single patterner to influence events across the entire country.”
Fagin spoke up suddenly. “They call it the Gift of the gods, you know. Patterning is the most subtle and dangerous of Gifts. I think you encountered a patterner once.”
Lily shot Ruben a hard glance. Apparently he’d been sharing a lot with Fagin, some of it highly classified. “I’ve run across a couple of them, actually.”
“Oh?” Fagin’s bushy brows shot up. “The one I was thinking of was named Jiri. You had some difficulty overcoming her.”
“I didn’t overcome her,” Lily said dryly. “I managed to stay alive. She didn’t, but that’s because she only cared about one thing. And she got that.” Her daughter’s life. Jiri had not been a good guy by any means, but she’d given her life so her daughter would live. The child had been adopted by the Leidolf Lu Nuncio.
Fagin steepled his hands on his belly. “You have some understanding of the Gift, then. Patterners are rare, for which we can thank the good God. When the Gift does appear, it’s almost always in the weak form. A weak patterner senses event patterns unconsciously. He may learn how to control his Gift so that his effect on events is less haphazard, but he doesn’t sense the patterns directly. A strong patterner does. A strong and experienced patterner can manipulate those patterns in subtle ways to bring about what he or she wants.”
“I thought all patterners did that.”
“They all affect events, though the weak ones affect them only slightly and often unpredictably. A strong but inexperienced patterner . . . I descend into theory now,” he said apologetically. “Strong patterners are so rare we have no hard data on how their Gift operates, but there is anecdotal and historical evidence. A strong but untrained or inexperienced patterner will generally be adept in one application of his Gift, but not others. Napoleon is a good example.”
She blinked. “He is?”
“Certainly. He’s often lauded as a military genius, but his real genius—and the way he used his Gift most effectively—lay in the social interplay of politics. He was eventually defeated on the battlefield, after all, but never politically. Had he taken the time to become more adept at patterning before plunging his nation into war, he might never have been defeated at all. I suspect Jiri was both a strong patterner and fairly experienced. She was not, however, a fraction as powerful as Friar now is.”
That was so not good news.
Fagin smiled gently. “Patterning is called the Gift of the gods because we believe—and by ‘we’ I mean fusty old academics like me—that some of those who once were worshipped as gods were real beings, adept-level patterners of great power. They were able to influence such a multiplicity of events simultaneously that no single unraveling of their weaving could defeat them. Friar has power an adept would envy. He does not yet have the experience to wield it in a godlike way. That’s one advantage for us. The other—”
“The Shadow Unit,” she said wearily. “You’re going to tell me it’s needed to catch Friar.”
“No, I’m going to tell you that Ruben is needed to run that Unit. There are two Gifts that can confound a patterner. One is ours. Sensitives can’t be affected by the patterner’s manipulations, which makes us the large rock in their artificial stream.”
Rule spoke for the first time since admitting he’d deceived her. “As are lupi, at least as far as Friar is concerned.”
Fagin nodded agreeably. “So you stipulate. Your fiancé,” he added to Lily, “says that lupi are immune to her magic. Since we believe Friar’s Gift comes from her, they would likewise be barriers to his patterning. You and I and the lupi form, ah . . . call us dead spots in his manipulations. He can mobilize events that affect us, but it takes more power because his magic can’t touch us. But there’s only one Gift that can truly act against a strong patterner. Precognition.”
Lily frowned. “Because that’s like patterning? A precog is sensing patterns, I guess, when he gets a hunch.” Or sees visions of the Apocalypse.
Ruben shifted slightly in his chair. “I don’t think so.”
“No?”
“Fagin and I have discussed this.” A smile flickered over Ruben’s thin face. “At length. He would prefer to believe that my Gift picks up patterns from the future, much as a patterner senses patterns in the present. My input is subjective, of course, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. I’ve discussed this with that