The Talented (20 page)

Adrienne’s lips twitched.
“You could say that.”

“
Did you know blood is made
up of many different parts?” Louella asked curiously.

Maureen made a
disapproving sound. “Can’t this wait?” she asked. “Blood is a
rather distressing topic to discuss when you have
company.”

“
The blood will congeal if
I leave it sitting,” Louella muttered, bending back to her work.
“It can’t wait.”

“
I didn’t know it was made
of parts,” Adrienne said, ignoring Maureen and returning to
Louella’s question. She was as interested in Louella as she was in
the topic, and too experienced with blood to be distressed
discussing it. “Blood mostly seems the same to me.” Adrienne knew
of a couple different kinds of blood: the slow seep of a cut, the
spurt of a severed artery, the sick smell of blood from a gut
wound, but for the most part it all looked alike. “What are the
parts like?”

Louella frowned. “I don’t
know what they do yet,” she admitted, staring into the bowl as if
it held the answers. “This is pig’s blood, fresh from the butcher
just an hour past. I can feel the particles, like being able to
pick out ingredients in cake batter, but without the pig I can’t
tell what they do.”

“
If they do anything,”
Maureen said. “Honestly, Louella, what does it matter if blood has
parts? We can heal cuts now, can’t we?”

Louella looked hurt by
Maureen’s reaction, those big blue eyes clouding. “Well, yes, but
what if the different types of particles do something? Knowing
about them could make our healing better, more efficient. Besides,
don’t you want to
know
?”

Maureen threw up her
hands, but Adrienne moved closer to the small, blonde woman. “Could
you test what the particles do with human blood?” Adrienne
asked.

“
I think so, but the person
would have to be bleeding sufficiently and willing to wait while
I—”

Without ceremony, Adrienne
pulled up her sleeve, took her dagger, and cut a long, shallow line
across the inside of her arm. “Will this do?”

Louella looked momentarily
surprised, but she didn’t waste any time before beginning the study
of Adrienne’s living blood. Maureen stared at Adrienne, her
expression a mix of disgust and horror.

“
Why did you do that?”
Maureen asked, aghast, as though Adrienne had just committed a
horrible crime.

“
She needed someone to
study,” Adrienne said. The stinging pain from the cut was easy to
ignore, and she thought the subtle tingling sensation must be
Louella watching—or maybe feeling—what the particles in her blood
did. Although Adrienne saw no more than a seeping wound, she was
sure that it was more than that to Louella.

“
This is a place of
healing,” Maureen said. “This is not a place to harm yourself. And
to what purpose? She probably won’t find anything of interest,”
Maureen said. “The butcher probably got dirt in the blood, and
those are the ‘particles’ she sensed. She spends more time
experimenting than healing these days. It’s shameful.”

Adrienne did not like the
derisive tone in Maureen’s voice, nor the look in her eyes that
betrayed her disgust. “I’ve seen a lot of men bleed to death,”
Adrienne said. “Good men that deserved to live. If Louella can
learn something useful, I want to help. If she discovers nothing,
then she can heal me when she has satisfied her curiosity, and no
one is the worse for it.”

“
Fascinating,” Louella
said, sitting back slightly from Adrienne’s arm, where blood was
still flowing slowly from the wound.

“
What did you find?”
Adrienne asked.

“
I’ll need more
opportunities to study,” Louella said, “but it seems that some of
the particles—there are different kinds if you remember—help the
blood to clot.”

“
You mean they stop the
bleeding?”

Louella nodded. “Yes. I
wonder…” The tingling amplified and Adrienne watched the long cut
scab over. “I pulled those particles together and sped everything
up.” She smiled, pleased with herself as she studied the
scab.

“
Why don’t you just finish
healing it?” Maureen asked. “She can make it look like there was
never a cut at all,” the woman told Adrienne. “She doesn’t need to
leave a scab.”

