Faerie Winter - Janni Lee Simner [44]
“I do not know.” Karin lifted a stray screw from the floor and rolled it between her fingers. Its threads were thin and precise, as only work from Before was. “I paid little attention, in those days, to the games my brother and his companions played with humans. I ought to have paid more attention. If I had, I might have seen sooner what was happening between Kaylen and Tara, but I was more concerned with trying to be what my mother needed than with protecting my youngest brother.”
I didn’t need to ask if she thought she’d succeeded in pleasing the Lady. I heard it in her voice. “I was never who my father wanted, either,” I said. My voice sounded too loud in the small space.
“Yet you stood up to him at the last.” Karin carefully set the screw down on the floor. It rolled away just the same. “Kaylen told me.”
I looked down, ashamed. “I didn’t send him away soon enough.” Caleb must have told her that, too.
“None of us can change what we’ve already done, Liza.” Karin’s hand brushed my shoulder. I flinched, and she drew respectfully away. “That the past cannot be undone was one of the War’s hardest lessons. We remain responsible for our actions there, but we have no power over them. We only have power over the thing we do next.”
“Even under glamour? Are we responsible then?” I traced a finger through the dust on the floor. Dust from Before—it smelled of oil, too. “Karin, how often did you—” I stopped myself. Karin had fought in the War. No doubt she’d used glamour in ways I could scarcely imagine, and other weapons as well.
“Never as a game.” Karin stared at the orange light between us. “And never since the War. Kaylen understood, sooner than me, that your people are not mere toys. I did not understand until I heard their cries as they died. I did not understand until I came to a human town, and began to care for its people, and they for me. I understand now.”
Why should it take death to understand such a thing? Yet I hadn’t understood until a few months ago that Karin’s people weren’t all monsters, either. “Karin, Mom says you think she and Caleb started the War. Do you?” Did they?
Karin laughed, but there was no joy in it. “Tara always did have a way of simplifying things. Fault and blame are complicated matters. Tara and Kaylen played a role, certainly. So did I, and my mother, and Tara’s father.”
The children of powerful people, nothing more. “Who was Mom’s father?” I’d never known any of my grandparents.
“Who people are is never simple in your world,” Karin said. “Among your people, position is not defined by birth or strength of magic. Tara’s father was neither a wielder of power nor a maker of goods—he was merely a merchant, a procurer and seller of the goods others made, weapons in particular. In my world, such a person would be of little consequence. I did not understand how different matters were in your world until your mother—” Karin stopped abruptly. “I cannot tell this fairly, Liza.”
“I’d rather hear it unfairly than not at all.” Mom had her chance to tell me fairly.
“I know less than you think.” The vine around Karin’s wrist unwound a little, creeping toward her fingers. “I did not note when your mother first found her way into Faerie. I do not know how she and Kaylen came to care for one another, even through the glamour my people use so easily upon yours that we do not even think of it as part of our magic. I don’t know what made Kaylen certain the caring was more than a part of the illusions he wove. My brother did not ask my advice in those days, and if he had, he would not have liked the advice I’d have given. I know only that Kaylen lifted the glamour from Tara at the last and, in doing so, swore an oath to never use glamour against your people again. I have since taken the same oath, though I was slower to