by Dawn Peers
Maertn's mouth started working up and down; he was apparently nearing being able to vocalise some words.
"I...Quinn...did you? Are you?"
"Spirits no, please, no, I haven't killed anyone. I couldn't kill anyone."
Quinn rushed the words. Eden just nodded in response. He, too, was working towards finally responding. "This makes sense. This makes so much sense. Everything about you. But Quinn...why didn't you tell anyone? Ever?” He looked over to the healer, to reassure himself that Maertn indeed was just finding this out. Maertn looked as stunned as Eden felt. “Not even Maertn? Who else knows this?"
Quinn blushed deeply, her shame growing. She should have told Maertn long before this. Why hadn't she trusted him? She had been ashamed of herself, she knew. She hadn't wanted anyone to know what she was, because she had been taught by Sammah that to be as different as she was, was wrong. She didn't have a gift or a blessing; to be an empath was to have a curse.
"Only Sammah knows."
"Then why is he telling everyone that the Satori...wait...are you saying Baron Sammah is behind the killings?" Maertn almost yelled this, with both Eden and Quinn hushing and waving him down. Maertn looked absolutely furious.
"He has to be, doesn't he? Doesn't it just make sense to you?" Eden was calm, quiet even, but his words were tense with loathing. "He keeps Quinn quiet to do his bidding, then when...what? When you grow up, he needs to get rid of you?"
Quinn shook her head. "I don't think so. I think it's because I tried to leave. I...wait...neither of you care? That I'm an empath? That I can read you? That my father..."
Eden waved her down. "That isn't the important thing now. Am I hurt? Yes. I'm more than upset, Quinn. But what's more pressing now, is that, not only am I meant to be dragging you down to the cells, we know that you are not guilty of what they’re accusing you of. Who is guilty? The Sha'sek ambassador. Do you know what that's going to look like when we tell the king?"
Eden was running his hands furiously through his blond hair, which was dusty and dirty, unkempt with the sleepless days he had spent on the search to impress his unimpressible father. Quinn reached out to Eden, and felt her heart clench when he waved her away. He pinched the bridge of his nose. She suspected she had just given him a migraine.
"Would you have rather heard this from someone else?"
Eden laughed maniacally. "Spirits, no! Who else would tell me? Sammah? And he wouldn't just tell me, either. He'd hand you over with the ropes already in his hand and you'd be dangling off the side of the castle walls by sundown."
Quinn felt physically sick at the thought. Maertn saw her pale and left his chair to kneel in front of her. He placed his hands on her knees, squeezing just enough to let her know he was there, and he cared. "Don't listen to him Quinn. We'll get you out of this. You don't have to be scared at who you are. That doesn't change anything. Not to me."
Quinn looked down to meet Maertn's honest gaze and immediately burst in to tears. Maertn yelled at Eden, distraught at what he saw.
"Look at what you've done now! Spirits be damned, Eden, why did you have to talk like that?"
"I'm sorry Maertn, but it's true!" Eden stood and kicked out at his chair. A leg fell off, and the useless collection of wood collapsed to the floor. "Why mince our words now? The entire kingdom is out to kill the Satori because they believe he—no, she—is a killer. We know Quinn isn't a killer. Who else is going to believe us? No one knows Quinn. She's lived here all her life and you're the only friend she has. We have to keep her safe whilst we make a plan to convince the king and the entire court that not only is the deadly Satori one of their maids, but one of their most trusted advisors is their actual murderer. And, whilst they're at it, executing him will lead to a new war. How's that?"
Maertn faced up to Eden. Quinn bawled at them to stop. Her voice was so hoarse, so broken, that they turned to her immediately.
"I'm not crying because of what Eden said. I want to, but I can't. Because it's true. I'm crying because I've been a terrible friend to you, Maertn. I couldn't keep on lying to you. I can't be what you want me to be. I know that you love me, Maertn. I know it in the same way that I know Eden loves me. But I don't love you. I can never love you in the same way that I love him. So stop it, both of you. My choice is made."
