“So? Try.”
I frowned. Then I took the grip in my right hand and held the scabbard in my left; and then my eyes fluttered, and it was like someone breathed air through the muscles in my arm and my hand. I turned the sword, once this way, then the other, and then…
In the flash of a second I had the naked blade before me, pale green like the buds of new leaves upon the tree. I stared at it, shocked by my own success.
“Good job,” Miljin said, but he did not seem at all pleased. He looked to Ana. “He has it, then.”
“He does, it seems,” said Ana.
“I…I have what?” I asked. “What are you all talking about, please?”
“Memory in the muscles,” explained Miljin. “You learn how to move and you remember it, Kol, so you can do it again. Perfectly, every time.”
He said this with some awe, but it sounded more or less in line with all the rest of my alterations. “But…that’s because I’m an engraver, sir,” I said. “Yes?”
“Hell no,” said Ana. “Most engravers capture experiences—sights, sounds, and especially smells—but not movement. They can duplicate speech and words, but they can’t make their bodies act out something complex. That’s much harder. But if you are taught how to move in a way once, Din, then it seems you can move exactly that way again, and again, and again.”
I was thunderstruck for a moment. “That…that can’t be so,” I said finally.
“Oh, yes?” said Ana. “And how did you learn to pick locks? Or duplicate Sazi text? And how did you cut down three men with almost no combat experience? Your muscles remembered. They remembered movements, remembered your training, from long ago. They saw the dangers and moved you about.”
Miljin took his sword back from me and sheathed it. “And though I don’t know who trained you, boy, they must’ve done a proper job.”
I listened to this in quiet shock. Memories of the fight outside the miller’s flooded my mind: the way I’d been pulled, the way my eyes had read the soldiers’ movements, the way my hands and feet had acted as if another had been controlling them. And in a way, I realized they had been: they had been obeying a different Dinios Kol, one from many months ago, when he’d acted out those very motions in training.
“They never tested me for this,” I said.
“That’s because it’s rare as all hell,” Ana said. “So rare even I’ve never seen someone with the knack.”
“But I have,” said Miljin. He gaze grew distant. “I once knew a man who was one of the greatest duelists I’d ever seen. Could parry and dance and fight like no other. And though his arms were corded and strong, he was no crackler—yet almost none could defeat him. I wondered how he’d learned his trade…Though now and again, I noticed that as he fought, his eyes seemed to shimmer. To vibrate in his very skull. An engraver, with the knack. Just like you.”
“So…why is it we wished to confirm this about me?” I said. I returned to sit at the table. “Do you wish me to become some kind of bladesman like that, ma’am?”
Ana turned to Miljin. “Perhaps not a bladesman—but someone capable of defeating the threats we now face?”
Miljin stared at her. “What? No. Hell no. Even with his knack, we can’t manage such a thing in a day, ma’am.”
Ana frowned. “No? Why not?”
“Well…I don’t wish to be impertinent, ma’am, but you can’t just memorize combat as if it were a country jig,” said Miljin. “The boy here almost got killed at the miller’s on account he put his foot in the wrong bit of mud! There’s all kinds of bits you have to learn just by doing. Reading the landscape, the look in the other man’s eye, the type of blade he has. Those aren’t purely movement, so I doubt he can memorize it. If he trains, he can learn quick—but it’d still take time.”
“Damn it all, Miljin,” she snapped. “Then what can you give the boy in the time we have that would actually keep him alive?”
“Beg pardon,” I said, “but—keep me alive?”
They both looked at me, then away. There was an awkward silence.
“Why are you so worried about me, ma’am?” I said. I recalled what we’d been discussing before their little test. “Does this have anything to do with the person who killed Aristan and Suberek?”
Another silence. Ana waved a hand at Miljin as if to say—Well, go on, then.
Miljin stared off into the courtyard for a moment. Then he asked: “You ever heard of a twitch, boy?”
“A twitch? No, sir.”
“Hmph. Wouldn’t expect you to. It’s an altered being. A soldier, suffused for combat. Or they used to be.” He leaned forward conspiratorially, the bench creaking under his girth. “See—a twitch is suffused to possess superhuman explosiveness. Not just strength, for that’s different. Rather, twitches can move faster than most human beings, leaping forward like a mantis snapping a moth from a flower.”
“What might you mean by ‘used to be’ soldiers, sir?” I asked.
“Well, it’s one thing to have strength,” said Miljin. He tapped his arm. “You can alter muscles and ligaments to support that pretty good. But speed…that wears you down. And that’s what happened to twitches. The more they moved, the more their very joints and bones dissolved, their flesh unraveling like a shoddy scarecrow in the wind. Apoths put some kind of healing graft in them to try to keep them upright, but there was some kind of problem with that, too…”
“Contagion,” said Ana. “Most healing augmentations, ironically, are quite susceptible to contagion. Very active blood is good for healing, but also for spreading mold or fungi throughout the whole of your body, apparently.”
“That was it,” said Miljin. “Anyways, Apoths figured that it wasn’t worth it. Not when they had folks like me who were easier and cheaper to make and maintain. But the Hazas…Rumor had it that the Hazas employed a twitch or two. Ones that looked like ordinary folk but could be called upon at a moment’s notice, when the Hazas had a problem.”
“A problem,” I echoed. “You mean…when the Hazas needed someone dead.”
“One way of putting it,” he said.
“You’re saying…You’re truly saying the Hazas use some kind of immensely altered assassins?” I said. “All across the Empire?”
“It’s a rumor,” he said. “The Iudex could never find evidence of it. So a rumor it stayed.” He shot a glance at Ana. “But I also heard there was a series of killings in the Sazi lands a few months back. Folk found with holes drilled in their heads. Folk on the wrong end of the Hazas. No one could figure who could have done the deed and vanished in such a fashion…except, maybe, a twitch.”
I glanced at Ana as well. Her face stayed turned to the sky, and she said nothing.
“And…that’s what you wanted to train me for, ma’am?” I said. “In case I meet this twitch?”
“You meet a twitch, there’s no training I can offer that’d save you, even if we had months and years to do it,” said Miljin. “They were supposed to be unbeatable in combat—for about a minute a day, mind. After that, their muscles wore out and they had to recover.” He shrugged. “If you last that long, maybe you can stand a chance. But my best advice is stay the hell away from them—if a twitch really is here.”
“And I suspect one is,” said Ana. “For there are many people the Hazas would likely want dead here in Talagray. Namely, anyone who could link them with the deaths of Blas and the ten Engineers, and the breach.”
“Like Aristan,” I said. “But what about Suberek?”