The Chronicles of Elantra 6 - Cast in Chaos (57 page)

At the door, she paused. “Are you ready for this?” she asked, letting all of her anxiety show—which would have pissed Marcus off to no end, because it reflected poorly on her training.

Ybelline brushed Kaylin’s forehead with her stalks.
Show me what you saw before you arrived. It won’t make me “ready,” but it will help.

I wanted the Linguists to handle this.

So did I. But we’ll make do.

They would have run through the doors, but Dragons had grips like steel vises.

“We,” Sanabalis said gravely, “will go first. Stay behind us, both of you.”

It had been a long damn day, and as war hadn’t yet been declared, she was still a representative of the Law—and the Law didn’t hide behind anyone else. “It’s kind of hard for her to talk from behind your back,” Kaylin snapped. “And I go where she goes.”

Her teacher, looking more remote than he usually did, raised a brow.

The day was going to get a lot damn longer if she didn’t rein in her fraying temper. “They—I think they must have had their own version of the Chosen back home. They recognized the marks on my skin, and they didn’t try to hurt me. I’ll be safe.” She grimaced as Tiamaris roared. “Or as safe as I can be if we’re starting a Dragon War in the middle of Elani.”

The Arkon, however, said, “They are rather tall.”

Kaylin grimaced. “Welcome,” she said, as she stepped firmly between the two Dragons, still hanging on to Ybelline’s hand, “to my life.”

The first things she noticed were the small river running alongside the street and the decidedly unusual fauna poking up between the cobblestones. The gate whose opening had been so chaotic, and whose consequences still waited to be assessed in the future, had vanished. The sky was more or less blue, which meant no
further
water was about to upend itself on her head.

The streets, given how crowded they were, were also silent. It was the wrong type of silence, but considering the alternative in this tension, it was the best they could hope for.

Severn had found a safe patch of cobbled ground in between three Dragon bodies. How, she didn’t know—but he usually managed. He raised a brow as Kaylin approached, and she let go of Ybelline because she remembered that a castelord did have some public dignity requirements. “We’re good,” she said. “Well, Evanton and his Garden, at any rate. Are they pulling out
drums?
”

“Looks like,” Severn replied.

The strangers were, indeed, carting drums. They were tall and deep, with pegged, stretched skins at their height. No blood had yet been spilled, and the Swords, mindful of Dragons—and what Dragon form meant about Imperial dictate—had formed up behind the three Court members in a wide, loose half circle.

The old woman, Mejrah, was standing behind the drums, her arms folded tightly across her chest. At this distance, she looked pale.

“There’s one man there I can speak with,” Kaylin told Ybelline. “I think he’s the traveler.”

“Can you see him?”

The answer, sadly, was no, because the strangers
were
tall, and all of the guards had formed up in the front of the rest of the refugees. They had left room for the old woman who seemed to be some sort of Matriarch, but none of the others that Kaylin privately thought of as Elders were in easy sight.

Ybelline pushed her way past folded wings until she stood at the shoulder of Tiamaris. “Lord Tiamaris,” she said, as if she had met him in a guest room in the Palace to discuss a matter of very minor import.

He didn’t swivel to look at her, but he did answer. “Yes?”

“I am here on behalf of the Imperial Court, in position of Linguist. It is not my area of expertise, but I believe better verbal communication would be of benefit to everyone present.”

He might as well have been carved out of stone.

“Private Neya has had some exposure to the strangers, and she believes that she can safely approach them.” She paused, and then asked, in an entirely different tone of voice, “Has the Emperor been summoned?”

That made his wings twitch. “No. We are not yet at the point where that is considered utterly necessary.”

“In which case, you will allow us passage.”

“Castelord—”

“The castelord’s
request
is not unreasonable,” the Arkon added, and this time, Tiamaris did turn to look.

“Arkon?”

“Indeed. The situation that the Court thought most dire has been dealt with, and has left me much to think about. The situation that the Lords of Law were more focused on clearly has yet to be resolved. It is not, unless there has been open warfare, a matter for the Dragon Court.”

