Cast in Sorrow

Teela shrugged. “It was dark.”

“In both places. The only light in the courtyard was the one I brought with me. The words,” she added, “they glowed.”

“Very well. Statues.” The Barrani Hawk’s eyes had lost their green.

“Technically, no.”

“If you take much longer to tell me the rest, I’ll strangle you myself.”

“Didn’t you just say—”

“I told you not to bleed on the dress. I don’t recall that strangulation causes bleeding.”

“The statues moved. They followed me. They tried—they tried to touch one of the words. I thought of them as ghosts,” she added. “They always reacted to the same word.”

“I am not going to ask you what the word was, because I really will strangle you when you can’t answer.” Teela folded her arms across her chest as if to stop her hands from acting of their own accord.

“They couldn’t touch it; their hands passed through it.”

“Yours clearly didn’t.”

“No. But—every time one of them tried, the word grew heavier. By the end, even you would have found it a strain.”

“And that end?”

“I walked into a room. It was behind a warded door. My hands were full; I had to hit it with my head.”

A grin tugged the corners of Teela’s lips up as she considered this. “It opened?”

“With a lot of noise, and if by ‘opened’ you mean turned to burning ash.”

“Alsanis was never rumored to be this dramatic. Continue.”

“The Consort was there. In the center of the room. Which wasn’t a room at all—it had no ceiling. The sky on the inside was daylight; the sun was high.”

“Did she cast a shadow?”

Had she? Kaylin frowned.

“Did you?”

“I was kind of busy, Teela. Is it important?”

“It’s a dream. Or a nightmare. Everything—and nothing—is important.”

“The Consort had been singing. She was almost at the end of her song when I arrived; I panicked.”

Teela shot Kaylin her best “water is wet” look.

“The weird thing is, she was standing in front of a fountain. The fountain was at the heart of the room. The room was like an eleven-pointed star, in shape; the floors were stone. The ghosts—they all followed me in a line —walked to the eleven corners, and climbed invisible pedestals; they were all facing inward. They were looking at the Consort or the fountain.”

“Or you.”

That hadn’t occurred to Kaylin. “Or me. I had to let go of the words to catch her before she fell. But the words waited.”

Teela didn’t even tell her that the words weren’t sentient. “And then?”

“The Consort touched the words; they were solid, for her. We kind of—kind of pushed them into the fountain.”

Teela stared at her.

“There was nowhere else for them to go, Teela, and they had to go somewhere. I’d’ve given them to the ghosts, but there were eleven ghosts and two words.”

“I cannot believe Lord Sanabalis considers it wise to teach you magic.”

“Whisper that in his ear if it’ll get me out of his lessons.” She hesitated. She had come to the end of safe story—if mentioning the eleven was safe at all.

Teela, of course, noticed.

“One of the words sank into the water. The weightless one. The other hit water—and rose.” She sucked in air, and rose herself. Standing was in all ways less impressive. “The water froze as the rune changed shape, Teela. In the center of the fountain, made of ice, I saw you.”

“You have not spoken of this to anyone else?”

“No.”

“You’re lying.”

“It wasn’t technically speaking.” Kaylin didn’t like the color of Teela’s eyes; she didn’t like the Hawk’s sudden stiffness, either. “The eleven came off their pedestals then. They walked to the center of the room, to the lip of the fountain. They lifted their arms—to your image—and, Teela, they screamed.”

* * *

She wasn’t certain what Teela would do. She ate, in silence, although she’d lost all appetite. She was a betting person, but this could go either way; there was a good chance Teela would pivot on heel and leave the room. She had that tight-lipped “keep away” look that would have sent most of the office on whatever errands they could find that took them farther away from her desk.

Kaylin, with eight years of experience in the same office and no reasonable—or farfetched—errands to run, should have said nothing. It was safest. “Teela, what happened to the children? What happened to you?”

“Nothing happened to me,” was her bitter, bitter reply. Kaylin almost didn’t recognize her voice.

“What happened when you served as harmoniste?”

“Nothing.” Teela looked over her shoulder to the closed door. “If I had known that you would be involved like this, I would never have allowed you to—”

“We needed that information.”

“No, kitling, we didn’t.”

“People were dying—”

“Yes. But we didn’t know that at the time, and the truth of the matter is, I don’t care about those people.” Her eyes narrowed as Kaylin’s jaw dropped in outrage that was entirely genuine. “I don’t care about them as much as I care about you. Is that better? You don’t value yourself. Fine; not all of us labor under your evaluation of yourself.”

“You’re one to talk.”

Teela stared.

Kaylin knew this wasn’t smart. She knew it. But she was underslept and overworried and her mouth kind of opened and all the wrong words kept falling out. “You hate it when people worry about you. You hate it when they care. You never ask for help, even when you—”

“Need it?” Teela’s eyes were now dark blue slits. “What help, exactly, do you think you can offer? You have no idea what you’re doing. You’ve no idea what you’re facing. You wander around touching things that should never be disturbed, and you don’t even realize you’re doing it.

“You can barely save yourself. Do not insult me by implying that your concern can somehow save—” She stopped. Turning, she walked out of the room.

* * *

The small dragon returned a short time later, squawking.

“No,” she told him, from her glum perch in the chair she now occupied solo. “It didn’t go well.”

Squawk.

She poked at food. The small dragon landed on the table, skidded across its smooth, flat surface, and smacked into a silver tray. “Don’t eat that,” Kaylin said. “You won’t like it.”

He hissed.

“Fine, suit yourself.” She pushed herself out of the chair and started to pace. The room was large, but it was still a room, and at the moment, it felt like a cell. She glanced at the small hole in her dress, and then, frowning, at her arms. Ice shards had struck skin—but they’d caused no pain. Instead, they’d stilled the burning of the marks on both arms.

She stopped pacing and looked down at him. His eyes were wide and dark; they were the only thing about him that wasn’t translucent, unless you counted his teeth.

“I’m going for a walk.” She headed toward the same door that Teela had exited, and he jumped and