Cast in Oblivion

by Michelle Sagara

  “I don’t know if it was the right thing to do, dear,” Helen replied. “The right thing, the wrong thing—people get so focused on it.”

  “I’m an officer of the law, Helen.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. But think. The Hawklord’s decision, with regard to you, was right. It is not the only time a risk has been taken. You took that risk, to the Consort’s great displeasure, with the Devourer. It is not a risk I would have taken. If the Devourer had not been brought into the Keeper’s Garden, it would have been disastrous for our world. But because you could speak to the ancient behemoth, it is, once again, the right choice. Do you understand? Right or wrong is decided on the basis of a significant moment. Or perhaps, more accurately, wrong is. You should bathe,” she added. “And sleep.”

  Kaylin nodded.

  “Not that way. That’s the dining room.”

  * * *

  She was in a bath, thinking about what “bath” had meant in the streets of the fief, when the door to her room opened. Unlike Teela’s quarters, a bath here was, if a luxury in comparison to her old life, more contained. For one, there was a tub, not a pool.

  She no longer had barred windows, and if her door was the same flimsy wood that it had been in her first apartment—now ash and splinters thanks to Barrani politics—it was vastly more secure. Her own floors creaked, but the halls outside didn’t. She found creaking comfortable; she could practically tell where she was in the room by the sound the floor made, which was useful when it was dark.

  She therefore heard the door open. “Are they back?”

  “Not all of them, dear,” Helen replied. “But there’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”

  “I’m wet. And naked.”

  “He’ll wait.”

  * * *

  Less dry than she would have liked, and armored with a robe that was admittedly full body length and thick, Kaylin entered her room. Terrano was sitting on the bed. Had he been Teela, he would have been lounging across it, but he was seated almost dead center on the side closest to the bathroom door, huddling in place, knees drawn up beneath his chin, his arms wrapped around his shins.

  He did look up when she entered. She knew why he’d come. “Give me a second,” she told him, and proceeded to walk around the bed and crawl beneath it from the side he wasn’t occupying.

  She pulled the small chest in which she stored her few remaining valuables out from beneath the bed—items that an Arcane explosion hadn’t managed to destroy, or things that had come to her after she had found Helen.

  She pulled out a small box and pocketed it before she walked back around the bed to where Terrano was sitting, unmoving.

  “What do you want to do?” she asked him.

  He was silent for long enough she thought he wouldn’t answer, which was fair. If he knew what he wanted to do, he probably wouldn’t be sitting here looking so forlorn.

  “They like it here,” he said.

  “And you don’t.”

  “I don’t hate it.” More silence followed.

  Kaylin joined him, although she kept some distance between them. He wasn’t Teela; she had no idea how much space he needed. When he failed to continue, she took up the slack.

  “In my fourth year in the Halls of Law,” she told him quietly, looking at her hands, “one of the Swords was having trouble with his wife. She was a Hawk. It was...messy. They’d been married for maybe four years, and things weren’t going well. I grew up without a father,” she added, “and I have no idea what happened to him. I didn’t have a strong sense of permanence. I wanted permanence,” she added, “because I wanted safety. I wanted stability.”

  He nodded. He didn’t ask her why she was telling him this story; he understood. Or at least understood that it would lead to a point that would make that why clear.

  “I didn’t understand what had happened, because they’d been so close. And now they were like armed camps. And we were expected to choose a side—and naturally, given one was a Hawk and one was a Sword, it wasn’t that hard for me. But—” She shook her head. “David took me aside, and we talked.

  “Apparently the Sword had cheated on his wife, and she had found out. She was hurt and angry. And I didn’t understand it because I’d have married his wife. Like, it seemed so stupid to me. I didn’t understand how he could want some other woman. Leila was tough, she was smart, she was cool under pressure. I thought she was beautiful, but—apparently that’s subjective. Because some people are stupid.” This last was spoken as if she was still sixteen. Almost seventeen.

  What else does he want? What else could he want?

  David’s smile had been pained. Everything. We can want everything. We can want things all the time. Sometimes we forget what we have, or sometimes the fact that we have it tarnishes it. I’m married, he added, as if this was relevant. Doesn’t mean I can’t look. Doesn’t mean I don’t find others attractive. I do. I’m not a different man because I got married. I have the same responses.

  But your wife doesn’t hate you enough to throw you out?

  I can look. I look, was his affectionate reply. But here’s the thing: what I’m building with my wife, I’ve committed to building. I want what we have. I want what we have more than I want what someone else has. Or what I don’t have. Do I find other people attractive? Sure. Leila is stunning. But...she’s not my wife. She hasn’t shared my history. She hasn’t had my back when things were tough. She’s not the person I go home to.

  Kaylin repeated this quietly, still looking at her hands. “He said that he knew he could have what he’d always had before he met his wife—or he could have his wife and make something deeper and stronger from it. But he couldn’t have both.”

  “What did you say to him after he said this?”

  “Well... I pointed out that Marcus has a lot of wives, and maybe that would work for us, too.”

  Terrano shot her a look. “It wouldn’t work for us. And I think it would definitely be disaster for Dragons—but that’s just a guess.”

