BEFORE LUNCH, TABITA took time to introduce Shironne to each of the other girls in the yeargroup individually. The yeargroup had come back from their history class, their curiosity barely contained. Shironne tried to pin names to individuals as she greeted each one, but after meeting several, she’d become lost.
Individually, they weren’t bad. Their minds were far more disciplined than the Larossans Shironne passed on the street every day. It was the sheer number of minds in the same area, like the difference between the gabble of a single goose and an entire flock.
“My head is hurting now,” she whispered to Tabita when she decided none of the others were near her bunk.
“My apologies,” Tabita said. “We’ve got one left, and she’s the worst. I don’t think putting her off is a wise start.”
She could hear the last girl approaching them, her emotions strong and hard, a mocking feel to them. Shironne flinched back.
She was never going to be able to survive among the Family if she couldn’t handle the members of one yeargroup. And she hadn’t met the boys in the group yet, either.
I can do this. I need to do this.
She reached out in her mind, seeking that corner where she could always find her tie to Mikael. He was busy doing something slightly improper, something that had to do with a dead body and with her, although he wasn’t thinking in terms clear enough that she could make out what was running through his mind. She wished futilely that he was nearer, that she could draw on his calm, his ability to control his emotions.
And then she felt his recognition of her, as if he’d turned and seen her waiting for him.
Are you all right? A wave of concern accompanied those loud words in her mind. He knew what she was doing today. That it would be hard for her. He worried over her now, words floating in his mind, not quite distinct, but he was far away from the Fortress, in the city somewhere.
She had no way to talk back to him. He wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up her thoughts and could only grasp her emotions if he was close. Or asleep.
If he’d been asleep, he would know how near she was to panicking.
Shironne held in the brittle laugh that tried to work its way past her lips. She wrapped her fingers around the crystal stashed in her pocket, trying to force her mind into order.
And then a wave of his calm overtook her, wrapping her in its grasp like a blanket, protecting her from all the other minds that tore at her. She stayed there for a moment, clutching that blanket about her. It reassured her, far better than any piece of stone. After a time, she let go and brought her mind back to awareness of the busy room about her.
She sensed a trio of girls nearby, perhaps sitting on the same bunk. They were curious but not unbearably so, and Shironne couldn’t quite tell their minds apart.
Others had already left the room, probably heading up to the mess on One Down. That left only a handful of girls moving about in the barracks room, making small noises. None were fretting over the stranger in their midst. Not loudly enough that Shironne could sense it, at least.
And there, to the left, was the other girl, the one she hadn’t met. Strong willed, with a cloaked mind, thinking hard of something distant.
“Shironne, this is Maria,” Tabita said, her voice flat and hard.
The final girl’s attention turned to Shironne, cold and disdainful. Irritated. Impatient, a reaction that the other girl seemed to push at Shironne.
Shironne weighed what she sensed between the two girls: guardedness on Tabita’s part that suggested she had something to fear from the other, and a forced disdain on Maria’s side that made Shironne suspect Maria had reason to dislike Tabita. She saw herself as powerful, and Tabita as an interloper. Perhaps Maria had been the Second before Tabita came to live here.
If I make a friend of Tabita, I’ll be making an enemy of Maria.
That wouldn’t work the other way around, though. She could try to make Maria her friend, and Tabita would understand her reasons for doing so.
Shironne sought that calm spot she’d had before, that refuge in Mikael’s mind. It was still there, still safe for her. She drew on his confidence and forced herself away again.
“So, this is what a touch-sensitive looks like,” Maria said coolly. “How . . . interesting.”
Shironne made a half bow in the direction of that voice. “It is my pleasure to meet you.”
“Well,” Maria responded and then walked away, measured footsteps sounding on the floor.
“She’s part Anvarrid, isn’t she?” Shironne asked when the other girl had walked away.
“Yes,” Tabita answered. “How do you know?”
“Um . . . I’m beginning to be able to sort it out, the thing that makes Anvarrid sound different to me in my mind. They . . .” She tried to come up with a description that made sense. “They excel at pushing their emotions at people. They do it in a way Larossans can’t. I don’t know why.”
That set Tabita’s mind to whirling. “Does that make it hereditary?”
