The Emperor's Wolves (Wolves of Elantra #1) - Michelle Sagara Page 0,39

she ran. But I’m the last person she’ll ever want to see. I think—I think she could be happy here. She always dreamed of crossing the bridge. We all did. Ybelline?

I’m here.

I’m tired. I’m just so tired.

I know. It is safe to sleep here. It is safe, for now.

* * *

Helmat did not choose to speak until Ybelline’s stalks detached themselves from Severn’s forehead. She continued, however, to hold the young man, who appeared to be sleeping. Her arms were slender; shorter and smaller than Severn’s in all ways. But there was strength in her, regardless.

“Well?”

Her face was adorned with tears; she had shed them while in communion, and they had not yet ceased to fall. Helmat was no stranger to Tha’alani tears; they fell often, when the Tha’alani were at work. These tears, however, were different. He knew it. En knew it.

Garadin’s enlarged face had long since dissipated from the far wall, the mirror connection severed. Helmat was grateful for the absence. Garadin—and all of his kin—were the most difficult, the most coldly truculent, in the wake of an investigation such as this.

Ybelline, however, was not. Helmat had clasped his hands loosely behind his back; he left them there. Had the decision been his to make, he would have ordered Ybelline back to the Tha’alani compound—ah, no, quarter—and canceled the request until someone like Garadin could fulfill it. Seeing her face, her reddened eyes, the tears she did not bother to wipe away, he felt a visceral surge of self-loathing.

He was Lord of Wolves for a reason. None of this conflict now showed. He had, in the end, accepted that she would do the job, and he endured the consequences. “Is Severn sleeping?”

“Yes.”

“Will he wake if you let go of him?”

“Probably.”

“You don’t want to let go of him.”

“Not yet.”

En moved from the wall against which he was leaning. “What did you find?”

“He killed two children. Girls,” she added, aware of Helmat. En didn’t often differentiate between victims if they were mortal.

“Ybelline,” En said. Helmat was willing to wait for her to gather her thoughts and put them into cogent—and professional—words. Elluvian, however, was not. He had never been particularly patient, a fact Helmat found ironic. The Barrani were Immortal; they could be killed but absent murder, they had no fundamental lack of time.

Ybelline’s glance flickered over En and away. “He was not paid to kill them. They were not assassinations.”

“But children.”

She nodded. “I think, in his position, you would have done the same.”

“Would you?”

She shook her head, but the movement was slow and thoughtful. “I do not think I would have believed that there was no other choice. Even if that were, in the end, proved true. But you? You would have believed it.”

Helmat stiffened. “Tell me, then. Tell me everything.”

“You are aware that there was some commotion in the Imperial Court recently?”

“There’s always a commotion in the Imperial Court.”

“The Hawks have adopted a mascot. That was the word that was used. Intelligence documents highlighted it; the person who wrote the report was clearly not a person from whom all sense of humor has been leeched. I would expect you to be peripherally aware of the difficulty; it involved the Halls of Law.”

“It didn’t involve the Wolves.”

Her expression made clear that she was tired of games for the day, but he held his peace for a moment. It was far easier to see anger—even chilly as it was—on her face than pain or grief.

“I am aware of the unusual situation.”

“You are aware of the reasons that it became so?”

“Mortals are seldom mascots, but yes, I am aware of the reason the Emperor was against it.”

“And against the survival of the child in question.”

“And against the survival of the child in question, yes.”

“It is my belief that that child, Severn, and the two children he killed are linked.”

Helmat regarded the sleeping man in question. The killing of children carried with it a weight of assumptions, evoked a visceral disgust, that the killing of adults of any race did not. Even for Helmat. Perhaps especially for Helmat. Wolves killed, and were killed, in the line of duty. It happened frequently enough that it was not remarkable. It was always regrettable.

Helmat could think of no cases—he would search through Records later—in which those unavoidable and regrettable deaths involved children. The Wolves had hunted children before, it was true—but only in tandem with kidnappers the Emperor had deemed sufficiently dangerous. The Emperor, however, erred on the side of caution when handing down his