The Chronicles of Elantra 5 - Cast in Silence (40 page)

But he served, and he served in ways that she was not competent to serve. He had given up so much; she dreaded taking lessons to learn how to keep her mouth shut. She had never felt so small and so petty before.

No, she thought, as the door began to glow far more brightly, that wasn’t true. But each return to that self-awareness always struck her like this.
I’m not worthy
. And the only way to change that if it was so unpleasant? To
become
worthy. Which was a lot like work, but worse.

She opened her mouth to speak because the silence she was in was so bitter, and bit back words with effort; they would have been spoken to make herself feel better; they wouldn’t have helped Tiamaris.

But he didn’t seem to need help. He spoke and she cringed until the moment the door, now shining beneath the combined touch of both of their hands, shone so brightly she had to shut her eyes.

Which was good, because the damn thing shattered.

She heard it crack, and she heard the timbre of Tiamaris’s voice shift and tunnel into a single syllable that reverberated throughout her body; she had only enough time to stiffen before she felt the surface of what had once been stone break beneath her palm—and beneath his spread fingers. Glass—if it was glass—drove itself into her hand like sharp, misshapen teeth, and she let loose a volley of Leontine.

Severn caught her wrist as Tiamaris lifted his hand.

“I would think it inadvisable,” Nightshade said quietly, “to offer the Tower your blood.”

It was nice to know that Barrani Lords were consistent in their ability to offer helpful advice. Kaylin stopped herself from snarling, largely because Severn was removing a large shard of glass. “It’s not the first Tower I’ve bled in,” she snapped, before remembering that he didn’t—yet—know.

But he did, now. She cursed him in four languages, and in silence, and he smiled. It was a thin, blue-eyed smile, but he was genuinely amused.

“She is not the only person,” Tiamaris said drily, examining the tips of his fingers, “who has fallen foul of that advice. It is,” he added, glancing at Kaylin, “good advice.”

“I’ll try to avoid cracking solid stone doors in the future,” she said with a grimace. Severn was bandaging her hand. She didn’t ask him with what. It wasn’t a deep cut, and it had looked—for the seconds it was exposed—like a clean one.

“If you’re finished?” the Dragon asked Severn. Severn raised a brow. “I believe the door is open.”

“It’s unlikely to close soon.”

Given that it was a gaping, slightly jagged door-shaped hole, Tiamaris nodded. But Nightshade said, “It is a Tower.”

They moved.

Because it was a Tower, Kaylin didn’t expect much continuity between what was on one side of the door and what was on the other. Which was good, because there wasn’t any.

Grass spread out before them like a well-tended carpet. The bits beneath their feet were crushed by Tiamaris’s weight. The sun was high, and the sky was the clear azure that happens only on a perfect day. In the distance, trees stood like windbreaks, and the sounds of a river could be heard at their back.

Kaylin turned. Sure enough, there
was
a river. It had one rickety, wooden bridge above it in a distance that was almost as far away as the trees, but in the opposite direction. “You can see the grass?” she asked, with just a trace of anxiety.

Tiamaris nodded.

“Severn? Nightshade?”

The Barrani Lord did not seem to be offended at the lack of affixed rank. His eyes were a mix of green-blue that meant alertness, but offered no danger.

“Yes,” he said quietly—for their benefit, not hers. “I can see grass. There are trees in the distance, and a river.”

“Do you recognize the river?” Kaylin asked him.

“Yes.”

“Good. I don’t.”

He raised one brow. “Do you not?”

“I’ve never traveled outside of the City.”

“You wouldn’t have to,” he replied quietly. “It is the
Abiliani
.”

“The what?”

He raised a brow, and the strangely pronounced word suddenly came into focus. “It’s the
Ablayne?
”

“I believe that is how it is often pronounced by your kind.”

She stared at him for a long moment. “Do you even remember a time when there was no City here?”

“No. Nor do I believe Lord Tiamaris does.”

She glanced at the Dragon Lord.

“He is correct,” Tiamaris replied. “But we are all, now, in the Tower. What we see reflects some amalgamation of the Tower and ourselves.”

