The Talented (17 page)

“
And who will my trainer
be?” Adrienne asked, hoping it was not one of the pompous old
commissioners who had not even spoken at the meeting. Franklin
might not be such a bad teacher, except for his unfortunate choice
in jackets.

“
Well, I was hoping to
train you myself,” Ben said somewhat shyly. “I have had some
success with training others in the past,” he hastened to add. “We
should know within a couple of months whether the training is
effective.”

Adrienne thought that a
couple of months was a long time to wait to see results, but then
Jeral had probably thought the same when she had so carefully paced
his training. She would have to trust Ben as Jeral had trusted her.
Perhaps something like the friendship she had found with Jeral
would develop between her and Ben. “That sounds good,” she said. “I
should be ready to start in a couple of hours.”

Ben looked surprised. “Are
you sure you don’t want a day to acclimate? If you have really read
the book, you are ahead of schedule. I don’t want you to burn out.”
His face was earnest and almost painfully innocent, yet he was not
one of the scholars who had cringed away from her.

Was he too innocent to see
the dangers that the other scholars did, or was he just more open
than they were? Adrienne hoped for the later—innocence was too
easily shattered and replaced by something harder and far less
kind.

“
The trip here was not
rigorous,” Adrienne assured him. “There is no reason not to begin
this afternoon. Perhaps we can discuss the journal
then.”

“
Of course,” Ben said with
the smile all scholars seemed to get in regards to books,
especially old ones. “I will meet you in your room in, say, three
hours? Will that give you enough time to freshen up?”

“
Yes,” Adrienne assured
him, thinking that three hours would easily accommodate a meal and
a bath, and perhaps even a short walk around the city.

••••••

The inn was larger than it
had appeared from the outside. The common room was already
half-filled with patrons, and the small fire cast light without
contributing unduly to the heat that was always present in this
part of Samaro. Adrienne was still examining her surroundings when
the innkeeper approached her.

A clean white apron
stretched across the innkeeper’s round stomach as he appraised
Adrienne from head to toe. His eyes lingered on the sword hanging
casually from her hip. “May I help you?” he asked in a voice
completely void of the welcoming tone that was typical of
innkeepers. Instead, it seemed to suggest that she find another
place to stay.

“
I am Lieutenant Adrienne
Rydaeg,” she said, holding her back straight and head high. “The
commission has a room for me, I believe.”

“
The soldier,” he said
flatly. Adrienne wondered if every citizen of Samaro had such an
aversion to soldiers, and she had been spared the discrimination in
other cities because she had always been part of a larger group.
She didn’t think so.

Although people in other
places had occasionally been wary, Kessering seemed unique in its
pronounced dislike of people in her profession. The men and women
who kept inns and taverns were usually glad when soldiers were
present, but this man was looking at her as though she was
something particularly nasty stuck to the bottom of his
shoe.

“
Yes, I am a soldier. Do
you have a room for me?” Her gaze dared him to contradict the
commission and say no.

The innkeeper gave a
brusque nod. “In the back.”

Adrienne had slept in far
worse places than a small back room in an obviously prosperous inn,
and being given an unnecessarily shabby room was almost amusing in
its pettiness. “Has my horse been delivered here? And my
belongings?”

“
Your things are in your
room,” the innkeeper informed her, “and the horse is in the
stables.” He wiped his hands on his pristine apron. “Is there
anything else I can do for you?” he asked impatiently.

“
Yes,” Adrienne said,
keeping her temper on a short leash. “I am going to see for myself
that my horse is being properly cared for, and then I would like a
bath—a hot one—and a meal. A real meal, mind, with meat and bread,
not just a bowl of stew.”

The innkeeper looked like
he was going to choke, but whatever he wanted to say to her he
managed to hold back, even going so far as to force a tight smile.
Adrienne thought that the scholars must do business with the inn
often for him to make even that small effort.

