Kaylin was afraid of this word and what it meant, even though shed seen enough at first glance to get the gist of it. This was not a word she wanted to define anything. The one that she now carried with her, yes. But not this one.
The dragon was singing. The eagles were singing. Their voices had flattened into a single thing; she could no longer hear harmonies or the subtle shifts that indicated multiple voices. Her own voice was silent.
She had been to so many dark places in her life. She had suffered so many losses. She had lost the only home she had known, but had never lost the desire for, the need for, a home. She had lost her family. She had lost the person on whom she had most relied. She had become something she hated, and stayed there for long enough it was still hard, on some days, to look in the damn mirror.
She had been to so many dark places in her life. She had suffered so many losses. She had lost the only home she had known, but had never lost the desire for, the need for, a home. She had lost her family. She had lost the person on whom she had most relied. She had become something she hated, and stayed there for long enough it was still hard, on some days, to look in the damn mirror.
I dont want to do this, she told the small dragon. But she flew toward the rune anyway. I mean it.
His squawk was turned to song and not to what often sounded like angry, harping lectureabsent intelligible words.
And she realized that it didnt matter. She couldnt understand the thing if she didnt examine it. She probably couldnt understand the whole of its meaning, regardless; she wasnt an Ancient or an Immortal, or the distant relative of a world-devouring creature. This wasnt, and would never be, her language; her understanding would always be imperfect.
But...the rune itself seemed so personal. It seemed, for just a moment, to be part of her, exposed, writ large. Since closing her eyes made no difference in this space, she gritted her teeth instead. She was angry.
But shed been angry at herself, on and off, for a long time. Anger didnt control her actions anymore; it just made long, hard days longer and harder. What shed done in the past, she couldnt change. She could refuse to make the same stupid choices; it wouldnt stop her from making different stupid choices in the future. If she learned something from themif she survived for long enough to learn somethingshe could narrow the stupidity options. She was human; she would never narrow them to zero. But no one did. Even the Hawklord made mistakes.
On most days, she pulled herself up off the ground from her figurative face plant, and kept moving, reminding herself that it was normal to make mistakes. Everyone had to fail sometimes. On some days, no.
And she could see failure in this rune. Failure. Loss. Grief.
But she couldnt see rage, self-loathing, the desire to lash out and break everything in sight. She couldnt see what shed felt when she discovered the death of the two children she had known and loved best.
No, that wasnt quite right. She could. She just couldnt see all of what shed felt. She couldnt see her own sense of betrayal at Severns hand. She couldnt see her certain sense that if it were not for her, both girls would still be alive. There was no self-loathing.
There was loss. Isolation. A hint of choicebut it was a choice that would be made, again and again, a defining choice. It was...it was like responsibility. No, that wasnt quite it. It was duty. It was defining duty. It was as strong as her sense of duty to the Hawks.
Yes, she hated the bureaucrats. She hated the stupid regulations that seemed to serve no purpose, unless one wanted criminals to get away. She hated parts of Elani street, her regular beat. But she loved the work. She loved the sense of purpose it gave her life.
Would she still love it so much if every Hawk she knew and worked with now were dead and gone? Would she feel the same sense of purpose if she were the only one left to do the work? Would she still do the work? Could she?
Loss. Grief. Shades of things Kaylin could understand if she rearranged parts of life on the inside of her head.
She turned to the small dragon. Were taking them both.
His eyes widened, although given their size in the rest of his face, it was hard to tell. She reached out for the rune, and gripped it firmly in her right hand, the left being occupied. She wasnt certain what to expect, but it was warm to the touch; as warm as the first rune had been.
Only when it was firmly in hand did the singing suddenly stop.
The silence was intimidating because it was so complete. She turned to look at the eagles; they were hovering in place; even the path of their flight, interwoven as it had been with the shadows, had disappeared. They were facing Kaylin. Since the shadows had no faces, it was harder to tell what they were looking at, if they looked at anything at all.
Barian had called them the nightmares of Alsanis.
She stood suspended in the air, her hands on two runesnot one. Nothing besides movement and sound had changed; the runes were still visible, and much larger than they had been on her skin. Shed hoped that the choosing of the words was the end of her responsibilities. When a mark had lifted itself off her skin in the dusty back rooms of the Arkons personal collection, the Dragon spirit trapped there had flown free.
