Convergence (53 page)

This time we were taken to another part of the city, the one that lies across the Magross
bridge
in what's considered Noble territory. Most of it looks just like any other part of Gan Garee, but the only people living in the lower-class housing are those who work in the shops and businesses based there. The members of the patrol guard make it their business to know all of them by sight, since anyone they don't know
is
summarily ejected from the area. And it isn't even possible to claim to be there just to shop. The price of everything is double to nonresidents, and residency has to be proven.

Carriage and coach traffic was, of course, much heavier in that part of town. It would have been fractionally better if it hadn't been raining, but not enough to have made the trip any shorter. The very quiet trip, with Beldara and Rion lost in their individual thoughts, and Jowi apparently as reluctant as I to break the silence. Logically we should all have been thinking about what lay ahead, but somehow I felt that that wasn't the case. Jowi might have been considering the coming tests, but I was fairly certain the other two had different things on their minds.

We finally turned off the main thoroughfare into the approach drive of two large buildings which stood fairly close together. A stone awning arched across the forty or so feet between them, providing a shelter for the side doors which opened opposite one another over there. Our coach pulled up to the building on the right, and the second coach, filled with the rest of those at my house, stopped to the left. We four were guided out and into the right hand building, then up five or six steps, with our driver leading the way.

"Fire magic, Air magic, and Spirit magic sessions are held in this building," the man said, opening his rain cape against the unexpected warmth of the place. The floor was open all across its length, just like the building where I'd originally gone to register for the first test, but three separate areas contained tables and chairs. All of them were empty of people right now, and the driver pointed to large, draped signs hanging behind the three areas of tables and chairs.

"You can see by the symbols which area is for which aspect," he went on. "Go through the door behind your own aspect, and you'll be told what to do next. The coach will be back to pick you up again this afternoon."

With that he turned and left us, giving none of us a chance to ask how
late
this afternoon. It was now barely past eight in the morning, which would have made the answer somewhat significant.

"Well, we might as well get on with it," Jowi said, and I gave up watching the departing back of our driver to see that Beldara and Rion had already begun to walk toward their respective doors. "Let's wish each other good luck, even if we won't need it. We have skill and talent, which take the place of a good deal of luck."

"You still won't find me turning down the luck," I said with a smile before exchanging hugs with her. "And you'd probably feel the same if you had Beldara sharing
your
aspect."

"Not probably, definitely," she agreed,
then
grew serious. "Be certain you watch your back where she's concerned. If she can ruin things for you, she'll do it."

I nodded to show I already knew that,
then
parted from Jowi to follow after Beldara. The woman who shared my aspect acted as if she were all alone in the building, but her pace was faster than your average uncaring stroll. She seemed to want to leave me far behind, but walking wasn't the way she'd be able to do that. I increased my own pace a little, and passed under the flame sign only a moment behind her.

I was able to catch the door before it closed completely, and walked into a fairly large room right behind Beldara. There were four men standing around to the left of the door, all of them wearing the same clothing and identification cards that we did. The room itself was lamplit and separated into sections by walls of what seemed to be transparent resin, with a narrow hall running between the sections both left and right. The area we stood in had been left unpartitioned, and once Beldara and I were in it another man came from one of the sections to the left.

"Well, how nice to see that the newcomers have finally made it," he said, looking us over with very little approval. He wore expensive trousers and coat in a bright green, a yellow silk shirt, and a very red ascot that didn't go with the rest at all. The way he moved said he considered himself quite important, and he obviously expected us to think the same.

"For those of you who don't already know, I am Forum, High rated Adept, and your examiner in Fire magic for the next few days," the man continued, flicking a finger under his red ascot. "Anyone wearing the color of our aspect like this is the same, so I would advise you newcomers to be on your best behavior. If you anger the wrong person, whatever promise you've shown will end a broken vow."

He looked around as he said that, apparently expecting something, but he didn't get it. One or two of the men shifted uneasily, but no one said a word.

"My goodness, you
are
becoming a promising group," he said with a laugh after a moment, his narrow face wearing a sarcastically patronizing look. "There's usually at least one among the newcomers who blurts out his horror at the idea of someone using their talent to harm someone else. That sort needs to be reminded that the laws aren't quite the same among
us
as they are everywhere else. But you already seem to know that, so let's get on with getting you started. Watch closely."

He took two paces back, and then a long rope of fire appeared in front of him. I say a rope, because that's what the section of fire most resembled. It burned as greedily as fire always does, but I could feel the way his talent held it firmly in the shape and state he wanted it in.

"Again for the newest newcomers, the first thing you will practice is achieving this exact shape," Adept Forum said, obviously not straining in the least. "What you want is an obedient length of hemp, and once you have it you must learn to divide it in two. When you have two obedient lengths, you'll then practice twining them about each other like so."

He'd separated his rope into two narrower ropes, with both of them still under perfect control. Then he began to wind the two lengths of fire around each other, but they weren't allowed to merge. They stayed individual lengths from top to bottom, which seemed to shock some of the others. Their gasps gave me the first hint that what was being done was considered unusual, since I'd been able to do the same for years. I didn't know whether or not to admit that,
then
decided to wait and see how things went.