“
I will see to your bath,
and the rest,” he said at length.

Adrienne nodded before
turning on her heel and heading to the stables. Although her nose
told her that the stalls were well-maintained overall, her fears
for Strider’s welfare were confirmed when she saw that, despite the
fact that the stable was only half full, the stallion had been
placed in a small corner stall with poor ventilation.

“
I would like to speak to
whoever is charged with the horses’ care,” she proclaimed loudly,
knowing that someone was likely within hearing range.

Moments later a dark,
dirty face peaked down at her from the hayloft. “Can I help you?”
he asked. He spied her sword and his eyes widened, but a smile
split his face, a far cry from the fearful look Adrienne was
growing to expect. “Hey, are you a soldier?” He seemed excited by
the prospect.

“
I am,” Adrienne said. “Can
you come down here?”

“
Sure,” the boy said
amiably. He crawled nimbly down the ladder to stand before
Adrienne. He was thin despite the childish roundness of his cheeks,
and Adrienne judged him to be in his early teens, the age where
boys seemed to stretch and grow into strange, gangly
creatures.

“
You care for the horses?”
she asked.

“
For two years now,” he
said with obvious pride. “How long have you been a
soldier?”

Adrienne smiled in
amusement at the rapidly fired question. “Seventeen years. Why is
that horse in the corner?” she asked, pointing to
Strider.

“
Master Inbaum told me to
put him there. Said he’s a vicious beast and to keep clear of him.”
The boy shrugged his thin shoulders. “Don’t seem vicious. But how
come you don’t look old? Seventeen years is a long time.” he said,
eyeing her critically.

“
I’m not old, and seventeen
years isn’t so long,” she said, though it occurred to her that for
a boy who hadn’t yet seen his seventeenth year, seventeen must be
an eternity. “That’s my horse in the corner,” she said, “and I want
him moved to a better stall.”

The boy whistled. “He’s
about the finest horse I ever saw. Guess I was right ‘bout him not
being vicious, then?”

Adrienne had seen Strider
wreck a face with his hooves, but at present he was dozing on three
legs as peaceful as any pleasure pony. “Not unless I want him to
be.”

The boy bobbed his head.
“He needs a good brushing-down,” he said. “Master Inbaum told me
not to bother, before, on account of he was dangerous and
all.”

Adrienne removed a silver
penny from her purse and flipped it to the boy. “I’m asking you to
take special care of him,” she said, looking into dark eyes that
were surprisingly pretty for a boy’s, fringed as they were by long
dark lashes. “If there are any problems, I want you to tell me
straight away. Come to me yourself; don’t send a message,
understand?” Adrienne wouldn’t put it past Master Inbaum to
“forget” a message for her, or have one of his other employees do
the same.

“
Got it,” the boy said,
pocketing the coin.

“
I’m Lieutenant Rydaeg,”
Adrienne said, offering the boy her hand. He took it with the same
pleasure as he had taken the silver penny.

“
My name’s Thom,” he said
with a wide, goofy smile. “Hey, maybe if I do a good job, you’ll
let me ride your horse?”

“
Not a chance,” Adrienne
told him easily.

“
Will you let me see your
sword?”

“
Maybe.”

He seemed happy enough
with that, and went about relocating Strider to a more suitable
stall. Satisfied with the transaction, Adrienne left the stable in
a brighter mood than she had entered. A young boy was not much of
an ally, but he was better than nothing.

Since Adrienne did not
trust any of the suspicious-looking girls in Inbaum’s employ to
clean her
swa’il
without ruining it, she set to work cleaning it herself and
removing what stains she could after bathing and putting on a
reasonably dirt-free outfit. She stopped only to eat the meal that
was delivered to her room. The pieces of chicken had been
overcooked so that what parts of it were not fat were brutally dry,
but the crusty bread was good and a nice change from trail fare.
She ate the bread in lieu of chicken and was reasonably
satisfied.

