willing to try—we’ve been practically sitting on him. He wants to be helpful, he added.
Tell him helpful is staying where he is. No, wait. Don’t. She hadn’t been Robin, but she’d been his age—and he’d been pretty damn helpful already.
Can you contact Killian? He had Starrante removed from the chancellor’s doorway because conflict—deadly conflict—involving members of the Academia is strictly forbidden.
I would—but I don’t think he’ll distinguish between Starrante as he was and Starrante as he is, and I think we want to get Starrante to the office somehow.
Severn, possessed of the same facts as Kaylin, nodded in the distance.
Sedarias and Bellusdeo had caught up with Starrante by this point, but Starrante had taken most of the hall’s width as his personal fighting position, and it left little room for Sedarias unless she wanted to leap over the heads of the people who had been ordered to secure the hallway and keep visitors from going any farther.
The halls were tall enough that Sedarias could—with some magical aid—clear the heads of Candallar’s gathered guards; she was less certain to clear their swords if they noticed, and she’d land as a force of one on the other side. Unless she had no intention of fighting, in which case she might be able to run toward Annarion, Severn and Emmerian.
Bellusdeo didn’t consider the height of the halls suitable for flight but seemed content to observe the third Arbiter as he muscled his way through the roadblock. She took position behind his left side, and Sedarias stepped in line with the Dragon to cover his right. Kaylin saw why.
The Barrani to the left and right of Starrante, pressed into the walls and parrying the Arbiter’s blows, would be left behind; they might be able to attack Starrante from the flanks more successfully than they had from the front. This didn’t seem to concern the Arbiter.
It should have concerned the Barrani more than it had, because annoyed Dragon—Bellusdeo—or annoyed Sedarias was probably more deadly than Starrante; they just weren’t as instantly viscerally terrifying.
Nightshade.
He was both annoyed and amused.
You said Killian had finished his lecture. Is he still there?
He is quizzing us.
What, without any time for study? Shut up, Kaylin. Sorry—whatever he did to Starrante, I need him to do to Candallar’s thugs.
Why? I do not see any cause for concern in the current interaction.
No, he wouldn’t. They’ll die. All of them will die. I think Starrante would leave them behind but—she was interrupted by a scream of pain as fire enwrapped a sword arm—Bellusdeo and Sedarias won’t. If he can send them to their figurative rooms—
Killian glared at her. “I begin to understand why so many of your companions find you so trying. I do not believe this fracas involves any of my students, and the Arbiter’s role is a more independent one. I fail to understand why you are concerned with these intruders—they would not be at all concerned were you or your companions to die in these halls.”
“Because I could have been one of them, years ago and in a slightly different life.”
“I fail to see the significance.”
“I learned things I didn’t know between then and now. I believed that I could live a different life—but I had to be alive to do that.”
Nightshade’s amusement deepened, probably because Kaylin’s frustration had. But the frustration was irrelevant to Killian, and the attackers weren’t irrelevant enough to Bellusdeo and Sedarias. Both of the Barrani that Starrante had already shunted to the sides were bleeding on the floor; one might survive, but the other wouldn’t make it.
The Barrani at the back of this ten-person group—now eight people—took stock of the situation in front of their eyes, and began to back up or to look for side routes down which they might escape. Solidarity of purpose vanished as the immediate desire to survive took over.
Starrante didn’t seem concerned with those who fled; Bellusdeo and Sedarias appeared to consider pursuit. But Starrante’s movement through the hall was, attackers notwithstanding, a rush of motion, and in the end, they chose to abandon pursuit of enemies in favor of the Arbiter.
The combat had slowed him enough that they were starting from the same place again, and this time, when the blockage cleared, they moved far more quickly to keep up. So did Kaylin. The odd, awkward gait that had characterized Starrante in Severn’s eyes was gone; he moved gracefully and swiftly—very like the spider that he appeared to be. He knew exactly where he was going.
Severn knew it, too—Severn had