Seeker (10 page)

He held her away, just enough so he could look into her eyes. But she would not meet his gaze now.

“How do you know what Seekers really do?” she asked.

“My … mother,” he answered reluctantly.

“Your mother,” she whispered. “You never speak about her. Catherine.”

“Yes.” It felt strange, telling Quin anything about his mother, when he knew his mother wouldn’t have approved of Quin.
When you love, you open yourself to a dagger
. Hearing his mother’s name on Quin’s lips made him feel uncomfortable, as though she were exposing something private.

As though sensing his thoughts, Quin said, “My mother has said her name a few times, but she didn’t like to talk about her either. Your mother told you … specific things about what Seekers do?”

A lump was forming in John’s throat. His mother had done a great deal more than tell him about Seekers. She had, unintentionally,
shown
him.

“She told me … some things,” he answered, fighting to keep his voice even. “Do you want to tell me what you did last night?”

“No,” she said immediately. Then, more quietly, she added, “I never want to speak of it.” She wiped her cheek roughly with the heel of her hand. “Was it always like this? All these hundreds and thousands of years?”

“I don’t know. But it’s Briac’s way. He should have warned you.”

“Why?” The word sounded choked as it came out of her.

“Why should he have warned you?”

“No—why are you here, John, if you knew? Why would you stay?”

“I—I don’t want to do … whatever he asked you to do,” he told her haltingly. “But this is my birthright, Quin. Just as it’s your
birthright. I have to take my oath. I have to become a Seeker and have an athame. Things must be put back—”

“
Have
an athame?” she interrupted, her expression changing into something like pity. “Do you think my father is likely to loan you his? Do you think he’ll ever let it out of his sight?”

“There are two here, Quin. Two athames on the estate. And one doesn’t belong. Is that another thing he’s been hiding from you? One is from Alistair’s family, but the other—”

“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,” she said, cutting him off and not really listening, “because I’m leaving. In the morning I’ll leave.” She was speaking quietly but intensely, to herself more than to him, as though talk of the athame had suddenly blotted out everything except her desire to go.

“I want you to leave with
me
,” he told her. “I want you to come away with me. But—but not yet.” He put a hand gently under her chin and lifted her head so she had to look at him. “Quin, you have to stay and let him teach you the rest. All about the athame. So we understand it.”

A strange, strangled laugh came out of her. “I’m never going to use it again.”

“You will,” he said softly. “It’s what we were born to do.”

“No,” she said, tearing her eyes away from him. “I won’t do any of it again.”

John hesitated. He was about to ask her for something he would find very difficult to do himself. But there were larger things at stake.

“Quin, please listen. Can you … avoid the worst? And still learn to use the athame?”

“Avoid the worst?” she repeated, her voice rising. “There’s no avoiding the worst with Briac!”

“But if you stay, if you learn a little more, I—I have a plan.”

She was having difficulty focusing on him. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Did you know they have to tell you now? Once you’ve taken your oath.”

“Tell me what?”

“Whatever they know, whatever knowledge they’ve been taught. Once you take your oath, you only have to ask.”

“Is that true?” There was a flicker of interest in her voice.

“My mother explained it to me.” In fact, it was one of the last things she ever said to him. She’d been bleeding all over the floor, and he’d been frantic to make it stop, but she’d acted like the injury didn’t matter.
He must tell you anything you want to know
, she’d said.
But you must take your oath
.

“Yesterday that would have fascinated me,” she murmured, her eyes dropping to the straw beneath her. “But today … there’s nothing more I want to know. And, John—you don’t want to know either. You should trust me in this.”

He was starting to feel desperate again. “There’s so much more we need to know!” he told her urgently, his voice getting loud despite his best efforts. He pulled the whipsword from her waist and held it up between them. “Your whipsword? Alistair says every whipsword in existence was created a thousand years ago. How? A modern weapons company couldn’t make one today. I know—my grandfather owns one of those companies.”

She took the whipsword back and clipped it into place. “We have knowledge others don’t.” She said it without interest.

“But
how
do we have that knowledge? And how many of us have it?”

“What do you mean?” she asked him. “There aren’t other Seekers anymore.”

That was what Briac and Alistair had told them, many times. They were the last of the Seekers, and most of their knowledge and history had been lost. John was quite certain this was Briac’s convenient explanation to prevent apprentices from asking difficult questions. But Quin had always been in such awe of her father that she’d believed him completely.

“Then why are we worried about disruptors?” John asked her.

Her eyes were still blank. “Because disruptors are the most dangerous weapon a Seeker has, created to instill terror.” She was simply parroting Briac now.

“You just said there aren’t any other Seekers,” John pointed out gently. “Why would we ever fight someone with a disruptor if we are the only Seekers left?”

“Outsiders could get their hands on disruptors,” Quin answered slowly, as though this were the first time she’d thought of it.

“That’s possible,” he agreed. “But it’s not the most logical explanation, is it?”

Quin’s eyes gradually came back into focus on him. “You think there are more of us? More Seekers?”

“There must be more of us, Quin! And I’m not the first person to ask these questions. There was—” He stopped himself. He wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t bring himself to mention the book. That was between him and his mother. He took both of her hands in his. “There’s history. You ask if it has always been this way. Why hasn’t Briac taught us our history?”

“It’s lost. So much of our knowledge is lost.”

