“I—” Aryl focused on the fruit. “They’re ripe? Leri—” The words died in her mouth. The sweetberries were Leri’s favorite. Hard to find before the flitters, difficult to pick even then, Costa had finally coaxed several vines to take root in his window’s gauze—keeping them as much of a secret as anything could be between Chosen. “Are you taking them to her?” she managed to ask.
“She won’t know what they are.” Taisal’s voice was absurdly normal, as if she didn’t hear what she was saying.
“But—” Aryl choked back whatever else she might have said. To exist yet be mindless? Never, she swore to herself, shields tight. Never that.
Taisal took her silence for concern. “Don’t worry about Leri. She and the others are safe.”
“Safe,” Aryl repeated, and swallowed bile. Her voice rose. “Never to leave the Cloisters, you mean. At best, a—a servant.”
“She lives. The others live. Of the seventeen killed at Harvest, eight were Chosen, daughter. Be thankful only three more died.”
The world, to Aryl’s inner sense, still held spaces where—she made herself think their names—where Oryl, Teis, and Ilea belonged, where all the others should be. The Yena Clan had been decimated while she, while she . . . she trembled, the truth a poison she had to spit from her mouth or die. “I should have held on,” she began, her voice low. “It’s my fault they died—that Costa died and Leri and—”
“No! No, Aryl. Never think such a thing. It was an accident—a terrible accident. There was nothing—what if you—” Without warning, Taisal sank to the floor, her elaborate gown bending in stiff awkward folds as if uncertain how to cope. Berries fell around her like drops of blood. “Oh, no.” With faint despair, “Costa’s sweetberries.”
One rolled to where Aryl stood, frozen in dismay. It stopped short of her toes, rose ever so slightly from the floor, and followed its own shadow back to the tray on Taisal’s lap.
She sensed tendrils of Power reaching out. Berry after berry silently obeyed, rising, moving, their lush red surfaces gleaming when they caught the light. “What are you . . .?” she breathed, then couldn’t say another word.
Eyes down, Taisal tidied her tray with short, fussy movements. When done, she held it out. Aryl took it, careful no more berries would tumble and tempt her mother to . . . to . . . She put the tray of flying fruit on the table. “What did you do?”
“I pushed them,” Taisal answered, matter-of-factly, as if she wasn’t on the floor in the middle of the room. Tears slipped from her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She sniffed.
Her mother never sniffed. This final oddity, of all the rest, drew Aryl to kneel beside Taisal, though she didn’t dare touch her. Not with Power still pulsing through the air and tangling her thoughts. “Are you all right?” she asked, disturbed by this reversal. What could she do? “Should I get another Adept?”
A too-wise look. “Please don’t, for both our sakes, Daughter. I’d hate to explain why the Yena Speaker, of all Om’ray, was using a Talent Forbidden years ago. Especially—” a pause as Taisal accepted Aryl’s help to rise to her feet in the cumbersome robe, “—while on the floor.” Standing, she wrapped dignity around her like a cloak. One hand found the moisture on her cheek and she shook her head. “Forgive me, Aryl. These past days—I should be stronger than this. Must be. The Clan needs me tonight. You do.”
While this was true, Aryl looked into her mother’s sad eyes and her confession stuck in her throat. Tomorrow, she promised herself. She’d find the words; she’d make things right.
Before the silence grew louder, she blurted, “This pushing . . . is it what you think . . . is that what Bern did? To save himself?”
“Sit, please.”
Once they faced each other across the table, Taisal chose a single berry and placed it on the polished surface. “It’s a little thing I can do,” she began. “Most who become Adepts possess unique abilities. I tell you this, Aryl, because I expect you will join us one day.”
Be an Adept? Spend the rest of her life in study, tending the ill and dying, never to climb on her own? Aryl pressed her lips together and held her shields firm.
Taisal didn’t pause. “Within the Cloisters, we share what we can with each other, practice what may in time be useful for all. It is how we learn more about the Power and ourselves, how we decide which abilities are safe to spread through Yena. Outside the Cloisters, beyond Adepts, such abilities are safer Forbidden. Why?” She waited, an eyebrow raised at her daughter.
“You might be seen,” Aryl supplied at that prompt. “By the Tikitik.”
“Or by non-Adepts. Yes,” she asserted as Aryl frowned, “there are Yena—impatient or careless—who underestimate how very closely we are watched. They would risk the Agreement for their own gain. No. We can only afford changes small enough to go unremarked, or abilities that appear gradually, as if they always existed. That is our safety, Aryl. As for what you saw?” Taisal smiled slightly. “Pushing is Power applied thus . . .” She gave the tiny globe a nudge with one finger. It rolled toward Aryl, then slowed and stopped. “The object moves through space as though touched. It never disappears. Is that what you saw at the Harvest?”
Trapped by the question, Aryl stared at the tiny thing. Safer than meeting her mother’s steady gaze. “I didn’t see what happened,” she mumbled. It was the truth.
“The scouts report the Tikitik delegation should arrive shortly after truenight, Daughter. I may have to explain what happened. Don’t make me expose Bern’s ability to them.”
Aryl’s eyes flashed up. “What do you mean? By what right—”
“Don’t play the child with me,” Taisal warned, her face pale and stern. “You know who supplies the light and warmth to our homes—who built these homes for us. The bargain struck by our forebears forbids fundamental change within any race, to protect the peace that is. The Tikitik have every right to ask questions about this disaster and be satisfied by the answers, no matter the cost to us.”
Aryl flattened her palms on the tabletop and leaned forward. “They should be asking who sent that machine to spy on us!”
“The Oud are not our concern.”
“But Costa said it wasn’t theirs—” Too late, Aryl closed her mouth.
Taisal surged to her feet, nothing soft in her eyes now. “You do remember more. Show me what happened, Aryl. Now.” Her Power pressed against Aryl’s, demanding to be allowed through.
“No!” She tightened her shields, tried to hide within. “No! Let me tell you!” She wanted to explain—make excuses—not this.
“Not this!” Aryl sobbed, even as the Adept’s trained strength ripped her shields apart as if they were gauze.
And forced her to relive it all.
Interlude
ENRIS BRUSHED HIS FINGERS along the row of slender punches until he found the finest tip. The wristband was waiting in the grip, its pale green surface polished until the intricate designs might have been water as it curled over stone. Not that he’d seen such a thing for himself. The memory of stream and stones had come with his grandfather, who’d taken Passage from Grona Clan, and Enris liked it.
It was the inside of the wide band that concerned him now. Taking his favorite hammer, the one with leather wrappings worn to the shape of his palm, he sat at his bench and carefully punched tiny indentations into the smooth metal. First, an outer square, no larger than his smallest fingernail, open at one corner. He thickened its lines slightly before moving inside to shadow it with a thinner one. After a moment to stretch and rest his eyes, he returned to work, painstakingly hammering a pattern within the squares. Random dots, to those who never went outside in the dark, or looked up; precisely placed, to someone who did.