Yes. Prima’s response appeared on the screen. Well…
“Well, what?” She raised an eyebrow.
Humans are very strange. But as far as I can tell, he should accept it as a perfectly good explanation for everything he saw. It’ll be a little boring but it will all come together.
Price sighed. Prima’s plan—an interweaving of three different factors that would lead Gary off-course—did seem sound. On the other hand, it was somewhat unsettling to rely on an AI for a plan this complex.
Even more so given the fact that no one had told her about the need for it. She had simply popped into Price’s email with some suggestions.
“Well, if you’re sure,” she said now. “I do feel a little bad for Amber, though. I would not be comfortable knowing that someone was listening in on my every moment at home.”
If I know Amber, she’s enjoying this immensely. And she’ll also find some ways to mess with him.
“That does sound like her. As long as she doesn’t give the game away, I have no objections.” She stood and went to the window to stare out at the New York skyline.
As CEO, she had known what was coming and had been ready to lie. She felt no guilt over it, certainly, and had trained herself long before to lie without any of the usual cheats people resorted to. In their attempt to lie without truly lying, they usually made the game obvious.
Price, on the other hand, had no qualms about lying for a good cause. Over the years, she had lied multiple times to avoid defense contracts that went against her morals.
On the one hand, she knew the Department of Defense would get their hands on an AI sooner or later. On the other hand, she felt an obligation to protect this one—and she certainly would not give up without a fight.
Not a brawl, though. It would be a fight she would plan meticulously.
Gary Brooks thought he was one step ahead, but he was, in fact, very, very far behind.
Chapter Twelve
Esak tried to avoid them but there were only so many places to go in a caravan and Taigan found him after dinner. She held her staff out and waited.
“What?” he asked finally and sounded suspicious.
“I’m going to teach you some self-defense,” she said.
“No.” He folded his arms and shook his head at her.
“Yes,” she insisted. She crouched and looked him in the eyes. “For two reasons. First, you want to get to the Rylkor Mountains and many things between here and there will mess you up if you can’t defend yourself. There are elves, there are bandits, there are monsters that look like a cross between a wolf and a bear, and there’s whatever is hiding in the mountains. If you want to get that key—which it would seem you do—you’ll need to survive until you get there.”
Esak said nothing but she could tell she’d hit a nerve.
“Second,” she said cheekily, “the quicker you learn, the harder you get to hit me with a stick.”
“Oh, damn, I did not see that coming.”
He considered this for a moment but it was obvious to both of them that she had won. Finally, he stood and dusted his pants off.
“Fine,” he said. “But don’t complain when you can’t teach me anything.”
“Uh-huh.” Taigan unhooked her cloak. She almost took the leather armor off as well—it was hot and not terribly comfortable—but that seemed both insulting and unwise. Plus, she should learn to live in it.
She handed the staff to Esak, who grasped it in the middle and almost immediately smacked himself in the shin while he tried to bring the front end of it down on her head. A significant pause followed during which she stared at his leg and he tried not to betray how much pain he was in.
Prima, on the other hand, laughed loudly.
“I told you,” he said finally through gritted teeth, “that I am not good at this.”
Taigan decided to ignore all his self-loathing talk. “It’s very simple,” she said. “You use your training time to make mistakes and then, once you know they’re mistakes, you know not to make them again.”
He gave her a poisonous look and rather than argue, she stared at him and waited.
The next time, he held the staff lower so he didn’t hit himself. That, of course, made the balance unwieldy and he missed her. He swore but the near-miss had emboldened him and the next strike landed on her shoulder. The one after that landed as well.
The one after that hit noticeably harder and she winced.
She had been right all along. He was very motivated to hit her with a stick. She had begun to wish she’d come up with another way to goad him because she would be entirely black and blue thereafter.
Esak began to smile as he brought the stick down again and again. His balance was off and none of his muscles were used to these movements, but he was a country boy. He had sufficient strength in him from carrying buckets of water and stray lambs, mucking stables, and splitting firewood.
Taigan began to dodge. First, it was only little movements, a sway here or a single step there. Then, she began switching it up, sometimes not moving at all and sometimes dodging as the staff came down. She made sure to keep reorienting Esak so he wouldn’t get used to hitting her only in one way.
She tired of the blows long before he tired of giving them, but it probably wasn’t very long before he put the staff down and crouched, panting. He opened his hands to look at his palms, both of which were an angry red.
“Oh, that.” She nodded. “You get used to that.”
He looked at her. “I’m still not good at it.”
“It’s your first lesson.”
“You didn’t teach me anything! You only had me…hit you. You didn’t teach me the grip, or any tricks—”
“Of course not. You taught them to yourself.”
He gaped at her. Back in the camp, several of the guards started into a bawdy song about a man with purple pants, and both Esak and Taigan listened for a moment.
“All I learned was that I’m still terrible at this,” he said finally.
“Okay, I have to ask—how soon did you give up on learning this before?”
