“Oh. They don’t know much.”
“She called you here to help, and they don’t know much?” He didn’t trouble to keep the scorn from his voice, but on the other hand, no scorn would probably be no voice, for Rennick.
“They don’t know much they want to share at any rate,” she told him. “And I’m not your job. They are. You saw the casualties,” she added.
He nodded, wincing slightly. “They’re all going to survive. One of the men got up and walked away.”
“He was probably less injured than he looked.”
“Private Neya?”
“Yes?”
“Learn to lie better. Or don’t bother. Bad lies insult the intelligence of the listener, and I believe that you don’t want to insult me.”
This wasn’t exactly true, but Kaylin was too tired to start a fruitless argument, which was generally when she started them. “Humans almost killed those men,” she told him, meeting and holding his gaze. “Humans saved them. We’re done with that now. Move on.”
“And where, exactly, would you like me to move?”
“To the part where you stop humans from wanting to kill any of the Tha’alani ever again. We brought you here because we thought you’d see a bit more of what the Tha’alani are like. Today wasn’t their usual day, so that’s a wash. But none of them want to hurt you and they certainly don’t want to read your mind.
“They just want to be left alone. They tried to save the city, and we’re going to make sure that people understand that.”
One of the Tha’alani men in the room stood. “It is to address this concern that we are here,” he said, in stilted Elantran. He didn’t bow to her, which was good. “But there is some concern.”
“We’re here to address those concerns,” she said, wearing her best Hawk’s face although her head really was throbbing. “Humans have … stories. Those stories aren’t like the Tha’alaan,” she added softly. “They’re not real stories. People don’t experience them as memories, and they certainly don’t live them the way some people can live old memories in the Tha’alaan.”
“These stories, are they true?”
Kaylin looked to Severn for help. As a rule, she didn’t ask for rescue, having learned early that it was pointless. But when it came to people, Severn was just better. He always had been.
Ybelline, however, lifted a hand. “Scoros,” she said, “sit. The stories that she speaks of are not true in the sense that our stories are true. They change with time, they change with the teller of the tale.”
He frowned.
“Scoros,” Ybelline added to Kaylin, “is a teacher. He teaches the Tha’alanari, and he is respected. He understands what they will face.”
Kaylin nodded.
“It is however very seldom that my kin are exposed to your stories, and some explanation will be required.”
Severn shrugged again. “You were always better at creating stories than I was,” he told her.
“But not better at lying.”
“No. This however is yours.”
She pressed her palms into her closed eyes for a minute. Then she nodded.
“Understand,” she said, addressing all of the Tha’alani present, “that humans don’t have the Tha’alaan. We don’t have access to perfect memories. I can’t remember clearly what I was doing eight years ago—but if you wanted to, you could. I can construct what I was probably doing eight years ago. And if it was utterly necessary, I could ask Ybelline to actually sort through my memories and tell me what I was doing—but without the help of the Tha’alani, if my twelve-year-old self wasn’t doing something in easy reach of Records, there’s no way for me to be certain.”
Scoros nodded; clearly this was nothing new to him.
“This is especially true of people who have had no sleep for a few years.”
Scoros frowned and Ybelline said, “She is not being literal.”
His frown deepened slightly, and then eased. Ybelline was speaking Elantran for their benefit, but, clearly, was speaking in other ways as well.
“The oldest of our stories are probably religious stories,” Kaylin continued. “Stories about the gods.”
“These are the ones you remember?”
“Me? Not exactly. When I say oldest, I mean, the oldest ones that anyone knows about.” She winced and gave up. “The earliest stories we’re told, we’re told as children, usually by our parents, sometimes by our friends. Children don’t always have enough experience to understand very, very complicated things, and stories are a way of explaining the world to them.”
“But they’re not true.”
“Well, not exactly.”
“We do not understand what you are explaining, then.”
Scoros looked at Ybelline. Ybelline looked at Kaylin. Kaylin looked at the tabletop.
And Rennick stood up with a disgusted snort.
“Rennick, sit down,” Kaylin told him.
Rennick didn’t appear to hear her. Given the color he was turning, it might not have been an act.
“Castelord,” he said, managing somehow to be polite and icy at the same time. “Do you have no art, here?”
She frowned. “Art?”
“Paintings. Sculptures. Tapestries. Art.”
“We have,” Scoros answered. His voice had dropped a few degrees as well.
“If what I’ve heard today is true, the Tha’alani have perfect memory. Anything, at any time, that any of you have experienced, you can recall. True?”
“Rennick—”
“No, Private. If I am to do my job, as you so quaintly call it, I need to understand what I’m working with, or working against. You aren’t even asking the right questions.”
“Rennick—”
“Kaylin, no,” Severn said, his quiet voice still audible over the echoes of Rennick’s much louder tirade. “He’s right. My apologies for the interruption, Mr. Rennick. Please continue.”
“Is it true?”
Scoros was silent for a moment. Kaylin imagined that he was trying to figure out what Rennick’s game was. She could sympathize. “It is as you say,” Scoros said.
“What is the purpose of your art?”
“Pardon?”
“Why do you make it? The sculptures? The paintings? The tapestries?”
“What does this have to do with your stories?”
“Everything.”
“I am not an artist,” Scoros replied. “But I will attempt to answer. We create these things because they are beautiful.”
“Beautiful? More beautiful than life? More beautiful than what’s real?”
Scoros’s silence was longer and quieter. When he spoke again, the chill in the words was gone. “Yes. And no. They are not the same.” The tail end of what might have been a question colored the last word.
“But you could find beautiful things, surely, in the—what did you call it? The Tha’alaan?”
“Yes. That is what it is called.”
“Can