to follow you out,” Bellusdeo replied, glaring at the Arkon’s back. She then said to Sedarias—or Kaylin, it was hard to tell which, “I don’t believe our invisible visitors can open the front doors.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Candallar has just left Killian’s residence. He is walking in a straight line to the building we currently occupy. I believe Candallar will be able to do what the rest of the people here can’t.”
“You think that’s why he’s here?” Kaylin asked.
“I can’t think of another reason, at the moment; I’m open to suggestions. But I don’t think breaking the windows would be a good idea. To us, this room is as solid, as fully realized, as any room in the Imperial Palace would be. The exterior of the building is not. I’m not sure what happens—to this building or to its occupants—should the windows themselves be open.”
“The doors—”
“Doors are meant to be opened and closed. I don’t believe these windows are.” She then cleared her throat, Dragon style. “Lannagaros.”
It was Emmerian who entered the room; Emmerian who placed a flat palm across the Arkon’s left shoulder. “Arkon.”
The Arkon exhaled. Kaylin couldn’t have continued to make that sound for half as long—and if she’d tried, she’d be gasping for breath at the end of it. “I concur.” In tone, it sounded like an argument.
Annarion jumped up to the window ledge, his feet making no sound. He might have weighed nothing. He turned back toward Sedarias, and she grimaced, an expression very much like one that might have graced Mandoran’s face. “Did I mention that I’m going to strangle Terrano?”
“Only about a hundred times this morning. I won’t try to stop you if you let me strangle Mandoran.”
Bellusdeo cleared her throat again. It was the same rumble of Dragon sound, but louder and shorter. She would have made a great sergeant.
“Fine. We won’t stop you if you try to kill Mandoran,” Annarion said.
This took the edge off the red-orange Bellusdeo’s eyes had become. Annarion smiled at her, his lips half quirked in one corner. He then turned and stepped through the windowpane. Without breaking it first.
Sedarias leaped just as lightly up to the abandoned window seat. “Go back to the front hall,” she told the Dragons. “Candallar is almost at the front doors.” To Kaylin, she added, “Retrieve the book from Larrantin, if that is now possible. I do not think it wise to let anything fall into Candallar’s hands.”
* * *
Kaylin turned immediately to leave the room. The Arkon, however, cleared his throat in much the same way Bellusdeo had.
“I have it.”
The words took a moment to make sense.
“I am uncertain how you managed to contain it or carry it,” the Dragon librarian continued. “It is not a book in any sense of the word; what you see as a book is...not what I see.”
“Now or before you picked it up?” The Arkon was indeed carrying the blanketed bundle. “I gave it to Larrantin.”
“He must have set it down, then. I picked it up from the front desk. I would have gladly taken it from his hands as you did, could I but see him.”
Kaylin wheeled toward Bellusdeo; the gold Dragon shrugged. “I am not his keeper.”
“It might be dangerous!”
“You cannot possibly be under the impression that Lannagaros takes orders from me. He barely takes orders from the Emperor, and when he does—”
“I understand the spirit of the Emperor’s requests,” the Arkon said.
“Oh, please. If you understood them, you wouldn’t be here at all.”
“I said I understood them,” the oldest member of the Dragon Court said. “I didn’t say I mindlessly obeyed.”
Bellusdeo’s snort had smoke in it. But she caught up with Kaylin and shouldered her out of the way as she returned to the abandoned front desk. Her armor gleamed in the interior light in a way that suggested a source of illumination Kaylin couldn’t otherwise see. Her eyes were orange.
The Arkon, however, remained well behind Bellusdeo and the two Hawks; Emmerian stayed with him, although he’d retrieved his hand.
People were unpredictable. Kaylin had considered—and probably still did—the Arkon a source of knowledge and wisdom. If he was cantankerous, and he absolutely was, he was steady. This Arkon, she hadn’t met, hadn’t seen. And clearly, neither had Bellusdeo.
It was harder to read Emmerian. Of the Dragon Court, he was the quietest presence. He was the man sent to interfere with her first attempt to find herself a new apartment. She couldn’t resent him for it; she had found Helen, after all. Helen