Chapter 08

08

Bellusdeo's eyes were full-on copper; the Dragon was unusually pale. Armor didn't bend as easily as cloth; she was therefore upright, rigid.

Kavallac waited until Bellusdeo nodded before she continued.

Kaylin glanced at the chancellor; his expression was a mask. Hard to tell whether or not this had surprised him; his eyes remained predominantly copper.

"As you now imagine, this was a shock to us. Were we meant to kill each other? Were we meant to compete in a complicated duel to the death? We would not do it. If I desired, on any given day, to strangle two or three of my sisters, I would never, ever kill them. If I trusted nothing else, I trusted them. We were not to spend time with our brothers—and perhaps Lannagaros has done us a favor, for his explanation makes clear why."

Kaylin lifted a hand.

"Corporal."

"If Dragons finding their adult names, their actual True Names, is expressed by the human form, and girls are born as humans..."

Kavallac's nod held grudging approval. "Serralyn, my apologies, but I will ask you to leave before I continue; I should not have spoken so freely."

Serralyn swallowed, nodded, and immediately walked through the portal Kavallac had created with a simple gesture. The Barrani student wasn't a fool—she had no desire to hear secrets of Dragonkind. Not as a Barrani.

Kaylin glanced at the portal and moved toward it, but it winked out of existence before she could reach it.

"Not you, Chosen. I am told you were present when Bellusdeo at last transcended her childhood. You have some understanding of what I am about to say, and your unusual nature—the marks of the Chosen—might have a role to play in Bellusdeo's difficulty that the wise cannot foresee."

Kaylin glanced at Bellusdeo for permission. The gold Dragon failed to see her until Kavallac answered the question she had asked. "Yes, Chosen. No Dragon is adult without possession of a True Name. Every Dragon of your acquaintance has achieved that fusion: word and being.

"But the male Dragons and their arduous process is not the process I faced; it is not the process Bellusdeo and her sisters faced. It is not something that was discussed with the fathers or the other adults within the Aerie."

Kaylin knew she didn't know enough about Dragons, but this wasn't something taught in racial relations classes. If it had been, she'd've paid more attention. "You...you had names. From birth."

"We had nascent names. The immature name I was granted at birth is not the name I now possess. We were never to speak of them, to offer them to others; they had the power that names have. Perhaps the Ancients who created us wished to lessen the threat of youthful folly; we could come into possession of our adult names—and the danger a True Name can present—when we were of an age that that youth would not count against us.

"It is not the way Barrani names work; nor is it the way Wevaran names work. I do not know the process by which Arbiter Androsse's kin wakened—and that is entirely irrelevant to this discussion." This was a warning to Androsse, who lingered in the area. She offered no like warning to Starrante.

"So on the day we were considered of age to join our mother, and she told us that only one of us would survive, it was not the welcome step into adulthood we had anticipated. One of my sisters, who tended to be more vocal and more immediate in her reactions, said as much. We lacked the full vocal cords of our adult people, but our voices were higher pitched, and hers carried. The mother simply nodded.

"We asked if she had killed her siblings. She had not. And, Bellusdeo, you have not killed your sisters, either."

"Then why—" the gold Dragon's voice was low, shaky "—are they weeping? Why are they trapped and bound to me?"

Kavallac's inner eye membranes rose, but the muted color was copper. So much sorrow in draconic eyes today. "There are accidents in the Aerie. I mentioned that some of my siblings had scars, did I not? Our bodies in childhood are frail—they are not the bodies of the male children. One of my sisters did not survive. Our people are not famous healers with reason.

"We went from five to four, and the mother grieved; her wails shook the Aerie for the entirety of the day." Kavallac exhaled, bowing her head in remembrance before she continued. "We had not yet finished our lessons, our classes. But in those classes, we were—Ah." She frowned. "Lannagaros, this cannot leave the library. Do you understand? I am willing to speak of things that would never have been spoken of in your presence, because I perceive you are our young queen's sole emotional support, and the rest of the Dragon Court is appallingly ignorant."

The chancellor nodded, bowing his head as if to the greater power.

"In her presence, we learned each other's True Names."

Kaylin's brows rose into her hairline before they descended again.

Bellusdeo hesitated, and then said, "Did you not learn them before this?"

"It was forbidden."

"Rules that can't be enforced shouldn't exist."

Kavallac chuckled. "You ignored those rules. Of course you did. You knew the True Names of your sisters."

"It was easiest."

