Read Sanctuary's Assassin (The Complete Part 1) Page 19

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  “I don’t like her eyes.” Ren’ai did not restrain herself as she brushed past Nakali and hopped into bed.

  “Well I don’t like yours.” Nakali sat down beside her. “They look like a lake frozen thin.” She pulled her thick braid over one shoulder and began uncoiling it strand from strand.

  “Why does she look at people like that? It’s a cold, dark stare.”

  “The Healer’s wife is a kind and caring person. Cold and dark are not words I would use to describe her. You just don’t like her lessons. But we all had to endure them.”

  “I don’t like the way she looks at me.”

  Nakali looked down at cold rock, pulling a comb through heavy strands as if choosing her words beneath slow breath. “Nai, Gwen sees things we don’t see. When she looks at you she does not see you like I see you. She sees more. She sees both sides, action and intent, reality and illusion” Nakali looked back to her apprentice.

  Ren’ai had to look away from her trainer’s glare. “Intent?” Her eyes met the trunks against the far wall just as one of her sisters startled an advancing FlameChaser with a bursting flame. Intent, she thought, if it be true, I’m not fooling anyone.

  “Gwendoline tests all new arrivals, weighs their loyalty to root out would be traitors, the assassins, the wolves in sheep’s clothing. That is any Dreamer’s birthright.”

  “If that’s really what she’s doing, you would not tell me; then I would know…”

  Nakali interrupted. “It does not matter if you know, Nai. You cannot keep her from seeing both sides of you. Besides, you would be dead by now if she had seen anything. She keeps a blade in her sleeve and she’s quick with it. She is like any of us in the Jagged. She does not take chances with the life of the Healer.”

  “If she already knows I am not an assassin, then why does she keep looking into me?”

  “Because, Nai, She is trying to figure out how to reach you. That is what Teachers do.”

  “If she thinks she is going to make me enjoy reading about dead kings.”

  “You don’t have to enjoy it, Nai. You just have to know it. Gwen wants you to enjoy reading about these things because it will make it more meaningful but if you kick and scream she will still make you do it.”

  “I will do it for Jabari, but I won’t like it.”

  “I’m sure you’ll see the purpose in time. That’s all any of us want. But I think you forgot something.”

  Ren’ai yawned. “Not tonight, Kali. I’m ready for bed.”

  “Yes. Our day starts with it and it ends with it.”

  Ren’ai thumped her feet to the floor and found her place there, sitting legs crossed in, hands upon her knees, drawing slow deep breath.

  Nakali did the same.

  And so another day met its perfect end in meditation; tomorrow the cycle would begin again. As one day of many, ran together now into the next, she became stronger, increased her understanding and her skill. As the lands beyond brought forth great Haerfests and those lacking in turn that broken little girl that the Healer had found in the woods that night learned her lessons well. One day soon now, one of Jabari’s guards she would be, but that would only be the beginning for her life quest of avenging her family and bringing justice to an embattled land.