Cast In Courtlight (27 page)

“Some. If that’s what this is, we’re in trouble.”

“Figures.” She held out a hand. He gave her the shoes. “My feet are cold,” she offered by way of explanation. She put them back on and stood up.

“We’re doing something wrong.”

He raised a dark brow. Standing, he leaned over the rail and dropped something; it might have been a coin.

There was no sound at all in the tower.

“That’s a good drop,” he told her, staring over the rail for some sight of whatever it had been.

She nodded, but she was frowning. “We shouldn’t be here. Andellen said that himself. If this is a test, it’s not a test that was designed for us. I should have asked him how long it took him to get out.”

“He wouldn’t have answered.”

“He led us here, didn’t he?”

Severn frowned. “You noticed.” There was vastly more sarcasm in the two words than words that feeble should have been able to contain.

“I sort of told him to.”

“You told him – and Kaylin,
don’t
take up acting as a second job if you think you need money – to show us around the High Halls.”

“Yes. But his eyes – ”

“Were green.”

“And brown.”

Severn thought about that for a moment. “And brown is approval. Or respect.”

“I think they’re usually the same, with the Barrani.”

Severn shrugged. It was his punctuation. “All right. Assume that he meant you to be here. Assume that this is, as he said, a test all Barrani must undergo if they want to be Lords of the High Court.”

She frowned. “Keep talking.”

“About anything in particular?”

“About the High Court.”

He sat on a step three above the one she was standing on; he was still taller, but she tried not to resent it. “The High Court is composed of Barrani Lords.”

“They all live here?”

At that, he hesitated. “The Lord of the West March lives in the West March.”

“Where is that, anyway?”

“No one knows for certain.”

“Right. But not here.”

“No… ”

“And the Lord of the Green? And what the hell
is
the Green, anyway? At least the West March sounds like a damn
place
.”

“The Barrani have their own symbols.”

“Green usually means they’re happy.”

“For a given value of happy. They’re happy killing each other half the time.”

“No, if they’re killing, they’re blue.”

“Does it matter?”

“Here? How the hell should I know?”

“Ah. I think I understand why you want me to do the talking. You’re babbling.”

“Ha-ha.” She frowned. “Teela is a Lord.”

“Well, she’s not going to be much help to us if we can’t get out.”

“But if we get out, what are we?”

“Alive.”

“Try to work with me, okay? Teela used to live
here
. But the closest friend she has is Tain, and I’d bet my own money he never did.”

“I wouldn’t touch that bet.”

“Samaran never did either. But Samaran followed Nightshade.”

“They have a complicated clan system.”

“They have a bloody complicated
everything
. If we get out, we’re not Lords of the High Court.”

Severn’s expression sharpened; for just a moment, he looked dangerous, and his scars were white and ivory in the gloom. It was, to be fair, mostly Kaylin’s gloom, as they were standing directly
under
a torch, but still.”

I may be forced to kill Andellen,” Severn said slowly.

“Don’t. Oh, and why?”

“The Barrani have owned the High Halls since before the founding of the Empire. This Empire. And the previous one. And, if history is correct, the one before that. They’ve always claimed it, there’s never been another race that has.”

“They built it.”

“Did they?”

“Most of it.”

“I’m not so certain.” The way he said it, Kaylin suddenly wasn’t so certain either.

“Think like a Barrani,” he told her, leaning back and placing both of his arms flat behind him. She wouldn’t have tried; her feet were still smarting from the constant cold of their contact with the stone. That and the edge of the step wasn’t worn enough that she wanted it biting into her shoulder blades.

“Trying.” She paused. Looked at him.

“
Not
like Teela,” he snapped. And added, “Try to work with me,” in very precise mimicry of Kaylin. “Castle Nightshade is
old
. It predates the Empire. All of them. What rules bind it?”

She shrugged. For a variety of reasons – most of them ones she was unwilling to think about at all, never mind with any depth, she didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the Castle. Or the Barrani that served as door-wards in the Long damn Hall. Or the portcullis. Or the forest. Or the room with the seal. “Nightshade,” she said quietly.