Adrienne couldn’t decide
if Maureen was more disgusted with her or Louella at the moment.
She had probably expected Adrienne to be a barbarian, but a fellow
Talented healer was probably held to a higher standard.

“
I will finish it,” Louella
told Maureen. “I just wanted to see if it worked, if this is what
scabs are made of. They are, for the most part,” she said as the
tingling resumed and the cut disappeared, leaving smooth,
unblemished skin in its wake.

“
That was amazing,”
Adrienne said, ignoring Maureen’s displeasure.

“
Thank you for allowing
that,” Louella said. “Now I know what one type of particle does.”
She looked immensely pleased by the discovery.

“
How many kinds of
particles are there?” Adrienne asked.

“
Many. I haven’t been able
to get an accurate count of them.

“
Louella, is there any way
for you to, I don’t know, boost these clotting particles? You know,
some kind of…preventative thing, so that if there isn’t a healer
around the bleeding will stop faster.” Adrienne could imagine how
useful something of that nature would be in a fight. Blood loss,
even if it was not enough to be life-threatening in and of itself,
could severely weaken a soldier and make her more
vulnerable.

“
Maybe,” Louella said. “I
would have to do more research. There are herbs that promote
clotting…” She trailed off in thought for a moment before looking
up and grinning at Adrienne. “You make a good study.”

Adrienne smiled back at
her. “Maybe I can help you again,” Adrienne said. “Right now, I
would like to meet more people with Talents, and I believe Maureen
would like to get some distance from me.”

The woman in question made
a sound that was not too difficult to decipher, but said nothing,
pretending she could not hear them.

“
Maureen was one of the
first healers to develop an ability,” Louella said, ignoring the
other healer and focusing her attention on Adrienne. “She’s good,
and quite versatile when it comes to what she can heal, but I think
she sometimes forgets that we were all using poultices and needles
not so long ago. She isn’t interested in learning more about what
we do, as long as we can do it.”

Maureen sniffed and left
the room, closing the door loudly behind her.

Adrienne watched Maureen’s
retreating form until the woman had closed the door behind her.
“Shall we go?” Adrienne asked, thinking that even if Maureen had
still been willing to show her around, she would rather Louella do
it. The blonde seemed more real. More genuine.

“
Who do you want to see?”
Louella asked. “There are more healers…” Louella regarded Adrienne
more closely. “No, you would probably like to meet Pieter, one of
the blacksmiths.”

Adrienne had been hoping
to meet a Talented blacksmith since she had first learned of them.
From the way the people in Kessering acted toward soldiers, she was
pretty sure she would not find a Talented swordsmith here, but a
properly balanced dagger, one made with whatever ability the smith
could channel into it, would be nice. “Yes, I would like
that.”

The blacksmith’s shop that
Louella led Adrienne to was located on the outskirts of the city.
The heat and noise made it an undesirable neighbor for many of the
other shops, but to Adrienne the familiar sounds were soothing.
Smiths and farriers were plentiful in camps like Kyrog.

She picked up her pace
until she was standing in the door of the shop, watching the
familiar sight of a big, heavily muscled man shaping iron while a
boy worked the bellows.

The blacksmith thrust the
tool he was working back into the red-hot embers and turned to the
door, wiping the sweat from his forehead on the back of his arm.
“Louella,” he greeted in a booming voice, a smile spreading across
his face

“
Pieter,” Louella’s voice
seemed even huskier, and Adrienne looked at the woman, wondering
about the change. Louella’s expression was the same, however, and
Adrienne thought she must have imagined it. She directed her
attention back to the man. Pieter, Louella had said.

“
Can I help you?” he asked,
casting an experienced eye into the fire at the half-forged tool.
Apparently it had not reached the right temperature yet, because he
left the heating metal where it was and returned his attention to
his visitors.

“
Pieter, this is Adrienne
Rydaeg,” Louella said.

