Cast in Flight by Michelle Sagara
“No. I guess we won’t know if we don’t knock.”
* * *
Grethan met them at the door. In general, Kaylin approved of this because Evanton took a long time to reach the door, and he hated it when people either pulled the bell a dozen times or, worse, pulled it once and assumed he wasn’t in when he didn’t immediately answer.
Kaylin had once suggested that maybe, just maybe, magic be used on that door or that bell that would allow the visitor to recognize when Evanton was, or was not, receiving guests, which got her a long lecture, but changed nothing. She’d long since given up trying. If she wanted to see Evanton, she had to play by his rules.
Grethan, however, was not old; he was young enough that walking to the door and answering it wasn’t at all taxing. He didn’t despise interruptions; he didn’t resent them. He smiled up at Kaylin’s familiar as he saw who stood on the other side of the open door.
The familiar squawked and leapt off the Kaylin perch and onto the Grethan one.
“Is he in?”
“He’s in the kitchen,” Grethan replied. “But I think he intends to move to the garden when you’re here. You’re a bit on the late side,” he added, half-apologetically.
“We had a bit of a day.”
“It’s you,” Grethan said.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You always have a ‘bit of a day.’ Whenever I think it’s hard being Evanton’s apprentice, I think about being you instead, and it helps. Um, sorry.”
The small dragon squawked.
“People destroyed her home once. She had to face the Devourer; she had to save the elemental garden from—from a mad man. She has an angry Leontine as a boss, she has a Dragon as a friend—and even that friend came only because she almost died in Shadow. I mean, seriously—she has a really stressful life. I only have to deal with sulky wild elements and a really grouchy Evanton—and he’s not grouchy all the time.”
Moran chuckled. “He’s not wrong.”
* * *
Lillias was waiting in the kitchen, her eyes a martial blue.
Evanton’s eyes didn’t change color; he had the rest of his very lined face to make up for the lack, and it did. She was late, yes, and clearly, at the moment, late was an almost unpardonable capital crime.
“I’m sorry we’re late,” Kaylin said before Evanton could speak. “It’s entirely my fault; Moran was waiting for me. But I had a Dragon to deal with, and while you’re like the Dragon in temper, you can’t reduce me to ash without the fire’s permission.”
“The fire is not notably reluctant to burn things.”
“No, but it would upset your guests.”
Lillias had been watching Moran, and only Moran; the social dance of apology, groveling and possible forgiveness meant nothing to her. Her eyes were a complicated shade of purple and the deeper gray that was the Aerian norm. She rose from the chair she’d occupied, and froze, standing by the table.
Moran understood what had happened; Kaylin didn’t, but could guess. Some greeting to the praevolo involved the spread or movement of actual wings, and Lillias, without them, couldn’t perform the proper gestures.
Moran caught Lillias’s hands before Lillias could fall to her knees. “I thought you’d died,” the Aerian sergeant whispered.
Lillias bowed her head. She raised it again when Moran’s hands tightened. “No, Moran.” She didn’t use the title.
“Why didn’t you contact me?”
“I did not know how. I was stranded, grounded. Were it not for the kindness of another Aerian, I would have remained in the Southern Reach, in a cave that was once used for the outcaste and other criminals; I had no way of reaching the ground. But I could not return.”
“But—I work on the ground—”
“Yes. I was not aware of that. I was given very little information about the Aerians.” She spoke the word as if it no longer applied to her. “And I had to adapt to life here. I almost didn’t,” she added, but the words were spoken with a wryness that bordered on affection. She shook herself. “I wouldn’t have recognized you, if not for the wings. You are a grown woman now, not an angry young child.” She hesitated. “Evanton says you wished to speak with me?”
“Of course I did. I had no idea you were alive until Kaylin said she’d met you.”
“We are going to the garden,” Evanton declared, rising. “The kitchen is crowded enough that it feels cramped; the garden is quite pleasant at the moment. Come.”
* * *
The elemental garden was, as Evanton had stated, pleasant. The breeze was gentle. The water was entirely contained in a pond that was deeper than the Imperial Palace was tall. Moss had grown across stones, but the earth was calm, and the grass that took root in it was lush and green, if a little unkempt.
Lillias had clearly seen this garden before, judging by her utter lack of surprise, but Moran had not. Given the cramped, rickety hall and the narrow closet-size door that led to this space, that wasn’t surprising.
“You’ve been here before,” Kaylin said to Lillias.
“Yes. Not often. Evanton is a busy man, and I don’t like to intrude.”
Moran was flexing her wings, although the injured one was slow to respond.
“How did you find out that Moran was here? I mean, on the ground?”
“Because I saw her,” Lillias replied. “I saw her on the night the Dragons came out to fight. I saw her in the air, with the rest of the Hawks.”
“You could recognize her from the ground?”
Lillias looked genuinely surprised by the question. She glanced at Moran, who was speaking, for the moment, to Evanton.
“I’m sorry if that was rude—it wasn’t intentional.”