Clearly dead Dragons and Imperial libraries had nothing in common with empty, gray sky, although Kaylin personally thought they had a lot in common with nightmares. The two words did not collapse or merge; they stayed pretty much where they were.
But the eagles didnt. The shadows didnt. The sky didnt fall away from Kaylins feet; they did. They suddenly folded wings and dropped in a dead mans dive. Kaylin kept her hands on the runes and glanced at the small dragon.
He warbled.
I dont like it.
As was often the case, what she likedor didntmade no difference. Her companion hissed and folded the wings that had allowed her to move freelyif slowlyin what was nominally sky. Weight returned. Given weight and nothing to wedge it between or hang it from, so did falling.
She tightened her grip on the words she had chosen, but they didnt hold her up; they came with her. After a few seconds of panic, and the realization that she couldnt streamline her own dive while attached to the words, she accepted the fact that she could do nothing but go along for the ride.
She just hoped that the landing wouldnt be fatal, and that it would bring her closer to the absent Consort.
Chapter 9
She fell for what felt like an hour before she saw the first sign of actual geography. As landscape went, it wasnt promising: it looked like a small, dark pit. From this vantage, she couldnt see bottom.
As she approached the pit, she realized that small was the wrong word. It was huge. She thought it the size of a city block, and revised that as she fell; it was the size of a city. A large city. When she finally reached its upper edge, she wasnt surprised she couldnt see bottom; she could no longer see the whole of its shape.
Turningwhich was difficultshe saw the sky recede as she continued to fall. The small dragon dug claws into the skin below her collarbone, and she cursed him in Leontine.
The Leontine bounced back in an echoing, strangled kitten soundthe usual result of the combination of human throat and the deeper Leontine curses. She chose a few of the less throaty words instead, and then, for good measure, switched to Aerian. It was the Aerian that caught her attention, probably because she mangled the pronunciation less. The echo was not attenuated. It wasnt stretched. It was almost exact, and it continued as she dropped.
She spoke in her mother tongue and listened to herself, growing quieter as syllables bounced off walls so distant they should never have reached them at all.
She then switched to Barrani. All languages had useful words, but it was hard to swear in High Barrani. Kaylin had always believed that High Barrani was the language of Imperial Law because it was the most stilted, pretentious, and boring of the Elantran tongues.
High Barrani returned to her in her own voice, but instead of a diminishing echo, she heard a resonance to the sound, an amplification. The runes in her handshands that were gripping tightly enough her fingers were beginning to tingleshook. She stopped speaking; the trembling, however, continued.
She hated working in the dark. Figurative dark, literal darkshe was hemmed in by her own ignorance. Thered been solutions to that, in the Halls of Law. Shed worked. Shed learned. Shed studiedat least shed studied the important stuff. Here, she had nothing to go on. Everything was a risk. Every decision had to be made on air and instinct and hope. She was afraid of the consequences because she couldnt even begin to predict them.
And...it didnt matter. She could fall foreverseriously, thats what it felt likeor she could take risks and pray that the only person who suffered when she did was herself.
She returned to High Barrani. She was unsettled enough that random words rolled off her tongue first; she shook her head, and when she spoke again, she began to recite the Imperial Laws. She was rusty, she knew; only the important ones were word-for-word clear: the ones that defined murder, kidnapping, theft, and extortion. She chose those because they were the ones around which shed based her life.
Theyd given her purpose. Theyd given her wings. Theyd given her family. Hope. Yes, her work regularly brought her into contact with the people most likely to break those laws, but she balanced the constant exposure to the least law-abiding citizens with her work at the midwives guild and the Foundling Hall. The worst and the best.
That job had brought her here.
Go left, she told the small dragon.
This time, he didnt warble; he huffed. She had the distinct impression he would have said about time, idiot if hed actually been able to speak in a language she could understand. This was why Kaylin did not own cats. On the other hand, at least the small dragon listened; he spread his extended, diaphanous wings and she drifted toward the left wall. It was not close; it took a long time.
She wondered if time was passing for the Consort; she wondered if her own body had collapsed in the Consorts room.
Taking a deeper breath, she let go of that thought and returned to Imperial Law. It wasnt as dry as it should have been because it had meaning to her. She thought of the first murder investigation Teela and Tain had allowed her to tag along on. And of the first investigation shed attended as an actual Hawk and not an unofficial mascot. Or an official one.