Cast in Peril. Michelle Sagara

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СКАЧАТЬ you’re as old as the Arkon—”

      “Yes. I was not, however, considered adult in my Aerie, because I wasn’t. What I learned, I learned by subterfuge and charm. Mostly charm.”

      “It wouldn’t kill you to try that on Diarmat. It might, at this point, kill him.”

      The rune began to thin as Kaylin watched it. No, not thin—compress. Three horizontal strokes began to shift their position, making a jumble of a pattern that had, for a moment, looked tantalizingly familiar. There was a short, fat dot in the center of the pattern, and slender, vertical squiggles to the left; those were pulled in as well, until there was something the shape of a very odd funnel just above the hatchling’s delicate head.

      It flicked its tongue and then roared. Which came out as a pretty pathetic squawk. As it inhaled to try again, the funnel above its head began to descend; the creature opened its mouth and…began to eat it. Or drink from it.

      “Bellusdeo, pinch me. Oh, never mind—you already are.”

      Bellusdeo, however, was staring at the creature. “Do you understand what you have in your hands?” she finally asked in a hushed voice.

      “A baby Dragon?”

      “Remind me to speak to the Emperor about the standards of your biological education,” was the scathing reply. “Anything that small and delicate that hatched in the Aerie would be crushed or suffocated before it got out of its shell.”

      “Well, it looks like a Dragon, except for the color.”

      “It looks nothing like a Dragon!”

      Kaylin decided not to press the point.

      “And if it were, we’d both be dead.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “It’s a familiar,” Bellusdeo replied. “They’re almost legendary creatures. No, let me rephrase that: they are legendary creatures. I’ve never seen one before.”

      “Then how do you know what it is?”

      “Familiars, according to legend, are born in magical conflagration.”

      “From eggs?”

      “Funnily enough, the legends didn’t specify. This one, though, was.”

      “What can you tell me about familiars? From legend, I mean,” she added hastily.

      “Very little. They were the creatures of sorcerers, and in one particular story, the sorcerer who sought to summon a familiar destroyed half a world in the attempt.”

      “Half a world?” Kaylin looked around the wreckage. “This doesn’t even qualify, if that’s the level of magic you’re talking about.”

      Bellusdeo shrugged. “Legends are neither scientific nor historical. Arcane bomb? Is that what you called it?”

      “Yes.” She frowned. “I didn’t see it; I could feel it. But I can see the sphere that absorbed most of the impact. On us,” she hastily added, looking at the debris.

      The Dragon looked around the ruins of what had once been Kaylin’s apartment. Or rather, her building, since the one above and the one below weren’t going to be suitable living quarters for anything but desperate mice.

      “Is this,” Kaylin nodded at the small dragon, “the source of the sphere?”

      “Pardon?”

      “The sphere. The one surrounding us.”

      Bellusdeo closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Kaylin was happy to see that they were orange. “You are correct,” she said softly in Barrani. “There is a sphere surrounding us. You can see that without casting?”

      Kaylin nodded. “It doesn’t seem like a strong spell.”

      Bellusdeo’s eyes rounded fully. Apparently this was idiocy beyond even her expectations of mortals. “In what way?”

      Kaylin was now looking, eyes narrowed, at every standing surface in the surrounding apartment. “No signature,” she replied, still examining the walls.

      The small dragon turned its head toward the large one; its tongue flicked air, and Kaylin saw that its tongue was now the same color as its eyes. The rune was gone.

      * * *

      Kaylin was almost afraid to move, but she did—slowly—the small dragon cupped in her hands, the large Dragon attached to her shoulders. She didn’t tell Bellusdeo to let go, because she had a hunch that the sphere was generated somehow by the creature Bellusdeo had called a familiar, and it was the sphere that seemed to be allowing her the slow, timid steps she was taking through what was essentially air with splinters thrown in. She didn’t want Bellusdeo to fall.

      But she looked at what remained of the floor where the Arcane bomb had exploded, and she could see the harsh illumination of a sigil against the broken floorboards; it was huge and splashed up against what remained of the walls.

      “What are you looking for? The device?”

      “No, that’s gone. I’m looking for the signature of the mage who created it. Arcane bombs are usually designed to have up to three different magical signatures, and none of those signatures is guaranteed to correspond to an actual criminal.” She frowned.

      Bellusdeo looked shocked. Outraged. It instantly made Kaylin feel better. “What do you mean, an actual criminal? Isn’t the creation of a magical item of that nature criminal enough?”

      Since it was more or less an annual rant on Kaylin’s part—if she was being generous—Kaylin had no arguments to offer in response. “This one’s different.”

      “How?”

      “I can only see two, and frankly, they seem a bit on the small size.”

      “Maybe it wasn’t what you thought it was?”

      “Or maybe the whole egg-hatching-in-conflagration thing did something with most of the magic the item contained.” She glanced at the creature, who had curled up so that his head was practically under one of his wings. He appeared to be sleeping. “He’s really, really cute,” she whispered.

      “Kaylin, please. Focus.”

      “Yes, Bellusdeo,” she said in exactly the same meek tone she sometimes used to ward off Marcus-level irritation.

      * * *

      Kaylin was wondering how in the hells they were supposed to leave the apartment and make their way down to the presumed safety of the street below, because the floors between here and the door—which had incidentally been blown clear off its admittedly flimsy hinges and probably lay in pieces on the stairs below—were nonexistent.

      Bellusdeo, however, didn’t appear concerned. Enough of the wall was missing that she could probably go Dragon for a few minutes and jump out; the fall wasn’t likely to harm her in her Dragon form. Going Dragon was technically illegal, and СКАЧАТЬ