“I was always terrible at it!”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” she said, getting annoyed now. “How long did you stick with it? You made it sound like it was years that you practiced and never got better, but you’re already getting better and it hasn’t even been an hour.”
Esak sat and made a show of not looking at her. He still examined his palms, which she would bet would blister later. She’d have to see if the caravan had a healer and if they could give him a salve for his hands.
“You didn’t see the other kids,” he said finally. He sounded resentful. “They were so good at everything and always learned faster than me—they always were faster than me.”
“Oh. So you didn’t mean you couldn’t learn, you only meant you didn’t win sparring matches against them.” Taigan shrugged. “What does—”
“If you were beat up every day and all the kids laughed at you, how long would you stay?” He glared at her. “I’m supposed to be the mayor after my father, but none of them will ever respect me. They’ll see me and they’ll remember how easily they beat me. Sticking it out wouldn’t have changed that.”
She considered this. It seemed obvious to her that he had gotten caught in his own head. Rather than doggedly getting up time and again and teaching himself how to beat them, he’d run away when it became clear that he wasn’t as naturally talented.
While she wanted to argue, she was fairly sure that nothing she said would convince him.
Instead, she shrugged. “Well, you won’t be mayor so it doesn’t matter. What does matter is making sure you know enough to protect yourself from animals or bandits—who don’t care if you’ll be mayor. They simply want to attack you.”
He opened his mouth but closed it. She could tell he had always hated the burden of knowing he would be mayor but that the reality of it was more than a little scary.
“More with
the staff,” Taigan said. She stood and shook her head, which proved to be a mistake. “And…uh, if you could focus on my arms and legs this time, that’d be great. I won’t be much use to anyone if I’m all concussed.”
Esak didn’t stand. “My hands hurt.”
“Yeah, bears don’t care about that.”
“I can confirm,” Prima agreed, even though he couldn’t hear her.
He sighed, clearly annoyed, and stood with the staff. He winced when he closed his fingers around it. He would definitely have blisters unless she could talk the AI into intervening. She had to hope she could.
She tapped both of her upper arms. “Go on. Give me a nice, hard sideways hit.”
He hit her on the top of her head instead.
“Ow.”
“I wanted to see if I could still do it.” He sounded pleased. “Okay, sideways.” He tried to swish the stick horizontally but only managed a slanting attack that ripped the staff out of his hold. “Ow, dammit.”
Taigan tried not to show how relieved she was that he hadn’t managed this attack immediately. She stood still while he picked the staff up and made a few passes in the air. Whether it was the pain on his palms or the new motion, he couldn’t seem to master it.
And the more he tried, the worse it got. She took a few thunks on the outsides of her ankles and one on her arm—although the staff was no longer in Esak’s hands—and the ground near her feet developed a divot.
Finally, Esak threw the staff away from him with a curse. “I told you,” he said bluntly. “I told you. I’m horrible at this. I can’t do it.” He stared defiantly at her.
She said nothing.
“Are you even listening to me?”
Wearily, she tilted her head to the side and regarded him with exasperation.
“What? What?”
“You’re being extremely lazy,” she said.
“I am not boring! I am—what do you mean, lazy?”
“I mean you try something half a dozen times, then get upset and call it quits. No wonder all the other kids were better at this than you. Have you ever worked at something?”
“I have!” he said, stung. “And you don’t know me.”
“Of course I know you,” she said. “Everyone knows you because everyone has the little voice in their head that tells them to give up when they look stupid trying to learn something.”
Esak remained silent.
“You let it tell you what to do,” Taigan explained.
“Well, it doesn’t matter.”
“Are you sure? Because in no world is ‘learning to do things’ not important.” She pinned him with a stare. “There’s a damned good chance you won’t even make it to the key at this rate, and when you do? You’ll simply wind up in another world where you don’t fit and you can’t get anything done.”
His face went white.
“You can run, and run, and run,” she said dangerously, “but you’ll never outrun this. Do you understand? The only way to stop it from following you everywhere is to deal with it.”
She could see how much he wanted to hit her with the stick—and how much he didn’t want to try again. He hated her with everything he was right now, but he also trusted her more than anyone else.
Because he knew, instinctively, that she was telling him the truth, and he also realized that she was the first one who had ever done that. His parents loved him and she was sure they had done their best. Sometimes, though, parents needed to stop telling their children that skill was innate.
“Do you honestly think you can teach me?” he said finally. “Me. You’ve seen me try. Don’t lie to me. Tell me the truth. Do you truly think you can teach me?”
“No,” Taigan said. “I think you can learn. I’ll simply be more annoying than the voice in your head telling you that you can’t.”
He stared at her for a long moment before his mouth twitched and he started to laugh. With his eyes closed, he laughed silently, and she cracked a smile.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Okay, I’ll agree. I’ll train with you. You be annoying and I’ll…be terrible at this, but I’ll try.”
“Okay,” she said.
“On one condition.” He jabbed a finger at her.
She raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t tell me to go back.” He looked mulish now. “The first time you tell me to turn around and go home, our lessons are over.”
