A Dagger's Width: A Short Story of Open Wounds by M. K. Dreysen

This week's story comes from the time between the first and second books in my Open Wounds Series. I call it A Dagger's Width.

Megan's a renegade. Not even half-trained; Megan's learned just barely enough magic to get in trouble. She's been protected from the Wizards, the Brotherhood, by the fact that her mentor works as a paladin to the Emperor. A protector of those who'd otherwise slip through the cracks.

And now Tony's kicked her out to see the world on her own. If she ever catches up to the old bastard, Megan's going to have a bunch of new stories, and quite a bit more anger to unload on Tony D'ags. But first, Megan needs to learn to negotiate A Dagger's Width...

A Dagger's Width: A Short Story of Open Wounds by M. K. Dreysen

A dagger's width is proportional to its length.

Its weight, too.

Force, no. Its force is a function of the hand holding it. How much strength it can apply, and where. The edge versus the flat.

These are the thoughts that ran through Megan's head, a stream of patience blazing along the pathways of her mind. Echoes to the burn of the blade, every inch of it pushed against the skin on the back of her neck.

"Just a twist, girl. That's all it takes." A whisper she didn't need to let her know about the possible death she wasn't looking for.

Possible. But Megan believed it was more promised than that. The person standing behind her wouldn't offer an out unless there was something she could provide. Information, surely. The few pennies in her pocket would be just as easily picked from a corpse.

A dagger's width, force, weight, pressed against the nape of her neck, and the assailant's hand gripped her shoulder. Altogether, a connection.

It was enough. "What do you want?" she asked the night.

"Quiet, girl." The hand pulled until Megan stepped backwards. "That's it, we don't want anyone interfering."

Megan followed step by step, further into the shadows of the alley. Each step, each breath, she matched against the person behind her, trying to find the rhythm. The one that would let her in.

"There, that'll do." The hand on her shoulder relaxed, like the mugger wanted her to do something. Try and turn, maybe. Megan reached out with her mind, she didn't want to imagine what the mugger wanted.

She needed to know. And there it was, a picture, Megan, turning into the knife and, oh shucks, getting stabbed for the effort. Not a deadly blow, no, someone wanted the girl reasonably whole, but a little nip and slash wouldn't cause a problem. Wouldn't chase the price down any.

Why, then? Why cut the girl and take the chance?

Megan held herself still; but there was no answer. The urge was enough by itself. The person standing behind her, the man, an older man, was long past the point where he wondered at his appetites. Beer, an occasional warm place to sleep, the knife, they were his lodestars. If somebody wanted to pay him to do what he'd have done for free, well so much the better.

Except for when the mark didn't act the way she should. Megan felt it, just a breath of confusion coming up and sifting through the mugger's instincts. This wasn't the way it was supposed to...

A dagger's steel has width, heft. It's also one of the very best ways to connect two minds. The edge, the spine, both lay across her skin, and she poured her mind through the steel, past the grip up the spine all the way to the base of his brain. The little node just above his spinal cord, the one where all the nerves that he'd have used to cut and stab bound together.

Megan reached out and pressed, just so. Just hard enough to let her step away from the man's grip, while he stayed frozen in place.

She felt the panic rising out of his mind, and watched it in his eyes. He couldn't make his muscles obey, couldn't reach out, couldn't shift the knife. He couldn't even scream.

Megan used both thumbs to close his eyes. She didn't need to talk to him, and the dumb animal panic would just distract her. "Shh. I'm not going to hurt you. In fact, when I'm done, you won't remember any of this." She started that process now. It was a gentle whisper, "forget", pulsed into his ear. The suggestion would wind its way through his mind, pulling this night away and sending it into the ether where it belonged.

First, though, she wanted to know what, who had sent the man after her.

'Who sent you?'

The picture formed in his head. Two people, he was standing at a bar and someone walked up behind him, but before he could reach for the knife or slide out of the way, she stepped up to the bar beside him.

'How do you know it was a she?'

The hands. The form was a cloak, heavy against the cold and the rain, but the hands when she put them up on the bar were thin, well-shaped. Not a lady's hands, not delicate, this one worked enough at something, but female for sure.

'How did you know I was the one?'

He was staring at a drawing now. The lady had said to memorize it, and then burn it. It was a charcoal sketch, a good one, of Megan's face. The mugger rolled it up, and threw it on the fire as he left the pub.

It was time for the last question he could answer before the compulsion wiped the night's purpose away from his mind. 'Where were you supposed to bring me?'

A complete shift in view now, first down to the river, a dock.

Megan almost left the man's mind then. It was a city full of docks, there wouldn't be any way to tell... but the view shifted again. Back, as though the guy were rising into the sky, or looking at his mind's map of the city.

The dock was special, how? It was in better repair than you'd think, looking at it the thing looked like it was about to fall down, but the bolts and the beams and bulkhead were better put together than appearances would have it. A smuggler's dock, built to look like it was about to fall apart.

That wasn't the only thing. The view in the mugger's mind expanded again, rotated, moved back and back and back further still, until the nondescript wall standing next to the dock grew into the corner of a much larger edifice.

Megan drew a fast quick breath. The man's mind view pulled back one more level, and she could see at last.

