He looked surprised at the question. “Yes, of course.”
“Blink occasionally. And stare less.”
This confused him. Which, given his origins, was probably to be expected. “The mark on my face was put there by the fieflord of Nightshade.”
Gilbert rose and bowed. “Then it is to you I must speak. You are Lord Kaylin?”
“I am Private Neya,” she replied, uncomfortable—as she always was—with the Barrani title. It had a weight she didn’t understand how to shoulder, and even if she could, wasn’t certain she wanted. “I’m a Hawk, and I serve the Emperor’s law.”
“Yes. I do not see that these are mutually exclusive.”
“What, exactly, do you need to speak with me about?”
“Lord Nightshade,” he replied. “I carry a message for you.”
Nightshade’s name—his True Name—reverberated in the hush that followed.
Calarnenne.
There was no answer. There had been no answer for weeks now, and the silence was slowly driving his younger brother insane.
It was Kaylin who attempted to repair the break in the conversation. “You’ve met him?”
“Yes, and no. If you enter Ravellon now, you will not find him.”
Kaylin nodded.
“But he is to be found there—or so he hopes—in the future.”
*
“She is not traveling to Ravellon,” Bellusdeo said flatly.
“It’s illegal,” Kaylin added, although the clarification probably wasn’t necessary, given the color of Bellusdeo’s eyes.
“It is not safe,” Gilbert agreed, as if that was the entire subtext of Bellusdeo’s statement. “But I was tasked with delivering a message.”
“From whom?”
Gilbert frowned. Kaylin considered the question a bit pointless, all things considered. “From—” and here he spoke a word that was thunder. With lightning for emphasis.
All of the hair on Kaylin’s body stood on end; her skin instantly broke out in the worst of the rashes that magic caused. In case there was any doubt, her arms—beneath the shroud of long sleeves—began to glow. It was not a glow that could be easily missed. Kaylin couldn’t fit syllables into the word—or words—that Gilbert had just uttered. She could not repeat the sounds.
The small dragon, however, lifted his head, squawking, and the pearly gray cloud that had hovered in place since he’d exhaled it began to move. It descended, and when it was a foot away from the top of the table on which Kattea had settled both food and drink, Kaylin leaped forward to rescue them.
The small dragon bit her ear without drawing blood; his eye rolling would have been at home on a Barrani face, if Barrani faces had contained eyes that looked like black opals.
“I don’t care,” she snapped. “You can do whatever you’re doing without destroying food.”
“Perhaps he means to imply that the furniture is more valuable than the food.”
Maybe it was. “You can’t eat furniture,” Kaylin replied. “Believe me. I’ve been hungry enough to try.” Not that she had any memory of that herself—but she dimly remembered the humorous stories that had sprung from the attempt. She set the tray on the ground nearest the girl who’d carried it so precariously into the room.
The cloud descended until it touched the surface of the table. From there, it rose. No, Kaylin thought, it unfolded, springing up in all directions from the wooden surface as if it had absorbed the base property and structure of the wood and was transforming it. What emerged, growing as if by layer, was something that might, in a nightmare, be a...dollhouse. It had what appeared to be doors. It had walls. It had a roof—or multiple roofs, as the various stories of the building, misaligned and not by any means entirely straight, expanded. It had towers, and one of these reached the height of ceilings that were much more generous than Kaylin’s previous home had once had.
Kaylin might have found it as magical an experience as Kattea clearly did, had her skin not ached so badly. Even her forehead throbbed; the only mark on her skin that didn’t hurt was the mark Nightshade had left there.
“What is this?” she asked.
Shaking his head, Gilbert said, “You must ask your companion; it is not a structure of my choosing.”
“But it grew in response to your answer.”
“Yes.” Gilbert knelt by the side of what could no longer be called a table, studying the structure that had replaced it.
“Records?” Kaylin asked Teela.
Teela blinked and then nodded. “The Sergeant is not going to be happy.”
“Not very, no—especially since we haven’t even started on the crime scene yet.”
*