Gabrielle lifted her hand and pointed her finger at Kapetria. “There’s one thing I want to know,” said Gabrielle, “before you begin.”

Kapetria turned to her attentively, and nodded. I wondered how she saw my mother, whose face always looked cold and disdainful to me.

“Do you value us?” asked Gabrielle. She leaned forward and towards Kapetria, narrowing her eyes. “Or do you see us as something inherently undesirable and even abominable?”

“Oh, that’s a very good question,” said Kapetria. “We value you beyond measure. You are most certainly not an abomination to us. What? Because you feed on blood? Everything living must feed on something. You have no idea how we value you. You are our hope.”

Welf gave a small laugh under his breath. “We’ve been studying you for years,” he said.

“You are the only other biological immortals of which we know anything,” said Garekyn.

“We would be alone if it were not for you,” said Derek. But no sooner had he spoken than he began to shake all over. Kapetria put her right arm around him seeking to steady him. She kissed him, stroked his hair, tightened her grip on him. But it wasn’t doing any good.

Dertu rose from the back row and came forward, putting his hands on Derek’s shoulders. “Father, be still,” he whispered. Father. So the clone calls this one Father.

“We should love one another!” said Derek. He was looking at me. He was cracking, obviously.

“Derek, listen to me!” I said. I leaned towards him. I couldn’t reach far enough to touch his hand. “I am sorry for what happened to you!” I said. “I am sorry. We are all sorry. We had no knowledge of your being held captive. We would have freed you if we had known. None of us would have done what Roland did!”

“He had no right!” said Derek, as he continued to look at me. “There is wrong and right and he had no right!”

“Yes, I know and I agree, and you are correct,” I said. I looked to Marius.

Marius said, “There has been no authority in our world for centuries. We’re trying now to come together, to make an authority, an authority under which such a thing couldn’t happen.”

“Oh, but you’d do terrible things to mortals, wouldn’t you, any of you?” said Derek. “Haven’t you imprisoned them so you could feed off them as if they were cattle?”

My mother laughed. She sat back and shook her head. She was making me perfectly furious.

“Maybe some of us have done such things,” I said to Derek. “And some of us have never done such things! But we try to do what is right. We try. We believe in right. We believe in defining ourselves in terms of right. We try to feed only on the evildoer.”

“Some of us feed only on the evildoer,” said Gabrielle.