Maertn's shoulders collapsed and, to the astonishment of both Eden and Quinn, a huge grin crept across Maertn's face. He knelt back in front of her, joy dancing around his eyes. "Oh dear Quinn, is that what you thought? Is that why you've been avoiding me? Oh no, I don't...I mean I do...I do love you Quinn, with all my heart. Here. Look again. I give you permission. Tell me what you see."
Quinn met Maertn's eyes again. They were glittering with tears. She sniffed, hesitating at first, but emboldened when he lifted her hand and placed it on his heart. Quinn sent out a thin thread of curiosity, focusing on Maertn's heart for the first time. What she found there brought the tears back again, unbidden, but so joyful. She felt so warm; her body sang with the heat and joy that she found there. It was a calm warmth, like laying on a stone that had taken in the day's heat. She felt everything Maertn felt for her, and nodded. Then he pointed at Eden.
"Now do the same with him."
Eden took an involuntary step back. Quinn, at that moment, didn't want to do the same for Eden. He was so new to her, and his love for her would feel so incomplete compared to the totality of what Maertn had given to her. Then Eden spoke. "Do it, Quinn. I want you to know. I need you to know."
"Now that you know what I am?"
"Especially now that I know who you are. Not what, Quinn. You are still human."
Quinn nodded, pleased by his words but not quite believing them. She rose from her chair and Maertn moved to one side, the wide grin now a smile that was pushing up both sides of his cheeks. Her hand faltered as she moved it to Eden's chest, the palm hovering just above the cloth of his tunic. She could feel the heat rising from his body. Eden refused to move the hand for her. Quinn didn't even know if touching his heart would make a difference to what she felt for Eden; whether it would intensify the emotion of a first love. For Sammah, she had never touched her subjects. It didn't make the experience any less petrifying. Quinn felt that her hands should now be literally dripping with sweat, they had been so clammy before. In a mad second, she wondered how Eden would react to a clammy handprint on his fine tunic. Then she shook the irrational feeling away, and placed her hand over where his heart lay. She could feel it beating underneath her palm. His shirt was cool, smooth, and his chest hard. Quinn was already slightly breathless before she reached out to him. What she felt there almost buckled her knees.
Where Maertn's love had been warm and encompassing, Eden's hit her like a blast of heat from a blacksmith's furnace. She felt so rocked that she almost stepped back. Every muscle in her body started singing in response to what Eden was feeling for her; behind it all there was still a warmth, however Eden's love also contained passion. Quinn realised then, that she had never, ever felt Maertn actually desiring her, whereas this was Eden's overwhelming emotion. Beneath that, there was also a small hole; like a tug in a weave, there was also a doubt. If she tugged at this, Quinn realised, everything Eden felt would likely eventually unravel, the threads of his passion falling to the floor, unused and useless. This imperfection had never been there before. Quinn knew that this was Eden's reaction finding out she was an empath. It was only a small element of his reaction, but the doubt was there, nevertheless. Maertn's emotions were still smooth, flawless, and now Quinn knew, without ardour.
She turned to her lifelong friend. "You do love me," she said. Maertn nodded in response. "But you...you do not want me."
Maertn shook his head, keeping his smile. "I never have, Quinn. You're precious to me, and you always will be. I could never desire you in that way. It would feel wrong."
Maertn announced this as if Quinn should be able to fill in the rest of the blanks for herself. Quinn, however, was left utterly confused. She turned to Ede
n, who was now grinning as much as Maertn.
"What? What is it with you two? Stop smiling! What have I got wrong?" Eden looked at Maertn and winked exaggeratedly. Quinn thumped him on the arm. Eden yelped, rubbing the afflicted bicep.
"Ouch! That hurt!" Still, Eden couldn't help himself, and he began to laugh. "Don't get annoyed. You're the empath. I can't believe you haven't figured it out."
"Figured what out? Maertn," Quinn whirled on the healer, who stepped back, putting out his arms to protect himself.
"Don't wheel on me young maid. My skinny bones won't give me as much defence as your strapping lord over there."
