Michelle Sagara - Cast in Silence

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.

“Private,” he said as he approached her, making clear what the tone—at least in front of the guards—would be, “please follow me.”

She hesitated, aware that any other guard here wouldn’t have.

“No,” he added, when he noticed she wasn’t immediately dogging his footsteps, “I am not leading you to either an execution or a meeting of the Imperial Court.”

Since they would probably amount to the same thing, Kaylin relaxed and trailed behind the Dragon who was, truth be told, her favorite teacher, not that this said much. He led her to the rooms he used to meet with individuals, and she paused by the large, leaded windows that looked out at the Halls of Law. They seemed distant and remote to her, and she didn’t like it.

“Lord Tiamaris has made a preliminary report,” Sanabalis told her, as he sat heavily in an armchair designed to take the weight of a Dragon. “Some research is now being done by the Arkon, which may give you the luxury of a small break. I suggest,” he added, gesturing at the food that had been laid out on the small round table in front of him, “that you use it.”

The Arkon was the palace’s version of a librarian. He was also the oldest Dragon at Court, and technically not called Lord, and his hoard was the library. Kaylin’s understanding of the Dragon term hoard wasn’t exact, but time had made clear that it meant “touch any of my stuff and die horribly.”