by Kaplan, EM
He smiled ruefully. "I'm what you might call a 'dabbler,'" he said, the little old man's voice coming out with the last word. "Not enough focus to do any real harm. Or good. Just curious about the ways of the world. Not enough to see anything coming."
See things coming. A seer. She felt the jab at her father. "Have something against my father, do you?"
"Hmmm?" He willfully misunderstood her meaning. "Your father is as close to a seer as we have seen in many, many generations. We would do well to encourage him."
"That sounds like a line, something you say by rote," she said. "Have you said that one before?"
"A few times." He smiled and let his facade shift briefly, his eyes changing to coal black for a flicker. It could have been menacing, but it wasn't.
"How long have you known that you were a shifter?" she asked, wondering if she had latent talents that would someday surface, especially if Jenks were a blood relation of hers.
"Since I was old enough to focus my eyes," he said. She gave him a quizzical look. "I was a baby lying in my bassinet. First thing I saw was our household cat. World's first and most adorable cat-baby. At least for a minute. Couldn't hold it very long then. That came with practice."
She leaned against the counter. "During the attack on the Keep, I lifted a stone that was five times my weight, but I was exhausted for, I don't know, days, maybe weeks." She didn't mention the other factors that had incapacitated her as well. Namely, a heart and mind that were ripped open. And, well, nightmarish ogres.
He looked at her appraisingly. "Probably not your forte then, even though you can do it."
"Then how did I lift the stone at all?"
He shrugged. "Natural anxiety in the heat of the situation. Unusual circumstances. We don't always know what we can do until we're pushed." He paused. "Look. Masks can all do the simple things. Heal ourselves to some extent. Manipulate the light immediately around us by reflecting it or absorbing it. You're wondering if you're a shifter, a healer, or a seer. You're not going to know till it happens. It is what it is. There's no pushing it. And there may never be an it." He resumed gathering some tools together on the table surface. "It takes the right circumstance and the right person in it to awaken a talent." He said the word without bothering to hide the bitterness in his tone.
She realized, then, why he lived apart from the settlement. His ability to shift was so strong, how could they trust him to be who he said he was? He was built for subterfuge, not impartial observation and scholarship.
He was still talking. "Take Malga, your nanny. She didn't know she was a natural nursemaid till she was in her seventy-fifth year and met you. Didn't know that, did you?" He smiled at her surprise. "She can soothe babies of all kinds. Didn't know it until her own womb was long dried up. Might not have ever realized it at all. Destiny is a very unsympathetic mistress sometimes."
She watched him pour a white powder into a small stone mortar and begin grinding it with a pestle, his dry-skinned fingers wrapped around the stone tool. He reached up and broke a sprig of plant off a hanging bunch above him. He dropped it into the mix and ground it some more. It released a sharp smell that was both fresh and sweet. The whole mixture abruptly turned green, then lightened as the white mixed with it.
"Go ahead and ask me," he said.
She watched him grind the mixture until it became smooth. She couldn’t contain her curiosity. "All right. What is that?"
He shrugged. "Toothpaste." He scraped the creamy mix into a jar and screwed the lid on tightly. "But that's not what you want to ask me."
"Are you a mentalist—a mind reader—too?"
He laid his hands flat on the smooth wooden work table, and said again, "Ask me. Speak your question. You've had plenty of time to work up to it. What are you waiting for? Just ask me."
She came out with it. "When you see a path in front of you, how do you know if you should choose it and not some other path? How do I know if I'm supposed to take the Mask? What if it's not for me? What if I fail? Am I like you? Am I destined for something else? Or nothing at all? Am I . . . am I better off leaving the settlement and finding my own way? What if I do that and I just end up hurting everyone and failing anyway?"
"Kind of one question, but kind of a lot of questions," he said.
She rephrased it. "How did you know you didn't want to take the Mask?"
"Hm," he said. "But I did."
"You did? You did what?"