"Please don't be overly impressed," Forum said then, his tone very dry. "You'll be expected to master that and more before you're allowed to compete with our more experienced applicants, and you must bear one very important point in mind: bonuses in gold are won only with a victory in a competition. If you don't manage to qualify for the competitions, you can't possibly win a bonus. Now follow me."

He led the way up the narrow hall to the right, and at the end of it put each of us in a separate area that was rather small, lit by a glaringly bright lamp, and which contained a single chair. The chair was a crude wooden thing that promised to be very uncomfortable, but I'd seen much better chairs in the areas closer to the door we'd come in by. That had to be another way to convince us to do the best we could, along with the threat of holding back the gold most of us needed to pay for food with. They were determined to find out what we were really capable of, but I'd decided to be determined about something too.

I sat down in the chair inside my little cubicle, but still had no trouble seeing the others through the transparent resin. Even the man in the cubicle opposite mine was behind resin, as the door to his cubicle wasn't lined up with my own. That had to be a precaution against someone losing control of the | fire they'd summoned, which made a good deal of sense. Those who lose control also occasionally lose their heads, and I had no desire to need to defend myself.

But that only applied to someone's runaway fire. Where the people conducting those sessions were concerned, I meant to defend myself by hiding in a forest of other applicants. I would never be the first or the last to master some technique, at least until I'd had the chance to look around and maybe even speak to Jowi. She and I had wondered what these people could be up to, and by remaining as invisible as possible we might find out. I'd have to qualify for the competitions and try to win there, of course, but that would come later. Right now what I needed was camouflage.

So I watched my fellow applicants out of the corners of my eyes, and when two of them had managed to gentle their pillars of flame, I did the same. It took the same two a bit longer to separate their ropes in half and keep them separate, but I followed along with quite a lot of shifting in my chair. And once things began to happen, I discovered I didn't have to hide my looking around. By then everyone was doing it, to
see
who was doing better and who worse.

About an hour after we started, four more people arrived. They were two men and two women, and their clothing and identification said they were also applicants. Adept Forum put them in another set of cubicles, ones with better chairs, and we soon discovered why. They all began with three strands of fire, and the patterns they wove were fairly intricate.

An hour later two more people came in, both men.
When they took their places they began to form four-stranded patterns, and an hour beyond that brought a single woman who practiced with five strands. By then everyone in our original group had two separate strands, and winding them into a coil was the objective. I couldn't wait until we were beyond that point, because I wanted to try three strands. I'd never done that much on my own, and was looking forward to seeing how long it took me to master it.

About an hour after that, Adept Forum came through with a placard announcing lunchtime. I let my flames die out and got painfully to my feet, wondering if my back would ever be the same. Four hours of sitting in that chair had almost crippled me, and trying to stretch out the kinks hurt even more. I glanced around to see that the others were also on their feet, but Beldara was looking at me rather than trying to twist her body back into proper shape. Her face wore a look of spiteful triumph, and I didn't have to wonder why. She was the one I'd followed directly along after, which apparently had convinced her that she was my superior. Well, if it made her happy, let her think it. Only time would tell both of us the truth.

Our group had to wait until everyone else had left the room before we were free to go, but there were still plenty of empty tables where we could take our solitary meals. I'd hoped to be able to join Jowi in either her area of mine, but the three aspects were being kept strictly separated. Most of our six stood or walked around their chosen table until servants appeared with trays of food and drink, but two of the men had collapsed into the more comfortable chairs as though they were exhausted. One of those two had only just managed a tentative coil before lunch was announced, and the other hadn't even gotten that far.

Tea was brought to everyone rather quickly, but food was another matter. The lone woman was served first and then the two men, and then there was a delay, as though only small amounts of food could be produced at one time. I poured a cup of tea and sat to drink it, at the same time beginning to rethink my position. It looked as if we were going to be arranged according to ability in everything, and the front of the line was quite some distance ahead.

Which brought back memory of the speculation Jowi and I had indulged in. Not everyone testing could end up as a Seated High, or even qualify to try for the position, but everyone there was a
potential
High. One position for those who didn't quite make it was Adept examiner, obviously, but Adept Forum was someone who considered himself a good deal more important than he actually was. Important people don't spend their time with newcomers, showing them how to do beginning exercises.

So the position of Adept was one I had no interest in, for more reasons than simple prestige. I needed real power and standing to stay out of my father's reach, which at times stretched even to certain members of the nobility. That meant I couldn't afford to stay down near the bottom of the group, even if we
didn't
know what happened to everyone who showed strong ability. Not showing it would doom me as surely as anything the testing authority might
do,
since there was no doubt that-marrying another man like Gimmis would break my mind. The first time Odrin Hallasser hurt me I would turn him to cinders, and then probably not even notice when they sent me to the Deep Caverns.

I took a long swallow of the tea to warm the chill from my insides, determined to keep any of that horror from happening. It was a shame that so few people knew those with more than ordinary ability, or fewer women would be savaged. No one tried to rob or attack a stranger, not when that stranger might be capable of anything, but those who were known were another story. If it was understood that even those supposedly known might show stronger ability under stress . . . Well, that was a dream. People knew what they knew, and facts weren't going to change their minds.