A Lesson In Power

Aymon swiped through his tablet, reading snatches of the report that had been made on his new apprentices for the second or third time. He flipped past pictures of Sid sitting at the kitchen table of his family's farmhouse on Galena, leaned over waist deep in the guts of a tractor engine, and accompanying his older brother to the bar in town. Similarly, there were plenty of pictures of Yan enjoying her summer break with her family: working navigation on the bridge of the starship Iron Dreams , eating dinner with her friend Calor, taking shore leave on Byforest Station. It was an amalgamation of all sorts of quotidian images, taken from video surveillance cameras that had been placed on the ship by an Imperial agent.

It was only Kino whose photographic record was spotty at best. Although she was physically the closest to Aymon by far-- she had remained in her tiny Academy apartment over the summer-- she had also been almost completely unsurveillable. Kino had immediately found and destroyed the cameras that had been placed in her apartment, and she had sent a text to Aymon asking him to respect her privacy, please. He had been annoyed, but Halen had laughed and acquiesced. He had not had someone reinstall the cameras.

It was Halen's policy that if the students could thwart his surveillance, they had the right to. In some ways, it was more teaching them to be their own safeguards than anything, a lesson that Kino had apparently learned already. Even without the cameras, though, when Kino left her apartment (a surprisingly rare event), she was uniquely hard to follow. She didn't even seem to be doing it on purpose; pursuers simply slid off her like raindrops slid off an oiled coat. Halen had been patient, though, and one of his staff was finally persistent enough to figure out where Kino went.

It was annoying to learn the answer, but it was not a problem that couldn't be dealt with delicately over time. The first day of his apprentices being with him was probably not that time, though.

"They've made it through security," Halen said. "Should be just a minute, now."

"They're together?"

"They're presenting a unified front, at least," Halen said. He must have been watching them with the power, tracking them as they moved through the halls of Stonecourt, since he wasn't looking at his phone and the security system. Instead, Halen was just looking out the window behind Aymon's heavy wooden desk, watching birds flit across the sunlit courtyard outside.

Aymon put down the tablet on his desk. He wasn't going to learn anything new from a report he had already studied cover to cover. "Is it wrong that I feel nervous?"

"I'm sure teachers get jitters on the first day of school as much as the students do," Halen said. "You're going to be stuck with them for a while."

"The rest of my natural and unnatural life, you mean," Aymon said with a slight frown. He had been resistant to the idea of taking apprentices for a long time, because it meant, in a way, admitting that he was getting older. He was no longer young at all, and he needed to ensure that the line of Voices was unbroken, which meant training a successor to take over for him. That time would be in the far distant future, he hoped. They day that he would relinquish his position would not be a happy one. Thinking about it put him in a sour mood.

"I can understand you wanting to make a good second impression. Or third, for Yan."

Aymon made a noncommittal noise. "I'm sure that any opinions they have of me are more set by what they've seen on the news than what they thought of our interviews."

"Of course, but they're going to be forming a much closer impression of you starting now."

"I'm not sure which of us has the other at an advantage." Aymon drummed his fingers on the desktop in impatience. "I certainly hope they won't annoy me too much."

"It would only be fair, considering what you put Herrault through."

Aymon laughed at that. "It was hardly only my fault."

"They're outside the door."

Aymon stood. A long second later, there was a knock, probably from his secretary, Ms. Rosario. "Come in."

The heavy wooden door swung open, and his three new apprentices almost tumbled inside the room. Ms. Rosario offered Sandreas a smile over the top of Kino's head, then shut the door behind herself, stranding the apprentices in the room with him.

It was the first time that Aymon had seen the three of them together. They stood as though they had some familiarity with each other; Yan and Sid were bumping elbows. All of them seemed frozen, unsure of what to do or say.

Kino was looking around the room furtively, taking in the sunny white walls, bookshelves with well chosen mementoes, the famously photographed desk, the couches, and coffee table with a Book of Songs laying open on its glossy surface. Her left hand was prying at her right sleeve, tugging the button of her cassock almost all the way off.

Sid had a wide smile on his face and a mischievous glint in his eye. He leaned forward slightly, resting on the balls of his feet, and he had his hands loosely in his pockets.

