I take another sip of tea, icing my excitement to keep a clear head. I will have a lot of de-icing to do when this is all done. “Why didn’t you expose these lies when you found out? Pay the criers to shout it from every square?”

  Miyara makes a pained face. “We could not expose it without showing weakness.”

  “No,” I say. I see through that, see through all their careful words. That’s not the whole truth. And these women need a kick in the ass if they’re going to be any help. “You mean you could not expose it without showing fear. That’s all I see here. Fear of the temple. Fear of the Seilam Deul. Fear of looking weak. Instead of standing in your power.”

  “Exactly!” a narrow woman cries, smacking a fist into her hand. “We need to stand in our power! We can raise an entire city of bloodborn, and yet we sit here wringing our hands!”

  The room splits. It is only a momentary thing, only something I see because I have kept my breathing, because I’m not distracted by my own emotions: for a moment half the women there wear the same fierce expression, and the others frown, disagreeing.

  Then it’s all gone under those neutral grandmotherly masks, and Regiana offers me a smile. “Some of us believe in a more moderate course, dear.”

  “And that is?”

  “A city united behind us. With you as the moon that turns the tides.” Regiana was one of those who frowned.

  “What do I have to do with it?”

  “You are the bridge between us, dear. Daughter of the rightful Chosen who chose to leave the temple—”

  “I was thrown out.”

  Eyebrows raise at my interruption, but she goes on unperturbed. “Well, you didn’t really want to stay, did you? Either way, after you have studied with us a while, you can convince the public of the justice of our cause. Be the bridge between our two factions. Prove the temple is overstepping its bounds, and that we ought to have more control over the city, not less.”

  “Ah,” I say. “So you do want power.”

  “A balance,” Regiana says. “The balance we had, that’s now slipping. You’ve seen the packs of overseers in the streets, the way they are intruding into people’s homes with the excuse of looking for you. How soon till Nerimes uses other excuses? Or doesn’t need an excuse? The temple needs a check to its power.”

  Miyara shifts at this, and I guess that she and her friends disagree with Regiana. They want to use the bloodborn somehow. What did the narrow woman say? An entire city of bloodborn. I ice a shiver of fear and focus. “I still don’t see what all this has to do with me.”

  “No,” Regiana says, smoothing a fold over her legs. “That is your ego speaking again. The question is, what do you have to do with all this?”

  “Fine,” I say. “And?”

  “And you are the only woman—the only person—who will have been through both trainings. Who can use both types of sight. Who is of both sides. And who has a legitimate claim to the Ujela Dais besides.”

  I frown. “I can’t use bloodsight. I’m a seer.”

  Some of the theracants shift at this. “In name, at least,” the plump woman says. “Surely you don’t—you can’t use much male magic?”

  I raise an eyebrow. “You just saw me do it.”

  “You are a seer, yes,” Regiana says. “But you are also a theracant.”

  My brows are still up. “In what way am I a theracant? I’ve trained since I was seven years old to read water, to find insight and to fight. I am the opposite of a theracant.”

  At this Regiana smiles, in that same untouchably feminine way Estrija did last night. “I do not know how you are both, dear, but you are. We have ways of knowing.”

  “Prove it.”

  At this Regiana nods to the plump woman, who assumes a professorial air. “Have you ever felt the emotions of your friends, girl? Any moments where you knew what they were feeling, without them telling you outright?”

  I shrug. “I don’t have many friends.”

  “Enemies, even,” Estrija puts in. “What about Gaxana?”

  I laugh. “I wish. Half the time I have no idea what she’s thinking.”

  “Feeling,” the plump woman corrects. “A theracant reads feeling, not thought.”

  I shake my head. Not for the first time I miss the water of the temple, the easy awareness I had of everyone around me. I am blind here, especially in this room with these strange women.

  “What about location, then?” the plump one asks again. “Is there anyone you’ve known a long time, someone you feel like you could always point to, whether or not you’ve been told where they are?”

  Dashan. I know it before she’s even done talking. I’ve always sort of been especially aware of him. If I concentrate, I can even point to him—right now he’s to the south and west, in the temple. But of course he’s in the temple. Where else would he be? It doesn’t prove anything.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Maybe.”

  Regiana sighs. “Temerana.” The muslin-skirted student appears from just outside the door. “Go and fetch us a girl. Type three, I think.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but I’m not a theracant. I’m a seer. A good one. You can’t be both.”

  Miyara raises her eyebrows. “Can’t you? You’re a woman and a seer, something thought impossible twenty years ago.”

  Temerana is back a moment later, with a scared looking girl of about ten behind her, in the first awkward phases of growth. Miyara gestures her over and the girl comes, cowed. “Blood, girl.”

  The girl extends an arm, and Miyara makes a strange fist, with one knuckle extended. I notice the ring on that finger with a chill—a thick band with a wicked hook coming from it. A bloodhook—what the theracants use to take samples from their patients. Temple tales are full of witches appearing from midnight alleys, jabbing you in the arm and forcing you to do their will.

  Miyara pricks the girl with a practiced motion, a single bead of red appearing on her inner arm, where I notice there are other pinprick scars. She gestures towards me. “That one. Go.”

  A wave of revulsion hits me. “What—am I supposed to do with it?” I don’t actually know how theracants take in blood.

  Miyara shares an amused glance with the other women. “Your tongue. Just touch it.”

  The girl holds out her arm, eyes fearful behind a mask of obedience. My gorge rises. The last thing I want to do is lick this girl’s blood. But they are all watching. Best to have this over with.

