The Talented Read online

  Adrienne hesitated, then reached back and pulled the necklace over her head. “It was my mother’s.” Adrienne held the necklace out for Louella’s examination.

  “It’s beautiful,” Louella said, tracing a finger over the intricate design inset on the pendant.

  “It’s supposed to provide protection,” Adrienne told her, looking at the lines of the artful knot.

  “That’s lovely,” Louella said, handing the necklace back. “You must have been very young when you received this.”

  “I was four.” Adrienne ran the cord through her hands. “My father gave it to me before he sent me away.” She put the necklace back on, ran her thumb over the pendant once, then tucked it back under her blouse, where it would remain hidden from prying eyes. “I think he gave it to me because he felt guilty sending me away.”

  “Adrienne—”

  The back door opened and Pieter strolled in, interrupting whatever Louella had been about to say. He seemed momentarily surprised by Adrienne’s presence but recovered quickly. “Hello. Adrienne, I didn’t expect to see you here so late.” He smiled at Louella.

  “Adrienne’s been too busy to come by lately,” Louella said, standing to get Pieter a cup of tea. She passed close to him on her way, and Adrienne thought she saw Pieter’s hand brush Louella’s golden hair as the slender healer moved past him.

  “Yes, she hasn’t been by my shop either,” Pieter said, taking a seat between Adrienne and Louella. “How have you been?”

  “Not so bad,” Adrienne said, studying him. “You?”

  When Pieter accepted the cup from Louella their fingers brushed together and Louella’s face pinked.

  Adrienne was not experienced when it came to relationships, but she was not completely blind. She watched her friends with interest.

  “I got a commission for barrel hoops,” Pieter said when he finally looked away from Louella’s flushed face. “An easy job. If I had a proper apprentice, I would give the assignment to him.”

  Adrienne looked over and found Louella staring at the blacksmith, her teacup forgotten in her hand, as if someone ordering barrel hoops was the most interesting news in the world. Adrienne nearly smiled. They seemed such an unlikely couple, but from the way Pieter had walked right in the back door of Louella’s shop—the private entrance—Adrienne got the idea that she was the intruder there, and that Pieter was likely the reason Louella had still been up at this time of night. Which meant it was time for her to leave.

  “It’s getting late, and I was up early,” Adrienne said, standing. “Louella, I’ll stop by at lunch tomorrow and see if you’re free.”

  “Of course.” Louella and Pieter stood to see Adrienne out, and she almost smirked at their eagerness to have her gone. “Have a good night.”

  “You, too,” Adrienne said, holding back the chuckle until the door was closed behind her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Are you still trying to form fire balls?” Louella asked as yet another ball unraveled as it left Adrienne’s hand.

  “I’m getting better,” Adrienne insisted. She formed another ball in her hand, made a throwing motion, and with a tremendous force of will managed to keep the ball lit until it was nearly a foot from her hand. After that point, nothing she could do kept it from falling apart.

  “That’s better?” Louella asked skeptically.

  “I just need more practice.”

  Louella shook her head. “I can see the effort it takes you to throw one of those. You’re spending too much time and energy doing something that is not natural to your Talent. What you should be doing is practicing things you can do.”

  “But if I could throw flames in battle—”

  “I don’t know about battle,” Louella said, “but I know that if the person has to be that close to you for you to hit them with a fireball, you might as well not be able to throw fire at all.”

  Before Adrienne had a chance to form a response to what she had to admit was a logical point, Pieter let himself into Louella’s kitchen.

  “What’s going on?” He leaned back against the counter where Louella busied herself with the meal she was putting together. He had come for lunch, as it had become habit for the three of them to eat together whenever possible. It could still surprise Adrienne that she was friends with Louella and Pieter, even after months of knowing them.

