Page 23 of Cast in Conflict

“She’s not technically—”

“Out.” He breathed a small plume of actual fire as he spoke.

Kaylin didn’t need to be told twice. To be fair, she didn’t need to be told once, either.

“Is that what you believe?” Severn asked, as they crossed into what had once been the border zone.

“No. I mean, it’s true—I think Bellusdeo is the perfect ally for Tara or any of the Towers, but...no. I think she actually cares about Bellusdeo’s happiness. And Bellusdeo hasn’t been happy for a long, long time.”

“War didn’t make her happy.”

“No.”

“War would make her happy now?”

“I’m going to punch you if you keep this up.”

Severn grinned.

It was true, though. War hadn’t made Bellusdeo happy. Being here, being free, being alive, hadn’t exactly made her happy. Knowing that she was the only hope for the continuance of the Dragon race hadn’t made her happy. But Kaylin didn’t inherently believe that Bellusdeo was doomed to unhappiness.

Maybe all that was left was a choice between different unhappinesses. What was the thing that would make her the least unhappy?

She cursed in Leontine. “Fine. I think we all want Bellusdeo to be happy, and none of us understand how that would work—but we all have ideas. Except for Tiamaris and the Emperor.”

“Let’s talk to the chancellor and see what he has to say. We won’t be accompanying Bellusdeo anywhere today unless she happens to be at the Academia when we arrive.”

Kaylin’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t expect him to be in a good mood. Not if he singed Emmerian’s cape—Emmerian is the least confrontational of the Dragons.”

The streets, as Tara had said, didn’t become elongated or compressed; they didn’t lose color. They seemed solid and as real as any other streets in the fief as Kaylin and Severn walked down them.

They weren’t normal streets, however. The border zone as it existed had become absorbed somehow in the resurrection of the Academia, under its new chancellor. All of these newly solid streets somehow formed borders and boundaries that transcribed the Academia. They didn’t lead to Nightshade, the next fief over. She could turn heel—and tried—and follow the streets back to Tiamaris; different streets must exist in Nightshade now that led to the Academia.

There seemed to be no streets that connected the actual neighboring fiefs.

This made a kind of sense to Kaylin. If one of the Towers fell, the contamination or corruption could not spread to zones the other Towers occupied. It could, however, spread to Elantra, the city that Kaylin—and many, many others—called home.

“These streets still make no sense.”

Severn nodded. “They would be difficult to map, yes.” His tone made clear that some intrepid cartographer would be forced to do it anyway.

“The Emperor doesn’t rule the fiefs. He can’t just order someone to map them.”

“And the chancellor doesn’t rule Bellusdeo, either.”

Fair enough. Kaylin found maps useful—at least Records versions of maps—but not necessary. No doubt their existence in Records implied she was wrong.

“Do you think people could live here?”

“I don’t see why not. I imagine that some people will—but that might be at the chancellor’s discretion. I’m not sure how or why buildings that aren’t related to the Academia nonetheless survive—but clearly they do.”

“That’s another question to ask the chancellor. Some other day. I figure we’ll have our hands full with the Bellusdeo question.” It occurred to her that it might be a good idea to stop talking and start thinking, because she had to have an actual question or two to ask if she did manage to get his attention.

The Academia buildings were the buildings that Kaylin had first encountered, but they were, as the rest of the streets that led to it, solid, their colors the natural colors one would expect of stone, wood and glass. The central parkette around which the buildings curved sported trees and incredibly well-tended grass, as it had the first time Kaylin had seen it. But here, the grass was ridiculously emerald, and the trees in such perfect health that none of it looked real.

The buildings themselves were also in perfect repair. To be fair, if she thought about it, so was Helen—and these buildings were the heart of Academia. Killianas—Killian—was the central intelligence that kept the Academia functioning. He was a building with a much more amorphous set of instructions than Helen.

Or so Helen had said. His creation had been the work of not one, but practically all, of the extant Ancients, those beings who had created the various races that now populated both the city and the Empire. And beyond that, as well.

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