had she not seen Teela dispose of a Barrani, she would have wondered if this was how immortals met their end. But the dead man had bled, and gurgled; his injuries had been profoundly mundane.

War.

The word hung in the air before her, as if it were being written in slow, large letters. As if she were, in fact, in school, and the teacher found belaboring the obvious a suitable punishment. Humiliation often worked.

It just didn’t work well on fieflings.

The Barrani Lord slept beneath her palms. Time did not age him; it did not touch him at all. But Kaylin, pressed against his skin, didn’t either.

This is beyond me, she thought, and panic started its slow spiral from the center of her gut, tendrils reaching into her limbs.

Severn’s arm tightened.

She heard his voice from a great remove. “Anteela,” he said, pronouncing each syllable as if Barrani were foreign to him, “your kyuthe must know what the Lord is called.” Not named; he knew better than that. And how? Oh, right. He’d passed his classes. She’d had to learn it the hard way.

“He is called the Lord of the West March,” Teela replied.

“By his friends?”

“He is the son of the High Lord,” was the even response. It was quieter but sharper; she could hear it more distinctly. And she could read between the lines—he didn’t have any friends.

“Anteela, do better. Your kyuthe cannot succeed at her chosen task, otherwise.”

But Teela did not speak again.

Lord of the West March. Kaylin tried it. As a name, she found it lacking. He must have found it lacking, as well. There was no response at all. There was nothing there.

Swallowing air, Kaylin opened her eyes. And shut them again in a hurry.

But she was a Hawk, and the first thing that had been drilled into her head—in Marcus’s Leontine growl—was the Hawk’s first duty: observe. What you could observe behind closed eyes was exactly nothing. Well, nothing useful. There were situations in which this was a blessing. Like, say, any time of the day that started before noon.

But not now, and not here. Here, Kaylin was a Hawk, and here, she unfurled figurative wings, and opened clear eyes.

She was standing on the flat of a grassy slope that ended abruptly, green trailing out of sight. Above her, the sky was a blue that Barrani eyes could never achieve; it was bright, and if the sun was not in plain view, it made its presence felt. There were, below this grass-strewn cliff, fields that stretched out forever. The sun had dried the bending stalks, but whether they were wild grass or harvest, she couldn’t tell. She’d never been much of a farmer.

The fields were devoid of anything that did not have roots.

She turned as the breeze blew the stalks toward her, and following their gentle direction, saw the forest. It was the type of forest that should have capital letters: The Forest, not a forest. The trees that stretched from ground to sky would have given her a kink had she tried to see the tops; it didn’t.

But she wasn’t really here.

Remind me, she told herself, never to heal a Barrani again.

She wondered, then, what she might have seen had Tiamaris not had the sense to forbid her the opportunity to heal a Dragon. She never wanted to find out.

There were no birds in this forest. There were no insects that she could see, no squirrels, nothing that jumped from tree to tree. This was a pristine place, a hallowed place, and life did not go where it was not wanted.

This should have been a hint.

But there were only two ways to go: down the cliff or into the trees. The cliff didn’t look all that promising.

She chose the forest instead. It wasn’t the kind of forest that had a footpath; it wasn’t the kind of forest that had any path at all.

It was just a lot of very ancient trees. And the shadows they cast. All right, Lord of the West March, you’d better bloody well be in there.

She started to walk. In that heavy, stamping way of children everywhere.

Shadows gave way to light in places, dappled edges of leaves giving shape to what lay across the ground. She got used to them because they were everywhere, and she’d walked everywhere, touching the occasional tree just to feel bark.

If time passed, it passed slowly.

Her feet—her boots still scuffed and clumsy—didn’t break any branches. They didn’t, in fact, leave any impression in what seemed to be damp soil. Rich soil, and old, the scent mixed with bark and undergrowth. She could plant something here and watch it grow.

Her brow furrowed. Or at least she thought it did. Aside from the forest itself, everything—even Kaylin—seemed slightly unreal.

She reached into her pockets, and stopped.

Her arms were bare, and in the odd light of the forest, she could see the markings that had defined all of her life, all action, all inaction, all cost.

She held them out; the marks were dark and perfect. It had been a while since she’d looked at them in anything that wasn’t the mirror of records. She touched them and froze; they were raised against her skin. They had never had any texture before.

Lifting a hand, she touched the back of her neck; it, too, was textured. She thought she might peel something off, and even began to try.

“Kaylin.”

She stopped. The voice was familiar. It was distant, but not in the way that Severn’s words had been distant.

“Hello?”

“Do not touch those marks in this place.”

It was Nightshade. Lord Nightshade. She turned, looked, saw an endless series of living columns. There was no movement, no sign of him.

“They’re—I think they might come off.”

“Do not,” he said again, his voice fading. “I am far from you, and you are far from yourself. Leave, if you can.”

She shrugged. “There doesn’t seem to be a convenient door.”

“Unfortunate.”

“Where are you?”

“I am both close and far, as you are close and far. You have my name,” he added softly. “Remember it.”

“I … do.” Even in sleep. “But I … don’t think it’s a good idea to speak it here.”