“Nightshade binds it?”

She nodded, hesitantly grasping the strands of Severn’s thoughts. “He rules it,” she said. “He didn’t build it. I think – I haven’t asked how, and no, I’m never going to – that taking the Castle was costly. But it’s his. He can go anywhere in it.”

“And you?”

“He… said that I could eventually find my way anywhere in the Castle, but I wouldn’t get there the same way he did.”

“Is that because you bear his mark?”

“I’ve never asked.”

“Well, ask
that
one, will you?”

She nodded, humor absent. The attempt was tiring. “You’re saying… that the Lord of the High Halls rules the Halls in the same way the fieflord rules the Castle?”

“I wouldn’t bet my money on it. I would bet yours, if that’s any help.” It was; fief-talk for almost certain, but not quite.

“It still doesn’t explain the test.” But she looked at the walls. “Or maybe it does,” she added. Thinking again. It was comfortable, to think. Compared to, say, panicking.

“No, it doesn’t. But Teela lived here. Andellen lived here. Nightshade lived here.”

She nodded three times. “So the taking of the test probably meant – before the Dragon Emperor, before the Empires that I don’t remember the names of, so don’t bloody ask – ”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

” – that at some point, only Barrani who
could
live here without getting lost, the way the Castle loses people, did live here.”

“The Barrani like to weed out the weak. They’re fond of hierarchies and titles. If this was a proving ground of some sort, it probably wouldn’t have mattered to them who built it originally. It served a purpose. You came here, and you either made it out or you didn’t. It’s pretty clear that Samaran never tried. Tain?”

She said, “He didn’t try.”

Severn nodded grimly. “You think he wouldn’t be here at all if he had.”

“I think he
would
be here if he had. Or at least as much as Teela is. I don’t think pass or fail here is a grade.” She bit her lip. “If we can pass this test somehow, we
can
live here. I mean, we can live in the same damn place as the High Lord.”

Severn nodded. “You think Andellen wants that?”

“I could not tell you what Andellen intended.”

“By current law – by current
form
– we’d have to be accepted as Lords of the High Court. If we made it out.”

“And could prove it, yes.”

But she was still frowning. “If it happened that way, though, it’s not the Barrani that are doing the testing.”

“No.”

“It’s the High Halls.”

“Yes.”

She said something in Leontine. And then added something in Aerian.

“What I’d like to know,” she finally said, stretching her legs and massaging her calves without – quite – sitting on the steps, “is who the hell thought it would be a good idea to design
sentient
bloody buildings.” The cold was bad enough that she hesitated for a moment and then slid her feet back into her shoes.

“The problem with that,” Severn replied, his voice that shade of too quiet, “is that we’re probably likely to find out.”

That’s the point, she thought. She put her hands on the rails and examined them carefully. “Barrani,” she told him.

“You said the mark on the wall was a High Barrani rune.”

“No, Andellen said that. I said it looked like High Barrani to me.” She frowned, and then added, “The bastard.”

“Does that mean I can try to kill him?”

“No. It means you can stand in line. He
didn’t
say it was High Barrani. I said it. He just told me what it meant.”

Severn said, “I don’t like what you’re thinking.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking. I don’t even know what I’m thinking!”

“I know what you will be thinking in about ten seconds… you’ve got that look on your face.”

“I’m thinking,” she said pointedly, “that thinking like a Barrani will get us exactly nowhere. I’m thinking that this is like the Long Hall in Castle Nightshade, but it’s stretched in the wrong damn direction.”

Severn shook his head. “I told you. I don’t like it.”

“Come on,” she added, gripping the rail tightly in whitening hands. “Do you trust me?”

She regretted the question the minute it fell out of her mouth.

“That’s not the right question,” he said, coming to stand beside her. His hand was around her waist for just a moment as he looked down. “Do you trust me?”

“With my life,” she said, but bitterly.

She leaped up lightly onto the railing, and Severn did the same; she caught the hand at her waist and held it tightly. Then she jumped, and her weight bore them both into the darkness.

