She had never been good with words.
Oh, she could be a smart-ass. Almost a decade with the Hawks would have that effect on anyone. But when it came to important things? She couldnt choose the right words to save her life. She blurted, if she could get them out at all. She tripped over them, even though she knew what she wanted to say. Or at least knew what she wanted to convey.
It was simple to know what she felt.
It was hard to make other people understand it. Words were sometimes more of a barrier than a bridge, especially because it was so easy to choose the wrong ones. It was just as easy to hear the wrong onesto think she understood what the other person was trying to say to her. To hear what the words meant to her, not what they meant coming from someone elses mouth.
She was not the right person to be choosing words.
She stilled, frowning. These werent Elantran words. Or Leontine or Barrani or Aerian, either. These were True Words. In theory, if she chose the right word, there was no way to misinterpret it. It had no hidden meanings, no barbed cultural contexts, no past associations she could trip over like a clumsy toddler. It would convey the whole of what she meant, not more, not less.
This would have been comforting if she knew what she was supposed to mean. Or if the cost of failure wouldnt be so high. Without the right word, the Consort wouldnt wake.
And without it, Kaylin thought, as she bypassed four more runes, Kaylin wasnt so certain that shed find her way back herself. Opening and closing her eyes didnt shift or change the scenery much; she was still here.
She stopped singing. The dragon, predictably, complained. She traversed sky, listening to the songs of eagles and their shadows, on wings that werent hers and never would be. As she did, she passed more of the floating marks and they vanished in her wake, dwindling and returning to her skin. She heard the sorrow and the loss and the yearning carried by the voices of dreams and nightmares. She understood them in a way that didnt encompass words, they were so much a part of her life.
Shed heard thatand desirein the Consorts song of wakening, in the lee of the Hallionne Bertolle. Shed even joined the Consort, singing the part Nightshade would have taken had he been there. Desirethe desire shed heardwouldnt touch this emptiness. Not in Kaylins life. She hesitated. This wasnt her life, was it? It was the Consorts. The Hallionnes.
But it had been left to Kaylin to choose a word that would somehow respond to it. Kaylins choice. Kaylins imperfect choice. She stopped when there were only two runes in the whole of the sky. The eagles and the three shades continued to fly, their path unimpeded by obstacles, their voices soaring and diving as they did.
She didnt understand how to say these words. Any of them. But as she looked at the two that remained, she understood what they meant.
They were almost of a size; their shapes were different. In the first, the long, straight line of the rune was central; the looping adornment to one side of that line was complex; the dots to the other side, and the single stroke at its height, a frame.
The second rune had no central element that she could see; it was a balance of delicate squiggles, dots, slender strokes. Its shape suggested a cohesion that closer approach dispelled.
Both were luminescent gold. Broken into components, they shared several base shapesbut it was the combination that made them so distinct. The combination, she thought, and the essential meaning. It was to the more complicated, delicate rune that she drifted.
She could almost hear it as she approached. It seemed to singor at least to hum, as she could make out no distinct syllablesin time and in tune with the dreams and nightmares. It was at the heart of their song; it was isolation, writ large and made strangely compelling. Seeing it, hearing it, she felt that she understood the song in a way that she hadnt before. If she could speak it or sing it, she was certain that whoever was listening would know that she did, at last, understand.
It was larger than Im lonely. It was larger than Im alone. Choice and consequence and acceptance and pain were tied into it, part of it. This was loss, the result of loss; the result left when something whole had been shattered, and the pieces imperfectly swept away.
Yet there was no anger in it; no resentment, no desire for vengeance or destruction. It wasit was like a dirge. A funeral dirge. It was a farewell, a goodbye, uttered by the people who remained behind. Behind, Kaylin thought, and alive.
She skirted its edge, and then turned, almost blindly, toward the other word.
She couldnt hear it, from here. She didnt know what it meant. She glanced at the small dragon; he was staring pointedly at the side of her face. His tonguesolid, now, where the rest of his body wasntflickered out to touch her cheek, and she realized she was crying. Normally, this would embarrass her. Here, it didnt matter. Tears had no meaning to dreams, to nightmares.
