by K.M. Weiland
Chapter Twenty-Three
Allara sat on the rough slate floor in the gymnasium and retied the laces that ran all the way up her boot to just below her knee.
In front of her, Quinnon scrutinized Chris’s shooting stance. “You’re catching on to this firearms business faster than you did the swords. You had a little more practice with that, did you?”
“My dad was a cop—a policeman. He taught me.” Chris tilted his hand and scrutinized the heavy chewser pistol. “I learned on a Glock. Nothing like this.”
The chewser model was an older gun that carried its hydraulic converter in a thick cylinder under the barrel. It was bulky, loud, and likely enough to break the shooter’s thumb if he pulled back the hammer the wrong way. But it was compatible with a wide range of ammunition types—everything from snub-nosed slugs to knuckle-sized buzz-saws to half-span stilettos—and it had the stopping power to take down a Koraudian lion. It was the firearm of choice for Quinnon and many other Guardsmen.
Chris had taken a few minutes to adjust to its bulk, then shredded the leather target set up in front of the waterfall.
He grinned back at Allara. “Think you can best that one?”
“I won’t even try. Chewsers are too large for me to handle.” She knotted off the lace on her boot and let Quinnon help her up. “I prefer something sleeker.”
She selected a straitquin pistol from the nearby rack.
Straitquins were light and elegant, with a slim slug-only barrel and the hydraulics tucked away in the slight curve of the grip. The ivory grip of her personal favorite was carved with an elaborate seraphin rooster, the hydraulic vent holes placed strategically so the light shone through the bird’s eyes and open beak.
She traded with Chris. He took a second to examine the gun, but by this time he was familiar with the basic workings of Lael’s firearms. He flicked the tiny lever that turned on the hydraulic system and waited a second while it powered up. With the waterfall pumping mist into the room, the hydraulics had access to all the moisture they needed. He extended his arms and braced one fist inside the other.
“Top left corner.” His practice with the chewser had already torn up the bull’s-eye.
He squeezed the trigger, and the hydraulics’ faint hum was replaced with the blast and gush of the steam-powered slug. It slammed into the corner of the target and toppled the framework.
He tossed a grin over his shoulder. “How’s that?”
She clapped twice. “Too bad conceit isn’t the only requirement for survival.”
Quinnon handed Chris a slug for reloading. “You’d be immortal.”
“Aw, now, you should be happy I’m a fast learner.”
He clicked off the hydraulics and used the pistol’s reloading rod to fit the slug down its barrel. Then he flipped the pistol around and handed it back to Allara, grip first, with a little bow and another twinkle in his eye.
“Makes you look like a good teacher, right?” He winked.
She busied herself hanging the pistol on the rack.
Sometimes the things he did and said and the way he looked at her left her feeling more like the student than the teacher. She had grown up in the royal court, where people fawned over her, men courted her, and flattery was a language of its own. She had never been at a loss for how to respond.
But from the moment he had ridden into her life, Chris Redston had thrown her off balance. Now that anger was no longer the most obvious response, she didn’t know quite how to respond to him.
Aside from their audience with Steadman the other day, life had been calm enough lately. Their days had rocked into a rhythm of fencing, studying, shooting, and riding, and she had to admit Chris had proven a model student. He worked hard, never complained, and between what his body was remembering from this world and what his brain brought over from the other, he was living up to his claim to be a Guardsman. He was turning out to be a better shot than she was and just as good a rider. His fencing still wasn’t up to speed, but the raw talent was there, if only he would stop over-thinking.
Any day now, her father would summon them to Glen Arden. Mactalde wouldn’t wait much longer to strike, and her father would want to formally acknowledge the Gifted before leaving for battle.
If she observed Chris solely from the perspective of a Searcher gauging her Gifted, he could have been worse at this point—much worse. In another few days, he would be as ready as she could hope to make him in such a short period of time. Any Searcher would be pleased.
But the objectivity of a Searcher was starting to prove elusive. He kept her off balance, and she hated it. But she couldn’t quite convince herself to hate him. He wasn’t the blackguard she had originally convinced herself he was. He had seemed to mean it when he’d said he was taking full responsibility for what had happened. Time would bear out the truth, of course, but he hadn’t faltered so far.
And he wasn’t like Harrison Garnett, who had always despised her, feared her, even. When Chris looked at her, she had the eerie feeling he was seeing past all her defenses, straight to the core of her, and whatever it was he saw there—the anger, the fear, the weakness—he accepted it without judgment.
Quinnon bent to pick up the ammunition pouches and the rifles they had been working with earlier. “It’ll be time for dinner in less’n an hour. We’ll quit for the night, so you can get cleaned up and work on some more of that etiquette.”
“You ought to join in,” Chris said. “You might learn something.”
