*
By unspoken consent, Kaylin and Bellusdeo left the room together. Severn, Kaylin’s partner, remained behind with the Barrani.
“Did any Barrani come here yesterday?” Kaylin asked. “I mean, besides us?”
“You haven’t won the bet yet.”
Bellusdeo lifted a brow behind Kattea’s back, but made no comment until the girl bypassed the stairs that led to the bedrooms. She headed to the door that led to the basement, instead. Of course it had to be the basement.
Bellusdeo’s eyes were orange by the time Kattea opened the squeaking door. Kaylin’s would have shifted to orange or blue if human eyes changed color with mood. She glanced at her arms. Her skin didn’t hurt, which would have been a comfort in other circumstances, but the marks on her arms had begun to glow.
Bellusdeo couldn’t fail to notice. Light seeped through the dark, full-length sleeves Kaylin habitually wore while on duty.
The basement was not well lit. Some homes had window-wells at the height of basement walls; the previous owners of this one obviously hadn’t seen much use for them.
The stairs ended.
“Is it always this dark down here?” Kaylin asked their guide.
Kattea did not carry a lamp or a torch. Her left hand trailed the wall as she walked, but the light from the door above them ended abruptly. It was replaced by a lot of darkness.
Bellusdeo could see in the dark; so could Teela and Tain. Kaylin and Severn required a bit of help. So, in theory, should Kattea. “Gilbert says you need light,” Kattea said, a hint of question in her voice.
“In general, yes. You don’t?”
“Not if Gilbert’s here.”
Kaylin silently kissed two silver coins goodbye as Kattea led them farther into the basement. She forgot about the bet when she realized that the floor beneath her patrolling boots was made of solid stone. Reaching out, she touched a wall that was also solid stone; it felt smooth to the touch. Smooth and cold.
“This is a large basement,” Bellusdeo said, presumably to Kattea.
“It’s really big,” Kattea agreed. “It’s mostly empty.”
As they walked, the word mostly echoed in the invisible heights above their heads. The sound of their steps in unison made the kind of noise that suggested vaulted ceilings and a deplorable lack of carpeting.
“Kattea—is this how you found the house?”
She didn’t answer.
“Tell Gilbert that he’s right. I need the light.” It was funny how little it helped when light flooded the basement.
*
The ceilings were fifteen feet off the ground, and the ground was, as Kaylin had suspected, stone. If not for the utter absence of natural light, this could have been a grand hall in a manor into which Kaylin would never be invited. Or a palace.
There was no way that this was the basement of the house in which Gilbert and Kattea claimed to live. There was no way it would fit.
“Is it too much to ask,” Kaylin murmured, “that something be normal for a few days? Just—normal? Normal, venal criminals, ordinary stakes?”
“You are clearly not immortal,” Bellusdeo replied. She glanced at Kaylin; her eyes were fully orange now.
“Meaning it’s not boring.”
“Normal—for me—for centuries was the heart of Shadow. I do not yearn for it. Normal, for me, was the war that eventually destroyed my home.”
“I get it. I suck. I’ll stop feeling sorry for myself. Or,” she added, when Bellusdeo raised a brow, “I’ll at least stop whining out loud.”
“The latter is conceivable.”
“Thanks.”
“You should never have accepted the marks of the Chosen if you wanted a boring life.”
“I wasn’t offered a choice.”
“What is the phrase that Joey uses?”
“Joey? Oh, you mean at the office?”
“Yes. I think it’s ‘Sucks to be you.’ Did I say that right?”
“Yes.”
Kattea snickered.
“That’s funny?” Kaylin asked her.
“No. Gilbert doesn’t understand what it means. That’s funny.”
Gilbert was not present. Any hope that Kattea was not communicating with him in his absence—and it was very scant hope, given the observable facts—wilted.
“It’s around here somewhere,” Kattea told them. “There should be a door.”
“Should be?” Bellusdeo asked, her voice deceptively soft.
“The basement here is a bit confusing. It changes shape, sometimes. Gilbert says that’s normal.”
“It is so not normal,” Kaylin told her.
“I told him that. I think it confused him.”
“Gilbert sounds like he’s easily confused.”
“He really is. He says—he says that’s why he needs me.” The words trailed into silence. Kattea was a child. She was not a young child, but she was a child. But that meant nothing in the fiefs.