"I'm sorry," the Dragon said softly, staring at the Ablayne as it moved slowly across either bank.

"For what?"

"Everything, Chosen." She began to walk along the banks of the Ablayne itself, and Kaylin joined her. The banks of the river could occasionally house criminals-usually petty drug dealers with delusions of future survival-but she had no doubt at all that Bellusdeo was perfectly capable of dispatching them. "I am grateful not to be dead," she finally said.

Kaylin saw where she was walking: toward a bridge. It was the bridge that led to Tiamaris. "But?"

"It is so crowded here. It is crowded, it smells strange, the people speak a language I don't understand. I haven't lived in my home for so long, I thought-" She broke off, crouched, and slid the hand that wasn't holding a rumpled bundle of silk into the water.

"Nothing is ever home right away," Kaylin told her quietly, meaning it. "Come on. Let's go to Tiamaris."

Bellusdeo hesitated, although it was she who had led them, meandering, toward the bridge. "The Outcaste," she said when she finally rose.

Kaylin stiffened but waited.

"He gave me both form and name. He made me almost adult."

"He murdered twelve children when I was twelve in order to enslave me." Kaylin was surprised at the bitter anger that slipped out with the words. "And he broke my arm the second time we met. I don't like him," she added.

"I don't believe he cares for you, either," the Dragon replied with a smile. "But I-" She fell silent again.

Kaylin couldn't guess at what she wanted to say, and didn't try. For once, she was content to walk and wait. And they did walk, although they didn't walk quickly. "There are Ferals here," she told Bellusdeo when they'd cleared the bridge.

"Ferals?"

"They come from the Shadows, but only at night. I don't think they're going to cause you much trouble."

"No, not much." She fell silent again as they walked the streets. In the glow of moonlight, without the lamps that defined most of the rest of the nighttime city, the struts and beams of buildings that were slowly being reconstructed looked skeletal, and to Kaylin, beautiful. "I don't think I was ever meant to leave the Shadows."

"But you did."

"Yes. Because of my Ascendant. I escaped. Do you understand what the Outcaste wanted of me?"

"No. I can guess."

"Can you?"

"Children."

"Yes. That. Children. Hatchlings. Nameless hatchlings," she added softly. "When I...was lost...there were others. Females, among my kin, are always rare. But I was not the only one."

"What did he want them for?"

"It was never discussed. But what he made of me, he might have made of hatchlings: half-named, shadowed, never quite independent." She glanced at Kaylin. "We do not feel, about our young, the way you do, the way I saw you care for that egg. It is not in us."

"Then you-"

"It was not for the sake of the hatchlings-all theoretical-that I loathed and despised what he desired. He wanted to own me. He wanted to name me because he could then own me. I have escaped that fate," she said again. "And yet, I am now here. In an Empire, not an Aerie. In a world without Mothers. I have no sisters. I have no city and no lands of my own; I have no Ascendants, and no way to create them.

"I have no crown, and I have no throne; I have no windows into other worlds and no way of touching the knowledge I once touched while the world crumbled around me."

"You have Maggaron," Kaylin said quietly, remembering, with clarity, the night she had run into the fief of Barren. She had lost her home. She had lost her family. She had lost everything she had ever known about her life.

"Yes," was the soft reply. "I do. But can he stand against an Emperor?"

Kaylin's brows rose into her hairline. "I don't think that's going to be necessary."

"No? What do you think the Emperor wants of me?"

"...Children."

"Yes. Children. How far do you think I will fly-if I fly at all-as the only Dragon alive who can bear eggs?"

"I-Bellusdeo, I've never met the Emperor. I honestly can't say."

"You're being deliberately evasive."

She was. She turned down Avatar Road, familiar even in the nightscape, pausing only to listen for the baying of Ferals. If they were there at all, they were too distant. "How did you meet the Norannir?"

"How?"

Kaylin nodded.

"An odd question. I met the Norannir when I first emerged from the Shadowfold, Chosen. They were...a strange people to me at the time. Not Barrani, not human, not Leontine. They were tall, and loud, but they were not then as you see them now. They lived in cities much like yours; they were learned and patient. They taught me to speak their tongue. I could not teach them to speak mine, and although Barrani is a language I understood, I did not speak it often. Not then.

"There were no Dragons in the Norannir lands, save those that traveled through the storm."

"How did you come to rule them, then?"

"There were no Immortals in Norannir lands, either. If you mean did I conquer, did I subjugate? The answer is both yes and no. If they were not then what they are now, they were always capable of war. They merely fought among themselves with no clear victor to unite them."

"You became that victor."

Bellusdeo inclined her head.

"Why?"

"Because the people who rescued me-if indeed that is the correct word-and taught me gave me both a home and hope that someday I might return to my Aerie. They opened the doors of the greatest library I have ever seen for my use. They did not deny me what they might have, had they been less generous. When they were attacked, I joined in the defense of their lands-because their lands had become my home."

"And they became your people."

Bellusdeo was silent for half a block. "Yes," she finally said. "My people." She glanced at Kaylin and then asked, "How did the Emperor become your Emperor?"

"He's a Dragon?"

"That is hardly an answer."

"I'm not exactly sure. I mean, I know how he became my Emperor, personally; I crossed the bridge over the Ablayne. But I don't know how he became our Emperor. In part, it was because of the war with the Barrani-the three wars? Four? But I'm not sure how mortals fit in with that. Probably by dying a lot."

