He paused but didn’t turn back. “Do you wish to remain here? It is safe for you and your kind, but it lacks basic amenities.”
“I don’t think it’s going to remain safe,” she told him, grim now. “Is there a reason you can’t take the book from the Arkon?”
“Book?” Killian turned then, the movement far more like the movements of the Barrani she knew. Kaylin almost took a step back at the intensity of his expression; his eye had lost the appearance of natural eyes. It was, like Helen’s could be when she was distracted by dangers, obsidian. But the flecks of color that added light were almost lurid.
“Larrantin gave me a book,” Kaylin said, her voice steady by dint of will. She was telling the truth—but sometimes truth didn’t matter to the powerful. Killian had not seemed powerful to her until the moment he turned. He’d seemed...broken, almost absent, and, although she would never say this out loud, pitiable.
She repented.
“He gave me a book to give to you.”
“You do not carry a book.”
“No. I—” She swallowed. “The last time you saw me, I was trying to deliver Larrantin’s book. But when the door opened, you had guests.”
He did not reply. When Kaylin fell silent, he said, “Continue.” His voice, like the movement of floor beneath their feet, was thunder.
This had seemed like such a good idea when she’d been looking for a way into the building that bypassed the Arcanist and his crew. It didn’t seem like a great idea now.
“We—I wasn’t sure you were aware that you had guests. They weren’t students. They weren’t trapped in your wall.”
Killian’s eye began to glow, the black emitting a light that ate all other light. As if the remaining eye in miniature was akin to the giant eye on the wall, that dark-cast gaze traveled over all of them. Severn moved, and moved quickly, as did Emmerian, leaping into the corners formed by walls on either side of the open door.
Bellusdeo was standing too close to the Arkon to do so. Or maybe not; she didn’t even make the attempt to get out of the way of a gaze that had become, in a moment, almost physical.
As the gaze of the eye in the border zone, this one swept them someplace else in an instant.
Someplace else was dark. The floor in this place was soft—which implied carpet. Or worse. It no longer trembled. Kaylin reached out with her left arm and contacted the Arkon’s back. Or his robes.
“Bellusdeo?”
“I’m here.”
“Could either of you do something about the lights?”
“I believe,” the Arkon said, “we will leave that up to you.”
“Sanabalis hasn’t been teaching me anything as useful as lighting.”
“I am sure he has laid down enough of the basics that you could, with effort, illuminate at least one room.”
“Or you could, with no effort, do the same.”
“Kitling,” Bellusdeo said, voice softer than usual, “while Lannagaros was not known for the sweetness of either his temperament or his teaching, he seldom made requests of this nature without reason.”
“Meaning he’s not attempting to torment me or make me feel stupid?”
“Yes.”
“But Sanabalisdidn’tteach me how to... Oh.”
“It is a small wonder to me that you have survived Sanabalis,” the Arkon then said. “I understand that Bellusdeo is with you for all of Lord Diarmat’s classes.”
Kaylin grimaced in the dark. The Arkon was unlikely to see her expression.
He knows you well enough to know what your expression is likely to be, Hope said.You will want to be careful here.
“Where is here?”
