“I would prefer that she not step inside at all.”
“I am not certain,” En replied, “that you have that discretion.”
Helmat’s eyes left Ybelline’s. “Records,” he said. He didn’t invite Ybelline to enter the conference room but ceased to block the door. “Severn, I apologize, but I am going to have to ask you to return on a different day. Rosen will find you lodging and meals should you require them. You are a provisional Wolf, but we take care of our own. I fully intend, if you pass this final stage of the interview, that you will be one of us.” He turned toward the wall opposite the door as Ybelline and Elluvian entered the room. The door then became wall again.
“I could swear,” Helmat said, in a tone that implied he very much wanted to, “that I apologized to Severn and asked him to leave.”
“You did,” En replied. “But you must be distracted; you did not hold the door for him. How difficult do you expect the interview to be? You want the boy; on some level you trust him, even now.”
Ybelline’s smile was soft and warm. “You can, if you desire, send me away, but when an agent is needed, Lord Marlin, I will be coming in the foreseeable future. If it helps in any way, Garadin is in complete agreement with both your opinion and your directive—which I believe might be a first.”
“Garadin doesn’t want you here.”
“No.”
“But you are demonstrably here.”
“Indeed.”
Helmat exhaled a few choice words. “Why?”
“I wish to gain experience of—”
“No, Ybelline, you don’t. That explanation might work on Rosen or En. It might work on Severn. They are not the Lord of Wolves; I am. You do not need to prove anything to anyone. You never have. You are here for a reason. You will not proceed until you have explained that reason fully.”
Her antennae performed an almost graceful salute. Her face lost warmth, lost any suggestion of softness; steel might have been the color of honey. “Very well, Lord Marlin. But I wish Records to observe that you did ask.”
Records flickered to life, sputtering almost fitfully, the sign of an incoming transmission. This transmission occupied the whole of the wall facing the closed door.
Garadin’s broad and displeased face filled the wall’s surface. “Lord Marlin,” he said, glaring past the Wolflord to Ybelline. “I have been directed to inform Ybelline that the information you have demanded is entirely and completely classified.”
“I imagine,” Lord Marlin said softly, “that it will not remain that way.”
“It will. You have asked for an explanation, and while the equivalent of paperwork is being prepared as we speak, theEmperorfelt it expedient to initiate contact with the Tha’alanari. Ybelline is not, at her own discretion, to bespeak you in the manner of our kin. She is allowed, however, to aid in the interview of your candidate; the Emperor understands that the Wolves are in dire need of people.”
Helmat was silent for one long beat. “Understood.” And he did. He turned to Ybelline. “Accept my apologies,” he said in an entirely different tone of voice.
“For your suspicion? Or for its accuracy?”
“For the terrible use we force upon you and your kin.”
Her smile broke before it reformed; he saw the pain beneath the surface of it, and did not understand, in the moment, the strength it took to smile at all.You are being a fool, he told himself, and knew it for truth.An old, stupid, prejudiced fool. Ybelline was young; older than Severn, but not, in Helmat’s opinion, by enough. It was not the first time the Wolflord had encountered her. Nor was it the first time he had felt the instinctive desire toprotect. Helmat hoped that this might be the last. If Ybelline was to fulfill Garadin’s duties until Garadin was whole enough to do them himself, Severn would be the last interview Helmat would conduct.
“And would you change it? If the decision to do so was yours, and yours alone, would you change it?”
“...No.”
“No.”
“It is the only way we can arrive at a truth that is not obfuscated.”
“Your apology smacks of pity, Lord Marlin. The regret is thin and almost irrelevant.” She bowed her head for one long moment; he saw the tremble of her shoulders, the stiffness of her hands. He might have attempted to offer comfort; the Tha’alani had seen, long ago, the worst of what he had been in this life, and he was not that youth anymore. He was not afraid of her.
“And is regret absolute? One thing or the other? You are Tha’alani. You know that that is not the case. Even among your kin—”
She lifted her chin. Her eyes were green. Ybelline. Green. Helmat almost ended the meeting for the day and allowed her to come again tomorrow or the day after, as she had threatened. “Helmat, you regret whatIsuffer. You wish, somehow, to protectme. I am the strongest of my kin. You know—intellectually—that my people share experiences. What happens to one is open to all, with very few exceptions. Garadin’s pain, you do not regret. Or Draalzyn’s. Timorri’s. Any of my kin who have been broken, in the end, by the terrible secrecy of the madness of murderers. What you fail to understand is that their painismy pain. I am part of that secrecy.
“Could I, I would do it all myself, and share none of it. You wish to wait for another member of the Tha’alanari. You think that will spare me. It does not, and itneverwill. Do not worry for me,” she told him, as if she could read his thoughts without touching his forehead or his skin. “I will find it far easier than Garadin. Had I been allowed to substitute myself for Timorri, we would not have lost him.”