Cast In Courtlight (32 page)

Yet it felt, as she struggled with the immensity of its weight, like something solid enough to build a palace on; a foundation, a thing of strength. It was
large
. She’d never tried to carry something that large before; certainly not in the palm of her hand.

Her hand was almost flat, her fingers shaking with the effort to sustain her grip. She pulled. And felt her left hand come free; her eyes were still closed. One hand. One word. She concentrated on the other hand, the empty one. And felt it as that: empty. Something nicked her palm, something as sharp and clean as Severn’s daggers had been. She almost opened her eyes. Keeping them closed required more effort than running after a Leontine suspect who didn’t want to be questioned.

Still, she’d done that, time and again.

Sharp. Hard. Both of these things. But her fingers closed effortlessly over the shape, and she felt, to her surprise, something softer and more giving beneath those fingers, something that was warm and light, like mossbed or flower petal. Clenching her hand drove the edges of the whole thing farther into her palm, but she did it anyway. There was… life here. Something living. Something that was utterly unlike the vast shape she contained in her left hand. It almost seemed to sing.

She lifted her hand without thinking, and opened her eyes. And screamed.

Her hand was dripping blood.

She’d seen more, even of her own. The blood itself wasn’t the problem; it was the thing she held in her hand.

Severn’s grip tightened. “Kaylin – ”

She shook. Not her head, but her whole body, a convulsive movement that had nothing to do with voluntary choice.

“Your hand is bleeding.” The words told her more clearly what she wouldn’t have thought to ask: He couldn’t see what she carried in her right hand. She could.

It was… a symbol. A rune. But it was throbbing faintly, and it was red as dragon anger; it was both hot and cold, the edges sharp, the curves above them like scintillating light. It was pain.

It was more than pain. Sorrow, here. But also joy. Peace and despair. It was birth and death, and everything in between; a small microcosm whose shape somehow implied the whole of a world. She moved her left hand automatically, but it was heavy with what it carried, and had she been able to look away, she would have seen that, too – and it would have been far, far too much to take in.

“Kaylin.” Pause. “Elianne.”

She could not look away. Her eyes seemed to lend shape and substance to the rune; to give it dimension that it hadn’t possessed when it traveled the currents beneath the surface. It was waiting, she realized.

And she had no idea what it was waiting
for
.

Or rather, no idea she liked.

Two hands. One rune. A choice. But she’d made more than one damn choice on the path that led to this one. And she wanted to be around to make a lot more of them.

Severn’s hands left her shoulder; the cold in the air could be felt as his absence. As the absence of all things that meant life to Kaylin. She wanted to cry out again, but the single scream was all she was afforded; her mouth would not open in anything that resembled speech.

She heard the tearing of cloth as if from a great distance and wondered dully if he’d finally given up and cut off the damn sleeves that were such a horrendous pain. If she ever daydreamed about finery again, she’d make a beeline for the bridge across the Ablayne and throw herself over it. It would be wet, it would hurt, and it would be far, far more practical. He came back. He had never really left her. Even during the seven years after she’d fled the fief of Nightshade, he had never left; she’d just never felt his shadow, the comfort of his presence. Guilt had done that. Hers. His.

He caught her right wrist and she almost cried out a warning – but she was mute. She saw, however, that he held a strip of green silk in his hands. Mute satisfaction was better than none, and it was all she was going to get; he meant to bind the wound.

And the rune was in the way. She had thought the words attracted to blood, but this wasn’t a great, fancy leech; it didn’t absorb blood. It sat above it. She saw Kaylin in the rune, as if it had changed shape, had granted her a moment of familiarity. She saw, as well, Elianne, and heard the distant sound of Steffi’s voice, felt the discomforting presence of Jade’s silent suspicion. She felt Catti there, and saw her, red-haired and mutinous; saw Dock as well; saw a gleam of golden fur, and claws that were red with blood. Greater claws than that appeared next, appeared on top of the Leontine ones; she saw the jaws of a Dragon open so wide it could swallow the rune whole.