She was truly interested in the answer, Shironne decided, seeking knowledge rather than an advantage to push. “Most of the people who work in Colonel Cerradine’s office can do it to some extent,” Shironne said “Not all. My mother can.”
“What about Eli?” one of the other voices asked, reminding Shironne that she and Tabita weren’t alone here. “Has she met Eli yet?”
That last query was addressed to Tabita, not her, but Shironne answered anyway. “I’ve met him before today. I visited here about a month ago, so I met him briefly then.”
“Aha!” a second voice from the bed said. “You’re the Larossan girl Mr. Lee took down to the cold rooms for some reason.”
“Yes. I was there to . . . um, view a dead body.” She’d been there to touch it, actually, to glean what remained of the dead woman’s memories. But most people found the idea of dealing with a corpse unsavory. “Elder Deborah took me down there later to view a second one.”
That set off eager whispering from the trio on the nearby bed.
“Did you meet Gabriel?” Tabita asked.
The other girls shushed, making Shironne suspect Tabita had gestured for them to do so. “Yes, I did.”
A flare of exasperation came from Tabita. “It would have been easier to send him to meet you then, rather than Eli. Eli hates having his schedule disarranged. But of course, Gabriel chose not to mention it, so . . .”
Shironne remembered Gabriel as friendly, with a humorous streak that Eli completely lacked. “Why do you say of course?”
“Gabriel’s destined to be a chaplain,” one of the trio said. “Everyone knows that.”
And chaplains had to keep secrets.
Tabita had escorted Shironne to the quartermasters’ hall on One Down earlier to procure uniforms and other garments, a satchel, and various necessities. They’d made their way then to the infirmary to ask for a schedule for Shironne’s duty shifts there and followed that with a long walk all the way to the back of the Fortress where the chapel lay. The chapel also served as the refuge on that level, the place to go whenever something dire happened. She’d been introduced to the head chaplain there.
Tabita sighed. “The chaplains want to meet with you regularly. I forgot to add that to your schedule.”
Did everyone want to talk to her? “Why?”
“To talk about your talent,” Tabita clarified. “None of them have ever spoken with a touch-sensitive before, I assume. But they’ll probably wait a few days to make certain you’re comfortable here, that you’re fitting in.”
Because fitting in was all-important inside the confines of the Fortress. That was why Mikael wasn’t allowed to live here, because he was so loud. None of the yeargroups wanted him.
“We’re going up, Tabita,” one of the trio announced. The sounds of moving fabric and footsteps accompanied Shironne’s sense of them moving away. She rose, figuring that Tabita needed to go as well.
“You did the thing where you faded away again,” Tabita said as she rose. “Before Maria spoke with you, I mean. You were losing control and you went away, then you came back calmer. How did you do that?”
I wish I could tell her. “I can’t say.”
A faint hint of frustration came from Tabita, but she tamped it down. “Should I take your hand?”
Shironne rose. “Ah, no. Let me try to get up to the mess myself.”
That offer elicited a flash of approval. “What do I do?”
If Tabita went ahead, Shironne would simply be able to follow her sense of the girl. She was familiar enough with Tabita now to sort out her thoughts from others. “If you don’t mind going slowly, you could stay behind me, to correct me if I get too far off course.”
“I’ll do that,” Tabita said.
Shironne made her way slowly toward the quarters’ door, concerned that someone might have left something on the floor between the rows of beds. But soon she stood at the quarters’ door and stepped into the hallway where the chevrons on the walls could guide her. At this point, both rows of chevrons led in the same direction, toward the main stairwells in the center of the Fortress.
“I can’t remember their names,” Shironne said. “Could you tell me again?”
“Whose names?”
“The three girls on the bed. The ones who were waiting for you. Their voices are so similar I can’t tell them apart.”
Tabita chuckled. “It’s Hanna, Hedda, and Norah. I suspect if I closed my eyes, I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart either. It probably doesn’t help you to know that Hanna is Larossan, like you, but was raised here from birth.”
And it didn’t help that their names sounded alike. Shironne repeated the names anyway. In time she should be able to differentiate them.
“Also,” Tabita added, “in my mind, they even feel the same. They’re that close. It will rip their hearts out when Hanna has to leave.”
