Tel Cursar straightened abruptly to his full height. “You’re a Talent.” His tone had hardened, his face had stiffened, and his eyes had gone cold. For a moment Kerida thought he was going to say something harsh to her, and she braced herself, ready to give as good as she got. “I thank you for the hospitality we have been given,” he finally said. The most formal words he could have chosen.
“You are welcome.” She gave the answer courtesy required. She couldn’t ask him now. He wouldn’t tell her. Talents do not live in the world.
He turned on his heel, very crisp, very military, signaled to his waiting men, and was gone without saying another word.
Ker blew out her breath, blinking away what she refused to acknowledge was the burn of embarrassed tears. She was a Talent. Her old life was gone, really gone. If she’d needed any proof, she’d just been given it.
Was that why she’d been allowed to speak to them? She rubbed her face, breathing deeply through her nose. Something to ask Barid when he showed up.
Ker looked around the kitchen for something that would give her an excuse to stay where she was. If she went up to her room now, she’d just wake up the others, without getting any sleep herself. Finally, her eyes rested on the water reservoir to the left of the bread ovens. Unlike the water barrels, the reservoir was made from tin, nothing more than a large square pot, really, filled with water kept warm by its spot next to the stove. Picking up two pads to protect her hands, she inched the container away from the oven wall until she was able to pull it out and push it over completely. She danced out of the way as the water splashed over the floor, stopping short of where the stone turned to wood.
She released the breath she’d sucked in. That was lucky. She fetched the mop and clean rags from the cupboard next to the outer door. If water had gone down into the storage cellars, she would have been in trouble.
KER was bringing the final pail of water from the well in the courtyard when Barid let himself into the kitchen from the corridor.
“What are you doing?” He frowned at the wet floor, the mops and rags.
“Giving myself an excuse to be here,” she said, tipping the pail into the reservoir. “And you an excuse to come looking for me.”
“You emptied out the water on the floor?” Barid still looked puzzled.
Ker shrugged. She tossed the damp rags into the pail and picked up the mop. “I was planning to say the soldiers made me do it, if anyone asked.” The rags she hung from the handles of the oven doors to dry, and the mop and pail she stuffed back into their cupboard. Drying her hands on the front of her tunic, she sat down on the stool usually reserved for the Senior Cook.
Mopping up the water and fetching more in from the well had given Ker time to think. Whether or not her encounter with Tel Cursar had been planned, it had shown her, in a way even Matriarch’s lecture couldn’t, that there was no turning back. She was here to stay, and as much as it rankled, she’d better find a way to deal with it.
The only consolation was that her success would really annoy Matriarch.
“Well?” she said now. “You had something you wanted to say to me?”
Barid nodded, frowning, as if he didn’t know how to begin. “You remember High Inquisitor Luca Pa’narion?” he said finally.
“How would I possibly forget him?” Not only was he the Inquisitor who’d taken her away from her life, and her family, and brought her here, he was the one Matriarch didn’t like.
“There’s an opportunity he wants to offer you, something that could start as early as the spring.”
Ker started, her interest sharpening, and crossed her arms to cover the movement. “In the spring, I’ll only be a third-year Candidate, if I’m not still here in the kitchen.”
“You really don’t know?” Barid shook his head, leaning back against the worktable and gripping the edge with his hands. “With your gifts, if you put as much work into your studies as you’ve been putting into pretending you were going back to the Eagles one day, you’d be finished your training in six months. You and I could graduate together.” His teeth flashed white against his dark skin.
A Passed Candidate—maybe a Full Talent—in six months. Ker shivered, suddenly aware of the late hour, and how cold it was here in the kitchen. That would really get up the old woman’s nose—an old woman who’d been very careful not to say anything about this when she’d gone on and on about how great Ker’s Talent was. She straightened her spine.
“Are you interested?”
