“She trusts your safety to me while you are here. I’m not entirely certain what you told her, but I don’t need to be. I cannot promise your safety while you are not within my walls—and you will not always be here. I accept that, or I could not have become your home. If she can live with the guilt, she will, I think, remain.”
Moran came back. She looked frail, which again was discomfiting. She didn’t speak; instead, she walked directly through the arch opposite the one she’d just exited. She paused this time and said, “Kaylin, come with me.” She held out a hand. It wasn’t a command, but it also wasn’t the sarcastic barking that generally passed for requests in the Halls of Law from anyone who wasn’t Caitlin.
Kaylin, almost mute, followed, thinking at Helen before she realized that Helen might actually respond to the thoughts—which would just humiliate a Hawk and an Aerian who were both accustomed to more privacy. Helen was mercifully silent.
Kaylin looked across this new room to the pool at its center. Moran had removed her shoes, and her feet dangled in what did not look to be particularly warm water.
Kaylin had seen the natural baths the Barrani liked, and this resembled them; there was rock and water. But the water was also open to the sky and the elements; the shape of the basin implied that rain actually fell here. So not Kaylin’s idea of a real room.
“This,” Moran said quietly, “reminds me of my childhood.”
“The other room reminds me of mine,” Kaylin replied. “But not entirely in a good way. I think I like actual walls.”
“The Barrani influence everything,” Moran continued, without looking up. “My grandmother lived in quarters very much like these.”
“You were fond of her,” Helen said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. She represented sanity and safety to me in my early childhood. She was considered far too old-fashioned, too outdated; she lived like a—commoner? I think that’s the word.”
“So?” Kaylin said. “I live like a commoner.”
Moran nodded. “And yet you are Chosen and you number, among your friends, Barrani High Lords and Dragons. And a very cranky Leontine sergeant and his slightly more scary wife. My grandmother had none of these things. She had birth and bloodlines, but after the death of her husband, she leveraged neither. She moved out of the Reach and into the antiquated quarters she had known as a girl.
“When things became...difficult...for my own mother, I was sent to live with my grandmother. I lived with her for four years, until her death.”
Something about the way this was phrased made Kaylin tense. Moran didn’t appear to notice.
“Her wings were different; they weren’t like mine. When I was young, I thought that perhaps I had baby wings and that the spots would fade with time.”
“Like freckles?”
“Yes. Exactly like—but mine never faded.” She turned her face toward the water and sat, silent, for a long moment. “I know I shouldn’t stay here.”
Kaylin hoped that this meant she would.
“The old quarters are gone. When my grandmother died, they were...remodeled. The Aerians have their own mages; they are not like Imperial mages. They...shape things; rock and wood and water. Most of the interior Aeries look like places the Barrani might live, if given the chance.”
“They wouldn’t live here.”
“No. Not here. I shouldn’t stay,” she said again. “But the truth is: I am injured. I will heal. But it won’t be instant. I would rather live in the infirmary than live—without any freedom—in the home of my flight’s leaders, and that’s where I would otherwise stay. But—” She drew in a sharp breath.
“We’re going to give you a few minutes alone, dear,” Helen said. “We’ll be downstairs in the mess hall.”
“She means dining room,” Kaylin added, slightly confused; Helen had never made this association before.
“Moran understands the mess hall in the Halls; eating spaces in the Aerie are not quite the same, although practically speaking, they serve much the same function.”
Moran nodded. She didn’t rise as Helen drew Kaylin away from the bath toward the exit, but she said, without turning around, “Thank you, Helen. I now understand exactly why Kaylin was so insistent that I convalesce with you.”
* * *
“But will she stay?” Kaylin asked.
“I am not certain. I think she was unexpectedly moved by what she found when she opened that door, but she is not as young as you are.”
“Meaning?”
“She has experienced more, and that experience influences how she makes her decisions. Were she your age, but otherwise herself, there would be no question. She would remain. She would feel very indebted to you, however.”
“No, she wouldn’t.”
“No?”
“She would feel indebted to you. But I think that’s going to be the case anyway. You’re my home,” Kaylin added, “but you’re not my slave. Most people don’t have sentient homes. You speak, think, interact like a person—because you are one. Moran won’t be able to see you as some part of me. I don’t, and can’t, own you. You’ve decided, for your own reasons, to let me live here; you’ve decided that you’ll accept my guests—even Imperial ones. You go out of your way—”
“It is part of my essential function—”
“—to make those guests feel safe and at home here.”
“Mandoran and Annarion were willing to die to protect me,” Helen countered. “I could not in good conscience offer less. I would even be willing to house your Teela, but she is...less comfortable with my presence. She does trust me where you’re concerned, but she is afraid that the fact that she is not you, and not like you, would tell against her where I’m concerned. She thinks that I am very like Caitlin.”
“And you’re not?”
“I do not think so. I have not yet met your Caitlin.”
“You’d like her.”
“I hope, for your sake, that she likes me,” Helen replied. She led the way into the dining room.
“Shouldn’t we use the parlor?”
“This is a much larger room, and the windows are both bigger and brighter.” She frowned.
“Problem?”
“Teela and Mandoran are speaking to Annarion; he is not responding. Or rather, not well, and not with words. I should go.” Helen’s voice could be in two locations at once; that ability did not extend to her full, physical Avatar. Tara could, and the Hallionne could. But there was a lot Kaylin didn’t know about Helen and her capabilities.
“I’ll wait.”
The small dragon squawked, loudly, in her ear, and Kaylin said, “But he’ll go with you, if you don’t mind.” More squawking and one spiteful snap at the stick that kept Kaylin’s hair in place later, the small dragon was gone, flapping around Helen’s departing head in a circle of irritability.
Kaylin took a chair and folded her arms on the tabletop; she dropped her head onto her forearms. She was exhausted. What she did know about Helen was simple enough: she trusted her. Everything else could wait.
* * *
The first person to enter the dining room was not Helen.