Kate stood in front of Siobhan, feeling as nervous as she did before any fight. She should have felt safe; she was standing on the grounds of Thomas's forge, and this woman was supposed to be her teacher.
And yet she felt as though the world was about to disappear from under her.
"Did you hear me?" Siobhan asked. "It is time for you to repay the favor you owe me, apprentice."
The favor that Kate had bargained back at the fountain in exchange for Siobhan's training. The favor that she had been dreading ever since then, because she knew that whatever Siobhan asked, it would be terrible. The woman of the forest was strange and capricious, powerful and dangerous in equal measure. Any task she set would be difficult, and probably unpleasant.
Kate had agreed, though she didn't have a choice.
"What favor?" Kate asked at last. She looked around for Thomas or Will, but it wasn't because she thought the smith or his son could save her from this. Instead, she wanted to make sure that neither of them would find themselves caught up in whatever Siobhan was doing.
The smithy wasn't there, and neither was Will. Instead, she and Siobhan now stood by the fountain of Siobhan's home, the waters running pure for once rather than the stone of it being dry and filled with leaves. Kate knew it had to be an illusion, but when Siobhan stepped up into it, it seemed solid enough. It even dampened the hem of her dress.
"Why so frightened, Kate?" she asked. "I'm only asking you for a favor. Are you afraid that I'll send you to Morgassa to hunt for a roc's egg on the salt plains, or to fight some would-be summoner's creatures in the Far Colonies? I'd have thought you'd enjoy that kind of thing."
"Which is why you won't do it," Kate guessed.
Siobhan quirked a smile at that. "You think I'm cruel, don't you? That I act for no reason? The wind can be cruel if you are standing in it with no coat, and you could no more fathom its reasons than…well, anything I say you cannot do you will take as a challenge, so let's not."
"You're not the wind," Kate pointed out. "The wind can't think, can't feel, can't know wrong from right."
"Oh, is that it?" Siobhan said. She sat on the edge of her fountain now. Still, Kate had the impression that if she tried to do the same, she would fall through it and tumble to the grass around Thomas's forge. "You think I'm evil?"
Kate didn't want to agree with it, but she couldn't think of a way to disagree without lying. Siobhan might not be able to reach the corners of Kate's mind, any more than Kate's powers could touch Siobhan, but she suspected that the other woman would know if she lied now. She kept silent instead.
"The nuns of your Masked Goddess would have called it evil when you slaughtered them," Siobhan pointed out. "The men of the New Army you butchered would have called you an evil thing, and worse. I'm sure there are a thousand men on Ashton's streets right now who would call you evil, just for being able to read the minds of others."
"Are you trying to tell me that you're good, then?" Kate countered.
Siobhan shrugged at that. "I'm trying to tell you the favor you must do. The necessary thing. Because that is what life is, Kate. A succession of necessary things. Do you know the curse of power?"
This sounded a lot like one of Siobhan's lessons. The best Kate could say for it was that at least she wasn't being stabbed in this one.
"No," Kate said. "I don't know the curse of power."
"It's simple," Siobhan said. "If you have power, then everything you do will affect the world. If you have power and you can see what is coming, then even choosing not to act remains a choice. You are responsible for the world just by being in it, and I have been in it a very long time."
"How long?" Kate asked.
Siobhan shook her head. "That is the kind of question whose answer has a price, and you still haven't paid the price for your training, apprentice."
"This favor of yours," Kate said. She was still dreading it, and nothing Siobhan had said made it easier.
"It's a simple enough thing," Siobhan said. "There is someone who must die."
She made it sound as bland as if she were ordering Kate to sweep a floor or fetch water for a bath. She swept a hand around, and the water of the fountain shimmered, showing a young woman walking through a garden. She wore rich fabrics, but none of the insignia of a noble house. A merchant's wife or daughter, then? Someone who had made money another way? She was pleasant looking enough, with a smile at some unheard joke that seemed to take joy in the world.
"Who is this?" Kate asked.
"Her name is Gertrude Illiard," Siobhan said. "She lives in Ashton, in the family compound of her father, the merchant Savis Illiard."
Kate waited for more than that, but there was nothing. Siobhan gave no explanation, no hint as to why this young woman had to die.
"Has she committed some crime?" Kate asked. "Done some terrible thing?"
Siobhan raised an eyebrow. "Do you need to know such a thing to be able to kill? I do not believe that you do."
Kate could feel her anger rising at that. How dare Siobhan ask her to do a thing like this? How dare she demand that Kate cover her hands in blood without the slightest reason or explanation?
"I'm not just some killer to send where you want," Kate said.
"Really?" Siobhan stood, pushing off from the lip of the fountain in a movement that was strangely childlike, as if stepping off of a swing, or leaping from the edge of a cart like an urchin who had stolen a ride through the city. "You have killed plenty of times before."
"That's different," Kate insisted.
"Every moment of life is a thing of unique beauty," Siobhan agreed. "But then, every moment is a dull thing, the same as all the others too. You have killed plenty of people, Kate. How is this one so different?"
"They deserved it," Kate said.
"Oh, they deserved it," Siobhan said, and Kate could hear the mockery in her voice even if the shields the other woman always kept in place meant that Kate couldn't see any of the thoughts behind all this. "The nuns deserved it for all they did to you, and the slaver for what he did to your sister?"
"Yes," Kate said. She was certain of that, at least.
"And the boy you killed on the road for daring to come after you?" Siobhan continued. Kate found herself wondering exactly how much the other woman knew. "And the soldiers on the beach for…how did you justify that one, Kate? Was it because they were invading your home, or was it just that your orders had taken you there, and once the fight starts, there isn't time to ask why?"
Kate took a step back from Siobhan, mostly because if Kate hit her, she suspected that there would be consequences that would be too much to deal with.
