Cast in Oblivion Read online

  “I’m not sure she won’t consider it comedy.”

  “Given her mood? Comedy would be appreciated by the rest of us.” He winced. “She’s not happy with the available clothing in the house.”

  “Helen can probably help out with that—but the clothing she makes doesn’t tend to stick around beyond the front gates.”

  “Unless we’re eating in the streets, that shouldn’t matter.” He winced again. “I have to head downstairs.”

  “Someone other than you getting stuck in the walls?”

  “Very funny.”

  * * *

  Only after Mandoran had headed downstairs, as he referred to the shifting complex of rooms and stairs that comprised Helen’s basement, did Terrano appear. Of the cohort, he was the most silent, the most withdrawn. Allaron, the cohort’s giant, and easily the tallest Barrani Kaylin had ever met, usually grabbed him by the shoulder and physically dragged him to wherever the rest of the group was seated. But Terrano couldn’t join their internal banter—or internal screaming arguments, which was what Kaylin suspected was more likely—and she knew when Terrano was actually with his friends because they were all forced to speak out loud if they wanted him to hear what they said.

  “What is it really?” he asked.

  “It really is a document that’s supposed to help me navigate the political undercurrents of the High Court. Or at least that’s what I was told. I’ve only managed to look at the first few pages.”

  “Is a Dragon really coming to dinner?”

  “If the Consort is, yes.” She exhaled. “We have a Dragon for dinner on most nights.”

  His expression made clear that he knew this. He was still far warier of Bellusdeo than any of the rest of the cohort, and it was clear that he found their reaction to Kaylin’s housemate confusing. Or wrong.

  “The other Dragon is called the Arkon. I don’t actually know why, so don’t ask; he has a perfectly reasonable name, but Bellusdeo is the only person I’ve heard use it. He’s old, he’s cranky and he’d prefer to be walled into his library; the only thing that can dig him out of it is a literal fireball. Or Bellusdeo.”

  “Why is he coming?”

  It was her turn to grimace. “Because the Dragon Court doesn’t trust my political competence. The Arkon chose to come because Bellusdeo and Lord Diarmat don’t get along all that well, and having Lord Diarmat be my supervisor—in my own home—would be a disaster. Worse than a disaster. For me,” she added, seeing Terrano’s expression. “He’s my etiquette teacher.”

  Terrano laughed; the laughter was brief. “You don’t think that’s funny.”

  “No. Then again, I’m the one taking the lessons.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be much of a teacher.”

  Considering the source, Kaylin almost found this insulting.

  As if he could read her thoughts, Terrano shrugged. “I don’t have to worry about my manners. There is no way I’m coming to dinner if the Consort is here.”

  Kaylin decided to change the subject. “Mandoran just headed downstairs.”

  “Someone stuck in a wall?”

  “He didn’t seem to think it was that funny when I asked, which probably means yes. Or worse,” she added. Terrano brightened and drifted—literally—toward the closet that led to the basement.

  “I’m worried about Terrano,” Helen told Kaylin when the door itself had closed.

  “Worried for him or worried about what he’ll do?”

  “He has no intention of harming the Consort. He’s less sanguine about the Arkon, but that’s because he assumes that the Arkon may attempt to harm him. Or his friends. It is not a concern of mine,” she added. “Terrano is...not happy.”

  “None of the cohort is particularly happy.”

  Helen nodded. Because a messenger had arrived at the door, she’d brought out her physical Avatar. “I’m not certain we’ll be able to keep him.” At Kaylin’s expression, she added, “Unless he means to harm any of my guests—or you—I’m not equipped to be a prison. And even if I had that inclination, Terrano is unusual enough that I’m not up to that task, not for long. He spent most of his life attempting to escape a Hallionne. What he learned over the centuries in the many attempts, I cannot easily counter.

