that had obviously been worked—but still, stone. Kaylin’s habit of falling out of bed when nightmares were bad or the mirror barked did not lend itself to hard stone floors.
The walls appeared to be made of stone, too—and the stone wasn’t cut stone or block; it was all of a piece. Arches had been worked into the walls, and Kaylin could see light from rooms to the left and right of this one. But this room was enormous. It was also not one in which Kaylin thought she could ever sleep, because it was missing a wall.
There were buildings so decrepit in the fiefs that walls had come down. Tiamaris was fixing those, usually by destroying the rotting ruins and rebuilding from scratch, but Nightshade had never cared enough about the fief and its citizens to do the same—and having a shelter without walls was the same as having no shelter at all, when night fell.
She said nothing. She knew Moran’s life in the Aerie was not her own life in Nightshade. Hells, it wasn’t her life in Elantra. But it shadowed her; it was so much a part of where she’d come from.
Moran left Kaylin at the door and walked, wings lifting, toward the open sky that faced the rest of the room. The sky was city sky: it was dappled with clouds, but blue and bright, sun setting in the distance. Moran turned away from that sky to face Helen. Kaylin had never seen the expression her face now wore. It was almost uncomfortable to look at; Kaylin felt as if she was intruding on something incredibly private.
Moran opened her mouth, but no words came out. She looked much, much younger than she did in the Halls. Without a word, she turned and left the entry room, walking to the right of where Kaylin stood looking out.
When she’d left, Kaylin said quietly, “She has to stay here. She has to stay here.”
“I am not a jail,” Helen said. Her voice was gentle. “I understand what you want to offer, and Kaylin, I am—as I have said before—happy to do so. Your Moran means you no harm; she is afraid that her presence here will cause it. I can’t convince her to shed that fear, because her presence will cause you no harm here. But it isn’t what happens here that she’s afraid of. It’s what happens outside of these walls.
“She trusts your safety to me while you are here. I’m not entirely certain what you told her, but I don’t need to be. I cannot promise your safety while you are not within my walls—and you will not always be here. I accept that, or I could not have become your home. If she can live with the guilt, she will, I think, remain.”
Moran came back. She looked frail, which again was discomfiting. She didn’t speak; instead, she walked directly through the arch opposite the one she’d just exited. She paused this time and said, “Kaylin, come with me.” She held out a hand. It wasn’t a command, but it also wasn’t the sarcastic barking that generally passed for requests in the Halls of Law from anyone who wasn’t Caitlin.
Kaylin, almost mute, followed, thinking at Helen before she realized that Helen might actually respond to the thoughts—which would just humiliate a Hawk and an Aerian who were both accustomed to more privacy. Helen was mercifully silent.
Kaylin looked across this new room to the pool at its center. Moran had removed her shoes, and her feet dangled in what did not look to be particularly warm water.
Kaylin had seen the natural baths the Barrani liked, and this resembled them; there was rock and water. But the water was also open to the sky and the elements; the shape of the basin implied that rain actually fell here. So not Kaylin’s idea of a real room.
“This,” Moran said quietly, “reminds me of my childhood.”
“The other room reminds me of mine,” Kaylin replied. “But not entirely in a good way. I think I like actual walls.”
“The Barrani influence everything,” Moran continued, without looking up. “My grandmother lived in quarters very much like these.”
“You were fond of her,” Helen said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. She represented sanity and safety to me in my early childhood. She was considered far too old-fashioned, too outdated; she lived like a—commoner? I think that’s the word.”
“So?” Kaylin said. “I live like a commoner.”
Moran nodded. “And yet you are Chosen and you number, among your friends, Barrani High Lords and Dragons. And a very cranky Leontine sergeant and his slightly more scary wife. My grandmother had none of these things. She had birth and bloodlines, but after the death of her husband, she leveraged neither. She moved out of the Reach and into the antiquated quarters she had known as a girl.
“When things became...difficult...for my own mother, I was sent to live with my grandmother. I lived with her for four years, until her death.”
Something about the way this was phrased made Kaylin tense. Moran didn’t appear to notice.
“Her wings were different; they weren’t like mine. When I was young, I thought that perhaps I had baby wings and that the spots would fade with time.”
“Like freckles?”
“Yes. Exactly like—but mine never faded.” She turned her face toward the water and sat, silent, for a long moment. “I know I shouldn’t stay here.”
Kaylin hoped that this meant she would.
“The old quarters are gone. When my grandmother died, they were...remodeled. The Aerians have their own mages; they are not like Imperial mages. They...shape things; rock and wood and water. Most of the interior Aeries look like places the Barrani might live, if given the chance.”
“They wouldn’t live here.”
“No. Not here. I shouldn’t stay,” she said again. “But the truth is: I am injured. I will heal. But it won’t be instant. I would rather live in the infirmary than live—without any freedom—in the home of my flight’s leaders, and that’s where I would otherwise stay. But—” She drew in a sharp breath.
“We’re going to give you a few minutes alone, dear,” Helen said. “We’ll be downstairs in the mess hall.”
“She means dining room,” Kaylin added, slightly confused; Helen had never made this association before.
“Moran understands the mess hall in the Halls; eating spaces in the Aerie are not quite the same, although practically speaking, they serve much the same function.”
Moran nodded. She didn’t rise as Helen drew Kaylin away from the bath toward the exit, but she said, without turning around, “Thank you, Helen. I now understand exactly why Kaylin was so insistent that I convalesce with you.”
* * *
“But will she stay?” Kaylin asked.
“I am not certain. I think she was unexpectedly moved by what she found when she opened that door, but she is not as young as you are.”
“Meaning?”
“She has experienced more, and that experience influences how she makes her decisions. Were she your age, but otherwise herself, there would be no question. She would remain. She would feel very