"I was a Mask. For a while." While she stared at him in surprise, he continued. "I went on only two tasks before I put it down. Very simple tasks, generally speaking. No nations at stake. No people being tried for their lives. A divorce, in the first case. An estate dispute in the second. The first lasted four months, and the second only seven weeks."
"How did you know that you couldn't do it?"
"Too much anger," he said with a half-smile. All she had seen of him was wry playfulness. It was hard to imagine him with a scowl. The corners of his eyes creased as he watched her try to digest what he'd said. "I have what was deemed ‘an excess of emotion.’ I couldn't help people. I couldn’t listen to their problems objectively when I cared too much about them. These people I was supposed to judge—they were complete strangers at first. Then suddenly, I was invested in their lives. I knew them. Cared for them. Loved them. And, as you know, anything but absolute objectivity is . . . "
"Useless in a Mask," she finished for him. He shrugged, and she wondered, "But how do you tell them? How were you able just to tell all of them?" She didn't gesture toward the settlement, but they both knew who she meant.
He wiped his hands on a towel and stood for a moment. "It was better to hurt them for a short while than all of the people out there, possibly forever. If I had continued as a Mask, I would have failed many people, many times over. I can’t even comprehend the harm I could have done."
"But how do I figure out what I'm supposed to do?" she said. "I'm leaving on my first task in just a few days. And it's not an insignificant one, as far as things go. And I'm not the primary. Both of my parents will be there. But I'll be there. As a Mask. Don't I owe it to these people to be the best we have? To be objective and cool-minded, scholarly, and rational?"
"And compassionate?" He looked at her with a tilt to his head, his blue eyes twinkling though his expression was somber.
“Compassion? That’s the very thing I need to hide.”
“Maybe,” he said, though it didn’t sound like a maybe.
"So there is a place for compassion in all of this confusion? How do I judge?" She looked at him, not bothering to control what she knew were wild eyes and flat-out fear written on her face. "What do I do?" she asked finally. She had no idea what to do. She needed guidance. She needed advice. She needed someone to tell her, specifically, word-for-word, what to do.
He gave that simple half-smile, blue eyes glinting black. "Just try not to foul it up."
Chapter 16
Ott and Rob had been traveling for days. No, it had been weeks, Ott realized, slowly coming back to himself a little more, hour by hour. The ground here was frozen, he noticed, making their path slippery as they ascended north into higher elevation. Gasgun Lake off to their left was solid, most likely for duration of the winter. He couldn't see the cold letting up now that it had started its icy sweep over the area. The lake was always the first one in the area to freeze. Probably had an iceberg at its core from the way it felt, even in summer. No fishing there for a while, not even in an ice house. Ice crystals formed on his scarf under his nose.
The sky threatened snow at any minute, but they were only a long day's walk from home, and it wasn't windy, thank Lutra. And just as he thought that, the wind picked up, as if to taunt him. Home, he thought ambivalently, squinting against the sting of the air. He would be glad to see his sister and her children, to feel their small arms around his neck, and to sit in front of a warm fire with dry, unfrozen toes. But he wasn't sure he had a place there anymore. He had a room. Yes, it was his room and had a
lways been his, but he'd been gone for so long . . . Never mind the urge to turn his feet back south toward that oppressive blue forest, not just in footsteps, but to turn back in time to where she was. His chest tightened like it was gripped by very real bands, instead of ones made of misery.
"Looks like it's going to snow," Rob said from under his furlined hat for about the fifth time. Ott grunted. He tucked his chin in and returned to his thoughts. They were loaded down by their packs. Ott eyed Rob's where it was distorted by the large jar with its ghastly contents. The head. Thankfully, the thing's eyes were closed in there or Ott would not have been able to sleep in the same camp. It made him feel queasy. A lot of things made him feel sick right about now—things he couldn’t get out of his mind for the life of him.
