“I would if I knew what you were doing.”
“I’m introducing myself. That’s what I did the first time to get his attention.”
“How are you introducing yourself, exactly?”
“Touching the floor so I’m in contact with the building, and...thinking at it.” This sounded far less reasonable on the outside of her head.
“Ah. That is not what you are actually doing.”
“It looks to me like that’s exactly what she’s doing,” Bellusdeo said.
“Spoken like a warrior.”
Bellusdeo’s laughter implied that the Arkon’s expression was sour and annoyed. Kaylin loved the sound of that laughter. There was affection in it, even if there was mockery; the mockery implied history rather than superiority or cruelty.
“What am I doing?”
“Can you not see your marks?”
“I can. They’re not doing anything special; they’re flat against my skin. Except for the light.”
“Perhaps that was the wrong choice of words. Can you nothearthem?”
“No. You can?”
“Not clearly enough to repeat them, but yes—I hear the echoes of words. Understand that these words are not simply spoken, although they must be spoken in some fashion if they are to be made manifest; they are felt, they are seen, they are tangible. To speak is to call them forward, to hold them in place for some small time.
“But this was not a language made for our use, except in one way.”
“True Names.”
“Yes.”
“The thing I don’t understand is how you can speak a True Name and alsobea True Name. I mean, if I could only ever use a word once, I’d never be able to speak at all.”
“Hush and listen. I will do the same. It is something that I have not attempted in the past; I have studied the configuration of your marks at the request of the Emperor, but I have seldom had the chance to do what I am now doing. You never sit still for long enough,” he added. “And you are always in the middle of a crisis that necessitates movement, motion.”
“I cannot hear them,” Bellusdeo said.
“No. But you, too, were always in crisis, and I cannot fault the choices you did make in a past I did not experience at your side. Be our guard, then; practice what you dedicated your life to in that past.”
The Arkon did not magically join her in the space she occupied behind the darkness of closed eyelids. Terrano had said that this was her way of phasing, of moving between different planes of existence. She didn’t do what the cohort did, and she didn’t experience it as a change in herself; she experienced it as a change in her environment.
This type of shift was not one that affected Bellusdeo’s ability to see Kaylin; what Kaylin thought she was doing and what Bellusdeo witnessed were the same. She didn’t become invisible or transparent to the Dragon’s eye. But she was aware that communicating with buildings wasn’t as simple as the Hallionne had made it out to be. She hoped that this was not like attempting to reach the embattled heart of the High Halls—because that had been terrible.
But the being at the heart of the High Halls had been aware. He had made choices. His imperatives were different than Killian’s had once been. How had Killian survived? And if he had somehow managed to disperse himself between the demarcations of the fiefs, if he had somehow managed to preserve the Academia, why was he so limited?
What had she seen in the border zones that might answer these questions?
“Corporal.”
She grimaced. These were all questions that she felt needed answers—but Killian wasn’t here. She once again directed her thoughts toward reaching him.
She stopped searching when the Arkon began to speak.
If she couldn’t see the Arkon, she could hear him. His voice surrounded her. Without opening her eyes, she couldn’t tell where he was sitting or standing. She couldn’t hear his breathing, but without concentrating, couldn’t hear her own.
The syllables that rolled in were not in a language she knew, but he spoke a language she recognized. She almost opened her eyes.
