“Chosen,” he said. She could hear the word, could feel her body reverberate with the two syllables. The high-pitched, painful shriek was gone.
She opened her mouth to reply, but words deserted her; her mouth was too dry, her throat too constricted. She forced herself to breathe normally. Wondered what she was inhaling.
“There is danger, here.” He looked away, to Terrano. “I am...free? I am free. If you release me, I will not harm you, and I will not return to Ravellon.” The word he used was different; Kaylin could hear the clashing overlay of syllables, but it didn’t change the heart of what he’d actually said.
Terrano hesitated.
“It is safe,” Alsanis said quietly. “They will do no harm to me.”
Terrano let go. As he did, Kaylin saw that his hand was bleeding. The person that he’d caught and held in its insect shape remained standing; he made no further attempt to flee. But he turned to the Avatar of the Hallionne, and lifted his hands in a complicated dance of motion that seemed deliberate, graceful.
It took a moment for Kaylin to realize that this was his version of a bow: a gesture of respect. What surprised her was Alsanis; he lifted his hands in a motion that, while far less fluid, appeared to be almost the same.
“It is a greeting,” Alsanis said, glancing at Kaylin. “An old greeting. Words once had different meanings, different textures, and to speak them at all required power and will, focus and certainty; they were not unlike bright, beautiful cages. There are reasons why you cannot speak that ancient language. And no, Lord Kaylin, it does not come easily to even one such as I.”
She wondered where he’d seen that greeting, where he’d learned it, what etiquette schools—and here, an image of angry Diarmat, not that there was any other kind, filled her mind—he had been forced to attend.
Alsanis laughed.
“I come from the east,” the stranger said. “I was sent out to gather information. They will know that I am lost to them.”
“Who sent you?” It was Kaylin who asked. Terrano was staring at the stranger, his forehead creased in a deepening frown, as if he couldn’t quite bring his gaze into focus. There was no enmity in it, no hostility.
The stranger’s eyes lit up. Literally. The facets that made the eyes look insect-like began to flash, to spark; he lifted his hands, and his fingers once again did a strange, deliberate dance through air. But what had she expected? That he somehow dislodge a name, an identifier, something that Kaylin, as a Hawk, might hope for when questioning the witness to a crime? He was a Shadow.
But he’d said he was free. Free, now.
“Alsanis, what the hells is Shadow?” It was a question she’d asked before, sometimes in desperation, sometimes in fear, but she’d never asked it like this.
There was no response. From out of the eyes of the stranger, bleeding into the air, came something that looked like multicolored smoke, if smoke were liquid. That smoke dribbled in all directions, spreading and meshing until it resembled something solid. Kaylin tried to think of it as a Records display, because those changed from mirror to mirror. She mostly succeeded, until she stopped having to try.
What she had expected to form was some envoy of Shadow; something that was a mishmash of body parts in the wrong places, and in the wrong quantities. Or a Dragon. A big black Dragon. Neither would have surprised her.
What she got instead sucked all the air out of her lungs—and everyone else’s as well.
It was a Barrani man. He wore Court robes and a very slender tiara; his eyes were Barrani blue, his skin flawless, his posture elegant, his expression forbidding.
Lirienne shut down instantly. She could not hear his thoughts, could not feel any of his emotional reactions. Kaylin held his name, not the other way around. In theory, Kaylin could force her way in. But that would be costly for both of them.
More costly, by far, for you. It was Nightshade. His interior voice was ice. She was almost surprised to hear from him, given she was in the Hallionne; Helen seldom allowed his voice to penetrate her barriers.
You recognize him.
Yes. So does your kyuthe, if I am not mistaken.
He’s Barrani.
Oh yes, Kaylin. He is Barrani, and a Lord of the High Court. If your Shadow is truly free, if it does not lie, there is a compromise in the structure of the High Court itself, and a failure in the tower.
Bellusdeo did not recognize the man, but recognized the significance regardless, and her eyes were already almost red. She turned instantly to the Lord of the West March. He did not appear to notice.
You are aware of the ways in which such a breach might occur.
She nodded, although Nightshade wasn’t there to see it.
“He sent me,” the Shadow said, his words almost superfluous.
*
Alsanis reacted first. His hands moved, all grace lost to urgency. But the stranger was looking, almost expectantly, at Kaylin.
She struggled to find her voice; it came out thin. “When did he send you?”
The concept of when clearly caused some difficulty, which wasn’t entirely a surprise. But he said, “I traveled directly when word reached him of your arrival in this place.”
There was cacophony in her head, then. Ynpharion spoke. Nightshade spoke. Lirienne was silent, but it didn’t matter; the imperative, the concern, the anger, fell into her mind like a bad traffic accident on a busy, busy street. Guys! she shouted internally. Can you please just shut the hells up for a minute?
“My arrival? Our arrival? Or Terrano’s arrival?” As she spoke, she pointed; she was aware that his sense of people as individuals might not be the same as hers, but his answer, if it could be extracted, was important.
“Yours, Chosen.” He frowned. “Yours and the Dragon’s.”
She needed a measure of time, now. She needed a way to ask how long ago was this and have it be both understood and answered.
Alsanis spoke. She didn’t understand the words. The stranger, however, frowned. Beside the image of the Barrani Lord, a second image began to form; at first Kaylin thought he was adding color and setting to the former; sky appeared, and beneath it, something that might have been grass or weeds.
Alsanis nodded, and Kaylin watched. Nothing changed, to her eye, except the color of the sky itself. She knew roughly when she’d left Elantra; she didn’t know exactly when she’d arrived at the Hallionne Orbaranne. She knew that she’d lost time trying to walk through a portal, but not how much time. But to her the sky was a night sky, shading into morning.
Alsanis, however, saw more, or understood more. He frowned. “Lord Kaylin.”
“Please translate,” she said, in High Barrani.
He closed his eyes. Unlike the stranger, his eyes had lids. The silence was tense; seeds of fear and suspicion had taken root.