Taigan smiled and shrugged. “And who would you hurt by doing that?”
He glared at her.
“I won’t say anything,” she said. “I’m as stubborn as anything, ask my mom. I know stubborn when I see it. I know I can’t persuade you. But if you run off and don’t train, It won’t get me killed on the road to the Rylkor Mountains and it won’t fuck my new life up in a new world.”
“I hate you,” he retorted. There wasn’t much depth of feeling, merely annoyance.
“That’s cool,” she said. “Anyway, I’m going to go learn that song they’re singing.”
“Why? It’s not good.”
“Exactly. I’m going to sing it to you tomorrow if you don’t practice.” She narrowed her eyes and leaned closer. “And I am terrible at singing.” She smiled at him and headed off. “See you then.”
Chapter Thirteen
The Rylkor Mountains appeared in the distance a few days later.
Govorn had to tell them that’s what they were looking at, of course, because at first, Jamie had no idea what he was seeing. The mountains didn’t exactly look threatening. He had, in fact, mistaken them for rolling, green hills, indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape.
“Those?” he asked the man doubtfully. “Wait…how good is your distance vision?”
The caravan leader laughed. In addition to being disgustingly handsome, he always seemed to be happy—although Jamie assumed it would be easy to be happy when you were rich and handsome.
“They don’t look like much from here,” the man agreed, “but the land slopes down for a long time before them and the path up is treacherous. Trust me, you don’t want to take it lightly. If you want my advice …” He trailed off and waited.
He sighed. “Go on, give me your advice.”
“Thus speaks a boy who hates taking advice but has learned the hard way to not make his own mistakes, hmm?”
“I’m not a boy,” he said. In truth, Govorn was a nice man and never one to make people feel inferior or to drive his employees to exhaustion. But when someone seemed to have everything they could want in life, even their kindness could sting.
“Just so,” the leader said approvingly. “My apologies. You see, it is difficult to not look at you and think of my youth. Oh, yes, when I speak of despising advice, I am speaking from experience. I was never good at taking it. That was why I spent a truly miserable year as a pirate.”
Jamie looked at him in surprise.
“The advice I wouldn’t let anyone give me,” Govorn confided, “was that I hated ships and got very seasick at the slightest provocation. And before you ask why I wanted to be a pirate if I hated ships, I think you know the answer already.”
“To impress a girl?” He grinned.
“That’s the one.” His companion chuckled. “The funny thing is, I never saw her again. One thing the sea gives you is perspective, at least. So many ports, so many people. You start thinking that maybe one pretty smile in one city might not be enough that you should tie your entire future to it.”
Jamie mulled this over.
“More, it taught me that I liked to see the world,” Govorn said. “To see the stars at night.”
“You never found someone worth tying your future to?” he asked curiously. He cleared his throat. “Perhaps that’s none of my business.”
“A fair question. And, no. Not yet. I like to imagine I’ll meet her on the road.” The man smiled lazily at the road winding ahead of them through fields. “Someone who’d rather see new sights with me than plant roots. If I find her, I’ll be happy and if I d
on’t, I’ll still be well-pleased with my life.”
This seemed like a good way to live, and Jamie said so.
“Remember that,” Govorn told him. “In any case, we were speaking of my advice to you—and that advice would be to let the boy alone and go find another adventure.”
“The—Esak?”
“Yes. He’s determined to make it to the mountains, but—”
“Do you know why?” Jamie looked around, worried that the boy might be listening in.
“I didn’t ask. If he wants to tell me, he will. He’s too busy being miserable, though. All I can see is that he’s determined and nothing will talk him out of it. As I was saying…” He cleared his throat. “I’d say you should let him make his journey alone.”
“I don’t think we can do that,” he said apologetically.
“Why not?”
“You didn’t ask his reasons.”
“Fair enough.” Govorn looked ahead toward the green, rolling mountains. “Do you see the green? Those trees are tall, and they say the ground behind them and between them is cracked and full of sheer drops. From what I have heard, the wind in the trees is like a nightmare. There are stories of whole caravans going mad, taking each other’s lives or their own, and lifelong friends who fought like mortal enemies.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” The man looked at him, his face unusually somber. “Most would call it magic but it’s enough for me to not go there.”
Jamie considered this. “We have to get there,” he said. “It’s…for our family. They need us to.” He squinted to look more closely. “I’d go alone, but…”
“Who can say if it would be more dangerous to go alone or together?” Govorn shrugged. “If you’re determined to go then you must follow that. But if there’s any other way—”
“I wish there was.” He truly did.
“Hmm.”
“Hmm, what?” Taigan had come to join them. She kept Jamie between herself and Govorn.
Her brother was beginning to think she had a crush—or, at least, was deeply flustered by the man.
“Your brother tells me there’s no talking you out of going to the Rylkor Mountains,” the caravan leader said. “A dangerous enterprise, I’m afraid. The route to the peaks is difficult and there are more than a few tales of madness.”
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