She didn’t answer.
* * *
The stranger who was no longer enslaved did not evaporate or disappear. He remained standing in the Hallionne’s hall. When Kaylin pushed the familiar’s wing away from her eyes, she saw him as a diffuse, spiked ball. A floating one.
“His function,” Alsanis said quietly, “is analogous to Records.”
“Pardon?”
“He was considered a historian, a receptacle of information. He was sent to regions in which others might have difficulty surviving; it is why his form is inexact. It extends into the world in which you live, but it does not reside entirely in that world.” He frowned. “Before the fall—those are his words—he...reported?...to—the word islibrarian, I think. I am sorry. His mode of communication is almost archaic.”
“Meaning?”
“It was archaic before I was born.”
“Born? Or before you became the Hallionne?”
“The latter. He has served in Ravellon in a similar capacity. He has, until now, had no ability to breach the Tower barriers.”
Bellusdeo seemed far more concerned with this statement than she had the information about the Barrani war band and their politics. “What changed?”
“He was carried out,” Alsanis replied. His eyes had lost the appearance of living eyes as he spoke. “Someone entered Ravellon, bypassing the Tower defenses, and absorbed him as a passenger.”
Kaylin’s hands became fists. “Let me guess. The Tower that was breached was in Candallar.”
Alsanis, however, did not reply immediately. He spoke to the Shadow, and eventually turned back to Kaylin. “The name has no meaning to him.”
Kaylin turned to the spiky, floating ball. “I don’t believe you.”
“He does not understand.”
“The Towers take the name of their lords.”
“They do not,” the stranger said. She could hear his voice, even if he in theory had no mouth with which to speak. The screeching had diminished, although she continued to hear a faint buzz. “They do not change. They are like this place. It is quiet here. It is not so quiet in Ravellon; a hundred thousand mouths speak in all places, all directions. I was sent to the border, the boundary, and I was told to accompany the one who would meet me there without absorbing his essential information.”
Kaylin let that sink in for one long minute. “Fine. Tell me—show me—what you saw when you met the person there.” She folded her arms and waited. Nothing happened. It was Terrano who interrupted; the tenor of his voice rose and fell, but the words were not words that Kaylin understood.
Clearly, the ball did.
The image of the Barrani noble did not fade. The clothing he wore, however, transformed as they watched, as did the ground beneath his feet. When the transformation was complete, the Lord of the High Court resembled one of Nightshade’s thugs.
Kaylin understood that this disguise would be necessary if the Lord wanted to head into the fiefs without drawing attention to himself. What she needed to know, however, was not the how, but the where.
Instead of addressing the spiked ball, she turned to Terrano. “I need to see more of his surroundings. If he met the man on the borders of Ravellon, those borders are physical. I want to know what they looked like.”
“If it was Shadow—”
“The Barrani lord didn’tstayin the shadows, or Spike wouldn’t be here.”
“Spike?” Terrano interrupted.
“We have to call him something,” Kaylin replied, adding a fief shrug. Spike did not seem to notice. Or mind.
“He does not mind,” Alsanis said. “But I am uncertain that he understands the purpose of the word or your version of an identifier.”
Kaylin, responsible for the digression, cleared her throat. “Anyway. He walked through the streets of the city; he walked through the streets of a fief.”
Terrano spoke again, and this time, the ball surrendered a detailed map. It took Kaylin a moment to realize that’s what it was; it was an amalgamation of the literal view of the street, with the wrong colors—too many, too spread out—and overlapping buildings. No, she thought, they weren’t overlapping, not exactly; it was as if each building had been viewed a hundred times, over a decade or two, and the composite of each viewing had been laid over each other.
