Ashling

by Isobelle Carmody

  "His Talent must have given him the knowledge," Domick said.

  I gaped at the coercer, astonished. Why had it never occurred to me that Ariel was a Talented Misfit?

  Domick went on unaware of my reaction to his words. "Kella thinks he has empathy because of the way he generated fear, but I think he is a latent coercer. He couldn't be a futureteller, because if he had futuretold that Obernewtyn was not destroyed, he would also have foreseen us using Dragon to fool the soldierguards. I think he simply had a true dream."

  True dreams were common among Misfits, and often contained fleeting flashes of the future.

  My mind circled back to my own question: why had I never thought of Ariel being Talented? I had known he was a Misfit, but above finding him morally corrupt and sadistic, I had never considered what it was that had made him a Misfit.

  Why?

  The answer came swiftly.

  Because I did not want it to be so.

  I wanted to believe that all Talented Misfits strove for right and justice. Yet there were many who hid their abilities from themselves, despising them. It was why we tended to rescue children and young people, for they were more capable of changing their thinking, accepting their Talents as gifts to be nurtured and developed; of becoming part of our community.

  I forced myself to think of Ariel as having a Talent. It left a bitterness in my mouth.

  "To my mind, the real question is what made Ariel set so much store by a single true dream," Domick was saying. "Everyone knows how easy it is to misinterpret them, and how often they're just plain wrong."

  I blinked, as his words penetrated. "Maybe he dreamed it more than once. After all, it was true."

  The rain began to fall more heavily. The coercer looked up with a muffled curse and lengthened his stride. I drew up the hood of the cloak to stop water dripping down my neck and hastened to keep up, my thoughts running ahead of me.

  Ariel as a coercer—even as a weak and unaware coercer— was a fearsome notion.

  In the early days at Obernewtyn, there had been much concern over the morality of coercion, and even talk about trying to convert it to healing or some other use. But in its aggressive form, it had proven too necessary to our survival.

  Instead, there had been a move away from separatism. These days, guilds aimed at training novices to use all of their powers, though Misfits still generally chose to specialize in one specific Talent as part of the process of becoming guilded. There had been some resistance to crossguilding, until it was realized secondguilding often enhanced the primary ability. For instance, as a farseeker with coercion, I could coerce from a distance, instead of needing to be close to a subject, as a plain coercer must. And the combination of beastspeaking, farseeking and coercivity meant I could coerce animals without being close to them physically.

  My thoughts returned reluctantly to Ariel.

  I preferred to think of him as an unconscious coercer than as an empath. Obscene and impossible that he should possess the same ability as the blind, infinitely gentle Em-path guildmaster, Dameon. If Ariel were an empath, it must be some twisted variant.

  I felt my mouth open, for indeed he might be a Talented Misfit with a defective mentality. There were many born since the holocaust with warped minds, and not all were drooling imbeciles.

  I shivered at the notion of a Misfit with empathy or coercion, driven by a defective will. Thank Lud, Ariel had never realized his abilities or used them consciously. How much more harm might he have done?

  Domick plucked at my arm and pointed across the street to a dingy inn whose signboard proclaimed it incongruously: The Good Egg. "That is where we will make contact with Brydda."

  "The last time I went into an inn looking for Brydda Llewellyn I was arrested," I said, following him reluctantly across the street.

  "We will not ask for him openly," Domick said. "It is just a matter of ordering a certain obscure brew that will not be in stock."

  "What if someone else gives the same order?"

  "There is a combination of quantity and certain other stipulations that trigger the process which will signal the Black Dog. He will come as soon as he is able."

  "Here?"

  "Here, or to the safe house. We will wait a little, in case he gets the message at once and sends someone for us."

  There was no time for more talk as the door swung open and a group of drunken revellers stumbled out into the night. Domick grasped my elbow, steering me past them and into the inn.