  “His thoughts are generally opaque—but I think that’s deliberate. He’s not afraid that I’ll hear him. Or rather, he’s not afraid that I will use what I hear against him. His interaction with Alsanis was extremely unusual, and he thinks of me—in some fashion—as a Hallionne.”

  “And you’re not.”

  “I am neither as powerful nor as extensive as the Hallionne. I have more autonomy than the Hallionne, which gives me flexibility that is somewhat foreign to Terrano. But no, dear, I’m not worried about that. I do not believe he will intentionally damage me. Sedarias has disentangled herself, and will be joining you shortly.”

  Kaylin, stack of papers in hand, headed toward the dining room.

  Sedarias arrived without the rest of the cohort, but was joined by Teela and Tain. Although she was casually dressed—for a Barrani noble—she looked forbiddingly martial; had she shown up in plate armor, Kaylin wasn’t certain she’d look any less intimidating.

  “Mandoran says you have a mirror here.”

  “Helen?”

  “There is one room in which mirror access is permitted; mirrors do not exist in any of the living quarters.”

  Teela took a chair and flipped its back toward the table before sitting; she draped both arms across the top of the chair and slouched—elegantly. When she wasn’t eating, this was her preferred posture. Tain took a chair and sat in it stiffly, back straight against the chair’s frame. This, more than the color of his eyes, made clear that the two were still arguing.

  Tain intended to join the cohort in the Test of Name.

  Kaylin couldn’t, Severn couldn’t and Teela couldn’t. Nor could Nightshade, Annarion’s brother. They had faced the test; they had passed it. The Tower would not allow them to go through the process again.

  But when Kaylin had somehow made it to the basement of the High Halls, when she had seen what lay in wait there—and seen, as well, those who were trapped for eternity by its shadows—Evarrim had been there. And Evarrim was demonstrably a Lord of the High Court. If the Tower itself didn’t open a figurative door for the supplicants, there was another way down.

  There had to be. The Consort and the High Lord had been there.

  Kaylin wondered how much of this she should tell Teela.

  “I think she knows, dear,” Helen’s now-disembodied voice said.

  Teela shot Kaylin a glare of midnight blue. Since Kaylin hadn’t said anything, she thought this a tad unfair. “Don’t start,” the Barrani Hawk said. She looked pointedly at the stack of paper in front of Kaylin.

  “You want to see paperwork now? Marcus will have a heart attack.”

  “Marcus doesn’t have a heart. Sergeants are required to have them surgically removed. Now, spread them out.”

  “There’s probably nothing here you haven’t seen,” Kaylin said, although she obeyed Teela’s command. There was a lot of paper, all of it in High Barrani, a language not known for its precision. Or for its brevity, at any rate. “And even if there is, it’s going to take hours—at best—for you to find it.”

  “That,” Sedarias interjected, “is why I’m here.”

  “And no one else?”

  “No one else wanted to be in the same room as Teela’s foul mood.” Elantran still sounded strange, coming from Sedarias, but Sedarias, like the rest of the cohort, used it whenever Kaylin was in the room. It wasn’t necessary—Kaylin had a more than passable command of Barrani—but Mandoran had pointed out that there were things one could say in a foreign tongue one wouldn’t say in one’s mother tongue.

  “And you don’t care?” Kaylin asked. The papers seemed to be di
vided into Barrani lines or lineage, and the hierarchical lineage was complicated. Not all of the members of any particular family actually bore the same name—there were alliances and offshoots of the main branches scattered everywhere, and some of the offshoots had roots in more than one significant family. Ugh.

  “My mood,” Sedarias said with a sweet smile that nonetheless appeared to drip venom, “is equal, at the moment, to Teela’s.”

  “So no one wanted to be in the same room as your mood, either?”

  “Got it in one. Hand me that. No, not that one, the other one. The small stack under your right hand.”