Kaylin wondered if this was why Bellusdeo could tolerate the cohort so well. They had made the same choice that she and her sisters had, if for different reasons. She stopped. Were the reasons that different, after all? The girls were born frail; they were raised separately for their own safety and survival. They did not leave the Aerie often—if at all—because they had no wings. They couldn't fly.

"That was a disturbing lesson, but necessary. We thought, at the time, that it was to promote either closeness or caution. It opened up a world to us; we had lived together as the closest of kin for all of our lives—but we became far, far closer as a result.

"Our mother told us that the reason we were born as we were was to learn, to absorb, to have different interests, different passions, different ambitions; to accumulate magical knowledge, historical knowledge—everything individuals who were nonetheless closely connected would have.

"She asked us what we were willing to lose, if we were willing to lose anything at all. She asked us if we could imagine murdering—that was her word, and I feel in retrospect that it was far too melodramatic—our sisters. We had already lost one, and the grief of that taught us everything we needed to know about loss. We could not countenance another such loss—let alone becoming the cause of it."

Bellusdeo nodded. She had no words.

"She left us with that question, and with the discussions that arose from it—the desperation, the certainty that only one of us could survive, the discussions about which one of us it would ultimately be. We criticized each other's choices, and we elevated them as well—the choices we had not, by inclination, made ourselves. We called for votes, we called for consensus—it was a tumultuous, difficult period. We did hate our mother then.

"We eventually came to a decision: we chose. We had experienced loss and grief and we did not want to be the only survivor; we did not want to live with that loss in isolation." Kavallac lifted her face; she was smiling, and there was a serenity to that smile that was rare.

"I had no choice," Bellusdeo whispered. "We had no choice. We had gone in search of our adult names, as we were taught." Her eyes flared a deep, almost shocking red.

"Taught by who?"

"A...male Dragon." The loathing in her words transformed grief to the crimson of rage. "He taught us how adult names are found and made."

"That is not how our adult names are made or found," Kavallac replied.

"I know. I know that now." Bellusdeo's voice was low, almost a whisper.

Kavallac glanced at the chancellor. He said nothing, but his eyes had shifted from grief to anger, the rage slower to arrive than Bellusdeo's.

Kavallac lifted a hand—as if she were, in truth, Bellusdeo's mother, and not an Arbiter of this endless library. "When I speak now, I speak as a single person. But every single one of my surviving sisters is with me. I am multiple.

"On the last day of our childhood lessons, the Aerie mother guided us and explained to us how the mothers of the Aeries come of age. Our names merged—it was fraught and terrifying at the time. But when we emerged from our final lesson, there was, as our mother had said at the beginning, only one of us. But that one was all.

"I could handle a sword. I could read multiple languages. I could cast spells from different schools of magic. I could sing. I could write music. I could remember all of our lives as if they had been only one life: the sum of us, the sum of our childhoods. That is how we who are mothers emerge into the world as adults.

"And I could, at last, become a Dragon; the skies were no longer beyond my reach if the adults would not condescend to carry me."

Bellusdeo was silent. When Kavallac's voice died into stillness, she continued to listen, as if clinging desperately to a glimpse of a vanished, lost home.

It was Kaylin who was therefore left with questions it was awkward—or worse—to ask. She would have waited, would have asked them of the chancellor later, when Bellusdeo was absent. But the chancellor wouldn't have answers.

She swallowed. No one wanted to talk about their own mistakes, but especially not the life-altering tragedies. And Bellusdeo had been the queen of her empire, a ruler who could not display weakness or uncertainty where it might be seen by her subjects.

Kaylin cleared her throat. She could ask to come back to the library later. She could. But while it was far safer to ask the questions behind Bellusdeo's back, it felt wrong. How, she didn't know. Safety was best, and it wasn't like she'd be using any information against her friend.

She decided on a half measure. She tapped Bellusdeo on the shoulder. "Can I speak to you in private for a minute?"

Bellusdeo frowned. She was no doubt considering what might require privacy. But she was unsettled, enraged, and there was only one thing that could cause that. She might have made a good Hawk. She understood, and nodded.

They stood surrounded by books about three city blocks away from the library's only other occupants.

Kaylin inhaled. She was afraid of angering Bellusdeo, and she was afraid of causing pain. Had she not felt viscerally certain that her unasked questions were important, or would be, she would have shut down the line of thought and walked away from it permanently.

"I don't have Immortal memory," she began, speaking slowly. All of her possible words seemed like the wrong ones, but that was the topic, not the words themselves.

"Stop it."

"What?"

