Michelle Sagara - Cast in Peril

But Kaylin didn’t need to hear more, because something flew in through the open window.

Chapter 2

Kaylin’s first instinct was to ram the shutters shut, but she was carrying the egg, and she’d have to set it down—or drop it. “Get down, Bellusdeo.” Her voice was sharp, harsh.

Bellusdeo caught Kaylin by the shoulders and dragged her from the window as Kaylin ducked out of any line of sight that wasn’t at a severe angle and tried to see where the crossbow bolt had landed. She didn’t find it.

“Kaylin, we have to leave.”

“If there’s more than one assassin,” Kaylin countered, “running out the door in a panic is playing into their hands.” She grabbed for the egg’s carton as a second bolt flew through the open window.

Except it wasn’t a bolt. Kaylin felt the hair on her neck instantly stand at attention, which was bad; the marks on her body began to burn, which was worse. She couldn’t see what she’d clearly heard land on the floor of her apartment, but she didn’t need to see it to know—suddenly and completely—what it was. Her eyes widened.

“Gods—Bellusdeo—it’s an Arcane bomb—”

The room exploded.

* * *

Wood flew out in a wide circle: shutters, parts of the wall, wooden floor slats, and the soft wood that formed their base. Her mattress sent feathers into the air, and the feathers were caught in a blue, blue sizzle, becoming a miniature lightning storm. There was so damn much magic in the room, Kaylin’s entire body was screaming in pain on the way to total numbness.

Which was better than being dead.

Bellusdeo had her arms around Kaylin and her back toward the window; her body was pressed against the egg that Kaylin still held between almost nerveless palms. The world expanded around them; shards of mirror flew past Kaylin’s cheek and lodged in the Dragon’s hair. The floor beneath their feet cracked and gave; the joists above their heads did the same, bending up toward someone else’s floor. Wind whipped whatever wasn’t nailed down through the air—which would, in this apartment, be everything.

Everything except the two women who stood at what had once been its center. Kaylin could see a sphere surrounding them; it was a soft, pale gold, like the color of a living word—but there were no words to shed it.

“Are you all right?” she shouted.

Bellusdeo nodded. Her eyes were still bloodred, and her hands were like bruising pincers.

“I didn’t know you were so powerful—”

Bellusdeo’s brows rose into her very disheveled hair. “I’m not. This isn’t me.”

“It’s not me, either.” Kaylin looked at the bracer on her wrist; its gems’ lights were flashing so quickly they looked like chaos embedded in gold. Somewhere above, below, and to the right, people began to shout and scream as Kaylin looked at her hands.

For once, Kaylin was barely aware of the civilians.

The egg’s shell had cracked, and bits of it were flying in the unnatural wind the Arcane bomb had caused. It didn’t matter. What was in—what had been surrounded by—that shell stared up at her. It was small and pale; it was also, like slightly smoky glass, translucent. Everything except its eyes. Its eyes were disturbing; they had no irises, no pupils, no whites. They would have been gray or silver, except for the constant, moving flecks of color that seemed to all but swim across their surface. Like opals, she thought.

Or, remembering the effects of the Shadow that had destroyed the watchtowers in the fief formerly known as Barren, like malignant storms.

Bellusdeo looked down, as well. She tried to move out of the way, but since she didn’t actually let go of Kaylin’s shoulders, it was awkward. Dragons weren’t known for their flexibility. She hissed, a wordless sibilant. “Kaylin, your arm.”

“The bracer does that some of the time. Ignore it.”

“I wasn’t talking about your bracer. Your—your marks, Chosen.”

Kaylin frowned. She couldn’t take her eyes off the small creature—and only in part because she didn’t want to. It had the form and shape of something reptilian, but not the actual scales. A long neck, a long tail, and a delicate head with a tapered jaw, the beast now sat in her palms.

“Kaylin.”

It opened its mouth, revealing translucent teeth, translucent tongue, and some hint of translucent upper palate. “I think—I think it’s yawning.”

“I think you’re crazy,” Bellusdeo snapped in Elantran. In Barrani, she added, “Is that the right word? It means insane.”

“Yes.” But when it stretched its neck, its tongue flickering like a snake’s tongue might, she saw the last little bit of its body as it slowly unfurled wings. For something that fit more or less in the palm of her hand—well, a little less—it had long wings. Long wings; eyes like opals.

“Kaylin—”

Kaylin shook herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking at the spot where the floor wasn’t anymore. It happened to be far beneath her feet, but she hadn’t yet fallen. Neither had the weightier Bellusdeo. “What about the marks?”

“If you can manage to divert your gaze by a few degrees, you’ll see for yourself.”

Kaylin looked slightly over the small creature’s head. “Oh.”

“Oh, you say.”

One of the marks from Kaylin’s arm was floating in the air above the small creature’s head, hovering, in miniature, the way the spoken True Words did. “Bellusdeo, can you read it? Can you tell me what it means?”

Bellusdeo shook her head. “I was taught very little of the ancient tongue.”

“But you’re as old as the Arkon—”

“Yes. I was not, however, considered adult in my Aerie, because I wasn’t. What I learned, I learned by subterfuge and charm. Mostly charm.”

“It wouldn’t kill you to try that on Diarmat. It might, at this point, kill him.”

The rune began to thin as Kaylin watched it. No, not thin—compress. Three horizontal strokes began to shift their position, making a jumble of a pattern that had, for a moment, looked tantalizingly familiar. There was a short, fat dot in the center of the pattern, and slender, vertical squiggles to the left; those were pulled in as well, until there was something the shape of a very odd funnel just above the hatchling’s delicate head.

It flicked its tongue and then roared. Which came out as a pretty pathetic squawk. As it inhaled to try again, the funnel above its head began to descend; the creature opened its mouth and…began to eat it. Or drink from it.

“Bellusdeo, pinch me. Oh, never mind—you already are.”

Bellusdeo, however, was staring at the creature. “Do you understand what you have in your hands?” she finally asked in a hushed voice.

“A baby Dragon?”

“Remind me to speak to the Emperor about the standards of your biological education,” was the scathing reply. “Anything that small and delicate that hatched in the Aerie would be crushed or suffocated before it got out of its shell.”

“Well, it looks like a Dragon, except for the color.”

“It looks nothing like a Dragon!”

Kaylin decided not to press the point.

“And if it were, we’d both be dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a familiar,” Bellusdeo replied. “They’re almost legendary creatures. No, let me rephrase that: they are legendary creatures. I’ve never seen one before.”

“Then how do you know what it is?”

“Familiars, according to legend, are born in magical conflagration.”

“From eggs?”

“Funnily enough, the legends didn’t specify. This one, though, was.”

“What can you tell me about familiars? From legend, I mean,” she added hastily.

“Very little. They were the creatures of sorcerers, and in one particular story, the sorcerer who sought to summon a familiar destroyed half a world in the attempt.”