  “That’s more or less what he said, too. But: he said he’d made a choice. It curtailed—that was the word he used—his freedom, yes. There were some things he had to think about before doing, and some things he couldn’t do even if he wanted to—because he’d made that commitment. He’d promised. And that promise wasn’t something his wife did to him, and it wasn’t something she forced on him. He’d chosen. Some days it was harder than others—but he said that some days being a Hawk was much harder than others, and he pointed out that I loved being a Hawk. Well,” she added, flushing, “being an almost-Hawk.

  “You lived in Alsanis for almost your entire life. Alsanis started as your jailer. So it makes sense that you wanted freedom. All of you,” she added. “But...you lived with your family. Your chosen family. I don’t know how awkward you found it at first—this whole True Name thing, this people-in-your-thoughts thing. I don’t always find it very comfortable, especially not Ynpharion, who pretty much despises me. If I didn’t feel the same about him, I’d probably find it painful.

  “But... I understand why you chose it. I understand why every single one of you took the risk. Because what I wanted, even when I was totally unworthy of any trust at all, was to find people I could trust. And the name would have meant instant trust.”

  “Or mutually assured destruction,” he countered.

  “Or that. I don’t know why you chose to do it. Having met Sedarias, I can’t honestly say that I believe there was no coercion—even if she left the choice to you, in theory. There was going to be a right choice and a wrong choice, and... I wouldn’t want to make the wrong choice while Sedarias was in my face. Or knew of my existence at all.”

  He laughed, releasing his legs. “There was some of that, yes. Fear of Sedarias. Fear of making the wrong choice.” He shrugged. “It’s so long ago now none of us can think of it as the wrong choice.” The s
mile dimmed.

  “In order to escape Alsanis, you changed. You changed slowly, but you changed. I don’t know that you understood how much, at the start. I don’t know how deliberate it was. I only have Mandoran and Annarion to go on. Annarion doesn’t try to change his form. He’s not playing with invisibility or shifting states the way Mandoran does. He definitely doesn’t get stuck in walls.”

  This caused Terrano to snicker, as well.

  “But the changes are most dramatic in Annarion, because all of his little breaks with reality happen when he’s upset.” She thought of Annarion on his first—and hopefully only—visit to Castle Nightshade, and couldn’t help herself. She shuddered. “He wanted to come home to his brother.”

  Terrano nodded. “And look how well that worked out.”

  “When you’ve lived here and had to listen to them shouting at each other for nights on end, you can make that face.”

  “I can make a different face, if you’d like.”

  “Please don’t.”

  He snickered again.

  “I think you’d be like Mandoran, if you lived here, not Annarion. But that’s the point of all this, isn’t it?” She exhaled. “You could stay. You could stay here. Helen would be happy to have you.”

  “She doesn’t know me.”

  “No. But she trusts what you mean to Annarion and Mandoran, and she’s very fond of both of them.” She waited.

  “It’s not the same,” he said, once again allowing his shoulders to curl. “I can’t hear them. I can’t talk to them.”

  She didn’t point out that he could, because she knew what he meant, even if True Names had not had the same effect on her life.

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” he continued. “I—Look, we’re raised to be outsiders. We don’t value honesty. We don’t value earnestness. It’s death. That’s what we were taught, growing up: it’s death. Someone older and smarter will use whatever we reveal against us, or our families.

  “But no one taught us to be ourselves. And ourselves were all we had.” He hesitated. “I wanted freedom. I didn’t want to come home. I couldn’t understand why Sedarias—whose political life started early and happened often—would want to come back. I think Mellarionne was the only family that had a kind of contest to see who’d travel to the West March, as if it were some kind of privilege. But the rest of our families threw us away.

  “If I could still hear them, I’d never stay. You don’t know what the world is like. All the worlds. All the states. I haven’t seen most of them and I’ve barely scratched the surface.” His voice dropped. “But it’s so quiet out there. So quiet.”

  “You came back for them.”

  He nodded. There was no point in denying it. In the quietest voice he’d used yet, he said, “I missed them. I hate the silence.”

  She bowed her head, turning her hands in her lap. “Why can’t you stay here, and—I don’t know, take vacations? Why can’t you experiment with form and place, the way Mandoran does?”

  “I don’t belong here anymore. I can’t be part of them.”

  “Sedarias wants you to stay. I think she’s most worried about you, out of all the cohort.”

  “She doesn’t trust me. I mean—she doesn’t trust me to survive. She trusts that I won’t hurt them, of course. She doesn’t believe I’ve changed that much. I don’t think she believes I could.”

  “And if you had a name? You could hear them. You could speak with them. I don’t understand why you couldn’t just...do whatever you’re doing now.”

  “No. You don’t.”

  “So tell me.”

  “It’s the name. It’s the fact of the name. You have experience with the nameless—or those who’ve tried to escape the cage of their own names, right?”

  She nodded.

  “You thought it was stupid.”

  She nodded again.

  “You would. You don’t need the name.”

  “If it weren’t for your names, you wouldn’t awaken. You wouldn’t be alive.”

