Kaylin opened her mouth.
Gavin spoke first. “Red had some concerns. I told you: you want that information, you’ll need to mirror in for it, or talk to Red yourself.”
Thanks, Gavin. Grimacing, she moved again. “Gilbert, can you see standing stones here?”
“Stones?”
Kaylin took that as a no.
“Private,” Gavin said sharply.
She glanced back at him while the familiar complained.
“What are you doing?”
“When I look through my familiar’s wing, I can see three stones; they’re in a triangular pattern. I’m examining them.”
“That’s not what he means,” Kattea said. She hesitated and then added, “What he means is, you—you’re kind of standing in that guy’s face.”
“On?”
“No. In.” She started to come out from behind Gilbert’s back, and Kaylin realized he was holding her in place. His third eye hadn’t closed, and she could see reflected light across the whole of its surface. “It’s kind of creepy.”
“This place—it is not stable,” he said. He turned to Kattea. “Kattea, return home.”
“I’m not going without—”
“Now.” This last word was not uttered quietly. Kaylin wouldn’t have been surprised if the whole neighborhood heard it. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the inhabitants of the Palace heard it.
Kattea surprised Kaylin; she hung on, but she was pale in her resolution and visibly trembling.
His shoulders sagged and he lifted her. “I am sorry. I am not accustomed to company; not like yours. You are too slight for this, and I do not want to see you hurt.”
Pale, she said nothing.
“What did you see, Gilbert?” Kaylin asked quietly.
He was silent for a long moment, his gaze fixed on Kattea, who was now seated in the crook of his arm as if she were a baby. An angry baby, but still precious. “I told you that when I met Kattea, it was difficult for me to see her. To perceive her.”
“You said she was like Lord Nightshade.”
“Yes. And you disagreed.”
“I disagreed less profoundly than Kattea would.”
“That is true. But regardless, it was difficult to see her. Difficult to hear her. It is...difficult for me to see the boundaries of your buildings, your streets. It is difficult to eat your food. It is like...grasping the smoke from your fire would be to you; grasping it and trying to make it solid, to make it functional.
“There are key areas, geographies if you will, in your world that are not as insubstantial or difficult, to me. The Castle was one. Your Helen is another. If I look out across the breadth of your city, there are a handful of monuments that are as solid—to my eyes—as your city is to yours.
“What you did for me, what you called healing, was helpful in this regard. I do not see you as you see yourself—I do not think that is possible—but I see you more clearly than I did before.”
“The basement of your house?”
“It is real, to me.”
“And the basement of this one?”
“It is real.”
“The stones?”
“They are not, in any sense of the word, stone.” He exhaled. “Seeing you at all, seeing Kattea, is an act of...translation? You are writ in a tongue of which I have only rudimentary understanding. I glean meaning, but it takes effort, and it is exhausting. Your familiar is real to me. He is a comfort. He understands the difficulty—but he does not share it. He speaks my tongue as comfortably as he speaks yours, in a metaphorical sense.
“The bodies, and the stones that you can see only with the help of your familiar, are not like you, or Severn, or any of your other friends. But they are nonetheless much more like you than I am.”
Kaylin could only barely understand how someone could look at standing stones and confuse them with actual people. “How are they like us?”
Squawk.
“If you saw what Gilbert sees, you could’ve tried harder to communicate it.”
Squawk.
“Could you speak with the stones?”
Gilbert frowned.
“You can speak with us,” Kaylin pointed out.
He turned to Kaylin. “You will have to take Kattea.”
Kattea threw her arms around his neck. She would not look at Kaylin at all.
“Every attempt at communication is an act of inversion,” Gilbert explained. “And I am not certain that it is safe for Kattea to be in my physical presence while I make the attempt. It caused your Nightshade some difficulty.”
“Kattea—”
“No.”
Gilbert closed his eyes. “You understand that I am concerned for your cohesion?”
The girl nodded into his shoulder. “You promised.”
“I did not promise—”
“You promised you would let me choose.”
“I did not promise that I would let you commit suicide.” Above Kattea’s head, he asked, “Is that the correct word?”
“Pretty much. You understand that Kattea is much, much younger than Nightshade, right?”
“Yes.”
“Letting Nightshade choose—”
Kattea cursed.
“—or not. If the stones are alive, if the stones are like us, why do you think there’s a risk to Kattea?”