The Talented

by J. R. McGinnity

  Through tearing eyes, Adrienne saw Maureen lift her hands from Thom’s chest. Fear gripped her until she saw the boy’s chest rising and falling by itself. Her head went light with relief and she sagged, forced to brace her hands against the ground to keep from landing on her face. “He’s okay,” she repeated over and over, her voice a harsh whisper as she tried to make herself believe them. “He’s okay.”

  She looked up and saw Malokai watching her. “You saved him,” she croaked.

  “You thought to look for him.” Malokai’s voice sounded as though he had been swallowing razors, and Adrienne winced in sympathy. Her own throat felt as though it was on fire. It was at that moment that Adrienne realized that Malokai was shirtless, and that there were angry red burns on his chest and shoulders, and probably more on his back that she couldn’t see.

  Malokai seemed unaware of the burns.

  “He’ll be fine,” Maureen said, coming over to the sorry pair. There was a moment of hesitation before the healer placed her hand on Adrienne’s shoulder and closed her eyes. Adrienne felt quiet shivers coursing through her before Maureen broke contact.

  Adrienne’s lungs no longer spasmed, and her throat felt smooth and unharmed by the smoke. The painful marks left by Strider’s hooves had begun to fade as well.

  Maureen then turned to use her Talent on Malokai, and Adrienne noticed some of the tension fade from his face as the pain left his body.

  “Thank you,” Malokai told the woman he knew only by sight, his voice back to its usual musical quality. Malokai was as alienated from the other Talented as Adrienne was, but Adrienne realized for the first time that despite their differences, Maureen was not a bad person. She would not have had to heal Adrienne and Malokai, they had been in no real danger, but the healer had done so without being asked.

  Adrienne was humbled.

  “Keep an eye on the boy,” Maureen told Adrienne.

  Adrienne nodded. Maureen began to turn away, and Adrienne stopped her by putting a light hand on her arm. “Thank you, Maureen. You saved that boy’s life tonight.”

  “So did you. Both of you.” Maureen smiled, and there was respect in her eyes. “My Talent is with sickness,” she said. “I did what I can, but have Louella check on you. And on the boy.” She looked back at the burning stable. “How did it go up, do you suppose?”

  Adrienne shook her head and Maureen walked back into the crowd.

  “Go to Thom,” Malokai told Adrienne once Maureen had gone. “I’ll look over the horses.”

  ••••••

  “I need you to teach me Oneness,” Malokai said.

  Adrienne raised an eyebrow. She had been just about to climb into bed when Malokai had knocked on her door, and she was not impressed that that was all he had to say. “I was planning to sleep tonight,” she said, readjusting the belt on her robe. She wore nothing underneath but the thin sleep shirt she had invested in after the incident with the stables, and she wished Malokai had come only a few minutes earlier, when she was still fully dressed. It was hard to look imposing wearing a robe.

  “Teach me, and I will let you sleep.”

  Adrienne sighed and opened the door wide enough to allow Malokai entrance. She waved a hand and the candles scattered around the room lit so that more than the dying fire provided light. “Have a seat and tell me why you need to learn Oneness tonight and not tomorrow when I’m awake.”

  Malokai sat in the single chair in the room, pulling it away from the table to sit facing the bed where Adrienne took her own seat. The room was small enough that their knees almost touched, and Adrienne wished that she could adjust her robe over her legs without looking nervous. She was used to wearing her swa’il when in the company of men, not flimsy cloth.

  “I finished the book. Ben said we would begin working on Oneness in a week or two, once we had discussed the book thoroughly.” The disgust in his melodic voice was interesting, as was the fact that he had said “Ben” rather than “Master Ruthford.” Malokai had never before referred to Ben informally, and Adrienne doubted it was friendship that had prompted the change.

  “That sounds about right,” Adrienne agreed, raising a hand to smother a yawn. She was tired; she’d spent the day training guards and practicing with her Talent. “Ben—all of the scholars—like to discuss and understand every bit of information before moving on to the next step in training.”