“Where do we go from here?” she asked him.

“The trees,” he replied.

But Severn was gazing beyond the trees. Beyond, and above. She touched his shoulder to get his attention, and instead of looking at her, he lifted a hand and pointed to the Southern Ridge. It was part of Elantra, but the buildings and the horizon they made usually obliterated most of its majestic rise. Here, nothing impeded the view of the sharp, stone cliff with its almost invisible caves.

“They’re not far,” she told him quietly. “But we don’t have much way of scaling the cliff face.”

“We’ll worry about that when we get there.”

It was a pleasant walk, as they’d dispensed with the rope linking them. It was not even, in Kaylin’s experience, particularly grueling; her daily patrols covered more distance, if not more ground. No one spoke, but no one felt the need to speak; there was nothing on the horizon for as far as the eye could see that posed much of a threat. The grass bothered Kaylin, though. It continued, the perfect representation of a rich person’s lawn, in its green stretch. There were no flowers, no weeds, no stones—nothing to break it at all. There was also no sign of what had done the work to keep it in such an unnatural state.

She knew it wasn’t real; she just wanted
more
reality. Not that she was grading the Tower’s presentation, but still. Severn, judging from his minute frown, had noticed; Nightshade, as guarded as any Barrani stranger, seemed above noticing, and Tiamaris? It escaped his attention. The Southern Ridge did not.

Nor did the shadows that began to flit across grass as they approached the foot of the cliff. Kaylin looked up instantly, squinting against the sunlight that blanketed the cliff face. She could see nothing in the sky that cast those shadows, but they continued their movement, from one side of the ridge to the other.

They weren’t uniform, and they weren’t entirely regular, but she recognized them; they were what sun and distance made of Aerian wings, of Aerians in lazy flight. There was no stop and start; the Aerians that she couldn’t see except in the afterthought of cast shadow, were patrolling the ridge from above. They never patrolled it on foot; there was no point. No one approached the ridge from the ground.

No one, she thought with a grimace, sane.

“Are there stairs?” Lord Nightshade asked.

“Are their Aerians, in your time?”

“There are.”

“And they live in your City?”

“No. Our City does not extend this far. They live…separate from it.”

“The High Lord accepts that?”

“Let us just say that the structural changes required to affect a difference would significantly alter the shape of the City he rules. He has not—yet—decided that it is necessary.”

“Do they cause him any trouble?”

“None.”

“Beyond the irritation of their independence.”

He glanced at her, and smiled. “Beyond that. But for a man accustomed to the absolute obedience that comes with power, that is more than enough. In my world—and not the Tower’s—they are not friendly. They are not actively hostile, but you will find no easy way up to the aeries.”

“The Aerians,” Tiamaris said quietly, “would never agree to serve those bound to land.”

Nightshade nodded. “Nor would we, had we their ability. It is not in our nature to serve.”

When they reached the foot of the cliff, they stopped. The sun had neither risen nor fallen during their walk, as if it were an artist’s perfect rendition of the object, and not the object itself. Like props, Kaylin thought. She walked to the base of the cliff, where rock gave way suddenly to grass, looking for some sign of stairs or a path cut into the side of the stone; she wasn’t terribly surprised when she found none.

Because this cliff could be climbed. It could be—with difficulty and not a little risk—climbed by her. She began to walk again, looking for the best place to start, and watching the possible hand and footholds become smaller and smaller as they ascended. Shrugging her shoulders out of her pack, she knelt, untying her regulation boots. She knotted them together by their laces and dropped them into the pack.

Remembering, as she did, another climb, a different impossible height to scale. At the top of it waited the last assignment she had accepted from Barren—the one that had caused the last big argument with Morse. She was careful, even in thought, not to call it a fight, because Morse did
not
lose fights, and Kaylin had walked—not limped, not bled—out of the apartment that had been their home for six months. Her face had been white and red with the imprint of Morse’s open palm and her own anger.

That had lasted as she’d walked into the intermittent flow of people in the streets of Barren, evaporating only as she approached the bridge. She stood to one side of it, near the bank of the river, looking across at the outer City. Barren’s men had been told she was passing through; they weren’t to hassle her—but she wasn’t to linger. It looked bad.

