“As far as I know. It’s—it’s like a birthmark. Or maybe a curse.”
“A curse?” Karn leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
Jenna didn’t know much, so she saw no reason not to spill it. “All I know is what I’ve been told,” she said. “My parents adopted me from an old woman who said she was my grandmother. She said they should hide the birthmark, because people would kill me because of it.”
“What people? And why?”
“She didn’t say.”
Karn scowled, like he was angry with her dead grandmother for not leaving clear directions. “Have you seen it anywhere else—the symbol, I mean? Or seen anyone else with a marking in the same place?”
“No,” Jenna said, “but I haven’t really been looking.”
“What was your grandmother’s name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where was she from?”
“She never said, I guess, though my da said she sounded like a foreigner.”
Karn rolled his eyes. “Your parents adopted a baby and they didn’t ask a single swiving question?”
“They must’ve asked when my name day was, so they could celebrate when it came around,” Jenna said. When he kept shaking his head, she said, “Look, they’d waited a long time to have a baby. They were getting up in years. Maybe they figured beggars can’t be choosers. Or they might learn something they didn’t want to know.”
“Have you ever been to the Northern Islands? Or Carthis?”
Jenna shook her head. “I’m not even sure where that is.”
“Perhaps your family was from there? Or maybe they traveled there?”
“Why all these questions about places I’ve never been? Are you sure you have the right person?”
“Why is the Empress Celestine looking for you?” Karn snapped the question out, like it would catch her off guard.
Jenna felt like she was wading in deeper and deeper, with nothing to hang on to. “Who is Empress Celestine?”
“Empress Celestine is the empress in the East. She rules the Northern Islands and Carthis,” Karn said. “Or most of Carthis. So. What is her interest in you? And don’t tell me you don’t know, because I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t know what to say, then. I never heard of her, and I had no idea she was interested in me. If she’s the one looking, then why don’t you ask her?”
“That,” he said, wincing, “would not be a good idea.” He held up the dagger. “Where did you get this?”
“My grandmother gave it to my parents. She said it belonged to my mother.”
“What’s your mother’s name? Where is she now?”
“I don’t know her name, and she’s dead. Both my parents are dead.”
“Really,” Karn said skeptically. “Let me fill you in. This weapon of yours is from the Northern Islands. It is carried by Empress Celestine’s bloodsworn warriors.”
Jenna stared at it, then looked up at Karn. “But . . . you acted like you didn’t know anything about it before, when the healer—when Freeman was trying to treat me.”
“What I’ve been told is that nobody survives a cut from a bloodsworn blade. Sharing that would have served no good purpose.”
Jenna swallowed hard. “Oh.” That explained why Karn was so desperate to get her to Ardenscourt—because he thought she was going to die.
“So. It seems that Freeman is very good at what he does. Now,” he said, as if he’d backed her into a blind alley, “would you like to change your story?”
“Not unless you want me to make something up.” It was like she was in class at the temple, and she hadn’t done her work.
“Celestine tends to seek out the powerful. So what makes you powerful, Jenna? What does she want from you?”
Karen’s rapid-fire questions about things she knew nothing about were getting on her nerves. “Think about it, Lieutenant,” she said. “If I were powerful, do you think I’d be locked up in somebody’s dungeon?”
“You are resistant to magery,” he said.
“I didn’t know that until you tried to spell me.”
“Do you have other gifts as well?”
“Nothing that an empress would cross the ocean for.”
“Such as . . .”
Jenna sighed. “I see things that other people can’t. Like, you know, visions. Sometimes I see hints of the future. Sometimes I see a person as they really are. Or I see the truth when you tell me a lie.”
Karn shifted on his stool, as if he found that last bit unsettling. “What else?” he persisted. “Even if it seems trivial.”
“I have good hearing and a sensitive nose. I can see farther than anyone I know, even in the dark.” She hesitated. “I heal up quick, whether it’s a cut or whatever. And—and I don’t burn.”
“What?”
“Just what I said. My skin turns heat and flame. Even when I was little, I could snuff out a lantern with my fingers or pull a pan out of the oven bare-handed.”
Karn didn’t seem impressed. “How is that helpful?”