The Emperor's Wolves (Wolves of Elantra #1) - Michelle Sagara Page 0,78
lever.
As if in agreement with Severn’s thought, the Wolflord said, “She cannot rule and guide your people if she does not understand what they suffer. But Garadin, she knows this.
“If all of the Tha’alanari were like Ybelline, the fractures between our peoples would occur far less often. She came to interview Severn.”
“Interview? Is that what you now call it?” the Tha’alani man said in some disgust.
Ignoring this, the Wolflord continued. “I am aware of the effect of such interviews on our applicants. The majority do not consent to serve the Wolves or the Halls of Law in the wake of their meeting with the Tha’alani. The private not only agreed to serve but sought Ybelline out in the Tha’alani quarter a scant week after their interaction.
“Ybelline agreed to speak with him. I am certain that the Tha’alanari advised against such a meeting.”
Garadin’s silence was confirmation.
“She chose to meet with him anyway. They spoke.”
“What did they speak of?” Garadin demanded.
“The private has only barely returned; he has not had the time to tender a report, which I’m certain will be forthcoming. You are Tha’alanari—you have direct access to Ybelline in a way the private never will. Did you not ask her?”
Of course he had. She had, probably politely, refused to discuss it. She had refused Scoros; she had rejected the entreaties of the Tha’alanari as a whole. Severn had not been privy to those pleas. But she had informed him that Scoros had gone in search of the castelord, and she had not been forced to vacate either the room or her search for the information Severn felt necessary in the wake of Scoros’s errand.
To his surprise, Severn spoke. “What you want for her,” he said, “she wants for all of her people. She desires their safety; she wants to protect them. She’s done this by serving the Tha’alanari, and she’ll do more when she becomes castelord. But...she believes that she can’t know how to protect her people, how to be the castelord she wants to be, if she doesn’t understand all of the dangers they face.”
“No single person understands—”
“No human, no. I don’t know her as well as you do—I can’t. But do you honestly believe she hasn’t examined the full information the Tha’alanari carry with them, as a burden, so that most of the Tha’alani won’t have to? She has to know what you’re facing to change anything.”
Garadin was arrested; his glare had removed itself from the Wolflord’s face, and now rested firmly on Severn’s. His eyes, however, were no longer green. They weren’t gold, but the hazel implied a much calmer anger.
“How long did her...interview...with you last?”
Severn frowned. The question implied that Ybelline hadn’t shared the whole of that interview with the Tha’alanari.
“I don’t know. Judging the passage of time wasn’t my first priority.”
“What was?”
Severn shrugged. “What you feel about Ybelline, she feels about the entirety of the Tha’alani quarter. What I asked her to do is relevant to that. She wanted to do it, for the same reason that drove me to the quarter in the first place. I’m human. She’s Tha’alani. But the bridge between us is the need to catch the criminal.”
“Catching him will not change the past. It will not magically extirpate the horror of those experiences.”
Severn nodded, unmoved. “It will prevent the same crime from ever happening again. That’s what she wants. It’s what I want. But neither is relevant. It’s what the Emperor wants.”
“And if she had refused you, boy? If she had declined your request? Would you have then gone straight to the Emperor?”
Severn’s brows folded for a moment at the outrageous suggestion. “How would I speak to the Emperor?” he asked in honest confusion.
The Wolflord cleared his throat. “I am not, of course, the Emperor we all serve, but I am the voice of the Emperor in the Halls of Law; the Hawklord, the Swordlord, and the Wolflord are empowered to give commands in his name.”
“And would you have come to Helmat, to force her to do the work?”
Severn met, and held, Garadin’s eyes. “No.”
“It was Helmat who acquired the requisite permission for you to come to plead your case at all.”
Severn nodded. “But it was not the Wolflord’s request. It was mine. I asked permission to visit Ybelline because I think we need answers.”
“Do you even understand the question?”
“I understand the reason I asked.”
Garadin snorted. His eyes were a lighter hazel now, his skin no longer leeched of color. “You are young, as she is young. I cannot imagine