Cast in Flame (49 page)

And she felt the knots of other fears tighten, robbing him of breath; she felt his fear and his sense of humiliation war with his certainty—and hers—that if she was given this information, the fight might, somehow, be winnable. He cared about his people as a race; he cared less about the individuals—even those he knew were dying in the streets of this city.

The Consort was the heart of the Barrani. And the Consort had gone out of her way to preserve a lowly, irritating, stupid mortal for a
good
reason. Not for weakness. Not for indulgent sentiment. Lord Kaylin had
touched
the Lake of Life. Lord Kaylin had drawn words from its many waves. Lord Kaylin
was
the emergency measure.

And no one knew this. No one but the Consort and now, because Lord Kaylin was desperate, Lord Ynpharion.

But he could not ask this question of the Consort. Oh, he could ask—but she could not answer. Not where it could be heard. Not where it could be questioned. Not where
any
answer could be used as a weapon in some future war or some hostile coup.

There was only one way.

Kaylin understood what he intended to do; she caught it as he withdrew. She was motionless for one long breath.
Ynpharion—don’t. You’re right. She has
reason
to keep me alive. I have a use, if only in the absolute worst case.

And I do not.
He didn’t argue. He didn’t try.

And you don’t.
She didn’t even
like
Ynpharion. He was a constant misery.

This amused him; the amusement steadied him, because otherwise, he stood on the edge of a personal abyss. There was only one way in which he could ask that question; only one way in which the Consort might ever answer it.

Ynpharion turned to the Consort, bowed low, and rose. He closed his eyes. He
had
to close his eyes. He could not bear to see pity—or worse—in the Lady’s face.

Open them,
Kaylin told him. It was an unexpected command. He almost fought her—but they didn’t have the time, and he knew it. He opened his eyes.

He opened his eyes to see the sudden glow of gold in the Consort’s eyes. He had surprised her, because, in silence, he now offered her the whole of his true name.

And she understood why. She lifted her head. “Lord Kaylin.”

But it was Ynpharion who answered. “I must ask a question. It must be answered. There is only one way to ask, Lady, and only one way in which you would ever tender that answer to me. Please.”

The glow of gold diminished; it shaded into a golden brown, which shocked Ynpharion, who had expected pity or disgust instead. He gave her his name; she accepted it. She
spoke
it. Her touch was
not
Lord Kaylin’s touch; it was strong and certain and complete. But it had to be, because to answer this question, it was the only way to be certain of safety.

That, he thought, and his death.

Kaylin was witness; she was on the inside of Ynpharion. She heard him ask the question.

The Lady says it is not dissimilar to choosing a name.

This was not a helpful answer. And Kaylin wanted the answer to
be
helpful; to be
defining.
Because Ynpharion had given up everything, eternally, to receive it.

She chose our names,
he said, voice soft.
She gave us life. I have to have faith that it is not in my destruction or enslavement that she will find her power. She is the mother of our race.

Kaylin didn’t point out that
this
Consort had almost certainly not chosen Ynpharion’s name. She was struggling to remember what dipping her hand into what hadn’t even
looked like
a lake had felt like.

She closed her eyes; the familiar carried her, and anyway, the ground was now solid. It wasn’t
flat,
but it was solid. The Arkon was attempting to keep her from being turned to scorched ash. While speaking. She could, of course, see the words. She carried three. One, she set down; she couldn’t say why. But the two, she lifted.

And as she did, they gained weight. Their size didn’t change; their shape wasn’t altered. But they grew
heavy.
As heavy, she thought, as the words she had first chosen in the High Halls, from the Lake. Their edges felt sharper, harder; she thought they would cut her palms.

And she didn’t care. Because the High Lord’s name had been heavy—and she had only carried one small part of it. The name she had taken, without thought, for herself, had been heavy. The words themselves hadn’t been so damned heavy when she’d picked them up—and now was not the time to be struggling with their weight.

The Consort says: yes, it is. She says it is the only way. The Consorts carry the names any distance required—she says you will understand this: you are a birth-helper.

A midwife,
Kaylin told him.

But not all births, she says, are simple; some are deadly. When a mortal birth goes wrong, you have the power to stave off death.

I’m not trying to deliver
a baby.

No. I am sorry, but she seems to feel you will understand the weight of life.

These words
aren’t
alive.

Not on their own, no. She says—

Time seemed to slow in the sphere in which Kaylin stood. The wind whipped debris toward her, and only in her direct radius did it suddenly crawl to a dead stop, suspended in midair. She turned; she saw that splinters just past her shoulder suddenly
flew
as they moved beyond her.

Lord Kaylin, I must
see
. No—not the street and not the ancestor; I can see those. I must understand what you
do
when you aid birthing mortals.

There was nothing—in any of those memories—that Kaylin feared to share. She did as he asked. She felt his disgust, but it was tempered by genuine curiosity, and as he watched—and it was
fast
—that curiosity became something entirely other. Ynpharion was moved.

I did not know,
he said.

His ignorance was a matter for
any other day.

Apologies, Lord Kaylin. I have...transmitted...your memories to the Consort. She is frustrated. But she says that if the infants themselves are of insignificant weight to
carry
, they are not insignificant to you. It is
that
that you must...translate. You have carried words from the Lake. You understand what they can—and must—mean for our kin.

They are like your infants. You cannot know, when you deliver a living child to its parent what that child will become. You cannot know if you will be forced, in future, to hunt them or kill them. You cannot know if they will remain at the side of their parents or murder them and turn against them. You know
nothing.
But it is the same nothing that the Lady knows. It is an act of hope and faith, not certainty. It is an act of the moment.

