“What is this?” Conn Arthur demanded. “You said nothing about this.”
“This?” Kip asked. “What are you mad about, and why are you bringing it to me right now?”
The sun was rising on another perfect morning on the Great River. According to their guides, they were about five minutes from Fechín Island. There they would rendezvous with the Cwn y Wawr.
“You were supposed to take care of this!” Conn Arthur said, pointing at Tisis.
“Easy!” Cruxer warned.
The Mighty’s skimmer, already small with nine people on it, especially when that nine included men the size of Big Leo, Kip, and Conn Arthur, felt downright minuscule when the big bear was angry.
“I was planning to!” Tisis said.
“How?!” he demanded.
“I hadn’t figured that out yet!” Tisis said. “I was kind of hoping we’d have a chance for you to show how useful… Shit!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Kip said. “You have to tell—”
“Ah shit!” Conn Arthur said. “There’s their scout. They’ve seen us. Now we’re committed.”
Kip couldn’t see anyone until he flickered his vision to sub-red and saw the warm blotch in the trees along the riverbank.
“Slow down to half speed,” Kip ordered. “It’s, um, only polite to give them a chance to prepare for our arrival.” He turned to Conn Arthur and Tisis. “You’ve got ten minutes.”
“The Cwn y Wawr?!” Conn Arthur said. “You never told us we were meeting with the Cwn y Wawr.”
“I wasn’t hiding it,” Kip said. “I told you we saved two-hundred-some men. Why do you care?”
“I thought the last conflict between you was a hundred years ago,” Tisis said.
“That’s because we haven’t wanted to be slaughtered again. We’ve had to live so we can disappear at any moment, for any amount of time. When we hear they’re coming to the Grove in force, we leave and stay away until they lose interest.” Bitterly, he said, “It’s another reason they call us Ghosts.”
“Wait,” Kip said. “Why do they hunt you?”
“You should have told him,” the conn said. Below him, Sibéal was rubbing her face.
“I was going to tell him,” Tisis shot back. “When the time was right. Apparently you thought you’d take that decision out of my hands.”
“You didn’t think you could keep it from him forever, did you?” the conn said.
“I wanted to give you a chance to prove your worth. The Chromeria is more than a little nervous—”
“What is this about?” Kip demanded. “Now!”
“Shady Grove isn’t separate from the Chromeria simply because some drafters want to stay in Blood Forest,” the conn said, mountainous shoulders slumping. “We’re will-casters.”
“So what?” Kip said.
“So what?!” The conn was baffled.
“I thought you’d be angry,” Tisis said. “I thought that if they showed how incredibly useful their powers can be—”
“I’m angry. I’m angry you kept something from me that you thought would make me mad. That absolutely infuriates me. We’ll talk about that later.” Kip remembered the fear accorded to Teia’s use of paryl. Paryl was scary, and it didn’t fit nicely into the Chromeria’s septophiliac teachings. He could easily imagine the same happening to other slightly divergent teachings. But will-casting? He’d used it himself against Grazner, and been told only not to try that so early in his drafting career. What was the big deal?
Sibéal Siofra said, “We hoped to show you how we use a partner in battle to help explain, but the skimmers travel so quickly they couldn’t catch up.”
A partner? What was—
Tisis turned to Sibéal. “I don’t suppose the Third Eye said anything about what we’re supposed to do now?”
“No.” Sibéal’s face was impossible to read, maybe a little tightening around the eyes, but the smile not moving. That was unnerving. Luckily, the he-bear of a conn was far more expressive. His already pale face went pasty. His fists clenched, and Kip could actually see the tight thews of his shoulders swell with sudden tension.
“Kip,” Tisis said, “do you remember when you were going through your Blackguard initiation, and you grabbed that boy’s open-luxin spear and shattered it?”
“How’d you know about that?” Kip asked.
“Balls, Kip. You think the Blackguard trainees do anything in the Chromeria that isn’t immediately grist for the rumor mills?”
Kip hadn’t really thought about it. But he supposed that the attractive, powerful young men’s and women’s fights would be fairly intriguing to the average drafter who never got to raise a fist in anger, much less throw a luxin missile. “Grazner was his name,” he said. “Commander Ironfist called it willjacking.”
“Right. Willjacking is one tiny part of will-casting,” Tisis said.
“Shit,” said Cruxer, who had just come up to join them. “I can’t believe I didn’t put the pieces together. Will-casters. That’s why Sibéal’s with you. That’s her people’s magic.”
To Kip, Tisis interjected, “Will-casters draft only enough luxin to transmit their will. To objects and to animals.”
“And to people,” Cruxer said.
“Not to people,” Sibéal said quickly. “Not in the sense you mean.”
Cruxer interrupted, “Forcing your will onto a person, making them do whatever you want? It’s mind rape—and often a precursor to actual rape. That’s what I was taught. Are you saying it isn’t used that way?”
A frisson passed through the nearby boats, and Kip was keenly aware that Cruxer had just equated a hundred nearby drafters with rapists. Everyone in the boats within earshot went very quiet and very tense.
“It can be used that way,” Sibéal admitted.
“And animals.” His mouth twisted. “Uniting with an animal. Forcing yourself. On an innocent animal. It’s like—”
“It’s a terrible thing to call good evil,” Sibéal interrupted. “Horny, shamed zealots often see perversity in innocent activities. Men like that would describe a mother changing her son’s soiled nappy as stripping an infant naked and rubbing his genitals. It’s true, but it’s misleading. When a man sees perversity everywhere, one must question who’s the pervert. I’d hate for you to become a person like that, Commander.”
Cruxer looked as if he’d been slapped. “Yet even a shamed, imperfect man might actually find himself among those who pervert the gifts Orholam has given them.”
It was a step back, but the crowd of will-casters didn’t see it that way. They moved from vindication to surly outrage in an instant. Point to Cruxer, but maybe this wasn’t an argument worth winning. Kip felt as if he were watching a team of runaway horses pulling a heavy-laden cart down a crowded street. Perhaps disaster couldn’t be averted forever.
But Sibéal held her hand up. “Will-casting is a sword. Like any sword, it is meant to cut and kill. It is an implement—mostly—of violence and ugliness. It is a sword we here carry with an appreciation for the dangers of the blade. Surely you warriors can understand this. We do not disagree about how vile are the abuses of this craft.”
“Except the Chromeria says all uses of your craft are abuses,” Cruxer said.
“Cruxer,” Kip said, “you know I love you. But shut your gob. Sibéal?”
She looked down the river nervously, but they were still quite a ways out. “Your Magisterium draws its edicts in such a way as to keep as many people safe as possible. It would ban swords altogether, so as to save us all from those who use swords to rape and steal and kill. But there is a time to kill, and a place to use every weapon at our disposal. Is now the time and place for you, Kip Guile, who said he would lead us to kill and to die?”
“I take it that the Cwn y Wawr disagree,” he said.