“And everyone else?”
“The Barrani are not the concern of the Dragon Court—or rather, these particular Barrani are not. The war band is. However, one possible benefit of a declaration of war is that the High Court and its lord are not in a position to make racial demands of the Emperor. Discussions and negotiations are tense enough that the Emperor would reject, outright, any attempt to forcibly repatriate your friends.”
“You’re speaking theoretically, right?” Kaylin asked, without much hope.
“He’s not,” Tara replied, before Tiamaris could. “Things have moved quickly, here, but nothing is on fire.” She hesitated, which was unusual for Tara. “Ah, I forgot to mention something. You will not be able to speak with Lord Ynpharion, nor he with you, while you are within the Tower.”
Kaylin folded her arms. “Thank you.” She meant it. “Now that we’re home and as safe as we’re likely to get, we’re going to have to visit Candallar. You’re a fieflord, he’s a fieflord. If you have any way of making that meeting safer, we’d appreciate it. His job as lord of a Tower is to stop Shadow from escaping to eat the rest of the city.” To Tara, she said, “He apparently allowed a Barrani Lord—of the High Court—to enter and leave Ravellon. When he left, he was carrying a passenger.”
Tara’s eyes were obsidian.
“You let us in. You had that option. Could you let me walk into Ravellon and come out carrying Shadow?”
Tara’s skin turned to stone. Literally. “No.”
“Well, that’s what the Tower of Candallar seems to have allowed.”
“Impossible.”
So not the word Kaylin wanted to hear. Before she could continue, Tiamaris lifted a staying hand. “We have been informed—by Corporal Handred—of Candallar’s possible collusion with both assassins and...something at the heart of Ravellon.”
I told him what you knew. If Shadows are leaving Ravellon and entering Elantra that way...
Kaylin relaxed. Marginally.
Tara said, “We are also investigating. My lord has begun the process of—”
Tiamaris coughed. Very, very loudly. Tara subsided.
Interesting, Nightshade said. Clearly not all Barrani 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 smells terrible.”
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 is no way that 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.
*