"Ask. Just...ask. I obviously trust you enough that I won't assume malice, and I am an adult. I ruled an empire, a world. I was not in the habit of torturing or murdering my counselors when they brought up unpleasant topics."

"It's about the names. You said you were guided in the creation of, the finding of, your adult names."

Bellusdeo nodded.

"All of you? Were all of you guided the same way?"

"Yes."

"But you had names. Not adult names, but names?"

"We did."

"And you were namebound."

"Mortal memory cannot be this bad. Were you not listening to Arbiter Kavallac?"

"I was—but she never did what you did. She never met the Outcaste. She was never a denizen of a world that was falling to Shadow. I want to ask her how...how that might have affected you. How having something that could be a placeholder for an adult name—while you were all separate individuals—could have affected the...merging."

"Did you know?"

"No, not before—not before your True Name fully emerged. But I understood it while I was—while I was helping you. I understood the rightness of it. I understood what had to happen."

Bellusdeo, pale, looked up.

"I want to ask her what might have happened had you and your sisters—without the guidance of a mother—found adult names and forms individually."

Silence. Bellusdeo closed her eyes, her hands by her sides. They weren't fists, but fists might have been better; there was so much unsaid it felt like an unbearable weight had descended on the Dragon. Kaylin had no way to carry it.

"What answers? What answers do you think she'll have?"

"I don't know. But... I'm a Hawk."

The sentence made no sense to the Dragon; her eyes opened, her brows folded, and she turned to Kaylin, eyes orange. "Believe that we all know that. What does that have to do with this?"

"Sometimes the questions we ask—the incidental questions, the unrelated questions—lead to answers. If Kavallac has no answers, she's a Dragon, she was raised differently, she understands adult names. The possible ramifications might lead her to questions we'd never even think to ask, and the answers to those questions might be what we need."

"You didn't ask."

"No."

"Why?"

"Because this isn't an investigation for the Halls of Law. It's..." Kaylin trailed off. There were some words she just wasn't good with. She'd never be good with them. At heart, she was an orphan from the fiefs. Yes, she was a Hawk, and she'd made that define her because it was better than being a helpless, useless fiefling, with no money, no purpose other than survival, however survival could be attained.

Bellusdeo had once been a queen, an empress. She had led wars. She was the heart of the future of Dragonkind. She, too, had fought for survival. But never the way Kaylin had. There were thousands of people like Kaylin in the world. There was only one Bellusdeo.

"What is it?" Bellusdeo had never been famous for her patience, at least not in this world.

"I think of you as a friend. I don't have family, so my friends are important to me. I know there are things you don't want to talk about, and things you want kept secret. This one—the Outcaste—is the biggest one.

"If you don't want Kavallac to know, I don't want to mention it."

"Even if you're a Hawk?"

"Even then. I won't ask without your permission."

Bellusdeo exhaled smoke, her eyes flecked now with red. "How pathetic do you think me, Corporal?"

Kaylin flinched, but held Bellusdeo's gaze with her own. "I don't think you're pathetic at all."

"You must, if you feel that even the mention of the Outcaste will cause so much damage."

It wasn't only the damage to Bellusdeo that she was worried about. She almost asked if Bellusdeo considered her a friend, but couldn't. She couldn't force those words out of her mouth. She didn't want to look pathetic. She regretted her life choices, or at least the ones she'd made in the last five minutes.

"Ask her. At this very moment, hiding my own folly seems almost irrelevant."

They returned to the Arbiters and the chancellor; the four were speaking quiet Barrani. Bellusdeo would hear the words at this distance, but Kaylin wouldn't, the difference in their hearing was so marked. The words stilled as Bellusdeo approached. Or as Kaylin did.

Kavallac turned to the Hawk.

Kaylin began. "Dragons who are male are born with the physical prowess of your race. They find their adult names—and forms—somehow. It's not necessary that I know," she added, as the Arbiter's expression shifted. "I want to make sure I understand what you've said. The girls are born almost like Wevaran are born: they have parts of what must become the adult name—and when they achieve that, they gain the physical prowess; the emotional and intellectual strength is accessible at birth, but they have to grow into it."

"Yes."

"What happens if, on a distant world with no mother to guide them, the girls reach the age of maturity in terms of human form without somehow merging with their sisters?"

Kavallac's eyes had shaded from copper to orange. "They would remain as sisters."

"What then happens if a Dragon—a male Dragon—teaches those sisters how to form a True Name in the way that the male Dragons are forced to search for one? Assume the male Dragon had a vested interest in the results but possibly didn't know that the women are born with some fragmentary elements of a name."

