“Then who? Oh. Rennick.”
“Ellis, come and hold this waterskin for Kaylin. You can feed her anything she’ll eat,” he added. He bent down quickly and kissed her forehead. “Well done, Kaylin,” he said softly. “I don’t want to leave Rennick alone.”
She was stupid; she nodded.
“Oh, and Ellis? She’ll tell you she’s ready to get up and walk around long before she’s actually ready to get up and walk around.”
Ellis looked a bit doubtful, and the waterskin shook in his hands. It looked huge in contrast, like some headless, stuffed toy. “How will I know when it’s okay?”
“When she’s finished eating all the food and drinking all the water.”
Severn gave Kaylin the sweetest of smiles.
What she wanted to give him would not endear her to the future would-be castelord, and she tried very hard to remember this.
CHAPTER 3
Kaylin wanted to sleep for a day. Sadly, she wanted that day to be now, and would also have liked it to be longer by forty-eight hours than the average day. Ellis didn’t talk a lot; the effort of making Elantran words was obviously not trivial. But, mindful of Severn’s dictate, he encouraged her to eat and drink.
He must have either had younger siblings or spent time in the Tha’alaan watching other people’s children, because his form of coaching left something to be desired. The cooing, Kaylin admitted to herself, might be cute—and even hilariously funny—on another day.
Like, say, a day in which she didn’t feel like she’d been on the losing end of a bar brawl with the occupants of an entire tavern. But the food did help, as did the effort of keeping the ill humor out of the words she was speaking to a child. She did not, however, offer to let him touch her forehead with his stalks. If he wanted to be castelord, he was going to damn well have to learn how to talk the hard way.
And explaining the words that she was thinking to a young child of any race—never mind a young child with an entire Quarter’s worth of parents and grandparents in attendance courtesy of the racial gift of mindspeaking—was not on her list of things to do on any day.
When she had finished eating and drinking everything—and Ellis had shaken the waterskin up and down just to make certain—Ellis tried to help her to her feet. She was certain that her knees would recover from the way she had to fall in order not to crush him.
But even at her crankiest—and this was pretty much the nadir—she found something about his solemnity touching. She stumbled beside him as he led her to Ybelline because, even if she couldn’t read minds, it didn’t take mind-reading to know that he considered this babysitting of a Real Adult a task of honor and importance, and she didn’t want to take it away from him.
She was entirely unprepared for Ybelline, because Ybelline met her on one side of the arch that Ellis, talking to her as if she were a sick puppy, was urging her toward. Ybelline’s hair was down—literally—in a honey-gold cascade that obscured her shoulders. Her eyes were the same color, the same almost gold, almost brown. The light that came in—far too brightly—from the open windows and half-walls seemed to have stopped there for the sheer pleasure of illuminating the castelord of the Tha’alani.
The Tha’alani woman who wasn’t classically beautiful—if there was such a thing—was radiant anyway. She had changed into a simple, cream gown that fell from her shoulders to her ankles unimpeded. All of this, Kaylin took in at a glance—and even if she’d wanted to see more, she wouldn’t have been able to, because Ybelline Rabon’alani crossed the distance, ignoring Ellis’s loud warnings, and enfolded Kaylin Neya, scruffy and severely under-rested Hawk, in her arms.
It felt like home, to Kaylin. She let her forehead lean against the taller woman’s shoulder, and she wanted to stand that way forever. But that wasn’t why she’d come, and she knew that Severn and Rennick were waiting somewhere. She hoped that Rennick hadn’t offended anyone. Anyone else.
“He’s been remarkably quiet,” Ybelline replied, speaking with the ease of long practice.
“That’s probably bad.”
Ybelline was silent for a moment, and when she spoke, her tone was guarded. “Possibly bad for you.”
“For me? Why?”
“He was at the longhouse. I would have refused him entry into the Quarter, but I was … distracted.”
“You had every right to be. The others—”
“They’ll live. They’re well.” Her voice was soft, and soothing.
“Good. I wanted—”
“You had to be the one to help them. Kravel was beyond us,” Ybelline added. “Even had we been able to heal him in other ways, he would have been lost to the Tha’alaan. But they have seen, and they have understood. Not all of your kind are insane. Not all of them are so maddened by fear that they must, in turn, be feared.”
“They’ll forget,” Kaylin said.
“They are not human, Kaylin. They will not forget.”
“And if they do, you’ll remind them?”
Ybelline shook her head, and her hair brushed Kaylin’s face as she lifted it. “No. You are not Tha’alani. But you have touched the Tha’alaan. What you understand might change in time—but they will remember you because they desire it. Not one of them wishes to fear the whole of a race. To fear even the ones who injured them is burden enough.
“And it is my fault and my responsibility. I have worked among your kind for most of my adult life, and I didn’t think before I left the Quarter. I didn’t think about how it would look to people who have so little knowledge. I should have realized—”
“You were trying to save a city. You had a lot on your mind.”
The smile on Ybelline’s face was wry, but the panic was gone. “Have you had a chance to speak at length with Richard Rennick?”
A number of answers came and went. Kaylin said simply, “Not at length.” It was about as polite as she could be, given everything.
“Then you understand what he has been ordered to do?”
“More or less.”
“Can you please explain it to me? No, not the reasoning behind that—believe that given the events of this past week, I understand the reasons perfectly. I don’t, however, understand exactly why this task was given to Rennick. I do not understand how what he produces—which by Imperial mandate must be untrue—will serve the goal of educating the … public, as Mr. Rennick calls people.”
Had this been a normal day, Kaylin’s head would have hurt. And since misery loves company, she said, “Maybe we should answer this question while Rennick is actually there.”
All in all, not her brightest suggestion.
She was escorted—having been parted from Ellis with gods only knew