The worst part of it wasn't thinking about one of those creatures dragging Mel through the blue-tinted underbrush—although that was an awful memory. The beast had been ponderously crashing below them with her tucked under into the thick hide of its side, rough hands clamping her down like she was a rag doll. They had saved her that time. The worst part was not having been able to save her a second time. He couldn’t even remember what happened at the Keep after the stones crushed her. After the hallway collapsed and she was . . . killed. Everything leading up to that, he remembered in sickening detail. How the smoke filled his nose and eyes. A scream behind him. Stones crashing down all around. The sting of debris. The hallway disintegrating. Then nothing. Rob said later he saw Ott kill one of them, but Ott didn't remember any of it. A part of him had been sliced out. He felt its absence, but suspected it was a festering wound that his mind had wanted to quarantine for good reason.
What price would he pay to have her back? Anything. He would give anything he had. Or was he elevating the memory of her to impossible perfection now that he would never have her? He’d had only one conversation with her, an interrupted one at that. How could he know, especially from such a short time together, that she was perfect—perfect for him, as flawed as he was?
Stupid line of thought. It served only to make him feel the loss more, to stab at an open wound with a hot poker. He blinked his stinging eyes as the wind picked up. They might have to find shelter soon. The first tiny, biting grains of snow began to blow. He raised a gloved hand to scrub across his eyes and crashed into the back of Rob, who had stopped. Rob grabbed Ott’s arm trying to steady him on the icy path as their feet attempted to slip out from under them.
"What is it?" Ott shouted irritably over the growing wind.
Rob pointed. The road split ahead. From the mines westward, a steady stream of people flowed, heading east toward home. Not just people but all kinds of creatures—children, animals on leads, and people carrying or dragging their belongings. Not moving slowly either. They were traveling at a fairly steady clip, with the smaller children being carried. Now that they were closer, Ott could hear the clank of mining tools strapped to the pack animals, children crying, and the occasional dog bark. Ahead of them at the fork in the road, there was a wagon upended in the ditch, one set of its gray wooden wheels pointing toward them. Two people—adults—with other smaller figures huddled nearby were staring at the wreckage, no one stopping to help them, their pots, pans, and other belongings strewn on the frosted ground. Yet, the stream of bodies flowed on.
Chapter 17
"Mass exodus," Rob said, his voice breaking with shock. He had more reason than Ott to be concerned. These people worked for Rob's family mines. They were his father's people. One day, they would be Rob’s people.
"Where are they going?" Ott asked as they drew closer. Rob laid a hand on the arm of a man passing by and repeated Ott's question.
"We're getting away from the cursed trolls. What d'you think? The bastards took over the mines. They slaughtered us. We can’t stay there," the man told him, his manner suggesting he had clearly not recognized Rob. Otherwise, there would have been deference or at least a hint of respect in his tone. The man moved on with the others, his head ducked down in the wind, and soon disappeared in the dark, shuffling crowd of huddled shoulders.
"Do you need help with your wagon?" Rob shouted at the man standing in the ditch. The man looked up with a sour expression. He was middle-aged with thin wisps of gray hair blowing out of his blue woolen cap, his bony wrists dangling beyond too-short sleeves.
"It's a lost cause," he said. "Damn thing broke an axle. It'll be covered in the snow by tomorrow. Me and the young ones were just picking up what we can carry."
"We'll help you," Rob said, gesturing at Ott to come with him as he slid down the side of the incline.
"Get them pots over there," the man barked at his blue-lipped children, who scrambled to collect the scattered cookware on the cold ground. Not a gloved hand among them, Ott noticed.
When they were moving again, back among the crowd, the man pointed to his own chest. "Jonas. And my eldest daughter Treyna," he said pointing to the other adult with him. Ott was surprised when she lifted her eyes to meet his and then looked at him from under her snow-laced lashes. She was not put off at all by Ott’s scowl. He had thought she was the man’s wife from the way she had care of the younger kids, but she was young, too, maybe younger than Ott by a couple years even. Her eyes were gray-blue and clear. She smiled at him and then lowered her face again. She was gloveless like her siblings, and her knuckles were raw and cracked from the cold where she grasped the edges of her shawl together. Jonas didn't bother introducing the younger children, of which there were three, the eldest only thigh-high to Ott, maybe five years old at the most. Rob gave Ott a look and hoisted the nearest child up in his arms as they walked.
