28 #2
She shook her head. Frowned. It’s louder in the distance—behind me. She could hear, absurdly, the sound of a sword being drawn. It wasn’t Severn’s.
No. It’s Teela. Helen was right: there are intruders. Fallessian has let Terrano go, if you hear a second sword. The third
is Sedarias. He hesitated, which was unusual when things were starting to heat up. The fourth is An’Tellarus.
Kaylin didn’t understand why swords had to be drawn. They were all standing within Helen’s perimeter. Nothing should be able
to make it into the manse itself. But Helen had mentioned a possible avenue of attack.
Kaylin was already in a state of heightened tension; she knew time was rapidly evaporating. And she knew that the slender thread she could barely see was the answer, if she could follow it through to its end. An end that should be Nightshade, except it was going in the wrong direction.
Or maybe the power of the Erenne mark wasn’t derived entirely in the space in which people mostly lived. Maybe the thread
that ran from Kaylin to Nightshade passed through something else. Given Yvonne’s presence, and the Teller’s Crown, and the
dress—which she’d stupidly worn to impress An’Tellarus—Kaylin could guess what that something was.
She did what she always did when nothing made sense: she kept moving forward. Moving was better than fear. Anything was better
than fear.
Even the ghostly Yvonnes in their multiple forms were better, although she sucked in air when they began to separate, each
copy a perfect representation of the Yvonne that Kaylin had met in the real world. Their eyes were flat, though; they lacked
pupils. Their color was a muted shade of green—like forest green, if forests were dark with lack of sunlight.
Those eyes were turned toward her, and they moved as she moved, although they reflected nothing. But the Yvonnes stood to
either side of the slender thread, as if they were human walls meant to protect it and to emphasize its existence. Their mouths
moved as if they were speaking, and sound emerged—but it was wordless, almost keening, although their expressions were placid,
even neutral.
Severn said there had been multiple Yvonnes when he’d found her—Shadow Yvonnes. If these were somehow the Yvonnes he had destroyed
to reach the real Barrani woman, Kaylin shouldn’t trust them. But they had been in the green. They had been, according to
Severn, the test of the weapon he now bore.
Had the green made guardians of them?
Had they somehow remained, nebulous and unseen by all save Mrs. Erickson, as guardians of Yvonne? Why were they here at all?
They didn’t move as she approached them; they didn’t move as she passed by, following the barely visible thread of power that
flowed from the Erenne mark to an unseen destination. She could hear steel clash as it struck steel. Her arms began the slow
burn that announced the unwanted presence of magic.
The magic of the green had never affected her that way. Nightshade’s mark hadn’t, either. She froze for one moment, and everything
wavered: the many Yvonnes, the absence of light in the Marks of the Chosen, and the slender thread that was still, somehow,
attached to her.
The power of this mark wasn’t hers, but she needed that connection now, in a way she’d never needed it consciously before.
She had to focus, had to ignore the sudden pain that flashed, like brief, intense fire, across her skin. If the cohort was
fighting, this was their battlefield, and Helen was on their side.
Even Annarion had drawn his sword.
Silence, then. Even Annarion had drawn his sword. How did she know that? She hadn’t asked Severn, and she was certain she
hadn’t reached for him, either. But she did know. She could feel the slow trickle of blood down her face. She could feel heat,
and the light of the thread that had almost evaporated grew stronger, more certain.
But it wasn’t certain enough. She understood, as she stood, ghostly Yvonnes to either side, that the connection wasn’t strong
enough. Androsse had said that she had to accept it. She’d spent too long worrying about love, about what love meant. Maybe
there was a True Word called love, but Kaylin had never seen it. What she’d seen and heard were mortal variations, different languages, different attempts
to approach love, own it, deny it.
Androsse’s version of love was not Kaylin’s. Kaylin’s version of love would not, could not, be what an ancient, Immortal, unknowably powerful being
felt. But clearly it wasn’t necessary; Androsse was wrong. Except in one way.