The smuggler's dock lay in the shadow of the University. Of the Brotherhood. The man was telling her, as best he could guess, that the people who'd hired him were likely sent by the Brotherhood, if not wizards themselves.

'The dock's where the Brotherhood does business they won't admit to?'

The affirmation from the mugger's mind was the last conscious thought to rise before her compulsion took him. Megan felt the connection fall away as the man fell into forgetful sleep. The only thing holding him up was her hold on his spinal nerves.

She looked around the blind alley. The mugger had pulled her in to where the shop next door stored their trash. She shrugged. 'Good a place as any,' she told him. 'Go lay down in the corner and get yourself some rest.'

He shambled over, kicking bits of this and that out of his way, then slid down into the deepest of sleeps. He'd be there 'til dawn, then wake with only the lack of a headache to let him know this hadn't been a normal drunk.

Megan left him there and made her way to the river. The smuggler's dock, if the man's memory was any guide, lay a couple miles upriver. An hour's walk, if she hurried she might get lucky and find a position to observe the people who'd paid her putative kidnapper.

She wanted to fight the urge to pin that on the Brotherhood. Her mentor had taught her better than that. "Don't jump to conclusions," of course, and most of all "Just because you want someone to be the bad guy doesn't mean he is". Tony D'ags had had his own nose burnt on that one, more than once. Megan had avoided asking just how badly, or for the details of the stories.

She'd also have liked to have believed that the Brotherhood, nor anyone else in this overgrown burg, even knew she was there. In New Amsterdam for only a few days, and it's not like she had a reputation to precede her. Not like Tony. She was just barely more than a kid.

Problem was, the Wizards up in yon towers, the ones looming over her and the river as she closed in on the smuggler's dock, had far too many ways to keep an eye on the people they chose to take an interest in. And, however much she liked to believe that she was still beneath notice, Megan knew that Tony would have had to keep his superiors informed of at least the bare bones of her story.

Which meant, of course, that the Brotherhood would have ferreted out her name and story. The Righteous Ones, Tony's order of do-gooders, the Emperor's Own, were protective of their secrets, but only up to a certain point. Given the way they'd brushed up against the Brotherhood, here and there and off to one side, the odds were good that at least a few tales had reached tilted ears. What was the good of being the power behind the throne if you didn't keep up with the throne's doings?

Assuming, of course, the unlikely pair sneaking into the dockhouse opposite her were both her kidnapper's employers, and connected to the University and its machinations.

Both members of the pair looked more or less the part for skulking in the dark. Cloaks, boots, that sort of thing. But if either one of them had ever had the misfortune to brush up against a hard day's work, Megan would eat a bug. She had to put her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle.

The larger of the pair certainly looked like a bodyguard. Wide, like he could barely fit through a door wide, chest bigger than a beer keg wide. The only thing that kept him from being a giant was that he wasn't tall enough for the part. He'd block out the sun for kids and small folks, but he was a couple hands short of where he'd need to be to throw shade on most other men.

Not that Megan would bet on any other man or woman against him, not if they got in reach. The guy's muscles looked sufficient to crack and break anyone or anything he laid his hands on.

The lady was a counterpart in the giant economy size. Over here, from Megan's vantage, she looked just a normal, well-built figure and all over just as you might expect. It wasn't until she stood next to the door that Megan could see the reference point and realize the lady just about brushed the top of the doorway with her head.

'Why on earth would they need to pay for a kidnapping?' Megan asked herself. 'All that pair would have needed to do was walk up on me in the dark, and they'd have scared me anywhere they wanted to go.'

The other part that made them stick out as a little too out of place, was the expense of the clothes they were wearing. The two of them had gone to a lot of work to make sure their cloaks and boots and so on were made for the evening's skulking; if Megan was any judge, that was just the problem. There weren't very many following the moonlit paths who got their clothes tailor-made for the event.

It was time to get a little closer to the action. Megan followed the shadows across the road. No torches or lamps around, only the moon flitting in and out of the clouds, so there were plenty of shadows to choose from.

And, enough so avoiding the temptation of reaching out to call a few to her was easy. Megan's own abilities were developing well enough to tell when someone close by was playing games; if either of the pair in the dockhouse were University-trained, she didn't want them having any extra warning of her coming.

Plenty of shadows meant she could concentrate on bringing her conscious mind in close, hidden, quiet, where she wouldn't give herself away just by being in the neighborhood.

Whoever had built the dockhouse seemed to have had some idea of the types of meetings the place would hold. The front door, the one the two had used to get in, was only the obvious way in. Just around the corner was another door, helpfully frozen open by what only looked like rusted hinges. Megan slipped inside, careful to move only just so far into the space beyond.

"Think he'll have any problems?" the woman's voice asked the darkness.

"Depends. The girl's no pushover. And he didn't look like he'd recognize that without a demonstration."

The man's voice belied his appearance. It was a high clear tenor, not the rumbling bass she'd have thought his chest more suited for.

The woman's voice was a pleasant alto. "Different subject entirely. What do you make of the Emperor's gift to his firstborn?"

"New Wales, rather than New Amsterdam? Wouldn't it be nice to be handed such a little gem?" The man chuckled. "I think he'll have more than a few strings attached. The princess will eventually be more than capable of managing her father's gift."

"Assuming she gets the chance to do so. No matter her talents, she's a few good years before having the necessary connections to insure complete control. I agree, her father's going to want to make sure the strings remain firmly in hand 'til the proper day arrives."

