But understanding their meaning hadn’t given hermorepower. It had allowed her to use them as she hoped they were meant to be used.
“I don’t think so.”
Moran gave her a look that was pure sergeant. She returned a look that was visceral private.
“True Words can be True Names. But that is not what your words are.”
“You are wrong,” the outcaste said. And he spoke in High Barrani. But he continued to intone the words as he did, without pause.
So did the terrifyingly strange familiar. Was this what he was? Was small and squawky like the heart of Shadow? She fought panic; his Shadow entered her, flowed into her, in a way that the other Shadow couldn’t. And why? Because she’d fought it. Becausehe’dfought it, for her. She looked down at her hands and blinked.
They looked gloved, in this space. They looked like pretty lace gloves. She lifted her hands again. Crossing her arms, she placed a hand just above each collarbone.
The pain ebbed.
The familiar continued to chant. He might not have noticed her at all.
“That Name,” she told the outcaste, “is not your Name.”
His eyes widened; his recitation stumbled.
She had been afraid that speaking the words would give him power over them. She had assumed that the familiar’s recitation was supposed to provide balance—as if she were a rope, and this were tug-of-war. But that wasn’t the way language worked. True Names, maybe. But not True Words. Not these words.
The familiar continued to speak, and Kaylin swallowed hesitation and fear, containing them. She began to speak the words as well, to echo the familiar’s steady, slow reading.
Unlike either the familiar or the outcaste, she couldn’t read them and speak at the same time. But it seemed important to her that she speak, that she follow the familiar’s lead.
You couldn’t own words. You couldn’t own language. You might invent one, but to speak it, you shared. You couldn’t control what anyone else made of the language; couldn’t define how they spoke, when they spoke, or what they spoke about. Only when they were with you did you have that control, because conversation involved two. Or more.
Speaking these words didn’t change them. They weren’t True Names. They had existed before Kaylin—longbefore Kaylin—and they would exist after she died. She wasn’t the words. The words weren’t hers. But the skin they were on? Thatwas.
The outcaste could speak. He could recognize the language that even the Arkon struggled with. But itwasa kind of language. Speaking it didn’t change its essential nature, because speaking it couldn’t. People spoke words in order to communicate.
“Private.”
Or intimidate, or invoke emotion. Often conversations caused more confusion, not less; people used the same words in different ways, and therefore heard them and weighted them in ways the speaker might not have intended.
These were True Words. In theory, such misunderstandings weren’t possible. In theory, the words had meanings, and those meanings did not, could not, change. But...if these were True Words, if True Words could be spoken as if they were just another language, like Barrani or Aerian, there’d be no need to have the words attached to her skin, or the skin of any of the Chosen before her.
Regardless, the skin was her damn skin. While the words occupied it, they were as much hers as anyone’s. The marks rose as the recitation continued.
One of them was devoured, slowly, by the shadow on her left. The outcaste’s voice dipped again, as his eyes widened. They were orange now. They looked truly Draconic.
“What are you allowing him to do? Foolish girl—”
“It’s not the only time he’s done it,” Kaylin snapped back, losing the thread of the familiar’s steady voice. “But you know what? He needs permission. He doesn’t take what’s not offered. He doesn’t lie about what he is or what he wants. He doesn’t try to give a young Dragon a fake name so he can control her!”
Bellusdeo roared. She couldn’t see the gold Dragon, but she could hear her so clearly she lifted her hands to her ears.
The outcaste lost the thread of Kaylin’s words, lost the focus on Moran, lost height. It was to Bellusdeo that he looked; he could see what Kaylin couldn’t. “Is that what you think?” he roared. Kaylin shouldn’t have understood a word of it. She almost wished she couldn’t. “Is that what you think I was trying to do?”
Bellusdeo roared again, longer and louder. After a pause, she said, “Sergeant dar Carafel,let. Me. Fly.” This last was in Elantran, but spoken with all the depth and fullness of an angry, red-eyed Dragon. “...Please.”
“I cannot allow you to continue your fight in the Southern Reach. Enough damage has already been caused that this landing area has become unstable. If you fight here, you might destroy half the cliff face before you’re done. If only that. If you wish to fight, you must do so well clear of the Reaches.” She paused, and then added, “The outcaste is a matter of the Dragon Caste Court. There is a reason no one interferes in the wars of the Dragons, and I would not interfere now were the cost of inaction not to be paid by my people.”
The outcaste continued to look at Bellusdeo. “I did not destroy your sisters.”
“The Shadow—”
