Kaylin explained in the more awkward way: with words that she had to choose herself. Where once she had been terrified of the Tha’alani and their ability to ferret out hidden, dark secrets, now she was comfortable with it, even at home in it. Which is why, of course, it wasn’t working properly.
For the water to make the choice it did requires a vast outlay of power—and will. The water is not, as you are aware, a single individual; it has a will that is divided, and the divisions are not always complementary. The part of the water that is theTha’alaanwas the part of the water that chose to move you. But it moved you instinctively, Kaylin. Thereistrouble, but...it can’t clearly articulate what that trouble is.
Ybelline sounded troubled as well. Troubled and yet oddly relieved.
We thought the water was under attack by something new and terrifying. We do not have access to the Keeper’s garden, and the rest of Elantra is...not friendly when it comes to my people; we were discussing our possible options. A runner has been sent to Grethan, in the Keeper’s abode. Now, however, we understand that the weakening was at the will of the water, and not due to an outside attack.
I can’t hear the water.
No. I am sorry. We can, but it is very, very weak. The water bids me tell you that she can hear you, and that you must...silence. The silence continued for a beat too long.I am sorry, the caste leader said again.I am forced to contain the communication, to keep it separate from the Tha’alaan. We will...attempt to understand what she is trying to tell us; it is confusing. We can see what she sees—no, we can experience what she experienced—but we cannot...understand it. It is not an experience we, any of us, could have. But Kaylin? She is afraid.
Fear was poison to the Tha’alani; it was the entirety of the reason they avoided contact with other races unless commanded to break into their thoughts by the Imperial service. She felt Ybelline’s presence, as reassuring as a hug offered in comfort, and she thought that fear itself, run rampant, writ large, was poison toanyone, not just the Tha’alani. But it was here, in the Tha’alaan, that she understood what its absence meant. She could be herself. She could reveal her thoughts. They could see her lack of confidence, her lack of intelligence, her lack of strength—and to them, that waspart oflife. It was not the whole of it. They accepted it so calmly, so peacefully, that Kaylin could accept it all as well. Everyone felt these things some of the time.
But one couldn’t let those thoughts dominate all others; one couldn’t make decisions based only on fear, large or small. She exhaled.If I can, I’ll try to contact the water again.
If?
I have the only female Dragon we know about in the West March, an ancient stronghold of her enemies. I’d like to move to a different stronghold, just in case—but the water is active here, and I’m not certain it’s active everywhere. Its presence in the Hallionne we arrived in was extinguished by our arrival.
And they needed to speak with the Consort. They needed to speak with the Consort someplace safe from eavesdropping. The Consort didn’t trust her brother. Or perhaps she didn’t trust someone close to her brother. Or perhaps she didn’t trust Kaylin herself. The weave of suspicion, of the fear of deception, and of the actual deception itself seemed both fine and delicate—unless one were a fly.
But if you were a figurative fly, you couldn’t ignore that web.
The thing is, she thought as she withdrew her hand, you couldn’t live in it, either. If you were trapped in it, the only thing you could see was the web itself, and the web brought the fear of the spider until that was the whole of the world. But webs were in corners, in out of the way places; they weren’t the whole world. And it would be easy to forget that.
It had been easy to forget it.
But...it was tricky. If the entire world wasn’t treachery and deception, treachery and deception existed. How safely could one approach that web without being caught up in it again?
“You’re thinking,” Bellusdeo said.
Kaylin shrugged. “Brooding, mostly.”
“Well, possibly now is not the best time. Your familiar is chewing on my hair and glaring at everything.”
“That’s not a glare—that’s the way his face always looks. And, umm, sorry about your hair.” Kaylin lifted an arm, retrieved her familiar, and turned to offer the Lord of the West March a very correct bow. This surprised him, so Diarmat’s infernal lessons were clearly useful forsomething. “We would like, if possible, to visit Alsanis now.”
He did not argue. He spoke a word to his attendant, and the attendant nodded, vanishing down one of the halls that led away from the fountain.
* * *
“Yes, we understand that,” Kaylin said, with barely contained exasperation. “What we want to know is what yourotherallies wanted from the alliance.”
“Well, the mortals probably wanted to live forever,” Terrano replied.
“The mortals weren’t your only allies. They weren’t even the most significant of your allies. And they weren’t the ones who were attempting to write the rest of us out of existence.”
“It wouldn’t have worked. I think.” Terrano didn’t seem all that upset about genocide as a concept, at least when it didn’t involve the race he was born to.
“Did you nevertalk to them?”
“Yes.”
“What did you offer them?”
He rolled his eyes. His response was High Barrani, but it was not a word Kaylin recognized. Or rather, not a series of words.
The Lord of the West March, however, did, and he grew pale, which was not a terribly good look on the Barrani. His eyes devolved instantly from blue into a midnight blue that suggested black.
