She was surprised to see that the cohort were very physical; there was almost always contact between the various members, even Sedarias. The stiff and very proper demeanor was shed in the presence of Mandoran and Annarion, and she sat beside Mandoran, an arm around his shoulders, her head tilted almost into his.
But she wasn’t the only one. Two of the cohort were sharing a chair; several were holding hands or arms. They could have comfortably occupied half the space because they didn’t seem to have any hesitation about how much they overlapped. Terrano was included in their number, but Kaylin noted that, after the brief hug he had offered a smiling Mandoran, he had pulled his chair to the side, out of easy reach of any of the rest.
She wondered, then, how much Mandoran and Annarion had adjusted their behavior as Helen’s guests. Wondered if, when she wasn’t in the room, they overlapped or huddled like this. This didn’t look like a Barrani gathering; had Kaylin’s vision been poorer, she might have assumed these people were Leontine kits, huddled in a pile near the hearth.
And she wondered if Teela’s propensity for casual physical contact had been a memory of this, something she had lost for centuries—and that she had thought lost forever. She couldn’t imagine Teela entwined with this mass of the cohort, though. And she grimaced when she thought of Tain’s reaction.
Helen came to stand beside her as she lingered just on the inside of the doorway.
“They won’t consider your presence a disturbance,” Helen said. “If they need privacy, it comes built-in.” Her smile was slender but warm. “I think they are surprised at how much they missed each other. They’ve relied on their names for so long, their names are like the Tha’alaan to them. But the physical presence has weight, as well. They are happy.”
“I think Alsanis will miss them.”
“I am certain, in a fashion, he will. They did not resent him, in the end. He did what he could for them, for as long as he could. But Kaylin, they are all aware that you carried them for the last stretch of that road. You are not of them, but they consider you one of theirs. It is part of the reason Annarion has been so aggrieved.”
“Nightshade wanted me to do what I did. I mean, he didn’t know precisely what it would be—but he wanted to rescue his brother.”
“Yes. And I believe Annarion understands that. But you know better than anyone that there are some prices for rescue that you are not willing to pay.”
Kaylin fell silent. Severn glanced at them both and then waded into the room. He pulled out a chair at the less crowded end of the table and took it, relaxing slowly into a seated posture that was very similar to Terrano’s. On Severn, however, it didn’t look unnatural.
Kaylin was about to join him when Spike came careening through the hall, like a ball thrown by an angry drunk. He came to a staggering stop inches away from Kaylin’s face. Helen cleared her throat. Loudly. The familiar, however, looked bored and tired; he lifted an eyelid, looked at Spike, and let it close, his entire posture suggesting that nothing about this was an emergency.
“I am here,” Spike said, as if the obvious needed to be stated. Kaylin stared at him, trying to figure out what he wanted. In the end, she lifted a hand—the left hand, because she was still capable ofsomecaution—and let him settle into her palm, spikes and all. The spikes, however, didn’t hurt, and he weighed next to nothing. She could probably injure herself if she closed her own hand, but Spike didn’t seem intent on making her bleed again.
“He injured you?” Helen asked. Except that her voice was colder and harder, and the question came across as a demand.
“Probably my fault,” Kaylin said quickly. “I asked him if he could find me again. We kind of—never mind. You can just read my mind.”
Helen presumably did. Her eyes had gone obsidian again, but nothing else about her appearance changed; she was staring at Spike as if vision alone would answer any remaining questions she might have.
“Oh, it won’t,” Helen replied, although Kaylin had said nothing.
“I’m not sure why he cut me. I kind of wish he’d cut my hand, instead; I can patch up the shirt, but...” She shrugged. She was lying; she’d given up on salvaging this particular shirt, but had not yet done the math that would allow her to afford a new one.
“I understand why he cut you,” Helen said. “He wished to be certain that he could find you again.”
“And he can find anyone he—”
“Whose blood he has consumed, yes. He, by the way, is perhaps not the appropriate word. And no, he does not consume it the way your vampires would.”
Kaylin flushed.
“He is evaluating the metrics of the blood itself in a way that means he can be completely certain of his identification.”
“You don’t do that.”
“No, but it is not required. I have other methods of identifying you that Spike does not. If you would not mind, I would like to converse with Spike.”
“Go ahead.”
Helen’s voice shifted; she lost words, or rather, words as Kaylin understood them. Here or there she caught a syllable, but in the end it became almost painful to listen to—it was like the droning buzz of a bee hive, except that as more words were added, more bees arrived. In the end, Kaylin lowered her hand from the underside of Spike’s body, covered both ears with her hands, and retreated to the dining room.
She figured Spike wouldn’t find the retreat insulting; she covered her ears whenever Bellusdeo spoke in native draconian—or at least she did if she had two free hands—and Bellusdeo didn’t.
But the cohort were now craning their heads toward the door as Kaylin entered.
“Can you understand what they’re saying?” Kaylin asked, as she retreated to the wall farthest from that open door.