She hadn’t much cared what it
looked
like, then. She’d probably picked a fight with his thugs just by walking halfway across the damn bridge four times before turning back, but it was a fight she could more or less finish if she had to, so it didn’t frighten her.

The City did. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe she thought they would notice that she didn’t belong. Maybe they would notice
why.

But…maybe they
wouldn’t.

The second thought had frightened her more, but she couldn’t have said why.

Severn joined her, and she startled. “Climbing?”

“I can, yes. There don’t seem to be stairs or portals. I’m not complaining about the lack of portals,” she added quickly, just in case the Tower was listening.

Severn chuckled. He’d been scanning the rocks, as well, but he said nothing, merely waited for Kaylin to find her first handhold and start.

But as she did, the hair on the back of her neck began to rise, and she froze, one foot on the ground, and one already rounding to accommodate both her weight and the uneven surface of a large rock.

CHAPTER 22

Tiamaris roared, and the wind that howled and whistled fell silent, as if in embarrassment at the inevitable comparison. Kaylin’s foot found solid ground as she turned; her hand still touched the cool surface of rock.

Tiamaris looked at her, and then craned his neck, briefly, toward the height of the cliff, where the aeries could barely be seen from their vantage. “I do not think,” he said, with a very odd smile, “that that will be necessary.” His eyes were gold, and they shone.

She started to speak, stopped, and then said, “Lord Nightshade, I’d advise you to move.” The Barrani Lord was perhaps ten feet away from the Dragon Lord. He raised a dark brow, and then glanced at Tiamaris. When he backed away, he moved slowly and gracefully, but he did move, although Kaylin could feel his stiff reluctance to take advice from…mortals. He came, however, to stand between Kaylin and Severn, the cliff face at his back.

Tiamaris stretched his arms to the sides; wind caught his hair, pulling at it as if it were a small, nagging child who wanted attention
now.
He felt it; his smile shifted, becoming, for a moment, indulgent. “Private,” he said, “this is the heart of a Tower. It exists in the gap between worlds.

“There is no Emperor here. There is no law.”

She knew what he intended before his body began the shimmering and vaguely terrifying process of shedding humanity in favor of the primal power of the true Dragon form. “You have—I am told, with frequency—spent many years cajoling any Aerian unwise or unfortunate enough to stand his ground to take you up into the air.”

She winced. “They’re exaggerating.”

Tiamaris fell forward, his hands splayed flat against the unnatural grass in the lee of the great, stone cliff face. Those hands grew, changing shape and texture. The mail of gauntlets that were entirely composed of scale gave way to scales, and to claws, each much longer than his fingers had been. His neck stretched as his body did; his legs, like his hands, seemed to absorb the bronze plates that had been greaves, and anything bootlike or bootshaped moved fluidly away from his midsection, transforming as it did into the hind legs of a giant lizard.

Not that she would ever
use
that word where he could hear it.

Wings unfurled from his back, breaking through his shoulder blades as if they had just fled jail time. They went on forever, catching sunlight and reflecting it in a spray across the short grass Tiamaris was crushing simply by existing.

He roared again, and in some ways it was a comfort—it was almost the same sound that he had uttered to get her attention the first time. Deeper, yes, and rumbling—but it was recognizably his voice. And when he lifted the jaw that had opened on that roar, he swung his massive head toward her. His eyes were the size of her fists. Or maybe Severn’s.

“Come, Private. You like to fly, and you have
never
flown like this.” He lowered his neck, stretching it so that she could approach. She did, but she hesitated. “I don’t—I can’t—ride,” she finally confessed. “The Aerians carried me. But horses tend to throw me just for the fun of it. Or step on my feet when their trainers aren’t looking.”

He chuckled. The ground shook. “They tend to run screaming from me. I will not throw you. I will attempt to catch you if you fall.”

She looked pointedly at the mess his claws were making of the ground. “You get a lot of practice catching things you
aren’t
trying to kill?”