31 #2
Helen was silent for so long, Kaylin felt a knot of anxiety begin to form.
When she spoke, it was in a language Kaylin didn’t recognize and couldn’t understand.
But Hope did, and the hatchling, newly born, seemed to as well; they both stopped their fight.
Hope let go of the hatchling’s tail but breathed on it before he withdrew to Kaylin’s right shoulder.
He lifted a wing to cover her face but didn’t smack her with it.
To her surprise, the hatchling mirrored his movement, lifting his wing to slap it across Hope’s. She shouldn’t have been able
to see through the substantial new wing. She could. She could see the darkness and Shadow that existed beneath her feet, could
see it at arm’s length. And she could see, as the Marks on her arms began to glow a strange purple-blue, the tendrils of that
Shadow, as if Helen no longer existed.
She could see her hands.
She could see the intricate lace of black on one of them.
She understood.
Kaylin! Overlapping voices. Distant voices. Voices she knew. She heard Helen’s voice. She heard Nightshade’s. She heard Severn’s.
Over them, around them, she heard familiar cursing, familiar beloved invective. Terrano.
She had no words to offer in return; she had a silence built of fear and determination. She stood on the edge of hope, the
edge of despair—really, was there that much difference? If she failed, she would fall. If she succeeded, she would fall. Where
she landed defined what she needed to do.
She reached for the tendrils of Shadow she could now see so clearly. Reality faded. She could see Helen’s floor as gray, lifeless
stone. It reminded her of the buildings in the border zones of the fiefs.
Yes. Hope’s voice.
Yes. The hatchling’s.
It was the hatchling’s wing that revealed Shadow—but the Shadow itself was like flickers of fire, small streams of water,
damp soil; it existed, but it didn’t seem sentient. The Yvonnes were gone. What was left of them was this new lizard, far
more physical, far more present, than Hope.
She no longer held the orb—the egg—in the palm of her hand, but the egg’s weight rested on her left shoulder, almost unbalancing her as she shifted her stance to accommodate it. She then reached out for the closest tendril of Shadow.
It was a thread. It reminded her of Wevaran webbing, it was so slender. If she blinked, it vanished, and she had to work to
reassert her vision. But she’d had to do that with the magic of the Erenne mark as well. Throughout, the Yvonnes had helped
her, forming a tunnel, a passage that she could traverse to reach Nightshade. Or to reach enough of him that she could heal
him and send him into the battle.
What will had created the Yvonnes? What will had driven them to Kaylin’s aid? Not Yvonne. Kaylin would have bet her own money
that Yvonne had been unaware of their existence until Mrs. Erickson had seen them.
Light rose from her legs, her chest—a green-gold light. The green.
But there was no story being told—not in the words of the Ancient, wild green. She could hear it in the clang of steel against
steel, the sharp explosion of spell against spell, the whistle of a weapon chain that broke spells before they landed. She
could hear it in the shouts and commands of unfamiliar voices. It was an unfolding story of its own. She wanted it to end—but
end had many meanings, and she was terrified of the wrong one.
She knew the silence of death. The absence. The loss of warmth.
She’d found a home. She’d built a family. The Barrani were attempting to destroy that—and they couldn’t do it the usual way.
Nightshade’s near death was the Barrani norm. Anything their enemies did here could be prosecuted under the full force of
Imperial law. But prosecution didn’t bring back the dead. She knew it. She’d known it for years: her job was to bring criminals
to justice—but that didn’t repair the damage they’d done.
She caught Shadow strands and began to pull them, to wind them around her gloved hand.
The hatchling growled and bit her ear—much harder than Hope usually did, but probably not hard enough to remove part of her lobe.
She didn’t like that the immediate result was a shift in color; the threads themselves were multihued: purple, dark turquoise, blood red.
She understood that these were what she needed to pull, to gather.
The Shadow-created tunnel was a tapestry; it was the colored flecks and threads that seemed to hold it together. She pulled
and they came, with resistance, to her hand. But she saw, as they did, that they weren’t threads. They weren’t like whatever
became laced gloving. They felt like . . . vines. Like stems.
She was unprepared when they grew buds, and utterly silent when the buds immediately blossomed. The shape of the bloom was
familiar; the color wasn’t. These were the flowers, in green and white, that Mrs. Erickson had worn as a wreath; they were
the flowers that had bloomed in the ruins of a displaced mansion.