  But Adrienne had come to realize that she had a special bond with Pieter and Louella. They were not as different from her as Adrienne had assumed the first time she met them. The bond forged between soldiers who trained and fought together was strong—they had to trust each other with their lives—but the bond Adrienne shared with the other Talented was even more exclusive than the bond Adrienne shared with the ranks of other soldiers she’d trained with. Maybe Louella and Pieter had never risked their lives to save hers, but they could relate to her in a way few others could.

  “Look,” Adrienne said, turning to show Pieter the ball of light. She went to throw it, and it unraveled before it had even left her hand.

  Pieter cast Louella a sideways glance, then smiled unconvincingly at Adrienne. “You’re getting better.”

  Adrienne sighed. Perhaps Louella was right. “No, I’m not.”

  “You will be.” Pieter seemed confident that she would improve, and Adrienne was grateful for his support.

  “I was telling Adrienne that she should move on from fireballs,” Louella told Pieter. “Find new ways to use her Talent.”

  “It was easier for us,” Pieter said. “We more or less knew how to use our Talents. Using fire as a weapon…it will take some thought.”

  The fact that Louella and Pieter had come to accept Adrienne’s purpose here was one of the things she was most grateful for. Adrienne only wished that being a soldier did not distance her from the rest of the Talented. The distance between herself and Ben had grown since the night she had unexpectedly developed her Talent, though they worked together every day trying to find the limits of Adrienne’s power. But Ben was not the real problem, nor were the other Talented who avoided her the cause of Adrienne’s dissatisfaction. Adrienne was beginning to wonder about the commission’s long-term plans. They had not mentioned again what her Talent was to be used for or how she should focus her ability, and there was no sign that another soldier was indeed going to be brought to Kessering. One of the groups that had been sent out to find a soldier to train had returned without a soldier at all, and the other group had yet to return to Kessering, though they had been gone for nearly a year.

  Adrienne did not voice her concerns that outlaws had probably found and killed the men sent out into the countryside alone. If the scholar’s only protection had been someone like Ilso, it was all too likely that they would never make it back to Kessering alive.

  But there was no point in revealing such concerns, and if she told Ben or one of the other commissioners she would no doubt receive a lecture about King Burin’s justice, or perhaps a lecture on how the Creator protects the faithful. She wanted neither.

  “I made meat pies for lunch,” Louella told Adrienne and Pieter, sliding the tray out of the brick oven and setting it on top to cool, “and I have leftover cobbler from last night.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” Adrienne said, redirecting her focus to her friends. She hadn’t told her friends about her worries regarding the commission. “What are you working on, Pieter?” She could tell from the lingering smell of wood smoke and ore that he had been at his forge before coming here. “More barrel hoops?”

  He shrugged his massive shoulders, tilting his head from side to side to crack his neck. “No. I was asked to make a couple of hinges, easy work, but I’m going to try focusing my energy and Talent on what I want them to do, as opposed to whom I am making them for. If that works it would be a way to use my Talent so that it benefits more than one person, and can be passed from person to person.”

  Adrienne considered this and nodded. Despite her own developing Talent, Adrienne had trouble fully grasping
the extent or limitations of anyone else’s abilities, and the feeling seemed mutual when the others tried to understand hers. “I hope that works for you,” Adrienne told him sincerely. “It would mean—”

  “Adrienne!”

  Adrienne recognized the voice and heard the underlying panic. She leapt to her feet and ran into the front room where a flushed Ben was breathing heavily and supporting himself against the doorpost.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, surprised to see Ben in such a state.

  “I-there-I—”

  “Ben!” Adrienne snapped, infusing her voice with officer’s steel. “What happened?”

  Her command penetrated through the fear clouding Ben’s mind. “There are men in the city,” he gasped. “Armed men. They’re attacking the guards!”

  Adrienne came to attention. “Where? How many men are there?”

  “They came in the north gate.” He was still struggling to bring his breathing under control, but his mind seemed clearer. “Twelve men, but there might have been more that I didn’t see.” Ben’s voice wavered. “They started killing people.”