Yan stood stiffly upright, the tension evident in the controlled hunch of her shoulders. She looked back and forth between Aymon and Halen, clearly not happy, but she kept that emotion off her face and wore a thin, professional smile, replacing nervousness or anger.

"Welcome to Stonecourt," Aymon said, after half a second of letting them stew. "Please, take a seat." He gestured to one of the couches and all three jumped to obey, sitting down as if it were some kind of competition. Yan ended up in the middle of the other two. At a much less frantic pace, Aymon made his way over to the opposite couch, sharing a brief look of amusement with Halen on his way.

"I trust you all had a pleasant summer?" Aymon asked.

There was a brief moment of silence, then Yan spoke up. "Yes, sir."

"Is Ms. BarCarran the only one of you who has a voice?"

"Maybe," Sid said with a cheeky grin. "Sir."

Aymon clamped down on his own amusement and just gave Sid a look. He would cut down on false politeness now. "There's no need to be so formal when we're in private," he said. "You're going to be spending-- I hope it's a good long time-- with me, so we might as well get used to each other now. You can call me Aymon or Sandreas, whichever you prefer."

If Sid was crestfallen at having the tactic of 'waiting just a little too long to be polite to someone' taken away from him immediately, he didn't look it, and continued to smile and meet Aymon's eyes. Yan, judging by her face, seemed to have made up her mind that she was going to call him 'Sandreas', first names be damned. Kino watched the exchange with no change in expression, still silent and twisting the sleeve of her cassock.

"Personally, I think the best introduction that we can make with each other is by pretending that we are already well acquainted. The philosophy of apprenticeships is in learning by doing, of course. I wish I could say that I'll be putting you all to work immediately, but I think that that would be an overestimation of both of our capabilities," Aymon said. "Quite obviously, I've never had apprentices before, so this will be a learning experience for all of us." Halen was right, he sounded just like some kind of teacher, and not a very good one. "I suppose I should lay down some ground information, shouldn't I?"

The three apprentices nodded at him, following Yan's lead. She had her eyes fixed on him, steadfastly ignoring Halen over by the window.

"Right. I'm going to be announcing that I have taken apprentices at the Governor's Dinner, which is coming up in two weeks. That will be your first public appearance, and the first thing I'm going to require of you. That should give us all at least enough time to settle ourselves into this new arrangement, before I start giving you serious work." He smiled, trying not to make it sound too much like a threat. Aymon was used to dealing with known quantities: politicians with agendas. It was odd to not have that be the case, and it left him floundering. Since the apprentices weren't providing much in the way of visible feedback to his words, he just had to keep going.

"In these two weeks, you're going to receive a crash course on how to protect yourself. It's an unfortunate fact of life that as soon as you become a visible public figure, especially one close to me, you become a target. I'd like to minimize the chances of one of you dying immediately. I believe I mentioned this to you already, Yan."

"You did," she said, and glanced at the other two, surprised that he hadn't said that to them.

"Sadly for you," Aymon said, this time with a broad smile and sweeping look across his three apprentices. "I don't have time to spend teaching you the basics of self defense."

"We had self defense at the Academy," Sid interjected. It was a relief that he did, allowing Aymon to play off his words.

"And I learned how to cook from my mother," Aymon said with a wave of his hand. "That doesn't mean that I could serve a three course meal. You may not know this, but the Academy masters have a vested interest in all their students not being able to hurt each other." Aymon's voice was dry as chalk.

Kino's lips twitched in a tiny smile, perhaps despite herself. Aymon took that as a victory.

"So, as I was saying, I will not be teaching you that on a daily basis." At least not for now, he thought. "And, until you're publicly announced as my apprentices, I can't be dragging you along through my day either. That means that, for the next two weeks, you will be at Halen's mercy."

Yan stiffened immediately, as Aymon had expected she would. Sid simply looked confused.

Halen took his cue to come over, and he stood behind the couch on which Aymon sat, looking down at the apprentices with a placid expression. "You're heart's beating like a drum, kid," Halen said, looking at Yan. "I'd think it's obvious that I'm not here to hurt you."