Quinnon didn’t even deign to glare at him. “You’ve still got a ways to go yourself from what I’ve been seeing. Bring that lot over here.” He carried the equipment back to the racks and piled it for the pageboys to put away.
Chris followed him, toward Allara, and she moved away. She was starting to like Chris Redston, and every preservation instinct in her body demanded she fight it.
“I’m going up.” She pulled her sleeveless tunic’s hood over her sweat-dampened hair and resisted a shiver. The flush of body heat from their fencing match had faded, and the outside cold seeped into her bones.
He half-turned. “If you wait, I’ll come with you.”
“No.” The word was out almost before she had time to consider it. She pasted on the smiling façade of an experienced courtier. “Thank you, but I’m chilled and I want to speak to Esta about dinner.”
Puzzlement passed across his face, but he let it go with a shrug.
She turned and forced herself to hold to a stately walk all the way across the gymnasium to the stairs. As soon as she was around the corner, she bounded up the circular staircase two steps at a time.
By the time she’d run all the way up to the third story, she was sweating and huffing. When she banged into her dressing room and cast the hood back from her head, Esta looked up from her needlework in alarm. “What’s the matter with you? Are the Koraudians here?”
Allara waved her off. “I just felt like a run.”
“That’s hardly befitting your position.”
“No one saw me.” She started unfastening her tunic’s buttons. “Will you draw me a bath?”
Esta made a face and took her time sticking the needle back into her cloth. Then she rose slowly, straightened her wig, and started across the room to ring for the maids. “Sometimes I just don’t know what to make of you. You’re more hoyden than princess.”
“Don’t fret yourself. No one knows what to make of me.” Except perhaps Chris Redston.
She stalked to the nearest closet and scowled at the dozens of gowns. The last thing she wanted to do was dress up and go down there and teach that man one more rule of etiquette. The way things had been going, she was likely to drop her fork every time he looked at her. And if he winked at her again, she’d slap him.
A flash of white caught her eye, and she turned to the vase of flowers he had brought from his world. Orchids, he called them. The white petals spread around hearts of deep pink, like exotic butterflies. They were beautiful.
Sh
e walked over and stroked a finger up the underside of a petal. She still didn’t know exactly why he’d done it. Part of her wished he hadn’t, and part of her loved that he had, and part of her just wanted to chuck the whole lot out the window. Kindnesses were dangerous. They shattered defenses and left the receiver naked and vulnerable.
If only Eroll were here. He would know what to tell her. He understood this sort of blather far better than she did. He’d probably think it was all some great joke and tease her mercilessly, but at least he would make sense of it.
She closed her eyes and tried not to wonder where he was. If he were in danger, if he came back hurt in any way, she would revive her anger toward Chris.
In the meantime, she went back to the closet, sorted through a few gowns, rejected most of them, then pulled out one made of green velvet with a sand-colored over-gown laced loosely across the bodice. She almost put it back too, then slammed the closet door and tossed the gown onto the chaise. She would wear what she always wore and she would not fall prey to womanly fussings over whether or not her male dinner guest would find it attractive. She didn’t need to be attractive to Chris Redston.
In fact, that was the last thing she needed.
__________
By the time Allara rose from the sunken tub—heated from the coals in the recessed chamber just beneath it—she had completely forgotten to speak to Esta about dinner. Fortunately, it turned out as well as it always did without her well-intentioned interference: a chilled sopple soup, herb and cheese tartlets, baked randar root, seraphin hens stuffed with sweet nuts and marinated in a wine and cream sauce, and a goblet of sweet dassberry syrup for dessert.
When they finished, Quinnon excused himself for his nightly conference with the head of the Guard, and Allara led Esta and Chris into the Red Salon, the only room in the palace she could honestly say she liked. The servants had already lit the globes on the elaborate gold pillars and the fire in the great hearth. The light flickered against the red tapestries that framed landscape windows and their glittering glimpse of the city.
Esta sat on the settee in front of the fire, spread her skirts around her, folded her hands, and promptly fell asleep.
Allara gritted her teeth and prodded at the fire with a poker. This was the first evening she and Chris had been left alone. Of course the one moment she actually wanted someone around for moral support, Esta abandoned her. Quinnon sometimes spent hours talking with the Guard, so she couldn’t rely on his appearance either. What was a Searcher supposed to talk about with her Gifted if they weren’t at work?
Behind her, he yawned. “I’m beat.”
“You could go to bed.”
“I keep thinking I’m going to go to bed and actually sleep. But then I wake up on the other side and remember that’s never going to happen.”
He walked up beside her and leaned one hand against the mantle. He had submitted himself to the proper dinner dress—a leather doublet flared at the waist, voluminous green velvet knee breeches, and a dress scabbard with a jeweled rapier—but as soon as they’d left the dining room, he had unbuttoned the doublet and loosened his collar.