  Though cavernous, it was ill lit as all such places were, for the people who came to drown in their cups seldom wanted to be seen doing it. The inn was surprisingly crowded for a city supposedly full of poor, but perhaps there was always enough coin for oblivion. The room reeked of cheap, sour fement and old sweat, but I was grateful for the warmth created by the throng, and glad to stop walking. My feet ached from the tramp across the city.

  I took my cloak off with some trepidation, having no alternative but to let myself be seen as a girl because of the clothes I had put on in the safe-house bathing room. I could have completely coerced one or two people into seeing me any way I chose, but not a whole roomful. Coercing a large number of people was more of a general influencing, or accentuating what existed already in their minds. There was always the risk that someone with a natural mindshield would see through this less specific coercive cloaking, but only if their attention was on us at the moment I set it in place. Oddly, I had always found the cloak very effective even when there were unTalents with natural mindshields, because a group of people tended, more often than not, to operate as a single not very intelligent mind. I was not clad in very extravagant gypsy garments, but the tan of my skin marked me, so I made them see me as a full-grown gypsy woman rather than as a girl.

  To my astonishment, Domick suddenly reached out and drew me into the circle of his arms.

  X

  "Ho, Mika!" someone cried.

  Domick turned, digging his fingers into my shoulder.

  "Join us," said a lean man with thin lips and close-set, crafty eyes that moved over me like prying fingers. "Who is your companion, my friend?"

  "Her name is Elaria," Domick said in an arrogant voice, that startled me almost as much as his putting an arm around me. He slid into a seat, pushing me before him, and I found myself crushed up next to an old man with a grizzled face and faded blue eyes.

  "Elaria, I am Kerry," the lean man opposite introduced himself with a leering smile. He stabbed a blunt finger at the old man beside me. "That is Col, and by me here is Oria."

  Col merely grunted, but the blond Oria gave me a friendly nod which filled me with suspicion. Since when were people even civil to a gypsy? Far less a halfbreed.

  As if voicing my thoughts, a thick-necked youth further down the trestle scowled at me. "Halfbreeds are thieves an' plaguebirds," he said loudly in a highland accent.

  "You are a fool, boy, blighted with stupidity which is a greater affliction than plague, since one cannot even hope for recovery from it." Domick's eyes were contemptuous. "Would I walk about with a carrier of the curst plague?"

  Oria and Kerry roared with more laughter than the witticism deserved. As the blond woman moved her head, I saw that her face was disfigured on one side by the savage spore of the plague.

  "Ruga, you've been put in your place fair enough." Kerry leaned across the table to me and I fought the urge to slap him away. "She's comely enough," he approved. "But my taste don't run to gypsy flesh. Specially not one with a face as sober and sour as a judge."

  "No doubt she finds you a sour eyeful, too," laughed the woman.

  "Well, like I was sayin'," said the young highlander further down the trestle somewhat huffily, "I'm thinkin' of joining th' soldierguards. I'd just as soon step on a few necks as have mine stood on."

  The oldster beside me gave a sneering laugh. "Join up and you'll just as likely find yourself warring with the tribesfolk in distant Sador. And I've heard they roast over their temple fires and eat them a
s who they take prisoner."

  "There will be no war against Sador," Kerry said swiftly, his eyes flickering to Domick's face and away.

  "The Council has sent Herders on a mission to make peace with the Sadorians," Domick said.

  "Peace?" echoed the bleary-eyed Col. "The Council don't want peace, 'cepting maybe a big piece of Sador. And who knows what them Herders are after?"

  An awkward silence ensued, then Kerry said with forced joviality, "Best keep your words for other company, old man. There's some here who might not take kind to your speculation."

  "You have no need to worry about me," Domick said. "Fools blow air out of their mouths as often as their bums, and either way it causes a stink and comes to nothing."

  I looked around at the people at the table and, seeing their expressions, understood suddenly why Kerry and the woman had behaved so oddly, fawning on Domick and being civil to his gypsy companion.

  They were afraid of him.