"What? My... what? What am I missing here?"
Quinn looked between Eden and Maertn, who looked at each other and burst again in to fits of laughter. Quinn went beet red, and when they saw that she was genuinely annoyed and distressed, they tried to calm themselves down. When Maertn snorted, however, the peals of laughter rang out anew. Quinn thumped herself down on her chair, waiting for their mirth to die out. She tried her best to look serious, but their laughter was infectious, and her annoyance began to wane. Still, she had no idea what their mirth was for.
"Come on you two. What gives?"
"Ah Quinn. You had no idea? Ever? Despite, well, knowing everything?"
Quinn rolled her eyes. "I only have a sense of emotions. I can't read your mind. And the power has changed recently. I'm much better at this than I used to be."
Maertn scratched his chin. "It's probably a great thing that you can't read minds. You see, the thing is, I have a secret too. Knowing what I know about you now, I'm surprised it's a secret. But, the thing is," Maertn scratched the back of his neck, looking suddenly awkward "I'm more likely to have those sort of feelings for, oh, let's say Nimmer."
"Nimmer? The apprentice? With the blacksmith?"
Maertn gave her a slow smile. "Yes. That Nimmer."
Quinn frowned. "But then he and you…oh."
"Yes. Just like him. Are you shocked?"
Quinn sat back in her chair, rocking back onto two legs and thudding it back to the ground. "Huh. Now I actually think about it, feeling the difference between the two, no, I'm not surprised."
"Am I any different to you now?"
"No. Why would you be?"
"And that, Quinn, is how I feel about you. Understand now?"
Quinn felt relief wash through her. The analogy was absolutely perfect, and fit how she felt like a glove. Like always, Maertn knew how to fix her. She went to his open arms, and he held her in a close and tight hug. He kissed her on the top of the head.
"No more secrets now, Quinn. Okay?"
Quinn nodded past the lump in her throat, managing a hoarse okay in response. She looked over to Eden, who looked almost sheepish, but she could now see his awkwardness around her and Maertn was not, and never had been, through jealousy.
Neither of her friends had her powers, but they had both seen more in each other than she had managed. Was she wrong, to just rely on what her ability could tell her about the inner workings of people? How much else was she missing? Quinn went to Eden, who also hugged her. It wasn't the same as Maertn, and it never would be. Quinn never wanted them to be the same; she loved them both, in very different ways.
"So," she began, wiping a scattering of happier tears away from the corners of her eyes "where do we go from here?"
Quinn and Maertn sat back down on their chairs, silence filling the room. Eden stood with his hands on his hips, having to accept the consequences of lashing out earlier. In the background, the daily hubbub of the castle continued; Quinn had not broken the world with the telling of her tale.
Maertn mouthed something silently. Quinn eyed him, not interrupting. She knew that he was trying to work something out. Eventually, he lifted his eyes to her.
"You said earlier, that your power has changed recently. How? Tell me what you mean by that."
Quinn hooked a piece of hair behind her ear. The change she had felt was easy in the thinking, but not easy in the telling. She let out a frustrated sigh. "I'll start from the beginning. That would probably be the simplest thing. If we have time for that."
Eden shrugged. "I'm not expected anywhere else. This is part of my investigation, after all. And that is not a lie."
"That’s the sad truth. Well. I've always known I was an empath. Sammah never hid it from me. What he did always say, was that I could never tell anyone. He said that if people knew what I could do, then they would cast me out, and I would end up dead." Quinn held up a hand when she saw both men move to interrupt her. "No. I was young. I believed what he said; of course I did. Why would I believe anything different? As I grew older, Sammah explained to me some basics of my curse, as he called it. He told me how, if I felt certain sensations when I directed my attention to a certain person, then it meant they were feeling a very particular kind of emotion. He started using me when I was very young. He would have me sit in a room with his guards—Elias was always there—and he would have a stranger there. The stranger would be asked questions, by one of Sammah's Everfell men at first, but eventually I would ask them. Sammah would ask me to detect the truth of what the man was saying."
"You can tell if people are lying?"
