Ybelline rose. “An’Tellarus, Elluvian,” she said, “I must ask you to withdraw. There are things to be said here that are caste court business.”
“Ours or yours?” An’Tellarus asked, in grim amusement.
“Mine.”
An’Tellarus raised a brow. “Child,” she said, her voice honeyed, “that is not the way you show gratitude.”
“No,” Ybelline agreed. “And I am grateful for your escort. But the gratitude and obligation will fall upon An’Sennarin’s shoulders; you will not seek me or my kin in the immediate future. It was for his sake that you agreed, not mine or my people’s. It is for my people’s sake that I am here.”
“Very well,” An’Tellarus replied. She turned and walked out of the sunlight, pausing only once to glance over her shoulder at Elluvian, whose hesitation was marked, and longer. Caught between his duties as a Wolf and An’Tellarus’s silent command, he chose to navigate the danger that was immediately in front of him. He followed.
“He is not wrong,” An’Sennarin said, when they were gone for some five minutes. “The dates could mean many things. My rise to power.”
“The death of the previous lord and his heir,” Ybelline said. Her eyes were now hazel, but flecks of green were emerging. It was the manner of the deaths that had struck Severn. Clearly they had struck Ybelline in exactly the same way.
“Did you know Tessa?” the Barrani Lord asked. It was not the question Severn had been expecting; it was one of the possibilities Ybelline had been prepared for, given her lack of visible reaction.
“She was dead before I was six years of age.” The words were flat, neutral. Her eyes were fixed to his face, as if vision could give her, momentarily, what she could not retrieve without physical contact. “You knew her.”
He nodded and began to fidget. “I was not the heir designate when I came to the High Halls.”
“No.”
“I was not a Lord of this court before I arrived.”
“You arrived, I assume, to take that test?”
He nodded. “I came from the West. The politics of the High Court are...different.”
“More deadly?”
He grimaced. “Differently deadly. I had been summoned to court by An’Sennarin, from an insignificant branch family in the West March.”
“Why?”
An’Sennarin was quiet, but not still; he opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, in a sequence that implied he was searching for words and failing to find the ones he wanted.
Ybelline waited.
“You are perhaps not aware of how Barrani society is structured.”
“No.”
“We are not like your kin. From the moment we are born there are words we must not speak. Words we must not hear.”
She nodded.
“The West March is less formal than the High Halls; it does not exist in the shadow of a Dragon. The Eternal Emperor’s reach does not encompass the West March; we are not part of his hoard. The rigid formality of the High Halls is necessary—or so I’ve been told—because wedolive in the shadow of a Dragon. We live at the foot of his throne.
“There are tests given us when we are young.”
Severn’s eyes left Ybelline. He was not afraid that An’Sennarin would harm her.
“I did well in those tests. Remarkably well, considering the significance of my parents and siblings. My parents were proud.” The words were laced with bitterness. “My siblings hated it. I survived that displeasure because I was never officially made heir. I was much younger than either my brother or sister. Too young to make the journey to Elantra.
“But not too young to be commanded to make it. You cannot imagine what your city looked like to my eyes. The streets are crowded, smelly, oft hot; there are too few trees and the buildings are made primarily of stone or dead wood. I was considered lucky, even exalted—I was given a room within the High Halls themselves by An’Sennarin.
“He did not otherwise condescend to speak with me; he arranged the time and the hour for the Test of Name. I would not, of course, be of use or value to him because my potential could not be properly exploited were I not a Lord.” He spoke bitter words in an entirely pragmatic way.