lady'll always go for the man who'll care for her."
Atla managed a grin, and if it was a little on the wan side, it looked genuine and simply conflicted, rather than false.
"You didn't answer my other question," she prompted.
"Huh? Sorry?"
"Today." She let her voice stiffen just a touch. "Does it bother you that this will be your life?"
"No." The answer seemed to surprise him, or maybe the speed of it did. His attention turned inward for a moment, then he looked up at the ceiling. She followed his gaze, enjoying her share of the moment. Quietly, without bringing his eyes back down, he said, "No, this is alright." Then he did frown at her. "I mean, bits of it were a bit scary, and it's not easy, I'm not taking it lightly." He waited for her to nod. "But I feel... um, I guess it's the feeling that I can make a difference. It matters that I can do this."
She ruffled his hair, drawing a brief scowl. "Good. That's the first step on the way to being a good Gifted, rather than just an able one." He smiled, but a stone dropped suddenly into the pit of Pevan's stomach. Her tongue and lips drying as she spoke, she said, "You felt powerless before?"
The thought troubled him. She tried to wet her palate while she waited for his answer, but nothing came. By the time he spoke, she felt as though she could barely move her tongue at all. He said, "I wouldn't, uh, put it quite like that. It's not so much powerlessness that bothered me, just... well, I guess it comes down to not really having a place in the village."
"What do you mean?" She tried to keep from sounding too incisive, but the net result was that her tone became teacherly, patronising in its sing-song happiness.
"I have four brothers." He shot a strange mix of frustration and longing at the middle distance. "All older, none of them Gifted."
"Ah." Coliter, the youngest of the Webberat sisters back in Federas, shared some of Atla's insecurities, though there was no way Coliter would ever make a good Gifted. Pevan gave the lad another kindly smile. "Hand-me-downs, the small bed, and not much room left in your father's workshop for you to learn?"
It was hard to characterise the sharp change in Atla's features. His eyes became startled, dark pits, the tension etched hard around them. "H-how did you know?"
"Happens in every village, I expect." She patted him on the arm again. "You're lucky, and it's probably to the benefit of your family, too. They haven't made it hard for you?"
"No." He shook his head, but his face began to droop into sadness. "I miss them."
"Chin up, remember?" She let her tone do the work of recapturing his focus. "Especially here. This whole place is about making the effort to present yourself well, remember."
When he stood straight and put on his serious face, he piled on maturity. The transformation was striking. He even spoke more surely. "It's hard, being Gifted. I mean, I can be a Guide, Bersh's training's been great for that. But I hadn't even thought about all this other stuff..."
"Likely Bersh hasn't either." Pevan shrugged, studying the boy's face. "It's no criticism, really. Probably he's never needed to be a Gifted before. Most Four Knots are all the authority most towns could need. But there's no reason not to understand how to play the role. You'll find yourself working with strangers a lot, people who need to trust you at a first impression."
He nodded, face as fixed as a statue's.
"Okay, let me ask you another question." She paused, waited for him to nod again. This was the question she was really worried about, and it almost stuck in her throat. "If I- If you could make the entire Second Realm disappear right now, so you never needed to use your Gift again, and neither did anyone else, would you do it?"
Atla spoiled his appearance of maturity by chewing his lip for a second, but when he met her eye there was no doubting how seriously he took the question. His voice dropped a few notes, his intonation as even as a Wilder's, though more gruff. "What's the catch?"
She grinned despite herself. "Top marks. If I'd thought to ask that, we might not even be here."
"Ask it?" His face went wide, and he lent back just a tiny little bit. "Of who?"
"The Separatists." She hugged herself, broke eye contact to watch a pair of Gift-Givers crossing the Hall, half-way to the far end.
"That's what they mean by Separation? It's not just not going to the Second Realm anymore?" He waited for her nod, and continued. "So what's the catch?"
She rolled her eyes, scowling. "Reports vary. Taslin said it would be as bad for us as another Realmcrash. Chag reckons the Separatists have the right of it, and it'll be a lot more benign than that. Just a few localised physics disturbances and some Realmquakes."
"Realmquakes?" The face that had seemed so fresh and innocent only a minute before had hardened to the point that the widening of his eyes made him look as much angry as afraid. "You mean like y- two days ago?"
"That's what I thought. I'm inclined to believe Taslin's account, from how cagey the Separatists were." She folded her arms and looked back along the hall, suddenly uncomfortable looking Atla in the eye.
His tone when he spoke justified the discomfort. "So, we're going to stop them, right?" It was easy to imagine that Dora might have sounded like that as a trainee.
***
About the author
R. J. Davnall has been telling stories all his life, and thus probably shouldn’t be trusted to write his own bio. He holds a PhD in philosophy and teaches at Liverpool University, while living what his mother insists on calling a 'Bohemian lifestyle'. When not writing, he can usually be found playing piano, guitar or World of Warcraft.
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