  Adrienne cursed ripely. “Louella, start gathering the other healers; we’ll need your skills. But be careful going through the streets. Ben, Pieter, I want you to get as many people inside, behind locked doors, as possible.” Less victims, she thought. Less chance of hostages or collateral damage. She was halfway out the door before she turned back to see them all standing around uncertainly. “Go!”

  She tore out of the small shop and ran toward the north end of the city. The fact that Ben had sought her out meant that the situation was dire, but she was not totally surprised by that. The guards weren’t skilled enough to fight off men armed with anything more lethal than sticks. It had only been a matter of time before trouble cropped up that they could not handle.

  Adrienne ran down the main thoroughfare. She could hear the clashing of swords in the distance, the terrified screams. The cries of pain.

  She turned a corner and saw the battle, if it could be called that. Three of Kessering’s guards were lying on the ground; three more were engaged in the fight and losing ground quickly. The rest of the guards stood back, paralyzed by fear and uncertainty, and Adrienne realized one of the downed men was their captain.

  “With me!” Adrienne shouted, drawing her blue-tinged sword from its sheath. She caught the attention not only of the shocked guards, but of the enemy as well.

  Unlike the city guardsmen who were dressed in their burnished armor, Adrienne wore only her swa’il. But the men who had come to Kessering were not without experience, and they quickly recognized her as being more dangerous than any of the men standing around wearing expressions of shock and fear along with their armor.

  Two of the marauders who had been hanging back watching the slaughter approached Adrienne cautiously, swords raised.

  Adrienne held her sword ready and shifted onto the balls of her feet. She waited for the men to come closer. One part of her mind analyzed them, looking for weaknesses, while another part was focused on her own body. It had been awhile since she had done anything other than run through sword forms, and it would be the first time she used the Talent-forged sword in battle. She couldn’t afford to worry about either thing now; all she could do was hope for the best.

  The smaller of the two men moved quickly, striking with a sudden burst of speed that she was sure had bled more than one opponent.

  Adrienne turned his blade back, twisting her own blade in an attempt to force the sword out of his hand. It twisted his wrist back, and only a quick adjustment of his grip allowed him to keep hold of the weapon.

  He was no amateur. Few soldiers could have recovered so quickly.

  The bigger man, several inches taller than his companion and as much as seventy pounds heavier, approached Adrienne more slowly, his eyes sharply focused. Adrienne would have preferred to be cautious, to take her time and learn this new opponent with his careful moves and dangerous eyes, but another of Kessering’s guards had fallen, and there was no time to wait. She dispatched the large man with her sword, shifted her blade to her left hand, and with a practiced movement pivoted and threw her knife, which stuck in the smaller man’s throat.

  His hand went to the protruding blade in his throat, and a gurgle of blood left his mouth before he collapsed, as dead as his friend.

  She had expected to hit his chest and buy herself some time, and she took a single moment to be pleased with her unexpected luck before turning her attention back to the fight.

  The remaining invaders converged around her, paying little mind to the few guards still standing, most of whom were wounded. The rest of the city guards were staying back, well away from the fighting, no more threat than the townspeople locked safely in their homes.

  Nine against one were not odds in Adrienne’s favor, and her mind raced with possibilities as her opponents inched closer. They were being cautious, having seen her in action, but they had her outnumbered, and they knew it. If the guards had been willing to help, Adrienne thought they might be able to dispatch two or three of the raiders, or at least provide a useful distraction, but she knew better than to count on them to do anything more than stand there and stare.

  She swept her sword out in front of her in a semi-circle, trying to keep the men back, but it was futile. There were too many of them.

  Adrienne sensed movement behind her, but she did not turn fast enough and felt the white-hot pain of a sword stabbing into her thigh.

  She stumbled back and fell to one knee as the men approached. One stepped forward, taking his time, enjoying the moment, and Adrienne felt the heat of temper fill her. She would not die on her knees. With all of her remaining strength she surged to her feet and raised her sword. The blue-tinged weapon caught the light and seemed to glow as she brought it down.

