although he was often more comfortable speaking his native tongue. “Sedarias isn’t saying that the powerful should do whatever they feel like at the moment; she is saying that they can.
“You can’t save everyone. It’s not possible. And there will always be people who need more than you and have less. Always. Even in your perfect world, unless you somehow imagine that everyone in that perfect world will all be the same. We’re immortal. We have time. You don’t. Would you make all mortals immortal? Attempts to do that have never worked well. Would you make all immortals mortal?”
“No.”
“Sedarias wants to know what you think your ideal world would look like.”
“Sedarias can drop dead.”
Silence. And then, because Sedarias had not dropped dead, “If you removed the fiefs, if you reformed them as Tiamaris is attempting to do, what will you do with your warrens? They are not, she infers, any safer for their occupants than the fiefs were for you.”
“They don’t have Ferals.”
“No; they have thugs who rule the warrens with more efficiency and more intelligence—or cunning. Your rule of law, your laws, haven’t prevented the warrens from existing.”
“Annarion, please stop passing on Sedarias’s opinions. I don’t want them, and they’re not relevant to what we’re trying to do here.”
“She points out—”
“I mean it.”
He fell silent. When he spoke again—and he did—he said, “I don’t agree with Sedarias, except in one way: if you feel responsible for everything, you’ll have no life of your own. If you can’t do everything—and not even you believe you can—then what is the point of anger or guilt? It’s like you’re feeling guilty, and that makes you angry, and then you’re angry at...what? The universe? The world? The people who abuse the power they do have?”
“The people who don’t care.”
“If we can’t change things, not caring is a way of surviving. Because caring or not caring has the same effect. Yes, perhaps we could say ‘but we care,’ but...if it doesn’t change anything, what does it even mean?”
“That part where I said stop?”
“Sorry. We find your worldview very, very confusing. Mandoran probably understands it best, but he’s having trouble explaining it and he thought you’d do a better job.”
“Mandoran is an idiot.”
For the first time since they’d left Helen, Annarion cracked a smile. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was there.
“If it makes much difference, Teela pointed out the midwives and the foundling hall.”
“In what context?”
“Well, they don’t pay you. And you’ve saved lives.”
Kaylin shrugged. “Did it make a difference to Sedarias?”
“Not really. But Sedarias’s family is—Well, you’ve seen her sister and her brother.” He hesitated. “You’ve been happy with the changes Lord Tiamaris is making in his fief.”
Kaylin nodded.
“They make pragmatic sense to Sedarias—if your people are starving, they’re going to be useless—but at heart, the world is like the fief. This one,” he added, with a trace of bitterness. “If you’re at the bottom, you’re dependent on the largesse of the powerful. In order to stand on your own, you have to be a power. She understands ties of affection and obligation—but she doesn’t understand a sense of obligation where those ties are nonexistent.
“Helen’s tried to explain it. But Sedarias thinks Helen has no choice but to think what she thinks because that’s the way she was built.”
Kaylin was offended on Helen’s behalf, and tried to squash it; Helen wouldn’t be offended. She exhaled. “Can we drop it?”
Annarion nodded.
“But tell Sedarias that I go to the foundling hall because it’s like seeing a bunch of little Kaylins who won’t be terrified of Ferals, won’t face starvation, and won’t be without protection. It’s like it helps me imagine a life that wasn’t mine for kids who might not survive otherwise. I survived because I was lucky. And because I had Severn.”
But that led to darker thoughts, and she shied away from those.
“You’re not worried about my brother.” The last word rose slightly.
“Not yet.”
“No?”
“We bumbled our way out of trouble. I’m guessing Nightshade knows what we did and how we did it. He won’t get stuck the same way we did. I’m more worried about Terrano.”
“Oh?”
“He’s more of a trouble magnet than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Annarion coughed.
“What?”
“Sedarias suggests you find a mirror.”
“I don’t go looking for trouble. I just trip over it.”
“Sedarias also says: fair enough. Is that the border?”
Kaylin glanced at Annarion; his eyes were narrowed. She hesitated, and Bellusdeo said, “Yes, that’s the border. What do you see when you look at it?”
“Fog. Or smoke.” Mandoran and Allaron joined him