*
Four guards, wearing something that was the Barrani variant of a tabard, formed up around them—two in front and two in back. Teela, dressed for Court, looked every inch a Barrani High Lord. Kaylin didn’t have Barrani hearing, but understood from the half-heard words that at least one of these guards had tactfully suggested that four was cutting it too close; he wanted to increase the number.
Teela was not impressed by this and the suggestion wasn’t repeated. Nor did any of the other guards chime in with support. She commanded, brusquely, and they obeyed.
This was not the first time that Kaylin had been in Teela’s personal rooms within the High Halls, but she felt less overwhelmed—in part because she wasn’t wearing an awkward, expensive dress that made her feel a bit like a clown—and she paid slightly more attention.
She was accustomed to seeing Teela within Helen’s boundaries. And before that, in her apartment, or in a tavern. She now had familiarity with Teela as a High Lord, and she was less uncomfortable with the concept than she had been. It’s true she wanted Teela to be all Hawk, all the time, but she had come to accept that the fact that Teela had a life outside of the Halls didn’t make her any less Teela.
Outside of the vestibule, for want of a better word, the walls were adorned with both hangings and paintings; there were small statues in stone alcoves between stone frames that otherwise housed wooden doors. One of those doors was warded; the others were not. There were carpet runners of a deep, deep green, with dark blue embroidery that seemed to seep up in a pattern. Edged in ivory and gold, they implied a forest at night. Or a forest of night.
“These are enchanted,” Kaylin observed.
“They are. I apologize if it makes you uncomfortable. Almost anything of value within these rooms has rudimentary enchantments; some are passive, some active.”
“And if I ask how they’re active?”
Teela failed to reply.
*
Leaving Teela’s personal chambers, once the outer doors had been reached, was a journey through forbidding, almost martial, stone. Where the entrance to the High Halls boasted light, magnificent statues, and pillars at least three times Kaylin’s height, these halls spoke of blood and death and war for succession—any succession, any line. There were weapons, not hangings or paintings, as decorations; some had chipped blades or worn grips.
To Teela, they were irrelevant; it was the people in the halls—dressed, Kaylin assumed, as servants—that were not. Although Teela didn’t appear to actually see them, Kaylin wasn’t fooled. No Barrani Hawk had eyes that blue when they weren’t on high alert.
The guards formed an outer layer of protection, but Teela was at its heart. She had not chosen to wear the Dragonslaying sword, and Kaylin wondered, as the halls became slightly more crowded, if that had been smart. The weapon was almost a symbol of rank and power within the High Halls.
Kaylin wasn’t terribly surprised when her arms began to ache. The High Halls, like the Imperial Palace, was meant to be relatively secure. Security meant magic. While Teela’s gaze swept the Barrani in the halls, Kaylin’s was focused on the walls, the floor, the small alcoves, and once, on the beams of a transitional ceiling. What Teela couldn’t take down in personal combat would flatten Kaylin without difficulty; she was therefore free to practice magic recognition, such as it was.
Most magic just gave her hives. But some magic was more powerful, and to Kaylin’s vision, the casting of the spell left a weave of telltale sigils in its wake. The sigils were unique to the caster; if there were three sigils, it meant that there were three different enchantments in place. Sometimes it meant three mages had worked in concert, but more often, it meant they worked in sequence. Sigils did not decay with the passage of time; they decayed with the passage of the magic itself.
Teela had once been a member of the Arcanum. Kaylin knew this, but did not know anything else, like, say, when. Or why. Or why she’d quit. Teela was sometimes like a closed book and sometimes like a bloody vault. The part of her history that involved the Arcanum was in the vault. As a result, Teela had the ability to see and recognize magic; she didn’t have the ability to do so without preparation and time.
It was therefore Kaylin who said, “Stop!” in Elantran.
Teela stopped instantly. “Where?” she asked, in the same Elantran.
“Straight ahead. Maybe another ten feet.” Kaylin poked the familiar. He chirped like a bird. An angry bird.
“You’re frowning.”
Kaylin nodded. “I can see one strong, sharp sigil. It’s almost like it’s been carved in the air itself—and it’s not like a door ward. It doesn’t seem to be embedded in anything.”
“Do you recognize the sigil?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean much. I can say without doubt that it’s not one of Evarrim’s spells.”
“Lord Evarrim.”
“Whatever.”
“This,” Teela replied, as she lifted her hands, “is why I prefer to leave you at home.”
“If it helps, I don’t use Dragon titles, either.”
“Or table manners. Although, to be fair, yours have improved markedly in the past month. Manners, however, are particularly useful among my kin. They are tools of diplomacy when used correctly.”
“According to Bellusdeo, so is war.”
This pulled a chuckle out of Teela that Kaylin would have bet wasn’t there. “It is to avoid deploying that tool that manners are frequently best used. Now be quiet and let me concentrate.”
Severn unwound his weapon chain. If the Barrani guard found this offensive, it didn’t show. Then again, both Kaylin and Severn were wearing Hawk colors, and the Barrani generally considered the Hawks barely worth notice. There were advantages to being invisible.
There were advantages to being multilingual as well. It meant Kaylin could understand the very quiet, very Leontine phrase that Teela used. “Can you break it?”
“Not safely—for you.”
“Severn?”
“Probably.” He didn’t start the weapon chain spinning, and wouldn’t until the guard formation changed. He looked to Teela for permission.
“What, in your opinion, does the spell do?” Teela asked.
Kaylin, however, missed the first iteration because her arms had begun to glow. Although the marks that adorned most of her skin were hidden by long sleeves, the cloth could only mute the light when it reached a certain level. “Nothing good.” She swiveled her head in the familiar’s direction. “Are you willing to risk him eating it?”
“There are other halls we can take, but they have different drawbacks, the biggest being the height of the ceiling.”