Page 39 of Cast in Conflict

“Until when? This is going to be a problem, and you know it. You already know there are arguments brewing. And you know what the Dragon is like.”

“That Dragon saved your lives.”

“Some of them, yes. Look—it’s not personal. We don’t want the Tower to spite her or injure her. We’re not trying to take something that’s hers, okay?”

“You don’t get it. The reason Candallar did whatever he did was because he didn’t care about Ravellon. He didn’t care about Shadow as more than an irrelevant passing concern. He certainly didn’t care about the citizens of his fief.

“For Bellusdeo, someone with your needs captaining that Tower is—what’s the word, Helen?”

“Anathema, I believe.”

“Right. It’s that. If she wasn’t angry, if she expected competition, this is exactly the worst thing for her to hear if there are already problems with the Candallar border.”

“We think she’s wrong.”

“Kaylin,” Helen said. “I have created a bubble. Is it visible to you?”

“It’s visible to me,” Terrano said.

“Is your name Kaylin?” Kaylin snapped. Hope squawked.

“That has nothing to do with us—that’s Helen’s fault!” Terrano told Kaylin’s familiar.

“Helen, is there more?”

The silence was heavy with hesitance. If buildings could exhale on an embarrassed sigh, this one now did. “There is one other factor. Teela is attempting—was attempting—to draw the debate to a close; Bellusdeo’s eyes were a very disturbing shade of red. She roared—the roaring started with Bellusdeo—and it is possible that the person monitoring her from outside heard that roar.”

“You’re not talking about Emmerian, are you?”

“Yes, dear. I’m sorry.”

“So...you let Emmerian in.”

“I had hoped that he would have a calming effect on Bellusdeo, or at least on the debate itself.”

Terrano had found the bubble that Helen had created. Kaylin knew this because he cohered within the space, becoming the annoying Barrani cohort member she knew. Kaylin couldn’t see the bubble itself, but understood that it was where Terrano currently stood. She moved quickly to join him.

“We’d probably lose at least a person or two to Bellusdeo if we were fighting at all fair. And if Helen allowed us to fight.”

Since neither of these things—fair fighting or Helen’s approval—were likely to happen, Kaylin snorted.

“But we’re not really keen on fighting two Dragons. Teela called Kariannos only after Emmerian burned down half the dining room.”

“Emmerian did?”

“Yes, dear.”

Kaylin reached the ground floor. If Emmerian had, as Helen said, burned down half the building, it was the back half.

“No. But I elected to move everyone, given the unfortunate heat of the argument.”

In anyone else, this would have been an attempt at black humor. In Helen’s case, the description was likely literal.

“Are they in the training rooms?”

“They are in a variant of the training room that I have not had cause to use for a very long time.”

“You do remember that Emmerian is part of the Dragon Court, right?”

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