“Besides,” he said, “I wanted to ask you if something was wrong. You seemed distracted all through dinner. Didn’t harp once when I forgot to keep my chair exactly ten inches from the table.”
She cast him a glance. “I didn’t notice.”
“Yeah, and I noticed you didn’t notice. That’s the point.” His mouth straightened. “You angry with me again?”
“No.” The word came out quickly. She looked at the fire and shook her head. The next attempt sounded more modulated. “No.” She made herself smile and raise her face. “That is to say, not particularly. As you’ve found, I’m generally a rather angry person.”
He turned his back to the fire and crossed his arms. “And why is that?”
“Why are any of us?” She stabbed the poker into a crumbling log and raised a spray of golden sparks. The last thing she wanted to discuss with him was herself. “Aren’t you angry?”
He was quiet until she glanced at him, then he wrinkled his nose. “I suppose, to some extent. Though apathetic might have been the better term.”
“Might have been?”
He smiled again, but his expression was serious. “I haven’t felt very apathetic these last few weeks.”
“And what has changed?”
His eyebrow lifted in incredulity. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Just because everything changes doesn’t mean we change right along.”
“Well, I’m not saying I’m any different. Not yet. But when you see a bigger picture, your perspective does change. Know what I mean?”
“No. I don’t.” She lowered the poker and found herself standing straighter. “My life has always been the same. I’ve always known what I would be, and I think, deep down, I’ve always known what it would bring.”
“And that’s what makes you angry?”
“I’d rather be angry than apathetic.”
He chuckled. “Point taken. But I’m sure being the Searcher and all that wasn’t easy to grow up with.”
What was this he was giving her? Sympathy? Even Eroll didn’t give her that. Eroll loved her unconditionally. Eroll would die on the point of a rapier to defend the slightest dint in her honor. But Eroll didn’t like peering too hard at the ugly and the uncomfortable. His philosophy was to put the bad in life behind him as quickly as possible and forget all about it.
She resisted the urge to rub at her crooked finger and made herself look at Chris. In Lael, people braced themselves up and moved on. They didn’t wait for assistance. They didn’t bemoan their lot to others. They just did what needed doing. She didn’t want Chris’s sympathy.
But the way he presented it, off-hand almost, it was neither a revelation of his own weakness or an accusation of weakness in her. It was just recognition. And maybe understanding.
“What about you?” she asked. “How did you grow up?”
He stood there for a second, just watching her.
So the Gifted didn’t want to talk about himself anymore than she wanted to talk about herself?
He scratched his cheek. “I guess you could say I grew up kind of like you did—all at once. My mother and younger sister died when I was twelve, and my dad pretty much fell apart after that.”
“I’m sorry.” What else could be said to something like that? “My mother died when I was young too.”
Again he smiled the not-quite-a-smile. “Happens to a lot of people so I hear.”
“And that’s why you’re apathetic?”
“I don’t know. Can you pin your anger down to just one thing?”
Gifted, Gifted, Gifted. It all came back to the Gifted for her. But, no, that wasn’t quite true either. Her anger was born of her fear, and hadn’t she been afraid all her life?
She shrugged. “I suppose not.”
For a moment, they stared into the crackle and spit of the flames. She stole glances at him. His presence in her head was warm and drowsy, contented almost. He no longer overwhelmed her, even standing side by side, and he didn’t feel so alien anymore.
She almost liked the sense of his presence. So long as she could feel him in her head, she wasn’t alone. No matter where he went in this world, no matter if she understood him or even liked him, so long as he lived here, she would never be alone. The feeling of unwarranted protection that gave her startled her with its power.
She cleared her throat. “So . . . it would seem you’re no longer as adamant in your aversion to Lael.”
He lowered himself to a crouch and clasped his hands between his legs. His upward glance pulled her down beside him. “It’s hard to be in a strange, new, beautiful place—where I might add, you’re fighting for survival from practically the first day—and not find a reason to be interested in life every time you wake up.”
She knelt, awkward for a moment, and spread her skirt around her. He took the poker from her and laid it on
the hearthstone. She fidgeted with her hands in her lap, then flicked her sleeves behind her and leaned back on her arms. “I think I’ve always been a little envious of the Gifted. There’s this whole other world out there, and we’re not allowed even to see it.”
“You see it every night when you dream.”
“That’s not seeing it, not really, and you know it. The gypsy section in Glen Arden is full of interpreters who claim they can tell you about the other world if you share with them the bits and pieces you remember from your dreams. And if you put a gold piece in their palms, of course. But we can’t see your world anymore than you saw us before you crossed.”
