Terrano snickered. “You broke her door?”
“I thought the door was stuck. It was an aged building with warped, creaking floors, and warped shutters over small windows.”
It was Tain who coughed this time. Teela shrugged. “It’s not like she didn’t give us a standing invitation. And keys, at least to the first door.”
Kaylin thought Terrano’s understanding of Elantran had improved markedly. “No,” Helen said quietly. “I am translating for him. I sometimes forget to do it quietly.”
“Quietly?”
“I am capable of speaking to one person, and one alone—but it uses different muscles, and more power, and it requires the creation of a small, contained space. I explained this to Terrano, and he was willing to allow this. I haven’t tried to do this for you.”
“Sometimes it would be helpful.”
“Yes.”
“But?”
“But,” Helen agreed. “This house is your house. To isolate you within your own house is obviously something Iamcapable of—but it is best left for emergencies. To do this for you—as opposed to your guests—I would be cutting you off from the rest of the space that comprises me. It would make functioning as a house much more difficult.”
“You know,” Karian said, apparently to the room at large, “it would be helpful to the rest of us if you’d just return to us.”
Terrano stiffened. Allaron dropped a hand on Terrano’s shoulder, but before he could speak—and Allaron wasn’t one for a lot of words—Mandoran materialized. He put a hand on the shoulder Allaron’s wasn’t occupying. “Walls?” he asked.
Terrano slowly unclenched. “You know—you guys can’t do this anywhere but here. Not until you’re good enough at it.”
“Which in some people’s cases will be never.” At Kaylin’s expression, Mandoran added, “We can speak to each other. We can think at each other. We can share information so easily, information is central, like your Records, but contained to us. But there was a reason Terrano was the first—and the only—one of us to escape the Hallionne. I was close, I swear it.”
Terrano nodded. “You’d have been able to join me if you hadn’t been so lazy. You didn’twantit enough.”
Mandoran ignored this. “We’renotone person. We’re a dozen people, give or take, with access to thesameknowledge. But we have different strengths and different weaknesses. And different tempers. Look, you know True Names, right?” He winced; no doubt Teela, Sedarias, or both, were telling him not to say that where anyone else could hear it. “But you’re not the people whose names you know. If you knew them for centuries—if you could imagine knowing them for centuries—would you become those people?”
The thought of becoming Ynpharion made her grimace. “No.”
“It’s the same with us. We’re all still ourselves. It didn’t surprise you to know that Annarion and I are completely different. You didn’t expect us to be the same person.”
“That’s because I live with you.”
“Yes. You’ll get more of an idea of what we’re like when you live with the rest of them, too.”
Kaylin looked around the training room.
“This isn’t the first time someone’s been shunted to this damn room.” He spoke with a broad grin, since the person who had most often been shunted here was Annarion. “It won’t be the last.”
“There’s a big difference.”
“Well, yes, there are more of us—”
“The Consort is coming to dinner.”
Teela was green. She looked queasy, her eyes underlined by dark, dark circles. Taking her life in her hands, Kaylin turned to the Barrani Hawk that was part of the cohort. “You couldn’t unconsciously lose cohesion—not like Annarion does. This is twice in less than a week. Why areyoudoing this?”
When Teela failed to answer, Tain cleared his throat. He would never have dared to ask the question Kaylin had just asked, but he wanted the answer. He wanted it badly.
Teela didn’t answer. None of the cohort did. Mandoran took a step back and Kaylin grabbed his arm before he dispersed through the nearest wall.
It was Bellusdeo who broke the awkward silence that had enfolded them all; she roared. Kaylin nearly jumped out of her own skin; so did Terrano. The rest of the gathered cohort were still.
“If you are going to interrupt other people’s conversation with your arguments,” the gold Dragon then said in a much more normal voice, “I suggest you at leastpracticeto get it right. If you manage a genuine roar, you could probably blame the expression of rage on me, even if I’m not the actual source.” She smiled. There was teeth in it. “There has to be some advantage to living with Dragons, hmm?” To Kaylin, she said, “I’m going upstairs. I have a sick headache, and if I hear another half-hearted roar like the first one, everyone in this house is going to know what an angry Dragonreallysounds like.”
