The Consort looked as if she would speak, but demurred. She then turned to Kaylin. “If you are not here for An’Teela’s sake, why have you come?”
Kaylin indicated her tabard. “It’s Hawk-related. I would say it’s Hawk business, but I haven’t found out why, yet.”
The Consort chuckled. “Meaning you require a crime and have not yet found evidence of one?”
“Something like that.”
“And you feel that she does not understand the Barrani.” The Consort’s smile was fond as she turned it on Teela.
“She is not attempting to invent a crime; she is genuinely certain one exists. Were she to be convinced that one did not exist, she would move on. It is not political on her part.”
“Ah. Well. What crime am I to help you uncover then? I admit that I have been feeling somewhat—how do you say it? At loose ends? Yes. At loose ends, lately.”
Teela said, to Kaylin, “She is bored. And you are never boring, in the end. Frustrating and sentimental and frequently oblivious, but never boring.”
Kaylin tried not to resent this, and mostly succeeded. But she frowned. Which of course, everyone noticed, even Severn. “You’re not feeling bored.”
“Bored was not the word I used, and if you dislike it, you must take up the word choice with your kyuthe.”
“You are worried.” This almost entirely derailed Kaylin’s attempt to put together a politic sentence that involved Candallar.
“I am always worried about something, Lord Kaylin. It comes with the responsibility of my position. It is also not considered terribly wise to make such a statement so baldly.”
“Sorry.”
“Distract me.”
“I wanted to ask you about Candallar.”
“Candallar? You speak of the outcaste fieflord of that name?”
“He’s the only one I know of.”
“Why do you ask about him?”
“Because I met him in person in the city I patrol.”
The Consort’s eyes darkened into the familiar shade of Barrani blue. “When?”
“Two days ago.”
“Where?”
“It doesn’t matter. I was on patrol, and he was there. He was, I believe, invisible—which is questionably legal—and he meant to meet the Barrani who otherwise patrol that area.”
“Meeting with Barrani is not illegal by Imperial standards, surely?” The emphasis on Imperial was not flattering.
“No, of course not. But he’s a fieflord, and the fieflords, with the exception of Tiamaris, don’t generally come to the city for legal reasons. The people from the city who visit their fiefs don’t generally visit out of the goodness of their hearts, either.” Kaylin rigidly avoided looking at Teela. At all.
But the Consort didn’t. “An’Teela?”
“It is your decision, Lady.”
“Why do you believe I have information of relevance?”
Because you know Nightshade and you even like him was not actually a good answer. Because Nightshade told me I should talk to you was an even worse one, on reflection. “I don’t,” she finally said, speaking in Barrani. “But you are the person closest to the High Court I can talk to. You do not play politics the way that the rest of the Lords do because until there’s another Consort candidate, political games are irrelevant. You see everything from above, but you can afford to remain neutral.”
“Do you think I have much choice?” The Consort waited until the silence stretched thin enough for breath to break it. “I am the mother of the race. I have power. I can, in theory, refuse to offer names to my enemies. I can refuse to wake the children that are already rare enough in number. I can, in theory, do worse.
“But Kaylin, all of this was considered before the Lake was created. There are tests we must pass. The initial tests are difficult, but they are in keeping with any other test for any other training we receive as simple Barrani Lords. The Test of Name is less forgiving.” The Consort bowed her head. Lifted it. “There are tests that come later, when the first are passed, that are far, far more difficult. The politically powerful often send their daughters to the Lake as supplicants. Very few are the daughters who pass the initial tests who have returned.
“In order to be mother to our race, we cannot engage in the politics which are lifeblood to many of our kin. The ambitions of our parents aside, we cannot be beholden to anyone. If the line is more important to us than the race, we will never be given the duty and the task of guarding and guiding those names.”
“But I didn’t take any of those tests!”
“No.”
“And I—” Kaylin stopped. Her familiar had bitten her ear hard enough, she was certain, to draw blood.
“I have spoken at some length with Lord Andellen, purely socially. Did you know that he remains almost awed by the work you have undertaken with your mortal midwives? It garners you no acclaim—from my understanding, midwives are deplorably underappreciated by your kind. It affords you no monetary gain. It certainly does not benefit you personally. Why, then, do you do it?”
“Because I’m Chosen.”
“Oh?”
“The only good thing that came with these marks was the ability to heal. People died because I have these marks. They were horribly murdered, and they were kids. If I can save the lives of babies, if I can save the lives of their mothers, it’s like—it’s not that it brings the dead back. But...” She shrugged, uncomfortable now.
“You do not do it because the marks compel you.”
“No.”
“You are aware that you are not the only bearer of these marks in our long history?”
Kaylin nodded.
“You are aware that their power is not sentient in any obvious fashion? That the use to which the power is put is, in theory, in large part in the hands of its bearers?”
Kaylin nodded again, but less certainly. She didn’t really know what the power was or how to use it, beyond the act of healing itself. But...the words sometimes lifted themselves off her arms. And that implied purpose or awareness, to Kaylin.
“Could you condemn a baby to death for political reasons?”
“Of course not!”
“Of course.” The Consort’s smile was slender but genuine; there was a dangerous affection in it.
“The Lake tests for that? I mean, can it?”
“In a fashion, yes. More than that I cannot say. The neutrality of the mother is not absolute in matters of Court politics; we are Barrani, after all. But there is a sharp divide between that Court and our duties. It is not as difficult for me as it was for my mother; many of the people who conspired against her and her sons were people she had personally awakened. But it was not their treachery that placed the greater burden upon her.”
“It was the voices of the lost.” The voices of the damned, really, trapped beneath the High Halls because they did not have the strength of will—or the callousness—to escape the horror they found there.
“Yes, Kaylin. You have seen them. You have heard them. Everyone here now, everyone who can hear, has. I hear them,” she added softly. “And the Lake weeps at the sound.”