The Dragon concurred. “Is flight still forbidden?”
The familiar nodded. As a small lizard, his facial expressions were limited, but he looked concerned, to Kaylin.
“How did the cohort get past this?”
“Don’t ask me—I’m not one of them anymore.”
Kaylin exhaled. “But you’re here.”
“Obviously I have an intelligence deficit.”
“Fine. You recognized this as Alsanis.”
“I spent most of my existence trapped here.”
“So did the cohort. What did Sedarias do—if she managed to do anything—that allowed them safe passage?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because my skin feels like it’s being flayed off, and that’s probably not a good sign—for Alsanis.”
Terrano fell silent for one long beat.
“What are you doing?”
“Be quiet.”
Bellusdeo shook her head when Kaylin opened her mouth again, and Kaylin closed it, missing Severn. He was generally content to let her do most of, if not all of, the talking. But as she watched Terrano, she had a feeling that hewastalking, and in a way she couldn’t. For perhaps the first time, she considered the advantages of being Terrano and Mandoran. She didn’t much like the idea of getting stuck in walls, though.
The words spun slowly—and loudly—to a halt. And the air grew less heavy, the ground less hard. She couldn’t hear Alsanis, and that still bothered her, but she now had a faint sense of his presence.
“What did you do?” Bellusdeo demanded.
Terrano grimaced. “When we were struggling to find our way out of our cage, we developed different forms of communication. There were layers to it; we could communicate almost entirely truthfully while obscuring small, but critical facts.
“It was obfuscation that was the important part, then. Of course, Alsanis was aware of our various attempts—he’s a Hallionne. So it became a bit of a game. We have ways of communication that in theory shouldn’t exist, and he created systems to hear that nonexistent communication. We had successes, but most of them didn’t last long—it was always work to keep ahead of Alsanis.”
“So you were—”
“Using one of the older secret modes, yes. If Alsanis has somehow been cut off from communication with us—I mean with you and the Dragon—there’s a strong chance that the rest of the modes we developed were not considered when the interference was put in place.” For a moment, he seemed highly pleased with himself, which once again emphasized his youthfulness.
“Did he answer you?”
Terrano pointed at the word forms. “He never used the undercurrent to speakwithus; that would have made it clear, immediately, that he could. But he learned to listen.”
“While he has this much control, let’s get moving. Ummm, I don’t suppose he could make the edges of those lines less sharp?”
Terrano snorted. “You might as well ask if he can makeyouless clumsy. If the edges are too sharp, don’t touch them.”
Bellusdeo’s eyes lightened as she snickered, because clearly, that’s what friends did. Kaylin forced herself not to reply, and began to navigate toward the distant cohort. She had questions, of course—but questions had to wait.
The tighter congregation of words did not diminish; neither did their edges. While it was easier to walk between them when they did not spin or move, following Terrano’s advice was difficult, and became more so as they continued their awkward pursuit of Sedarias and company.
Three words in, Kaylin knew she was going to need a new shirt; the current one had been cut in three places, and the third cut wasn’t small enough to patch. There’d been almost no friction; the slicing of cloth had made no sound. She glanced at Bellusdeo, but the Dragon scale was more hardy than simple cloth.
The fourth cut broke skin. It was a very shallow cut, more of a scrape or a scratch than a wound, and blood beaded from it slowly, welling up in uneven blobs of red. In the stillness, Kaylin didn’t even curse.
She did curse the fifth time; the cut was deeper, and the blood, rather than beading, ran down her arm, as if it were trying to underline the injury. This time, that blood spread across her skin, running across the marks that lay there, flat and glowing a gentle gray. Her familiar squawked in her ear, in the tone of voice she imagined Terrano would use if he’d noticed.