"One wonders only how his Imperial Majesty managed to pry it loose from his wife's control. She'd not have parted with her dowry without a well-balanced trade." The man shifted, and the building shifted with him, as though he were leaning against the wall on the other side of the dockhouse from where Megan stood. "I wonder which of our brethren are scrambling to discover the quid balancing the quo."

The woman snorted in response.

Megan was very well interested in the story; it wasn't every day the premier city of a continent had its name changed for it. The Emperor's reach was profound, especially when he was being generous with his wife's property, assuming the pair of Brothers (for there could be no question of who they were, given the man's self-admission) were fully correct in their gossip.

She wasn't worried about the internal workings of the Brotherhood and their games. The odds that she'd ever need to know how they spied on each other and the court over the ocean were so small as to be laughable. At least so far as Megan knew at that point in her career, anyway.

The only question remaining was whether she wanted to wait around for more. The odds weren't exactly in her favor. She could step forward, or maybe just stay a voice in the darkness, query them. Find out who they were and what the hell they wanted.

Or she could do what she did. Slip on back out the door and down the road. Those two, if they were members of the Brotherhood, weren't going anywhere. The great bloody pile of rock behind the smuggler's dock wasn't about to disappear into the mist and fog rolling in off the river.

It wasn't heroic. The merry trickster was supposed to tweak noses, and hound his enemies to their constant despair.

Problem was, Megan wasn't much interested in heroic deeds that night. Not after finding out about the Emperor's latest troublemaking endeavor. She wanted to get through with her business and then vanish back into the continent's interior. Catch up with Tony and Roberto and the gang, maybe, or head across mountain and desert and the ocean to see what the other side looked like these days.

First though, she had a chore. Thanks, Tony. Schmuck. He'd turned her loose on her own just a few months back, when they'd finally made it all the way East, to Savannah. "Right, kid. Time for you to beat feet, and find your own way in the world."

"What happened to being your apprentice?"

"I never promised that, and you know it." He hadn't. But she'd never given up hope. "You and me, we've worked well together, and the rest of the crew will miss you. Problem is, you've got that wandering look in your eye, and you'll be very dangerous until you've worked a bit of it off."

She didn't have any problem understanding what he meant. The paladin and his collection of fellow horizon's fools weren't always hip deep in trouble. But when they were, and she'd seen it more than a few times, they didn't need a half-grown, half-trained, all-reluctant wizard who didn't want to admit it losing her interest, or her patience.

And she didn't want their lives hanging on her inability to focus. Absinthe, Brother Charles, Roberto, Tony, they'd all turned into family.

They'd be waiting there for her, ready and willing to take her up again when she could be just a part of the crew.

But Tony hadn't just let her run off into the sunset, either. "Call it your very first quest, sister."

"Uh-huh. Why don't you get on with it, Tony?"

And so, she'd had to make her way here, with the baby hero's quest mapped out for her and everything. It all should have made her gag, if it wasn't for the way Tony had set the hook in her mind.

"Look, kid."

"You told me not to let you call me that anymore."

"Shut up and let an old man talk."

What he'd set for her wasn't much more than "Pass a letter to a shopkeeper".

Except for the hint he'd given her about the shopkeeper's hobbies. "Let's just say that, if she's kept her head down, the Brotherhood won't have had any reason to snatch her up. You might just benefit from getting to know such a lady."

That was to fix the half-trained part. Tony had to be very careful, toting around someone he suspected, but didn't "know", was a natural wizard. He was a paladin of the Emperor, after all. And the Brotherhood, the Emperor's wizards, were very, very clear about what Tony should do when he found such.

He was half-trained, too, but the Brotherhood did it that way for all of Tony's Order. Just well-trained enough to be protected, not so independent that he didn't have to run back to them every so often and beg for a little help.

Strings.

Like the strings Megan didn't notice following her from the smuggler's dock. The two Brethren themselves weren't aware that it had happened. The connections had been made, however, as all of the three would become aware of further down the line.

Megan had spent the day searching for the shop. Gillian. That was the lady's name, and Mega was supposed to pass her a letter from Tony, then ask her a few questions. The shop had been easy enough to find. It was tucked back into a row of other shops, traders and crafts, books and makers of this and that. Not the big industrial places, leather and iron and the rest that the city made a place for down the river.

But this time of night? Well, Tony had said that the lady wasn't much connected to the daylight trade. The place had been closed up and shuttered when Megan found it. Maybe it was worth going by, closer now to the midnight hour.

Light peaked out from behind the shutters of the little shop. Not a lot, but the darkness of the rest of the street made it pretty obvious who was awake at this hour. Megan followed the light up to the door and knocked.

She was more than surprised to see the door open enough for a candle to gleam through the crack. "Yes?" the lady on the other side asked.

"Tony D'ags sent me with a letter for Gillian," Megan replied.

"Uh-huh. Give it to me."

Megan passed the letter to her. Then waited while the lady opened and read the thing.

"Well, young Megan, come in, come in. It's not a bad neighborhood, but we don't want you attracting any accidental attention either." The lady opened the door further, and Megan slipped inside.

Gillian didn't waste any time. "Tony says you're trying to avoid the attention of the Wizards."

