John emerged from the trees, coming out of the forest gloom into late-afternoon sunshine. The tiny stone barn was up ahead, right at the cliff’s edge. The river was a low roar here, and as he got closer to the barn, he could see the water far below, carving into the base of the cliff as it headed east and south toward the lowlands of the estate.
The barn might once have been an outpost of the castle, a home for a lookout, maybe. But while the castle had fallen into ruin, the ancient barn was still standing, its slate roof as heavy and solid as the stones of the barn’s walls.
After his conversation with Briac the night before, John had been too upset to see anyone, and had spent the evening alone. Today he’d stayed in his own cottage, packing up his few belongings. Briac would be taking him to the train station late in the evening, and then John would be gone from the estate—until he figured out a way to get back.
After what he suspected had taken place before Quin’s oath last night, he’d hoped she would come to him in the morning. All day, he’d imagined her storming into his cottage, outraged at her father’s dishonesty and furious as well that Briac was kicking John out. Yet she had not come. Did it mean she was happy following her father? Had John lost her? This thought left him with an ache so intense that he’d driven his fist into the wall to make the feeling go away.
At last, when he could no longer tolerate her absence, he’d gone looking for Quin. She hadn’t been in any of the cottages or barns near the commons. Eventually he’d come to this little outpost on the cliff.
“Quin?” he called as he got near the barn’s open doorframe.
There was no answer.
He entered the barn. On the ground floor were a few decaying stalls once used for animals. The space was brighter than he’d expected. There were large circular openings—windows with no glass—at each end of the structure, up beneath the peak of the roof. The sun was coming through the western window, casting a yellow light into the rafters and onto the high sleeping loft.
He found her in that loft, a small space with a wooden platform wedged up against the wall. There was a fresh bale of straw on the floor, which Quin must have dragged up there herself. The bale was broken open, and straw was strewn across the platform, making a simple bed. There was a lantern on the floor, unlit now but with a pack of matches beside it. She was obviously planning to spend the night here by herself.
Quin was seated on the platform, her knees drawn up to her chest, staring at an old and very battered portable television. She didn’t turn her head as he climbed up into the loft.
Quin watching television alone in this remote barn was so odd that John was momentarily at a loss for words. And when he finally opened his mouth, he stopped himself. She was watching a news report on the shabby set, and something about it caught his attention. There had been a change of power in a large French company, one of those huge organizations that controlled a little bit of everything in almost every part of the world, much like the industrial empire ruled by John’s own grandfather. The head of this French company, the news was reporting, had disappeared, along with his family. Some sources speculated about sudden health problems. Others feared there had been a violent crime, because traces of blood had been found in the man’s country estate. Either way, the location of the man, his wife, and their children was unknown, and this unexplained absence left the business dangerously at risk of a takeover.
That French businessman—wasn’t his name familiar to John? John had never been much interested in his grandfather’s business talk. It had been the background noise of his childhood, which he had always tried to ignore. His mother had considered such work beneath him. And yet for years, his grandfather had been discussing business around him. Surely that name was familiar?
“Quin?”
Without looking at him, her hand reached out and switched off the television.
He sat next to her on the platform. Tucking her hair back, he gently kissed the spot where her jaw and ear met, and as he did, he noticed a small bandage on her neck. Quin gave him no response. Instead she stared out the window.
“Did you take your oath?” For a moment he wondered if her strange demeanor meant she’d failed. But without a word, Quin extended her bandaged left wrist. “May I look?” he asked her.
She glanced at him quickly, then away. Her fine white skin was particularly pale, without the flush her cheeks usually wore. Her pretty, dark eyes were like coal against snow. She shrugged.
He peeled back the bandage. There, terribly blistered, the shape of a dagger was burned into her skin.
“You did it,” he said.
“I did it,” she agreed, her voice lifeless. “Everything he asked me to do.”
John had expected her to be upset. But she was more than upset—she was in shock. The task Briac had assigned must have been particularly bad. He wondered what he himself would have done in the same situation. Would he have been able to go through with it? Do what has to be done, his mother had insisted. I will, he told himself now. Even when it’s hard.
“It wasn’t what you thought it would be,” he said softly. It was a statement, not a question.
Quin took her arm back, tucked it close to her body.
“No,” she agreed.
She studied John’s face then, almost as if she were trying to recall how she knew him. One of her hands came up to his cheek. “What happened to you?” she asked at last. “What did Briac say, when you met him yesterday?”
“He’s kicking me out.”
“That’s ridiculous. He has to finish your training.” She said the words automatically, but they seemed to have no real meaning to her. They were like lines from a play she’d performed years ago.
“Ridiculous, right. Because your father’s an honorable man, isn’t he?”
They held each other’s eyes, and finally they were sharing the truth about Briac between them. Quin was trying not to cry, but she was losing. She moved into John’s arms, and he held her tightly against him.
“All your life he’s made you think one thing while preparing you for another,” he told her softly. “Now you know.”
She was shaking against him, and her tears were coming faster.
“Are you saying you know what we did?” she whispered as she cried. “How can you know?”
“I don’t know exactly what happened last night,” he said. “But I know what Seekers do—what Briac does. And I can see the shock on your face.”
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.