Yan's lips were pressed tightly together, and she refused to look at his face, instead looking slightly over Sandreas's shoulder.

Sid's hand crept out of his pocket, and in his lap he fingerspelled something too fast for Aymon to catch, directed at Yan. Aymon didn't sign, but he knew the alphabet, if the person signing it went slow enough.

"Halen is my personal assistant, something like my aide-de-camp, if he were in the Fleet. I trust him with my life. If he tells you to do something, consider it as though it were an order coming directly from me. Do you understand?"

He waited until all three apprentices had mumbled some variation of 'yes' before he continued.

"Excellent. As long as you keep that in mind, you should have no problems." Although he wasn't looking at Halen, Aymon knew he would be amused by that pronouncement. Aymon glanced at the clock. "Do you have any questions? I know this is all very abrupt, but I only have an hour before I need to meet with Admiral Vaalks, so if you don't, I'd like to begin your first lesson quickly."

"You're coming?" Halen asked.

"I figure a practical demonstration is warranted."

Yan and Sid both looked like they had questions, but it seemed that Yan was not going to ask for the sake of time and politeness. Sid was not going to ask because Aymon looked him in the eye and raised an eyebrow, silently asking if the questions on the tip of Sid's tongue (or the tip of his fingers, more natively) were actually relevant. He felt instinctively that Sid was much like his own younger self, and thus he had some handle on how to control him at this moment. It would probably get more difficult as time went on and Sid grew more used to the limits and freedoms of his role, but for this moment, a wily smile was an easy boundary to push and prod at, an easy, silent negotiation for them both to have.

"Well, if there are no questions..."

"Why doesn't Yan like you?" Kino asked abruptly, staring at Halen. Sid twitched forward and looked at her. Apparently that had been the question that he was about to ask.

"Oh, she didn't already tell you?" Halen asked. Aymon knew that voice. It was the voice he used when he was smiling, with teeth. "I used to be a pirate, and she used to be a spacer. We're natural enemies."

"It's not 'used to be,'" Yan muttered, then bit her lip, looking down at her lap.

"Oh, you're not a spacer anymore," Halen said. "You haven't been since you were hauled off to the Academy, and you certainly aren't one now."

Aymon wished they would drop the subject. He recognized the tone in Halen's voice, a melancholy sound. They almost never talked seriously about Halen's past, and it surprised Aymon that Halen was willing to be so immediately open with the apprentices.

Yan had caught Halen's change in tone too, because her face, which had been previously twisted and averted in a stifled anger and embarrassment, stilled, and she glanced at Halen for a second with involuntary sympathy rather than rancor. Then the mask was on again, and she looked at Aymon with a stiff smile.

Aymon stood. "Let's not waste time on the past," he said. "You'll all have plenty of time to get to know each other, I'm sure." He headed out of his office, stopping in front of his secretary's desk. "If Vaalks comes while I'm out, tell him I'll be here as soon as I can." He began to leave again.

"Of course, sir," Ms. Rosario said. "And I have a message for you from Guildmaster Vaneik."

Aymon resisted the urge to sigh heavily, stopping in his tracks. "And what does he have to say?"

"He says he's looking forward to discussing the Olar situation with you at the Governor's Dinner."

"I'm sure he is," Aymon said.

"Do you want to send a reply?"

"How long until he's out of contact range?"

"Six hours."

"Then I have until then to come up with an answer." He turned again and left for real this time, leading his apprentices like a row of ducklings down the hallways of Stonecourt. People he passed in the hallway were curious about the new apprentices, so even those who were well used to seeing Aymon around had a reason to stop and stare. In an otherwise unoccupied stairwell, Aymon said to his apprentices, "Don't mind people around here. They'll get used to you soon enough."

"And," Halen said, his voice echoing off the concrete walls, "they have strict orders not to bother you, at least for now."

There was no response from the three, focused on hustling to keep up with Aymon's brisk pace down these hallways that were so unfamiliar to them. They made it to one of the sub basements of Stonecourt, and finally into the suite of training rooms that were kept down there. Halen used them, as did the elite security team that answered just to him, but that wasn't a very large group of people. Right now, they were in the simplest room, a harshly lit, wide open space that could be used for target practice or for general recreation. Along the back wall where they had entered, there were tall locked cabinets full of equipment, and the opposite wall had targets set up.