“It’s not that different there, really. Even has the same people.”
“And how many people have you seen here whom you’ve recognized?”
He lifted a shoulder. “No one. But they’re out there, right? Your other self is knocking around somewhere in my world. Maybe we’ve even met.”
She smiled. “I think not. You, I would have remembered.”
“You would have woken up, snapped your fingers, and said, ‘Ah, there went history’s worst Gifted.’” He was teasing, but the look he cocked at her said he was hoping she would refute him.
In all honesty, she had to. “You’ve some stout competition in Harrison Garnett.”
The set of his mouth turned grim. “Harrison wasn’t the one who brought Mactalde across.”
“That’s not irremediable. Not yet. And anyway Harrison had his own ill-fated gifts to offer in competition.”
“Speaking of gifts—” He lowered his crouch onto one knee and turned to face her. “What is it your regular, run-of-the-mill Gifted who don’t manage to majorly mess up the worlds on their first day—what do they do end up doing here?”
“That depends on the era.” She watched him. “Some are warriors who come to fight and win great battles.”
“Is that what I am?”
“It does rather seem that way. But you’d think the God of all would have chosen someone who knew more about war. A great tactician or something.”
He turned back to the fire. “I have to tell you I wasn’t a great anything.”
She studied his face in the flicker of the light. “You have your good points.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I do, do I?”
The back of her neck warmed, but she held his gaze. “You’re smart, you’re brave. Stubborn.”
“That’s a good point?”
“As one stubborn person to another, take it for what it’s worth when I say yes.”
He flashed a grin, then softened the expression. “Well, I doubt any of those are going to fulfill the purpose of the age. But thanks.”
He watched the fire for a moment, his face unreadable. She couldn’t interpret his thoughts, even through the sense of him in her head.
Finally, he rose. “It’s getting late. I should head to bed and make sure no one’s trying to kill me in the other world.”
She stayed where she was, looking up at him. “Good night.”
He walked away and passed Quinnon in the doorway. They stood outside for a few minutes, their conversation a murmur.
She stared into the heat of the fire, listening to them. She’d said nothing but the truth when she’d told him he was smart, brave, and stubborn. But there was one other thing Chris Redston was. He was kind. That wasn’t likely to fulfill the purpose of the era, but it was something else that kept her from feeling all alone. And that wasn’t nothing.
_________
She climbed the wide staircase, which was lit with a candle globe embedded on either end of each step. Behind her, boots stamped on the flagstones. She glanced back to find Quinnon following her.
He had removed his Guardsman tabard for the night and slung it over the shoulder of his loose tunic. He looked tired, old even. Sometimes she forgot he was almost old enough to have been someone’s grandfather, had he ever bothered to leave her side long enough to have a life of his own.
She turned to him, one hand still on the railing. “You should get some rest. You’ve been working harder than any of us.”
He waved her off and held out the embossed silver cylinder of a royal message. “Thought you might like to see this before morning. Courier brought it in just after dark.”
Her heart clinched. She grasped the cylinder and fitted her signet ring into the grooves at one end. Like a key, she turned it, and the lid sprang free. She passed the lid to Quinnon, upended the rolled parchment into her hand, then handed over the cylinder as well. They both knew what the message would say.
She read it at a glance. “Koraud has declared war. Troops are already moving. Father wants us in Glen Arden by tomorrow morning. He’ll introduce the Gifted at the ceremony tomorrow night, then leave right away to join the army at Aiden River.”
Quinnon didn’t seem surprised, or happy. “Why does he have to wait for us before joining the army?”
“The presence of a Gifted can be a great advantage during the time of war. And under the circumstances, it’s best if Chris is formally recognized by Father as soon as possible.” Her hands shook only a little as she rolled the parchment. “I’m glad he’s waiting for us.” She held out a hand for the cylinder and tried to organize her thoughts. This was what she had been waiting for, wasn’t it? This was what she had been preparing for.
Quinnon watched her. Unlike Chris, he had a way of studying her without giving any indication what he was finding. “I’ll go out and alert the engineers to put our train on the cables.”
“No, I’ll do it. You’re tired.”
He glared. “Like rotted teeth you’ll do it. You wake up your maids and get packed. And get that Gifted back out of his bed. If we leave now and travel all night, we still won’t make it to Glen Arden until mid-morning, even by sky.”
She touched his shoulder. “Let the Gifted sleep until we have to leave. It’s more than sleep to him, and he has problems of his own to tend to in the other world.”
“You’d do us all a good turn to keep your head on straight about him.”
She pulled back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re a lass, and he’s a lad who’s made a muck of everything in real short order.”
Her face stiffened. “We all make mistakes. He’s not a bad person.”
“I’m not saying he is. But, you mark me, you don’t know a thing about him.”