Without thinking, she pulled the rune up – and pulled her hand away from Severn before he could bind the wound he could see. She wasn’t certain that the silk would pass through the rune; wasn’t certain what would happen if the rune no longer touched her skin, her blood.

She heard screams of anger, of pain, of joy and of pure irritation; she felt the flight feathers of Clint’s gray wings, and then, on those wings, the feel of the wind high above the city, near the southern stretch Clint called home.

She heard the Leontine vows she had been taught, and she almost said them; this was the closest she could come to speech. Some of it must have forced itself out because Severn touched her again; her eyes were wide and unblinking. She saw the fief of Nightshade. And the fief of Barren. She had spent six dark months there; she saw the deaths. The training. The other vows. Dark and sharp, the rune bit her hand again. A reminder. Everything was here, in this shape, every little scrap of knowledge that memory couldn’t contain so elegantly. Everything she
was
.

And she understood, in a way she had never understood, what a cage was: this. This word. And it had her name on it.

No. Worse than that, it
was
her name; she had chosen it, and it had taken her blood and her permission. It would become what she was, and she would bear it as scar and threat, as vulnerability and fear, for the rest of her life.

She had envied the Barrani. Anyone less beautiful than the Barrani always did – and that was pretty much
anyone
. She had envied them their forevers; had envied them their Hawks, their golden crests, which they could bear long past her dotage. she did not envy them now.

Choice. She closed her eyes again. There was
too much
of her life here, and she was living it all in brief flashes so intense they made her nauseated. The hate she had felt for herself, the contempt, the disgust, were brighter and clearer than they had been in – hours. Hours ago. When Severn had buried Steffi and Jade.

She lifted her right hand. What it held was now weightless, almost insubstantial. Closing her eyes because open eyes were infinitely worse, she brought the hand to her chest; the word was crushed against a part of her dress that she
hadn’t
managed to rip, slash, bleed on or otherwise deface.

And she bled on it. And bled.

The sharp edge of the word cut her dress and her skin as if neither were of consequence. She understood that this was symbolic – but symbolic was something that involved long robes and funny hats, cheap wine and incense, stupid words repeated by people who were so accustomed to saying them they’d lost all meaning in the drone. This was different; it was the
root
of symbol, the thing from which the branches grew, distinctly different from the powerless repetitions that might follow. Or even the powerful ones.

She accepted the choice. Accepted the irony in the Elantran translation. And she pressed the rune into her flesh, into her skin, into her heart. It was an act of suicide.

Or an act of birth.

The pain ebbed slowly as she drew her bloody hand back. She heard Severn swear. Words.

First words.

And she heard, blended with his syllables, the rush of his welcome worry, his obvious fear, another sound like the crash of thunder momentarily given sentience and voice.

Ellariayn.

Her name. Her
true
name.

By your choice you shall be known
, she thought bitterly. And now, by her choice, she would be, and in a way that no mortal should ever be known.

Severn’s hands touched her cheeks; they were wet. His eyes were dark, the same shade they had always been. His hands were gentle as he brushed the tears away.

“You’ve cut yourself,” he told her softly, as if she had gone mad, or had come so close there was no other way to speak to her.

She nodded. Felt the weight of the word take root inside her, where no others had gained purchase. Or permission. And the words that were crawling up and down what had already been written on her arms stilled; they faded until she could no longer feel them. Looking at Severn, she reached out to grab his hand; hers was ice. And smeared with blood. But he didn’t seem to notice.

And her left hand? Weighted and heavy, she looked at it: It was empty. Whatever she felt, whatever she had pulled from the miasma, it was gone.

And it was not gone.

“Elianne,” Severn whispered, stroking her face, calling her back.

It had once been her name. Kaylin had once been her name. She felt them as words – Elantran words – shorn of life or power. No, not power. There was power there: When Severn called, she looked up.

“Severn,” she whispered. “What do you know of Barrani names? True names?”