  Fire erupted. It ran down the length of her sword and up the other man’s. It ran over his hands and arms, catching his clothes on fire. He dropped the weapon, and though the connection with her was lost, it didn’t matter. The flame seemed to have a life of its own as it covered the man’s body, consuming him.

  Even as he screamed in pain, Adrienne turned away from the human torch and brought the fight to the other men. The pain in her leg was pushed aside, her tiredness a thing of the past as anger and power took its place.

  Some of the men scattered, but most stayed to fight, rage and blood lust overpowering fear and common sense alike. Between the eager flames that ripped down her sword and the skill that had been bred into her for most of her life, it was only a matter of minutes until all of her enemies were laid at her feet, some burnt until they were little more than ash.

  Adrienne stood with her legs apart, blood forming a pool around her left boot, sword tip resting on the ground. She breathed heavily as she took in her surroundings.

  Guards and townspeople were on the ground, some twisting and moaning, others ominously still. Men and women walked amongst them, and where they stopped the fallen seemed to revive.

  Healers, Adrienne realized as her mind cleared slightly of the post-fight haze and the mind-numbing exhaustion brought on by blood loss. Talented healers.

  “You’re hurt!”

  It was Louella. Before Adrienne had a chance to answer, Louella bent to examine the stab wound on Adrienne’s thigh. A hot, tingling sensation went up and down Adrienne’s leg, and the pain faded. She looked down and saw no fresh blood coming through her blood soaked swa’il, though the damage to the leather was irreparable. Through the wide tear in the leather and the blood still on her skin, Adrienne saw smooth, unblemished flesh. “Thank you,” she said, aware of how serious the wound could have been without Louella there. “How are the others?”

  Louella’s light blue eyes were sad. “Three of the guards are dead,” she said. “Two more were seriously injured, but they should be okay.”

  Adrienne nodded.

  “Two townswomen are dead,” Louella added softly. “Four men. A few more people wer
e hurt…a child.” She shook her head and Pieter, who had been standing silently beside her, stroked the healer’s golden hair with a large, calloused hand. “Why did this have to happen?” Louella asked.

  “It didn’t have to,” Adrienne said bitterly, though she knew the question was meant to be rhetorical. “If we had better leaders and a central army, maybe no one would have died today. If the commission had been prepared, this could have been prevented. Kessering is a wealthy city. A wealthy city with fine goods that was left poorly defended, with barely a double handful of guards all told. The raiders could have been kings in this city, pillaging and making sport of the people living there.”

  “Elder Rynn and the others couldn’t have known.”

  “It’s their job to know!” Adrienne said. “If they are going to be leaders here, it is their job to protect their people.”

  “You protected us,” Louella said, resting her hand lightly on Adrienne’s shoulder.

  “You did well,” Pieter said. His face was set in grim lines as he took in the carnage that filled the normally peaceful street. Although she knew Pieter and Louella accepted the fact that she was a soldier, she was still surprised by his words.

  But Pieter looked serious, and Adrienne realized he was not looking at the men she had killed, but at the innocent people hurt and killed by the those men. “It was the sword,” she explained.

  Pieter nodded. “I could feel it.” Surprise won through Adrienne’s exhaustion, and it must have shown on her face, because Pieter continued without her having to ask. “I can’t always feel what I’ve made, not without trying, but when your fire was on it…I could feel the power.”

  “They’re connected,” she said. “The Talents seem to amplify when brought together.” She had felt the immense power rushing through her Talent-imbued sword when she had run fire down the blade; it had been like nothing she had ever felt before.

  “They’re meant to work together,” Pieter said softly.

  Louella broke into their conversation with a gentle voice. “We’ll discuss this later,” she said. “Adrienne, I believe you need to sit down, have something to drink. Between the fight and your leg…”