Ybelline said nothing for one long beat. “The blame, if blame must be assigned, is ours. Not yours. You gave them something humans seldom give the Tha’alani. You weren’t afraid. You were never afraid of them. You were curious, you were as excited as they were, and you accepted...everything.”
“But—”
“There is no but, Random. I know what they felt. I’ve seen it. I will remember it for as long as I live. I imagine Severn will do the same.”
Severn looked, with care, at the statue of Ollarin. As he’d done with the odd tableau, he leaned forward until his eyes were less than two inches from the figurine. Proximity made the details clearer.
This Ollarin was not the man Ybelline had glimpsed at the back of a crowd of mortal murderers.
“You can touch that one,” Random said.
“This one? But not the others?”
“I wouldn’t touch the new one yet. It hasn’t stabilized.”
He didn’t ask her what her use of the wordstabilizedsignified. Instead, he retrieved one of his hands—the left—and lifted the figure of this Ollarin.
“When Tessa touched you,” he said, “you were given an oracle.”
Random nodded.
“Did you tell Master Sabrai?”
She shook her head. “...He would have been angry.”
“This,” Ybelline said, “is why we have secrets, or keep them. Tessa, Jerrin, and Tobi didn’t tell anyone they were going to come here, either—because their parents would have been angry. And they would have said no. But we’re not good at keeping secrets like this for very long; they just had to keep it hidden for long enough that they couldn’t be easily stopped.”
“What was the oracle you offered them?” Severn continued.
“She knows.”
Severn met Ybelline’s gaze. “Will you tell me?”
Ybelline was silent. After a long pause, she said, “Ollarin was some part of the vision.”
“And the rest?”
She shook her head. To Random, she said, “I cannot answer all of Severn’s questions. If you can, you must answer them.”
“You want him to know.”
“I want him to know.”
“Tessa wanted to meet him.”
“Ollarin?”
“Yes. Tessa saw him, and she wanted to meet him.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I knew that she would want to meet him. After they visited. I knew she would want to come back.”
“And she did.”
Random nodded. “We were older. She was your age. Jerrin didn’t come. Tobi came with her, but Jerrin didn’t. Jerrin was scared.”
“Did she make an appointment for her second visit?”