  Kaylin’s eyes drifted to the top of that small stack; she’d been trying to keep the hierarchical lines together, inasmuch as that was possible. Mellarionne was written and underlined three times. The triple underlines seemed to denote important family. Kaylin now classified them as “first rank.” Something old and just beneath the High Lord in importance to the Barrani—or at least the Barrani Court. She was pretty certain that Sedarias was of the Mellarionne family line.

  “She is, dear,” Helen said.

  “You know,” Sedarias said with a raised, dark brow, “I begin to understand why Mandoran thinks giving Kaylin his name—or our names—would be both practical and convenient.”

  “Oh?” Teela said, because Teela absolutely did not agree.

  “Living with Helen is very much like living with the named. There’s nothing we think, unless we’re very, very careful—” and her tone implied most of the cohort found that impossible “—that she can’t have access to if she needs it. Helen pretty much fills that function.”

  “Helen,” Teela pointed out, “is in one location; it is not hard to avoid her, if it becomes necessary.”

  “And it would be hard to avoid us?”

  “The word hard implies that it would be possible. I am against it, as you well know.”

  “She’s saying that out loud,” Sedarias pointed out as Kaylin passed the intel on Mellarionne across the table, “because she expects that her opinion or her desire carries more weight with you than any of ours.”

  “You agree with Mandoran?”

  “Of course not. But this is possibly the first time I’ve really considered that he may not be an utter fool in this regard.” She had slipped into Barrani.

  “Is there anything in there you don’t know?”

  “Probably most of it,” Sedarias replied. The answer surprised Kaylin. “We’ve been shut away in Alsanis for nine centuries, give or take a few decades. It’s only in the past few months that I’ve been able to cautiously reestablish connections. Most of my early connections are dead now. Some are nonresponsive. I have information; I have contacts. But as I’m sure you can imagine, things have changed.

  “How much, how markedly, I won’t know until we are invited to Court. At this point, we won’t be invited to Court unless and until we pass the Test of Name.”

  “You’re certain you’ll pass.”

  “You have doubts?”

  About Sedarias? No. Not really.

  “This is Dragon intelligence, not Barrani intelligence, but some of the information was clearly gleaned from Barrani.” Sedarias was frowning. “My brother is An’Mellarionne.”

  “You were considered the heir?”

  “The most likely heir, yes. It is why I was sent to the green. My family was considered bold, at the time; some called us reckless. But it is clear that Mellarionne, at least, survived and thrived. Ah, yes, very bold.” She smiled. It was not a kind smile. “I see we survived an attempt to take the High Seat.”

  Teela frowned. “The Imperial intelligence—”

  “It wouldn’t have been Imperial intelligence then,” Kaylin pointed out. “The Empire didn’t exist.”

  “We don’t know when this information was gathered. I highly doubt it was gathered at the time of the attempt.”

  “You remember it?”

  “Clearly.” Teela offered nothing else. Kaylin had the suspicion that Teela would offer nothing that was not in the dossier itself.

  “Were you involved in it?”

  “What does the document say?”

  “You were not An’Danelle at the time.”

  Teela stiffened. “That is not the styling of my court name, as you are well aware.”

  “It is not a styling,” Sedarias said—to Kaylin, who would have edged her way out of the conversation, and the dining room, given half a chance. “It is a statement of fact.”

  “And perhaps when you are An’Mellarionne, you can call my personal choices into question.” Ugh. Teela’s eyes were definitely a darker shade of blue now.

  “And does your line accept the obliteration of its name?” Sedarias demanded. It had the sound of an old argument. It was a new argument to Kaylin, who didn’t know much about the hierarchy of the Barrani lords. She knew that being a Lord of the High Court meant that you had passed the Test of Name; she knew that the Court in the West March did not require that their lords take and pass that test.

  The An’Teela, An’Mellarionne, An’Danelle—which she promised herself she would never, ever use—were new to her. But she could read between the lines. If someone was An’Mellarionne—and that someone wasn’t Sedarias—it meant they were the head of the family, the first among the Mellarionne kin. Teela was called Teela; sometimes she was called Corporal Danelle. Danelle was her family.