"Well, yes ma'am, I guess so." Megan gave her a thumbnail sketch of how she'd come to be here. The way that her best friend had been taken by the Brotherhood when they were barely more than children, forced to join the University whether he wanted to or not by the talent she and Chad had discovered they both shared. He'd been found out; so far Megan had avoided that fate.

"Working with Tony helped," she said.

"It usually does, child," the lady answered. "He's more than a little concerned with the underdog."

Megan didn't go into a lot of detail about her adventures with Tony. Mostly she wanted to talk about the way the talent inside her, the things she was discovering she could do, had grown.

Like the kidnapper earlier in the evening. "The knife made it easy, it almost made the connection for me. And his mind was just there, waiting for me."

"It feels good now, doesn't it, to know you've got some defenses to call on?"

Megan nodded. "Sure. But there's a part of me that wonders if I've stepped over the line, too. Done something, taken something from him that was a little too much for the trade."

"You need to listen to that voice, Megan. If you're telling me the whole of the truth, you did fine tonight. But there may come a time when you get a lot closer to possessing someone else, owning them body and soul. That voice might be the only thing that saves you from going there."

Megan shuddered. It was the first time anyone had ever acknowledged to her that being inside another's mind was playing with real fire. The books she'd found had mentioned it, talked about the pitfalls that waited if you let yourself fall to the temptation to take over someone else's mind completely and totally.

But the lady sitting across from her wasn't a dry treatise on the subject. The look in her eyes wasn't just a warning. She knew, Megan told herself.

And Megan found herself wanting to learn more. About the pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Most of all: what was possible.

"There's more though, isn't there?" Gillian asked. "This street rat wasn't looking for you by accident."

Megan nodded, and finished telling her story of the evening's adventure. When she described the two Brothers, Gillian smiled.

"I know them. I wouldn't say they're harmless, all of the University faculty have their moments. But there are far worse that might have taken an interest in you. Show me, if you're comfortable enough." She led Megan over to a sitting table and a shallow dish of still water. "Do you know how to project to it?"

All of the books Megan had found had something to say about still water and how to use it. Megan had seen Tony use it, as well, but she'd never yet done it for anyone else but herself. She settled into the chair, a stiff wood thing probably meant to make sure no visitor overstayed their welcome.

She set her feet on the floor, straightened her back, and focused on the water. The image of the two that had paid the kidnapper appeared almost immediately. A mind's eye picture floating on the water's surface.

"Yep, just who I remember. Go on, Megan."

The rest was the darkness of the shed, the conversation in the dark. Megan let it unfold, not sure what Gillian was looking for. Until her view of the shed shifted when she left the place, and Gillian stopped her. "Hold, child. Just keep the image there. Do you see them?"

See what? Megan closed her eyes, half in frustration, half to sit and feel, ask her mind if there was something she was missing. And... there was, wasn't there? How'd the lady standing behind her know there were hidden little strings drifting away from the shed, across to Megan, and now tied to her sitting here in Gillian's shop?

"Experience, Megan. Sometimes, you just get that feeling there's more going on than a first look gives away." Gillian reached a long finger down to the water's surface, not quite touching physically; just close enough to push with her will at the gold threads faint as dust connecting Megan to the Brethren.

"Feel anything?" she asked as she did it.

"No ma'am."

"They're not active, then." Gillian waved at the picture Megan had formed, once twice a time again, until it vanished and left her scrying vessel empty and clear. "I think I'd like a beer. How 'bout you?"

She poured a pitcher full from a tiny keg she kept in her pantry, then mugs from the pitcher. "Get the keg filled once a week. The water from the river's good, if you can walk about ten miles upstream. Try and drink any of it drawn here in the city and you'll have the screaming trots for the next month. Assuming you don't shit yourself to death first. I boil the hell out of the it for anything I need clear water for, tea, potions, stuff like that." She put two mugs down on the same table where she kept her scrying gear. "No place else, really. The city charges too much for the square footage. You keep down this path, young lady, and you'll find yourself learning an awful lot about taxes and business fees and other damned fool shit you ran away from."

"So what are those threads, Gillian?"

"Fate. Accident. Something wicked dancing in your future, maybe something sweet and fanciful. Who knows; not I." She took a sip from her mug. "Now really, what they are is a passive tie. They weren't set there by anybody on purpose. You didn't do it, and neither did those two professors in shadow gear. All I can say at this point is that, somewhere in the future, you and those two are going to have some sort of business together. What it is, you'll just have to wait a bit and find out."

Megan mulled that over. "Do you think they know about these fate ties yet?"

Gillian put her hand up, palm to the ground and top to the ceiling, and waggled it back and forth. "Maybe, maybe not. Give it a day or two, and I wouldn't have seen it. The only reason we caught it is because we scried your time today within a few hours of your doing it."

"If one of them has reason, or a habit of going back over their pursuits..."

"They'll see it."

"If neither one of them bothers with that sort of thing on a regular basis..."

"You're likely going to pass up to that moment, whatever's waiting for you, being the only one of the three of you who knows about it."

Megan thought it over some more. "And they can't use those ties to do anything to me? Or me, them?"

Gillian gave her a grim smile. "I never said that."

The implication hung there, behind the lady's smile; Megan tried to ignore it. "I'm not interested in that, other than making sure there's no way for them to trip me up that way. And if they don't even know it exists?"

