“Do what?”
“Greet you.”
“Yes, Epharim,” Severn replied, stepping on Kaylin’s foot before she could open her mouth. Well, before she could speak, at any rate. “I am Corporal Severn Handred, and this is Private Kaylin Neya. We serve the Emperor in the Halls of Law.” He offered his hand in turn, and Epharim took it, repeating the gesture that was supposed to be a handshake.
He beamed. “And what does it mean?” Each word a little too distinct, as if speech itself were something new and unfamiliar. Or as if the language were. But he spoke the common tongue of Elantra, and if the cadences were off, they were, each and every syllable, completely recognizable.
Severn said, “We don’t use names that have specific meanings.” Clearly, Severn had been a master student in racial studies.
“You don’t have a naming tongue?” Epharim’s brows rose. And as they did, Kaylin noticed—with the training she had excelled in—that the passersby in the street all seemed to slow, that their stalks, from different heights, perched upon different shades of hair, seemed to turn toward them. Or toward Epharim.
“Are we causing a scene?” she asked in low tones.
Epharim looked confused. Well, more confused. “A scene? Like in a play?”
“No. A scene, as in everyone in the street for miles stops to stare at us as if we’re insane.”
He blinked. Looked at the people who were—yes—staring at them, and then looked back at Kaylin. “This … is a scene?”
Severn stepped on her other foot.
“People don’t normally stop to stare like that.”
Again his brows rippled, this time toward the bridge of his straight, perfect nose. “They don’t?”
“No.”
“Then how are they expected to observe?”
“Observe what?”
“You. Corporal Severn Handred.”
“Severn will do,” Severn said. “It is our custom.”
“They’re not supposed to,” Kaylin replied, ignoring Severn. “They have other things to do, don’t they?”
“They have things to do,” Epharim agreed, still standing there, anchoring Kaylin in place while stragglers farther down also stopped walking and turned to look back. “But most of them have never seen one of your kind so close. They will remember,” he added, as if this was supposed to be a comfort. She had the momentary urge to pull out her beat stick and approach them with a smile that was about as soft as steel, telling them to move along.
But there were children there, their stalks slender, and to her surprise, almost transparent, their eyes wide and openly curious. Too far away to see her own reflection in those eyes, she knew then what she would want reflected, and the impulse left her. She turned slowly back to Epharim, who was beaming at her with an expression she now recognized—a childlike wonder so out of place on the face of a grown man she had failed to see it at first.
She had never seen Tha’alani children before. Never seen their babies, or their elderly, their youths; she had never held one, never ushered one, bloodied and crying, into the world; she had never been called upon by the guild of midwives to save a mother who would otherwise die at what should have been the start of a new life.
Then again, she had never been asked to lick natal fluid off the hair of a Tha’alani newborn, so maybe she should be grateful. She wasn’t, but that was the perverse nature of her universe. And as they stared at her, she stared at them, separated by yards of street and a gentle breeze. It was utterly silent.
One of the children—dark-haired, dark-eyed, pale-skinned, too young to be easily identified as either boy or girl—slid loose from his guardian’s grasp and toddled toward her, his stalks weaving in the air so awkwardly she wondered if they could be combed out when they got knotted. It was an idle thought, and it held no fear.
As the child approached, she thought him a boy, and knew that she could easily be wrong, but she had to think him one or the other because it was not a pronoun she ever applied to children.
He was smiling, and he had teeth, and his cheeks began to flush as he teetered in the precarious almost-fall that was a young child’s run. All of Kaylin’s self-consciousness melted in the warmth of that smile, and she knelt slowly, bringing herself as close to the ground—and to his approaching height—as she could while still maintaining any dignity.
He wore a blue-and-red robe, gaudy, bright colors that had a sheen that caught light, and gold around one wrist. She held out her arms without thought, and he chortled with glee. Had he been Leontine, he would have had milk teeth, and she would have been a tad more careful while holding out uncovered hands.
But he was Tha’alani, and almost human, and the stalks that had terrified her were almost literally knotting themselves as they twisted. The terror they held for her, perched on the forehead of older men with grim, shuttered faces, was gone.
She thought he might slow his approach, but the momentum of his trajectory carried him forward, faster and faster, until he was leaning toward the ground; she caught him before the stones did. Swept him up, her hands under his arms, and held his face across from hers, laughing, because she had to laugh. He was laughing.
And as he reached for her, his slender arms dimpled with baby fat that had not yet disappeared with height and age, she let out a small squeal of delight that easily matched his, and she hugged him.
The stalks on his forehead untwined and touched her face, soft as feathers, but slighter and more insistent. They brushed her cheeks, her mouth, her nose, as if they were his fingers, and then rose toward her forehead and hovered there, waiting.
After a moment, they touched her forehead.
She should have been frightened, but it was impossible to be frightened in the face of his open curiosity, his imperious delight, the smug sense of certainty that loved children everywhere show. If she were a danger to him, he couldn’t conceive of it, and she couldn’t, either.
And if he were a danger to her, then she had grown so paranoid and so pathetic that … But she couldn’t hold on to the thought. His stalks continued to bat against her forehead, and she realized that he was looking for hers.
“I don’t have them,” she told him gently, aware that she was confessing some inner fault. His smile faltered, and he looked at her face intently, his eyes wide. He hesitated a moment and then his stalks were moving again, this time more slowly; she could more feel than see them, because she was watching his expression. She thought he might be worried now, or afraid, because she was different, strange, unknown.
Instead, she felt a giddy delight and something else, the desire to be chased around in the open streets, the desire to laugh and to hide and be caught, over and over again. That and mild thirst. None of these were her feelings.
She glanced at Severn, who was watching her as intently as any of the Tha’alani in the tableau the street had become. She heard herself say, “He’s—he’s speaking to me ….”
The Tha’alani had never spoken to her, not this way. They had pried, poked, pulled at memories; they had forced her to see what they were seeing. But they had never exposed themselves as this child had just so joyfully done.
Would it have made a difference?
She set the child down and he ran away, and stopped, and looked back, waiting for her to follow, to chase him.
She looked back at Epharim for guidance, but found nothing there that would stop her or warn her; he had no fear at all for the child, and clearly no sense of impatience at the delay in escorting her to see Ybelline.
“His