Her eyes, predictably, adopted flecks of red. "I perceive that this is not a theoretical question."

"No. It's not."

Kavallac turned to Bellusdeo, who had adopted a familiar posture which Kaylin recognized only belatedly: it was how she stood when Kaylin was at work and the gold Dragon was shadowing her. Bellusdeo met Kavallac's gaze in silence; the investigation was in the corporal's hands.

Kaylin looked to Starrante, who was huddled, legs drawn into his body, all but two of his eye stalks housed there as well. "Has that ever happened to your kin?"

"We cannot leave our birthing place," was his slow reply. "Not until we are complete. We are not Dragons; our design predates that race."

"If, in the birthing place, there was a way for the hatchlings to find, to build, an adult name the way Dragons do, how would that affect the gaining of a name?"

"You ask a complicated question. I have no immediate answer."

Kaylin nodded, and returned to Kavallac. "I have the same question for you. If the immature sisters could be guided the way the male hatchlings were, what effect would that have? If the sisters—all of the sisters—could fully transform into their draconic shape, would there be any need to merge?"

"I am not an Ancient, Corporal. I am considered wise, but I did not design our race; I did not bring Dragons into being. I cannot, without some meditation, begin to answer that question. Were there other circumstances you wish me to consider while I reflect?"

"The sisters," Kaylin replied.

"How so?"

"They died. They died before they could merge the nascent names to form a whole."

Kavallac's mouth opened soundlessly. To Bellusdeo she said, "Impossible."

"It's not impossible. We found their bodies—we found them here, within Elantra. It caused a bit of a stir because the bodies were identical; it was like the same person was dying over and over again."

"Corporal, I assume you are good at the duties required of a Hawk. I am—I was—as good at the duties required of a Dragon. Bellusdeo, as she stands before me now, is whole."

"How can you be so certain of that?"

"Lannagaros?" Kavallac said.

The chancellor was silent, marshaling words. When he spoke, he spoke quietly. "What she sees, I see."

"And the first time?" Kaylin demanded. "When you met her again?"

He shook his head.

"But...she could become a Dragon. You saw that."

"Yes."

"Did you not think something was wrong at the time?"

"I sensed no taint of Shadow. I sensed no hint that she was not as she appeared to be. But what she appeared to be at that time was a child. A familiar child. I was very frustrated by her in my youth—she and her many sisters—but very fond of them as well. We assumed they were dead, and we grieved.

"It is the gifts unasked for that move us most deeply, and her presence was that. If she could not be the future of the race, she could not—but she was nonetheless Bellusdeo." He turned to Bellusdeo then. "I wished for your happiness. Even now. We lived as a race without a future before; we survived it. I did not feel the pressure to become something other, to become something you had no desire to be, was reasonable."

Kavallac's expression made clear she did not agree. "What do you see when you are in her presence now?"

"Bellusdeo," he replied.

The Arbiter's eyes narrowed. To Bellusdeo she said, "Is your name now the one you retrieved with the aid of someone who did not understand?"

"No."

Kavallac exhaled smoke, her eyes more red than orange. "This is not the discussion I thought we would be having; you have given me much to consider." None of it, by her tone, pleasant. "I understand the question of Necromancy or shamanism is critical to your well-being, but there is too much now wrapped up in those questions. Allow us—or allow me—to retreat for now; there is far too much to research and consider.

"What you have asked, Corporal, is dangerous; it is possibly the reason that the Ancients, in the end, abandoned a race with the duality ours contains."

"Bellusdeo," the chancellor said, his voice gentle in the way it was only for the gold Dragon. "Will you not tell her the rest?"

"This is a Hawk investigation, for the moment—at the Hawk's request."

This was going to be a day in which Kaylin deeply and continually regretted her life choices.

"Kaylin, do continue," Bellusdeo added, when Kaylin failed to open her mouth.

She lowered her chin, her eyes now skirting various sets of feet. It was the only way she thought she'd be able to continue under the weight of different stares.

"Arbiter, when you lived in the Aerie, did you ever have to contend with outcastes?"

"No." The word was a vibration of sound that encompassed anger and denial.

"But you were aware of Dragon outcastes from other Aeries?"

"Yes." The single syllable took far longer to speak than Kaylin would have liked.

"I don't know if the chancellor has spoken to you about the early days of the Imperial Dragon Court."

"He has not."

Kaylin looked up from people's feet, swiveling her head toward the chancellor. His eyes were a deep, dark orange as they met hers. She really wanted him to take that part of the discussion and fill it in; he remained silent.