The world folded, twisting around them as they fell.

Or as they should have been falling. Except that they weren’t. They hung suspended over nothing, as torchlight and stairs and brass shattered and blended, re-forming around them as if they were the center of the universe.

The center of a different universe.

Kaylin looked up at Severn’s chin. She would remember the underside of his face clearly, because it was the first thing she tried to see. “Can you see this?” she asked him softly. And then, when he didn’t answer immediately, “Are you all right?”

His hand was still around her waist; her hand was clutching it. He moved slightly, changing his grip. It was sort of an answer. It wasn’t a
good
answer. He said, each word distinct, “For a person who hates magic, it doesn’t bother you much.”

“Meaning?”

“You’re not hysterical.”

She shrugged, or tried to. “Would it help?”

He laughed; it was a low sound. “It might help me,” he told her. “It might not.” He let her go. She did not, however, reciprocate.

Looking at her hand for a moment, he said nothing. And then he straightened his shoulders, and he was Severn again. Because he had become aware that she needed him to be Severn. She let him go, then. Thinking, as she did, that need was a funny thing; you were never sure if you had it by the tail or the jaw. Being needed forced her to find strength; being needed too much forced her to confront failure. Not being needed at all?

She shook her head. They stood in a long hall. There were no stairs here, and the brass work that had been the railing was now a green set of lines that clung to walls, shadowing them with the green of summer leaves. The hall itself was perhaps ten feet tall, but the ceilings were rough, and suggested dirt rather than rock. The walls, however, were smooth beneath the creepers, and hard.

She looked at Severn, and then beyond him. In either direction, the hall seemed featureless; it was an improvement over the stairs, but only theoretically. “Flip a coin?” she finally said.

Severn dutifully pulled out a silver talon. Kaylin called, and he caught; the coin rested on the back of his hand, beneath the flat of his palm.

“Well?”

He removed his hand. The coin was completely blank.

“Really hating magic,” Kaylin told him.

“Not as much as I will if the coin stays this way. I should’ve used copper.” Kaylin shrugged and began to walk, and Severn fell in beside her. There were no torches here, but a diffuse light peered out from the sparse gaps between leaves; it was enough to see by. They walked in silence for some time.

“What are we looking for?” Severn finally asked her.

“The way out.”

“What does that mean here?”

She started to answer, but flippancy evaded her grasp. “I’m not sure,” she told him slowly. “I’m not sure where
here
is.”

“What does it mean in the Castle?”

She shook her head, and her hand brushed her cheek. “Nothing,” she told him. She looked up at the ceiling. “Can you give me a boost up?”

“You can probably reach if you sit on my shoulders.”

They’d done this before, but she’d been younger and lighter; muscle counted for something. He knelt, and she straddled his shoulders, discovering that skirts were, in fact, bad for
everything
. But if she’d gained muscle and height in seven years, so had Severn; he gained his feet without apparent effort.

She reached up and touched the ceiling. What appeared as dirt was not – quite – dirt. It was, however, covered in a mottled layer of earth. She ran her hands across it, frowning. “Severn? I think the ceiling is made of… roots.”

“Roots?”

“Plant roots. Some are smaller than others. Some are bigger than my thigh.”

“Roots usually grow down,” he said after a pause. “You think we’re underground?”

“As much as you do,” she replied. “How far can you walk like this?”

“Not far.”

She nodded, although he couldn’t be expected to see it. Her hands continued to play against the surface, her nails gathering dirt the way short nails everywhere did. “Let’s follow this one,” she told him. “Take a couple of steps forward and stop.”

He did this, and she once again touched the ceiling. Found the largest of the roots, and, trying to keep her hand beneath it, nudged him forward again. They walked this way for about twenty minutes before Kaylin told him to stop. There was enough urgency in the single syllable that he almost unbalanced, and she realized he’d gone for his knives.

“It’s not that kind of stop,” she told him as he regained his balance – and his hold. “I can – something’s different. I can feel – something engraved here.”