May sat across from her, setting down her book and neatly folding her hands atop it. “Tell me what you know about them.”
Kasira didn’t respond right away, unsure what sort of test this was. If she told the truth, she would sound prejudiced, just when she had been presenting the image of changing. If she feigned ignorance, her reaction would look unjustified.
“I know they can raise the scales on their tales into sharpened ridges,” she said, deciding to stick with simple facts. “And that they live mostly on the banks of swamps, where the mud keeps them cool.”
“Do you know what they use their tails for?” May pressed, clearly seeking a certain answer.
Kasira gave it to her. “Defense?”
“Security,” May corrected. “They live in small groups, one extended family to a swamp. Because they spend so much time exposedon the banks, they have high startle reflexes, a trait that gives them the ability to react to threats and get back in the water quickly. Their tails have evolved in length to allow each Yrva their own cooling space, while still enabling them to seize any young around them and pull them into the water. Yrva without offspring will often grab the tails or legs of other Yrva, each one helping the next back into the swamp.”
Now she saw where this was going—it was the same lesson Allaster had tried to impart with Benlo. What she saw as weapons and aggression, the Library claimed had another purpose. Some part of Kasira knew that already. The part that had grown up curious about beasts and been the one to question these things, only to have her voice silenced.
Somewhere along the way, she had stopped asking questions.
“Are you saying the Yrva was trying to …protectme?” she asked.
“That’s correct.”
Eirlana wouldn’t know what to make of that, and in truth, Kasira didn’t either. The idea sat with her strangely, a splinter beneath her skin.
May scooted back her chair and held out her hand. “The blade, please.”
Kasira considered palming it and professing she had no such thing, but this was an opportunity to establish another level of trust. The mages respected and listened to May; her opinion of Kasira could decide the fate of her con, which made keeping May on her side just as important as earning Allaster’s trust. Besides, if she willingly gave it up, May would tell Allaster, and perhaps it would be enough to balance out Elyae’s maneuver.
So she handed the knife to May, who retrieved her book and bid her good night.
Kasira spent the rest of the evening with a pot of tea, researching every beast she had ever encountered in the Malikinar. It didn’t take long to notice the pattern. The Yrva she had surprised in the woods all those years ago had likely only been reaching for young. Fiers, with their curved claws and long, sharp horns, lived mostly underground. They only attacked in defense of their homes, which was why a groupof them had infiltrated her Malikinar camp—they had set up their tents atop a colony.
It was the section on Alkatir that truly gave her pause though. According to the book, they were highly intelligent creatures capable of understanding human speech. Outside of Kalthos, there wasn’t a single documented case of one attacking a human, and the book noted the Kalish reports were probably doctored to cover attacks initiated by Malik.
She thought of the cub she had left alive—its wing broken and its eye ruined. If these books were right, if her knowledge of beasts was truly so fundamentally flawed that she had seen violence where only fear had existed, then she had fallen much further from her promise to Loraya than she had realized. She had let fear take root inside her, let it wrap its thorny vines about her heart.
And if she gave the Library to Vera, the Ambassador would do the same to the rest of the world.
CHAPTER 12
KASIRA
ASKASIRA FINISHED HER ROUNDS ATBENLO’S PEN THE NEXT MORNING, she looked at the beast with fresh eyes. Her research had revealed their long fangs were for spearing fish, though they preferred to scavenge for bugs and plants, and the book theorized they had developed their incredible speed as a means of escaping predators. Their skeletal figure was also typical of the species, not a sign of underfeeding, though every time she saw the beast, he was snuffling through the grass for a snack.
Benlo perked up when she set a foot on the lowest rung of the fence, leaning her forearms on the wood. The light filtered through the brown feathers of his ruined wing, giving them a reddish glow. He had an idle air to him, every action slow and focused, and it lulled her into a sense of complacency, watching him as the sun gently warmed the back of her neck.
“You know,” she said so quietly only he could hear, “there was a time when I would have thought you remarkable.”
As a child, she would have been in awe of him, but it hadn’t just been the priests who drove that wonder away. It had been the children, the townspeople, everyone—save Loraya, who had always sought knowledge the way a flower turned toward the sun. They had watched each other’s backs in the orphanage, been each other’sguiding lights, but she hadn’t realized the depth of Loraya’s loyalty until the day Kasira had been forced to drown the Talowell.
Loraya had found her crying out back and thinking it the pain of her punishment, tended to her burn without saying a word. Afterward, when Kasira told her what had happened, Loraya had found a Silas Toad to put in the priest’s pillow. They had heard his yowl halfway across the church as they fled the orphanage.
It wasn’t until later that she learned Loraya’s entire family had been killed by beasts.
She had never forgotten the way Loraya had put that aside for her—for something Loraya should have detested. It was the first time she had realized she didn’t have to be what the world made her—a lesson Belvar and the Malikinar had spent seven long years undoing.
It was strange, having these two parts of herself brought in contention with each other. The curious child she had been and the cynical woman she had become, who was being forced to recognize that perhaps the child had known more truth than the woman, as children often did. How many beasts had she killed for acts of aggression that were actually something else entirely?
What a foolish question, she thought.
It didn’t matter what the beasts’ intentions had been. All that mattered was that they were beasts. Aggression or defense, the Malikinar would see them dead, and Kasira had only been doing the job required of her to survive. Just like she was now. It didn’t matter if the beasts were innocent, didn’t matter if the Library was everything she had once dreamed of. The consequences of failure were too high, and she would not let Loraya down again.
