Kaylin told her everything. Ybelline was Tha’alanari. What she saw in Kaylin’s thoughts, she could—with effort and discipline—keep out of the Tha’alaan. She showed Ybelline the three corpses that had been the start of her involvement; she showed Ybelline Gilbert, Gilbert’s basement and her attempt to heal him. She showed Ybelline the elemental water and told her what the water had said.
Her conscious memory was nowhere near as good as the memory Ybelline now touched, and Kaylin was perfectly willing to let the Tha’alani castelord rifle through all of it. She had no fear at all that Ybelline would judge her.
“Come with me,” Ybelline said, as she withdrew.
Kaylin hesitated, and Ybelline marked it. “I’m sorry. I want to introduce Gilbert and Kattea. Gilbert, Kattea, this is Ybelline—the castelord of the Tha’alani.”
Gilbert set Kattea down and offered the Tha’alani woman a very deep bow. It was not, strictly speaking, a Tha’alani greeting, but Ybelline interacted with enough people that she recognized it as a gesture of deep respect, regardless. Kattea’s stiff nod was less admirable and far more skittish—but this was something Ybelline understood, as well. Kaylin’s annoyance was deeper and lasted longer.
Then again, some of it was with her past self, and no one could get as angry with Kaylin as she herself could.
Gilbert offered Ybelline his hand. Kaylin stepped between them a shade too quickly. Ybelline, however, shook her head. “It is all right, Kaylin. It is a risk I am willing to take.”
“He’s not—”
“Yes, you’ve told me. But I have...done as I must. I have experienced my own death.” Her smile was slightly gray, but the resolve beneath it, unshaken. “Experiencing death is not, in the end, as terrifying as it seems at a remove; it is not fear, but fact.”
“Ybelline—”
“If you are not mistaken, he will help us. And if I am not mistaken, it is Gilbert’s help we now require.”
“It’s the ‘me not being mistaken’ part I’m worried about,” Kaylin replied.
Ybelline’s answering smile was deeper this time. “It is because you are young. If you do not trust yourself, that is...how do you say it? Not my problem.”
“That’s pretty much how we say it, yes.” Kaylin exhaled. “Gilbert, I’m not sure if you know the Tha’alani, or know about them.”
“Kattea fears them,” Gilbert said, which caused the younger girl to blanch. Then glare. “You do not.”
“No, I really don’t. If we could all communicate the way the Tha’alani do, I’d be out of a job. You will not find kinder or more understanding people anywhere, ever.”
“But you are still worried.”
Kaylin exhaled. “I am worried for them. When they speak to you, when they read your thoughts, those thoughts become part of what they know, and what they know is part of the Tha’alaan. Healing you...made it clear that you’re not like us. But if you’re different in the wrong way...”
“You are not castelord, Kaylin,” Ybelline said firmly. “And I am not a child to be protected when the future of my people—and yours—is imperiled.”
“I am not worried,” Gilbert said—to Kaylin. “It is frustrating; it is hard to make myself understood to your kind. What she knows—what she can know—cannot hurt me.”
“And if she touched your name?”
“That is not the way it works” was his quiet reply. He almost sounded regretful. He once again extended his hand; Ybelline took it. She hesitated.
“The functionality is within the stalks?” Gilbert asked, correctly identifying the hesitation.
“Not entirely—but yes. They are not always necessary for the Tha’alani.”
His smile was slender, but genuine; she’d amused him. She certainly hadn’t amused Kattea. Kaylin placed a staying hand on the younger girl’s shoulder.
“You let her touch you,” Kattea whispered.
“Yes, I did. The thing about Ybelline is this: she can see everything about you—all the things you hate, all the things you regret, all the things you would never tell anyone—” with each phrase, Kattea’s body stiffened slightly “—but she doesn’t judge you. She will never hate you, even if you hate yourself. I know it doesn’t make sense to you,” she added. “But I’m not worried for Gilbert.”
“You’re worried for her?”
Kaylin nodded. “Not because I think Gilbert will try to hurt her,” she added. “But I’m starting to think that people—like us—aren’t meant to understand people like Gilbert. I mean, we’re not even built so we can. I think there are whole parts of him that make no sense to us, and will never make sense to us. We can think about him on the outside until it’s exhausting, but—we’re not inside of him.”
Ybelline stiffened, in a much more obvious way than Kattea had; Kaylin crushed the girl’s shoulder, realized what she’d done and apologized.
“Gilbert’s like us, in one way,” Kattea surprised her by saying.
“Oh?”
“Or maybe he’s only like me.”
Paying attention to Kattea was easier, at the moment, than watching Ybelline. If Kaylin had thought her wan and pale before, it was nothing to the color she now became. But Ybelline was right. Kaylin was a private. Ybelline was castelord.
“How is he like you?” Kaylin asked, forcing her eyes away from the Tha’alani and Gilbert.