He shook his head, drawing her close; she went into the hollow of chest and arm, and found shelter there. But not truth. She wanted to tell him. She’d never been good with secrets, and she was terrible with lies. the instinct that shut her mouth was older and stronger than either, and she said nothing at all.

Minutes passed, or hours; Severn was stroking the dirty mess of her hair; he was whispering something that made no sense, in the most quiet of his voices. She wanted the peace of the moment, and took it, High Halls be damned. She had seen too much, and this was the way she accepted it: in his arms. In that safety.

If safety was illusion, comfort was not.

“It’s over,” he told her. That’s what he’d been saying. “It’s over, Elianne. It’s over.”

She let him say it again and again until she half believed it. The wanting was stronger than the ability to have, but hadn’t Severn himself said as much? She held on to it anyway.

And then, looking up from his chest, pulling herself a little way from the harbor of his arms, she looked at the only door in the room. “It is over,” she told him quietly. “For now.”

As it happened, she was woefully optimistic.

Severn led her to the door, and she followed him, learning to walk again. Halfway there, he bent and removed her shoes. He didn’t offer to carry her, and she wouldn’t ask. What he carried instead, he did without physical effort, but it was more important. Well, except for the shoes.

They reached the door together, and to Kaylin’s relief, it wasn’t warded. It was a simple door, an elegant door, and engraved across the planks of its surface was a tall tree. Severn caught the door’s handle – because it had to have one, missing the ward – and pulled it open.

Sunlight seen through the height of forest leaves fell at an angle through the open door, and the sound of soft music and softer voices drifted toward them.

So, too, did a breeze, and it carried the scent of food.

Kaylin’s stomach did a sharp turn and grumble, which would normally embarrass her. She was beyond embarrassment.

Mostly.

But when she stepped through the open door, her hair mired in root-dirt, her nails a mix of blood and earth, her one whole sleeve resting above the slash made by dropped dagger, her torn sleeve exposed and ragged, she stopped. Beneath her feet was familiar stonework, and she could feel it all against the soles of bare feet; it was sun-warm and hard, but not so hard that she couldn’t walk it with ease. She looked around with a growing sense of dread.

And found herself in the center of the circle of the Lord of the High Court, somewhere about three feet to the left of his seat.

There should have been noise.

Or shouting.

There should have been surprise, or at least consternation. Guards should have drawn swords. Barrani should have sneered or looked down their noses or
said something
. Anything. At all. As Severn joined her, standing by her side in such a way that his shadow covered her, she realized that they were all watching the Lord of the High Court. Every single one of them. Kaylin had often been in crowded, large rooms; she’d carried words that caused surprise or shock. She’d watched that surprise spread, like the ripples around a stone dropped in still water, but even when it didn’t, it never shut everyone up; there was always a child, a buffoon or a man too deep in his cups to notice the Hawks were there.

This attention was therefore entirely unnatural, and it made her nervous. The fact that she was underdressed in the extreme didn’t seem to have caught anyone’s attention. And it should have. It should have been either a joke or an insult.

She looked at Severn. He did not touch her with anything but his eyes; those eyes were slightly narrowed. A silent reminder that she wasn’t among friends. As if she needed it.

And maybe she did. She felt disoriented. The High Circle looked strange to her eyes, as if the luminous and magical light that mimed the sun had increased both in brilliance and the multiplicity of its colors; as if it fell on one thing more heavily than the object just beside it. She wanted to talk to Severn. She wanted to ask him if he saw what she saw. To ask him
anything
, really. To hear the sound of his voice. Because she knew that sound; knew all of the variants of it. Knew its weight, its seriousness and its mockery. He offered her silence instead, and his silences had never been so comfortable or predictable.

The Lord of the High Court rose from his seat beneath the bowers of the central tree. He trailed odd light, and his expression was not so sharp as it had been; it was as if he stood in mist, or was of it. Kaylin wanted to slap herself; she felt like she’d been drinking a shade too much.