Cast in Chaos. Michelle Sagara

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СКАЧАТЬ given the turn the afternoon had taken, Kaylin wasn’t certain she qualified as sane. “But I could not find you by conventional means. I chose a…less conventional approach, through the Castle’s portal. It would not be an approach open to many. Perhaps the High Lord, or another fieflord—but only if you held their name.”

      She opened her eyes. “What happened in Evanton’s store?”

      “The Keeper’s domain is bound by many, many magics. Most of those are older than any known Empire. I cannot say for certain what happened. You might wish to speak with him, but I am not sure he will be able to enlighten you. May I suggest, for the duration of the current crisis, that you avoid wandering in his shop when he is not actively present?”

      She grimaced, and then her eyes narrowed. “Current crisis?”

      “I believe you are suffering from rains of blood, among other difficulties.” He raised a brow. “Come, Kaylin. You did not honestly think a difficulty of that magnitude would stay across the Ablayne?”

      “I wasn’t thinking about it much at all. It’s not fief business.”

      “Not yet, no. But I believe that your difficulty in the city and the difficulty you encountered in the Keeper’s abode are linked. “Remain here. I will return with food and water, now that you are somewhat more settled.”

      Kaylin drifted off while Nightshade was absent. The room was quiet, the couch too comfortable. She was cold, here, and there were no convenient throws that she wanted to touch; she felt too damn grubby, and even at its simplest, Castle Nightshade was out of her league. But her stomach had settled enough that the complaints it now issued were the usual ones. She was hungry, damn it.

      Nightshade had implied that he’d had to go to the portal to find her. Which said something about the portal. One of the many things it said? Entering it at the moment was probably not a great idea, so leaving might prove difficult.

      But one of the other things it implied was that the portal existed in an entirely different space than the rest of the Castle. Or at least the rest of the fief. She turned that one over for a few minutes. What did she know about the Castle, after all? Its well, if you fell all the way down to the bottom and miraculously survived, contained a cavern with a vast lake that the Elemental Water could actually reach out and touch; its basement contained a literal forest of trees that seemed sentient—certainly more sentient than the Hawks when they’d been out drinking all night and had work the next day; somewhere beyond that forest, there was a huge cavern that was covered in runes that were very similar to the ones that adorned half of her skin.

      She grimaced. What else?

      There was a throne room. She’d seen it once. It contained statues of almost every living race in the Empire, and when Nightshade desired it, those statues came to life. Were, in fact, in some way, always alive. He’d said he used the power of the Castle to create them, but made it clear that he had started from flesh. But…how? How had he used that power? What had he told it to do?

      She stood, found that her knees no longer wobbled, and began to pace in a rectangle around the low table.

      What was the Castle, at heart? It was not the Tower of Barren. Or rather, of Tiamaris. It didn’t speak, or think, or plan, or love.

      Or did it?

      “No,” was the quiet reply.

      CHAPTER 8

      Nightshade stood in the open doors, a tray in his hands. Or rather, between the open palms he held to either side. She hesitated, and then walked quickly over to where he stood and lifted the tray the normal way. Watching the Lord of the fief play servant always unsettled her.

      He raised a dark brow; his eyes were still the shade that exists just before emerald falls into sapphire. His hair, unbound, draped across both shoulders; his skin was pale. The tray shook in her hands; she looked at what was on it. Water, or a liquid just as clear and colorless, fruit, cut cheese, meat. No bread. She carried the tray to the table. He followed in silence.

      She was always aware of where, in a room, Nightshade was. It might have been because of the mark; it might have been because she knew his true name. But she thought she’d have been just as aware if she’d had neither. Even his silences demanded attention. She could more easily ignore the Dragon Lords whose company she kept than the Lord of Nightshade.

      He knew. It amused him. Which annoyed her. “Why doesn’t Castle Nightshade speak?” she asked, veering away from both annoyance and compulsion.

      “I think you know the answer to that better than I.”

      Clearly, if she were interested in forcing the conversation into safer channels, she was going to have to carry most of it. “You were there. You were there when the Tower of—of Tiamaris—woke.”

      “I was there for only some part of it. My knowledge of the Towers at that time—and it was not without significance—was based in its entirety on their nascent forms. I understood, how ever,” he added, voice softer, gaze fixed on her face, “that I was not to be bored. I had encountered a mortal—a mortal with the unfortunate manners of a wild human, or a coveted one—and she bore my mark.” His glance brushed the sleeves of her shirt, and his eyes flared—literally.

      Magic caused her skin to tingle and the hair on the back of her neck to rise. Before she could speak or move, the ties at her sleeves fell open, and those sleeves were rolled, end over end, up her arms until the inside of those arms were exposed. Both arms, simultaneously. It was a neat trick, for a value of neat that was also distinctly uncomfortable.

      “You bore, as well, the marks of the Chosen. And you seemed both powerless and ignorant, in the main, of what those marks might mean to you should you survive them.”

      “But the Tower—” she began, attempting to control the conversation. Or anything, really.

      “The Tower of Tiamaris heard you,” was his reply. “As did I. You were there when his Tower woke. You were not, however, here. Nor were you in the other fiefs in which such Towers woke and found they were powerless. What you touched, Kaylin, you changed. You have not touched the heart of Castle Nightshade, and before you ask—if you are so foolish as to entertain the notion—no, you will not wake the Castle’s heart.”

      But as he said it, she felt both the force of his declaration, and the tremor of uncertainty that lay beneath it. He wasn’t sure that she could be kept from it if she wanted to go to the heart.

      “You are wrong,” was the cool reply. “But the only certainty is your death, and I am reluctant, at this moment, to kill you.”

      “But at this moment,” she replied, half touching his thoughts, half speaking them as if they were also her own, “you can kill me. And you’re not certain that’s always going to be true.”

      One brow rose, revealing more of the blue his eyes had become. He didn’t deny it, however; there wasn’t any point. Not that he wouldn’t have lied if there was any chance it would be effective; the burden of truth for any Barrani was decided by the gullibility of the audience, and the possible consequences of the lie itself to said Barrani.

      She glanced at her arms.

      “Yes,” he said quietly.

      “You knew. You knew I would live in Nightshade. You knew it centuries ago.”

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