  Abruptly Domick rose and left the table, saying he wanted to order a drink. I tried not to look disconcerted at being left alone there, but I sensed the others at the table studying me covertly. Unnerved, I shaped a general coercive probe suggesting that I was defective. Given the general prejudice against gypsies, it was not difficult to plant a negative thought and, as the idea took root, they relaxed. Only the plague-scarred Oria did not cease her scrutiny. I entered her mind at the subvocal level, and discovered she believed me to be a spy left by Domick to gamer information. It was clear this disturbed her, but I did not trouble to delve deeper to learn why. I merely grafted into her thoughts a memory of having seen me before with different men at different inns, and of having observed enough of my behavior to judge me defective.

  Her disquiet faded, and she dismissed me from her mind. Turning to the old man, her brow creased with exasperation. "You are a fool with a mouth big enough to lose yourself in, Col. Don't you know who that was?"

  He shrugged. "Some official or other. What do I care who he is? I've seen him here before."

  "And that makes him safe?" she hissed. "He works for the Councilcourt."

  "He sweeps the floor an' runs messages," said the high-lander, Ruga, from down the table. "I heard him say so once."

  Oria sneered at him openly. "Of course he would say that."

  The old man frowned. "Well, what does he do then? Is he a spy?" I felt myself start, but no one noticed. The blond woman leaned across the table and lowered her voice. "You heard what happened to Jomas?"

  Col nodded, so I was forced to read the memory evoked by the woman's question direct from his thoughts.

  A man called Jomas had spoken out against a Councilman, claiming he had charged his father with Sedition in order to obtain his farm. Jomas had been arrested and charged with Sedition the very next night, and tortured so savagely that he had never walked again.

  "So what? Everyone knows they torture Seditioners," Col said.

  Oria looked around before speaking. "Neither Jomas nor his father were Seditioners and well you know it. But the point of the story is that Mika was here when Jomas was mouthing off about that Councilman."

  Col snorted. "And for that you'd have me fear him? This place is full of folk who'd sell their mother for the price of a mug. Anyone could have reported Jomas' mouthings."

  "I went to see Jomas when he recovered," Oria said fiercely. "He told me he was there when they tortured him."

  "He?" the oldster echoed, confused.

  "He," Oria repeated. "Mika." She lowered her voice. "He is a torturer."

  I was so shocked that my probe faltered in its hold on the group.

  "We should not talk of such matters," Kerry said, his tone suddenly anxious. "People who talk too much have a way of disappearing into the interrogation rooms beneath the Councilcourt."

  "Sometimes elsewhere," Oria added darkly, as I regained control.

  Obviously there were rumors about Domick because he worked for the Council. But why would he let them believe he was a torturer when a little coercion could quash a rumor that must surely make spying more difficult? Someone else asked if it was true that the recruiters were looking to war in Sador.

  "Course they are," Oria snapped. "But they're hoping the mission will bring the tribes to heel without it. War is expensive, but they want control of the spice groves ..."

  "That's not why they're recruitin'," retorted Ruga. "They want more soldierguards because of them rebels with Henry Druid gettin' too big for their boots."

  "Henry Druid is dead," Oria interrupted. "He died in a firestorm in the highlands."

  "I heard tell he was took to Herder Isle," Col said.

  "You think everyone who walks out the door is spirited away to Herder Isle," she snapped. "The Druid is dead and Brydda Llewellyn leads the rebels in Sutrium. That is all that matters."

  "Not Brydda. Bodera," Kerry began.

  "What does it matter who leads them?" sneered Col, glaring into his mug. "I hope there is a war, whether it is with them demonish-looking Sadorians, or the rebels, and they all kill one another."

  "They'll have their work to catch the Black Dog," Oria said, with a defiance that made it clear that she had rebel sympathies. "They fall over their own feet every time they try."

  "Don't matter who hunts him," the old man said. "They'll get him in the end. He's just a man, an' sooner or later he'll make a mistake."