Because Hanna was Larossan, like all the people who worked for the colonel. Once they’d served sentry duty for three years, they were expected to leave, the Family’s duty to them—as required by treaty—completed.
“It’s possible they might lose all three of them then,” Tabita told her. “And Theo, for that matter.”
“They?” Shironne asked. They’d reached the end of the hall and she started following the upper chevrons toward the central stairwells.
“They?” Tabita repeated.
“You said they might lose them. Not we.” She’d questioned prisoners for the army before. The wording of a statement, even one made in casual conversation, could be important.
“Ah,” Tabita said. “I won’t be here, either. I’ll be sent back to Jannsen once I’m of age.” She tried to hold in the sense of loss that accompanied those words. “If you hear me called a dove, it means I was sent here from Jannsen but will have to go back.”
“You don’t want to,” Shironne guessed.
“No,” Tabita answered softly.
Shironne reached a corner and felt the chevrons on the other side of it, trying to decide whether she needed to cross the hallway. It’s logic, she reminded herself. But this hallway was busy, a large group of people coming toward them from the left. Giggling voices, quickly shushed, suggested it was a younger yeargroup, curious minds considering her, but turning away politely. Shironne let the group pass and then followed, relatively certain the children were headed to the commons as well. That was cheating, but she was tired now. “Who makes that decision?”
“The elders,” Tabita said.
“Couldn’t you ask to stay?”
It took a moment for Tabita to answer. “It’s the way it is.”
Shironne walked on, one gloved hand trailing on the chevrons. Later, when Tabita wasn’t paying attention, she was going to hunt through Mikael’s memories and figure out why Tabita was here. And why she couldn’t stay.
Because if they won’t let Tabita stay, they won’t let me, either.
* * *
Mikael had felt a brief moment of panic from Shironne earlier, too vague for him to grasp the source, but enough that he could feel her distress. He’d thought calm back at her, and after a moment her fear had subsided.
That was exactly the sort of thing the elders had forbidden him to do.
Over the last month, he’d discussed this at length with Deborah. If what she understood of binding was correct, the more time that he and Shironne spent in proximity, the closer their minds would become. Curiously, it didn’t seem to be an even exchange, perhaps due to Shironne’s greater inherent sensitivity. She was able to pierce through into his mind at will and dig through his thoughts. He could almost feel it when she did that, like an itch inside his brain, but he never had any idea what she was looking for.
He didn’t mind. His knowledge was likely making it easier for her to get along, rather like he was a book of instructions.
What was curious, though, was that he wasn’t developing the ability to peek into her thoughts. True, he picked up strong reactions from her—surprise, alarm, fear—and usually had an idea where she was. But when it came to developing the true mutual communication that bound pairs were supposed to have, he failed. Deborah hadn’t opined on the meaning of that, and he certainly wasn’t going to go to the chaplains to explore the issue. They were already suspicious of the relationship, given the age disparity. He didn’t need to feed their worries.
He opened his eyes to find Kassannan gazing at him impassively in the dim interior of the coach bearing them to the hospital at the Army Square. Kassannan wasn’t a sensitive, so he wouldn’t have felt him disappear, as Dahar put it. But Mikael suspected he’d fallen out of the conversation instead. “I apologize. I lost my train of thought.”
“I said that you can’t be there,” Kassannan said. “Tomorrow, whenever they can get Shironne to come view this body.”
“I understand.” Mikael puzzled over the idea. “Who does that request go through, anyhow?”
“Deborah, as her sponsor. You want to take a note to her?”
To Deborah. He wouldn’t run into Shironne in the infirmary if he went after dinner, so that seemed safe. “I’ll do that.”
“We’re going to miss her around the office,” Kassannan said. “I am.”
Kassannan had worked with Shironne more closely than anyone else in that office. His wife had died several months past, and much of the work that kept Kassannan occupied in the time afterward was his work with Shironne.
“Given what she is,” Mikael said, “everyone will want her time.” The coach made another turn and slowed. They must be at the hospital. “I’ll leave you to it, then. We’ll talk tomorrow?”
Once the coach had stopped, Kassannan opened his door and jumped down. “We’ll do that.”