“You’ve met a lot of Arcanists, have you?”
“Only a handful. Your Teela was one.” As Kaylin opened her mouth, Evanton glared. “No. Shut up now or we will never leave the hall, and I, for one, am a tired old man. It is past my bedtime and I need my sleep.”
* * *
Lillias was on the ground when Evanton opened the door; she seemed to be waiting for them. Her eyes were filmed with tears, and clearly, some of those tears had already been spilled. She smiled at Evanton; Kaylin saw some hint of the younger woman she might once have been. To Kaylin, she said, “Can you see her?”
The answer was yes—but only barely. Kaylin knew that the skies above this garden were actual skies; they were not illusory. But Moran was a speck so small she might have been a tiny bird. A tiny bird with daydreams of being a hawk. She rose, she drifted, she dropped—the drop so sudden in its plunge Kaylin forgot to breathe—and she rolled. The Aerian Swords, the new ones, would have died of envy had they seen the ease with which she now covered the sky.
“How did she get hit at all?”
“She was carrying the netting,” Evanton replied. He was cranky and tired—he hadn’t been making that up—and seemed to feel that the answer was so obvious Kaylin shouldn’t have wasted air asking the question. “If you recall the purpose of the netting?”
“...To dampen magic.”
“Very good.”
Kaylin stared. She felt a pang of resentment for the Halls of Law and the Imperial Hawks and the Barrani, because Moran should not have been carrying those nets. Moran should never have had to touch them. Becausethiswas what it had cost her.
“You are thinking with your mouth open,” Evanton said.
“You know, I really think you should leave your house more often. Go visit the Arkon; you’re practically the same person when you’re in a cranky mood.”
“Her duty did not cost her anything. She is, as I said, flying entirely under her own power. You could rip the wings from her back—”
Lillias almost shrieked.
“—and she could fly. She cannot be made outcaste. She cannot be sundered from the ability you see now.”
“I’ve never seen her fly like this.”
“Almost no one has.” Evanton’s voice softened as he watched her. “She does so only here, because here, she has privacy. Lillias has seen her fly like this before, and neither you nor I are Aerian; we come with no baggage and no expectations.”
Kaylin snorted. “You? No expectations?”
“She does not, perhaps, know me as well as you do.” Evanton folded his arms. “But even I find it almost breathtaking. I hate to interrupt her.”
In Kaylin’s experience, this meant very little. And sure enough, he spoke to the wind in syllables that sounded like language but failed to become actual words to her ears. The wind clearly spoke to Moran, and Moran became larger and larger as she descended; when she landed, she was an Aerian woman of nominal height and build, and her wings were the same wings they’d been since the night the High Halls had been attacked by their ancestors.
“Evanton’s grouchy because he’s tired and he needs sleep,” Kaylin said by way of explanation. Or apology.
“Evanton is, indeed, somewhat tired. He is grouchy because he has spent an hour listening to your private.”
Lillias watched with a frown that meant she was accepting Evanton’s version of events, which made some kind of sense. Evanton gave her the gift of flight she had lost—and it was clear that there was no greater gift. Yes, she had adapted to a wingless, human life. To hear Evanton speak of her, she had adapted well. But it was here that she could shed gravity and all of the pain of her past decisions.
And it was here, Kaylin realized, that she could watch Moran fly, and understand that the choice that had cost her flight had been, in the end, for the moment, worth it.
Moran’s wings rose and spread in a complicated way that spoke of respect or veneration as she turned to Evanton. She added a very human bow.
“You tell her,” Evanton said to Kaylin. “I am going to bed.”
* * *
Lillias left. It was late enough that she could refuse Kaylin’s offer of hospitality; late enough that she could also refuse Moran’s. And Moran did offer, assuming rightly that Helen would be just as happy to have Lillias visit as she was to have Moran.
Lillias thanked Moran profusely, which embarrassed the Hawk sergeant, who felt that gratitude, if it existed at all, should be going in the other direction. But, mindful of Evanton, she accepted Lillias’s undeserved thanks with patience and only the hint of a blush.
“Praevolo,”Lillias said, “it does my heart good to see you fly again. No one, ever, has flown the way you fly; no one could touch your flight, even when you were a child. No one.”
