Where I came from, an advantage was an invitation to robbery. Or worse.
It is not so different, here—but it signals, to the would-be thief, that there are consequences.
She would have answered, but at that moment, the stranger looked up to meet her eyes, through the veil of familiar’s wing. She realized one of the disturbing things about him was that he had no eyelids.
The second disturbing thing was the eyes he did have: they looked like...bee eyes. Or bee hives. Like something was livinginthem that might emerge at any minute. She wondered, as she controlled a shudder, what he saw when he looked at her. As if in reply, the marks on her arms began to glow.
19
He opened his mouth; he had no teeth. Where teeth might have been, he had fine, multicolored filaments; they moved in a wave that appeared to reflect light. She could see that the form and shape he now wore was diffuse, amorphous; that it suggested life—or rather, life as Kaylin knew it—without actually being it. She tried to concentrate on it anyway, because everything else screamedwrongto her. And he wasn’t the one who had his hands in someone’s chest, wrapped around their heart.
If it was even his heart.
“Chosen,” he said. She could hear the word, could feel her body reverberate with the two syllables. The high-pitched, painful shriek was gone.
She opened her mouth to reply, but words deserted her; her mouth was too dry, her throat too constricted. She forced herself to breathe normally. Wondered what she was inhaling.
“There is danger, here.” He looked away, to Terrano. “I am...free? I am free. If you release me, I will not harm you, and I will not return to Ravellon.” The word he used was different; Kaylin could hear the clashing overlay of syllables, but it didn’t change the heart of what he’d actually said.
Terrano hesitated.
“It is safe,” Alsanis said quietly. “They will do no harm to me.”
Terrano let go. As he did, Kaylin saw that his hand was bleeding. The person that he’d caught and held in its insect shape remained standing; he made no further attempt to flee. But he turned to the Avatar of the Hallionne, and lifted his hands in a complicated dance of motion that seemed deliberate, graceful.
It took a moment for Kaylin to realize that this was his version of a bow: a gesture of respect. What surprised her was Alsanis; he lifted his hands in a motion that, while far less fluid, appeared to be almost the same.
“It is a greeting,” Alsanis said, glancing at Kaylin. “An old greeting. Words once had different meanings, different textures, and to speak them at all required power and will, focus and certainty; they were not unlike bright, beautiful cages. There are reasons why you cannot speak that ancient language. And no, Lord Kaylin, it does not come easily to even one such as I.”
She wondered where he’d seen that greeting, where he’d learned it, what etiquette schools—and here, an image of angry Diarmat, not that there was any other kind, filled her mind—he had been forced to attend.
Alsanis laughed.
“I come from the east,” the stranger said. “I was sent out to gather information. They will know that I am lost to them.”
“Who sent you?” It was Kaylin who asked. Terrano was staring at the stranger, his forehead creased in a deepening frown, as if he couldn’t quite bring his gaze into focus. There was no enmity in it, no hostility.
The stranger’s eyes lit up. Literally. The facets that made the eyes look insect-like began to flash, to spark; he lifted his hands, and his fingers once again did a strange, deliberate dance through air. But what had she expected? That he somehow dislodge a name, an identifier, something that Kaylin, as a Hawk, might hope for when questioning the witness to a crime? He was aShadow.
But he’d said he was free. Free, now.
“Alsanis, what the hellsisShadow?” It was a question she’d asked before, sometimes in desperation, sometimes in fear, but she’d never asked it like this.
There was no response. From out of the eyes of the stranger, bleeding into the air, came something that looked like multi-colored smoke, if smoke were liquid. That smoke dribbled in all directions, spreading and meshing until it resembled something solid. Kaylin tried to think of it as a Records display, because those changed from mirror to mirror. She mostly succeeded, until she stopped having to try.
What she had expected to form was some envoy of Shadow; something that was a mishmash of body parts in the wrong places, and in the wrong quantities. Or a Dragon. A big black Dragon. Neither would have surprised her.
What she got instead sucked all the air out of her lungs—and everyone else’s as well.
It was a Barrani man. He wore Court robes and a very slender tiara; his eyes were Barrani blue, his skin flawless, his posture elegant, his expression forbidding.
Lirienne shut down instantly. She could not hear his thoughts, could not feel any of his emotional reactions. Kaylin held his name, not the other way around. In theory, Kaylin could force her way in. But that would be costly for both of them.
More costly, by far, for you. It was Nightshade. His interior voice was ice. She was almost surprised to hear from him, given she was in the Hallionne; Helen seldom allowed his voice to penetrate her barriers.
You recognize him.
Yes. So does yourkyuthe, if I am not mistaken.
