her face.
“I did take my oath,” she said quietly. “I trained with both your father and your mother. And Alistair of course. And others.”
“But you…”
“I took my oath, I am a sworn Seeker,” Mariko said. “But I chose to spend my life as a mother, not…something else.”
Quin nodded. It was a decision she understood quite well after the life her father had shown her.
“And your athame, the athame with the dragon…” She’d looked through the pages of Catherine’s journal, studying what had been written about each Seeker house. According to Catherine’s records, only the athame with the fox and the athame with the eagle had been seen in the last few decades. But Catherine hadn’t known everything; she hadn’t described the athame of the Dreads, for example—now in Quin’s possession—with its insignia of three interlocking ovals in the shape of an atom.
“Gone,” Mariko said, her gaze shifting away from her whipsword to look at Quin. “Our athame has been gone for a hundred years or more. My family still sent children to the estate for training—in hopes that one day we might recover our athame and be a great house again.”
“Your athame isn’t the only one to disappear.”
“No,” Mariko agreed. “We were not alone in that.”
“Do you know where they’ve gone and why?”
The woman shook her head. “No. And because I can see the question in your eyes, I will tell you that I don’t know the ‘why’ of many things. My family lived apart from other Seekers for many generations. I do not know why Seekers have become what they’ve become over the last hundred years. I only know I didn’t wish to be one of them.”
Quin nodded again. Then she asked, “Mariko…did you ever see a strange sort of metal helmet? Something you can wear while training, maybe?”
Mariko continued to look at Quin, but something in her gaze changed, became more cautious.
“I left the estate after my oath, but I went back,” she said after a thoughtful moment. “Because I loved Alistair MacBain.”
In Quin’s recollection, Mariko and Alistair had been happy together, though Quin had to admit that she’d paid very little attention to adults’ relationships when she was a child—she’d been blind to the way her own father had treated her mother, for example.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have returned,” Mariko went on slowly. “Alistair’s life and my own would have been easier if I hadn’t. But it wouldn’t have been much of a life.” She sighed and looked away from Quin at last. “Shinobu has always loved you, you know.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I love him back.”
“But perhaps it would be easier for both of you if you didn’t love each other…or if you didn’t wish to be Seekers.”
The woman’s voice was so heavy with regret, Quin found herself incapable of responding. She thought of Mariko and Alistair MacBain, in love all those years but forced to live apart because of what Seekers had become—and in particular because of what Quin’s father, Briac Kincaid, had become.
Eventually she stammered out, “I—I hope we’re trying to seek the right things.” This sounded weak, but it was the truth.
After a moment of reflection, Mariko nodded, as if coming to a decision within herself. “You asked me a question. The answer is no, I’ve never seen a metal helmet like the one you described, not in person. But—”
She reached into the cabinet and pushed all the hanging clothing to either side. The cabinet’s back wall was white. Over the white, in a deep red, someone had painted a detailed picture of a metal helmet exactly like the one Quin had taken from Briac and those strange boys. Beneath the helmet were several lines of Japanese text—a numbered list.
“It’s called a focal. My family had one once, as you can see,” Mariko explained, gesturing at the painting. “A helpful ancestor decided to write down instructions for its use.”
Quin’s eyes scanned the Japanese characters.
“Can you translate it for me?”
“Do you have such a helmet?” Mariko asked her. “I never saw one on the estate.”
Quin didn’t respond at first. Mariko had left the world of Seekers. Did she really want to know the answer? Wasn’t it better if she stayed in the dark, safe in a separate life with her younger son, Akio?
“What if I do?” Quin asked at last.
“Then you should be careful with it,” Mariko told her. “Seeker tools are never toys. They are never to be taken lightly.”
“I don’t take any of this lightly.”
“No, I don’t think you do,” Mariko said meditatively.