  The table fell silent again as Domick reappeared bearing a small jug.

  "I don't know how you drink that mucky syrup," Oria said brightly. "But if you ordered it more often, old Filo would keep some for you instead of your having to wait while he sends out."

  The coercer made no comment. He drank with every evidence of enjoyment, then set me mug down and looked around the table.

  "You should be careful of loose talk," he said casually.

  There was something in his tone that brought everyone in the immediate vicinity to silence.

  "There are those who are not what they seem," he went on, in a sinister tone. My heart began to thump. Now what was he doing?

  "Take that man." He pointed to a drunkard, staring about owlishly at the nearest table. "He seems no more than a sot. But is he really? Perhaps he is something more than he seems. Perhaps he has drunk less than he makes out and flaps his ears for Seditious talk."

  Oria laughed uneasily. "You jest."

  Domick smiled and sipped at his golden mead.

  Suddenly the oldster beside me slammed his fist down. "I'll not pretend! I am no Seditioner to sit here cowering.

  The room fell silent and all attention was on Domick, waiting to see what he would do.

  "And what am I?" he asked in a soft, dangerous voice.

  "I've a right to speak," Col blustered, the silence penetrating at last.

  Domick supped the last of his drink, then he dabbed fastidiously at the edges of his mouth with a handkerchief. "You should use your tongue for less dangerous talk, old man," he said at last. "Fortunately for you I sweep, I write letters, and sometimes I deliver them. That is all I do. Anyone who would say otherwise ... should think twice."

  He rose, pulling me up with him. I kept my head down, trying to look moronish and insignificant. Domick nodded languidly to Kerry and Oria. "Perhaps, when next I come, the company will be better."

  Kerry smiled stiffly and bade us walk safe.

  Outside I pulled on my cloak with suppressed fury. "Are you crazy? There is not a person in there who will forget your face or mine after that little display. And how is it so many people know you work for the Council? Is this some brilliant new strategy based on telling your business to every stranger you meet?"

  Domick was looking out into me night, his face empty of expression. "A Council employee is often investigated in the interests of security. If I had no life to investigate I would be instantly suspect. I must have a background to fit my role and those people are part of it."

  "You might have warned me," I snapped. "What if I hadn't been able to improvise?"


  "Guildmistress of the farseekers, veteran of hundreds of daring and brilliant rescues, unable to improvise?" he demanded dryly. "Yet I would have warned you, had I expected them to be there."

  "Perhaps they deliberately came tonight to avoid you," I snapped.

  He shrugged. "That is likely true. They have no love for me. Why are you so angry? I would have warned you if I could, but once inside it was too late."

  I opened my mouth to deny anger, then realized he was right. My temper had risen from fear.

  "That was unnecessarily dangerous," I said, forcing myself to be calm. "You deliberately frightened them. Why?"

  Domick's eyes were like the holes of the Blacklands as he stepped out into the night. "The people back there are not bad folk. They are just poor and ignorant. They speak too freely of matters better left unsaid. I am trying to teach them to keep their mouths shut."

  "And what if there had been trouble in there? What would Mika have done? Would his job protect him if someone decided to take offense to his bullying?"

  "You don't seem to grasp what it means to be employed by the Council," Domick said softly. "There is little it would not protect me against."

  I snorted in disbelief. "Only those high up in Council employ warrant that sort of protection. Not a sweeper of floors."

  "You think that after so many seasons' faithful service, the Council would not reward a loyal worker?" Domick asked quietly.

  A chill crept along my veins. "You mean ..."

  He laughed hollowly. "Let us say that it is some time since I have swept a floor in the Councilcourt, Elspeth."

  I licked my lips. "The people back there believe that you are a torturer. Why didn't you coerce them against believing such a rumor? What possible advantage could it give you to let them think it?"

  "The protection and power wrought by fear," Domick said. "But even if the rumor had served no purpose, I cannot stop it. I could not coerce everyone to disbelieve a rumor that is so universal."