“Nothing at all?”
A three-beat silence followed the question before it was broken. “I can see why Ybelline likes you. Yes. I have said nothing at all. They have not heard me—and I have not heard them—since I walked to the gates. I am not, now, in the confines of the Tha’alaan.”
They were not afraid of Severn.
They were afraid of, or for, the castelord, one of the few who could sunder himself from the racial mind of his people and survive it.
Every element of the case itself rearranged itself in Severn’s untouched thoughts. The oracle. The Oracular Halls. The visitors. The sketch and the figurine. Ybelline’s reactions to all of it.
For the first time, he regretted the absence of Elluvian. Elluvian would survive here. Severn Handred might not. One of the two witnesses gathered by the Barrani Hawks had been safely on the way to the Halls of Law in the crowded city streets—and they had died. The Barrani Hawks had been powerless to save them. The only surviving witness had been saved by An’Teela and Elianne, if the gossip was to be believed. Severn did believe.
He considered turning on his heel and leaving the quarter, but the gates were now closed.
“I like Ybelline,” he said instead as he stood his ground.
“She should never have gone to bespeak you on behalf of the Imperial Service.” Adellos walked to where Severn stood. He couldn’t force Severn to walk beside him.
“She had reasons for doing so. Reasons I’m certain you understand.”
Adellos’s nod was heavy.
“Did you serve the Imperial Service in your time?”
The castelord’s face had lost the avuncular, almost affectionate expression that had been pasted across it since the gates had opened. “Yes. In the time before I became castelord. It is one of the requirements.”
“And she is your daughter?”
“No. We are related only distantly by blood—as we are to most of our kin. We do not choose castelords by heredity.”
“How do you choose them?” Severn asked, partly because he was curious, and partly because he was stalling for time.
“How do you think we choose?”
It was a serious question, not a flippant one. Severn exhaled. He wondered if Ybelline would become Adellos with time and experience; it was a bitter thought. “Castelords would have to be Tha’alanari.”
Adellos nodded. “The legal structure of the caste courts was devised by the Emperor. The wordcastelordis not one that is native to our people.”
“They would have to be able to keep their thoughts—possibly the whole of their thoughts—from the Tha’alaan.”
He nodded again.
Exhaling, Severn said, “They’d have to be able to keep their thoughts entirely to themselves. There are things that they won’t share with even the Tha’alanari.”
“Yes.”
“You think I’m a threat.”
“I do not believe you bear us any malice, but in my experience the most dangerous of threats can come from a place of genuine affection. A place of hope.”
“If you can keep your thoughts to yourself, is there any record left when you die?”
“There is. And those memories will be given to only one person upon my passage.”
Ybelline.
“The memories and experiences I have shared with the rest of my kin will become—have already become—part of the Tha’alaan. No doubt some of the witnesses here search it as we stand in the street and speak.”
“Forgive me,” Severn replied. “I am—as any other person—reluctant to walk peacefully to my own death.”