feels that I owe you an apology.”
“Apologies are considered too trivial for attempted murder, at least among my people,” Severn replied. He had chosen to speak High Barrani.
Adellos smiled. His eyes remained green as he offered Severn a small nod. “As they are among almost all of the people of my acquaintance. She feels I owe you an explanation.”
“And you don’t agree.”
“No. Had explanations been a possibility, I would not have made the attempt.”
“It seems extreme, but I lack all of the necessary information.”
“I do not believe you do.” His eyes, green, darkened. “I believe you have far too much information; you are a threat—an unintentional threat—to our people and their sanity.”
“Not nearly as much of a threat,” Severn replied, “as the castelord committing murder would be.” There was accusation and heat in the words; Severn abandoned any attempt to hide them.
“There was no threat in that,” Adellos replied. “My memories, as I said, would not touch the Tha’alaan. They would not darken the Tha’alanari. It is only Ybelline who would be forced to bear their burden—and given the memories themselves, the burden would not be heavier.”
“I do not believe Scoros or Garadin—or Timorri for that matter—agree.”
Adellos said nothing. He started to rise, and then returned, heavily, to the chair.
“You met the Oracle,” he then said. “I had not expected that. Had not, in fact, been informed about it at all. Ybelline did not inform the Tha’alanari.”
“With cause,” Ybelline said.
“Do you now believe that I would kill or harm any of our people?”
“Do I believe it? No. But my beliefs are now just that—they are conjectures, where you are concerned. It is a risk I was not willing to take.”
“You were not willing to take that risk before I attempted to harm Severn.”
“To kill him,” she said.
Severn lifted a hand; he touched Ybelline’s elbow and she turned her attention toward him. She was distant now, the warmth that had seemed so essential a part of her nature frozen by her anger, her sense of betrayal.
“Why did you choose to close your thoughts off entirely? As I said, I had not yet attempted to harm Severn. I had not interceded in the investigation.”
“That, also, is not true,” she said. “You did not attempt to gainsay the Imperial Service—we both know any such attempt would have ended in failure. But the witnesses Severn wished interrogated? Those deaths are on your hands.”
“I did not kill any of them.”
“They would not have died had you not passed the information on. You gave the names and locations to the killers. I believe that makes you an accessory to murder. An accomplice.”
“Tell me, Ybelline, do you no longer believe in justice? Was justice not served by their deaths? They had quick, painless deaths in comparison to the deaths of our people, and their deaths—unlike the deaths they helped orchestrate—did not scar the Tha’alaan.”
She turned to face Severn. “I was the source of the leak.”
But Severn had inferred that from the conversation the two Tha’alani were now having—a conversation that he could hear. He had thought that this was done for his benefit. It was the reason the Tha’alanari spoke out loud in his presence.
He understood then that it wasn’t the reason Ybelline had chosen verbal communication. She was unwilling to share any part of her thoughts with the castelord. There was no other way of communicating.
“Do you believe that those witnesses died to hide or cover up the crimes that even to this day reverberate in the Tha’alaan?” the castelord continued. “Is that what you now think of me?”
“What I think of you is irrelevant,” Ybelline replied, her voice controlled in a way that Severn’s had not been.
“It is not irrelevant to the Tha’alanari. It is not irrelevant to me.”
She closed her eyes. “I want to believe,” she said, the harshness of her tone at variance with her expression, “that you would not—that you would never—harm us in the way we were harmed by human mobs. I want to believe it because you have been our castelord, the single person responsible for our safety and our sanity.
“And perhaps that is our fault, in the end—we allowed you to carry this burden in isolation for far too long. You should have retired.”
“I could not,” he replied, his eyes open and entirely focused on Ybelline. “You know why.”
“I was not yet born.”
“You were, but you were an infant. You were not even under consideration, and Ybelline, there was no one else. You know the Tha’alanari—you are familiar with