“What do you think? Maybe the Halls of Law weren’t my first choice, but at least as a Talent I’d be doing something besides hoeing potatoes all summer and then peeling them all winter.” She frowned. “Is that Luca’s ‘opportunity’? To graduate early?” She had another thought. “I could be a Talent for the Wings—” Ker broke off when Barid shook his head. “They wouldn’t want me,” she said. “Or the Halls wouldn’t let me. Neither one could ever be sure where my loyalties were.” She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders. “What’s this opportunity, then?”
“Ordinarily someone with your gifts would be training to be an Inquisitor—”
Ker straightened completely. “I could be an Inquisitor?” She grinned. That was better than being Matriarch. Inquisitor Kerida Nast. No, High Inquisitor.
“That’s what Luca is hoping for, though there’s something more.”
Of course, there was. Ker stayed quiet. Everyone had their own plans for her.
Barid pressed his lips together, and concentrated on a wet spot on the stone floor. “There’s a reform movement within the Halls, it’s been working in secret for—well, a long time anyway. Working against exactly the kind of things we all worry about—the narrow thinking, the rigid ranking—”
“The way that by the time you’re high enough in rank to make changes, you’re too old to care anymore? Don’t look so surprised. That happens in the military as well.” Her own father used to complain of it; he’d liked to surround himself with younger officers for that reason.
“Fine.” Barid grinned at her. “There’s a small group of Talents working against the worst abuses of the Halls, working to establish a different system, a better system.”
Ker laughed out loud. “And Luca thought this was something I’d be interested in, did he? Well—” She sobered. “He’d be right. But tell me, how can a conspiracy like this stay hidden from examination by the Halls of Law?”
Again Barid’s teeth showed white. “Easily, if the people doing the examination are part of the conspiracy.”
“The Inquisition?”
“Shh! Keep your voice down. Not all of them, no, but some.”
“Luca, for one.”
“Luca, exactly. He’s had his eye on you since he first saw how powerful your Talent is.”
Her powerful Talent that for the first time seemed to be working for her rather than against her. “Still, it couldn’t always be the same person examining you all the time, why the Tutors check us regularly . . .” She let her voice trail away as Barid just kept smiling and nodding.
“The people here are the best teachers, and they’re very good Talents,” he said. “But they’re not necessarily the best Talents.”
Not Griffin Class, Ker thought. Not like me.
“The best become Inquisitors—” Barid began.
“Who do our final examinations, the out-of-hall examinations, so if the wrong one examines me, she Flashes that there’s a conspiracy, and that I’m part of it.”
“Not after I show you how to block it.”
A block that was effective against an Inquisitor? She could rebel and be safe. Submit and not submit. Ker licked her lips. “You could have started with that.”
• • •
The soldiers came back on Kerida’s last day of discipline. This time they arrived long after the evening meal, when most of the Candidates had gone to th
eir dormitories for the night, and Ker and Cana, the only ones left in the kitchen, were returning clean plates, bowls, and spoons to the stands in the great room where only the lamps on the head table, and the fat beeswax candles in front of the shrine for the household gods, were still lit.
Kerida should have been doing this by herself, but there had been a problem with two leaky water barrels in the kitchen. It was now very late, and when Cana had started to help sort the platters and bowls onto the wheeled carts, no one in the kitchen had stopped her. As soon as they were finished unloading the cart, Ker sent Cana back to the kitchen with it.
“Go on,” she said, when the other girl hesitated. “I’m almost through here. There’s no need for both of us to be this late, and you’ve helped me so much already.” Cana had given her a swift smile, and a short nod, and headed back for the kitchen.
As Ker was restacking the last of the dishes, Barid came in from the outer corridor, stopping short when he saw her. “Kerida, can you finish later? There’s need of the room.”
“But—” Kerida stood ready to argue, but the stricken look on Barid’s face stopped her. He’d given her so much secret coaching in the last few days to help her catch up, Kerida reminded herself. She put down the bowls she still had in her hands. “Get me up early,” she told him. “I’ll finish then.” His smile was almost worth the sleep she’d lose.