“They have magic,” Tiamaris replied. “And numbers. It was our thought—”

“That three Dragons would deter them sufficiently that no war would be required. It appears to have been an accurate assessment, given the lack of blood. Have the Swords sent for—”

“Yes. Word has been sent.”

“Then step aside. The Private—and possibly Corporal Handred—will serve as escort for Ybelline. I do not think their line will hold peacefully if any of you three attempt to draw closer.”

It was a pity, Kaylin thought, as Severn joined them, that the strangers were so damn big. Had they been smaller than the average human they wouldn’t have seemed so instantly dangerous. On the other hand, danger enforced caution. The old woman, spotting Kaylin—which, once they’d cleared Dragon cover wasn’t that hard—turned to one of the nearby armed men and shouted something. Like Tiamaris, he answered without moving.

Unlike Tiamaris, he got a lot
more
words in response. Kaylin listened carefully out of habit; tone of voice alone made these words sound useful, in the street sense. There wasn’t a spoken language that the Hawks couldn’t curse in if it was remotely possible in the language itself; they were multilingual that way.

He spoke, and two of the younger men broke away; the guards readjusted their formation to cover the gaps they’d left. When the two men returned, they had a third with them, and Kaylin recognized him: Effaron. He offered her a tentative smile as he approached. The guards, of course, offered nothing. But Mejrah hollered something at them, and they did lower their weapons slightly in response.

Effaron was staring—down—at Ybelline. Her stalks were exposed, and they were weaving in the air. He wasn’t, clearly, a soldier; his face showed instant worry, instant fear. Ybelline was used to this. So was Kaylin.

“Effaron,” Kaylin said.

He frowned, and she stepped forward and touched the back of his hand. She tried his name again. “Effaron.”

He blinked, shook his head and turned his much larger hand so that he could hold Kaylin’s. “This woman with you,” he said quietly. “She is clean?”

It wasn’t
quite
what Kaylin was expecting. Maybe they had different words or phrases for
telepathic.
“I don’t understand the question. Can you try it again?”

“Is she—” He grimaced, and looked once again at Ybelline. “Her forehead. It is…mutated. Her eyes, however, seem human. You do not fear her?”

“No. Never.”

“But her forehead—”

“All of her people have those. They’re born with them.”

He relaxed then, and turned back to Mejrah. He shouted words that Kaylin couldn’t understand, and Merjah nodded rather smugly.

“She has faith in you,” he said quietly.

“I’m glad someone does.”

He struggled not to smile, probably because the two men to either side of him had faces of stone. But his amusement faded as he looked over Kaylin’s head—with ease—toward the Dragons who stood sentinel in streets that really weren’t meant for three of them. “They were men, when we arrived,” he said gravely. “And now they are not. But your people have not destroyed them. Do they serve them?

“They—”

Mejrah interrupted him before he could finish, and judging by the way he was groping for words, it came as a bit of a relief.

“We have ways of detecting the corrupt,” he said, after a pause in which he—clearly—made her words less barbed. Ybelline, however, tilted her head, listening. “And it is our fear that those ways might prove ineffective, here. This world—these buildings, these uniform streets—they are not our world. Your people are formed as people, but…small. We do not know which of our guidances will now prove true, and we have not yet attempted any of them because we don’t know if this would be seen as a hostile act.

“We are hungry,” he added. “We are tired. We are…fractious. When we made the decision to leave our homes, we came to it late, and many were lost to the Shadows.”

Kaylin stiffened. “Shadows?”

The way she said the word made him flinch, and he glanced, once, at Mejrah. Or perhaps beyond her to where her people huddled in the open streets. “You know of what I speak.”

“I…yes.”

“But you have these lands, and these buildings, and those men—and to my eye, they
are
men.”

“And women,” she said quickly.

He looked confused. “Some of your men are female, yes.”

Clearly the translation between traveler and Chosen wasn’t entirely perfect.

“They are people,” he said, probably because her confusion was clear. “They are
of
a people. The Shadows transform us. They break all ties and all kinship. Sometimes it is subtle, and therein lies the greatest danger. We cannot easily see it until the damage has been done. But often it is…not subtle. Those three,” he said again.