  “Yes. As infants, we have no other options. But we don’t remain infants forever, and we have forever, if we’re careful. But our names can be used against us.”

  “They can be used in other ways, as well—you should know this better than most of the Barrani out there.”

  He shrugged. “The name links us to this place. This state of being. It’s where you and your kind live; you couldn’t survive some of the places I’ve been. Or possibly you could, because of the marks of the Chosen—but not the rest of your kind. And not the rest of my kind, either.”

  She stood, slowly. “I don’t want what you want.” Her voice was soft; it was a statement of fact. “And I don’t understand what you want. But... I understand the desire, the need, to be free. You think of Helen as a cage.

  “I think of Helen as home. Not a home, but my home. I understand that this isn’t the home you dreamed of, if you dreamed of one at all. I couldn’t make the whole of Elantra my home—I can’t imagine what your sense of home might be. Maybe home is a cage. I can still leave it. I can go to work—which is definitely not home—and come back. I need the work,” she added. “I need to be a Hawk. If you asked me to choose between being a Hawk and having a home, I’m not sure what I would choose.”

  “Home,” he said, no doubt in his voice.

  “I am not at all certain that is true,” Helen said, although her Avatar hadn’t joined them in the room. “But I think it is the most apt metaphor for this discussion. Part of how Kaylin defines herself is her duties as a Hawk. They have been important to her for far longer than I.”

  “What if you had to choose between them?” Terrano then asked. Kaylin wasn’t certain whether or not he was asking Helen or her. But Helen didn’t have the choice to leave. If this was a cage, as Terrano implied, it was locked and barred. Helen could, and did, gain information from those who entered; she offered advice where it was wanted. Sometimes when it wasn’t, as well—but everyone did that.

  “I don’t know,” Kaylin finally said. “I could say I’d choose home, because I can always find another job. But...it’s not just a job to me. And I could say I’d choose the job because I can always find another place to live—but that place would never be home. I don’t know,” she said again. “Because I love both. I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t miss one of them, if I chose the other. I couldn’t imagine I wouldn’t have regrets.”

  She slid her hand into the pocket of her bathrobe, and pulled out a small box. “When we were in the West March, Alsanis gave this to me. He said I’d know when to use it.”

  Terrano didn’t even seem surprised.

  “I think he thought you couldn’t make a choice without understanding what it was you were choosing between. I mean—without having the experience. I think he’s kept this for you, and honestly? If it returned to the West March, he’d continue to keep it. You did save him,” she added softly. “And I think he’d return the favor if he thought that salvation—yours—was up to him. Maybe you could talk to him about it?”

  Terrano shook his head. He held out a hand, and Kaylin set the box in his palm, where it trembled slightly. “I’m going to go take a walk. Alone,” he added, not looking at Kaylin. Not speaking to her, either, if she had to guess.

  “I will leave the back door open,” Helen replied, confirming her suspicion.

  * * *

  Kaylin did not see Terrano the next day.

  Or the one after.

  Or the one after that.

  She did get an invitation to a ceremony to be held at the High Halls, and she would have resented it more but every member of the cohort plus Tain had also received an invitation, as had Teela. It was, however, Sedarias who explained that the use of the word invitation was a polite fiction. It was a command, dressed in pretty paper with lovely handwriting.

  Although the cohor
t had—demonstrably—passed the Test of Name, the High Lord considered the return of the lost children to be a moment of great import to the Barrani High Court. That celebration would occur in three days. All were expected to attend.

  This had caused a welcome discussion over what had otherwise been a somber breakfast table, although there was some danger, given the color of Teela’s and Sedarias’s eyes, that it would spill into a less welcome argument. Perhaps because Bellusdeo was present, it didn’t.

  But on the fourth day after Terrano’s departure breakfast was once again glum. Teela remained with Helen; Tain did the same. There were discussions about that, as well. Well, not exactly discussions; there was gossip about it, but Teela and Tain kept their disagreements to themselves. Teela was the only member of the cohort who could detach herself enough that she could maintain some semblance of privacy.

  The cohort accepted this; if they’d grown into a hive mind over the centuries, they’d done so without Teela. Teela’s absence, while it had been a cause for guilt and sadness, had not fundamentally changed their nature.

  Terrano’s absence, however, had left a hole in the group mind.

  Four days became five; five became six. She guessed that Terrano had made his choice, and she understood, because everything she’d said had been truth.

  Since the cohort had already accepted his decision, their continued gloom surprised Kaylin. But they hadn’t had much time to make a choice, or accept a choice or discuss individual choices on that day in the green. They’d made their choices, and they accepted them. They could, once again, return home. The absence of Terrano had not yet become as real as it became in the months that followed.

  His physical presence had been better than nothing, but...it was only his physical presence. It was why, Kaylin reflected, they pulled him into their group huddles, the physical piles that most resembled the Leontine family unit. If they couldn’t hear him, they could still assure themselves of his presence.

  That was gone. Apparently so was whatever it was that animated the cohort—or at least forced them to interact with words outsiders could hear. They were silent. Even Mandoran, whose idea of breakfast chat was admittedly tweaking the Dragon.