"I'll let you take the lead here," Aymon said to Halen. "This is more your domain than mine."

"Oh, and here I thought you had come to be helpful." Halen clapped his hands and looked at the apprentices. "Alright. Raise your hand if you've ever been in a situation that almost killed you." It was an abrupt change of tone, but Halen had never been one to waste time when there was work to be done.

Only Kino raised her hand, and Yan seemed startled by it. "I was on Falmar," Kino said, by way of explanation, voice completely flat. "Does that count?"

"It was a poorly phrased question. You've never been in a fight, though?"

"Not one that would have killed me," Kino said with a shrug.

"And you, Yan? Was the Iron Dreams ever attacked by those pirates you hate so much?" Halen smiled.

"Before I was born," Yan said, looking steadfastly across the room, not directly at Halen.

"Maybe it's for the best that you don't already have experience when it comes to survival," Halen said. "I won't have to break any bad habits."

"Bad habits?" Sid asked. "It would be pretty weird if any of us had made a habit of getting almost killed."

"Maybe that was another poor choice of words on my part," Halen said, but didn't clarify what he meant. "Let's start with a bit of a quiz. If someone were attacking you, what would your first instinct be?"

"What are they attacking me with? Where am I? What resources do I have?" Sid asked.

Aymon pursed his lips, leaning back against one of the cabinets. "It's a general hypothetical, Sid. Fight, flight, or freeze."

"I'd take cover," Yan said, sounding thoughtful. "If I could. That would give me a second to think."

Kino shook her head. "Better to just get out if you can."

Sid crossed his arms and frowned. "You're not going to have the opportunity to get out. Anyone who's after you who's smart would have blocked off the exits."

"You're not wrong," Halen said. "There are times when sheltering in place or running will be good options, but most of the time, they won't be. If you pick bad cover, for example, you could end up entrenching yourself in an indefensible or inescapable position. If you try to run, you can run directly into someplace even worse than where you were. But, of course, if you give yourself the ability to fight back, and have tools ready to defend yourself with, running or hiding become more viable options."

"Have any of you ever used the power to fight before?" Aymon asked.

Yan and Kino both shook their heads no. It was Sid, of course, who had a clarifying question. "It depends on what you mean by fight, and use the power."

With exaggerated patience, Aymon said, "Well?"

Suddenly Sid seemed embarrassed, as though he remembered exactly where he was. His hands twitched a little, and he jammed them into his pockets. "I used to throw things at my siblings. Probably doesn't count."

"I'd say not," Halen said. "Since I assume you weren't actually trying to hurt them."

"The masters would punish anyone who was caught fighting with the power," Yan said. "You said they had a vested interest in students not being able to hurt each other."

"I'm aware," Aymon said. "The power can be a deadly weapon, if you have the strength to use it that way."

"You mean like stopping someone's heart?" Sid asked. "We're going to learn to do that?"

"Do you want to learn how to do that?" Halen asked. It was a loaded question, and he stared directly at Sid, who, to his credit, did not flinch.

"Has it ever mattered to a teacher if I wanted to learn something or not?" Sid shot back, a weird bitterness in the squint of his eyes.

Silence fell for a second as Halen appraised Sid. "Did you ever try to use the power on someone else?"

"Yeah. Of course I tried."

"And what happened?"

"Nothing." He had a defensive posture now, his arms crossed.

Halen nodded. "I'm not surprised. Using the power on someone else's body is the most difficult thing that you can do. Do they ever talk about that, at the Academy of yours?"

"Only to tell people not to try it," Yan said. "I think a lot of people tried it and then decided that it was impossible."

"It's not impossible," Halen said. "Just very difficult. So much so that I doubt any of you will be able to do it for several years."

Yan nodded and Kino was still, both apparently willing to accept that answer. Sid, on the other hand, pressed on. "Why not? It seems like, if we're going to learn to defend ourselves, that should be the first thing we learn."

Halen glanced at Aymon, a look Aymon knew well, a request for permission. Aymon gave an almost imperceptible nod. He didn't know exactly what Halen was going to do, but perhaps it would be best if Sid learned this lesson now.