"Well, you mean besides the obvious?" the lady asked.

That Gillian knew about it. Which meant that others could discover the links. And, presumably, use them. "Do I even want to know what you could do to all of us, if you wanted to?"

"Not really, young lady." She was waiting for something. Megan could see it, sitting behind Gillian's eyes over the lip of her beer mug. Curiosity. She was wondering about?

"What can I do to protect myself, and I guess them?" Since there was no getting rid of the links, protecting the Brethren was just part of the package, if Megan's understanding was half correct.

The smile that lit Gillian's face was far more open, now. "Now there's a very, very good question. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that that very question is the start of understanding magic."

Over the next two nights, while she helped Megan understand the links between herself and the two professors, and how to hide them away where none could find or touch them, Gillian also helped Megan begin to understand what she meant about the Path, and how it was best approached.

"What do you mean, saying it's the first question?"

"You've been out in the world a bit now. Put aside what woman or man has done to you. And tell me about the way you've met the world."

The winds, the endless wind pushing and twisting as she rode across the badlands of the West. The voices, it carried voices from wherever it could pick them up.

The rain, harsh and tearing one minute, just the barest mist the second. Overwhelming her ears and eyes and leaving her blind and deaf and clinging to her saddle. Isolated and torn from the world.

Snow, just as blinding, binding; dust, and there was precious little subtlety there, only the life or death fight.

There were more, the little traps and tests Nature had set in her path as she'd made her first pass across the continent. A conversation she'd known in bits and pieces. Now, looking at it... "You're saying that Nature herself is the first test."

"Yes."

"And magic is one way to pass that test."

"Exactly."

Once she learned to find the fate braids, as Megan started calling them, she found hiding them away easy enough. It was a bit like throwing leaves over your backtrail, she told herself. Here, the leaves were random thoughts. "And not your own," Gillian pointed out. "Or, not just your own. If someone's interested in you, they'll hear random thoughts from you just by being close, so if you use a few of your own, it doesn't stick out. But just a few. The rest have to come from strangers, people you hopefully won't ever see again."

"So a trip to the regular pub is out, too." If her own thoughts and emotions would be a clue, so would be a regular crowd of people that were close to her.

"Well spotted. Where would you go, then?"

The docks. Sort of like being back home; the sea and its sailors were always there, waiting for her when she needed them. That's where she went now, to gather thoughts and feelings, emotions and curses. From the boys and girls hiding in the upper yards, to the captains and factors challenging each other over prices, Megan listened, watched, gathered the material she needed.

Then, memory stuffed full of the strange and the familiar, she went back to Gillian's shop and settled in to weave a blind for the mind's eye. A bit of this, a little of that, pictures and sounds and smells, she tacked a tube of thought together, then molded it in and around the lines that bound her to the Brethren.

"Good. Very good." When it was finished, Gillian leaned over and tested the work. Pushed at it, with hate and love, anger and pride, greed and jealousy and all the rest. And the weave held against her. "I can see your work, that there's something there, but that's all. And in a few weeks, with a little distance and wear and tear to go along with it, I won't even see that."

Megan wanted to believe then that that meant no one else would ever be able to find the work, and that which was hidden beneath it. But she'd heard a few too many stories to hold that feeling with any great confidence.

That being said, she was proud of herself. The blanket of lies was done, and she'd put it together well. It would do, especially if she had the good fortune to not stumble across any more of the Brotherhood.

"There are others, Megan. Don't forget that. The Brotherhood, the Wizards and their University, even the Paladins under the right circumstances, you're right to want to stay out of their way. But they aren't the only ones that could find you out if you don't mind your step." And that's when Gillian showed her that the working she'd made didn't just serve to hide the fate braids.

And so Megan sat down and finished her first great working; she fashioned her braids into a cloak of lies, a drift of hidden meaning that waited for her, wherever she went, hiding herself from the prying mind's eye of others. "It's an extension of the way you shield your inner mind, the methods that you already use. There are those who go out and build themselves a fortress, walls around their minds. That just happens to signal to all and sundry that there's someone there."

"Shouldn't I do that, as well?"

"Yes. But that's what happens when you're discovered and need to protect yourself from all comers. That's your second defense. First though, you need to learn how to hide."

And how to find someone who's hiding from you. As Megan wove her cloak of lies, Gillian asked her to spend her nights and days wandering the city. "Go, and hide from me."

Little by little, Megan discovered how to do so. Twenty minutes, an hour. An afternoon.

A full day. Steadily, as the cloak grew, as she pieced it together and molded it to the way her mind worked, she grew the time it took for Gillian to find her. And when she'd passed a full night and day without being found, Gillian exchanged places with her. "Now, it's your turn. I'll make it easy for you at first."

Same thing. Well, almost. What Gillian didn't warn her of was that searching was a two-way street. "It leaves you vulnerable." To a serpent's return, a strike back along the questing view, past whatever shields she could manage; the first two or three times she discovered Gillian's mind hiding in the alleys, the lady struck back, a simple tap that echoed through the vaults of Megan's head and set a headache for her troubles.

"Don't forget to guard yourself, young lady."

