Part 27 (1/2)
”I need to ask you who made this sword. And how they made it.”
”It is one of the swords that define the Ascendants,” Maggaron replied. It wasn't an answer. She felt his indecision, and she lowered herself to the ground-not to kneel, but to sit. Her knees she gathered beneath her chin as she moved to face him.
”I'm never going to be an Ascendant,” Kaylin told him. ”I only want to be an Imperial Hawk. That's it. That's all I've ever wanted. I don't consider myself the wielder of the sword; I consider myself its-its guardian. Its keeper.”
”For what, or for whom, will you keep it?”
There wasn't a good answer to that question. ”I don't know. I don't know enough about the sword. Tell me what you know. Or tell me what you were told.”
”I cannot, unless you compel. There are mysteries that I cannot reveal.”
This was the answer she expected. She knew she could force him to answer. She also knew that short of that, he wouldn't. ”Tell me what any of your people would know, then.”
”Chosen, I cannot separate what I know from what an outsider knows-not anymore. If you cannot bear to command me, speak with Mejrah, the elder. She will tell you what any exceptionally promising child is told before he leaves on the pilgrimage of a candidate for ascendancy.”
Kaylin looked to Severn. Severn nodded. ”We should have the time.”
”If I could release you, I would,” Kaylin told him.
”If you could release me,” he replied, ”I would test the very bounds of my nature; I would try to die, here, where the Shadows cannot call me.”
She rose and headed toward Severn, Morse, and the door. But in the door frame, she turned for one last glance out the window; his reflection, pale and ghostly, looked back.
”You should just put him out of his misery,” Morse said, but only after the door was firmly shut. Morse had never had a lot of patience with despair. ”He sits around the room all day-when he isn't sleeping. Makes me want to kick his a.s.s.”
”Sitting around in the room all day means he's one less thing I have to worry about-or did you forget what he looked like when the Shadows had a grip on him?” Kaylin said.
Morse shrugged. ”Morgue?”
”Sadly, yes.”
The door of the morgue opened before Morse could touch it. While Kaylin appreciated this far more than traditional door wards, she still found it slightly creepy, and given the contents of the room, a little time spent opening the door meant a few seconds less time in the company of angry Dragons, which was never a bad thing.
No sound escaped into the hall. ”Are they still there?” Kaylin whispered.
”Yeah.” Morse entered the room. Kaylin and Severn had little choice but to follow her lead; cowardice was one thing, but obvious cowardice was quite another. The first thing Kaylin noticed was Red. He was sitting in an armchair that looked entirely at odds with the rest of the morgue's decor; it had a high, tall back that gleamed. His arms lay against the arm-rests, and he'd gotten rid of the smock in which he normally worked.
She started toward him, caught his expression, and stopped.
Turning, she noted the rest of the room. The seven corpses were now covered, head to toe; nothing could be seen, not even the women's hair. Standing between the two large tables that served as almost communal slabs were the Dragons: Tiamaris, Sanabalis, and the Arkon. Tara was nowhere in sight. The color of the Dragons' eyes was, as Morse had reported, Not Good.
Six orange eyes now turned toward her. ”Private,” the Arkon said. If he'd said it in Leontine, it would have sounded like a curse.
She folded in the middle immediately. ”Arkon.” She didn't even bother to look up from the very uninteresting floor, boring being preferable to painful. He didn't tell her to rise.
”Did you speak with Lord Nightshade?”
”Yes, Arkon.”
”And?”
”No similar corpses were found in the fief of Nightshade.”
”He is certain?”
”We showed him the contents of the memory crystal you prepared, Arkon.”
”Good. Stand up,” he added, growling. ”And do not test my patience in this fas.h.i.+on again. You may play these games with Lord Diarmat. He has had centuries of training humans, and obviously has the tolerance for it.”
If she'd opened her mouth, she would have choked on her tongue. She did, however, rise. The Arkon was no longer looking at her, and she was now looking at the back of his robes. She could see Tiamaris and Sanabalis because they were more or less facing her. They weren't stupid; they were looking at the Arkon.
”You have no contacts in the other fiefs?”
”No, Arkon.”
”I dislike making a.s.sumptions on so little information.”
”Yes, Arkon.”
”Sanabalis?”
Sanabalis cleared his throat. The sound was pure Dragon. Kaylin had the very sick feeling that Dragon conversation was about to erupt, but she kept her hands dutifully by her sides. ”Inasmuch as it is safe to make any a.s.sumptions in the fiefs, I feel it is safe to make this one. The corpses appeared in Tiamaris, and only in Tiamaris.”
”An artifact of the crumbling barriers?”
Tiamaris nodded. ”That is Tara's suspicion. She has marked, in as much detail as possible, the locations of the storms that escaped the boundaries during the end of Barren's reign. There is no immediate correlation between those locations and the locations at which the corpses were found, but if the...women...emerged alive and died after the fact, that would make some sense.”
The Arkon broke a bit of stone off one of the slabs, and proceeded to crumble it into fine powder. Kaylin couldn't see his expression, and was grateful. ”There is no doubt,” he finally said. ”The internal organs are exactly what we would expect if the victim was a genuine Dragon.
”The skin was thicker than mortal skin, with the possible exception of Leontines in their prime, but there are no internal scales, nothing to indicate that scales could have once existed. I dislike it intensely. Yes, Private?”
”It's-it's nothing, Arkon.”
He turned. Kaylin was surprised the floor beneath his feet didn't crack; she was also surprised it wasn't blackened, charred, or molten. ”Perhaps I did not indicate how severe my lack of patience is. If you have a comment or a question, I am willing to hear it. Barely.”
”All of the members of the Dragon Court I've met look distinctly individual when in their mortal forms. Can that be altered?”
”Our mortal appearances? Yes. Not with ease, and not without cause, but, yes. We gravitate toward specific experiences naturally, however; color of hair, shape of face, height.”
”So...it's possible that these could, in fact, be seven different corpses?”
”They are clearly seven distinct corpses.” His voice was Winter, a reminder that people froze to death just by being outside.
”I mean they could, when alive, have been seven distinct Dragons.”
The Arkon's silence was chillier than his words.