Cast In Secret

“All right, you win.”

“We didn’t have a bet here.”

“What exactly is the Tha’alaan?”

“It’s their community,” he said slowly. “Their … living history. No, it’s more than that—it’s like a thought they all share, whenever they choose to touch it. The Tha’alani individually have exceptional memories of their personal experiences, and they share these. They share what they’ve felt. They can almost relive it, and in doing that, the community relives it. The Tha’alaan is like a collection of all their experience, past and present, living and dead, all their hopes, and all their fears.”

“I thought they didn’t have any.”

He raised a brow. “Anything alive knows fear. Ybelline is terrified now, and she is under some strain. She keeps much from the Tha’alaan and that is costly. Were she not trained for service to the outside—were she not schooled in handling the deaf, as we’re called—she would not be able to master her thoughts in this fashion.

“Not all the Tha’alani can. Some have aptitude, and those are trained and tested. Those powerful enough, they surrender for a time to the Emperor’s service.”

“Or to anyone who can pay?”

“No, Kaylin. There are perhaps one or two in the history of their kind who have chosen to work for the deaf, but they are the exception that proves the rule. Most of the Tha’alani would live forever in their own world, seeking no contact with any outsiders, were it not for the Emperor’s dictate.”

“They don’t want to do—what they do.”

“No.”

“But they do it.”

“Yes. Those who can. They rotate service—the length of time they can work outside of the Tha’alaan differs from person to person.” He paused. “Ybelline is very strong. Strong enough to be gentle,” he added quietly. “She doesn’t pity us, and she doesn’t fear us. She half understands.”

“She can … keep her experience of our world to herself.”

“Exactly.”

“So it doesn’t pollute the hive mind.”

He frowned. “They’re not insects, Kaylin. But yes, there are experiences that they would never otherwise have, and only those who can live with the isolation of individual experience can serve. It is very, very hard for the Tha’alani.”

They had no escort as they emerged from the large, rounded dwelling. Epharim was gone, and no one in armor stood ready to take his place. Kaylin was nonplussed. “She chose to let us walk here,” Severn told her.

“She didn’t seem to worry about you.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“We’ve met before,” he replied carefully. Where carefully meant completely neutrally in that don’t-ask-me-questions way. “I am not, perhaps, the ideal person from whom to draw information, but neither was I afraid of her, or her kin. They can’t create memories,” he added. “They can’t erase them. And what happened, happened.”

“I’m not proud of a lot of my ‘what happeneds,’” Kaylin said in a quiet voice. “If I wanted people to know, I’d tell them.”

“That is a luxury,” he told her as he continued to walk. “And a daydream. Learn to care less about what other people think.”

“I don’t want my life paraded through the office like yesterday’s gossip.”

“It already is yesterday’s gossip.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes. I do. I don’t agree with you, but I do know what you mean. We don’t have privacy, Kaylin. We have the illusion of privacy. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“And we have no secrets?”

He shrugged.

“I don’t want my children to know—to know about things that I’ve done.” She thought of the Foundling Halls, and the children she visited there. Shuddered to think of how much it would hurt them to know what she was capable of.

“That, I understand. Children are very absolute in their judgment. Do you truly think she would tell them?”

“Not her.”

“And the others?”

Kaylin cursed in Leontine. “Not them. But the people they inform—”

“Would you change your past?”

“Parts of it. In a heartbeat.”

He shrugged again.

“You wouldn’t?”

“I can’t. I don’t waste time thinking about changing what can’t be changed.”

“And you’re never afraid that someone will judge you? That they won’t misunderstand you or misconstrue you as you are now?”

“People judge me all the time. Be careful of that,” he added, pointing at a trellis that grew near the roadside. Vines were wrapped around it, and they rustled in the nonexistent breeze.

“But they don’t have the right—”

“They have the right to form their own opinions. I have the right to disagree with them in a fashion that doesn’t break the Imperial Laws.”

“But—”

“I’m not afraid of the judgment of strangers,” he told her quietly. “I live with my own judgment. That’s enough. And I judge others, and live by those judgments, as well.”

“I don’t—” want to be despised or hated. She couldn’t quite frame the words with her lips, they sounded so pathetic as a thought.

But Severn had her name; she felt it tug between them, its foreign syllables not so much a sound as a texture. Ellariayn.

He stopped walking and caught her face in his hands, pulling it up. She met his eyes. “Then stop despising and hating yourself, Kaylin. We’re not what we were. We’re not what we will be. Everyone changes. Everyone can change. Let it go.

“If you are always afraid to be known, you will never understand anyone else. If you never understand anyone else, you’ll never be a good Hawk. You’ll see what others see, or what they want you to see. You won’t see what’s there.”