“They’re Dragons,” Kaylin replied.

His eyes widened, and she wondered what the word
Dragon
meant to these men and women.

“This City is part of the Empire.”

He nodded; they had that word, or a similar one.

“It’s ruled by a Dragon. One very like the three who now stand in the streets. I’m a—a guard. I protect people and enforce the Emperor’s laws. The men behind the Dragon also serve as guards, in a different unit. They do the same. If you intend to stay here, or to stay anywhere in the Empire, you will be the subjects of the Dragon Emperor, and you’ll follow his laws.

“They’re not difficult. They’re not bad. They’re worth the time and the effort it takes to more or less uphold them. It’s what
I
do, what I’ve chosen to do.” She paused, and then said, “If the armed men
behind
the Dragons attempted to kill them, I’m pretty sure it’d be considered treason, and regardless, they’d all die. Probably quickly. Dragons are stronger than humans. They breathe fire, and they don’t need more weapons than their claws and their jaws. If they want, they can take to the skies and just rain fire on anything that moves beneath them.

“But those men wouldn’t
try
because the Dragons standing in the same street that your people are now standing in
haven’t broken any laws
.”

“They are…Dragons.”

“Yes.”

“Let me return to Mejrah, and consult with her. Will you join me?”

“If it’s allowable. I and my companion.”

When Effaron had withdrawn his hand, his words returned to babble. Kaylin wasn’t certain why; she hadn’t had to touch him in the nonworld. Ybelline said, “You could understand him, and he you.”

Kaylin nodded, lifting an arm with its patched, burned remnant of sleeve. “These apparently help. Who knew?”

“I understood much of what he said, thanks to Everly’s odd vision. They fled Shadows. They are afraid that they’ve fled to yet another battlefield. But…he said one word which was significant which Everly didn’t foresee.”

“Dragon?”

“Is that what it was?”

“I think so. I also think any shape-shifting and anything that
looks
different is going to cause panic.” Where panic, in this case, meant a lot of big weapons cutting into a lot of small people.

As they approached Mejrah, who stood in the center of the line, Kaylin could finally see some hint of the rest of the refugees. They were huddled into a much smaller space than people that size should even be able to fit, and they were—except for the children—silent. Grim-faced.

There were a
lot
of them. She felt what little heart she had sinking as she tried to count and gave up. There were far too many to just find emergency housing for, and far too many to casually
feed,
never mind employ.

Mejrah pointed at the drums, and Kaylin looked at them, as silently instructed. She turned to Effaron to ask him what the drums signified, but before she could, Ybelline spoke. She spoke in that low but musical voice that Kaylin loved, and the old woman’s brows rose into her straggly hair. Her expression cracked on a smile that was heavy with relief, and not a little joy, and she started to talk rapidly.

Ybelline’s laugh was chagrined; she held up both of her hands, and spoke again—but she spoke slowly and carefully. Mejrah slowed down, as well, gesturing toward the drums, and then the Dragons, as she spoke.

“There’s some minor difficulty,” Ybelline finally said—in Elantran. “My speech is not good enough, but I think she is asking permission to use the drums to perform a ceremony of some sort. It’s either cleansing—”

“Which would be bad, probably.”

“Or divination.”

“Which we could probably talk the Dragons into tolerating.”

“She’s willing to tell the men to stand down if we’ll allow this.”

“And if we don’t?”

“I didn’t ask.” Ybelline hesitated, and then said, “Cultural differences influence the way people speak and interact. I
think
it was meant as a request.”

“Tell her we’re going to go ask the Dragons.”

Ybelline nodded and did as Kaylin asked, and they retreated, notably unharmed, toward Tiamaris, Emmerian, and Diarmat.

Tiamaris was an orange shade of bronze; she had seen him red once, and a paler bronze once. Emmerian was a deep, deep blue; Diarmat was a blue-green. She wondered why the colors could differ, but didn’t ask. Instead, she said: “The good news is that Ybelline can speak some of their language.”

If Dragons had had real eyebrows, Tiamaris would have raised one. “The bad news?”