The words were heavier, now. Kaylin regretted taking two. They were warm in her hands, but they had edges, and she knew her hands were bleeding.
No one’s waiting for
these
words,
she told him.
It’s not the same as babies. It’s like delivering a child from—from a corpse.

She thought you would say that. But she says: trust. You understand what they mean—to the future of our people. The ancestor did
not.
Release them, and they will return to the Lake, and to that future.

But—but—

How do they return on their own?

Yes! Kind of really,
really,
need to know that, about now.

She says—I’m sorry—that if you gather them as you gathered—
shock. Absolute, utter shock.

Kaylin knew what the Consort had just told him. And she knew, as well, that had he not surrendered his name—and his freedom, his future choice—she would never have done so.
Ynpharion.

...If you gather the name as you gathered the remaining part of the High Lord’s name, if you feel and understand the weight and the measure—

I don’t!

—of their
value
and their necessity, it will be as if you were drawing them from the Lake itself. And when you release them, they will return. You can touch them and take them—I told her this—but if you cannot imbue them with your own sense of their potential, they will not...move.

So she wants me to just—just—
throw them away?

She knows that you will never do that. They are lives. They were not meant to be bound and used as they are being used now.

As, Kaylin realized, Ynpharion was being used now.

They were not taken from the Lake. They were forbidden their return. She does not understand how—but she says that what you feel
now
is what she has always felt. In your hands, she says, if you gather them the
same way
, you are seeing to their rebirth.

How can she know this?

She doesn’t. She
feels
this. This is why,
he added softly,
so few can become Consort, no matter how many might have that ambition. There is some part of the Consort who carried the weight of our names, no matter how briefly, in every one of us. She says you will know when it is time to release them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Kaylin couldn’t raise her arms, they were shaking so much. Two names, she thought. And there were more. She’d carried one part of one name through the High Halls. One. But she’d known when to release it because she was carrying it
to
someone. No midwife
ever
just dropped a newborn babe. They placed the babe in the arms of its mother, father, or nurse. They released the infant to safety.

You carry these,
Ynpharion said, as if anticipating the question she couldn’t even frame,
to their kin. To their home. The Lady says you will understand,
he repeated, as if by repetition he could drive away her panic.
It is not safe, but you will understand. She says she is sorry.

Whatever it was she was supposed to know or see, it wasn’t happening. Kaylin lowered herself to her knees; felt the ridges of frozen rock bite into her left kneecap. She let loose a few choice Leontine words—but she did it quietly. And in a much softer voice than Leontine generally demanded.

She could hold them—but honestly, not for much longer; she was afraid that she was going to lose her right hand. She didn’t—and couldn’t—understand the very essence of Barrani life. The words weren’t infants. They weren’t babies. They weren’t wed to flesh, to vanish when flesh failed. She couldn’t give them to their terrified, stressed out, underslept, elated parents when her job was done.

For some midwives, there was no parent to give the child to. And in that case, midwives didn’t just throw the child away.

She inhaled slowly. Exhaled slowly. These were not newborns. They had lived. Their owners had died. She hoped they had died. She had a sudden, cold memory of Barrani undead, and wondered.

What part of life existed in eternity?

This. And this word, either of these two, could be the reason a Barrani infant opened its eyes. What he saw, what he liked, what he hated—were somehow influenced by the life force that these words represented. How many other Barrani had carried these words at their heart, until that heart ceased to beat at all?

How many more would?

None, she thought. None if the words remained where they were, riven from the living by an ancestor who saw the lives—of others, of course—as nothing but a source of power.

Even if the words couldn’t cry—and of course, they couldn’t—they were far, far more than that. They were precious. Precious and so very heavy. But she couldn’t drop them. She couldn’t leave them here.

In the outlands, at the edge of a constantly shifting landscape, she had—without thought—saved one word; she had added it to her forehead. That word—that word had no weight; it had shape and form, but far less substance.

She could not do that here. Because here, she knew, was where these words belonged. The Lake waited. The Lake that was not a Lake in any real sense of the word. The first time Kaylin had seen it, it had been the surface of a table. A large table.

She hadn’t walked to the cave in which the Lake was physically housed; there’d been no one there to show her the way. But she
had
touched the Lake, regardless. She had run her hands through the flow of the current of words, fingers sinking through what appeared—to her eyes—to be wood grain.

She had been in the High Halls, then—in the oldest part of them. She was standing outside of that building now, in streets that were barely patrolled by Swords, and never by Hawks. There was no desk, no table; there was no cavern, containing endless, golden waves, composed of words such as these, moving as if alive—as if joyfully alive.

Inhale. Exhale.

No desk. No table. But the streets—broken, melted— beyond which the rich and the powerful sheltered—were the streets of her city. They were Elantran. The men who flew in the air above where she now knelt were Aerians; the men who ran
toward
death and danger, mortals, all. Almost all.

The whole city was her home. The High Halls were part of that city. The High Halls, and the Barrani, and the doorway that lead, at last, to the Lake itself. She had sworn the only oaths that really mattered—to her—so that she could join the Hawks.

She couldn’t reach the Lake of Life from here. If
she
could, so could the ancestor—and that was never,
ever,
going to end well. It was what, she knew, he wanted. Why else come here?

To harvest,
Ynpharion said.

Over my dead body.
And that seemed increasingly likely as time wore on, even if it passed much, much more slowly in this small space.
Tell the Consort that nothing’s happening. Nothing’s changing!