I don’t want him touching me now.
I look at Zan for just a moment. Long enough to communicate that. Something flickers in his gaze—disappointment, I think, and how dare he, given what he just pulled—but he inclines his head in acknowledgement.
Touching privileges revoked.
But I am well trained in managing my anger, and I’m aware that itismy own blurting that revealed me; he didn’t make me say anything, even if he arranged the circumstances.
I take a breath and own that. “Yes. I am a sage.”
It is, after all, true.
Even if I choose not to use my power ever again, nothing will change the fact that I have it, and that its presence necessarily defines the scope of my choices.
“Okay,” Teren says slowly, and takes a breath. “Okay. And if you’re with Zan, you’re not with the Order. But—you still shouldn’t be able to tell.”
I’m beginning to see the scope of the problem.
“That’s why we’re here,” Zan says. “The Quiet has fallen.”
Nomi sucks in a breath.
Teren braces himself against the wall as his knees give out. “Oh no,” he whispers. “After all this time? I can’t stay—”
Nomi cuts in sharply. “And here is a sage, right at the same time. Did you take it down?”
I blink at her. Obviously? No one else could have?
I turn a confused look to Zan.
“The priests used to send sages to try,” Zan explained. “Like Kovan. Though they stopped centuries ago—sages aren’t strong enough anymore.”
That makes me frown deeply. I was powerful even in my own era—or perhaps, the era I was born into—but there had been other powerful sages before, and there should have been again.
The Order isn’t just controlling us. They’reweakeningus, on purpose.
Then it’s Teren’s turn to suck in a breath as he whispers, “Oh my gods, you’reher, aren’t you? The Sage of Wrath?!”
I have no idea how to respond to that.
People have been awed by me before, but for my power, not for myexistence.
So it’s Zan who breaks the now-fraught silence and says with a hint of testiness, “I told you she was alive.”
And how didheknow, anyway, when no one else did?
Faintly, Teren says, “You did, but I thought you were just being romantic about it. Not, like, in a romance way, but I mean, spinning a dream to newly arrived sages who needed something to believe in, you know?”
We all stare at Teren, apparently united at last in an inability to believe in this characterization of Zan.
The sage blushes. “Pretend I didn’t say anything,” he mutters. “But—” He looks at me hopefully. “Does that mean you can fix me, so it’s safe for me to stay here? Without the Quiet I can’t suppress my power outside the house, and even here—I’ve been meditating since I woke up, but it’s too much. If any priests come into town, now that they can without consequence, they’ll definitely sense me.”
I push aside my anger at the idea of “fixing” him and clarify only, with a deep sense of foreboding, “Meditating?”
Teren looks confused. “You know, where you sit in one spot and try to clear your mind...” My expression must be leaking, because he finishes awkwardly, “Is that not how you do it?”
Hooooly gods.
“No,” I say. “No, that is not how a sage meditates.” I turn to Zan and say quietly, “This is why we’re really here, isn’t it? You lied to me.”
