“Thank you,” Moran replied. “I was concerned that it would be a little too much for the office.”
“Not alittle,” Kaylin countered. Last night, Moran had planned to take a leave of absence, as requested. By the Hawklord. One conversation later—if Annarion and his brother didn’t count—she was not only going into the office, but she was going in dressed as theIllumen praevolo. It should have been hard to look martial in that dress. It wasn’t. Moran looked very much like she was prepared for the battlefield.
“You’re going to cause a bit of a stir,” Tain added, looking appreciative. “But it suits you.”
“The stir or the dress?” Moran asked, the corners of her lips rising.
“Both, I think.”
“I’m almost sorry we missed breakfast. But Annarion wasn’t in the best of moods,” Teela said. Tain’s addition was lost, for a moment, to shouting. “They almost sound like Dragons.”
“You think?”
“They really don’t,” Bellusdeo said, “but if you want a Dragon to compare it to, I’m happy to oblige.”
“I bet you are,” Mandoran said. “And I’d just as soon take your word for it.”
“You’re willing to take my word for something?”
“Given the alternative, yes. Don’t get used to it.”
Bellusdeo snorted smoke, but her eyes were close to golden. They left the house in a huddle the minute Severn showed up at the door.
* * *
“They sound like Dragons,” Severn said as he reversed course and headed back down the walk.
“Don’t you start, too,” Bellusdeo told him. “They sound nothing like Dragons—they just happen to be loud.”
It was Kaylin’s turn to snort. “Having listened to your indecipherable discussions with the Emperor half a palace away, I’m going to say that loud isn’t the only thing they have in common.”
Bellusdeo looked down her nose at Kaylin, lifting a brow as she did.
The familiar was sitting on Kaylin’s shoulder, his wings folded. He looked alert, but not alarmed. The Barrani were blue-eyed, which was pretty much normal. It was amazing to Kaylin how similar their eyes were to Moran’s at the moment. Bellusdeo’s eyes had settled into an alert orange, but it was a pale color.
Moran attracted attention. She hadn’t chosen to don the tabard for the walk to the Halls, and people in the streets stopped to look—or, in one or two cases, stare—as they walked past. In part, it might be the bracelet and bandaged wing—Moran hadn’t elected to remove the dressing that kept the damaged wing in place. Kaylin doubted it, though. Moran walked with a kind of bold confidence she’d never seen.
Not that Moran lacked confidence, of course; in the infirmary, she had more pull than the Hawklord. She certainly had more pull than any of her patients, and had even threatened to strap an angry, hurt Leontine to a bed on at least one occasion. But that was a function of knowing her job, and knowing it well. This was different. It was almost as if she’d spent the whole of her life flying under cloud cover, and had finally flown free of it. She looked younger.
No, not younger, Kaylin thought. But...brighter, somehow. As if the trappings of thepraevolothat she’d disdained for all of her life had been a missing, and essential, part of her nature.
“I’d like to see her fly,” Mandoran said—very quietly. Aerian ears weren’t Leontine or Barrani; in that, they were much closer to human, so whispering was safe.
“So would I,” Kaylin replied, just as quietly. And it was true. She wanted Moran to let her heal her wing. She wanted Moran to fly. She thought, if she flew today, the Aerian would own the skies.
Instead, as if she were human, Moran owned the streets. Maybe it was the dress. Maybe it was the brilliance of the colors. Usually, Moran—like any sergeant—seemed both definitive and gray, as if it was necessary to let the office determine her shape. Or rather, she had. Today was a revelation. The Aerian didn’t look happy, exactly. From everything she’d said, beingpraevolohad not been pleasant for her. It had cost her her mother, her grandmother—the only family she had.
Kaylin hated winter and fiefs and disease, because those three things had killed her mother. But it was like hating rain. Railing against weather didn’t change the weather, because the weather didn’t care. It had no essential malice. It was something to be endured.
Moran had lost kin because ofpeople. It was different. It was profoundly different. And she’d denied the wings that had been her unwanted birthright. She’d ignored them. She’d proved that she didn’tneedthem to make a place for herself. She’d made one.
But it was a conflicted space—Kaylin saw that now, if only in comparison. She had been saying, in every possible way,Ignore me, ignore my differences. She’d forced herself to fit in. By denying what shewas, she’d created a life in which everyone else did, or could, deny it, as well. And that would have been fine, if not for the Caste Court. Or so Kaylin would have said. Now, she wasn’t certain. Moran had lived behind walls. Kaylin wasn’t certain if she’d knocked the walls down or opened a door, and it didn’t matter.
No one attacked her on the way to work. The familiar was alert. Everyone was alert, even Mandoran. But there were no more invisible attackers, no more magical assassins. There was just open, clear sky. There were normal Aerian patrols.
There was, when they reached the doors, Clint and Tanner.
Tanner blinked but otherwise held his post. It was Clint who froze in place.
