“Too long,” the Warden replied. He lifted his free hand and gently stroked the bird’s head, as if it were the head of a newborn babe. “What does the recitation hold for us?”
The eagle surprised them both. He answered. But he answered in a language that, while tantalizingly familiar in its parts, failed in all ways to cohere. Kaylin turned to Lord Barian. “Did you understand a word of that?”
He laughed. It was a shock of sound, coming as it did from a Barrani. “Perhaps one. I am fond of the sound of it; they spoke it often in my childhood.”
“Your language is confining,” the eagle on Kaylin’s arm said. “But you are a confined people, huddling in your singular shapes; you are easily broken.”
She frowned. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard this. “The Warden calls you the dreams of the Hallionne.”
“He does.”
“But you came from the shadows he called the nightmares of the Hallionne.”
“Did we?”
“Yes. What landed in my hands a few hours ago were shadows. But you emerged from them when—”
“Yes?”
“When the marks on my arms started to glow.” It sounded lame even to Kaylin, and she’d said it.
“Are we, brother?” her bird said to the bird on the Warden’s arm. “Are we dreams or nightmares?”
“They are the same,” the other bird replied. “Dream. Nightmare. They are things done beneath the surface of the world.”
“So...you don’t feel any different than you did when you landed?”
They regarded each other for a long moment, and then turned their beady eyes—and she’d seldom seen eyes that fit that description so perfectly—on Kaylin. “Did we land?”
“More or less the same way you landed just now, but with less feathers.”
They regarded each other again, and Kaylin snorted. What had been a suspicion was hardening into certainty as they spoke. “When I visited Hallionne Bertolle, his brothers woke. I don’t know if Bertolle has dreams; I don’t know what the Hallionne of the West March is called. No one speaks his—or her—name.”
“No one who dwells in this small enclave has ever spoken his name,” the bird replied. “Bertolle’s brothers have woken from the long sleep?”
“They had a little help,” Kaylin said, with sudden misgivings. She was certain she’d have bruised shins if Teela had come with them. “Were they not supposed to wake?”
But the birds now had words for each other, and as they conversed in their odd, melodious language, she turned to Lord Barian, who was staring at her. “What it is that you truly do in the city of Elantra?” His eyes were blue—but they weren’t the shade that meant anger or suspicion.
“I’m a Private. I serve the Halls of Law in that capacity. I hope one day to be Corporal.”
“Truly? You bear those marks, you can speak to the sleeping lost brethren of the Hallionne Bertolle, and you can wake the dreams of Hallionne Alsanis, yet you work as a Private? I recall very little about the Halls of Law; it is an institution that is irrelevant to the Barrani.”
“It’s not. For crimes Barrani commit against each other, the laws of exception can be invoked by the party deemed to be the injured party. But for crimes committed against other races, the Barrani are under the purview of the Imperial Hawks.”
“And if not the Hawks, the Wolves?”
Kaylin shrugged. “The Emperor.”
“It has long been a marvel to me that he shelters behind the ranks of his mortals.”
She shook her head, determined not to be offended, although it was hard. “We’re not there for his protection, of course. We’re there for the protection of the rest of the city. If the Emperor so chooses he can burn down half the city—but most of the people who die in the resultant fire won’t be criminals. We do what his fire can’t. Is Alsanis the name of the Hallionne that was lost?”
“Yes. Does An’Teela still serve the Imperial Hawks?”
“She does. Neither of us are here as Hawks; we’re outside of our jurisdiction.”
“Do you consider her a friend?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know her history?”
“I can’t possibly claim to know all of it, but I know what happened in the West March when she was young enough to be considered a child—and I know that she eventually came back, and she wore a variant of the same dress I’m wearing now. I know how her mother died. I know where. And I know that it’s considered an act of high treason to attempt to do now what was attempted then.” She tried to dampen the heat in her voice, and slid back into High Barrani. You could insult someone in High Barrani, but you had to work harder to do it.
“I did not come here to discuss Teela.”
“No.”
“Why did you ask me here?”
“We asked,” the eagles said in unison.
“The Consort touched the nightmares of the Hallionne, and she has not yet awakened. Lord Lirienne,” she continued, choosing to forego the title that seemed to vex Lord Barian’s mother, “said that the Warden absorbs those nightmares, except when the Lady is present.”
“I would accept them, regardless, but it is proof that she is present. Lord Lirienne took two war bands and left the West March in haste, at the urging of the Hallionne Orbaranne. We did not know if either he, or the party that set out from the city, survived.”
“How did he know to leave?”
“You will have to ask him. I do not speak with any of the Hallionne except Alsanis—and even that speech is limited. I touch the edges of his dreaming, and his nightmare, no more. My grandfather spoke to the Hallionne frequently. After the disaster in the green, he could still communicate with Alsanis; it became more difficult with the passage of time.
“They’re not trapped in the Hallionne,” Kaylin said. She meant the transformed. The lost children. He knew.
“They were,” he replied. “The Hallionne’s defenses are strong; what occurs within its walls occurs at the heart of his power. The Hallionne were not, and have never been, what we are; they have a breadth of experience that we could not survive. The children are called lost for a reason; they are no longer Barrani in any meaningful way.”
“Are they the nightmares of the Hallionne?”
“No.”
“Nightmares first, lost children later.” She hesitated and then said, “They remember who—and what—they were.”
“Demonstrably; they would not be so great a danger to us otherwise.”
“Dreams of Alsanis,” Kaylin said quietly to the two eagles, “how do I wake you? When you landed in my hands, did you sense me at all?”
They glanced at each other. “Yes. You wear the blood of the green, and beneath its folds, you bear the marks of the Chosen.”
“Can you read them?”
They turned to stare at each other, and then once again, at Kaylin. “Can you not?” one finally asked.
It was embarrassing to admit her failure to the large birds, but ignorance wasn’t a crime. “No.”
“But—”
Severn joined her, sliding