"One of the Dragons in the Imperial Court—in the Emperor's flight—is outcaste. He was not while he dwelled within the Aerie; he was considered a Dragon during the Draco-Barrani wars. But in the early attempts to investigate the heart of the fiefs, something he encountered there changed him."

"Lannagaros?"

The chancellor nodded.

"Very well. Continue."

"He was an adult Dragon; he understood the methods by which adults attained their True Names and forms. But he could traverse Ravellon , even after the Towers rose. And through Ravellon , he could traverse the portals that stood there—those that had not been destroyed, those through which Shadow traveled to devour worlds."

Kaylin met the Arbiter's gaze. Her early training took over. "Bellusdeo was lost to a different world: he found her—and her sisters—there."

"You are telling me that it was an outcaste who guided the nine children to incorrectly adopt their adult names?"

"Yes."

Had the library ceiling opened up to a storm of lightning bolts, it would probably have been more comfortable—she'd be forgiven for running away and dodging.

"Lannagaros."

"We did not—we could not—know."

"Does the Outcaste survive?"

It was Kaylin who answered. "Yes. And his name—I've seen it. He showed me. I don't think I could even begin to say it, to think it, because it's so complicated. It's like the name of a small world."

"You saw his name."

"He was fishing. If I tried to somehow use that name, to read it, the attempt would form a bridge between us. My will versus the will of an outcaste Dragon. I didn't take the bait."

"Perhaps one of the few moments of maturity and wisdom in your long career," the former Arkon said.

Kavallac exhaled fire—a small amount. Kaylin could feel its heat, although it didn't reach her. Hope squawked loudly, pushing himself up to stand at attention on Kaylin's shoulder. He clearly resented having to make the effort.

Kavallac coughed. "My apologies, Corporal. It appears that even the ancient and wise are not shorn of emotion. This is not the news I anticipated. Almost, I want to leave the library to confront the danger that faces the remnants of my race."

Which was impossible.

"Bellusdeo was guided to find her so-called adult name by a Dragon who understood the process—but did not understand how that process was different for Bellusdeo. She attained an adult name, and the fullness of the prowess of her form. As did her eight sisters, if I understand what I have heard." This time, she looked to Bellusdeo for an answer.

Bellusdeo nodded.

"And you knew those names."

The gold Dragon nodded again.

"I will not lecture you—as no doubt your mother would—about the folly of sharing your adult name; to you—and your sisters—it would be a simple, natural progression of the relationship you had shared to that point.

"I would be concerned—ah, far more than I am now—were you not Lord Bellusdeo of the fief of Bellusdeo. No Tower built by the Ancients would accept you as captain were you to be tainted by Shadow; indeed, at least in the case of the Tower you now occupy, I do not believe you would survive the encounter.

"But you are, to me, whole. Tell me, do you remember your lives?"

Bellusdeo frowned.

"Do you remember the lives of your sisters as if you were, singly, each of them? Or is your memory formed of your personal experience with each of the other eight?

"I told you that we were born as five, and one did not survive. I do not have her memories or experience; she was not part of the whole that I became. But I can remember each element of the four of us as if I personally lived it. I can trace the thread of each life as if it were my own.

"When you achieved your True Name, none of your sisters were alive."

"No."

"But the name you now bear is not the one you found for yourself under the guidance of the Outcaste."

"No."

"How, then, did you come by that name?"

Bellusdeo's hesitation was brief; Kavallac would notice it. "Is it relevant?"

"Yes. Because you have what you should not have if all of your sisters were dead before you achieved it. You should not possess the strength of name you clearly do.

"And perhaps that is why the ghosts that none of us, with the exception of a single, mortal woman, can see are weeping and lost. If you are now driven to somehow quiet the pain of the dead, it is an answer that will lead to necessary questions."

Bellusdeo said, "I will consider it. Understand that my attention, my power, has been turned toward the threat of Shadow, the heart of Ravellon , and the creatures that reside there, hemmed in on all sides."

Kaylin shook her head. "The Outcaste can—and has—left Ravellon . The Towers don't seem to be able to prevent his passage. He lives, as far as we can determine, in Ravellon , but whatever he consumes there, he can hide from the Towers."

Kavallac's eyes were blood red. So were Starrante's; Androsse's were midnight blue—moonless, midnight blue.

Kaylin exhaled then. She understood that Bellusdeo's silence was meant to protect her. Since she'd dragged the Dragon into a corner to ask permission to even mention the Outcaste, she understood it—and it was a relief.

"I helped," she told Kavallac. "I helped, with the power of the marks of the Chosen."