As the times stretched, the force Gillian used to strike back increased. Megan learned to balance the searching mind with the need to protect herself; it was a bit like walking a tightrope, one foot back one foot forward and stay balanced over the middle. Gillian's mind surging back against the search was a wind shaking the tightrope and Megan's job was to be still and flexible while the wind exhausted itself.

The reverse attack left Gillian open; once she knew she could defend herself against it, Megan learned as well to follow the surge back to its source. At first, she attacked the shell she found there; Gillian's mind was unassailable. So Megan switched to using Gillian's attack more simply, as just a backtrail to follow.

The ripostes would come as she learned the other paired steps of this dance. The next came when Gillian was satisfied that Megan could search and defend her searching mind, as well as hide.

Megan had questions. "I can understand how this helps me hide from the Brotherhood, or whoever," she told her teacher. "But you're not just hiding from me." She wanted to know how to build the wall of force Gillian surrounded her mind with, down and beneath her own mind's cloak.

"No, I'm not just hiding. But like the cloak, the wall is a personal work. You'll need to build your stones and mortar, the pieces, from yourself."

She didn't tell Megan any more. All she did was continue each day to test Megan's defenses. Search out little by little until she found the hidden mind, then pulse a bit of something, anger or laughter, screams or whispers, blue or red or green or anything at all, Gillian would push it past Megan's defenses and set it loose to echo in her student's head.

The headaches weren't the worst of it. The worst part was the giggle Gillian left along with it.

After three or four days of that, Megan was just about ready to give up in frustration. She'd started out building bricks and mortar of her own emotions. Her own anger and frustration, all the little bits and pieces of herself laying around ready to shield herself from an attacker.

But they weren't enough. Not matter how well crafted her bricks were, or the mortar she built from desires and dreams, Gillian pushed past them, giggling. With no more effort, it seemed, than pushing down a child's paper fort.

Megan walked out to the beach, out where she could drape the cloak of her mind over the whole of the sand and the waves and forget for a while that there was anything more important than the sun on her face and the salt on her lips.

She wasn't calling Gillian a witch, or a bitch, not yet. She wanted to, the lady making her work far more than even her grandmother had. At least her grandmother had only ever made her work her fingers and her back. Tony'd made her think and learn, sure, but always something concrete. Find the murderer, the smuggler, the cheat and the fraud. Here's the books, or the crime scene, or the witness with something to hide. Like that.

"You'll have to figure it out yourself, how to build this wall." And I won't give you any hints about what that means, how it might work...

'Because there's no one way is there?' Megan told herself.

Emotions are flighty things. Dreams, goals. They are fundamental, if they're real, always there. Except when you need to examine them, test them. Call them up and they vanish in the wind, leave you just wanting to wander off and go fishing instead.

That part was universal, Megan supposed. Everyone had to fight with this stuff. Maybe that was growing up, the young woman considered. But then what defenses were there?

She considered how Gillian attacked. She bundled up anger, laughter; love hate and giggles. Flighty things, emotions, goals, dreams. Easily focused and sent along a line of thought, sent out to sail through Megan's poor defenses and echo giggling behind them.

So, Megan considered, if these things of her mind stuff were better suited for attack, for the easily called up and focused and broadcast, what then could serve for absorbing these things? Gathering the momentary and the brief and turning them away to fall to the wayside where goals not pursued went to be forgotten.

When did thought become deed? Standing where the sea met the sky... the walls Megan built were made of deeds. For an attack of anger, a melding and counting, ten to one. For love, the fierce joy of the glance and the blush, turn in and dance then.

For each dream, a goal to guide it, a schedule to tame it. Her walls were not bricks and mortar, they were a stance, a reception of all that could come and preparation to turn any attack at all to her purpose, rather than the attacker's.

When the next strike came, Megan didn't worry about the fierce punch of greed Gillian sent; she listened instead for the giggle. She let the punch slide by, and there between the greed and the giggle, where the two emotions joined, Megan placed her fulcrum.

And then she rotated the attack; and then she remembered the feeling as she did so. And that memory became the cornerstone of her defense. When came the second attack, she didn't know for sure what emotion she would see barreling her way.

She didn't need to. For she remembered that, whatever it was, she was prepared to turn it.

Gillian was waiting for her, with the door open and a pot of tea sitting on the little table. "Oh, that was well done." She patted the seat of the chair. "Here, sit and tell me what you've learned."

That attacks are ephemeral, and there's always a place where the energy you build up to force on someone else runs out.

The hardest part was holding on to the memory of success. Over the next few days, Gillian repeated the lesson, the attacks. Each one became another stone in Megan's defense, another memory waiting when she needed them.

Because, as she found, there was no such thing as one perfect memory. Each in turn, if she relied on it overmuch, soured. Grew old, stale, unable to sustain the next attack. Despair rolled in, then, and the walls came tumbling down.

Each day's work started by rebuilding the exhausted rubble of yesterday's failure. "Life's kind of like that, Megan. No job's ever really done."

"Is it really like this, all day, every day?" Megan felt something much darker standing behind that idea. Not a wall of defense; a wall of despair where all the dreams and wildest of imaginings had gone to die.

"Of course not," Gillian responded. "There are plenty of smiles and sunsets ahead. It's just that right here and now you've gotta learn how to climb out of the well."

