Exploitable Weaknesses by Brian Keller (red queen free ebook txt) 📗

in search of the Spymaster. She felt certain that he’d want to hear what she’d discovered and what she sensed. Hoping to narrow her search, she reached out with her Talent and tried to feel where he might be or might have been. She got no indications. After she’d knocked on several doors, she was finally informed that Yoren had left the Palace District not long after she had, and he’d left in a rush. The fact that she hadn’t yet found him seemed to indicate that he hadn’t returned.

As she returned to her own chambers, her thoughts drifted back over the events of the day. From the time she’d felt the waves from two of the Gifted fighting, her preconceptions had been challenged. What she’d been taught about the Gifted was significantly incomplete. Gifted abilities were not alike. Manifestation of Talent in the rest of the populace differed not only in which Talents appeared but also in how they were accessed. While all the Gifted may channel power, and convert the power of one element force into another in the same manner, it seemed that not all of them had equal access to the same elemental forces. It seemed that even amongst the Gifted there might still be variations in affinities. She couldn’t blame those that had written the research materials that she’d been studying all this time; undoubtedly, they’d never had two such Gifted to study at the same time, and certainly not while locked in combat.

She might not know where Yoren was, but she could occupy her time documenting her own findings. No doubt the professors at the University would disregard, or even dispute what she was about to write, but she knew what she’d learned today was the truth and it needed to be written down.

*****

Cooper walked for a few more hours. He didn’t know how much distance he’d covered, but he knew he hadn’t reached the road yet. He thought he must be getting close to the road, so he knew better than to start a fire to warm himself. Even if he had wood to start a fire, any campfire would draw attention and he was still too close to the city to risk the kind of attention that might bring him. The air hadn’t started turning cold yet, but those days weren’t far off. He unpacked his bag and pulled on a second set of clothes, taking care to cover his feet. He wrapped his blades up inside his leathers and stuffed the bundle into the bottom of the bag, then pulled it around to use as a pillow. The second layer of clothing helped, but he still shivered himself to sleep. Tomorrow he’d consider cutting a few armloads of tall grass and weaving a sleeping mat, but most likely his time would be better spent putting as much distance as possible between himself and Paleros.

He woke before dawn, as was his habit, but today instead of using the privy at the end of the sleeping bay and doing his stretching exercises, he raised himself slightly on one elbow and took a look around. The grasses were tall enough that he had to sit upright in order to see far enough to serve any purpose. He still couldn’t see the road that would lead him to the Forest, but he knew that if he kept walking north he’d come across it. He’d just need to keep his eyes open for mounted patrols. As long as he was able to move uninterrupted, by tonight he felt he could relax. He wouldn’t expect patrols to venture out much more than a day’s walk from the city.

The remainder of the day was largely uneventful. He located the road by mid-morning and was able to quicken his pace. He continued to walk through lunch time, though he did pause briefly enough to pull some meat, bread and cheese from his pack. Memories of the last time he walked this road plagued him. The thoughts were bittersweet. He wondered what had happened to Kolrem. Whether he’d escaped when the soldiers burst into the Guild halls, or whether he’d fought and been captured, or killed. Thoughts of Kolrem opened the floodgates for other thoughts of friends and classmates to burst through. Rukle hadn’t indicated that he’d seen anyone else he could identify with any certainty. He had told Cooper that he thought he might’ve seen Aden, a classmate and assistant Apothecary, shackled and loaded into a cage, alive. He also said he’d seen the corpse of their combat instructor, Mister Skran, loaded onto a wagon. According to Rukle, it was either him, or someone with his same build who was dressed like him.

To distract himself from these thoughts, he busied himself with watching for rabbits as he walked westward. Within a few hours, he’d killed, gutted and skinned three rabbits and spent five minutes stalking some other animal. Once he’d gotten close enough, he saw that it looked more like a cross between a rat and a large cat. Since he didn’t know what it was, he left it alone and returned to the road. Three plump rabbits would provide plenty of meat for dinner.

By dinner time he still hadn’t reached the edge of the forest, but he could see it in the distance to the west as the road crested the higher points of the low, rolling hills. He realized that he still had no wood to build a cooking fire. He’d hoped, and even expected, to have found some fallen branches under the trees that grew in the fence rows, but obviously other travelers had the same notion, or perhaps it was the tenants themselves, picking up wood for their own cooking fires. It was made all the more obvious why merchants and other travelers carried bundles of firewood with them on their ventures. Cooper decided that if he couldn’t start a fire, there was little point in stopping