But these were blooms of livid, brilliant colors, and the colors seemed almost liquid in the way they moved across the shape
of petals. She continued to gather them, continued to uproot them. She was almost afraid to put them down, but they eventually
grew too numerous to easily carry.
Hope squawked loudly in her right ear.
The hatchling hissed, digging dark claws into Kaylin’s collarbone as if to stand its ground. Hope’s neck craned forward, and
he began to eat the flowers. The hatchling hissed in obvious rage, and his neck, less graceful, snapped forward as he lunged to do the same.
If they could have done it without unbalancing Kaylin, it would have been better, but at least the flowers weren’t touching
Helen.
“Anymore,” Helen said, her voice stronger.
She sounded worried. To be fair, she often did—it was familiar and comforting, even in this odd space.
Perhaps especially in it. “I believe you must continue what you’re doing as quickly as you can.
But I caution you strongly against feeding the hatchling any more of your blood. ”
The hatchling, having bitten her ear—and the ear did sting—was busy making short work of the flowers; droplets of different
colors trickled down its jaws. Hope was a far tidier eater. What Kaylin uprooted, the two ate—snapping and hissing at each
other as if they were siblings afraid that the other child would get more.
Hope seldom ate. Here, he was voracious. So was the much weightier hatchling. Kaylin continued to uproot these odd flowers,
and the two continued to devour them as they blossomed. The hatchling snapped at her hand once in an effort to get to a flower
first; it bit her finger twice for the same reason. It didn’t happen a third time because Hope bit the hatchling, hard. The
wings were the only reason they couldn’t fully engage; one of each was still plastered, like a mask, to her eyes.
Kaylin put a hand between their snouts before they could resume fighting. She could feel the air grow cleaner as she worked,
could almost feel the touch of sunlight, of warmth, even if she couldn’t see it. Her Marks were faintly luminescent, and Hope
shone with the same light; the hatchling didn’t. He radiated a red darkness—the kind of darkness she could see in broad daylight
if she closed her eyes.
Its eyes, however, became an almost milky white as it ate. The stems that Kaylin pulled from the stone ground continued to
bud and blossom in her hands, and the two—Hope and the hatchling—continued to eat as if they were ravenous, starved pets owned
by a neglectful master.
One of them seemed to gain substance and weight as it ate. Kaylin noticed, as the flowers were consumed, that the silence
was also consumed; the hush, the wall that had kept all sound out, was being weakened as she worked.
The hatchling finished eating first. Hope continued, squawking at the hatchling in disgust, annoyance, or concern—she couldn’t tell which.
But she’d made her way around the rough circle the Yvonnes had traced by their chosen positions.
She had handled the stems with care, pulling them up by the roots before they budded and blossomed.
It made no sense, but she’d given up on sense.
Only one stem resisted. It felt no different to the touch than any of the others, but she couldn’t pull it up as easily; it
felt almost as if something was pulling it from the other side.
“Not that one,” Helen said, her voice much stronger.
It felt no different to the touch.
“No. That one must remain if you do not wish to lose your friends.”
“Why?” It didn’t belong here. Kaylin’s sense of that was visceral and immediate.
Helen’s reply was in a resonant language Kaylin did not understand. Hope hummed, and the hatchling joined in; she felt the
sound travel through her body as if she were a bell that had just been struck by an unseen force.
Hope squawked. The hatchling growled. As if they were two halves of one body, they rose from her shoulders, lifting both of
their wings simultaneously.
Kaylin looked at her hands; they were empty. But she could feel the stem of something that hadn’t budded or blossomed, waiting.
She squinted as light and reality returned to her. She stood in the heart of her home, and Helen’s Avatar stood beside her.
Helen wore her usual clothing, but her eyes were the color-flecked obsidian they became when she made no conscious effort
to change their appearance.
“I will send you upstairs,” she said. A door appeared directly in front of Kaylin. “It should not cause discomfort.”
“The intruders?”
“I have two in isolation,” Helen replied. Her smile was granite and ice. “Two escaped. The rest are dead. Lord Nightshade is speaking—somewhat casually—with An’Tellarus. Teela has joined them. Sedarias is with Terrano and Mandoran; Terrano believes he can follow those who escaped.”
And Sedarias thought this was a good idea?
“No; she thinks it’s a terrible idea.”