When Ben came calling,
Adrienne was glad to leave the confines of the cramped room and
explore Kessering some more.

“
I hope your accommodations
agree with you,” Ben said with no trace of guile.

Adrienne thought about the
small room and dry chicken, and the lukewarm bathwater delivered by
a scowling maid. “I’m sure they’ll do,” she replied, not wanting
Ben to feel badly. It was clear he did not know or suspect how
Master Inbaum was treating her.

“
I don’t know quite where
to start,” Ben admitted. “Typically I start by giving my students
Asmov’s journal to read, but you have already read it.”

“
So his name was Asmov,”
Adrienne said, a bit disappointed to learn Pele’s real name. The
memory she had of the disagreeable Pele had fit the author so
perfectly that it seemed wrong to think of the author as anyone
else.

“
Yes. Asmov Petrovicz. I’m
a bit concerned about how much of the book you understood. Usually
I guide whomever I am training through the text, so that I know if
they have any problems with it.”

“
It was a bit dense, but I
believe I understand as much about developing abilities as I can
from one journal not dedicated to the topic,” Adrienne said. “I
understand more after today, of course.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
What I heard today helped
me connect some of the dots,” Adrienne said. “Age, professions, it
makes sense to me now. And why I am here, of course.”

“
Explain,” Ben asked,
looking surprised. It was clear that most on the commission thought
of soldiers as brutes, capable only of killing. To think that one
could learn and reason as well as a scholar was probably
unfathomable to most.

“
The age ‘limitation’ is no
real surprise,” Adrienne said. “As I told the rest of the
commission, many skills are best learned young. As for my being
here, there has to be a good reason behind it. It’s no secret that
no one in Kessering has a fondness for soldiers.”

Ben kicked a pebble with
his soft leather shoe. “You noticed that?”

“
It would have been hard
not to,” Adrienne said.

Ben turned to face her
more directly. “It is hard for people who rely on intellect to
entrust someone who operates and lives with such a violent
lifestyle.”

Adrienne had to laugh at
such a ridiculous comment. “Perhaps that excuse works for scholars,
but not for everyone else.

“
What do you
mean?”

“
This isn’t the first city
I’ve been to,” she told him. “Some people might be nervous around
soldiers, but that’s not what’s happening here.”

“
There was an…incident,”
Ben admitted. “A long time ago,” he rushed to add. “No one living
now was alive then, but the memory survives in the stories we’re
told.”

“
What stories?”

“
There was a garrison near
here once. A private one, not one that reports to the
king.”

Adrienne knew that most of
the garrisons and soldiering camps reported to the king in some way
or another, but she didn’t contradict him. “Of course.”

“
Well, the garrison asked
for money. A lot of it.”

Adrienne thought back to
the conversation she and Jeral had had with Lord Neecham not long
before. “I’ve heard of such things.”

“
Well, finally the people
of Kessering were tired of paying. They told the garrison that if
they wouldn’t protect them without fee, they weren’t
needed.”

“
So they left?”

“
Yes. And a week after they
did, the city was attacked.”

“
That’s unfortunate, and it
was wrong that the garrison was charging high prices for
protection, but you can hardly place the blame for the attack on
the soldiers that left.”

“
You can if some of the
attackers were soldiers.”

Adrienne shook her head.
“What?”

“
Stories say that some of
the attackers were recognized as soldiers that had been stationed
at the garrison, and that they attacked to teach the city a
lesson.” Ben cast her an apologetic look. “I don’t know how much of
it is true, but it’s what we’re taught.”

Adrienne felt a sliver of
sympathy slide into her, but it did not dispel the anger. “It’s
horrible what your people went through,” she said, “But you can’t
continue to make such generalizations about soldiers. The
commission brought me here because you needed me, yet the lot of
you dismissed me as a violent brute before you ever saw me. I am a
tactician, and I can read and speak Old Samaroan as well as any
scholar.”