"It is the only thing that gives me hope."

"Hope?"

"The Outcaste would have been Emperor, could he; he could not rule as your Emperor does. You, Chosen-you serve your Emperor's whim and his will, but you serve it as if it were your own. You make choices and decisions in the spur of the moment without his knowledge or his permission. You have your laws, and you serve a force created to enforce and uphold those laws-laws created, in the end, by a Dragon. You are Chosen, but you remain in obscurity in the life of your choice; you do not use the power you've been granted at his whim.

"I am sure that if the Outcaste ruled, there would be no such freedom. I am certain that if he ruled the Empire, there would be far fewer mortals living in it in the end; he would feed them to the Shadows."

"They're not the same-"

"No, I know. But what I fear is what I fear. I do not want-not yet-what the Dragons want of me. I can't."

"Ever?"

"I will not say I will never want it; never is a very long time." She glanced at the moons in silence. "I do not want to meet your Emperor."

"Neither do I."

Bellusdeo raised a brow, and then smiled and shook her head. "I will meet him, of course. I will meet him, and regardless of what I see when I do, I will accept that he is your Emperor. I will not endanger myself and I will not embarra.s.s you."

"You don't have to, trust me. There's nothing you could do to embarra.s.s me that I couldn't do faster-or better."

Bellusdeo laughed. It was, for a moment, the only sound in the quiet of the fief's night, and it was warmer and deeper than the lingering night chill. When her laughter faded, she glanced at Kaylin. "I was not like this before. I thought that the Shadows had not touched me." She lowered her head a moment.

Kaylin understood this, as well. "It seems so unfair," she finally said.

"Life is unfair. Which part of it pains you?"

"We suffer, and it breaks something. When we win free-by gaining our name, by crossing a b.l.o.o.d.y bridge-we still live in a cage of scars. If life were fair, we would never have suffered what we suffered at all; having suffered it and survived, we're still reacting to things that don't exist anymore."

"But they did."

"Yes. I hate that they still define me." Voice lower, she said to Bellusdeo, "I want that to change. I don't know how to change it. But I'm willing to spend the rest of my life trying." Shaking her head, she forced herself to smile; it was surprisingly easy. There was something about Bellusdeo that she liked. "Home is a strange thing."

"What do you mean?"

"We lose it, and we think it's gone forever. That's how I felt the first time I lost mine. It took me years to understand that I could find-and make-another. I couldn't do it on my own, though; I don't think-for me-home exists in isolation." Her smile deepened as she shook her head. "Come on."

The Dragon frowned. "Where are we going? The Tower is just over there."

"Not to the Tower," Kaylin replied. "We're just pa.s.sing by it so you can pick up Maggaron if you want to see him."

Bellusdeo confirmed at least one suspicion that Kaylin held: Maggaron came bounding out of the Tower almost before the doors had fully opened. Kaylin sincerely hoped his very heavy feet weren't actually trodding on the carrots that had been planted in places where most rich people planted gra.s.s; Morse would spit him, even given the difference in their height and weight, because Maggaron would fight cleanly. Morse fought to win, always.

Bellusdeo laughed at the expression on his face as he approached, and even given what the moons' light did to the color of his face, Kaylin could tell that he was blushing. "What Kaylin said was deplorably, absolutely true: she lives in a single room. I don't think you could walk through the door without bending."

"Have you come to stay in the fief, Lady?"

"I think, for the moment, you must call me by name. And no, not yet."

"The Dragons-"

"I have only met one more," she replied.

Maggaron stilled.

"...And I have no desire to lose you in a pointless fight, so, please, do not even think it. How was your day?"

"It was long," he replied, extending his hands. Bellusdeo could see much better in the dark than Kaylin could.

"They had you digging?"

"Yes, Lady."

"Maggaron-"

"I will call you by your name in the presence of strangers. The Avatar felt that I was restless, and she asked me to aid her in her garden."

"I...see."

"I did not mind. There is much work to do in the lands Lord Tiamaris rules." He hesitated and then said, "Could you not dwell here until you have made your decision?"

Kaylin frowned. "Maggaron-you learned to speak Barrani?"

"Pardon?"

"He is speaking the tongue of the People," Bellusdeo told her.

"But-but I understand what he's saying."

"Do you hear it as Barrani?" Kaylin nodded.

"You held his name, Chosen. You touched what he was."

"He doesn't have a name anymore."

"Perhaps not. Perhaps," Bellusdeo said softly, "he is part of mine. I cannot tell; I feel him as part of me now. But it is not surprising that you understand him."

"Where are you going, Lady?"

"I am not certain. At the moment, I am following the Chosen."

Maggaron hesitated, and then said, "She is walking behind you."

"Time-honored tradition," Kaylin told him. "Following from in front." She paused; in the distance she could hear the howl of Ferals. "This way," she told her companions.

She led them down streets she knew well by daylight; night changed them, but not enough to make them foreign. She hadn't often walked in Barren at night; she hadn't walked in Nightshade at night much, either. Maggaron was unarmed, but Bellusdeo, by her very nature, was not; Kaylin wasn't worried. The streets, however, were empty. If Tiamaris-with Morse-was on patrol, he patrolled at a distance; she could neither see nor hear him. She did watch, hoping to catch a glimpse of a Dragon on the wing.

She had to settle for a Dragon bound by gravity, instead.