"Just be careful," she replied.
"I'm always careful, Keritanima," he replied soberly, looking at the rising sun.
"Good, because I may need your help."
"How so?"
"The fastest way to find out what someone knows about someone is to make them talk about that someone," she explained. "If you want me to find out why they're so interested in you, you have to make them talk about you. And nothing can make that happen faster than when you make them angry."
Tarrin smiled slightly. "I think you have a plan."
"Oh, I have a very good plan," she replied with a roguish smile. "It involves all three of us. It's certain to drive the katzh-dashi crazy. That's just an added bonus, because what it's going to do is make certain that alot of people talk about us. That's information that'll be easy to gather up." She put her feet on the bench and drew up her knees to her chest. "The Princess Brat has been doing that for quite a while, so she can easily incite the Sorcerers into conniptions, but can you and Allia do it?"
"What would we have to do?"
She licked her chops absently, thoughts obviously forming behind her eyes. "The quickest way for the two of you to make them angry would probably be to become defiant," she reasoned. "That should be easy for you. But the problem is going to be coming up with a reason for you to rebel that makes sense. Plus it will make them show us just exactly how valuable they think we are."
He could understand the logic of that. By seeing how much they would take before they finally took action, he would understand how valuable he was.
"Since I've established the fact that the Brat Princess likes you two, she would probably join in the rebellion," she continued. "I'd rather not, but unfortunately, it's the way things are."
"Why is that?"
"Oh, I didn't tell you," she said with bright eyes. "I touched the Weave yesterday!"
"Congratulations," he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. "What's it like?"
"I'm not supposed to tell you that, but I loved it!" she said in wonder. "Now I understand why I've always detested the idea of being Queen. Sorcery is what I was born to do."
"I'm happy for you, Keritanima," he said, then he chuckled. "Why did your father give you such a long name?"
"It's something of a custom among female aristocrats," she sniffed. "My sisters have names just as long as mine."
"Well, I'm in danger of biting my tongue off every time I say it, so I'm going to call you Kerri," he told her. "Not because it sounds nice, but because I don't want to go around sounding like an idiot."
She laughed. "Kerri, is it? Well, I guess I can live with that. We'll discuss my fee for being so gracious some other time. Anyway, since I've just managed to make a touch on the Weave, rebelling would mean refusing lessons. I'd rather not do that, but I may not have a choice."
Tarrin's eyes narrowed. "Maybe not," he said. "It's not in stone yet, but let me see if I can't organize a bit of covert instruction."
"That short one? Dolanna?"
He nodded. "She's a very good friend. I may convince her to teach us secretly."
"We'll spend our time in rebellion in the library," she continued. "If we want a real chance at getting away, if it comes to that, we'll need every advantage we can get our hands on."
"How?"
"Tarrin, the Ancients wielded power that would make the katzh-dashi look like Novices," she said. "If we could somehow learn just one or two little secrets, we could maybe use them to make good on any escape. Don't you forget that if we run, they'll just use magic to find us. We have to find a way to stop that before we try anything."
"You sound convinced that we will."
"I am," she said. "I know a sinking ship when I see it, Tarrin. They want something from us, and they're more than willing to do whatever it takes to get it."
"How do you know that?"
"Just call it women's intuition," she told him. "I have alot of little reasons that all add up to the same conclusion."
"Well, we can try, but they've had whole platoons of Sorcerers trying to do the same thing that we're going to do, Kerri. I don't know if we'll have any more luck than them." He leaned forward. "The Lorefinders do nothing but try to find the lost secrets."
"True, but they're looking at it from a smashmouth perspective," she snorted. "They're looking for the secrets to be written down in the books, waiting for them to find it. The secrets are there, but they're not obvious."
"What are you talking about?"
"Tarrin, you'd be surprised at how much you can learn about a people just by figuring out what a day in the life of that person was like," she explained. "If we can figure out what they did from day to day, nothing serious or titanic or earth-shaking, just how Ancient Sorcerer Bobbi went about her daily routines, we may find something that they missed."
"How does that help us learn new Sorcery?"
"By understanding an effect, one can often make it come to pass," she pointed out. "After we learn more about Sorcery, we may be able to reverse-engineer some of those effects." She picked at her dress absently. "I'm pretty sure that the Lorefinders are looking for the wrath of the gods type things. They're not looking for how, perhaps, our Ancient Sorceress, Bobbi, cleaned her robes at the beginning of each day."
"And that information was probably left behind," Tarrin said in a glimmer of insight.
She smiled. "Of course. The Ancients took almost everything with them, and they probably didn't write about themselves, but I'll bet that others did. From what I understand, the Church of Karas hated them, and I'll bet that they were exhaustive in their study of the Ancients."
"Why?"
"How better to defeat an enemy than to understand that enemy?"
"'A predictable enemy is a defeatable one'," Fox quoted from one of his mother's many sayings.
"Just so," she agreed. "So we may be paying the Cathedral a visit. That's the main repository of almost all the lore of the church of Karas. I think we'll find some very interesting things there."
"They wouldn't let that kind of information out. And they'd boil their own gizzards before handing it over to the Tower," he reasoned. "So it's probably still there."
"Very good," she smiled. "I'll make a politician out of you yet."
"I hope not," he grunted. "So, what's our first move?"
"Our first move is to learn," she replied calmly. "I won't be ready to move forward for a few more days. Maybe a ride. But when I am ready, you have to get unfriendly. Find something that you really hate about your situation, but make sure it's something that they won't change. And when I give the signal, make it very clear that you're unhappy. Cause all sorts of trouble, until the Keeper herself has to deal with it. When she refuses to change it, then you go on strike."
Tarrin laughed. "That's a clever way to say it."
"Allia will stand by you, and after a bit of wishy-washiness, the Brat Princess will too. That will conveniently give us some time to kill, and we'll do it in the library. Miranda will be gathering information, as will Tiella and you. And hopefully, your friend Dolanna will give us some help. After that, we'll have to see where we stand with what we've got before we make our next move. We can't learn secrets unless we have at least a basic understanding of Sorcery, and for that, we'll need Dolanna."
"Dolanna is a katzh-dashi, Kerri," he said. "I trust her, but we can't let her know what we're planning. That will put her loyalty in conflict with our friendship, and I'm not sure which side of the fence she'll stand on."