Cast In Secret (50 page)

Just as it had held Uriel’s.

It had never occurred to Kaylin to ask – to touch – what lay beyond Uriel’s moment of… redemption. And she was suddenly certain it was there, in the depths of the Tha’alaan. And if Uriel’s life – if the horrors he experienced and the horrors he created – could lie in the depths, untouched and untroubled except at need, who was she to say that Grethan’s could be any worse?

He had given up his secrets.

And Kaylin had not.

All the anger went out of her, then. She saw a young man who had – if Evanton’s hopes were fulfilled – a long and terrible duty ahead of him. She saw a young man who had somehow managed, in spite of the pain of betrayal, the certain sense that he had done the worst possible thing, to save the child he had endangered. Not just once, but twice – for Mayalee had touched his mind and his thoughts, and he had let her see what had driven him, and also, how bitterly he regretted it.

And Kaylin saw that he not only accepted it, but that he found peace in it.

Maybe that would change.

Maybe it wouldn’t.

But all of life was decided moment by moment, and it didn’t
all
have to be in crisis.

The Tha’alaan waited in silence. Kaylin could hear it the way she might have heard another person breathing.

Knowing what was wanted – although it hadn’t occurred to her until this moment – she lifted her hands from Grethan’s, and raised them to her throat. There, unseen but felt, lay the pendant she had taken from a dead Dragon. She lifted it, felt the weight of its chain, and she slowly raised it above Grethan’s head. He bowed that head, and she let it, gently, fall.

“Water isn’t the only element in the garden,” she told him softly. “And it isn’t the only one that can speak, or listen. Talk to the others, sometime.”

His eyes widened slightly; she had surprised him.

She felt the sharp urge to tell him a story, and suppressed it; where it had come from, she didn’t know – but he was too old for the story circle.

Then again, so was the fire.

Lifting her hands, she touched both sides of his face. She touched him as a Healer, expending the power she used in the service of the midwives and the Hawks for whom doctors would be too damn late. She didn’t need to close her eyes to feel the damage he had done to himself; she could feel the dead, mangled nerves beneath the scar tissue on his forehead as clearly as she could see the scar.

“Maybe,” she told Grethan, “you had to be lost, in order to be found. I don’t know. I was,” she added, surrendering that much. “And I would have stayed lost if the Hawklord hadn’t found me. Maybe I didn’t deserve it – being found. Maybe I still don’t. I have a foul temper, and sometimes, damn it, I
want
things to be
someone
‘s fault – because that means it’s not mine.

“But it’s stupid to feel that way, to think it. It doesn’t actually change what
is
. I became a Hawk, and I’m damn proud of the Hawk. Become The Keeper, and you’ll do more, for more people, than I will ever be able to do. They won’t know it, but we will.

“Don’t hate what you can’t be. Don’t hate what you can’t have.” Words, paraphrased, that the Hawklord had told her, seven long years ago.

His eyes filmed.

Healing Catti had been hard. But healing Grethan was somehow as natural as breathing; as natural as telling the elemental fire a story; as natural as telling a dead Dragon the end of his tale.

She knew Grethan was in pain when the nerves began to grow again, when the flesh began to form. But he accepted the pain, possibly because he thought it was a deliberate punishment, and no more than he deserved. But it wasn’t. It just was.

And when she had finished, she was not surprised to see a glyph on her arm flicker brightly with a color she had no word to describe before it faded entirely from sight.

Mayalee crowed with glee, with utter, complete triumph. And Grethan bent to pick her up as she deserted Severn’s lap in an instant and leaped toward him. Their antennae twined and overlapped, and if Grethan cried, Kaylin couldn’t see him; she could see Mayalee’s mess of hair.

“Dock, if you push Catti
one more time,
I am leaving you in the foundling hall, do you understand?”

Dock, otherwise known as Ian if you wanted to annoy him, glared at Catti. “She never lets me finish a single sentence!”

“I let you finish that one!”

Severn looked at Kaylin with a very firmly fixed smile. Out of the corner of his mouth, he said, “Are you
sure
this is a good idea?”

“Catti – let Mayalee talk to some of the other children! Chant, use your words, damn it!” She had to raise her voice just to be heard. When she had carried Mayalee – on her back – into the Foundling Hall, the children had erupted like mage-fire, crowding around them with open curiosity. It was hard to think of them as rude, although technically it would have been hard to classify the questions that fell out of their constantly open mouths as anything else.

