Page 108 of Cast in Atonement

“Almost?”

“You are a very simple mortal; were you not Chosen, you would be beneath notice.”

Really, really disliked him.

“And it was not a lie in the sense you believe it was. You must also acknowledge that.”

“How?”

“You know Terrano. You know Mandoran. And you know Serralyn and Valliant. They are not what they were born to be; they are flexible in a way that the Barrani were created not to be.” His smile was now a slash of anger. “What lives knows change. What lives must know change.

“You are mortal. Your changes are multiple, and they occur so quickly, were you to attain immortality, you might reach out to challenge the Ancients. Azoria had that ambition: to become more than she had been created to be. To reach beyond the world the Ancients made to contain us.”

“And if she destroyed the rest of us in the attempt?”

Androsse’s eyes were narrow, almost glittering. Kaylin felt the hair on her arms begin to rise; her skin started to ache.

Hope sat up and squawked, leaning forward.

“Should we care, little mortal? Should I care? Almost all my kin are long dead, buried beneath the wave of the wrath of our creators; do you think that destruction touched only us? No. The Ancients were willing to destroy what they had created if it meant we ourselves would be stopped. Only some handful were spared, and even we were transformed, frozen in time, immutable and unchanging.

“You have divined that Azoria inferred, from our many conversations, that there was little difference between her kin and mine. She was curious, focused, ambitious, and perhaps I felt embers of nostalgia. Perhaps not.

“But why should I care for the creations of the Ancients when the Ancients themselves abandoned us? Why should I be concerned when the Shadows destroyed entire worlds, with no action from the Ancients, no attempt to preserve them? Think you that your lives have more value than that of an entire world?”

“Without life,” Kaylin said, voice swamped a moment by Hope’s squawking, “there would be no knowledge. There would be nothing new in your library—everything would come to a halt. The library would become a relic, a forgotten storeroom of history; if people don’t exist who can come to the library, if people can’t read its books, what’s the point? Why did you even become an Arbiter?”

The brief flare of magic receded. Hope, however, was leaning forward, as if at any moment he might lunge at Androsse. Kaylin reached up and curved a hand around his legs to prevent it. Hope was a familiar, and she was certain she hadn’t seen everything he was capable of—but Androsse was an Arbiter, and this library was the seat of his power.

“That is perhaps the first intelligent question you have asked today,” the Arbiter replied. “I have been Arbiter for a very, very long time. I was the first. I was one of the survivors of the purge; I and a handful of others. We are not what you are. We were never what you are. We are not like Barrani, or even the Dragons with their very narrow mutability.

“Barrani are not what we were; we are called Ancestors for a reason. What we were given to alter ourselves, to transform ourselves with time and effort, the Barrani were not given—as if the Ancients loved us only as children, as immature versions of ourselves.

“Not all our choices were wise. Not all our choices were safe. Some choices killed my brethren, and some transformed them beyond all recognition. But some became powerful, Corporal. Some could reach the shoulders of their creators. They were of us, but they were no longer us.

“How could I not understand what she wanted? Hobbled by her physical body, limited in ways we were not, she nonetheless desired to transform herself. To reach for those heights, even if none were there to see it, to take the hand with which she reached out.

“Your friends have done the same thing, in very different ways.”

“We did not,” Serralyn said, her voice steady but low. “We never wanted what she wanted. We never wanted what your kin wanted. We wanted freedom to be what we were. We wanted each other’s company.”

Androsse said, “Now, you must speak for yourself. What you want—you who revere our library—is not what your friends want.”

“Because we’re not the same people. But that was always the thing we prioritized: each other. We don’t want to hurt people who aren’t hurting us.” She glanced at Kaylin then. “Or who don’t want to hurt us.”

Kaylin had no intention of speaking about their attacks against the Consort—and possibly all of humanity. At base, Serralyn was right. Terrano had become the key to open the door that would let them live outside of their permanent, sentient prison—and when the door had opened fully, they stopped those attacks and severed their questionable alliances.

Of course their families—especially Sedarias’s—might disagree.

“Very well. I did not discourage Azoria. But as the corporal suggests, I did not speak of the history of the Ancestors. I do not wish to use my people as some sort of childish morality play. Had I discouraged her, she would have simply ceased to speak frankly.

“And, Corporal: I failed to answer the question I deemed intelligent. I was the first of the Arbiters chosen. I am the only Ancestor chosen as Arbiter. I believed, as many of my kin did not, that these traces of history deserved—perhaps needed—to be preserved. Here, there is proof that worlds long destroyed once existed; that research of value was conducted by every race on any lost world—and is conducted by any race on worlds that survived.

“Here, that knowledge is not destroyed; it is not consumed. And here, the seekers of knowledge might find all matter of information, should they desire to find it. There are times when I consider retirement; it is students with Azoria’s drive that remind me of the reason I accepted the request of the Ancients to become a steward, a guardian, of this growing collection of words and languages. But I am not like you, Corporal. I am not like any of you.

“It is the spark, the drive, the burning ambition that justifies our existence at all. The Arbiters Starrante and Kavallac will have different reasons for their tenure here—and different definitions of responsibility. We are not—as I’m sure even you perceive—of one mind; it was because we were not, and would not be, of one mind that we were chosen.

“And it is because we are not, that you may find some answer about the goal Azoria struggled—and failed—to achieve.”

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