Kerida crossed the great room briskly, but once she was in the darker shadow of the service corridor leading to the kitchen, she stopped and turned back, curiosity getting the better of her. What could require the great room at this time of night? The Senior Staff would meet in Matriarch’s apartments, where the old woman had a small conference room. The great room was a public place, far more likely to be used for the reception of someone from outside the Hall.
Now came the sounds of footsteps, the murmurs of voices, and Ker shifted, making sure she was beyond the light from the great room lamps, but still close enough to hear and watch what was going on.
“I regret having kept you waiting.” Matriarch must have come in by the main doors, but she hadn’t gone up to the head table, to her regular chair. Instead, she had to be sitting at one of the Candidates’ long dining tables. Standing between Ker and the old lady were several other people, blocking her view. They wore military cloaks, these others, some even with hoods up, and Ker shivered. It seemed they brought the chill of early winter inside with them.
She took a half step forward. One of the strangers was very tall.
“You have news for me?” Matriarch was still speaking.
“Matriarch, please.” This was a voice Kerida hadn’t heard before, breathless, and not under the best control. “Please, you must listen to me. You must flee the Hall now, tonight.”
Kerida’s heart leaped into her throat.
“Whatever do you mean? Where is your Cohort Leader?”
“Dead, Matriarch—or worse—and what’s left of us Eagles and Bears, we’re in flight. We were routed at the plains of Farama. We only stopped here to warn you.” The speaker took a deep breath, the sound ragged, and Kerida inched closer to the edge of the light. She couldn’t make out colors clearly. Were any of these soldiers Eagles? Any from the Emerald Cohort? What about Ester? Was her sister safe? “The Hall in Farama’s destroyed, and the Talents murdered. The invaders from the sea are torching the Halls as they find them, and they’re heading this way.”
Kerida put both hands over her mouth, sure that someone must have heard her suck in her breath.
“You are mistaken, I am sure.” Matriarch’s quiet voice was calm. “You have suffered great losses, this is clear, but think what you say. Halls have been burned before this, even Talents killed or injured. Accidents of war can happen, but it is not possible that invaders from Tolnida would deliberately destroy Halls and Talents.”
That’s exactly what Ker—what anyone—would have said. The Halls were the foundation of the Faraman Polity, the basis of the Law. For all their differences, Talents had been working alongside the Battle Wings since the very beginning—since Jurianol, the first Luqs, created the Polity—bringing Law with them wherever they went.
The speaker scrubbed his face with his hands. “Listen to me, old woman. Don’t you understand? It’s not the Tolnidas.”
Shock almost allowed a bark of laughter to escape Ker’s mouth. But the laughter didn’t last. If anything, the man’s disrespect showed how far out of patience he was.
“The invaders are foreigners, for the Mother’s sake! They call themselves Halians and they’re not bound by the Law! I’m telling you this for your own good, though why I should bother when you wouldn’t lift a finger to help any of us, I don’t know. They’re coming here. They’re not so very far behind us, maybe five days. Get your people away.”
“Impossible. Halians!” Ker could almost see Matriarch shake her head. “Halia is on the other side of the world. If you are trying to get my help, young man, you are going about it the wrong way.”
“Listen to me—”
“How can I listen? Nothing you say makes sense. What have the Halians to do with any of us? And if they are Halians, how could they be so close behind you? They can be no great force so far inland, not and keep a corridor open to their ships.”
That made good sense. Kerida found herself starting to relax.
“I don’t know how, Matriarch.” Tel Cursar. The voice and the height together were unmistakable. “I only know the numbers I’ve seen with my own eyes. I only know they have weapons I’ve never seen before—arrows that explode when they find their marks, lights that follow those who are trying to retreat.”
Tel paused to draw in a breath. Exploding arrows? Lights that moved of their own accord? That sounded like something out of Feelers tales. Ker shook herself. He was still speaking.
“I only know that people I trust, people my Cohort Leader trusted, told us the Grand Hall in Farama was torched, and those in Caldil and Kender as well. This Hall will be next.” His voice was strained with more than exhaustion.