“No. No, I forget myself.” Lillias’s smile was old and careworn. “We can see her, when she flies. She could be miles off, and if we could see her at all as more than a speck in the sky, we would know, instantly, who she is. She is praevolo.”
“You saw her get injured.”
Lillias bowed her head. “Yes.”
“That’s why you had Evanton make the charm?”
“It is not a charm,” Lillias’s voice was even quieter. She stiffened and looked over her shoulder. “It is part of the voice of the wind here. Can you hear it?”
Kaylin couldn’t.
“The wind knows its own,” Lillias said in Aerian. It was a phrase Kaylin knew because the Hawklord sometimes used it. But he’d never meant it literally, and it was clear that Lillias did. “I have no wings,” she continued. “Which you, of course, noticed. Most people don’t.”
“But your eyes—”
“Most people don’t. They are not Hawks, and they are not accustomed to judging mood from the color of eyes; they look at expressions, and listen to tone of voice. Now hush, and listen.”
“To what?”
“The wind.”
* * *
The wind did not speak to Kaylin, not in words she could recognize. Sometimes she spoke to the wind, in this garden, and it did respond, but not often. And clearly not the way it responded to Moran and Lillias. As if aware of what was to happen—and how could he not be?—Evanton came to stand by Kaylin’s side.
Lillias lifted her arms; Moran lifted both arms and wings, although the injured one twitched. Kaylin looked at the sergeant, and then looked away from what she saw in the Aerian’s face. In both of their faces.
The breeze grew stronger, but it didn’t gather debris in its folds, and in truth, it felt gentle. It sounded almost like a gale.
Lillias was the first to leave the ground. As if she had wings, phantom wings, she rose in the air, her feet breaking all connection with the grass beneath them. She moved as if those wings had never been lost, and she rose, looking up, always up, into the endl
Moran didn’t appear to be shocked; she, too, rose. She had wings, but they could not carry her weight—not in the world outside this enclosed space. But in this space, it wasn’t wings that were required. Kaylin’s hands curled into fists, not because she was angry, but because she wanted instinctively to hang on to something.
The air didn’t hold her. The air didn’t lift her. It had never been her element.
She watched. She watched the wingless woman turn and spiral in the air, rising and plunging deliberately in a dive. She watched Moran join her, weaving complicated, tight circles around her. The Aerian Hawks practicing their drills would never, ever have been able to keep up with her. She looked...younger. Joyful.
Lillias laughed, was laughing, and Kaylin wondered then how hard it would be to lose both of her legs, because that was the only comparison she could make. And yet Lillias had made a life for herself here. It wasn’t the life she’d once had, and she didn’t live without regret—but she did live.
* * *
“I met her,” Evanton said, “some years ago. I recognized what she was, as you did. What she said, however, was not wrong: people do not notice. It is possible for Lillias to live as you live—but it was very, very hard.
“You do not think of the fiefs as a particularly pleasant place.”
“I like Tiamaris.”
“Yes. But Tiamaris was not the fief of your birth or your childhood, such as it was. Nightshade was. You think of it as disadvantageous, and primarily it was. You had neither a normal childhood nor a normal life; you had no certain sense of safety. But I will argue that your life there did provide you with one or two advantages that Lillias did not have.”
Kaylin opened her mouth to protest and shut it again.
“You’re getting better,” Evanton said. “I had almost begun to despair. You were about to ask me what the advantages to you now are.”
She nodded.
“You had no home, Kaylin. You had no family. You had no sense that survival was certain. In every possible way, you lived on the edge. Because you did, you have no sense of society, and your place in it. Lillias was not powerful. She was not born to a significant flight. But she had family, and home. She had a place she understood. She knew what the rules were, and she had a job that she took some pride in.
“All of these were lost to her the minute she made her decision. It was,” he added mildly, “the right decision, in my opinion—but it was enormously costly. Sometimes, when the costs never end, the rightness of the decision is called into question. She lost what she had, when she fell.
“You found what you’ve built. You were not mired in the loss; it did not destroy you. You expected far, far less than Lillias had, until that moment, expected. Every comparison you made to your previous life was a good one. You did not pause to think that people were rude or graceless, because your sense of manners, such as they were, were very primitive. For Lillias, it was much harder. She had more to lose, and lost it all. She could not, at the time, see what she had to gain, because the one thing she wanted, she could never have again.”
Kaylin thought, without resentment, that Evanton was right. “If it’s all the same to you,” she added, “I’d rather no other child ever had to live with my so-called advantage.”
“It is a silver lining, Kaylin. It is not one to be desired, and where you survived, many in your position—and I have no doubt there are many—do not. But your entry into Elantra was vastly less painful and less complicated in the end than hers.”
“Did Moran always fly like that?”
“I have no idea. Like Lillias, I saw her in flight only once.”
“You saw her?”
“Yes, Kaylin. I am the Keeper; I am aware of many things that occur within the city itself, and so close to the heart of Shadow.” He looked up at the two women flying in the folds of elemental air. “Do you understand what they’re saying?”