  But she was called An’Teela at Court. Kaylin had half wondered what the “An” before her name had signified, but assumed it was a pretentious Barrani styling. And apparently she had been wrong.

  No, it seemed to imply that Teela was the head of her line. A line name she did not use. Technically, then, she was An’Danelle. And working as an Imperial Hawk. Kaylin understood that every Barrani family of note had a ruler, a leader. It was not that different from mortal, or at least human, families.

  But the rest? Had never been relevant. She had a queasy feeling it was all going to be relevant soon. And she remembered that the Hawks, or at least the Hawklord, never, ever sent her to site investigations that required diplomacy and tact. Or Diarmat’s punishing school of proper etiquette.

  Putting Teela’s and Sedarias’s anger aside, Kaylin took a look at the documents Sedarias hadn’t yet demanded.

  * * *

  After perusing too many pages of High Barrani, she realized that she didn’t know the families or lines from which most of the cohort came. That was going to have to change.

  Sedarias was simple: she was Mellarionne. She wasn’t the head of her line, and she intended to change that. She had killed her sister—also not the head of her line, but probably working in league with her brother, who was. Probably. Kaylin had been an only child. Had Kaylin been born Barrani, she’d probably never have longed for siblings.

  Annarion... She frowned. She was certain she’d heard his family name at some point, and since that family was the contentious issue between Annarion and his brother, she should remember it. She didn’t.

  “Solanace,” Helen said quietly. “I don’t believe he would be discomfited if you knew, or if I reminded you.”

  “He’s not,” Sedarias said, although she didn’t look up from her reading. “I think Teela has his family’s section.”

  “I do.”

  “Who’s An’Solanace? And are they at Court?”

  There was a long silence. It was long enough to be uncomfortable, and no movement punctuated it, which often happened when the cohort discussed an issue before someone opened their mouth. No, this was the silence of held breath. She had asked the wrong question.

  “It is not the wrong question,” Helen said softly. “But, Kaylin, it is at the heart of the conflict between Lord Nightshade and his brother.”

  “I thought the conflict was that Nightshade abandoned his family—but it was his family that kind of threw Annarion away.”<
br />
  “It was the head of his family, yes,” Helen agreed. She paused, and silence descended once again. This time, there was more expression in it.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “It is relevant. And if you read the documents concerning Solanace, you will understand why.”

  Kaylin held out a hand. Teela, who had the document section, failed to move.

  It was, as usual, Mandoran who picked up the broken thread of what had been a very pragmatic conversation until Kaylin’s question. Kaylin jumped. Until he spoke, she hadn’t realized he’d entered the room. Terrano followed. In ones and twos, so did the rest of the cohort.

  The dining room was now a war room, with paper rather than place settings. The color of Barrani eyes was blue.

  * * *

  “Karellan was Annarion’s uncle. He was ambitious; he had considerable power of his own. But he was of the line Solanace, and inasmuch as any ambitious man, he served its interests. After all, weakening the line you hope to take over is not doing your future self any favors.” This last was said without apparent bitterness.

  “Annarion’s father died—honorably—during the wars. That’s the story we’re told. Then again, all deaths are honorable among the Barrani.” Terrano snorted. Sedarias looked like she wanted to. Mandoran ignored both, with the ease of long practice. “Nightshade became An’Solanace. There’d be no argument between Annarion and his brother if Nightshade had remained An’Solanace. None. Annarion believed that his brother was the better man in every way. Reckless, yes, but always for a purpose. Annarion would have come home, and he would have been happy. Nightshade would have welcomed him home without hiding a dagger behind his back or a new supply of poison.”

  Kaylin looked to Annarion, whose head was now bent just enough that she couldn’t easily meet his gaze.

  “Karellan thought that Nightshade was his superior, as well. He was a better man than his father had been. He had earned one of the three. He was liked and respected. Solanace was Nightshade’s far more securely than it had ever been his father’s.”