“All of us were changed.”
“What you could—and can—do changed, yes. But Sedarias, from all accounts, thinks like a Barrani Lord. Even now.”
Terrano buried his head in the crook of his arms. “What’s the point?” he asked, his voice slightly muffled. “What’s the point in thinking like that?”
“She is Barrani.”
“What does that even mean? Her family abandoned her, same as ours. They were willing to throw us away because we might—might—become powerful. They thought they’d own us, if we did. And you know what?” He lifted his head. “We did become powerful. We are way more powerful than any of our parents. We’re powerful enough—” He stopped. Kaylin didn’t think he was finished, and waited. “Does she want to go home? Does she want to retake the lands that should have been hers?”
“I think,” Bellusdeo said, her voice quiet and entirely free of emotion, “she wishes to reclaim the lands that should have collectively belonged to all of you.”
“But why? We don’t need them. They’re no use to us, anymore. We don’t need to sleep. We don’t need to eat. We don’t need to breathe—well, not the way you do. We don’t need to hide under tall stone roofs. Or wooden ones. We don’t need any of it!”
“Terrano,” the Dragon said, when he once again fell silent, “why are you here?” It was the question Kaylin had asked, and the question the Lord of the West March most wanted answered, but the way she now asked it transformed the words. There was a softness to them, a different kind of assumption—it wasn’t suspicion, though.
He didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t. She was a Dragon.
“I was born between two wars,” she told him.
He looked up, then.
“We might be the same age. I was one of nine sisters in an aerie of grouchy Dragons. We were considered young for our age, and of course, fragile. We were fragile because—”
“You were female.”
Her brows rose briefly before she nodded. “You know that much.”
“Of course I do.”
“Kaylin didn’t.”
He snorted. “Mortal. You can’t expect any better.”
The smidgen of sympathy Kaylin had almost started to feel vanished. But Bellusdeo merely nodded. “I was born on this world. But the aerie was lost to Shadow, and when we emerged—my sisters and I—we emerged to different stars, a different sky.”
He lifted his head, placing his chin on his arms, arrested.
“I was not as you were. We were not sacrificed on the altar of war. But we were lost, regardless. We—none of us—were adults. We were as helpless as Lord Kaylin. And I lost my sisters, one by one, to the Shadows. I lost them, we lost each other, searching for our names. I lost some because, in finding names, their center could not hold. They could not maintain cohesion of one form or the other.
“Understand that Barrani make outcastes for political reasons, for personal gain. Dragons don’t.”
“Oh?”
“If we want political power, we kill our enemies.”
“We do that, too,” he said, quickly.
“We don’t look for consensus. We don’t attempt to gather armies. We try to kill our enemies. Or they try to kill us. I believe one of your historical High Lords called us barbarous savages, better than animals only because we were Immortal.” She shrugged. “Our outcastes are therefore above politics, or beneath politics; opinions differ. Enemies are personal. Outcastes are like terrifying natural disasters. One might feel threatened by an earthquake, and one does what one can to survive it—but one cannot take revenge against the earth.”
“I think it’s been tried,” Terrano said. His animosity had faded; he was looking at Bellusdeo as if he’d only just seen her and didn’t quite understand what it was he was seeing.
“Had my sisters and I remained in the Aerie, we would have come into our power naturally. We start out as the feeblest of the children; effort must be taken to preserve us. It is not an effort that is made for the males, because it is not required. When we do come into our power, however, we have far less difficulty controlling its use. I am curious about your Sedarias.”
“Not mine.”
Bellusdeo’s smile was brief, but genuine. “I confess I am fond of Annarion. I understand him. I understand his goals. I do not understand Mandoran.” She exhaled a bit of smoke. “But were they Dragons, both would be outcaste.”
Before Terrano’s outrage could express itself in words—or worse—Bellusdeo continued. “To the Dragons, I believe I would be considered a borderline case; were I not female, were the Dragons not so few in number, safety would probably dictate my death.”
“If they could kill you.”
Her smile was deeper, and something in it implied serious fangs, although at the moment, she didn’t have any. “Indeed. I would not lie down and expose my figurative throat; I feel that I have as much right to exist as they do. But I would, wouldn’t I?”
He nodded. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because the Barrani do not, and did not, do as the Dragons have done throughout our history. Barrani wake to one name. They live their lives, spend their existence, with that name. There are apparently those who attempt to divest themselves—deliberately—of their names. But absent that attempt, they are a single, indivisible whole.
“Dragons are not. They come into the world with a single name, but that single name is half of what they require. They have the capacity to hold a duality of names—but they are not considered Dragons if they cannot meld the duality into a single whole.
“Those who cannot are not considered dangerous. It is those who can that are.”
“But...you all can.”
“Yes, if we are adults, we can. But there are those who do not contain that duality. It is the foundation for their attempt to take more, to build more, to be more.”
And Kaylin suddenly remembered the one time she had seen the outcaste Dragon’s name. It had been far more complicated than any other True Word she had ever seen. It had reminded her, not of Barrani, but...of a world. A small world.
“You think we’re like that.”
“No. I was, I admit, concerned. I do not know the names of your kin; I do not know the names of my own. But they are alive because of those names.”
“And I’m not.”
Silence again. “I did not find my adult name on my own,” Bellusdeo said. It sounded like a confession. “But it is mine, regardless.
“But you did not return to your name. I do not know what you are. Because the Barrani are political, they will accept your cohort as Barrani, at least in public speech and interaction. But they know—as you do—that that is now only a small part of what they are capable of being.” She exhaled more smoke. “The world I grew up in, the world I ruled in its twilight, was destroyed by Shadow. And I see that Shadow in you.”
He sat up.
“But I see it in your Hallionne, as well. And it is...possible...that my understanding of Shadow is too narrow.”
Kaylin’s jaw dropped.
“Do I have something on my face?”