Kerowyn's Ride

had held the Keep, she’d gotten used to having an indoor practice ground. This one was much smaller, but she didn’t need room for twenty pupils anymore.

Kero was going through her paces; one of the Shin’a’in sword-dances. And as Tarma watched her, the Swordsworn’s heart sang with pride. Granted it was one of the simplest of the exercises, but Kerowyn performed it so flawlessly that it looked as effortless as breathing.

The girl’s a natural, she thought with a kind of astonished pleasure. Years and years of training younglings, and never a natural in the lot—and now, at the end of my days, I not only get to teach one, but she’s an adoptee. My Clan.

She’d been waiting for Kethry to get up the nerve to ask about the girl for weeks. Keth had been vaguely disappointed that Kerowyn proved out null so far as mage-craft went, though she’d admitted to her partner that the girl seemed more relieved than anything else.

Now, at last, she’d come down to watch Kero work out; and Tarma sensed that she was ready to ask the question.

“Well,” Kethry said, as Kerowyn moved into the next exercise in the cycle, this one a little harder than the last. “She looks like she’s doing all right. That isn’t Need, is it?”

“No, it’s a painted wooden practice blade,” Tarma told her. “I made it the same size, heft and shape, so she could get used to the weight and balance. Need’s up on her wall—her decision, and she says the damn thing stays there until she’s sure of her own abilities and she knows that what she does is due to her skill, not the sword working through her.”

“So?” Keth replied.

“So, what?” Tarma countered, teasingly.

“So how is she?” the mage snarled in annoyance. “Is she any good, or not?”

To Tarma’s utter amazement, her throat closed, and her eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t speak for a moment, and Kethry bit her lip in dismay.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “When she didn’t have any mage-talents, I was sure—what are we going to do with her?”

Tarma wiped her eyes on the back of her hand, and coughed to get her voice working again. “Keth, she’enedra, you’ve got it backward. The girl’s good. Hellfrost, she’s better than good. One year, just one year of teaching, and Companies are going to stand in line to have her.” She pulled Kethry into one of the alcoves formed by the irregular walls of the cave, so that Kero wouldn’t notice them watching her from the shadows. “Look at her; look at her move. She’s a natural, Keth, the kind of pupil that comes along once in a teacher’s lifetime if she’s lucky. She’s never had anything other than some indifferent training in knife-fighting, but she’s taken to the sword as if she was born with one in her hand. She’s doing things now that most of my old students couldn’t have done after two years of teaching. She could probably earn a living right now, if all somebody wanted was a basic recruit.”

“And in that year?” Kethry watched her granddaughter rather than Tarma.

“In that year she’ll be able to go to the best Companies and they’ll take her for officer training. They won’t tell her that, of course, but she’ll be an officer a lot faster than you or I made it. She’s not only a natural with a weapon, she’s a natural on the field.” She poked Kethry with her elbow to regain her attention. “By the way, Warrl said to tell you that you were right; she’s a Mindspeaker. He also said to tell you that he’s taking care of the training.”

Kethry relaxed. “Good, and I appreciate his delicate sense of what to promise. You know, I was afraid you were unhappy because she was awful, and you didn’t know how to tell me.”

Tarma chuckled. “Hardly. And hardly unhappy. To get a student like her is amazing enough—but that it turns out to be one of ours—well, the only thing that would make me happier would be if Jadrek were here to see her.”

Keth smiled a little. “He probably knew before we did. And thank Warrl for me; I was afraid she was a Mindspeaker, but since I’m not, I had no way to tell. I thought she was shielded, but that could just have been the fact that she was concentrating. She’s better off in Warrl’s hands—paws—than mine.”

“I think he has his paws full,” Tarma said, recalling what Warrl had told her this morning. :As stubborn as ever you were, mind-mate, and as taciturn. She won’t tell me anything, I have to pry it out of her. Thank the gods there’s only one of her, and I don’t have to teach her combative mind-magic. She refuses to learn the offensive techniques.: He had snorted his opinion of her attitude. :She has all the morals and compunctions as one of those half-crazed Heralds!:

“In that case, I have a proposition to make you.” Kethry took a deep breath before she continued. Tarma restrained a sigh; Keth only did that when she was going to ask something she didn’t think her partner would like. “Would you be up to teaching two? Your second pupil will already have had several years of good instruction, so he’ll be about at Kero’s level, I’d guess.”