"Did anyone ever explain to you why you shouldn't try to use the power on someone else?" Halen asked. "Aside from the obvious answer that it's difficult, and the Academy doesn't want to give its students the tools to hurt each other."

Sid shrugged. "I might not have been paying attention when they did."

Halen continued as though Sid hadn't said anything. "After all, there's so many uses for it that aren't even hurtful. Wouldn't it be useful for someone with the power to be able to set a broken bone, for example? Or to be able to pull someone out of harm's way? And I'm sure you can imagine the kinds of fun that the oldest Academy students might like to have." Sid laughed a little at that.

Aymon inserted himself into the conversation. It would probably be easier to come at this from an academic angle that the three students understood well, rather than Halen's instinctive understanding of how the power worked. "Kino, what's the third precept?"

She blinked in surprise, probably not expecting a theological quiz at that second, but she answered as second nature. "We are cloth woven from the same thread."

"Yan, third verse of the Creation Canto."

Yan closed her eyes as she strained to remember, tapping her hand against her side as she mentally fast-forwarded through the song to get to the third verse. When she did start singing, Aymon noted idly that she had a nice voice, full bodied and clear. "From the darkness woven, with the light entwined, each single human body, a piece of greater kind. The stars are not self-knowing, no heart or soul or mind. To us God gave the universe; to us God gave the light. To see as God does see us, to speak with the God’s own voice, we recognize ourselves in the others that we find--"

Aymon held up a hand for her to stop there. "Thank you. As the theology says, we are each a piece of the universe that has been given the divine spark of life. I'm sure you've been told to think of using the power as being able to exert your will onto the rest of the universe, thinking of it as an extension of yourself, correct?"

Yan nodded, a contemplative look on her face. Sid was impatient, and Kino was merely listening.

"That's all well and good for inanimate objects, and it's even a great way to think about how two people meditating together works. But the universe resists you enforcing your will on other sentient parts of itself. It's a violation. It requires a strength of mind, and a willingness to completely overcome another person's self."

"Like rape," Kino said, voice very flat, as though that was a simple fact.

"It's a tool, like any other," Aymon said. "A hammer can be used to build, or it can be used to kill. The same is true of that use of the power. But you have to have the strength to do either, and the power will fight you."

"I see that you still don't get it," Halen said, looking at Sid. "Would you prefer a demonstration?"

Sid looked as though he was trying very hard to keep his arrogant front up. "Sure."

"Very well." Halen didn't smile. Yan flinched back for some reason, though Halen hadn't even done anything, and certainly wasn't going to do anything to her. Sid's face shifted suddenly, and his right arm, which had been folded across his chest, stretched out in front of him, palm up. He curled and uncurled his fingers slowly. "How does that feel?" Halen asked.

"Weird," Sid said, mouth pressed into a thin line. His fingers kept moving, opening and closing his fist over and over. He tried to move his arm, pulling his shoulder back, but his arm was frozen in place in the air. "Let me go."

Halen didn't let him go for a second longer, enough to make Sid truly uncomfortable. "It takes a mental strength to learn a skill that would allow you to kill someone with so little as a thought."

He let Sid's arm go, and Sid looked at his hand and rubbed it, as if to make sure it really was his.

"You'll learn eventually," Aymon said. "But probably not for a while." Sid was shaken enough not to argue, as was Yan, who probably wouldn't have argued anyway. Kino was the only one who was just nodding, seemingly unaffected by the demonstration.

"We've wasted enough time on this tangent," Halen said, snapping back into his most professional demeanor. "My goal today is to get you up to the most basic level of self defense. Do any of you have experience with firearms?"

"I do," Sid said. When Yan gave him a curious glance, he shrugged and said, "I lived on a farm. Shooting bottles is one of the only fun things to do on Galena."

"Good." Halen glanced at the clock on the wall above the door. "You have to get going soon."

"I can stay for another minute or two," Aymon said.

"Alright, well, I suppose I'll use you for the practical demonstration while I have you here, and I can go over basic gun safety when you leave." He turned back to the apprentices and fished through his pocket for a second, pulling out a rock a couple centimeters in diameter. He held it up for a second, then tossed it to Kino, who caught it deftly.

