Michelle Sagara - Cast In Fury

She was entirely unprepared for Ybelline, because Ybelline met her on one side of the arch that Ellis, talking to her as if she were a sick puppy, was urging her toward. Ybelline’s hair was down—literally—in a honey-gold cascade that obscured her shoulders. Her eyes were the same color, the same almost gold, almost brown. The light that came in—far too brightly—from the open windows and half-walls seemed to have stopped there for the sheer pleasure of illuminating the castelord of the Tha’alani.

The Tha’alani woman who wasn’t classically beautiful—if there was such a thing—was radiant anyway. She had changed into a simple, cream gown that fell from her shoulders to her ankles unimpeded. All of this, Kaylin took in at a glance—and even if she’d wanted to see more, she wouldn’t have been able to, because Ybelline Rabon’alani crossed the distance, ignoring Ellis’s loud warnings, and enfolded Kaylin Neya, scruffy and severely under-rested Hawk, in her arms.

It felt like home, to Kaylin. She let her forehead lean against the taller woman’s shoulder, and she wanted to stand that way forever. But that wasn’t why she’d come, and she knew that Severn and Rennick were waiting somewhere. She hoped that Rennick hadn’t offended anyone. Anyone else.

“He’s been remarkably quiet,” Ybelline replied, speaking with the ease of long practice.

“That’s probably bad.”

Ybelline was silent for a moment, and when she spoke, her tone was guarded. “Possibly bad for you.”

“For me? Why?”

“He was at the longhouse. I would have refused him entry into the Quarter, but I was … distracted.”

“You had every right to be. The others—”

“They’ll live. They’re well.” Her voice was soft, and soothing.

“Good. I wanted—”

“You had to be the one to help them. Kravel was beyond us,” Ybelline added. “Even had we been able to heal him in other ways, he would have been lost to the Tha’alaan. But they have seen, and they have understood. Not all of your kind are insane. Not all of them are so maddened by fear that they must, in turn, be feared.”

“They’ll forget,” Kaylin said.

“They are not human, Kaylin. They will not forget.”

“And if they do, you’ll remind them?”

Ybelline shook her head, and her hair brushed Kaylin’s face as she lifted it. “No. You are not Tha’alani. But you have touched the Tha’alaan. What you understand might change in time—but they will remember you because they desire it. Not one of them wishes to fear the whole of a race. To fear even the ones who injured them is burden enough.

“And it is my fault and my responsibility. I have worked among your kind for most of my adult life, and I didn’t think before I left the Quarter. I didn’t think about how it would look to people who have so little knowledge. I should have realized—”

“You were trying to save a city. You had a lot on your mind.”

The smile on Ybelline’s face was wry, but the panic was gone. “Have you had a chance to speak at length with Richard Rennick?”

A number of answers came and went. Kaylin said simply, “Not at length.” It was about as polite as she could be, given everything.

“Then you understand what he has been ordered to do?”

“More or less.”

“Can you please explain it to me? No, not the reasoning behind that—believe that given the events of this past week, I understand the reasons perfectly. I don’t, however, understand exactly why this task was given to Rennick. I do not understand how what he produces—which by Imperial mandate must be untrue—will serve the goal of educating the … public, as Mr. Rennick calls people.”

Had this been a normal day, Kaylin’s head would have hurt. And since misery loves company, she said, “Maybe we should answer this question while Rennick is actually there.”

All in all, not her brightest suggestion.

She was escorted—having been parted from Ellis with gods only knew what difficulty—by Ybelline into the main hall whose chief decoration was a large table, with simple chairs, and the occasional flower in a bowl or a vase to add any color that wasn’t provided by faces.

Rennick in particular was an odd shade of gray. He was separated from the rest of the Tha’alani by Severn, and if the seating arrangement was accidental, Kaylin would have eaten her hat. Or her hairpin, given she didn’t own a hat. There were only five other Tha’alani in the room, all in robes very similar to Ybelline’s, which, given the heat and the humidity of the season, made sense.

Sense and clothing seldom went together, in Kaylin’s experience, and she didn’t recall seeing robes like this the last couple of times she’d braved the Quarter, so she assumed they were some sort of formal dress. Whether or not this assumption was right, the dress seemed to be accepted wear for both the three men and the two women. The colors of the dress were basically the same—a creamy gold that was almost white. The shoulders had different embroidery at the height of the seam, which might—although she doubted it, given the Tha’alani—be some sort of symbol for their rank.

Rennick rose when she entered the room. He was quiet, but not for lack of trying; if she’d seen a better imitation of a fish out of water, she couldn’t offhand recall it.

“At ease,” she told him. When this comment appeared to make no sense to him—and given Severn’s expression, it wouldn’t—she said, “Sit down.”

He sat. “Are you sure you shouldn’t be the one sitting?”

“I slept.”

“For three hours,” he added.

She could have told him that three hours after a day like this was a catnap, but didn’t. “I think we have the worst of the difficulties facing the Quarter from the inside in hand,” she told him instead. “The difficulties facing the Quarter from the other side of the guardhouse, not so much. You’ve been talking to the Tha’alani for the last three hours—what have they told you?”

“Nothing.”

She looked across to Severn. He shrugged. “Rennick thought it was relevant to ask them everything they knew about you,” he replied.

“Oh. They don’t know much.”

“She called you here to help, and they don’t know much?” He didn’t trouble to keep the scorn from his voice, but on the other hand, no scorn would probably be no voice, for Rennick.

“They don’t know much they want to share at any rate,” she told him. “And I’m not your job. They are. You saw the casualties,” she added.

He nodded, wincing slightly. “They’re all going to survive. One of the men got up and walked away.”

“He was probably less injured than he looked.”

“Private Neya?”

“Yes?”

“Learn to lie better. Or don’t bother. Bad lies insult the intelligence of the listener, and I believe that you don’t want to insult me.”

This wasn’t exactly true, but Kaylin was too tired to start a fruitless argument, which was generally when she started them. “Humans almost killed those men,” she told him, meeting and holding his gaze. “Humans saved them. We’re done with that now. Move on.”

“And where, exactly, would you like me to move?”

“To the part where you stop humans from wanting to kill any of the Tha’alani ever again. We brought you here because we thought you’d see a bit more of what the Tha’alani are like. Today wasn’t their usual day, so that’s a wash. But none of them want to hurt you and they certainly don’t want to read your mind.

“They just want to be left alone. They tried to save the city, and we’re going to make sure that people understand that.”

One of the Tha’alani men in the room stood. “It is to address this concern that we are here,” he said, in stilted Elantran. He didn’t bow to her, which was good. “But there is some concern.”