  Malokai growled. “I do understand the information,” he said impatiently. Although they had talked regularly over the past week, especially since the night the stables had caught fire, Adrienne was surprised by the amount of emotion Malokai was showing. “We discussed the book for three hours tonight, and I didn’t need any clarifications. I don’t need another two weeks of talking.”

  Adrienne understood Malokai’s frustration. She preferred action over long discussion herself and remembered keenly her own frustration when the commission had wanted to hold her back, but she had to carefully weigh her choices. This decision could mean bringing the wrath of the commission down on them both.

  The wisest decision would be to not help Malokai with Oneness. She knew Ben and the rest of the commission would be against her telling Malokai anything; they would tell her to wait and to mind her own affairs. The soldier in her felt compelled to obey their unspoken commands, but there was another part, equally strong, that railed against wasting time. The commission wouldn’t even know if Malokai could develop a Talent until he tried to achieve Oneness. It could take weeks—months—for him to do so once he started trying. She looked at Malokai, and thought that a two week head start wouldn’t hurt.

  “Oneness is about…Ben says clearing your mind, but I’m not sure that’s the best way to explain it,” she said. “I would say that you focus your mind and feel the connection we have with everything around us.” She leaned toward Malokai, resting her elbows on her knees, forgetting for the moment that she was dressed in just a robe and a thin shift. “We are not separate from our surroundings, from the world. We are One with the elements, with each other, with everything around us. You have to feel that.” She smiled ruefully and sat back. “The first step is to completely clear your mind.”

  Malokai nodded.

  “From what Ben told me, and what Louella said, most people sit and meditate, but I found it helped me to move,” Adrienne said. Malokai continued to sit there, seemingly unaware of anything else, before suddenly looking up.

  “What is next?”

  “You clear your mind, and in that state, you hopefully achieve Oneness, where you can feel that connection to everything. Asmov referred to a connection to the universe in his journal, and it really does feel like that.”

  “What’s after Oneness?” Malokai asked.

  “I don’t know if I can explain it until you reach that level,” Adrienne said. “I don’t think it would make sense.” And that, she knew, would be stepping way outside of anything the commission would allow. Stepping over those bounds would be beyond anything even she could rationalize.

  Malokai closed his eyes for a moment, taking deep, even breaths. When he opened his eyes, the blue orbs were intense and locked on hers.

  “I can feel your heartbeat,” Malokai said in a voice that sounded oddly detached. “It sped up just now, when I spoke. I can feel the grain of the wooden table, the draft from the window.” He turned as though he could see out the dark panes into the night outside. “Two men are arguing. Fighting in the street. I believe one of your guards is on his way to break it up.”

  A shiver raced down Adrienne’s spine, and she slipped into Oneness as well. She could feel Malokai, his existence, but she had to concentrate to really feel his heartbeat: it was slow and steady, not the quick, almost nervous rhythm of her own. There were three people on the street below, but she could not feel anything more about them than their presence. She could not tell who they were or what they were doing. “You can feel all of that?”

  Malokai looked momentarily puzzled by her question. “Can’t you?”<
br />
  Adrienne didn’t know where to start. That he had achieved Oneness so quickly and with such apparent ease was almost unbelievable. The level to which he could apparently sense things was nothing short of astonishing. “No,” Adrienne answered weakly. “I can’t feel everything, not as strongly as what you describe.”

  The strongest things in the room to Adrienne were her sword and the flames of the hearth and candles. Those things seemed almost to reach out to her, standing out in the sea of sensations she experienced whenever she was conscious of her Oneness. Louella had said it was like that for her with injuries. For Pieter, he could most clearly feel his tools and the metal he was shaping.

  “You can only feel some things?” Malokai asked, looking as puzzled as Adrienne felt.

