“Is that true?” There was a flicker of interest in her voice.
“My mother explained it to me.” In fact, it was one of the last things she ever said to him. She’d been bleeding all over the floor, and he’d been frantic to make it stop, but she’d acted like the injury didn’t matter. He must tell you anything you want to know, she’d said. But you must take your oath.
“Yesterday that would have fascinated me,” she murmured, her eyes dropping to the straw beneath her. “But today…there’s nothing more I want to know. And, John—you don’t want to know either. You should trust me in this.”
He was starting to feel desperate again. “There’s so much more we need to know!” he told her urgently, his voice getting loud despite his best efforts. He pulled the whipsword from her waist and held it up between them. “Your whipsword? Alistair says every whipsword in existence was created a thousand years ago. How? A modern weapons company couldn’t make one today. I know—my grandfather owns one of those companies.”
She took the whipsword back and clipped it into place. “We have knowledge others don’t.” She said it without interest.
“But how do we have that knowledge? And how many of us have it?”
“What do you mean?” she asked him. “There aren’t other Seekers anymore.”
That was what Briac and Alistair had told them, many times. They were the last of the Seekers, and most of their knowledge and history had been lost. John was quite certain this was Briac’s convenient explanation to prevent apprentices from asking difficult questions. But Quin had always been in such awe of her father that she’d believed him completely.
“Then why are we worried about disruptors?” John asked her.
Her eyes were still blank. “Because disruptors are the most dangerous weapon a Seeker has, created to instill terror.” She was simply parroting Briac now.
“You just said there aren’t any other Seekers,” John pointed out gently. “Why would we ever fight someone with a disruptor if we are the only Seekers left?”
“Outsiders could get their hands on disruptors,” Quin answered slowly, as though this were the first time she’d thought of it.
“That’s possible,” he agreed. “But it’s not the most logical explanation, is it?”
Quin’s eyes gradually came back into focus on him. “You think there are more of us? More Seekers?”
“There must be more of us, Quin! And I’m not the first person to ask these questions. There was—” He stopped himself. He wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t bring himself to mention the book. That was between him and his mother. He took both of her hands in his. “There’s history. You ask if it has always been this way. Why hasn’t Briac taught us our history?”
“It’s lost. So much of our knowledge is lost.”
“Is it? Now you can ask. You have to stay here, learn what you can. In a few months, you won’t need him. Then you can leave the estate and come teach me. You’re a sworn Seeker now. You have as much right to give me my oath as anyone else. We’d be together. In just a few months we’d be together.”
Quin was listening to him, considering this. She laced her fingers through his.
“What would we do then?” she asked him. “After I’ve taught you. After you take your oath?”
“We would take one of the athames for ourselves. And we could do…We would decide what to do. Together.”
“Like what?”
“We…would choose the right course of action,” John said, trying to pick the perfect words, words that would convince her. Eventually he would tell her everything and she would understand and help him. “I have—”
“You have everything. What is your grandfather? One of the richest men in England? Why do you want the athame? You want me to stay here, to do whatever Briac asks me to do. Why?”
“I don’t have everything, Quin,” he countered, frustration creeping into his voice. “My family—my mother’s family—we haven’t had everything for a very long time. And my grandfather…The situation is—it’s complicated.” That word was not really sufficient to describe John’s relationship with his grandfather, but it was the best he could manage at the moment.
“Will you tell me what happened to your mother, John?”
She’d asked him before, when they were much younger, and he had refused to explain. But Quin seemed to sense that the answer was now important, that it was directly related to becoming a Seeker and to both of their lives.
With effort, John breathed slowly, evenly. “She was killed,” he said. “Before I knew enough about her. She was killed in front of me. Or nearly.”
“Oh.” Quin’s face fell. “I’m sorry, John. I’m so sorry.”
She put her arms around him again, and he pulled her close, feeling her warmth. He was sidestepping the details of his mother’s death. In this case, the details were everything, but he wasn’t ready to say them aloud just yet.
“When someone you love is taken, you realize what’s important,” he whispered. “You don’t want someone else deciding who lives and who dies. You’ll never be safe.”
“No,” she agreed, her cheek against his. “You’ll never be safe.”
“What if we were to decide, Quin?” he breathed. “We’d do a better job. We’d make the right choices. Good choices. Eventually we could—we could make the kinds of choices Seekers were supposed to make all along. We’d put things back the way they should be.”
Quin’s lips brushed his cheek. Then she leaned back and held his gaze.
“Would we make the right choices, John? I’m not so sure.”
“Of course we would. We’re not like Briac.”
“But what you’re saying, it’s…it’s like something Briac might say, don’t you see?”
“It’s not like Briac—”
“If I stay, if I teach you,” she said, cutting him off, “we’ll become like him, even if we start out with good intentions.” Her voice became distraught as she added, “John—I think I’m already like him. I can feel it, and it’s too late for me.”
“Quin…”
She looked away, out the window and across the river. A new thought seemed to overtake her, and she turned back to him, her voice growing urgent. “We could be together…if we left right now. I’d leave my whipsword, everything. We’ll forget what we learned here. We could climb down to the river and go. Right now. Wouldn’t that be the best way?”
They looked at each other for a long while as John imagined himself saying yes. He could be with Quin. Their lives would be simple, and probably very happy. But he’d committed himself a long time ago, with a promise.
“Quin…what’s here on the estate—I need it. I can’t leave it behind. Even though he’s kicking me out, I have to find my way back.”
His words hung between them until Quin whispered, “Even if I can’t be part of it?”
Forcing himself to nod was one of the hardest things John would ever do. “Yes,” he answered. “Even if you can’t be part of it. I am part of it. I’m sorry.”
She was silent. Then at last she said, “When I leave tomorrow, I won’t be coming back.”
There was no hope in her voice, and John realized that she wouldn’t be convinced, not yet. He would find a different way to get what he needed, and hope that she would be far away and safe. Maybe that was better.
On reflex, his mind was already racing ahead with possibilities. There was a prickling sensation in the pit of his stomach, a premonition of dangers to come. He could see one course of action open to him, and it would be a dance for his life the whole way.
He stood and moved to the barn window, placed his hands along the edge to brace himself. A moment later, Quin rose from the bed and put her arms around him. The warmth of her felt good.
He turned, and his lips found hers. They held each other in a melancholy embrace as the sun set over the land.
Will this be the last time I get to kiss her? he wondered.
…to be continued.
To continue reading Seeker, look for it wherever books are sold.
Arwen Elys Dayton spends months doing research for her stories. Her explorations have taken her around the world to places like the Great Pyramid at Giza, Hong Kong and its many islands, and lots of ruined castles in Scotland.
Arwen lives with her husband and their three children on the West Coast of the United States. You can visit her at arwendayton.com and follow @arwenelysdayton on Twitter and Instagram.
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The Young Dread Page 10