And that was the last bit of imagination Megan needed to complete this part of her lesson. If the walls of despair she glimpsed every morning when she set about rebuilding her defenses were the dirt walls of a well, then the stones of her defense could use that despair. Just as each stone used the intent of her attacker, the structure of the stones, their pattern as she laid them, would use the way despair was always there, but ever porous; if she rotated around it to build her own intent...

To build a defense that stood, one stone more today than yesterday. "That's the start of it, Megan. Each day a little better, tomorrow just a bit better than today."

"You're saying that I've got a long way to go." It was kind of implicit.

"Sure. But you've got what you need to get on with it. A good start."

The two of them worked on attacks, as well. That went along with the defenses. "You won't know for sure what a good defense is, if you don't know what an attack is."

There was another implicit suggestion hiding in that. For Megan, it went back to the feeling she'd had, when the would-be kidnapper had his knife at her throat and the greedy hunger in his belly to bleed her just a little.

If she'd taken him over, complete and full and him reduced to a mewling howling little thing of madness she could claim as a trophy, what would it mean for her?

"A loss here. A scar there." Gillian shrugged. "It's no one thing, dominating other people. There's not a point on that path, no single action where you look up and realize you're a monster."

"But it does happen."

"Hell yes it happens. There's a lot of garbage in the Brotherhood's view of the world. They've collected their own scars; they'll build their own monster someday. But the fact is, they're right. If someone like you or me, someone who can hear what others hear and see what others see, gets hooked on forcing others to their will, then we really are the monsters they terrify Emperors with."

Megan half expected Gillian to look off to the horizon, then, or sigh, maybe. Give some indication that she'd known monsters, been damaged by them. But the older lady didn't do it.

"I don't have much sympathy for the ones I've seen go that far, Megan. And neither will you, when you see the damage they're capable of." Now Gillian did give a pensive look, one that showed memory and sympathy and a few of the scars that came from a life involved in what she was trying to teach Megan. "I think it's time for your last lesson."

"You're kicking me out, just like Tony," Megan said.

"Eventually, yes. And for the same reason. The Wizards, well the University, anyway, do something similar, but the fact that they all live within walking distance of each other makes it easier. What happens is that you reach a point where you don't really listen to me, anymore. And then it's time to go out and spend some time on your own."

But first, she had that last lesson to impart.

The hospital was a rambling collection of buildings, stone, wood, brick, hidden away on the smallest island in the harbor. It was a proper setting for madness and the things that walked in the night. Towers, barred windows, granite dark and wet from the constant sea spray. "She spends her nights there," Gillian told her student.

The two of them walked along the waterfront; the island and the hospital were just a few hundred yards away, across the water. Close enough for a boat to move between the island and the docks twice a day, morning and evening. Carrying supplies, gossip.

"Trustees. They clean the harbor, most of them. She cleans the jail for the sheriff. Serves food, the other little things."

The tavern down the street had the sheriff's warrant to feed the prisoners; the lady in question, the trustee, when she was there, made sure each of the prisoners got their share of it. She was pushing a little cart ahead of her, loaded down with food and empty trays that she filled and passed to the waiting prisoners.

The trustee was young, pretty, barely older than Megan. And she still looked it too, no false age from births or illness. "The sheriff's not..."

"If he is, at least he's treating her well." Gillian kept her face still, under control. "But she doesn't show any signs of it. If I had to guess, she reminds him of someone, and he's just trying to protect her."

Megan's teacher checked in with the deputy working the front of the jail, then led her charge over to the outer bars. "We won't be long. She's not much for conversation."

"The deputy recognizes you," Megan pointed out.

"I check in on her every few weeks," Gillian said. "The sheriff might be able to keep his hands to himself, but he's not the only one with the opportunity."

Megan stored the question away in her mind for later. Why was Gillian so worried about the lady shuffling her feet along the jail hallway in front of them? What part had Gillian played in the events that brought the lady here?

"What's her name?"

"I don't know. And, now, neither does she."

Megan was shocked by that; until the lady on the other side of the bars came close enough for Megan to hear her mind. There was the immediate, the cell and the cart, and the purpose, feeding the prisoners and cleaning after them.

And there just wasn't much else behind it. No sense of self, past present future. Just an empty vessel, waiting only to clear up, head back to her own cell on the island, and do it all again tomorrow.

No name. No memory of how she got here.

No defenses at all against Megan reading anything and everything that might stand behind the clear green eyes.

"May... I... help... you?" the trustee asked.

Megan couldn't respond, not immediately. But the lady on the other side of the bars was patient.

She had nothing to hurry on to.

"Um... No. Thank you." But then Megan did have something else to ask. "Wait. Do you enjoy your work?" Was she treated well?

"I... do," the trustee replied. "The sheriff is kind to Jane."

Megan turned to Gillian, question in her eyes.

"They have to call her something, so Jane Doe it is." Gillian leaned in to get Jane's attention. "Is there anything that I can get for you while I'm here?"

"No, ma'am. I... Jane, has everything she needs."

The way she couldn't quite decide how to refer to herself; Megan had to reach out, not to change anything, just to listen, to look observe.

To find nothing. When she moved from "I" to "Jane", there wasn't a reason. No split personality or paired souls waited behind the bottle green eyes.

There was only the gap where her personality should have been.