  Adrienne nodded. “Yes and no,” she said. “I can feel everything, but some things I have an affinity for. Fire I can feel most strongly,” she explained. “My Talent lies there, and fire feels…different to me than everything else. Pieter forged my sword using his own Talent, and what I feel when I focus on the sword is similar to what I feel for fire.” Pieter’s other tools also stood out clearly, but they did not call to her like the one made for her did. It did give her an idea, though. “What does my sword feel like to you?”

  Malokai glanced at the sword that was leaning against the wall next to the bed, within easy reach had Adrienne been lying down. “Hazy,” he said after a minute. “Not clear like everything else.”

  It was the opposite of what Adrienne had been expecting. “What about the fire?” she asked, wondering if, because he too was a fighter, he would have a Talent similar to hers. It was true of Louella and the other healers, after all.

  He gazed into the hearth and winced. “The fire is clear, but if I try to…reach for it…it’s hot.”

  That Malokai would try to reach for it, the only way Adrienne could describe what she did when using her Talent, was interesting. The fact that Malokai thought the fire was hot was just confusing to her. Adrienne was aware of the fire’s heat when she used it, but never uncomfortably so. As far as she knew, Louella and Pieter had never been able to reach for fire at all, or at least had never felt compelled to try.

  “Painfully hot?” Adrienne asked, wanting to understand.

  Malokai tilted his head. “Had I kept trying, yes, I think it would have been painful.” He shook his head. “What does it mean?”

  Adrienne didn’t know. Maybe Ben would have some idea, but telling him she had taught Malokai Oneness was not something she looked forward to doing. “I’m not sure,” she told him. “How did you learn Oneness so quickly?”

  “The Modabi Mountains are a dangerous place to be unaware of your surroundings. The skill of connecting to everything around you is essential for a warrior. Now that I have Oneness, how do I develop a Talent?” he asked.

  Adrienne held up her hands to ward him off. “I can’t help you anymore,” she told him. “Ben is going to be upset enough about what I have already done. I can’t add to that. I won’t.”

  “Ben doesn’t have to know,” Malokai said. “When he wants me to try Oneness, I will, and I’ll do it quickly, but he doesn’t need to know it’s not the first time I’ve done it. I’ve been using this Oneness since I was eight. Had Ben explained the concept to me, I would have discovered Oneness just as quickly with him as I did tonight with you.”

  “You can’t keep this a secret from Ben,” Adrienne protested, though she wondered what kind of eight year old would need such a skill. The mountains must be dangerous indeed to require such a connection to keep safe. “He’s in charge of your training.” Despite her earlier self-justifications, such a level of deceit was too much. Adrienne would tell Ben herself if Malokai refused.

  “He shouldn’t be in charge of our training in the first place,” Malokai told her. “He lacks any real leadership traits; he shouldn’t be in charge of more than chronicling what happens here.”

  “The commission put him in charge,” Adrienne said. “Whether you like Ben or not, whether you think he should be in charge or not, he is. And you have to tell him.”

  Malokai’s vivid blue eyes stared at her out of that dark face as if he was searching for something more. “They don’t deserve your loyalty.”

  Adrienne refused to look away from those eyes, although she wanted to. Instead, she kept her voice firm, her back straight. “I am a soldier. My loyalty is with my commanding officers.”

  “Then I will discover my Talent without your help,” Malokai said. “And I won’t tell Ben what happened tonight. Whether you tell him is your decision.”

  ••••••

  Since Malokai had discovered Oneness so suddenly, the relationship Adrienne had been developing with him had become strained. Malokai continued to help her train the guards most days, often using his urahu, the strange spearlike weapon he had brought with him from the Modabi Mountains. Adrienne enjoyed pitting herself against a skilled opponent with an unfamiliar weapon, which he used sometimes like a quarterstaff, sometimes like a spear, and always with incredible effectiveness.

  Her only regret was that what had passed between them nearly four weeks before, when she had refused to help him past the point of learning Oneness, had halted their growing friendship. They rarely spent time with each other when not training the guards, and when they were together their interactions were stiff and formal.