“Is it? Now you can
ask
. You have to stay here, learn what you can. In a few months, you won’t need him. Then you can leave the estate and come teach me. You’re a sworn Seeker now. You have as much right to give me my oath as anyone else. We’d be together. In just a few months we’d be together.”

Quin was listening to him, considering this. She laced her fingers through his.

“What would we do then?” she asked him. “After I’ve taught you. After you take your oath?”

“We would take one of the athames for ourselves. And we could do … We would decide what to do. Together.”

“Like what?”

“We … would choose the right course of action,” John said, trying to pick the perfect words, words that would convince her. Eventually he would tell her everything and she would understand and help him. “I have—”

“You
have
everything. What is your grandfather? One of the richest men in England? Why do you want the athame? You want me to stay here, to do whatever Briac asks me to do.
Why?
”

“I don’t have everything, Quin,” he countered, frustration creeping into his voice. “My family—my mother’s family—we haven’t had everything for a very long time. And my grandfather … The situation is—it’s
complicated
.” That word was not really sufficient to describe John’s relationship with his grandfather, but it was the best he could manage at the moment.

“Will you tell me what happened to your mother, John?”

She’d asked him before, when they were much younger, and he had refused to explain. But Quin seemed to sense that the answer was now important, that it was directly related to becoming a Seeker and to both of their lives.

With effort, John breathed slowly, evenly. “She was killed,” he said. “Before I knew enough about her. She was killed in front of me. Or nearly.”

“Oh.” Quin’s face fell. “I’m sorry, John. I’m so sorry.”

She put her arms around him again, and he pulled her close, feeling her warmth. He was sidestepping the details of his mother’s
death. In this case, the details were everything, but he wasn’t ready to say them aloud just yet.

“When someone you love is taken, you realize what’s important,” he whispered. “You don’t want someone else deciding who lives and who dies. You’ll never be safe.”

“No,” she agreed, her cheek against his. “You’ll never be safe.”

“What if
we
were to decide, Quin?” he breathed. “We’d do a better job. We’d make the right choices. Good choices. Eventually we could—we could make the kinds of choices Seekers were supposed to make all along. We’d put things back the way they should be.”

Quin’s lips brushed his cheek. Then she leaned back and held his gaze.

“Would we make the right choices, John? I’m not so sure.”

“Of course we would. We’re not like Briac.”

“But what you’re saying, it’s … it’s like something Briac might say, don’t you see?”

“It’s not like Briac—”

“If I stay, if I teach you,” she said, cutting him off, “we’ll become like him, even if we start out with good intentions.” Her voice became distraught as she added, “John—I think I’m already like him. I can feel it, and it’s too late for me.”

“Quin …”

She looked away, out the window and across the river. A new thought seemed to overtake her, and she turned back to him, her voice growing urgent. “We could be together … if we left right now. I’d leave my whipsword, everything. We’ll forget what we learned here. We could climb down to the river and go. Right now. Wouldn’t that be the best way?”

They looked at each other for a long while as John imagined himself saying yes. He could be with Quin. Their lives would be simple,
and probably very happy. But he’d committed himself a long time ago, with a promise.

“Quin … what’s here on the estate—I need it. I can’t leave it behind. Even though he’s kicking me out, I have to find my way back.”

His words hung between them until Quin whispered, “Even if I can’t be part of it?”

Forcing himself to nod was one of the hardest things John would ever do. “Yes,” he answered. “Even if you can’t be part of it. I
am
part of it. I’m sorry.”

She was silent. Then at last she said, “When I leave tomorrow, I won’t be coming back.”

There was no hope in her voice, and John realized that she wouldn’t be convinced, not yet. He would find a different way to get what he needed, and hope that she would be far away and safe. Maybe that was better.

On reflex, his mind was already racing ahead with possibilities. There was a prickling sensation in the pit of his stomach, a premonition of dangers to come. He could see one course of action open to him, and it would be a dance for his life the whole way.

He stood and moved to the barn window, placed his hands along the edge to brace himself. A moment later, Quin rose from the bed and put her arms around him. The warmth of her felt good.

He turned, and his lips found hers. They held each other in a melancholy embrace as the sun set over the land.

Will this be the last time I get to kiss her?
he wondered.

The ship hung fifty stories above London, floating on quiet engines between the tall buildings of the financial district. Its shape was a cross between a zeppelin and an oceangoing vessel. It was huge, and especially at midday its lustrous metal hide made it occasionally blinding to those outside. It was called
Traveler
.

On board
Traveler
, John walked through one of the upper corridors and knocked at his grandfather’s office door. He had returned to the ship the night before and was now steeling himself for his meeting with Gavin Hart. John never knew what to expect from his grandfather after he’d been away for a while.

Gavin opened the door himself and pulled John inside the room, glancing both ways down the corridor, as if to make sure no one had seen them.

“John, it’s so good to see you.”

He shut the door, but he looked over his shoulder again quickly, as though someone might be lurking in the room just behind him. Then he put a hand on each of John’s shoulders and squeezed, which was the old man’s version of an embrace. The effort seemed
to overwhelm him. He started to cough, a scratchy, throat-clearing sound.

“Good to see you too, Grandfather. Are you upset with me?”

“Sit, sit,” the older man said softly, straining to stop the coughing.

He helped John into a chair in front of his antique desk, then slid into his own on the other side. Behind Gavin’s head were enormous windows, through which John could see London’s skyscrapers sliding by. The tallest of the buildings were like stalks of metallic wheat, swaying gently with the currents of air.