“For all intents and purposes, it’s like they’re not there.” She shrugged again, uncomfortably aware of the Dragon’s stare. “Look, you grew up in an Aerie, and you even remember a lot of it. I grew up in the fiefs. I had no fixed home; we had places where we squatted. Some were too exposed. I used to daydream of being able to live in a safe place—a single safe place—that we could call home.
“It’s like—like there’s a space, and more people can live in it. And they don’t get in each other’s way. They don’t hurt each other at all.” She exhaled. “That part’s the important one. We’re all minding our own business. We don’t have to be aware of everyone else’s.”
“I am never going to understand mortals.” The Dragon exhaled, and some of the tension left the stiff line of her shoulders. “Regardless, we need to get them out of wherever it is they are. I don’t want Spike to play around with our ears.”
“They’re not quite anywhere,” Terrano told them both. “They’re in between states.” When this clearly failed to enlighten either Kaylin or Bellusdeo, he added, “It’s like they’re stuck in a door between two rooms. They’re not in one and they’re not in the other.”
“Was that the point of the trap?”
“No. The trap was probably meant to devour them.”
“Was it Shadow?”
He hesitated, and then glanced at Spike.
Spike, on the other hand, said, “Yes. I do not believe you should remain here.”
“And you’re safe?”
“I am safe,” he replied, without a hint of smugness.
This, on the other hand, caught Bellusdeo’s attention. “There is Shadow here, or near here?”
“Yes.”
“But it will not affect you.”
“No.”
“I think she wants a bit more of an explanation, Spike.”
“It is not diverse enough to affect me. It was meant for you. Or for them,” he added.
“Can you see it?”
The ball had no face, and therefore made no facial expressions, but Kaylin could almost feel frustration radiating from its core.
“I can sense it,” Terrano broke in. He glanced at Spike and shrugged. “It’s gathering over there.” He lifted an arm and pointed into the distance to the left of where Kaylin was standing.
“And you’re not in danger either?” the Dragon demanded.
“Not from this, no.”
“Why?”
“I no longer have a name. Shadow doesn’t seek to learn True Names; it seeks to change their essential structure. Where there are no names, it has more freedom to alter the base material.”
“But if you—”
“My friends have more freedom than the rest of the Barrani have; more freedom, certainly, than Teela will noweverhave. You encountered the Barrani who had reformed their bodies—they also had more freedom than Teela. And no,” he added, “I’m not going to go into the boring details. If you’re careful, the name isn’t a cage.”
“I do not understand why Barrani are so obsessed with their names,” Bellusdeo said. “Dragons have them and we accept them. Attempting to somehow remove the dependence on True Names seems akin to suicide.”
“It is by the use of that name that we can be enslaved, should a greater power discover it.”
“But it’s by the use of that name,” Kaylin countered, “that you could speak with your cohort, even when you were nowhere near them. The name is a bridge between all of you. All of them,” she corrected herself.
“It’s not doing them any good here,” he pointed out. She’d annoyed him. But he was right. None of the people who knew Kaylin’s name could talk to her now. And she imagined that at least one of them would be panicking.
