angel is in the night and the night is in me! Because he is the Shadow That Walks. Because he believes some people cannot be saved, only stopped. Because when he kills an evil man, I feel not just the pleasure of mastery, I feel the whole world’s pleasure at the retribution—an evil man is an affront and I erase the blot. I balance the imbalance. He loves that—and Elene would have to lose the innocence I love about her for her to understand that man.”
“This man,” Dorian said, poking Kylar’s chest, “and this one—” he poked Kylar’s forehead—“are on their way to madness. Take it from one who knows.”
“I can change,” Kylar said, but his voice was hopeless.
“A wolf might become a wolfhound, son, but it will never be a lap dog.”
“We are at war,” Speaker Istariel Wyant said. Her voice was nasal, the accent High Alitaeran. She liked making pronouncements.
Ariel had wedged her bulk into a too-small chair in the Speaker’s office, high within the Alabaster Seraph. She was puffing from the climb up the stairs. One meal a day until I can manage the climb without wheezing. One.
Sometimes Ariel hated flesh, hated being chained to something so weak and needy. It took such care, such slavish devotion, and wanted such pampering. It was a perpetual distraction from things more important, like what the Speaker wanted of her.
Istariel Wyant was a tall, imperious woman with a patrician nose and brows plucked down to thin lines. She had knobby joints that made her look lanky rather than willowy, and despite her pinched middle-aged face, she had the most beautiful long blonde hair of any woman Ariel knew. Istariel adored her hair. Not a few of the Sisters whispered that she must have rediscovered some lost weave to make it so thick and glossy. It wasn’t true, of course, Istariel’s mother had had the same hair. It was one reason their father had married her after Ariel’s mother died. Besides, Istariel wasn’t that Talented.
“This war is not just over what it means to be a maja, but what it means to be a woman.”
Seeing the undisguisedly ironical look on Ariel’s face, Istariel changed tack. “How have you been, sister?”
Of course, every full maja was addressed as “Sister,” but Istariel warmed the word. Used for Ariel, “sister” hearkened back to the supposedly halcyon days of their youth together, some fifty years ago. Istariel definitely wanted something.
“Fine,” Ariel said.
Istariel tried again, valiantly. “And how are your studies progressing?”
“The last two years of my life have probably been a complete waste,” Ariel said.
“Still the same old Ariel.” Istariel tried to say it lightly, as if amused, but she didn’t quite put in the effort to make it convincing. She probably thought that because Ariel didn’t use any finely nuanced social snubs, she wasn’t aware of them.
When they had been younger and Ariel had cared more about what her aristocratic little sister thought of her, it had been a bitter irony for her. Ariel had always fallen squarely in Istariel’s blind spot. The near-genius with which Istariel instantly understood the men and women around her had never extended to Ariel, with whom she spent so much time. When Istariel looked at her, she saw Ariel’s broad peasant face and thick peasant limbs, her lack of social graces and lack of concern for the important things—privilege, power, and position—and she saw a peasant. Istariel thought she understood Ariel, so she stopped thinking about her at all. Now she even allowed her eyes to flick down.
“Yes, I’ve gotten fat,” Ariel said.
Istariel blushed. How she must hate how I can still make her feel like a child. “Well,” Istariel said, “I, I suppose you have put on a little . . .”
“And how are you, Speaker?” Ariel asked. Why was it she could master the eighty-four variations of the Symbeline weave with perfect timing, structure, and intonation, but not make conversation? Surely small talk should be reducible to perhaps a few hundred typical questions, delineated into conversation trees according to the conversant’s responses, how well one knew the conversant, what the current events were, and one’s position relative to the conversant.
Timing of the questions and the length of one’s responses would have to be studied as well, but many weaves required exact timing, too, and Ariel’s rhythm was perfect. One might have to take into account the physical setting: one would speak differently in the Speaker’s office than in a tavern. Topics of study could include how