That gap stretched in front of Megan's mind eye. Yawned, deep, hungry. Beckoned to her, asked her to drop into it and explore, come in and feel, turn her mind to the task, there was an understanding here for someone smart and kind and...

And there was Gillian's hand and mind pulling Megan back from the trap. "You won't find a lesson there, Megan. Well, except for what not to do."

Megan gasped, hard and fast, as she pulled back from Jane's mind. It was like swimming up and out of an undertow, without Gillian's help...

"You'd have come out of it. Assuming she didn't try and talk you into taking over."

"You mean she's still there?" Inside that pit, trapped in her own mind, watching as her body went about its business with no input whatsoever from the soul and mind and personality that it belonged to.

"Down deep, where all she can know is that her body is there and doing something that she can't control? Well, yes." Gillian turned away, bringing Megan with her. "That's probably enough. You got the point, I'd imagine."

Megan did understand now, the outlines of it. Whatever Jane had done, however many she'd forced to do her bidding... and wasn't that pretty face part of it? Megan shuddered at that idea, the pretty young lady on the make, not just her body on offer, and there was always an old fart or two with more money and lust than sense. One too many, though, and what happened when the lust for power devoured her?

"Does it happen to everyone?"

"No. There aren't any guarantees. She's just one example of what might happen."

Imprisoned in, eaten by her own greed, so far down she didn't even know what her body saw, smelled, only that it was alive and forever beyond her control. "Do you think she got what she deserved, then?"

"I'm no judge, Megan. I look at her and my mind screams at the injustice, because I can only see this side of it. Whatever she did to get to that point is lost forever; we'll never know what the other side of the scale carries to balance the weights we see."

Megan didn't feel guilt. Not standing there where she could hear the murmur of the thing in Jane's mind. Maybe the blank slate was just an act. Maybe someday the greed inside wouldn't be satisfied with self-torture.

The teacher and her student didn't discuss the lesson, then or later, on the walk back to Gillian's shop. There was no need. Megan understood the sheriff, and Gillian. Their natural sympathy, even for the self-inflicted wounds.

Megan just hoped that none of the bystanders, the deputies, the prisoners, and the nurses and doctors across the water at the hospital, got hurt if the thing she'd sensed stirring beneath Jane's semi-catatonia ever broke loose.

When the pair arrived at Gillian's shop, after a brief quiet time while her teacher prepared a pain remedy for one of her older customers, they sat down to a beer and a discussion. "Where to next, Megan? What calls to you?"

The continent. The same way it had before she'd walked through the door of the shop. The call was ever constant, but Megan liked to pretend that the months she'd spent learning Gillian's lessons had given her a new ear for that call.

She didn't tell her teacher any specifics. Gillian shared too many ties with the Brotherhood and the University. Tony's had been more visible, more official. Coming here on his recommendation had been a risk, one that had paid off in the here and now.

Megan wasn't ready to push her luck much farther. The ties to the Brethren were still there. And however light they'd been so far, and so easily concealed, when it came down to it...

When it came down to it, the only reason she had to believe that the Brotherhood hadn't spent the past few months tracking everything she'd done was Gillian's word for it.

The doubts flashed through her mind in seconds; she didn't need to draw them out because she'd worried at them more and more the last few nights as this time drew closer. Megan did hope that the cloak she'd woven, and the shields she'd so carefully constructed, were good enough to hide her thoughts from the lady sitting across from her.

But she didn't lie, precisely. Megan still remembered her grandmother's lessons. Don't get caught on the easy stuff. "I've been keeping up with the ships down at the docks. There's a couple going out that sound like trips I might enjoy." There were more than that, but Megan weighed her options as much on the way the crew and the captains reacted, the things that went through their minds when she talked to them, as the places they claimed to be going.

"Vancouver? Or Galveston?"

Megan managed to conceal her shock; that Gillian had her eyes on the docks wasn't much of a surprise. That she knew so much about how Megan had been making her decision, that was the part that forced Megan to think about her vulnerabilities.

Megan fought those feelings of doubt for months; being on her own, out there following her nose around the world, getting into proper trouble, and then getting out again. That helped, helped build her confidence that the abilities she was learning, and most of all the experiences and mind she built up to use them, were equal to anything she found herself involved in.

The immediate reason the doubts slammed down on her, as she pulled away upriver on a canal boat headed up the Erie Canal, with a cranky set of mules and their tender who'd been happy for a little bit of help, "Especial' someone's good at talking to them jackasses, they trouble you don't know 'em", was the pair of Brethren standing on the docks. Watching for her to get on either the ship to Galveston, or the one headed around the Cape to Vancouver and then China.

The ties still bound her, but the fact that they were stuck watching to see which boat she got on helped. It meant that Gillian, and the pair of University professors, Wizards, who'd used her as their stalking horse, had actually delivered on Gillian's promise. Megan's own-built magical protections, the cloaks and walls and just the tiniest bit of self-confidence, were working, a little; enough so she could ride the doubt and know she'd come out of it on the other side able to handle whatever came her way.

It was enough, for now.

She did stick her arms across the rails of the canal boat and flip the Brethren her middle fingers. One way or the other... If Megan's suspicions about Gillian and why Tony'd sent her there. If the pair of Wizards had an informal agreement with the paladin and the lady in her shop, to carefully shape the training of renegades that came their way...

Well then they'd all well earned the gesture.