Page 90 of Cast in Conflict

Bellusdeo’s grin was brief, but genuine. “I don’t think that’s what he expected from me.” She spoke Elantran.

“No, and not for the reasons that occupy others,” he continued in Barrani.

“If I had to guess,” Kaylin said, almost sorry to interrupt them, because what Emmerian had said was important with regards to Bellusdeo, “I’d say if this is a door ward, it’s meant for Emmerian to open.”

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Emmerian considered this, and nodded. He stepped forward, an odd shadow of a smile on his lips, and placed his left palm across the ward, the gesture almost possessive, as if he were claiming it for himself.

The door didn’t open; it vanished, fading from sight beneath Emmerian’s palm.

It was therefore Emmerian who led the way in. If Bellusdeo resented this, it didn’t show. Hope squawked loudly, his screechy, almost birdlike tone filling the room beyond the door. It was a very, very tall, very wide hall, and it reminded Kaylin of the High Halls in its construction, except for one thing: while the floors, ceilings, and pillars were stone, they appeared to be made from a single piece; there were no seams, nothing that implied this had been built by people who had to rely on experience and tools.

The superficial resemblance to the High Halls ended; although pillars supported the vaulted ceilings above, there were no statues, no paintings, no tapestries, on any of the walls. There was an arch, not a door, at the far end—which she had to squint to see, the room was so vast. She had walked beats smaller in her time as a Hawk.

“One could fly in this room,” Bellusdeo said softly.

Emmerian nodded. “The door ward implies it.”

“And simultaneously implies the inverse: one can, but should not.”

Hope’s squawking had taken figurative wing, and now rebounded off uncarpeted stone, from floor to ceiling. If the Tower could hear and understand Kaylin’s familiar, it gave no sign.

“Hello?” she said, joining what she hoped was her familiar’s attempt to greet or otherwise converse with the core of the Tower.

Emmerian added Barrani words of greeting.

Bellusdeo, however, added draconic. Her voice was loud enough to cause tremors in the floor on which they all stood.

None of these attempts reached the Tower. Kaylin didn’t think the Tower was like Killianas; it wasn’t so shuttered or injured that it couldn’t, or didn’t, hear. The door ward had been placed; the cave and the tunnel leading to it had been created as unspoken permission to enter.

Or to risk entering.

Tiamaris had, long ago, said something about visiting the Towers; he didn’t consider survival—in the absence of a neutral lord—to be guaranteed.

Tiamaris’s Tower had had no lord. And...Tara was not the Tower’s name. She had had a name. She had forgotten it. And she had offered Kaylin the opportunity to give her a name that real people would use. Not that Tiamaris wasn’t a real person—but he was lord, not citizen. He was not what Kaylin had once been.

The Tower had reminded Kaylin of every wrong she had ever committed in the fief of Barren. Every wrong, every mistake she couldn’t fix, every death she couldn’t atone for. She bowed her head.

Bowed her head and lifted it.

It was true. It was all true, just as it had been when Tara had pushed her. But there were other truths, and she had chosen to live by them, no matter how difficult it became. She hated to be judged, it was true—but the judgment that mattered here, if one didn’t include fire-breathing Emperors or Leontine sergeants, was hers. And the only thing she had offered it, and could offer it now, was never again.

She wondered if either Emmerian or Bellusdeo were now experiencing what she had experienced her first time in Tara.

Bellusdeo roared; Kaylin wasn’t given enough time to cover her ears, given proximity and the silence the Dragon broke. She roared again, and this time, she began to transform in a hall that was large enough she could.

Emmerian, however, did not. He was grim, his eyes a steady, darkening orange. Whatever Bellusdeo had heard, he had heard, but he let her take the lead. Kaylin thought he might let her take the lead for the rest of eternity, his involvement in the household argument an error he was determined never to repeat.

She couldn’t tell if Bellusdeo had been threatened; she could tell the Dragon was angry; her eyes were red.

Red, Kaylin realized, with growing horror, and weeping.

It was the answer to the question she’d been way too smart to ask out loud. Yes. At least one person present was being tested and prodded. She liked it no more than Kaylin had. But Kaylin’s anger wasn’t a Dragon’s anger, or rather, the outcome of the two angers differed. Dragons could cause a lot of damage when they went on the rampage. Maybe that’s the reason there was no art in this room. Just the pillars themselves, standing between floor and ceiling.

Kaylin looked to Emmerian; he hadn’t taken his eyes off Bellusdeo, but his lips were a compressed, white line.

Severn kept his distance as well.

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