"Even now," Siobhan said, "I suspect I could put a dozen men or women in front of you through whom you would put a blade willingly. I could find you foe after foe, and you would cut them down. Yet this is different?"
"She's innocent," Kate said.
"As far as you know," Siobhan replied. "Or perhaps I simply haven't told you all the countless deaths she is responsible for. All the misery." Kate blinked, and she was standing on the other side of the fountain. "Or perhaps I simply haven't told you all the good she has done, all the lives she has saved."
"You aren't going to tell me which it is, are you?" Kate asked.
"I have given you a task," Siobhan said. "I expect you to perform it. Your questions and qualms do not come into it. This is about the loyalty an apprentice owes her teacher."
So she wanted to know if Kate would kill just because she had commanded it.
"You could kill this woman yourself, couldn't you?" Kate guessed. "I've seen what you can do, appearing out of nowhere like this. Killing one person, you have the powers to do it."
"And who's to say I'm not doing it?" Siobhan asked. "Perhaps the easiest way for me to do this is to send my apprentice."
"Or perhaps you just want to see what I'll do," Kate guessed. "This is some kind of test."
"Everything is a test, dear," Siobhan said. "Haven't you worked that part out by now? You will do this."
What would happen when she did? Would Siobhan even really allow her to kill some stranger? Perhaps that was the game she was playing. Perhaps she intended to allow Kate to go all the way to the edge of murder and then stop her test. Kate hoped that was true, but even so, she didn't like being told what to do like this.
That wasn't a strong enough term for what Kate felt right then. She hated this. She hated Siobhan's constant games, her constant desire to turn her into some kind of tool to use. Running through the forest hunted by ghosts had been bad enough. This was worse.
"What if I say no?" Kate said.
Siobhan's expression darkened.
"Do you think you get to?" she asked. "You are my apprentice, sworn to me. I may do as I wish with you."
Plants sprang up around Kate then, sharp thorns turning them into weapons. They didn't touch her, but the threat was obvious. It seemed that Siobhan wasn't done yet. She gestured over the water of the fountain again, and the scene it showed shifted.
"I could take you and give you over to one of the pleasure gardens of Southern Issettia," Siobhan said. "There is a king there who might be inclined to be cooperative in exchange for the gift."
Kate had a brief glimpse of silk-clad girls running around ahead of a man twice their age.
"I could take you and put you in the slave lines of the Near Colonies," Siobhan continued, gesturing so that the scene showed long lines of workers working with picks and shovels in an open mine. "Perhaps I will tell you where to find the finest stones for merchants who do what I wish."
The scene shifted another time, showing what was obviously a torture chamber. Men and women screamed as masked figures worked with hot irons.
"Or perhaps I will give you to the priests of the Masked Goddess, to earn repentance for your crimes."
"You wouldn't," Kate said.
Siobhan reached out, grabbing her so fast that Kate barely had time to think before the other woman was forcing her head down under the water of the fountain. She cried out, but that just meant that she had no time to take a breath as she plunged into it. The cold of the water surrounded her, and though Kate fought, it felt as though her strength had abandoned her in those moments.
"You don't know what I would do, and what I wouldn't," Siobhan said, her voice seeming to come from a long way away. "You think that I think about the world as you do. You think that I will stop short, or be kind, or ignore your insults. I could send you to do any of the things I wanted, and you would still be mine. Mine to do with as I wished."
Kate saw things in the water then. She saw screaming figures wracked with agony. She saw a space filled with pain and violence, terror and helplessness. She recognized some of them, because she'd killed them, or their ghosts, at least. She'd seen their images as they'd chased her through the forest. They were warriors who had been sworn to Siobhan.
"They betrayed me," Siobhan said, "and they paid for their betrayal. You will keep your word to me, or I will make you into something more useful. Do as I want, or you will join them, and serve me as they do."
She released Kate then, and Kate came up, spluttering as she fought for air. The fountain was gone now, and they were standing in the yard of the smithy once more. Siobhan was a little way from her now, standing as if nothing had happened.
"I want to be your friend, Kate," she said. "You wouldn't want me for an enemy. But I will do what I must."
"What you must?" Kate shot back. "You think that you have to threaten me, or have people killed?"
Siobhan spread her hands. "As I said, it is the curse of the powerful. You have potential to be very useful in what is to come, and I will make the most of that."
"I won't do it," Kate said. "I won't kill some girl for no reason."
Kate lashed out then, not physically, but with her powers. She drew her strength together and threw it like a stone at the walls that sat around Siobhan's mind. It bounced off, the power flickering away.
"You don't have the power to fight me," Siobhan said, "and you don't get to make that choice. Let me make this simpler for you."
She gestured, and the fountain appeared again, the waters shifting. This time, when the image settled, she didn't have to ask who she was looking at.
"Sophia?" Kate said. "Leave her alone, Siobhan, I'm warning you-"
Siobhan grabbed her again, forcing her to look at that image with the awful strength she seemed to possess here.
"Someone is going to die," Siobhan said. "You can choose who, simply by choosing whether you kill Gertrude Illiard. You can kill her, or your sister can die. It is your choice."
Kate stared at her. She knew that it wasn't a choice, not really. Not when it came to her sister. "All right," she said. "I'll do it. I'll do what you want."
She turned, heading for Ashton. She didn't go to say goodbye to Will, Thomas, or Winifred, partly because she didn't want to risk bringing Siobhan that close to them, and partly because she was sure that they would somehow see what it was she had to do next, and they would be ashamed of her for it.
Kate was ashamed. She hated the thought of what she was about to do, and the fact that she had so little choice in it. She just had to hope that it was all a test, and that Siobhan would stop her in time.
"I have to do this," she said to herself as she walked. "I have to."
Yes, Siobhan's voice whispered to her, you do.