She moved away from the rune; she had not dismissed it and it did not fade as she left; she could feel its light and heat as she rose above it and moved to the only other True Word in this sky.
Unlike the first rune shed approached, she thought this one was silent. It didnt hum; it didnt have a voiceif voice was even the right word. It stood aloof from the song that moved around it, carried by invisible thermals. Kaylin almost dismissed it.
But something about its shape was familiar. Something about the whole of its three-dimensional form felt right. Right? she thought, grimacing. Right for what, exactly? This would have gotten her zero on any test shed been forced to write to enter the Hawks; it wouldnt have even gotten part-marks. It may have gotten derision and criticism.
Its not about instinct, she could hear Teela sayingat a remove of too many years. She sometimes wished she knew Teelas True Name, because Teelas voice occupied so much space on the inside of her head anyway.
Youve got decent instincts. Most people do, even mortals. But instinct isnt law. It certainly isnt Imperial Law. You dont get to kick down a door or break through a window because it feels right. That usually leads to demotion or dismissal, if the Emperors in a good mood.
So I shouldnt trust my instincts.
Did I say that? Honestly, kitling. You put words in the mouths of everyone around you; we probably dont need to speak at allyou can carry both sides of the conversation. Understand, however, that theyll both be your sides. You need to trust your instincts. And then you need to be intelligent about proving the truth of them to people who dont have the same reaction you do. We call it covering your ass. Its an important component of Hawk work.
Did she understand what this rune signified? No. And staring at it wouldnt give her that understanding. She needed to approach it more closely, and she needed to hear it over the competing songs that filled the air.
What she felt, as she approached, was the warmth of sunlight on a still, cold day. It was the hearth fire in Marcuss house, when the Leontine kits were sprawled in one messy, living fur heap in front of it, and invited herby more or less tackling her, knocking her over and dragging herto join them.
Kaylin couldnt imagine living with Marcuss Pridlea; his wives, although she loved them, were terrifying. But from the first night hed taken her home, shed felt as if she almost belonged.
I dont suppose, she asked the small creature who was both her passenger and her only form of locomotion, that we could take both of them?
The dragon said nothing. He didnt even warble. When she hesitated, he bit her ear again. She growled. Marcuss kits would have choked with laughter at the sound she considered a growl.
She wanted this word. She wanted what it reminded her of. She realized she had no single word to describe it. It didnt matter. She knew that it wasnt home, not exactly, but it was close: welcome, warmth, acceptance. Acceptance of Kaylin, a human, in a home meant for Leontines. Acceptance and a place for her. It wasnt love; it wasnt even the promise of love.
But love could grow in a space like that if it was freely offered and freely accepted.
If she could only choose one word, it would be this one.
Thinking that, she looked over her shoulder. Only one? Was that what she had to do? Her arms ached; her legs ached; the back of her neck was burning. Only the mark on her forehead failed to cause pain, probably because it was singular.
In the absence of clear ruleshells, in the absence of murky onesthere was instinct. There was previous experience. Using the power granted her by the marks allowed her to healbut healing didnt change the marks themselves.
But freeing the trapped spirit of an ancient, dead Dragon had: one rune had vanished. Interacting with the Devourer had, as wellbut shed lost more.
Yet shed also gained marks. She couldnt be certain that they hadnt always been there; she felt that they were emerging with time. Only the mark on her forehead was one she had chosenand she hadnt consciously decided to add it to her skin; she had been in a panic because she didnt want to see it destroyed.
There were no rules.
She turned away from the rune that offered warmth across so many spectrums, and once again faced the one she thought of as mourning. She hadnt examined it as closely because she didnt want to return to what it evoked in her. Mourning was not the right word. Grief, maybe. But even that felt thin.
She reached out and placed a hand around one of the thinnest of the curved lines that comprised the rune that meant almost-home. When she started to move, it came with her. She was surprised that it had no weight, no drag; it wasnt small and it appearedto her eyeto be very solid. But it didnt fade away; it didnt return to its place on her skinwherever that was.
Nor did the other rune disappear; it waited.
I dont want to go there. But want or no, she went; the wings were not, in the end, her wings.
There are places no one wants to revisit.