"In a sense, yes. There are subtle changes in a person when they lie, compared to when they tell the truth. A flaring of hope, when they try to distract me. Or a sense of cunning or deception when they think their lie is a good one. Outright lies always make me thirsty. Oh, Sammah spent a long time training me before he unleashed me on the underworld of Everfell. But I was good, he said. I rarely got things wrong." Quinn looked up at Maertn with a smile "I know now that I can still get things wrong, no matter how I think my power is changing.
“It used to be the case, that I couldn’t filter people out. Not properly. I used to feel everyone's emotion, everywhere I went. That's why I hated crowds. That's why, when I was faced with a wall of one particular emotion. hysteria, for example, or hatred, it would make me dizzy. Sometimes it was too much, and I would faint. That's why I could never go to the marketplace. Never go to the feasts. I prefer it, in a way, now. I can sit on the peripheries of everything and no one pays me any heed. Do you realise how useful that is, when you're trying to read people? So that was the way my life was. Secretly work for Sammah, finding out information from these men he would capture, and working for Ross in the castle to make my life look as normal as it could be. Then, one day, I passed out again. It was the first time I properly met you, Eden. In a way. You carried me from that yard. I remember how your heart felt. It's one of the things that drew me to you." She met the eyes of the young man from Sevenspells. "You have a kind soul, Eden. So unlike your father."
He blushed and turned away from them both. He answered Quinn quietly "You have no idea how much it means to me to hear you say that."
"It's true," Maertn added "and I don't need to be an empath to tell you that."
"Thank you friends. Go on, Quinn. This isn’t about me. You haven’t finished?"
"Not by a long shot. It all changed after the last time I passed out. When I woke up, I felt different. Renewed. Powerful. For the first time ever, I wasn't being bombarded by everyone. I could pick and choose who I searched out. For the first time in my life, I actually had peace."
Maertn whistled. "That was a strange day, for sure."
"How so?"
"I helped to heal you that day, Quinn. But I have absolutely no idea what I did."
Quinn frowned. "What was wrong with me?"
"You were out—like you were dead. You were cold, you weren't responding to anything. It wasn't like you were unconscious in the normal sense. Sammah, he told me to fetch a book from his rooms. I didn't look in it. He started reading from it, telling me what I needed to do. It made sense. I...I looked in to your head, and I pushed the illness away."
"Pushed? Pushed what?"
Maertn scrubbed at his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't explain it. Is this how you felt trying to
explain what being an empath means?"
Quinn smiled. "Do you realise what you've just said?"
Eden clicked his fingers. "You're a healer!"
Maertn sneered. "You've only just figured that out? I'm going to be made a master soon. Yes, I'm a healer."
"No no, that's not what I mean. I spent some time, once, with a fighter from Sha'sek. His name was Under. He told me a lot about how Sha'sek works, its people, its politics. He didn't tell me anything about empaths—I'm not sure they know any more exist—but he did tell me about their healers. Men and women that have a sense of the body, and can heal illnesses that are inside, using their own minds. That must be what you did with Quinn."
Maertn's mouth worked like a fish out of water for a few seconds before he responded. "You mean I'm like Quinn?"
"Not exactly," Quinn answered "but I do know that you're a healer. Sammah told me."
This time Maertn did look hurt and angry. "You didn't think to tell me?"
"Of course not! Sammah threatened to hurt me if I ever told anyone about myself, or you. No one but Sammah and Sirah knew that we had gifts. Not anyone else that has a tongue, anyway. Why do you think I wanted to escape, Maertn? Your gift is a kind one. No one knows that you are different; to the rest of the kingdom, you're simply a talented healer. You don’t even look Sha’sek. There are no Sha'sek in the court to tell anyone any different, besides Sammah. And Sammah owns us."
"Until our naming days."
"Yes. Until our naming days. I think I scared him, Maertn. I don't think he was expecting me to get any more powerful before then. I think he thought he could keep me under control until my naming day, and after that time I would be sworn to him. I would have had to stay with Sammah, or forfeit my life."