But Mayalee didn’t seem to take offense, and she answered them all as well as she could, which, given her Elantran was all being borrowed from the Tha’alaan, took time. She had about a hundred or a thousand questions of her own to ask, as well.

Kaylin wouldn’t have even considered delaying her journey home, but Mayalee had asked if Kaylin had children of her own, and while Kaylin had been saying no, Severn had said, “Oh, about two dozen of them.”

And that had pretty much decided that, although the explanation of what the Foundling Hall actually
was
made no sense to the girl at first.

Marrin watched her kits with affectionate disapproval, content for the moment to let Kaylin play the heavy. She did discreetly remind Kaylin that consistency was necessary, and that threats were only useful if one was actually prepared to carry them out, but Marrin always said things like that.

To no one’s surprise, Sandrina asked Mayalee where she lived, and then followed it up with the much more pressing question, “Can we visit there?”

To which Mayalee had instantly responded “YES!”

Expecting some rescue from Marrin’s quarter, Kaylin was shocked to see the denmother of the Foundling Hall nod. “If Kaylin and Severn will escort you, and if you promise to behave, you can go.”

And that was that.

She could barely remember the dread she had felt when she’d first approached the guardhouse that kept the rest of the city at bay. It seemed as if it had happened in another life, and as she walked, Severn caught Kaylin’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. She looked up at him in surprise, and then offered him a rare, unguarded smile.

But the smaller children, having seen this, absolutely insisted on their turn holding Kaylin’s hand, and in the end, both Kaylin and Severn ambled toward the guard with two children in voluntary tow.

The guard looked neither grim nor defensive; his expression was one of – joy. Just joy. Mayalee caught Catti’s hand and dragged her toward the guard, who bent to greet them both.

The guard’s stalks entwined briefly with Mayalee’s, and before Kaylin could say a word, they left Mayalee’s and gently brushed Catti’s forehead. Catti didn’t seem to mind, although she found it confusing, but Mayalee was – as Kaylin walked into hearing range – insisting that this was how you said “hello”
properly
.

And what Catti did, Dock was willing to do, and soon, all the children followed suit. It was
not
the same as the first visit.

But Kaylin was aware that the guard’s joy was not just for the sight of Mayalee; he was happy to see
all
of the children.

Kaylin nodded as he finally managed to rise. “We’re here to deliver Mayalee, but she invited – ”

“Of course. She told me,” he added with a grin. “I’m not sure how far you’ll get, but Ybelline is expecting you.”

It was fair warning; they entered the quarter single file, and less than a city block from the guardhouse, they were greeted by children of all ages, who ran like water through the foundlings until it was hard – in the running and chattering mass of chaotic youth – to tell them apart.

Severn, divested of his duties, walked over to Kaylin and smiled. “You think they’ll like it here.”

“I can’t see how they wouldn’t,” she told him. “And I think… I think I’d like to bring them here every so often. It’s not what I was afraid it was, and maybe they won’t be afraid, either, when they become – well, whatever it is they want to become.”

“Adults?”

“That, too.”

Ybelline was, indeed, waiting for them, and they met her three blocks in. The whole Tha’alani quarter seemed to have gathered in the streets, but it wasn’t exactly a parade. There was, however, food and sweet water in abundance, and oddly sweet cakes, as well. She hadn’t the heart to chide her children for their terrible manners because they were in so much of a hurry to capture every experience they couldn’t be pinned down for long.

But she had no fear of losing them, here.

In fact, she had no fear at all in this place.

“Kaylin,” Ybelline said, bowing low. “Severn.”

Kaylin smiled, and when the Tha’alani woman extended a hand in greeting, Kaylin shook her head, walked past the extended arm, and folded her own arms tightly around the castelord of the Tha’alani.

With no hesitation whatsoever, Ybelline abandoned the protocol of the deaf, and she returned Kaylin’s hug, brushing strands of hair out of her eyes, and touching her forehead gently with her antennae.

She did not ask for promises, or for secrecy, or for silence. She asked for nothing. Took nothing.

Offered everything, and for a moment, Kaylin was willing to bask in the comfort of the contact; in the sense that she would not be alone unless she desired it.