"Kino, I want you to pretend like that rock is a bullet, and I want you to hit the target with it." He pointed across the room and moved out of Kino's way so that she could use the power to throw the rock at the target. She gave it a good effort, hovering the rock in front of her face, then sending it speeding off faster than the eye could follow, until it hit the target with an audible thwap and fell to the ground.

Halen summoned the rock back into his hand and tossed it up and down. "Good aim, and good try, but you don't really have a sense of just how fast a bullet needs to move, do you?"

"No," Kino said. "I could try again."

"No need," Halen said. "In the future, we will actually practice that skill, but it would take a lot to overcome your intuition about how fast objects are 'supposed' to move. It's not worth trying now; it's not the point." He turned to Yan. "And Yan, if I were to hand you a gun, right this second, would you be able to hit a target dead center?"

"Probably not," she said. "I mean, with practice I could." She seemed happy to honestly answer direct questions, even if they came from Halen. That was good-- she was professional.

"Exactly," Halen said. "You have two tools, and you don't have the skill right now to use either of them to their full potential. So, right now, I'm going to teach you to cheat."

"Cheat?" Sid asked, having regained some of his enthusiasm.

"Aymon, if you would," Halen said.

Aymon stepped forward and pulled his gun out of its holster, easily accessible through his cassock pocket. "Imagine a line of power that goes from the tip of the gun to the target." As he spoke, he used the power to draw such a line in the air by pulling the air into a dense shape, making a hazy distorted looking path across the room. It was for illustration purposes only. "What you need to do is create a power structure that will keep the bullet following that line. It's easiest to make a tube that will nudge the bullet away from its edges. That way, even if your aim is off, your bullet will still end up where it needs to go. Look closely at where I'm aiming, off center, but I can fire and still hit."

He brought the power up then, feeling it thrum in his mind, making the real power structure, and also did a quick deadening of the air around the gun, to make the shot near silent. He pulled the trigger. With barely a 'pop', the bullet lept from the gun, the recoil familiar and easy to handle. It was over before he could even feel the twinges of his power structure adjusting the bullet's course, and it hit dead center in the target, leaving a nice neat hole.

"Exactly like that," Halen said. "You see how it works?"

"What's the power structure?" Yan asked. "Specifically."

"Whatever you're most comfortable with," Halen said. "I prefer turning the kinetic energy to heat, myself. But you can use whatever structure you like."

Yan nodded, accepting that explanation.

"Ideally, you want to be able to use the same structure to stop a bullet dead, as a kind of shield," Halen said. He walked a bit away from the group. "It would be superhuman to keep up a power structure like that at all times, though I wish that you could, but if you know you're in a dangerous situation, you should surround yourself with that power structure. If your opponent isn't doing anything sneaky, it will do a great deal to protect you."

"Did you want to demonstrate that?" Aymon asked.

"I trust you won't actually try too hard to kill me," Halen said with a smile.

"Of course not."

Yan's eyes narrowed as she listened to their mild banter, and Aymon wondered if he would need to explicitly tell his apprentices the nature of his relationship with Halen. It wasn't exactly their business, but they probably would need to know, at least enough to know to keep their mouths shut. "You ready?" Aymon asked.

"I'm always ready."

He smiled as he aimed the gun at Halen, who was holding his arms slightly out from his sides, palms forward and fingers splayed. He was an easy target, but Aymon had no worry that he would accidentally hurt him. He fired the gun again, still dampening the sound, but this time relying only on his own aim. The shot was true, but when the bullet was about a meter in front of Halen, it stopped dead and clattered to the floor, the tip faintly glowing. It was over faster than the eye or mind could process. Aymon holstered his gun.

His apprentices seemed focused on Halen and the bullet on the floor, no longer looking at Aymon.

"You want a power structure like that," Halen was saying, "because an individual bullet moves too fast for you to catch it with your attention..."

Aymon smiled at Halen, tapped his wrist to indicate the time. Halen smiled back, but didn't stop his monologue to the apprentices. Aymon slipped out the door, leaving the lesson to proceed without him.