“Why lie?” Kaylin asked.
“Because if we didn’t, we’d kill everyone in sight. If there is no safety, there are still variations on acceptable danger. Do you know what trust is, Lord Kaylin?”
Kaylin waited, lips compressing. It kept words from escaping.
“Trust is what we have when we believe the people surrounding us are harmless. It is the comfort we take when we are certain that we will survive anything they might do to hurt us. Do you understand?”
Winston looked confused.
Kaylin, however, was not. As if Sedarias were her thirteen-year-old self, she met the Barrani’s blue-eyed glare. “You’re wrong.”
“Decades. Only decades.”
“I’ve lived that way. I did it for the longest six months of my life, and at the end of that six months, all I wanted was death. Mine,” she added. “I had nothing to offer anyone except death. Or worse. I looked at the future before me, and all I could see was pain and isolation and fear. I told myself that if I survived, I could change my life—and only if I survived. I did things to survive that I will never, ever forget. And on the bad days, if I could go back in time and eradicate myself, I would.”
Silence. Sedarias finally broke it. “You’re a Hawk.”
“I went to the Halls of Law to assassinate the Hawklord.”
“Teela says you are lying.”
“She’s wrong. It happens.” Kaylin exhaled. “Fine. I went to make the attempt. I didn’t expect to succeed. I expected to die. I expected to die, and if I’d had the strength, I would have saved everyone the trouble and drowned myself in the Ablayne. I didn’t. I didn’t want to live, but I couldn’t end my own life.
“If survival were the only thing that mattered, I wouldn’t be a Hawk. I wouldn’t know Teela. I wouldn’t understand the laws. I wouldn’t understand that no one is perfect; that the laws can be both good and inadequate at the same time. I do my best. My best changes from day to day. But I want the Hawks. I want people who struggle to do more than just survive. I want people I can believe in.
“I always wanted it.” Kaylin inhaled. Held her breath for five seconds and exhaled. “I trust Teela with my life. According to your definition, I can’t.” She glanced at Winston, who seemed to have calmed down a bit. “But...you wanted it as well.”
Sedarias folded her arms.
“If you hadn’t, would you know the names of the cohort? The True Names?”
“I did that, you foolish, foolish child, because it was the only way I could render them harmless. I did it because my will is the stronger, the greater, will. If I knew their names, I could defend myself against any possible attack. I did it because I had confidence in my own power.”
Allaron placed a hand on Kaylin’s shoulder. She glanced at him, and he shook his head.
But no. No. “Then why,” Kaylin said, as Allaron’s hand tightened, “did you attack the green? Why did you attack us when we went to perform the regalia? You almost destroyed an entire race—mine, incidentally.”
“We did not—”
“Fine. Your advice and your plans almost allowed total idiots to destroy an entire race. Some of those idiots are part of that race. I’m not going to quibble specifics.”
Terrano held up a hand. “Please talk more slowly.”
Kaylin wanted to shriek. She wondered, then, what the inside of Sedarias’s head sounded like. Hers was unusually quiet. “Fine. Why did you attack the green? Have you forgotten? Has your stay in Alsanis these past months damaged your Barrani memory?”
Silence.
“Because if it has, I remember. You wanted to change the past. It was impossible. It was always going to be impossible. But you did it anyway. Do you remember why?” None of the cohort spoke. Kaylin therefore turned to Terrano, the only member on the outside. “Terrano?”
His glance skittered off the ice of Sedarias’s expression. “...To save Teela.”
“Teela who abandoned you and returned to her home?”
“She didn’t abandon us,” he snapped. “You know what happened—why are you even talking about this?”
“You wanted to save Teela. Teela who was cut off from you. Teela who was no threat to you, and could never be a threat again. Teela, who you’d known for, what, months? At most?”
Allaron’s hand tightened again. Kaylin turned her head and said, “I have no intention of shutting up. Give up. Or break my arm.”
He actually reddened, but removed his hand.
“I understand who you say you are. I understand who you think you are. But there’s more. You came back for Teela. You meant to escape—I don’t know to where—but you didn’t want to abandon Teela, the last of your number.” She exhaled. “Nightshade never gave up on Annarion. Iberrienne never gave up on Eddorian. You all know this. Iberrienne almost destroyed us because he could be approached, could be manipulated. Why? He wanted his brother back.”
“I am certain Nightshade is having regrets.”
Kaylin’s smile was almost a wince. “Possibly. He wouldn’t go back, though. I don’t know what family was to you,” she continued, once again speaking to Sedarias. “But you could not have built this cohort if you hadn’t desired more than the constant political struggle to survive. If the family you were born into was nothing but that, you wanted more. You made more.
“I trust Teela. She won’t do what I tell her. She doesn’t obey me. She doesn’t serve me. We’re not one person or one mind. But...neither are you. I know the cohort argues; Mandoran whines about it. I know that you’ve been arguing with Annarion at a distance. And I know that you’ve never even tried to exert the force of your will on his True Name. Could you? Yes. You could try.
“But it would break something, and you know it.”
Sedarias glared at Kaylin. She transferred the glare to Eddorian, and then bounced it back. No, Kaylin thought, Sedarias’s head was not a quiet place right now.
“I wanted,” she finally said, “what Terrano wanted. I wanted to leave. I wanted to find a place that was not this one.”
“But you stayed.”
“I stayed because the majority of us wanted to stay. I knew what awaited me, and you are right: I did not want it.” She exhaled and seemed to dwindle in size, although her anger was rawer and harsher. It would be. It was now pointed inward as well as outward. Or perhaps, Kaylin thought, it was always pointed in both directions. She knew quite well what that was like. “I was the one who suggested the exchange of names.”
“You weren’t,” Terrano said—because he had to say it out loud.
“I was.”
“You weren’t.”
“Who was, then?”
“Annarion.”