These small filaments rooted in her skin had weak purchase there. They’d never grown stronger or deeper—whether by her will
or Nightshade’s. Why had he placed the mark on her cheek at all? She remembered, as she concentrated on moving forward, that
she had met a young Nightshade, and he had seen the mark on her cheek; he had been surprised.
But that man, and the man who placed that mark on her skin, were not the same; they had not—yet—lived the same lives. Had
he placed his mark on her cheek because he had seen it, in his distant youth? Did it matter?
She stopped walking. She didn’t open her eyes—if she opened them, everything else would be overwhelming. Who stood still,
unarmed, and silent when combat was unfolding all around them?
You, Severn said. And Yvonne. Watch the path you take, now. Helen says it will be unstable.
Yvonne’s many ghosts had formed two walls; she passed between them. Stopped there. She understood some part of what had to
be done. Inhaling slowly, she allowed the tiny filaments to extend, not outward, but in. To take root properly. To become
part of more than just a flower, more than just layers of skin.
She felt Severn’s drawn breath, his worry. She understood it. But they were standing on a cliff’s edge, and all other options
led to a fall. She could hear the crowd; she thought of it as Yvonne—as Yvonnes—because all of their mouths were moving, but
none seemed to move in the exact same way.
It was much, much harder than she’d thought to let the small roots that emanated from the Erenne mark spread.
She could feel them grow as if they were physical; she was certain her cheek was bleeding more heavily; it felt like pain.
It felt like invasion. Her instinct was to pull it out—or push it out—and be done with it.
She let the Erenne mark sink in. She let its roots spread beneath the surface of the skin, into flesh, growing—almost burrowing—as
they did. And then, with a healthy Leontine curse, she added power to it, almost as if it were a living thing, an injured
creature. It was the power of the Marks of the Chosen.
As the tiny filaments spread, she felt them thrum; they were warm, not hot. They didn’t add to the bleeding of her cheek;
they didn’t change the nature of her body. They wrapped themselves around Kaylin, but they never touched the Marks of the
Chosen.
The thrum was almost rhythmic, a beat, too soft to be drumming.
Oh.
A heartbeat. She could hear her own heart beating a little bit too quickly; this one was different. It was foreign. It was
familiar. The sound grew louder and more steady as she listened.
When she looked, once again, at the thread of light between the Yvonnes, she squinted—which was awkward, given her eyes were
closed. It had grown so bright, she couldn’t miss it. Bright, heart of white, edges of green—and that green was the color
of the Yvonnes’ eyes. She moved quickly, aware that she was no longer following something attenuated; she was bringing the
source of that light with her as she moved.
Step by step, the light cast by this single, wordless connection grew brighter.
This time, when the Marks of the Chosen began to glow, she ignored them; she didn’t attempt to squelch their radiance because
they no longer overwhelmed the thread she followed. She could hear the distant sound of swords; she could feel the thrum of
magic—other people’s—across the Marks. Instinct screamed: stop what you’re doing and get ready to fight.
But she was fighting, now. She had to hold on to that.
The cohort were here, just beyond her closed eyes. They could wield swords. She could wield daggers and long knives. Against
good swordsmen, unless she could lead them down very tight alleys where their weapons were constrained, she was just another
target.
None of the cohort could do what she was doing now. None of them bore Nightshade’s Erenne mark. None of them wore the Marks
of the Chosen. None of them were healers. None of them had any chance of doing what she might be able to do if she could follow the slender green thread to its end.
The clangor of swords was so very loud; she bent into her knees without thought, as if she would be forced to leap to survive.
Her hands found knife hilt and clenched. The thread flickered; the Yvonnes became more ghostly.
No. No. She forced her hand to release her knife. Against any Barrani wielding a sword, she was a profound embarrassment,
and that kind of embarrassment led to injury or death.
They do.
A familiar voice. A voice she felt like she hadn’t heard in months. She couldn’t see Nightshade—but she would recognize that
interior voice anywhere.