“Well, yes, now that you ask.”
“And that?”
“He had gray hair. A bit like yours, but with more black and less white in it.”
The silence that followed was almost suffocating in its intensity; the Arkon was frozen in place, as if even the ability to breathe had deserted him. Kaylin was uncomfortable with this type of silence, and as it grew and threatened to overwhelm all the textures of nonverbal sound, she broke it.
“He could see me. He thought—I think he thought—that I’d been sent to deliver a message. He said something.” She frowned. “He said something about it being ‘that time already.’”
Mortal memory was, at the moment, a curse to the Arkon, but he didn’t attempt to intimidate better memory out of Kaylin. “I think he knew what had happened. He couldn’t see Teela or Bellusdeo; he walked right through Teela. I thought he might be a ghost. It was Teela who told me his name. Or what he was called.”
“Larrantin,” the Arkon whispered.
“He could hear every word I spoke—to anyone else—even if he couldn’t see them, so it was hard to discuss in his presence. But he was Larrantin. I think... I think he’s living in a place where the Towers haven’t risen yet. Or rather, he was. He knew that the Towers would be created. He said something about selection. But he couldn’t leave the building.
“When he reached the doors we entered, he couldn’t leave. So he handed me the book he’d tucked under his arm and told me to take it to Killian, and to come back if Killian had anything to tell him.”
The Arkon’s gaze now shifted to the book on the table beneath one layer of scarf and Kaylin’s left hand. “Remove the scarf,” he told her. She did.
“Open the book.”
“Lannagaros, let her finish.”
The Arkon exhaled slowly, as if he were counting. “Apologies, Corporal. I assume you wish to tell me why you did not do as Larrantin commanded.”
“He asked, he didn’t command...” pedantry was never safe when practiced on pedants “...but we’d been looking for Killian, so I took the book. I meant to hand it over to him, but when we found the building that we’d left the first time, the doors were locked. They didn’t have modern door wards, but Annarion knew how to open them. When Killian appeared at the doors, his eyes were the death-variant of Barrani blue. But when those doors slid open, I could hear Nightshade.
“The cohort could hear their missing members.” She poked Hope. “Nightshade, at least, seemed to be trapped in an auditorium listening to a lecture, of all things. He didn’t seem upset, but he did sound frustrated; he said he couldn’t leave. I mean, he couldn’t leave the building.
“But that wasn’t the real problem.”
“I am glad to see that you are getting to it.” Voice dry enough to start fires.
“Thereal problem,” she said irritably, “was the two men standing to either side of Killian.”
This silence was different. It was more focused and oddly less suffocating. The Arkon didn’t break it.
Emmerian did. “Two men? Lord Bellusdeo?”
“We did not see them. Kaylin saw them because of her familiar’s wing.”
“Lord Kaylin?”
Ugh. “Kaylin is fine. Or Corporal.”
He nodded. “Corporal, then. Please describe the two men.”
“One was Barrani. An Arcanist; he was wearing the tiara I associate with the Arcanum.”
“It is not worn only by members of the Arcanum,” Sanabalis said.
“And the other was human.”
“Human?”
She exhaled. “Severn says he’s a member of the human Caste Court. Lord Baltrin.”
“Severn did not recognize the Barrani?”
