“Yes.” She smiled. “Wait until they are finished conversing, and then let us go in search of the water.”
* * *
The conversation, such as it was, continued for long enough that Kaylin gave up on the waiting and started in on the eating.
“You are not afraid of poison?”
“It’s a Hallionne. The food is produced by Orbaranne. If Orbaranne wanted to kill us, we’d be dead already.”
“You’re just hungry.”
“Evanton didn’t even offer cookies.”
Bellusdeo snorted. With smoke. She took a chair at the table upon which food had appeared, but did so stiffly and almost regally. Kaylin felt a bit guilty. But mostly, she felt hungry. Around food, she said, “The Hallionne won’t hurt anyone she’s accepted as a guest.”
“You like the Hallionne.”
“I don’t know them well enough tolikethem,” Kaylin countered. “But...I feel mostly safe in them. When they’re not under siege. I don’t think the Hallionne can be ordered to kill their guests, even by the lords of the lands in which they stand.”
“You are certain?”
“I couldn’t order Helen to kill any of our guests.”
“Tiamaris could order Tara to do so.”
Kaylin shrugged, but thought about this. It was easier to think on a full stomach, anyway. “Yes. He could. But the Towers in the fiefs aren’t the same as the Hallionne. I think that Helencouldhave been ordered to kill her guests at one point—but I think she broke whatever it was that controlled that.”
“Could you order her not to kill?”
“I don’t know. That’s a good question. I think I could ask, and I think she would listen. She’s not a weapon.”
“No. More of a shield, I would think.”
They ate in silence until the Lord of the West March joined them at the table. Then they ate in an entirely different kind of silence.
“Lord Kaylin,” he finally said.
She looked up, chewed quickly, and swallowed. “Yes?”
“You have passed the tower’s Test. You are part of the High Court.”
Ugh. “Yes.”
“You have sheltered Annarion and Mandoran, as you call them.”
“What do you mean, as I call them?”
“Their names are longer, in our Court—or would be, if they emerge from that test themselves. You have seen them; according to my sister, you have fought by their side. Tell me, as the one who helped them emerge from their long captivity, do you feel they will succeed?”
She blinked. “Yes?”
His smile was crooked. “That is not, perhaps, the confident assertion I was seeking.”
“I don’t know what they’ll see. They sometimes see things I can’t. My house can see what they see,” she added quickly, “and my familiar can see it as well. But I don’t see what they do. Teela can only see what they see if—” She stopped.
He allowed this. “And you think this without risk?”
Did she? She fell silent, and began to push food around in patterns on her plate. She understood what he was asking, and she was suddenly aware that she’d already been far too honest; she’d thought about the question, not the person asking it, and not the political environment that surrounded that person. She inhaled and put her cutlery aside. “Did you have something to do with their disappearance?”
