Gifted

7

 "You worked with Isaiah?" Erin asked.

"Oh yes. I was his apprentice. He took me on after I'd completed Initiation, but that was quite a few years ago now. I'm the second apprentice he's ever trained, which the Chief Kazi's sister introduced herself as Uma, then led Erin to a washroom. Without another word, she had cut Erin's mangey hair to shoulder length before shoving her underneath a shower. She made Erin scrub herself with soap and a coarse brush until her skin was red a raw. Once dried, Erin put on a pair of clean pressed trousers, a vest and boots like the ones worn by the other children she had seen. The new clothes felt strange and the boots felt a bit clunky, but she was pleased to note that her movement wasn't hampered. Uma then took Erin into the dormitory. A row of beds ran down two opposing walls and a trunk was pushed up to the foot of every bed.

"Boys sleep on the left-hand side, girls sleep on the right," Uma explained. "That one is yours," she said, pointing to the bed furthest away on the right-hand side.

"Inside the trunk you will find spare changes of clothes and spare bedsheets. Keep your space clean and tidy. Failure to do so will result in punishment."

"Can I keep my stuff?" Erin asked, pointing the bundle of her clothes and belongings in Uma's hands.

"No," she said coldly. "You are a recruit now, and all recruits are treated equally, which means no personal property. You can have your things back when the Crucible is done with you."

Erin scowled at this. She disliked Uma already. She started to wonder if agreeing to Isaiah's proposition had been a bad idea, but the thought of learning more about magic dispelled this doubt.

"Wait here," Uma commanded. "Someone will come by soon to give you the orientation tour. 'Til then, sit tight and don't give me a reason to hate you."

She left, shutting the door to the dorm behind her, and Erin slumped down onto her bed. She felt warm and clean and she fiddled with her newly cut hair, unused to its new shortness.

Presently, the dorm door opened, and a woman walked in. Erin guessed her to be perhaps in her mid-twenties, but she was unlike any woman she had seen before. She was everything Erin wasn't. Like Erin, the woman was dressed in thick boots, trousers and a vest, but where Erin's thin frame made them hang loose, the woman's powerful build made them swell with muscle. Her huge arms looked as if they could snap Erin in two, and her head had been shaved bare. Erin might have been frightened if it weren't for the kind eyes that smiled down at her.

"You must be Erin," the woman said brightly, shaking Erin's hand with crushing enthusiasm, "my name in Valarie. Isaiah's told me about you. Looks like I'm going to be giving you the orientation tour."

"He's told you about me already?" Erin asked shrewdly. "I thought he had a meeting or something"

"Oh, yes I think he does, but you know what he's like. He told me about you yesterday."

"Yesterday? How could he have known about me then?"

"He has the Sight, of course. Don't worry, you'll get used to it. It used to irritate the hell out of me when we worked together."

isn't happy about, so I hear. Most Inquisitors take dozens of apprentices throughout their career."

"Why has he had so few?"

"I'm not really sure. He doesn't like to talk about it, but I think things went wrong with his first. That was way before my time though and nobody who knows anything would dare to speak about Isaiah behind his back."

Erin nodded and mulled this over. It seemed that there was a lot more to Isaiah than he let on. She'd witnessed nothing but respect and possibly even fear for the man, and when she thought about the way he had dealt with the men who had followed them earlier, it wasn't hard to see why.