For the longest time, Ker thought Matriarch wasn’t going to respond. Finally, she said, “Will you submit to examination?”
Ker’s throat loosened as relief flooded through her. There was the answer; the soldiers would be examined, and the truth found out. That’s what Talents did, after all.
“That’s your answer?” The bitterness in the first man’s voice was so strong Ker could almost taste it herself. “We endanger ourselves to help you, and you won’t even take our words?” He drew himself up straight. “No. I won’t submit. And neither will any of my people.”
Tel shifted and reached out to touch the other man’s sleeve. “Fedna—”
“No!” Fedna, the officer who’d been speaking, shook him off. “I won’t—I’m in command, and we can’t . . .” In the pause, Ker could see him visibly taking control of himself. “After all we’ve already been through—a pox on them if they can’t believe us.”
“Examination is your choice, but you realize I will draw the inevitable conclusions if you do not submit.” Matriarch held up her hand. “Even without examining you, I know you mean well, and that your offer comes from your genuine and sincere belief that what you tell us is true. But, with nothing more, I must trust my own judgment and my own knowledge of the world. I cannot toss aside centuries of law and tradition because you ask it of me.”
“Then we’re wasting our time here.” Fedna turned and walked back down the central aisle toward the main doors without any kind of leave-taking. That alone told Kerida just how serious the man was.
Ker didn’t know she’d moved, but she must have, that or made some sound, because as Tel Cursar turned to follow the Eagles officer, he looked toward the corridor where she stood, looked right at her. His feet faltered, but he caught himself, and anyone seeing him would take it for the clumsiness of exhaustion. Before she even knew she was going to, K
erida made a fist and tapped herself on the left shoulder. “Come to me” was the signal, or had been when she’d been a soldier. “Meet me.” She was sure he could figure out where.
As silently as she could, she raced back to the kitchen. The place was now deserted, though Cana had left a lamp burning on the worktable. Kerida went first to the outer door, the one that opened into the stable yard. She lifted off the short stave of wood that acted as a bar, though it was used more to make sure the wind didn’t blow the door open than to keep intruders out. Then she took up the lamp and carried it into the storeroom.
Here Ker hesitated, lower lip between her teeth, scanning the shelves, the baskets and chests, and the net bags hanging from the ceiling. The inventory was so carefully kept that it would be known almost immediately if any food stores were missing. Her glance fell on an old, moth-eaten tapestry in the far corner of the room. Then she smiled. All the stores were carefully accounted for, even those already set aside, that balanced what had been given to the Carnelian Cohort twelve days ago. Those stores were already out of the inventory. She eyed the tapestry, committing its contours to memory, taking note of how the edges of the cloth lay on the floor. All she had to do was make sure this cover looked undisturbed, and Tel and his fellows could take away all they could carry. It might be days, or even weeks, before the theft was noticed.
She set the lamp down on a chest full of jars of spices and reached for the corner of the cloth covering the supplies. With her hands mere inches away, she froze, trembling at what she’d been about to do. If she touched it, if she touched anything, she’d be caught no matter how much time passed. Any Talent could Flash the tapestry and know who’d touched it and taken the food. She clasped her hands together, pressing them against her mouth. She couldn’t believe how close she’d come to giving herself away. Her heart was thumping so fast Ker thought it might explode.
“Deep breaths,” she told herself. “There’s nothing to worry about.” She picked up the lamp and crossed back into the main kitchen, glancing around again at the pots set out for the morning and the utensils hanging above the banked fires. She’d touched the lamp, but that was all right, she’d handled it tens of times. Likewise the bar for the door. She could say she thought she’d heard a noise, that she’d stepped outside and then forgotten to rebar the door behind her. What was the worst that could happen? She’d be punished for carelessness? She could handle that. Ker leaned against the table and folded her arms. What if they questioned her more closely? Examined her?
Halls of Law Page 4
