The Emperor's Wolves (Wolves of Elantra #1) - Michelle Sagara Page 0,174
are free to rejoin the Tha’alaan in their daily life. I look forward to it. I have spent too long without the steadying voice of the people I have governed and protected.”
“But you didn’t want her to bear that burden any earlier than she had to.”
“No—but that is our way. We believe that we can shoulder a burden we have shouldered for decades for just another day, week, month—just another year. I have regrets and a touch of guilt, but she has made her own will known. She will be our castelord. She will not make the decisions I made; she will make different decisions and possibly different mistakes.”
“But she knows the mistakes of the previous castelords?”
“Yes. But ruling is like this walk—we will go to my home, not hers. I believed it was risky and unnecessary. She believed it was risky but necessary. We are both possessed of the same information, and we reach different conclusions based on experience and previous failures. We both have the same desire as rulers. It is the experience and prior failures that shift or change what we feel is best; it is mostly the failures that govern the risks we will take going forward.
“I trust her to do what she feels is best. Always. I do not expect to agree with every decision she makes. We share a racial mind, but we are not bees; we have our own thoughts and beliefs. Different conclusions do not make her evil.”
“And yours?”
“As I said, it is time, for me. Were it not for her intervention I would have crossed a line that should never be crossed. It seemed sane to me at the time. Sane, rational, necessary. It did not seem sane to her, and in retrospect, she is right.”
“Adellos.”
The castelord—the man who would not be castelord for much longer—grinned. The grin robbed his face of years, of age; he looked much younger. “It is an advantage we have,” he continued, his voice softer. “When we give into our fears, when the fears drive us to act, our people are standing by, ready to grab us, to slap us, to tackle us—to stop us, in the end, from doing things we will regret forever.
“We make mistakes. We demand, often, the right to those mistakes. It is how we learn. Not all choices result in disaster—if they did, the Tha’alaan would have a different weight, a different responsibility. I am grateful that she intervened.”
“Do they know?”
“The Tha’alanari?”
Severn nodded.
“No.”
“And they will not hear it from this?”
“No. The children watch. They are the predominant witnesses; it is what they see—and what their feelings convey. They hear what we say within the Tha’alaan; they are not adept at uncovering what is simply spoken. Ybelline still considers it unwise.”
Severn agreed with Ybelline. He did so silently.
Her hand tightened briefly around his, but she did not release it. He wasn’t uncomfortable with silence, not a silence broken by laughter, some of it shrieking, all of it exuberant.
He allowed himself to relax. Allowed himself to watch the children, who were staring at him with open curiosity. Even allowed himself to wink at one or two just to watch their delight or astonishment or confusion.
This, he thought, was what he had gone to the Emperor to protect. This enclave of people who could share thoughts and emotions without words, and who were not afraid to be seen and known as themselves; they knew no other way. These children, so different from the child he had once been, and the child Elianne had become.
He had been accepted as a Wolf. He served the Emperor, and the Halls of Law, directly. What his responsibilities had been on the day he had entered the Wolflord’s office had been hazy and unclear; this might have been just another way to earn money, another way to stave off the vagaries of weather and hunger.
What it was, however, was this. The protection of this color, this warmth, this excitement and curiosity. He had helped to buy this moment, had helped to protect it. As he walked between two people who had given significantly more of their lives to do just that, he understood the weight of the oath he had offered the Emperor in an entirely different context.
He could, and did, embrace it.
He tightened his own hand around Ybelline’s as they continued to walk toward Adellos’s home, and the unknown future.
* * *
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First: thanks to Melissa Pixley, without whose charity bid in the Pixel Project drive this novel would not exist. She also caught a very unfortunate error before anyone else had to see it.
Thanks to Terry Pearson for providing a home-away-from-home and a desperately needed two-week writing retreat on extremely short notice, without which this book would have sailed happily past its actual deadline.
Thanks to my family, who cheerfully sent me off on the aforementioned desperately needed writing retreat. Not because I’m cranky when under the deadline gun. Honest.
My mother and father, as usual, stepped up to do a lot of the running around that keeps the house running.
Thanks to Team Mira for the fabulous cover: Kathleen Oudit, the art director, and Shane Rebenschied, the artist, hit it out of the park.
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