Mandoran didn’t offer a name. Kaylin didn’t ask.
Logia did. “Who? Who can do this?” It was to Kaylin that Logia turned.
“I don’t know,” Kaylin said—truthfully.
“You have suspicions. Bellusdeo can tell.”
“I have suspicions, but they’re not verified, and they’retotally irrelevantto Bellusdeo’s issues with Shadow.” She turned to Terrano.
Terrano cleared his throat and glared at Mandoran, who shrugged. It was a fief shrug, a habit some of the cohort had picked up from Kaylin. “I was walking in sidestep; I didn’t want to be seen. I mean, two entire war bands—if only two—”
“Wait. What do you meanif only?” Kaylin demanded.
“Teela found evidence of a possible third.”
“What?Where?”
“Ask her later. Let me finish so I can leave.”
Fine. “Go ahead. Finish.”
“I was walking the way I normally walk. I did see the Norranir in the streets, and I did see them enter the border zone. I was in contact with the rest of us, but... I could hear the most noise from the drumming and from other people. Those people were speaking Barrani; they were panicking. I assumed this was because the Dragon was trying to reduce them to ash.”
“Did she even know about them then? You’re sure you’re not confused?”
Terrano shrugged. “Is this your story or my story?”
“Yours, but we’d like it to be coherent. Until Teela showed up on the chase, Bellusdeo had no reason to be patrolling the border zone.”
Logia cleared her throat. “She has, now.”
“Her Tower’s power is completely attenuated in the border zone. She’s not as absolute there.”
“In theory she wasn’t an absolute when she lived here, either,” Terrano said.
Logia lifted a brow. Bellusdeo clearly had opinions; the Dragon’s expression shifted. Logia stayed in the driver’s seat. “There is a reason that the Tower chose a Dragon as its lord. She doesn’tneedthe Tower to patrol a few streets on the edge of the Tower’s remit.”
Kaylin couldn’t argue with that, and didn’t try. She turned back to Terrano. “That doesn’t explain why you were standing where they were.”
“Well, the thing is, I could hear them, but I couldn’t really see them, right? I mean, I could see the border zone, but it was blurry. Don’t make that face—the border zones arealwaysblurry. It’s better to enter those the normal way, but I assumed the small army was in the border zone, so I entered itmynormal way.”
“You didn’t, though.”
“I did. But the voices were indistinct to me. I could almostmake out words, but they were fuzzy, almost displaced.” Terrano stopped for a moment, looking at his hands, which rested in his lap.
“Let me guess. You wanted to hear things more distinctly, so you moved toward the voices, but they didn’t get any clearer.”
Terrano nodded. “I changed my approach. If walking toward them didn’t help resolve the sound into words, walking a different path might.”
“Did you not even think thatifthose voices were coming from another plane, you’d be in trouble once you reached them?”
“I thought I could just slide back to here.”
“Kaylin,” Mandoran whispered, “chill. Sedarias is approaching full-on rage.”
“Bellusdeo,” Logia said, “is in an unusual state. She says this is exactly like Terrano. But even so, she is almost shocked. She asks me to ask himwhat were you thinking?”
Mandoran grimaced. He glanced at Terrano but shook his head. There was no saving him from Sedarias’s ire if even Bellusdeo agreed.