*
Kattea left Gilbert standing to one side of the room; he was, once again, unaware of his surroundings, his two eyes blinking rapidly, his third staring at nothing anyone in the room could see. The familiar on Kaylin’s shoulder lifted his head, looked at Gilbert and snorted. He then lowered it again and closed one eye. Kaylin thought he would sleep, but he lifted his head once more, grumbling, and stretched his wings, smacked Kaylin—possibly accidentally—on the cheek with one and pushed himself off her shoulder.
He flew to Kattea and hovered in front of her pale face. He didn’t land; he did squawk—quietly, for him—while he hovered.
“Put out your arm,” Kaylin told the younger girl, gentling her voice as she realized Kattea was rigid with fear. Kattea blinked. Her eyes widened as she looked at the familiar, and some of that fear—though not the bulk of it—lessened. She put her arm out, and the familiar—complaining quietly the entire time—landed on her forearm, then inched his way up to her small shoulder.
She giggled. It was part nerves and partly the effect of his small claws; he didn’t dig in, but they tickled.
“We will not touch you without your permission,” Scoros said again. “Fear,” he continued, in a very conversational voice, “is difficult for any of us to deal with. You think adults don’t feel fear—but you are wrong. We all feel fear. It is part of being human. Secrets are harder for my people. Children don’t have any; they have not yet learned how to keep things from their kin. But because they can see the experiences of the rest of us, they understand that their fear, or their sense of shame, is not unique—it is natural. For your kin, the shame and the fear grow far deeper roots; they become larger and stronger.
“It is not so with the Tha’alani. There is nothing that you have felt that we have not felt. There is nothing new in it, for us; it is new to you because you have nothing to compare it with. But we understand that your secrets are necessary to you and the way you think and live.
“In your world, which is our world in the near future, almost everyone who lives in the city has died. In our world, which is our present, that future has not happened—yet. It is to prevent that destruction that we ask you now to consider allowing us to see parts of your life. We don’t know what destroys the city. Any clue—any information that your parents might have given you, anything that your neighbors might have said to your parents when you were too young to understand the words—might help us.”
The small dragon nuzzled her cheek—and then bit her hair.
“No,” Kattea said.
The small dragon squawked.
Gilbert failed to notice any of this. Kaylin wondered what he had heard in the Tha’alaan; he didn’t hear what she’d heard, to be so frozen in place by it. She wondered, briefly, if all thought had...dimensionality; if there were parts of thought itself that she couldn’t grasp, even if they were her own thoughts. She didn’t particularly like where this was leading.
Kattea shook her head again. No.
And Kaylin wanted to shake the girl until her teeth rattled. Which was wrong. She knew it was wrong, but they had so little information that any might prevent the looming disaster.
“Yes,” Ybelline said quietly, as Kaylin startled. The Tha’alani castelord was standing so close to Kaylin they should have been touching. They weren’t. “But that is the shadow fear casts, always. Kattea’s fear. Our own fear. But we cannot be you. We cannot be Kattea. What we can justify in the heat of the moment, we must live with forever; it becomes part of not only who we are, but who our people are. Every action we take shapes and defines us.
“And there is enough darkness at our roots. We have struggled for generations to lift ourselves out of our past. We will not go there again.”
The small dragon squawked; it was a softer sound and reminded Kaylin of crooning. With edges.
Kattea started to cry. The tears trailed down her cheeks, but didn’t give way to sobbing; her breath wobbled, but she held herself upright. Sleeves dashed tears away almost angrily. “My dad was a Sword,” she said, spitting the words out as if only force would eject them. “A Sword.”
She had said that before.
“Most of the Swords died. Some of the Swords were ordered over the bridge—two bridges—and they made people follow. My dad was one of them. It was his job, he said. He was supposed to keep the city safe. He was supposed to be there to stop fear from turning people into—” She stopped.