  I do it. One quick swipe—but there’s no denying the watersight that happens in the moment my tongue touches her skin. The million thoughts running through this poor girl’s head, the fear of the witches—interesting, she calls them witches—and memories of her mother and confusion and wonder at who I am. Then the copper tang of blood is in my mouth and she is backing away, but something’s different. Like I’m still holding her arm.

  The women watch me with hawk eyes. “Do you feel her?”

  Pure resistance makes me say, “No.”

  But I do—at least, I feel what it’s like to be her, because I know, because I remember being a cowed girl in a temple full of men, worrying about everything, wondering why my dad left me there, forced to do endless hours of meditation and chores and studies, and that deep knot of worry and sadness deep inside—

  I’m crying. I ice the feelings, whatever they are, the compassion for this girl, and look up. Miyara wears a victorious expression, as though she’s already won, but the plump woman butts in again. “Concentrate on your heartbeat,” she says. “Do you hear it?”

  “Of course I do,” I snap. Anger is a great cover for sadness.

  “Just yours?”

  I frown but listen—and gasp. There is another heart beating alongside mine. The girl’s.

  The circle breaks into smiles—they are leaning in to offer me congratulations, but I shake them off, shake off the brief flashes of watersight their touches give me. I want none of it.

  “Her name,” I say.

  “What’s that?” someone asks.

  “Her name,” I growl, fists clenching. It’s wrong to feel this girl inside me, wrong to have forced her in here, wrong to have knowledge of her like this. It’s all wrong. So at the very least, I’m learning her name. “What. Is. Her. Name?”

  The women glance around. “Yelin,” the plump woman supplies at last. “Theral Yelin. A second-year.”

  Theral Yelin. I vow to seek her out later, to learn everything I can of her. To apologize. But there are bigger things at the moment. “What does this mean? How long will I feel her?”

  Regiana is the only one not smiling. The only one who seems to understand how this feels. “You will feel her for life, girl. That is the gift and the curse of a theracant. We feel everyone we’ve touched.”

  “Congratulations, and welcome,” Miyara says from across the circle. “You are one of us now.”

  “And a strong one,” the plump woman nods, “to feel a heartbeat so fast.”

  I feel sick. “As your mother was,” another says. “She passed the test, you know.”

  “My… mother?” Confusion intrudes on my anger.

  “We offered her training,” Regiana says, “though she ultimately declined. Still, she likely felt you all the days of her life. There is no bond tighter than that between mother and child.”

  My mother—a theracant? It’s too much. I lurch up. “I—need some space. Some time.”

  The woman next to me lays a hand on me, and her thoughts are one hundred percent patronizing. “The sight is disorienting at first, dear,” she says. “Take as long as you need.”

  Anger claws out of the confusion inside me. “I won’t need long,” I grit, stalking out of the room, trying to ice everything.

  It won’t ice. Temerana is in the hall. She points fearfully to a room across the way, mercifully empty. My mother? Testing for the theracants? What would she think of me doing this? What will Gaxna think? I pace the floor, working my hands, Yelin’s emotions like a second flood inside me, mixing with my own, confusing, maddening. I’m a witch? What will Urte think?

  That stops me dead. The temple. Watersight. My life, until the last few weeks. What does it mean, that I can read blood? Were they right, that I’m not actually a seer? That I never belonged? But I know myself, know that’s not right, know watersight is as deep a part of me as my blood or my bones. I’m a seer, just not a normal one—like I’m not a normal girl. Or am I? Is the male part just a coincidence? An accident? Am I actually supposed to be a theracant? To wear long skirts and smile mysterious smiles like these women? Cursed to feel everyone I’ve ever touched in this impossible flood of sensation?

  I try to ice it again, try to ice the aching stress and loneliness coming from Yelin. It won’t ice. I try again, pacing, then remember my forms. Maybe they will help.

  I pull the staff from my back, begin slashing from Ice Carves Stone through Current Meets Air to Streambed in the Downpour, the first-year form, the most basic, demanding form. There is a familiarity in it, a freedom, a comfort I never felt anywhere else in that first year. A power. I jab forward, spin, feint and kick. I am a seer. I feel this deep in my bones, deeper even than Yelin’s sadness. A woman, yes, and a theracant, or at least someone with bloodsight, but male like the solid stones and arching balconies of the temple. I’m both. I’m more than both—more than the shitty definitions or politics either side try to force me into. I’m me, my father and my mother. Of course I have both their magics.

  I calm sometime later, pause at the tip of Droplet Meets Waves, chest heaving, sweat beading on my forehead. I let a long breath out. I find Yelin inside, her second-year emotions so familiar to me, despite her different training, and ice them. Find my own emotions, my anger at what the theracants did, my fear at what it showed me, my loss at wondering if I never belonged in the temple. I ice them too. Turn it all into a frozen block.

  Then I let it melt, let the emotions come out, and just sit and breathe through them. I know the women are waiting for me, that maybe never in the history of the Theracant’s Guild has an uninitiated novice made the entire Ninth Circle wait, but I don’t care. I need the time.

  I rise when I’m ready, when I am settled with who I am and what I can do. Rub the tears from my face, though they undoubtedly heard me crying, and straighten my clothes, the porter’s disguise I donned with Gaxna this morning. It feels like years ago.

  “Sorry, Gaxna,” I whisper, knowing what I have to do. “I will make this up to you.”