Helen didn’t reply.
Where is my brother?Amusement left the fieflord instantly.
He’s fighting intruders. Barrani intruders who managed to find a back door in.
Do what you must do. Do it quickly.There was no force behind the command.
Kaylin, far more aware of Nightshade than she would have been otherwise, let the power of the Marks go, pushing it out to meet the fieflord, and to examine the injuries he’d taken. She couldn’t heal blood loss, and he had lost blood, but he’d been unconscious and recovering as much as he could; it wasn’t the major problem.
She’d assumed poison, or magical poison—if that even existed. The Barrani were endlessly inventive when it came to causing death and destruction, as if the tools they created could be contained and aimed only at their chosen enemies. Kaylin had worked in the Halls of Law for long enough that she would never believe that.
Poison was present, eating away at organs; the damage done was not enough to kill the fieflord—but it was very close. She could sense traces of it, carried in Nightshade’s blood, but she could also touch the traces of a strong, protective magic, fighting the damaging invader.Meliannos.
She heard the sharp reverberation of thunder even as she thought the sword’s name. She knew better than to touch it. In some indefinable way, it was part of Nightshade.
For now, the fieflord said.Hurry. Imustwake.
She heard Annarion’s name beneath the syllables he shared with her; felt the force of intent and—rare for Nightshade—fear. This wasn’t caution, which was fear’s smarter, wiser, older sibling. This was just fear.
As if Annarion were the key to Nightshade’s injury, Nightshade’s intent, images of Annarion flooded in through the healing connection: Annarion as a baby. Calarnenne had been calm upon waking; Annarion’s furious, infant cries showed outrage at the very idea. He had been fast to walk, fast to grow;he had been better with a sword than Nightshade, but had taken poorly to magic, to start.
He could speak almost before he could walk.
He could bespeak the animals kept for use by the Solanace clan. He couldn’t sing, although he loved singing, and often joined in with a voice far stronger—if off-key—than the other infants. But to Nightshade, Annarion was gentle—far too gentle for the Solanace fray. It was not a trait that was prized by their kin.
It was a trait that had always seemed precious to Nightshade, perhaps because it was so rare. He had become protective of his brother and had learned to do so with subtlety. His father—and mother—believed that a child who could not survive their youthful naivete was pointless; it would not strengthen the family. It would not add to their prestige.
Being the parents of a weakling was, in fact, an embarrassment. Annarion was the perfect test subject in the eyes of his relatives: he was weak, he was naive, and he did not grow out of it. He was good with a sword. He could wield basic magic. He had thepotentialto become a good son, a worthy child.
Calarnenne attempted to train his brother. To teach him the rules of power. He made clear what the cost of his brother’s warped sense of right and wrong would be—to both of them—if Annarion could not hide his views and beliefs. But he could not do as his parents had done: he could not break the child, could not disparage him, could not humiliate him. Nightshade himself had undergone similar things in his distant, dim past.
He had proven the right of his parents’ approach. He had grown strong—much stronger than the cousins who nipped at his heels in an attempt to remove the most promising candidate for heir of the line. He had learned magic, and found it fascinating, but even that fascination, he hid; it was not seemly to be too interested in anything.
But he could not surrender his brother.
To Calarnenne, that child was a spark of hope, of a kindness, a joyful loyalty, that was absent in his life. His parents could not see it, or did not desire it. Perhaps Calarnenne himself was broken in dangerous ways. He attempted to feign disinterest in his brother, but that was all he could manage—and his family’s many servants were the eyes and ears for his parents, his uncles, his cousins.
The first person he had killed, when he stood on the edge of childhood, was a cousin. The second, a cousin as well. He’d been injured in the second death, and that had taught him to focus, to practice, to become strong enough that he wouldn’t face injury again. He accepted that death was the natural outcome of laziness or weakness.
He accepted, as well, that Annarion, if weak, would face that death. His attempts to deny affection for his younger brother had ended with an ultimatum: kill Annarion or be killed. A test. Life was full of bitter tests.
Kaylin almost pulled back at the searing rage, the pain, the fury, that blossomed in the wake of that memory, understanding again why healing was so inimical to the Barrani. Their lives depended on their ability to keep secrets, and the older the Barrani, the more secrets they had.
She didn’t pull back; it took effort. For just a moment, she was swamped with a murderous rage and an endless hollow of despair.
What stilled them, what interrupted them, was a young woman. Kaylin recognized her because the color of her hair was so different from the Barrani norm: the woman who would become the Lady. The current Consort of the High Lord. He had been drawn to her because, in her, he found some of the warmth and affection he found in Annarion. But she was drawn to him for the same reason.
If you attempt to unseat your parents now, you will die. If youdie, your brother will die. There is no one within Solanace who will protect him.Her tone was bitter, which was unusual—maybe because she was young.There’s no one in my family that would, either. Not yet.
That will change. Itwillchange. My brothers remind me of you and your brother. But they have the same power we have.
Almost none.
Almost none, in the time when Nightshade wasn’t outcaste, his brother wasn’t a member of the cohort, and the Consort wasn’t the Consort.
Kaylin tried to focus on the healing. Most of the thoughts that flowed into her as she healed were almost incidental; they came through the channel of her power. These weren’t that; they were far too strong, far too immediate. She felt as if she could join the two who spoke, huddled in the garden, their voices low, their gazes watchful.
She felt that even in this private moment, worry and fear and anger causing a collapse of shoulders, she could have touched them. She could have reached out with both arms, drawn them in toward each other and toward her, and neither would have pushed her away.