"Where are you headed?" Rob tried again. His furlined hat was pulled low over his eyes, so he was able to remain unrecognized.
Jonas was willing to talk. "To the big house. There’s a camp and they're taking us in. There will be food and a roof and strength in numbers. There will be warm fires and safety." Over the head of the child in his arms, Rob's eyes widened at Ott. The big house meant Rob's father's house, and was somewhat of a misnomer. The structure had rooms for well over 100 families, meeting chambers, and private antechambers. It housed the remaining members of Rob’s family along with the elder council members and their kin. Building it had taken Rob’s ancestors more than a generation using the sweat off the backs of their servants.
"What happened to the mine?" Rob asked.
"Attacked," Jonas said simply, with a shrug that seemed inappropriately casual. It seemed the presence of the creatures, the beasts, was common knowledge now.
"Where are you coming from?" Treyna got up the nerve to ask, risking a glare from Jonas. She fell in step with Ott, the mud darkening the hem of her skirts.
"Farther south," Ott told her shortly.
"And were the trolls there, too?" she asked. Her voice was low and didn’t carry well in the wind.
He nodded, a curt jerk of his head, a twinge of loss hitting him hard.
She read his face easily, but, not knowing his exact ailment, simply said, "We've lost everything, too. A lot of people have. We don't know where else to go. Wandering here and there at the mercy of strangers. It's hard on the little ones." She looked away, then down. Then, her eyes flicked back to him. It was a strange and telling look. A hardness in the set of her mouth caught him by surprise. Then it cleared as she twisted her mouth into a small, forlorn smile. Her tiny body was small and needed protection—he could feel her trying to draw him in with her eyes as surely as a honey trap. The wind picked up then and snow fell harder. Treyna hefted up her smallest sibling, so Ott picked up the other, a girl with gray eyes like her sister's who buried her face too trustingly into his neck, away from the stinging snow.
They walked through nightfall, trampling the snow in the road with their hundreds of footprints, though it collected to either side of the road. Miners were not nomads. They dug in by nature, perhaps by instinct. They set their shoulders to the task and worked in rhythm until the day was done. Walking was no differ
ent for them. There was no point in stopping. It was too uncomfortable to rest and real comfort was close enough to keep them on their feet.
Ott and Rob walked on with them. The little girl in Ott's arms fell asleep despite him shifting her from arm to arm when he ached. He imagined Treyna had it worse. She was slim and poorly dressed. Her face was wind-whipped and her eyes were drooping from exhaustion, but somehow her feet moved along with the crowd. Jonas walked ahead of them. Ott knew they were headed in the right direction, but he wondered how many others in the crowd besides himself and Rob knew that for certain. How many of them were frozen and filled with despair?
A few hours after dark, they heard a shout from ahead of them. Someone had spotted lights in the distance, and spurred on, they were soon walking into the camp city. The outer tents were cold and nearly deserted—wind blocks, really. The inner tents were warmer and filled with people sleeping on rugs surrounded by the mishmash of their belongings. Ott heard Rob swear under his breath, quietly enough not to wake the sleeping children, but loud enough that Treyna heard him, too. They found a place to spread their blankets and put down the children who instinctively rolled together, sharing warmth like sleeping puppies.
Ott pulled Rob aside, "They can't sleep out here much longer. When winter truly arrives, they'll freeze to death, every last one of them." He was looking at the sleeping children. Treyna, sitting tiredly next to them, caught his eye, but looked away quickly. She gathered her shirts around her legs, tucking them in, shivering. Rob rubbed the back of his neck, which probably ached as much as Ott's did. A small child was not a heavy load to carry, but even a light load became a burden after so many miles.
"I know that as well as you," Rob whispered back fiercely. "But there are hundreds of people. Where would we put them?" Ott knew well enough that we meant Rob's family, not necessarily himself included. Part of him was thankful for that. Part of him wanted to duck out and go home to Jenny and her kids, to sit by their warm fire and to be grateful for it.