I shake my head again. “But it isn’t mine.” I say it as though to comfort myself.
“You’re right,” she says, “but that doesn’t make it any less real. Whatever he’s feeling, you’re feeling. You can let yourself feel it. Then you can let it pass.”
Esther rises to a crouch and offers me her hand. A warm soothing energy fills me, along with the image of sunlit sails in the harbor, shifting slowly in the ocean wind. I let the sensation fill me up from my fingertips to my toes, and for the first time I can see how beautiful the harbor really is. When she lets go, the vision fades and I feel like myself again, with my familiar distaste for the ocean restored.
Then she takes the man’s hand, and he soothes instantly, his body relaxing.
“If it helps, approach this like…like it’s a con,” Esther says. “Like you’re tricking him into experiencing something that isn’t his. Be in control. Try again, now that he’s calmer. Focus on your own thoughts. Guide him. You’re using both aspects of your powers at once: experiencing his thoughts and memories, and then showing him an illusion and controlling what he sees, but in his mind.”
It takes a minute for me to prepare myself. Once I do, I place my hand upon his. I focus on a memory as though it’s a trinket in my hand, shaping its details with my mind.
At first, everything is black, calm and cool. Then pinpricks of stars open up overhead, and a warm summer breeze rushes over our skin. I’m sitting on top of the library in the Inner Ring. I’ve had a good week stealing from the markets, and I have enough extra food to make a special evening for myself. I’m eating a cold fruit pastry, sitting above a thousand books that I’ll never be able to read. The stars are as brilliant as they’ve ever been.
Then I’m remembering the first time I saw the stars at the harbor—the way the ocean crumpled the image of the sky and made it sparkle a thousand times brighter. Then an uncommonly clear sky in winter: starlight seen through the icy window of the baker’s shop, a rare flash of light right after dusk, patches of black clouds obscuring constellations—all of it beautiful and precious and everywhere at once.
When I leave the memory, it’s like letting go. In those last moments, I feel the man’s decision to stay there, staring up at the black sky, which now holds more constellations than I ever thought possible.
I release the Legal’s arm, and he’s quiet now, resting peacefully on the cot. I try not to look too astounded or confused.
“What did you show him?” Esther asks.
“I showed him the sky,” I say. “A hundred different times, but all at once.”
“Good. Very good.” She nods. “When you leave them like that, they use those images and memories as launching points for their own dreams. He probably won’t remember your original memory when he wakes.”
“How did you learn all of this?” I ask. “If you’re a secret, when did you ever get any practice?”
I check if anyone’s close enough to eavesdrop, but no one is. Rhana is having a discussion with her apprentices about how to make sure people take their medicine. And while Rhana herself is facing us, the small group of apprentices is facing away.
“My father taught me a lot, brought me here a couple times. Until he wouldn’t anymore. And when I knew enough to know I could help, I came here on my own.”
“That’s so…good and responsible of you,” I say. I half expect her to shrug or play it off as no big deal.
“Yes,” Esther agrees. “It is. It’s part of the job, part of the life. Being responsible and doing good…You’re in the enviable position of having power. There’s so much you can do with it. When most people have an idea of being sovereign or ruling the city, their idea of power is wrapped up in a single goal. A person wants to be powerful because they think it’s their right, or they want to prove they can do it, or they want to fix a specific problem. But being a sovereign is about being the type of person who deserves that power and who makes good decisions with it.”
“You make it sound so noble,” I say, doing a half curtsy.
“It is,” she says wholeheartedly. “And it should be. But. You really just have to know what you want to do with that power and what it means to you. More importantly, you have to know what kind of person you want to be, because power won’t change you. Power only allows you to change yourself.”
I cycle through the sarcastic quips I want to respond with: that my idea of power involves power napping, that I want to be the kind of person who doesn’t get distracted by jingling pockets, or that the only change I want to see in myself is a nice haircut.
Instead, I remain quiet and observe the room. I catch sight of Hat as she tends to a patient. She wears a white training cap, and her hair is pulled back sharply. She looks nothing like the girl I saved from the gallows. She looks everything like the woman she could become. She is changing as much as I am. Only, while Hat is taking charge of her new responsibilities, I’m trying to give mine away to Esther. And not only does Esther refuse to accept that I am ill-equipped for power, but she’s also waiting patiently for me to embrace it. It’s almost annoying.
For the first time in my life, someone expects goodness from me. And, for the first time, I want to try.
* * *
Each day for two weeks, I meet with Esther at Med Ward to practice my magic, and then I train with Glenquartz in a sparring room in the southern part of the palace. Really it used to be an assembly room, but there’s a one-inch soft mat across a large section of the floor and a table that currently holds four different types of swords.
I hold one of the swords lazily, with the blade resting gently against the floor.
“You’re the one who said you wanted to train for the duels,” Glenquartz says. “You’ve got to focus if you want to be prepared. You don’t know who’s going to challenge you or how many people you’re going to have to fight. It could be a hundred people. And between now and then, sure—the Royal Council has agreed to wait until the Assassins’ Festival for you to pass the tattoo peacefully, but it’s possible that there are people who are more willing to risk destroying magic if it means they get a chance at the tattoo.”
“You think they’re going to come at me with swords?” I observe the sharp steel skeptically and return it to the table.
“Probably not,” he says impatiently. “That’s why we’ll also train in hand-to-hand.”
I cross my arms and brace my right foot behind me.
The briefest grin passes over Glenquartz’s face, and he reaches for me to put me in a restriction hold or tackle me, but in two seconds flat, he’s on the floor.