“It took both of my grandparents when I was just a girl. I watched them go, and it wasn’t pretty. I haven’t given it much thought for years, but now I can’t stop picturing poor Dara—”
She mopped at her eyes with an enormous handkerchief while I took a large gulp of the hot tea. I still felt like a stranger, intruding on someone else’s grief.
“It’s the wild power,” she said once she had herself back under control.
“Wild power?”
“Those who’ve come across from Tartora call it the protection.” She snorted. “I can’t imagine what they think it’s protecting.”
“Oh, the curse that was unleashed by the massacre, you mean?”
She nodded. “Curse is a better word for it. It’s been a curse, right enough. I suppose someone has explained the power affinity to you since you arrived? Well, those of us who have it use our ability differently from the rest of you. We don’t connect with objects or people around us but with the leftover fragments of power that linger in our environment from everyone else. Everyone here has a weak ability and can seize only small handfuls of it at a time, but even that is enough to be deadly after a while.”
“Using a power affinity is deadly?” I asked, alarmed.
“Not if all you use is normal power,” she said. “It’s the wild stuff that’s so dangerous. If you could feel it, you’d know. There’s something wrong with it. Something twisted. You can’t use it unless you let it infect your ability. And every time you do that, it kills a little more of your insides. That’s how it feels, anyway. But there isn’t much of any other kind of power out here, so our grandparents used it to build this place.”
She stroked the table while fresh tears fell. I didn’t dare ask if her grandparents had used their ability in its construction.
“After they grew weak and died, those of our parents old enough to have been activated stopped using their ability. And though they activated us all in case of an emergency, we all swore not to use our ability in lesser circumstances.”
Her eyes narrowed. “But the General didn’t like that, no indeed. He was always wheedling—asking us to do this or that feat that his own elements ability couldn’t accomplish. He thought if we pushed ourselves, we could get stronger and overcome what he called our grandparents’ weakness.” She growled. “But he can’t feel it like we can. Something that wrong will twist us before we can twist it. And only a fool would try.”
Her brain caught up with her words, and her face crumpled again. “Or those with too loving hearts. Like Dara. When Quirin convinced her to start saying no to the General, that fiend started sending his requests through her son.”
I nearly choked on my mouthful of tea. “Renley asked her to use her ability? Didn’t he know?”
She sighed. “He believed the General’s lies, I’ll be bound. He hasn’t been activated, so he hasn’t felt it for himself. Of course, Dara never meant to let it go so far. She thought helping him just a little wouldn’t hurt too much. But she didn’t know when to stop. By the time she realized how bad it had gotten, it was too late.”
I swallowed. Had I stumbled on the reason it suited the General to keep Renley in the dark? The longer he could string him along before he activated his ability, the longer Renley kept helping the General to use his mother. Any remaining sympathy for the General and his cause evaporated.
Marissa must have read my anger in my face because she leaned forward, looking alarmed. “I’ve been letting my tongue run free, which I’d no right to do. It’s just that much of a relief to let it all out. I daren’t tell my husband because he’d tell Quirin. Promise me you won’t tell him yourself!”
“Surely he has the right to know what’s been going on with his own family.”
She shook her head firmly. “I’m sure he suspects, and one day, maybe, I’ll be able to tell him the full story. But what do you think he would do right now if he found out the extent of it?”
I thought of the flashes of fire I’d seen in Quirin’s eyes and realized her point.
“He’d go after the General,” I whispered.
Marissa nodded. “Aye, that he would. We’ve just lost Dara, we can’t lose Quirin as well. They were the closest thing we had to leaders before the General, you know. And some of us still have hope Quirin will find a way to get us out of this.”
I looked across at the two men. They were standing close together, their faces lined and their quiet words serious. Whatever they were discussing had gone beyond condolences, and for the first time I could see Quirin as a leader. He had shown a hint of it earlier as well, when he had put aside his own grief in response to Marissa’s. Maybe I’d been too hard on him.
“And perhaps you could help us as well.” Marissa gave me a measuring look. “Quirin assures us you’re as Calistan as we are.”
“Me?” I asked warily.
“If you really are such a strong mage, you could activate our youngsters. Mayhap some of them might turn out to be stronger than their parents. A few of them were born with different seeds, too. My own eldest has a healing seed, thrown up from who knows how distant an ancestor. The General only activates his favorites, and we’ve been reluctant to activate them ourselves, not wanting to limit them to our level.”
I held up a hand to stop her before she gained any more enthusiasm for the idea. When she stopped talking, I pointed down at my waist.
“I have a neutralizer, remember. I can’t activate anyone.”
Her eyes narrowed, her gaze going to the two men. “Mayhap there’s something we can do about that. If we put our heads together.”
I stood. I had been unhappy when a king asked me to activate his children, and I was no more comfortable with the idea in a settlement of outcasts. I had barely had the chance to get used to my own ability before it was locked away. I wasn’t ready to get mixed up in anyone else’s.
But neither could I pass up the potential opportunity to be released from the neutralizer.
“If you think of something, please let me know,” I said. “Maybe it would be a good idea if Quirin stays here for a few days. It’s done him good to see you both.”
Marissa looked over at the men again before looking doubtfully back at me. “Are you sure the General will accept that? Isn’t Quirin your jailer—of sorts?”
I smiled grimly. “Let me handle the General.”
Marissa grinned back. “There’s an attitude we could do with more of. Very well, then. We’ll keep him here. And if we come up with a plan, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Thank you. And thank you for the tea.”
She saw me off at the door, and I walked back to Quirin’s house slowly. My thinking had undergone so many changes in the last twenty-four hours, I felt dizzy.
I had thought I might need to visit a number of Quirin’s friends to get a feel for the true situation, but I had forgotten that not everyone grieves by withdrawing, as Quirin did. Marissa had been almost bursting to get her anger over her friend’s death off her chest.
It was possible I’d just found the allies I needed, but I couldn’t shake off the reluctance that had driven me from the house. All my life, everyone had wanted something from me—first my father, then the Tartorans, then the General, and now the Calistans. And though it was true that I shared a heritage with Quirin and Marissa, I couldn’t help but feel jaded after the General had attempted to use the same line on me only hours before.