I was thunderstruck for a moment. “That…that can’t be so,” I said finally.
“Oh, yes?” said Ana. “And how did you learn to pick locks? Or duplicate Sazi text? And how did you cut down three men with almost no combat experience? Your muscles remembered. They remembered movements, remembered your training, from long ago. They saw the dangers and moved you about.”
Miljin took his sword back from me and sheathed it. “And though I don’t know who trained you, boy, they must’ve done a proper job.”
I listened to this in quiet shock. Memories of the fight outside the miller’s flooded my mind: the way I’d been pulled, the way my eyes had read the soldiers’ movements, the way my hands and feet had acted as if another had been controlling them. And in a way, I realized they had been: they had been obeying a different Dinios Kol, one from many months ago, when he’d acted out those very motions in training.
“They never tested me for this,” I said.
“That’s because it’s rare as all hell,” Ana said. “So rare even I’ve never seen someone with the knack.”
“But I have,” said Miljin. He gaze grew distant. “I once knew a man who was one of the greatest duelists I’d ever seen. Could parry and dance and fight like no other. And though his arms were corded and strong, he was no crackler—yet almost none could defeat him. I wondered how he’d learned his trade…Though now and again, I noticed that as he fought, his eyes seemed to shimmer. To vibrate in his very skull. An engraver, with the knack. Just like you.”
“So…why is it we wished to confirm this about me?” I said. I returned to sit at the table. “Do you wish me to become some kind of bladesman like that, ma’am?”
Ana turned to Miljin. “Perhaps not a bladesman—but someone capable of defeating the threats we now face?”
Miljin stared at her. “What? No. Hell no. Even with his knack, we can’t manage such a thing in a day, ma’am.”
Ana frowned. “No? Why not?”
“Well…I don’t wish to be impertinent, ma’am, but you can’t just memorize combat as if it were a country jig,” said Miljin. “The boy here almost got killed at the miller’s on account he put his foot in the wrong bit of mud! There’s all kinds of bits you have to learn just by doing. Reading the landscape, the look in the other man’s eye, the type of blade he has. Those aren’t purely movement, so I doubt he can memorize it. If he trains, he can learn quick—but it’d still take time.”
“Damn it all, Miljin,” she snapped. “Then what can you give the boy in the time we have that would actually keep him alive?”
“Beg pardon,” I said, “but—keep me alive?”
They both looked at me, then away. There was an awkward silence.
“Why are you so worried about me, ma’am?” I said. I recalled what we’d been discussing before their little test. “Does this have anything to do with the person who killed Aristan and Suberek?”
Another silence. Ana waved a hand at Miljin as if to say—Well, go on, then.
Miljin stared off into the courtyard for a moment. Then he asked: “You ever heard of a twitch, boy?”
“A twitch? No, sir.”
“Hmph. Wouldn’t expect you to. It’s an altered being. A soldier, suffused for combat. Or they used to be.” He leaned forward conspiratorially, the bench creaking under his girth. “See—a twitch is suffused to possess superhuman explosiveness. Not just strength, for that’s different. Rather, twitches can move faster than most human beings, leaping forward like a mantis snapping a moth from a flower.”
“What might you mean by ‘used to be’ soldiers, sir?” I asked.
“Well, it’s one thing to have strength,” said Miljin. He tapped his arm. “You can alter muscles and ligaments to support that pretty good. But speed…that wears you down. And that’s what happened to twitches. The more they moved, the more their very joints and bones dissolved, their flesh unraveling like a shoddy scarecrow in the wind. Apoths put some kind of healing graft in them to try to keep them upright, but there was some kind of problem with that, too…”
“Contagion,” said Ana. “Most healing augmentations, ironically, are quite susceptible to contagion. Very active blood is good for healing, but also for spreading mold or fungi throughout the whole of your body, apparently.”