Page 105 of Cast in Conflict

Severn shrugged. “Training room?”

“Parlor first.” She was reasonably certain the cohort wouldn’t actually kill each other, and she was absolutely certain Emmerian wouldn’t injure Bellusdeo, possibly even in self-defense. No.

She understood why Mandoran had risked his life to interfere with Bellusdeo in the Tower; she understood what the danger he’d faced then was. She wanted to make certain that it wasn’t happening again.

The door to the parlor was closed; no smoke trailed out from the space between door and jamb. If Bellusdeo and Emmerian were fighting, no evidence of that was clear.

Until Bellusdeo roared.

Kaylin reached for the door. Severn caught her arm and shook his head. “She’s angry, she’s not enraged. They’re having a discussion. It’s the cohort we need to see.”

Helen’s voice didn’t tell them to stay put, which confirmed Severn’s opinion. She did, however, caution them about the avenues of safe approach.

“What does that even mean?” Kaylin demanded, as she jogged towards the closet door that led to the expansive training rooms.

Helen didn’t answer. Then again, she didn’t need to. Kaylin opened the door into a field. A battlefield, apparently, given the broken standards that awkwardly adorned it. There were as yet no bodies, but grass had been stripped from the earth by the passage of many feet—some of them hoofed, by the look of the damage. “Wrong room.”

Severn was looking at the banners. He turned back toward the door and exhaled, shoulders slumping.

There was no door. Of course there was no door.

Kaylin let out a stream of Leontine invective.

“She did warn us.”

“I want more information in my warnings. Damn it.” Kaylin listened for the sound of clashing armies, clashing forces, that these banners implied. Severn, however, walked to the nearest. Kaylin had missed it; the pole had been sheared in half at an angle, and the cloth lay across the ground. He lifted it.

It was, to Kaylin’s eye, Barrani.

“It’s Carmanne’s standard. Serralyn’s family.”

“She’s not here.”

“I don’t think this is an entirely physical fight.” He carefully flattened the standard and then rolled it up, as if it were a carpet. “Helen?”

A small wagon appeared to the left of where Kaylin was standing. Helen herself didn’t speak.

They picked their way across this field of standards; some listed; some were slashed or torn. At each, Severn paused to retrieve the cloth, or what remained of it, and at each, he named the Barrani family that it signified, adding the names of the cohort as necessary.

Each name added to the weight of Kaylin’s worry, enlarging it. She liked the cohort. As a group. As individuals. Even Sedarias. She liked what they had built; that they had chosen to trust each other, that they were willing to kill and die for each other.

This was the downside of that. The air fairly thrummed with enraged betrayal.

She stopped.

Air did not thrum with enraged betrayal. But she felt it, simmering in the earth beneath both of their feet. This was a battlefield, yes—but Kaylin was almost certain it was a battlefield of one.

Kaylin spoke a single name out loud. “Sedarias.”

A hand reached out and clamped itself over her mouth. She drove her elbow backward. Connected with nothing. The hand was disembodied. One of the cohort, then. She didn’t know which one; she’d never taken the time to memorize what their hands looked like. She nodded.

The hand fell instantly away from her mouth.

Speaking far more quietly, Kaylin said, “This is Sedarias’s battlefield.”

“It is.” It was Terrano.

“I thought you were at the Academia.”

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