a thought had dropped into her mind: …he’ll come after me again—in Hong Kong or on the estate…
She was quite certain that thought had come from Quin. Maud had felt this mental connection off and on for a month. It had begun on the day when Quin had fought John on top of the small barn above the cliff on the edge of the estate. During that fight, the Young Dread had chosen to help Quin by tossing her a lightning rod. It was as though she’d unwittingly created a permanent connection between them in that instant; Quin’s thoughts now traveled freely across the link at unexpected moments. The Young Dread could even feel Quin looking through her own eyes from time to time. She was not sure that Quin was aware of the connection, despite its strength.
“She’s not here!” the younger of the two boys said. Both stood outside the stable, waiting for Briac to reappear. “He’s acting mad again, Wilkin. If we’re going to follow him, maybe you should let him wear it awhile—”
“He can’t wear it now, Nott! He tried to steal it,” the other one—Wilkin—said. And then: “Are you crying?”
“I want to wear it!” the younger one, apparently called Nott, replied.
Briac emerged through the burned stable doorway, and immediately headed toward the old barn.
From her perch in the oak tree, the Young Dread heard John approaching below. He’d paused in the castle ruins to put on his cloak and gather up their weapons, and now he was sprinting through the woods toward her, his cloak streaming from his shoulders. The night was dark, but Maud’s eyes gathered all available light to allow her to see him easily among the shadows and the trees.
In the short time she’d been training him, John’s running gait had changed, become something more fluid, directed and swift. He threw off his hood as he began to climb the tree. To Maud, his motions were loud and clumsy, but he still moved better than most Seekers she’d met. He was learning to focus his mind, and his body was following suit.
Maud was used to perfect clarity in her own thinking. When she’d trained as a girl with her dear master, the Old Dread, he’d instilled in her a certainty of purpose and an ease in decision. A Dread was meant to stand apart from humanity and from Seekers so that her mind was clear to judge. And yet, the years she’d spent with the Middle Dread had eroded her faith in this simple rule. The Middle had interfered in the life of a Seeker—Catherine Renart, John’s mother—in a way that was unjust. He had participated in disrupting her. The Middle had committed other injustices long ago, but this one was recent, and he’d forced Maud to participate, which gave her a peculiar responsibility for the results. Was it wrong then, Maud wondered, for her to interfere in the life of Catherine’s son, John, in order to make up for what had been done?
Her master had gone There after the fight on Traveler, to stretch himself out for years and years, decades even. The Old Dread could not answer this question for her. And so the Young had made the choice to train John, to make him a Seeker. A Dread must not take sides, but this was not taking sides; this was bringing an unbalanced scale back to level. She was not sure how honorable John would be, nor how seriously he would take the three laws of Seekers, but surely having a good teacher was the only chance he had.
“Who is it?” John whispered, pulling himself up onto a thick branch next to her. He was breathing hard, but she could see that he was controlling himself, forcing his body to draw in air with an even rhythm. He took his training seriously.
“You’ll see in a moment.” She nodded toward the old barn in the distance. All three visitors had disappeared inside. “Can you hear them speaking?”
John closed his eyes for a moment, shook his head. “Only faintly.”
“Imagine the words are clear,” Maud whispered, “coming straight to your ears, with nothing between you and them. Try it.”
He stared at the barn, going very still as he concentrated on the distant sounds. Though Maud knew it would take much more than those simple instructions to teach John to throw his hearing, this was the first step. It was not a skill a Seeker required, yet she saw no reason John could not