Tiamaris coughed. Very, very loudly. Tara subsided.
Interesting, Nightshade said. Clearly notallBarrani had been forbidden communication.
“No,” Tara said. “Lord Nightshade is a fieflord, and the possible problems with Candallar might affect us all. But you are tangled in too many names, and at the moment, we deem the information flow problematic. Lord Ynpharion and the Lord of the West March cannot hear you here; nor can you speak to them, unless it is absolutely necessary. We have not impeded the communication of your cohort.” In a different tone, she added, “It is more complex, and the process would be more complicated; I am not entirely certain I would succeed. Has Helen tried?”
“I really wish you could visit and talk to Helen; I think you’d like each other. And no, I don’t think she’s ever tried. The cohort are part of Mandoran and Annarion. Losing that connection would be like losing a limb. She’s not big on causing harm to her tenants.”
“No. But her imperatives are not the same as the ones which bind me.”
Tiamaris watched her, but said nothing, and Kaylin thought that if Tara wanted to make the same adjustments that Helen had made to her own words, he might be willing to allow it.
“He would,” Tara said, in a much softer voice. “But we were built where we stand for a reason, and while Ravellon exists, no such adjustments would be safe. I would not risk the fief he is building. I would not risk him.” And she walked across the room to join him, losing, as she did, the armor with which she had greeted the cohort. Her clothing settled into the familiar, baggy gardening clothes that Kaylin privately thought of as the garb of her true self, and to everyone’s surprise, Tiamaris gently laid an arm around her shoulders, and drew her toward him.
It was hard to tell if he was her support, or she his, and Kaylin watched with something that was almost envy. Almost.
* * *
“This place stinks,” Terrano said, as they headed across the Ablayne. “It smellsterrible.”
Given the expressions of the cohort, most privately agreed, and Kaylin remembered Mandoran making a similar comment. Clearly, Mandoran was speaking to the rest of the cohort now. Severn was wearing his tabard. Kaylin was not wearing hers, as she had gone to visit Evanton after work hours. Although Tara could make clothing suitable for the Emperor himself, none of it persisted beyond the boundaries of the fief.
Kaylin did fall in beside Severn, regardless. He was alert. So was she. So was her familiar, who had perked up as they left Tara, and was now watching the streets like a hawk. There were no obvious threats; indeed, the threat seemed to emanate from the cohort, and Kaylin remembered, as a patrol of mounted Swords approached, that the Barrani war band had caused the Swords to go on full alert.
Severn, however, was uniformed, and was able to negotiate with the Swords; the cohort were not notably armored or armed. Their crime, such as it was, was being Barrani in highly concentrated numbers—and that was not, as Severn pointed out, against the edict of Imperial Law, which they all served.
The Swords did form up around the Barrani, more for the sake of the much more nervous onlookers than the Barrani themselves, and the cohort therefore had a more or less official escort through the rest of the Elantran streets. Kaylin found herself scanning windows in the taller buildings, but the usual street thieves and beggars stayed well away from the Swords, and as the neighborhood began to shift toward the high-end mansions that were common around Helen, they ceased to be even a passing concern.
I will inform the Consort that your lunatic plan was successful, Ynpharion said, the chill in his voice deeper than its usual frigid disdain.
You do that, Kaylin snapped back.
She points out that your dinner invitation is still viable.
Kaylin almost dropped her jaw.You have got to be joking.
No, Lord Kaylin, I am not. If you wish to withdraw that invitation—
I already did!
—feel free to send a message to the High Halls. Or better, deliver it in person.
There isno waythat she is coming here right now. We’ve just arrived, and she’s already tried to harm the cohort. There is no way.
Silence. She would have berated Ynpharion further, but sensed that he was no happier with the message he had conveyed than she was. If she wanted to shout at the source of her actual anger, she couldn’t do it through Ynpharion.
* * *
She breathed again as they approached the gates that were Helen’s actual boundaries, and smiled when the gates rolled open without assistance. Although this type of magic was not unheard of in the city, it was definitely unusual. But unusual, according to the mostly silent Swords, was the word of the very, very long day. Only when the cohort had been delivered to the property line did the Swords peel off and return to their regular patrol route.
Helen’s doors were open long before the cohort reached them, and Kaylin noticed that the cohort became more martial, not less, with the loss of the Swords. She didn’t tell them Helen was safe. If Mandoran and Annarion’s experience hadn’t made that clear to the cohort, nothing would. But she felt a bit bad for Helen, because Helen was social; she liked people, and liked guests.
Kaylin walked directly to Helen as Helen opened her arms, enfolding her in a hug that was simultaneously soft as comfort and rigid as armor. She looked past Kaylin to the cohort; Kaylin couldn’t see her expression, but could hear it in her voice, anyway. “Welcome. The boys—I’m sorry, that’s what we often call Mandoran and Annarion—are waiting for you in the dining room.”
“Teela’s not here?”
“Teela received a summons,” Helen said, her voice flat and neutral, “and chose to honor it. She left some thirty minutes ago, heading to the High Halls.”
Because if she went to the High Halls immediately, she could truthfully fail to answer most of the questions posed about the cohort’s arrival.
