She breathed again as they approached the gates that were Helen’s actual boundaries, and smiled when the gates rolled open without assistance. Although this type of magic was not unheard of in the city, it was definitely unusual. But unusual, according to the mostly silent Swords, was the word of the very, very long day. Only when the cohort had been delivered to the property line did the Swords peel off and return to their regular patrol route.
Helen’s doors were open long before the cohort reached them, and Kaylin noticed that the cohort became more martial, not less, with the loss of the Swords. She didn’t tell them Helen was safe. If Mandoran and Annarion’s experience hadn’t made that clear to the cohort, nothing would. But she felt a bit bad for Helen, because Helen was social; she liked people, and liked guests.
Kaylin walked directly to Helen as Helen opened her arms, enfolding her in a hug that was simultaneously soft as comfort and rigid as armor. She looked past Kaylin to the cohort; Kaylin couldn’t see her expression, but could hear it in her voice, anyway. “Welcome. The boys—I’m sorry, that’s what we often call Mandoran and Annarion—are waiting for you in the dining room.”
“Teela’s not here?”
“Teela received a summons,” Helen said, her voice flat and neutral, “and chose to honor it. She left some thirty minutes ago, heading to the High Halls.”
Because if she went to the High Halls immediately, she could truthfully fail to answer most of the questions posed about the cohort’s arrival.
“Yes, dear,” Helen said. “I believe that was exactly her thinking on the matter.” She paused. “Terrano?”
Kaylin withdrew and turned toward Terrano, who was pretty much holding hands with Sedarias and Allaron. Or at least they were holding on to his.
“I will not detain you or cage you. You are a guest, and in this house, guests are not prisoners. I won’t deny that cages do wait—metaphorically speaking—for those who enter without invitation or permission, but you are not one of them. Ah, speaking of which,” Helen added, “I believe you have a different visitor.”
“Who?”
“I would tell you his name, but I don’t think you could actually hear half of it. But I believe he said you named him Spike?”
She’d forgotten Spike.
“He apologizes,” Helen continued, “but he could not follow you into the Tower; he could not approach it following the path you took.”
“Wait, did you just say he’s in a cage?”
“It is a comfortable cage, but yes. I have the ability to make decisions of my own, and his story, while very chaotic and jumbled, seemed to me to be true. He explained how he met you. I was slightly uncertain until he told me the name you gave him.” She looked mildly disapproving.
“He—his form here—is a kind of floating, spiky ball,” Kaylin explained.
“I’ll let him out, then. He seemed to feel that you wished his company, and he owes you a great debt.”
“Debt? Ummm, is he Immortal, by any chance?”
“I believe you would consider him so, yes. Why do you ask?”
“Because Immortals hate debt or obligation—it’s practically a threat.”
Helen smiled and drew Kaylin into the house, where she was no longer blocking the door. As the cohort filed into the foyer, Helen said, to Bellusdeo, “The Arkon has been using the mirror almost continuously. I believe he is concerned.”
Bellusdeo snorted.
“And Maggaron is quite unhappy, at the moment.”
The Dragon sighed. “Let me go talk to him. I shouldn’t have left without him, but it might have entirely depleted the elemental water if he’d come as bodyguard.”
Helen froze in place. Her eyes went the shade of color-flecked obsidian that was natural when she forgot to put effort into maintaining her appearance. “Have you spoken with the Keeper?”
“We’ve kind of been busy,” Kaylin said. “Have you?”
“Teela and Severn did, separately. The Keeper did not, as we hoped, ask the water to intervene. Nor did the Tha’alani. The water acted entirely on its own.”
Kaylin knew this.
“Understand that the Keeper exists for a reason. I do not know if all worlds have a Keeper, but I have often imagined they must. The Keeper harmonizes the elements; it is because they exist in his garden that the world is stable. Were they to range free, they would destroy each other, or try, and in the process, we would perish.”
Kaylin nodded, because this was more or less her understanding.
“The water clearly feels that the danger is great enough to threaten them all.”
“So: we have a Barrani war band, the threat of war, a High Court in revolt, Barrani Lords in collusion with a fieflord to enter Ravellon, and an elemental water that’s terrified enough of something that she grabbed me and threw me at the West March. And at the heart of it all: Ravellon.”
“Yes, dear. You forgot the cohort.”
“No, I really didn’t.” Kaylin headed toward the dining room, followed by a quiet Severn. Bellusdeo, true to her word, had gone to apologize to her Ascendant.
*
The dining room was not silent, but Kaylin wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she couldn’t hear a majority of the conversation. Allaron had released Terrano, and had pulled up a chair at the table; his posture was far more like Annarion’s than Mandoran’s. The table was the centerpiece of the gathering, but that was fair; it was the centerpiece of most of the discussions that took place while Kaylin was at home.
She was surprised to see that the cohort were very physical; there was almost always contact between the various members, even Sedarias. The stiff and very proper demeanor was shed in the presence of Mandoran and Annarion, and she sat beside Mandoran, an arm around his shoulders, her head tilted almost into his.
But she wasn’t the only one. Two of the cohort were sharing a chair; several were holding hands or arms. They could have comfortably occupied half the space because they didn’t seem to have any hesitation about how much they overlapped. Terrano was included in their number, but Kaylin noted that, after the brief hug he had offered a smiling Mandoran, he had pulled his chair to the side, out of easy reach of any of the rest.
She wondered, then, how much Mandoran and Annarion had adjusted their behavior as Helen’s guests. Wondered if, when she wasn’t in the room, they overlapped or huddled like this. This didn’t look like a Barrani gathering; had Kaylin’s vision been poorer, she might have assumed these people were Leontine kits, huddled in a pile near the hearth.
And she wondered if Teela’s propensity for casual physical contact had been a memory of this, something she had lost for centuries—and that she had thought lost forever. She couldn’t imagine Teela entwined with this mass of the cohort, though. And she grimaced when she thought of Tain’s reaction.
Helen came to stand beside her as she lingered just on the inside of the doorway.
“They won’t consider your presence a disturbance,” Helen said. “If they need privacy, it comes built-in.” Her smile was slender but warm. “I think they are surprised at how much they missed each other. They’ve relied on their names for so long, their names are like the Tha’alaan to them. But the physical presence has weight, as well. They are happy.”