Cast in Wisdom (Chronicles of Elantra #15) - Michelle Sagara Page 0,24

*

Barrani had strikingly regular features unless they had retained a permanent injury. This man had. It wasn’t something as subtle as a chipped tooth, either; he had lost an eye. He right eye socket sat, obviously empty, in the center of a network of scars. Kaylin wondered if that had been the result of Dragon flame. The single eye he possessed was Barrani blue—midnight blue. Bellusdeo’s eyes could no longer be seen, because she kept Kaylin behind her.

The Dragon offered the Barrani a nod. He returned it, the glimmer of a smile changing the shape of his closed mouth. It was brief.

“You are far from home,” he said.

“Farther than you could imagine. And you?”

“For the nonce, I am at home. It is convenient. Your presence will likely make it less so.”

“If you would care to show us the exit, we will apologize for encroaching—unintentionally—upon your home.”

“Ah. And if I do not?”

“The floors are of wood, and this is not a Hallionne.”

His brow—his left brow—rose at her use of the word. “How come you to know of the Hallionne?”

“We have always known of them. I have, however, had a recent opportunity to stay as the guest of Hallionne Alsanis.”

“Truly?”

Bellusdeo nodded.

“You are well away from your lands, and to travel so—does that mean the war has at long last ended?”

“The wars between our people have ended, at cost to both.”

Hope squawked loudly. Both the Barrani and the Dragon ignored him, and he pushed himself off Kaylin’s shoulder to hover above them both at the height of the hall.

His squawking grew agitated—or angry. With Hope, it was sometimes hard to tell. The Barrani man did not seem to hear him. Bellusdeo did; she lifted a hand, flattening her palm at right angles to her arm, and Hope landed, still squawking up a storm.

The stranger wasn’t deliberately ignoring Hope, as Bellusdeo and Severn had been. The Barrani man frowned as Bellusdeo lifted an arm, and his hands rose to chest height in response. Hope, however, seemed invisible to his remaining eye.

Agree, Severn said. This was probably more bond-talking than he’d ever done. Call Hope back. I want you to look at the Barrani through his wing.

Hope usually slaps me in the face with the wing when he thinks I’m missing something, was Kaylin’s doubtful reply.

You just don’t want an earful of that squawking.

No kidding. But she was standing within arm’s reach of the Dragon, and when she called Hope, he came, huffing in frustration. Kaylin didn’t tell him what to do, given the Barrani stranger, but she pointedly indicated her eyes.

Hope landed and thwacked her in the face with his wing. To Kaylin’s eyes—beneath Hope’s wing—she was looking at a one-eyed Barrani man of average Barrani height. His hair was a drape of black sheen, and everything else about him seemed in the correct place. His clothing was a bit odd—but on some occasions, a bit odd was practically the new normal.

Hope snorted and lowered his wing.

“Have you,” the Barrani man was saying to Bellusdeo, “paid the price of passage?”

“I seldom pay a price in ignorance. And even were I to do so in desperation, I am uncertain that the price would be yours.”

He laughed, then. He had even, perfect teeth. “Very well, Dragon Queen. I will lead you to an exit while the possibility still exists for you. But you had best be away, and soon.”

“Where does the exit lead?” Kaylin dared to ask, as the man turned away.

“Out.”

* * *

Kaylin didn’t expect a Barrani to be true to his word. Not if it weren’t signed in blood, or signed in triplicate. But she trusted her ability to find a way out less than she trusted that single word, and even if she hadn’t, Bellusdeo had started to follow. While Bellusdeo was tagging along, she was the most important person in any room; the most important in any meeting, and while patrolling any street.

“You live here, right?” Kaylin asked the Barrani man’s back.

“Yes.”

“Do you have any idea why your house is at least partly attached to the border zone?”

“The border zone? I am afraid I do not understand this term.”

“The border zone is what we call the borders between the fiefs.”

“Fiefs?”

“How old are you?”

Bellusdeo cleared her throat. It was a warning, and as the sound was largely Draconic, no words were necessary.

He ignored this. “How old are you, that you ask?”

“I’m twenty.”

“Twenty?”

“Twenty years old.”

He did stop, then, turning to look past the Dragon to the private. No, no, the corporal. She was corporal