  Ben had finally allowed Malokai to move on to attaining Oneness, and when Malokai had done so immediately, the scholar began trying to help him discover his Talent. So far there had been no progress on that front.

  Although Adrienne had not really talked to Malokai since the night she had taught him Oneness without the commission’s permission, she knew he was growing frustrated. She could sometimes feel the frustration radiating from him like heat from a hearth, and she thought that might be the only reason he still practiced with her and the guards. Physical exertion was a way to release some of the pent up frustration, perhaps the best way for people like Adrienne and Malokai.

  And as far as Adrienne knew, Malokai did not have another outlet for his frustration. She still had her books, and the paper written in Almetian that she was bent on deciphering. The more she learned about the Dark Mage and the armies that had grown up around him, the more she thought that the mage and his armies, more than slavery, was the real cause of the rift between Samaro and Almet.

  There was something there, some missing piece, that had led to King Zuka, who Adrienne had learned had been the son of King Ignatio, freeing the slaves after his father’s death. It had not been, as Adrienne had been taught, a sense of justice that had caused King Zuka to free the slaves. There had been fear there, and an underlying benefit to freeing the slaves despite the fact that it had initially taken an economic toll on the country.

  If only she could read the Almetian script, she felt she might have the answers.

  Adrienne sat at the small table in her room, studying the copy she had made of the original text found in the book. The paper it had been written on was brittle and fragile, and Adrienne did not want to risk damaging it. The characters written on her copy were easy to see, but no easier to read despite their clarity. She studied the words, looking for more patterns in the text that might reveal some meaning. She could not read Almetian, but she hoped that if she studied it long enough she might find some similarities between the two languages.

  When her study was interrupted by Malokai knocking on her door, she was surprised enough that it took her several seconds to invite him in. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  Malokai ran a hand over his tightly curled black hair, the first nervous gesture she could remember seeing from the imposing warrior. “I was wondering if you would accompany me to Louella’s,” he said, his words a bit rushed.

  Adrienne was immediately concerned. “Are you sick?” she asked worriedly. Malokai didn’t look ill, but she didn’t doubt that he was one of those men who would look and act well until he passed out cold. Ricco wa
s like that, and had once collapsed at her feet from a fever she had not even known he had. Luckily, he had recovered without the aid of a Talented healer, but the memory had never quite left her.

  “No. I’m fine. I just want to talk to her. To you and Pieter as well.”

  “Okay,” Adrienne said, feeling more relieved than was perhaps warranted in a city where Talented healers made sickness little more than an inconvenience. “We can go now,” she said in an attempt to cover up the extent of her concern. “Pieter’s home is on the way.”

  The streets were growing dark with the coming night, and Malokai was silent as they made their way through the city. Adrienne tried to figure out why the M’bai warrior would need to speak with all three of them tonight, and failed to come up with anything plausible.

  Pieter asked no questions about why they had come to his home, or why they were now all going to Louella’s. He had patience, something Adrienne all too often lacked, and was willing to let people tell him things in their own time. Given his size and strength, Adrienne thought it was probably good that Pieter was a patient man and not one given to rashness or violence.

  Louella was obviously surprised to see the three of them when she opened the door, but she quickly put away the stockings she had been darning and invited them all in for tea. “What brings you by tonight?” she asked as she set the kettle over the fire to heat. “I have biscuits if you’d like something to go with the tea.”

  Louella prattled on as she got the biscuits and set them out along with plates and cups for the brewing tea, and Adrienne realized she was talking to ease any tension amongst the group. “Malokai asked us to come,” Adrienne told the other woman.

  “I figured as much,” Louella replied calmly, making sure everything was placed on the table just so before sitting down herself. “I’m only wondering why.”

  “I need help discovering my Talent,” Malokai told her, told everyone. He looked even grimmer than usual, with his dark face stony and his blue eyes serious.

  Louella smiled in amusement, and Pieter shook his head, low laughter rumbling in his barrel chest. “We can’t help you,” Adrienne said, the corner of her mouth quirking up.