“Harming the Consort would be one of them. Perhaps, had there been a different Consort, he might have approached the problem as Iberrienne did.”
“What do you mean?”
Teela rolled her eyes. “You noticed that the Consort referred to Nightshade as Calarnenne when they met in person in the West March.”
Kaylin nodded.
“You will note that no one else did.”
“No one else could bear the consequences of treating an outcaste as if he was still Barrani.”
“You believe that, clearly. They have known each other for a very long time. It is my belief that if she could, she would repatriate Nightshade. He would not harm her, would not countenance a plan that called for her injury or death, in my opinion. Did it not appear that way to you?”
Kaylin frowned. “Ilikethe Consort. I mean, she tried to trap the cohort, and tried to sort of use me to help, and she wanted the Norranir to die rather than risk saving what was left of their race—but I understood why she thought the risk was too great.
“I know we’re not of one mind. We’ve hadseriousdisagreements. But... I trust her. She doesn’t scheme for personal power. She’s not trying to enrich herself. I can disagree with her decisions, but at least I understand why she made them.
“She was genuinely happy to see Nightshade in the West March—her eyes were green. But aside from Serralyn, there are almost no Barrani whose eyes are consistently more green than blue. Maybe flecks of green, but not green the way the Consort’s are.” She frowned. She knew, now, that the Lake tested for things that were not considered the norm among the Barrani, knew that the chosen Lady was one who could rise above politics and stand fast against any grab for power her family might demand of her.
“Has Serralyn ever attempted to take the test of the Lake?”
20
Mandoran was the first to speak—or to cough, but it was a punctuation cough, not a genuine one. “What are you even thinking?” he demanded.
Teela and Sedarias were blue-eyed and clearly as unhappy with the question as Mandoran. Terrano, however, was thoughtful—which was enough of a clue.
“She hasn’t,” Teela said. “And just so you know, she’s horrified that you could even ask that question, given you understand what the Lady’s life is like. She’s happy where she is, and she considers even the attempt to take the Lake’s test to be life-threatening, especially now.”
“She’s curious, though,” Terrano added. Three sets of cohort glares fell on him. Terrano was pretty good at ignoring them. “What? She is!”
“Allow her to ask her own questions at a more convenient time.” It was a command. Had Sedarias uttered it, it would have been heated; Teela said the words, and Terrano grimaced instead of arguing. Or perhaps he just took his argument into the namebond sphere and left Kaylin and Logia out of it.
“I’m worried about this new beginning bit. I mean—I think they were trying to destroy humans as a race as well.”
Terrano shook his head. “I think they might have been trying to make humans Immortal. They’d have to understand how you were made. No Barrani envies your lack of time, but a lot of them envy your lack of True Names.”
“That’s not what they would have achieved.”
“No? You’ve watched Red in the morgue, right? Dissecting corpses isn’t going to bring the dead back to life, either. But dissecting the living might make clearer how the mechanisms of your lives work.” Terrano grimaced. “I’m not saying I agree with them, but I’m pretty certain I, at least, could continue to exist without the True Name that first woke me.
“I chose to keep it for a reason. If I could live without its constraints, I didn’t want to live without its benefits.”
“You mean the namebond.”
“I mean my family. The family I chose. I wanted to share what I found with them—with them and no one else.”
“You were born to some of those families or you’d never have been sent to the green.”
Terrano shrugged.
“And if you’d never been sent, you wouldn’t have found your true family. Good things can come out of bad things.”
“Not normally.”
Kaylin nodded. It was true. There was nothing romantic about starving and scrounging and almost freezing. There was nothing romantic about the poverty of the life of an orphan in the fiefs. She felt she could have been a decent Hawk without all of the terrible experiences. The other Hawks had managed it. She’d always hated it when people told her she should be grateful for the lessons of her early life—words offered by people who’d never actually lived the way she’d lived.
... and what had she just done? She’d done thesame damn thingshe hated so much to Terrano. She considered biting her own tongue off to prevent it ever happening again.