Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks [116]
“Nnn ga.”
“What? Oh.” Sister Ariel stayed seated cross-legged and murmured. The bonds fell from Vi’s face. She spat out the handkerchief—it had been wrapped around a rock, the bitch!—and breathed. She didn’t grab her Talent. Not yet.
“The rest?” she asked, gesturing to her other bonds.
“Mm. Sorry.”
“It’s a little hard to talk to you lying on my side.”
“Fair enough. Loovaeos.”
Vi’s body was pulled upright and scooted backward to a tree.
“So that’s your bait? A bluff about some spell on me that we won’t be able to take off until we get to the Chantry—where it just so happens it will be impossible for me to escape?”
“That’s it.”
Vi pursed her lips. Was it her imagination, or was there a slight glow around Ariel? “That’s pretty good bait,” she admitted.
“Better than we offer most girls.”
“You always kidnap girls?”
“Like I already said, this is my first time. It doesn’t usually come down to kidnapping. The sisters who do the recruiting have lots of ways to be persuasive. I was deemed too tactless for such work.”
Big surprise. “What’s the usual bait?” Vi asked.
“Just to be like the recruiters, who tend to be beautiful, charming, respected, and—not least—always get their own way.”
“And the hook is?” Vi asked.
“Oh, we’re continuing the fishing metaphor?”
“What?” Vi asked.
“Never mind. The hook is servitude and tutelage. It’s like an apprenticeship, seven to ten years of service before you become a full Sister. Then you’re free.”
Vi had had enough of apprenticeship to last her for ten lives. She sneered. Keep her talking. I might as well learn what I can. “You said I’m not really a wetboy. I do all the wetboy stuff.”
“Have trouble with the Embrace of Darkness, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Invisibility. You can’t do it, can you?”
How did she know that? “That’s just a legend. It drives up prices. No one goes invisible.”
“I can see you’re going to spend a lot of time unlearning things you think you know. True wetboys can go invisible. But mages don’t do invisibility. Your Talent has to practically live in your skin. Invisibility requires a total body awareness so profound that it extends to feeling how light is touching every part of your skin. What you are is something different—in fact, something forbidden by a treaty a hundred and thirty—umm—thirty-eight years old. The Alitaerans would be shall we say highly overwrought if we’d trained you this way. You see, if you mastered a few more things, you’d be a warmage. Oh, you’re going to cause the Speaker a few headaches, I can see that already.”
“Fuck you,” Vi said.
Sister Ariel leaned over and slapped her. “You will speak civilly.”
“Fuck you,” Vi said without intonation.
“Let’s settle something now, then,” Sister Ariel said, standing. “Loovaeos uh braeos loovaeos graakos.” Vi was yanked to her feet. Her bonds dropped away. A dagger flew from her pack and dropped at her feet.
Vi didn’t reach for the knife. She didn’t stop to take the time. She cursed her Talent into a titanic punch into Sister Ariel’s stomach.
The force of the blow blasted Sister Ariel off her feet. She flipped over the fire and skidded across the dirt on the other side, but Vi didn’t move. She didn’t even try to run. She was looking at her drooping hand.
It was like she’d punched steel. Bones were sticking out of her skin. Her knuckles were a mass of blood. Her wrist was broken. Both bones in her forearm had snapped. One of them was pressing against the skin from underneath, threatening to jut out.
Sister Ariel stood and shook her big, loose dress. Dust puffed