Cast in Peril. Michelle Sagara

the Shadow that had destroyed the watchtowers in the fief formerly known as Barren, like malignant storms.

      Bellusdeo looked down, as well. She tried to move out of the way, but since she didn’t actually let go of Kaylin’s shoulders, it was awkward. Dragons weren’t known for their flexibility. She hissed, a wordless sibilant. “Kaylin, your arm.”

      “The bracer does that some of the time. Ignore it.”

      “I wasn’t talking about your bracer. Your—your marks, Chosen.”

      Kaylin frowned. She couldn’t take her eyes off the small creature—and only in part because she didn’t want to. It had the form and shape of something reptilian, but not the actual scales. A long neck, a long tail, and a delicate head with a tapered jaw, the beast now sat in her palms.

      “Kaylin.”

      It opened its mouth, revealing translucent teeth, translucent tongue, and some hint of translucent upper palate. “I think—I think it’s yawning.”

      “I think you’re crazy,” Bellusdeo snapped in Elantran. In Barrani, she added, “Is that the right word? It means insane.”

      “Yes.” But when it stretched its neck, its tongue flickering like a snake’s tongue might, she saw the last little bit of its body as it slowly unfurled wings. For something that fit more or less in the palm of her hand—well, a little less—it had long wings. Long wings; eyes like opals.

      “Kaylin—”

      Kaylin shook herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking at the spot where the floor wasn’t anymore. It happened to be far beneath her feet, but she hadn’t yet fallen. Neither had the weightier Bellusdeo. “What about the marks?”

      “If you can manage to divert your gaze by a few degrees, you’ll see for yourself.”

      Kaylin looked slightly over the small creature’s head. “Oh.”

      “Oh, you say.”

      One of the marks from Kaylin’s arm was floating in the air above the small creature’s head, hovering, in miniature, the way the spoken True Words did. “Bellusdeo, can you read it? Can you tell me what it means?”

      Bellusdeo shook her head. “I was taught very little of the ancient tongue.”

      “But you’re as old as the Arkon—”

      “Yes. I was not, however, considered adult in my Aerie, because I wasn’t. What I learned, I learned by subterfuge and charm. Mostly charm.”

      “It wouldn’t kill you to try that on Diarmat. It might, at this point, kill him.”

      The rune began to thin as Kaylin watched it. No, not thin—compress. Three horizontal strokes began to shift their position, making a jumble of a pattern that had, for a moment, looked tantalizingly familiar. There was a short, fat dot in the center of the pattern, and slender, vertical squiggles to the left; those were pulled in as well, until there was something the shape of a very odd funnel just above the hatchling’s delicate head.

      It flicked its tongue and then roared. Which came out as a pretty pathetic squawk. As it inhaled to try again, the funnel above its head began to descend; the creature opened its mouth and…began to eat it. Or drink from it.

      “Bellusdeo, pinch me. Oh, never mind—you already are.”

      Bellusdeo, however, was staring at the creature. “Do you understand what you have in your hands?” she finally asked in a hushed voice.

      “A baby Dragon?”

      “Remind me to speak to the Emperor about the standards of your biological education,” was the scathing reply. “Anything that small and delicate that hatched in the Aerie would be crushed or suffocated before it got out of its shell.”

      “Well, it looks like a Dragon, except for the color.”

      “It looks nothing like a Dragon!”

      Kaylin decided not to press the point.

      “And if it were, we’d both be dead.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “It’s a familiar,” Bellusdeo replied. “They’re almost legendary creatures. No, let me rephrase that: they are legendary creatures. I’ve never seen one before.”

      “Then how do you know what it is?”

      “Familiars, according to legend, are born in magical conflagration.”

      “From eggs?”

      “Funnily enough, the legends didn’t specify. This one, though, was.”

      “What can you tell me about familiars? From legend, I mean,” she added hastily.

      “Very little. They were the creatures of sorcerers, and in one particular story, the sorcerer who sought to summon a familiar destroyed half a world in the attempt.”

      “Half a world?” Kaylin looked around the wreckage. “This doesn’t even qualify, if that’s the level of magic you’re talking about.”

      Bellusdeo shrugged. “Legends are neither scientific nor historical. Arcane bomb? Is that what you called it?”

      “Yes.” She frowned. “I didn’t see it; I could feel it. But I can see the sphere that absorbed most of the impact. On us,” she hastily added, looking at the debris.

      The Dragon looked around the ruins of what had once been Kaylin’s apartment. Or rather, her building, since the one above and the one below weren’t going to be suitable living quarters for anything but desperate mice.

      “Is this,” Kaylin nodded at the small dragon, “the source of the sphere?”

      “Pardon?”

      “The sphere. The one surrounding us.”

      Bellusdeo closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Kaylin was happy to see that they were orange. “You are correct,” she said softly in Barrani. “There is a sphere surrounding us. You can see that without casting?”

      Kaylin nodded. “It doesn’t seem like a strong spell.”

      Bellusdeo’s eyes rounded fully. Apparently this was idiocy beyond even her expectations of mortals. “In what way?”

      Kaylin was now looking, eyes narrowed, at every standing surface in the surrounding apartment. “No signature,” she replied, still examining the walls.

      The small dragon turned its head toward the large one; its tongue flicked air, and Kaylin saw that its tongue was now the same color as its eyes. The rune was gone.

      * * *

      Kaylin was almost afraid to move, but she did—slowly—the small dragon cupped in her hands, the large Dragon attached to her shoulders. She didn’t tell Bellusdeo to let go, because she had a hunch that the sphere was generated somehow by the creature Bellusdeo had called a familiar, and it was the sphere that seemed to be allowing her the slow, timid steps she was taking through what was essentially air with splinters thrown in. She didn’t want Bellusdeo to fall.

      But she looked at what remained of the floor where the Arcane bomb had exploded, and she could see the harsh illumination of a sigil against the broken floorboards; it was huge and splashed up against what remained of the walls.

      “What are you looking for? The device?”

      “No, that’s gone. I’m looking for the signature of the mage who created it. Arcane bombs are usually designed to have up to three different magical signatures, and none of those signatures is guaranteed to correspond to an actual criminal.” She frowned.

      Bellusdeo looked shocked. Outraged. It instantly made Kaylin feel better. “What do you mean, an actual criminal? Isn’t the creation of a magical item of that nature criminal enough?”

      Since it was more or less an annual