The Emperor blinked. “Your familiar has lost cohesion?”
Squawk.
“Is that a formal way of asking if he’s invisible?”
“Ah, no. I have some experience with illusion and invisibility; I would be aware of him were he here and merely invisible. I am without guards and without my Court; I am not foolish enough to also forsake reasonable precautions. He is not merely invisible. I would not have said he was present at all were it not for his very audible voice.”
“I don’t really understand it myself, but at the moment he’s here in a way that we—or at least I—can’t see.” She frowned.
“You are thinking again.”
Still frowning, Kaylin began to walk. The familiar existed. He was here. She couldn’t see him, and neither could the Emperor. She didn’t understand it. No one else she knew did, either. But...small and squawky wasn’t terrifying. And any reasonable person might consider that stupid: he could change size, he could fight with Dragons, he clearly had motives of his own.
More important, it wasn’t the first strange invisibility-that-wasn’t-invisibility of the day.
Annarion and Mandoran could see the little stinker. Teela and Tain couldn’t. Helen probably could.
Helen couldn’t be moved; she was a building. But Annarion and Mandoran could. With the familiar’s aid, they could even be moved safely. Kaylin wanted to take them to the crime site and ask them what they saw. Were the bodies similar to the familiar in his current state?
They were there. They were physical, they were real, they were lifeless.
But until she’d removed the familiar’s wing from her eyes, she hadn’t seen them. It was the inverse of invisibility, to most people. And most would have no reason to doubt the truth of their senses—and their prior experience.
She turned in the direction of the familiar’s voice. “You’re like the bodies.”
His squawk was softer and more encouraging. It didn’t, however, give her any new information. She remembered, belatedly, that she had company when said company cleared his throat, which was never a promising sound.
“I’m sorry. The small dragon is hooked into a reality that the rest of us can’t directly experience, being alive, corporeal and...well, actually, that’s all I know. Helen understands it better, but she can’t explain it in words we have concepts for.”
“You think your current investigation is somehow connected to this phenomenon.”
“I am really hoping it isn’t. But...yes.”
“I ask that you do what I cannot,” he said. This was an enormously humbling request, but Kaylin’s mouth was already closed and she managed to keep it that way.
“She doesn’t hate you,” Kaylin replied—which, as replies went, was strictly third class—or lower. “She understands, probably better than I do, what Elantra means to you. She understands what her presence theoretically means to the Dragons. But she is never, ever going to beg more than she already has. And before you say she hasn’t, she’s living here. She came here with pretty much nothing. She has no money, no power and no status of her own. The one thing she has to offer, her one area of expertise, is Shadow.”
“And Shadow is unpredictably dangerous.”
“Yes. Believe that she’s aware of that.”
“You are not saying this idly.” His eyes grew more orange.
“...No. I’m doing that thing that I always do.”
“Babble?”
She reddened. “Yes, that, too. I’m talking myself into doing the right thing, even when I don’t want to do it. I told you before—my big fear isn’t about dying. It’s about losing the people I love.
“And Shadows don’t care about love. Or at least not about the people I love.”
“I understood that. Do you intend to take Bellusdeo into Shadow?”
“I don’t intend to take her anywhere. But...she intends to follow wherever this leads. I can’t actually order her to remain behind and expect her to obey me.”
“And I—nominally—can.”
Kaylin nodded.
“This is a test?”
No one with a functioning brain tested the Emperor.
His eyes, a deeper orange in color, made clear just how little he appreciated this. But he understood that if orders were to be given, he had to be the one to give them. And he now understood that the orders would have consequences. “I will not, as you call it, turn you to ash if Bellusdeo survives. There are things she might, in time, forgive. Your death at my hands will never be one of them. If she perishes while in your care, her opinion of your death will no longer be relevant.
“You have never seen me angry.”
She had seen him angry at least once, but wasn’t stupid enough to correct him.
“She is not mine,” the Emperor continued. “She is not my hoard.”
“Could she ever be someone’s? Could you?” It had never occurred to Kaylin until this moment that the concept of “hoard” was elastic enough to encompass actual people. Given the Emperor’s expression, that was probably for the best.
“She is a Dragon,” he replied.