28
Kaylin had ignored the Erenne mark. It had become part of her skin, a tattoo. That’s how anyone who wasn’t Barrani saw it
in the Halls of Law; it’s how people at the market stalls saw it. It’s how residents—and customers—of Elani street saw it
as well. One or two had even asked her where she’d gotten it done.
She didn’t ignore the mark now. She didn’t accept that it was a passive statement of her power—or more specifically its lack.
She knew a connection existed; she wasn’t making herself bleed. Power flowed toward that mark. Her guess was her inability to process that power, that connection, caused the magic to disperse across that small patch of skin—which was what likely caused the
heat and bleeding.
She should have thought about this before now. Maybe if she had, she could have untangled at least Nightshade’s fate. She
didn’t understand how any of the rest of the interference worked; she accepted that it did. What she could do for Nightshade,
she couldn’t do for the Consort—or anyone else affected by whatever magics had been cast.
But this Erenne mark had existed before the magic cast on Nightshade; it was already established. As was evidence of the continuing
connection.
She lifted a hand to her cheek. Her skin felt cool; the bleeding and the heat had stopped.
She closed her eyes. The power of the Marks of the Chosen couldn’t reach Nightshade—but she wasn’t Nightshade.
She’d never really examined herself with that power; healing had been almost automatic, and she hadn’t caught so much as a minor cold since the Marks of the Chosen appeared on her skin.
She lived her life by instinct. What she was doing now wasn’t instinctive, and she was certain someone who’d been more deliberate
in their life choices would have had a stronger sense of how to progress. But she was sensitive to the power of the Marks
of the Chosen, and of the bindings of True Names. She listened for a long breath, but the Marks were silent against her skin.
They weren’t necessary right now. What was essential was the mark on her cheek. That had never spoken to her the way the True
Words could; she had never heard it as if it were a word, as if it expressed thoughts through language.
The Erenne mark had been used before—by Nightshade. She had a sense that words had been conveyed at a time when she wasn’t
quite in the same place and cursed mortal memory. Or maybe it was just Kaylin’s memory, honed in childhood in the fiefs. If
it wasn’t a threat, if it wasn’t a danger, she didn’t think about it at all. Her focus had always been on survival, and the
Erenne mark wouldn’t end her life.
She felt like she was always fumbling in the dark; there were glimpses of light here and there, and she tried to follow them—but
she couldn’t see the actual destination. She could make choices. She could act on them.
This, then, was a choice. She could feel her cheek, could feel, just beneath the surface of the skin, the tiny roots of the
spell, the magic that grounded the Erenne mark. She couldn’t feel Nightshade.
Why had he done this? Was it, had it ever been, about her at all?
Kaylin. Hope’s voice. She resonated with the sound of her name; it was a tremor that steadied her. Reminded her that even if she
was connected to people, through their names or hers, she was still herself. Whoever that was. The person she’d been in the
fiefs was not the person she was now. But that distant person, broken, angry, and afraid, had had dreams—and nightmares—that
had led her to become Kaylin, Imperial Hawk.
The Marks of the Chosen, like the Erenne mark, had been outside both her intent and control. But the Marks of the Chosen had
become part of the way she interacted with the world. They’d become a tool she could use.
But if she’d accepted the Marks because she had no choice, she learned to use them. The Marks of the Chosen didn’t make her
feel like a victim; they didn’t make her feel like less of a person. In theory, they made her more powerful; among the Immortal,
they made her worthy of a grudging, condescending version of respect.
They hadn’t changed who she was. They’d given her the opportunity to do more. To help more. To heal. Not all things that happened
without her permission became terrible, unwanted things. Birth, for one. No one had asked if she wanted to be born. No one
had asked her where. She would never, ever have chosen the fiefs if the choice had been hers to make.
Life was made up of things that weren’t her choice. But her choice still mattered. She wasn’t a god. She wasn’t an Ancient.
She couldn’t have perfect control over her life and what happened in it.
But she had enough choice that she could clear the rest of her thoughts. She could focus on the subtle, tiny roots of power
that seemed to rest just below the surface of her skin—the skin that bore the Nightshade. She could feel warmth in them, not
heat—but even as she thought that, they grew warmer beneath the palm of her hand.
