“But... I wouldn’t have known. Not instantly.”
Severn cleared his throat, and both Ybelline and the Barrani Lord turned toward him. “If we accept that power is the only legitimate ruler, nothing changes. We are valued only in that we are useful to the powerful.”
“That has always been true.”
“The Emperor has no need of most humans in that case. What he is trying to build is a place where you and Tessa might meet without the consequences to both of you.”
“Perhaps. It is not a risk I will ever take again.”
Severn nodded.
“I found a master in the Arcanum. He is known as an elementalist, but his affinity is, and has always been, fire. There were no masters with affinity to water. Few with affinity for earth. I was expected to be slow—a country cousin with little finesse and understanding of the subtle politics of adults. It was not hard to pretend to be what I actually am.
“But I needed to have as much intentional skill as I possibly could. There was only one way this cleansing would end.”
“You killed them.”
“I killed them.”
“Adellos helped.”
“Yes. Yes, Adellos helped. What I could do with water, then, I could not do on my own; his was the control, mine, the power. I asked, Ybelline. I think I begged. I wanted the killings to stop. No—I wanted to be the one to stop them. It was the only thing left that I could do for Tessa, and I needed to be the one to do it.”
“And the four witnesses?”
He shrugged. “They were, as you must have guessed, complicit in the murders. They were not witnesses; they were actors. They took advantage of the frenzy of the crowd to encourage the deaths that followed. They were not examined by the Tha’alani interrogators; they had come forth voluntarily, after all. And I did not want those crimes to recur. I did not want their study—the study of the witnesses—to once again disrupt the Tha’alaan.
“They deserved to die. Even by Imperial Law, they deserved it. Had they been taken in, had they been examined by the Tha’alani at the Emperor’s discretion, they would have died.”
“...But we would have had to go through four sets of memories.”
“Again. Adellos did not need to guide my hand by that point.”
“He did not attempt to dissuade you.”
“It might surprise you to know that he did. He did not, however, attempt to command or control. He had his own ambivalence, and he understood why I wanted them dead. It was not revenge; I had that. It was to protect the Tha’alanari.”
“And you knew the effect it would have.”
“I have been speaking to Adellos for most of your life; we have been friends, even by your standards. I have heard much about the burden of the castelord, separate even from the Tha’alanari. When it was too much to bear in isolation, he reached out to me—to a Barrani Lord, raised to games in which murder is an acceptable move. Nothing he spoke of could damageme. Nothing he spoke of could break me. I knew what the witness testimony, verified by the Tha’alani, would do to the Tha’alaan. I made the decision to kill.”
“He provided you the names.”
“He could not hold them back,” An’Sennarin said with a smile. “That is the thing that is not clear to those who have neither given nor taken a True Name. It is not a one-way exchange. I am far better equipped to hide my thoughts from him now than I was on that long-ago day. And it pains him greatly to attempt to exert control; he suffers even now with the guilt of it.
“If you use my name, as Adellos did, you will discover that weakness as well. I will not fight you,” he added, voice softer. “I know that you know it, or can know it, or will know it—you will be castelord. But Adellos has held that name and that knowledge separate from the Tha’alaan. And the water understands; I do not believe she will release it without his permission.
“I would not have become An’Sennarin were it not, in the end, for Tessa and the Tha’alaan. I would give it all back were she to survive. But as An’Sennarin I could end the deaths. As An’Sennarin I could destroy the parts of Sennarin that had allowed the murders to be orchestrated. I could end all threat from my line—and any lesser family—only as ruler.
“The murder of kin, the assassinations of kin, will not trouble the Emperor at all.”
“The witnesses were not Barrani.”
“No. I will be a Barrani Lord accused of a crime that cannot be dismissed by the laws of exemption. It is my death that will end the investigation, if you carry it through to its logical conclusion.
“And I will not walk to that death now—although there is nothing you can take from my thoughts and my experience that does not already exist somewhere in the Tha’alaan. But it is my kin, not yours, who will perish before I eventually fall, and my kin have done nothing but harm to yours. There will, perhaps, be some poetic justice in my death.”
“Is that what you’ve waited for? Your death?”