“
The soldier?” Pieter’s
smile widened. “I wondered if I would see you here. Wondered too
when they would think to train a soldier at all.” He chuckled, and
it reverberated in his broad chest like distant thunder. “It took
them long enough.”

“
Pieter,” Louella scolded,
“it must not have been an easy decision for the commission to
make.”

“
Why? They are training
people to ultimately fight Almet. They should have started with
soldiers, not turned to them as a last resort.”

Since Adrienne agreed, she
felt herself warming to the burly blacksmith. “They think soldiers
are too dangerous,” Adrienne told Pieter. “Not to be trusted with a
Talent unless there is no other choice.”

“
Dangerous isn’t a good
reason,” Pieter said. “I’m strong enough to crack heads, snap
necks, whatever you like, and any healer worth her salt would know
enough about herbs to poison as well as cure.” He looked at
Louella. The small woman with her golden cloud of hair and light
skin was a perfect contrast to the large, dark blacksmith. And her
look of consternation was impressive on such a delicate
face.

“
I wouldn’t do that,”
Louella squawked, fisting her hands on her hips as if preparing for
a fight.

“
And I wouldn’t snap
someone’s neck,” Pieter said. “But I could. Everyone is dangerous.”
He turned his back to them and grabbed a pair of tongs. “Besides,
they made no allowance for bravery or a willingness to fight. But
that is a different complaint, and I need to finish this, but if
you can wait awhile I would like to speak with you.”

Louella and Adrienne left
to wait outside the blacksmith forge. It was only comparably
cooler, but they could talk without shouting over the clang of
metal or worrying about sparks flying. “Pieter doesn’t like
scholars,” Louella confided. “He doesn’t like the commission at
all, I’m afraid.”

“
I picked up on
that.”

“
He disapproves of their
selection process, mostly. Blacksmiths were one of the last groups
they tried.” Louella shook her head. “I reckon they thought
smithing took more brawn than brain, but Pieter has plenty of
both.”

“
He doesn’t seem to have a
problem with soldiers,” Adrienne commented.

“
Pieter’s father was a
blacksmith in one of the soldiering camps to the north,” Louella
told her. “And I don’t have a problem with soldiers either, at
least not universally. I began my apprenticeship as a healer when I
was twelve. I’ve helped all sorts of people in all sorts of
professions. There are good people and bad people making up the
world, and I don’t think any job has more of one kind than the
other.”

“
Even healing?” Adrienne
asked. It was one thing to hold that opinion of people in other
professions, but much harder to look into your own profession and
see that unsettling truth.

Louella smiled weakly. “My
heart wants to say no, but my head knows better. People become
healers for all sorts of reasons, not just because they want to
help people and ease their pain.”

“
The same with soldiers,”
Adrienne said. “Not everyone joins to serve and protect, and others
want nothing more than to do just that.”

“
May I ask how your
training is coming along?” Louella asked, her blue eyes gently
probing as she changed the subject. She seemed very different from
the intense, almost demanding woman who had been studying a bowl of
pig’s blood not an hour before. More personable, and much more
kind. “Ben is training you, correct?”

“
Yes. My training is
progressing slowly,” Adrienne told her with a weighty sigh. “I can
achieve Oneness, but I have trouble consistently reaching the level
of awareness of my surroundings that Ben says is
necessary.”

“
You’ve reached Oneness
already?” Louella asked, her eyes growing wide. “It takes most
people weeks. Months, even. How did you do it?”

“
I read the book before I
ever got to Kessering, so that sped the training up,” Adrienne
explained. “And this ‘Oneness’ thing is something I’ve been doing
since I was young, I just didn’t realize it at the
time.”

“
Really?” Louella asked.
“The scholars must have been in a frenzy. After waiting so long to
begin training a soldier, it must come as a shock that you’re
progressing faster than any of us did.” Louella seemed pleased by
the situation, and Adrienne suspected Louella liked the idea of the
scholars being caught off guard.