She couldn’t heal Nightshade—not yet. She could heal herself or at least reach her own body with her power. She did, examining the one element that wasn’t hers, although the Marks of the Chosen weren’t really hers either.
She could feel warmth, could feel it as a trace of magic, of enchantment. It had no sigil, no signature, no name—but it wasn’t
that kind of magic. She was surprised it had power at all, but it did. Power was apparently required to maintain the mark.
She wondered if Nightshade was aware of it. Beneath the visible tattoo lay small roots that were almost skin-deep. They were
warm to the touch; her cheek was warm.
If it grew heated, she bled. But the bleeding was a result of the power that seemed to pulse into those roots, those traces
of magic.
She’d assumed, from Androsse’s research, that the point of the Erenne mark was the connection itself. It was laid where it
was both desired and accepted; it required that level of emotional communion.
Kaylin didn’t have that level of connection. The reasons didn’t matter. If Androsse was right about the origins of the spell, he was wrong about
its nature; the mark existed. It didn’t elevate her interaction with Nightshade. It didn’t change it. It certainly had a negative
effect on Annarion—but Annarion’s understanding wasn’t the historical, Ancestral understanding: it was modern, for want of
a better word.
Still, this was the only hope they had. These tiny filaments. Her eyes were closed; the Marks of the Chosen were glowing,
which made it hard to see any other light. But she breathed slowly, inhaling and exhaling, balancing breath as if she were
about to enter the training ring against a Barrani opponent.
She could feel warmth spread across that patch of skin.
It wasn’t her own skin she needed to find.
It was the source of the power that caused the bleeding.
She’d used her natural ability to see magic—and the sigils left in the wake of powerful spells—to examine spells, but none of those spells had been cast on the living.
Nightshade had never cast a magic powerful enough that she could see his signature and recognize it.
Or at least not where Kaylin could examine it.
This wasn’t a powerful magic. Had it been, she would have sensed it instantly. But it was a personal one.
This Erenne mark drew no power from Kaylin. All of the power that sustained it must come from Nightshade himself.
She could, with effort, follow the trace of magic that led from her mark to the man who had placed it there—but it was hard
work, and it required intense focus. Noise broke that focus. Light broke it. Even the Marks of the Chosen were a disruption.
Thinking that, she noted the golden glow of the Marks diminished as if responding to her irritable thought. It left the darkness
behind closed lids.
It left a single, very dim light, so faint it might be an illusion brought about by her need to see it. The color was odd.
The Marks of the Chosen were often gold—a warm gold—or blue; they were sometimes a haze of white light in which individual
words blurred. This was a green-tinged ivory; it reminded Kaylin of the green.
Even thinking of it, she felt the movement of words, the impulse of story—something yet to be given voice but building as
if it were a gathering storm.
Nightshade couldn’t tell the story, but the story needed to be told. That was the power of, the demand of, the green—something
that existed without the need for True Words, although True Words were spoken during the regalia. The words, Kaylin thought, were offered by the Teller and the harmoniste—the green had no easy way of communicating with
anyone else.
She could see Yvonne, ghostly and pale, images of her face overlapping. She couldn’t see anyone else because her eyes were
closed. Even her Marks were visually silent.
But the green thread that led from the Erenne mark, so slender it evoked spiders and other things Kaylin often found pointlessly disturbing, continued past Yvonne. Through her. Had she moved? She’d been standing in the corner.
She hasn’t moved, Severn said.
Kaylin felt her shoulders relax at the sound of that voice. But the thread doesn’t seem to be going to where Nightshade is.
Follow it. Follow it for as long as you can.
Kaylin nodded. She expected to lose that thread as it passed through Yvonne; she hadn’t expected that these blurred, overlapping
images would suddenly separate as she approached. She moved toward them, wondering if her body was moving, too.
No.
Can you hear voices?
No.
They’re not quite voices. I can’t hear words. It’s more like the murmurs of a crowd. As she moved, she added, There’s too much low-level noise to hear individual words. She exhaled. I can’t tell the mood of the crowd.
She’d seen mobs form, crowds transforming, through fear and anger, into something dangerous and unpredictable.
Severn wanted to join her. Is the noise directional?