“Not all of it. Some. My Aerian’s not as good as my Barrani. This is what the bletsian was supposed to do for her. For Moran, I mean.”
“Yes. It was what I gifted Lillias, when we first met.” He shook his head. “It is hard, to make sacrifices. Harder when none of them seem necessary or relevant in retrospect. Lillias needed to see Moran as she is now.”
Kaylin was frowning. “But...”
“But?”
“You said Moran wasn’t allowed to see Lillias as only one thing—in this case, a tragedy, a cause for guilt.”
“I did.”
“But...Lillias doesn’t really see Moran, does she? I mean, she sees the Illumen praevolo. But Moran as she is?”
“You know, there are days when I despair of you. And there are other days—like this one—when I realize that being a groundhawk is your calling. Yes, Kaylin. She sees the praevolo. She could hardly see anything else; Moran was a child when Lillias was made outcaste. She did not interact with Moran at any time; she did not visit her at the Halls of Law. She was only peripherally aware of the fact that Moran—no, that the praevolo—was still alive.
“But she gave up her life—as an Aerian—on the day that she saved Moran’s, and she did it for the praevolo. And for the child. You would like Lillias, if you had met her in other circumstances. But she sees only some small part of what Moran is.”
“And she didn’t get the humiliating lecture.”
“Ah. No. But I don’t know her quite as well as I know you.”
“You didn’t know Moran at all, and you lectured her.”
“True. But there is a type of self-aggrandizing guilt with which I am all too familiar, and I dislike it intensely.” He had the grace to redden. “I may have been a bit too harsh.”
But watching the two Aerians—neither of whom could take to the skies by their own power—Kaylin shook her head. “No,” she said, a smile hovering across her lips. “You were exactly harsh enough.” She looked at Evanton and added, “But don’t feel a great need to repeat it anytime soon.”
He laughed.
Chapter 19
Evanton left Lillias and Moran in the garden after first speaking to the wind. He escorted Kaylin out, and shut the door. “It is the one space in which they will be perfectly safe.” His smile was sadder and more lined, but it often was when he left the confines of the Keeper’s garden: age settled far more heavily across his shoulders anywhere but there.
“Did Lillias explain what the fancy dress means?”
“I understand the fancy dress, as you call it; I did not require explanations.”
Kaylin hesitated. Bellusdeo’s warnings—about panic, about fear, about the nature of people—were weighty and sharp.
“You are thinking so loudly I can practically hear you, and you are not thinking anything pleasant.”
“No.”
“I hesitate to ask you to share. In general, your unpleasant thoughts—or at least the ones that cause that particular expression—cause difficulties for everyone. On the other hand, some difficulties require intervention, and it is better to have an early warning.”
“I’m not actually supposed to talk about it,” Kaylin mumbled.
“Ah. But they can’t stop you from thinking?”
“No. And you’re smart, and you know things. I mean, different things.”
“Than you?”
“Than the Arkon.”
“You discussed this with the Arkon.”
“Yes. Because—”
“He is ancient and has some affinity for antiquities.” At Kaylin’s expression, he frowned and added, “He knows more than you do. What did you ask him?”
“I, um, asked him if he thought there was any chance at all that Shadow was, like the elements, a source of power. I mean, not like elements, but kind of like them. You know how summoners get pow
“Yes,” was Evanton’s dry response.
Kaylin reddened. Of course he knew. “What if Shadow was sort of like that? I mean, that some people could summon Shadow, and it would do what they wanted, and some could summon Shadow and it would...eat them.”
“You asked the Arkon this.”
She nodded.
“His answer?”
“He thought it was a very good question.”
“Why exactly did you ask the Arkon the question?”
Kaylin told him.
* * *
“There is no Shadow in my garden,” Evanton said when they had taken their usual seats around the now-less-crowded kitchen table. “There is, however, the Devourer of Worlds. I do not think he will awaken in any true sense for centuries.”
“The Devourer isn’t Shadow, though.”
“No.” Evanton paused. “Nor can he, in theory, be summoned the way the wild elements can. But it is possible that you are materially half-correct. It is not, however, a magic that I believe the Aerians know how to use, if anyone currently does.”
“I think someone currently does. The human who bullied Margot into reading the future—which made about as much sense to anyone else as Oracles usually do before things actually happen—was somehow imbued with Shadow. Or infested by it. That Shadow was, I think, key to his ability to physically control Margot—but he seemed both surprised and genuinely upset to see it.
“Second, the Arcane bomb that destroyed the infirmary earlier today. Usually when there’s that much damage done, you can see the magical splash across the bits and pieces of debris. There was some of that, but not nearly enough for a bomb of that power. There was also a lot of inert Shadow.
“And third...” Here she hesitated. “I don’t know what you’ve been told about the praevolo. Probably a lot more than I have,” she added in a rush when she saw Evanton’s wrinkles begin to fall into his pinched, annoyed expression. “Third, the world the Aerians were originally from was somehow losing its magic. I don’t understand how or why—I mean, how do you lose magic?—but that’s what they believed. They need magic to fly.