Page 185 of Cast in Conflict

“You could come with us, and you could visit Starrante.”

“I cannot leave this place.” He disengaged his limbs, allowing Kaylin free motion once again. She was loath to remove her palms; the marks that now floated in front of her face—three in all—were still glowing. Something should be done here; she wasn’t certain what.

Lifting a hand, she touched one of the three marks; felt its immediate weight as it lost buoyancy. The new mark on her palm became instantly heavy as well, as if the two words—old and new—were now interacting or merging to form a single whole.

She didn’t know what either meant, but she could guess, given the Wevaran’s reaction to the new one. Somehow, the new mark encapsulated what she had heard—what she had tried to hear clearly. Her attempt to do so had brought her to this place.

Kill me. Free me.

As if death and freedom were the same thing. And she knew that one too well. On the day she had first entered the Hawklord’s Tower, they had had the exact same meaning to her: death was the only freedom she was allowed. There was no other way to escape from...herself.

From the truth of what she had done and been. From the future that stretched out, endless, before her: more of the same. More killing. More failure. More death. If she had died as she had intended, she would have rid the world of one more ugly thing it didn’t need.

And yet, death wasn’t what had awaited her there. Death wasn’t what she’d been offered. The horror that she had turned her life into was not the only life she could live; it was perhaps the first time she had truly seen that since she’d fled Nightshade.

Her life had become more than pain and self-loathing. She had done everything she could—everything, no matter how resentfully—to walk a different path. To seek a different end. To live a life that had never seemed possible. It was a life she had wanted. A life she still didn’t believe—on the bad days—she deserved. She was arresting people who had done far less than she’d done in Barren.

But she was grateful to the Hawklord. To the Hawks. To the life they had offered someone who didn’t deserve it. She was grateful to see the foundling hall, the midwives’ guild, the Leontine quarter. Even the Tha’alani.

She knew that death was not the only freedom she was allowed.

And she knew that death was the freedom that voice—thrumming through Mandoran’s body—wanted. Had she followed it, had she desperately listened for it, because of her personal experience? She wanted to tell whatever was whispering or shouting those words that there was another way. A better way. A different way.

Harder, she thought, but better.

As if he could hear what she did not put into words—and given her experience with people who built and owned the spaces they occupied, she thought he might—he said, “You are not the same. You are mortal, child. There is an end to you. There is an end to your words, your voice. There is an end to the words that you might speak with any truth or strength.”

“And there’s no end for you.”

“Not that way. Time itself is not an enemy. It is not a friend.” But speaking, he looked at the word she now carried in her hand.

“Do you see it?” she asked, because she was now aware that others didn’t see what she saw when she looked at her marks.

“I hear it,” was his quiet reply. “I hear what you are saying, even if you do not. I wish you had fallen through a different wall—and that is unlike me.”

“What will you do?”

“Is that really the question you should be asking?”

Kaylin shrugged. “Probably not.” Most of the training she had received when it came to asking questions involved crimes, possible criminals, and general interrogation. “But I’m not sure how long this space will last.”

“The instability is unusual,” Bakkon replied. “It will not last.” The entirety of the Wevaran’s body shook, as if he were a wet cat who had come in out of the rain. All of the many eyes closed as Kaylin withdrew.

The mark, however, remained suspended in the air between them; the rest once again came to lie flat against her skin, their light dimming. She opened her hand to see that the new mark was also flattened against her right palm.

“How important are these books to you?”

“They are not more important than my life.”

She thought of Starrante. And then of the Wevaran who comprised Liatt’s Tower. And last, of the baby spiders devouring each other. This time, it was Kaylin who shook, as if to clear her head.

“Your life won’t be in danger if you stay?”

“I do not think it matters,” was the thin reply. “Mandoran, I must ask you to refrain from touching the books.”

“I wasn’t touching them. I was brushing off webs. Are you ready to go?” he added, in Elantran.

“I don’t think we should leave him behind,” Kaylin replied in the same language.

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