“I’m supposed to run about wearing just one glove?”Neil protested.
“I think it would make you look terribly intriguing,” Constance returned authoritatively.
“He ought to have some sort of training with that thing as well.”Ellie grimaced warily at the weapon as Neil shoved it back into the scabbard.“Especially if it’s capable of lopping people’s arms off if you use it the wrong way.”
“Most fencing clubs limit themselves to foils.”Constance frowned thoughtfully.“Except the one where Julian practiced, of course.”
Neil looked aghast.“You want me to learn sword fighting from Julian Forster-Mowbray?”
“Goodness, no.He wasn’t even very good at it.I’m sure Mr.Mahjoud could teach you—if he’d stop pretending that he isn’t a fearsome warrior.”
Adam cocked a skeptical eyebrow at Constance’s statement.
Ellie couldn’t blame him.She was still far from convinced of Constance’s theory that Mr.Mahjoud possessed martial capabilities.
Neil was tired and disheveled.None of what he’d just experienced aligned with his scholarly disposition.Ellie set a comforting hand on his arm.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I could see things in the past,” he spilled out.
“I have the entire history of Tulan trapped in my mind,” Ellie confessed at the same time.
They stopped, staring at each other.
“Tulan?”Neil echoed first.
Adam stepped up behind Ellie and put a steady arm around her waist.
She drew in a breath and said the rest.“I have the knowledge of an entire civilization that died two hundred and fifty years before we were born stuffed into my brain.”
Neil blinked at her, wordless with surprise.
“It happened back in British Honduras with the Smoking Mirror.Not that I can get at any of it very easily,” Ellie complained.“It only pops up when I’m not really trying.How am I supposed to preserve, record, and study the knowledge of a place that I can only remember when I’m not really trying?But if I don’t, so much will be lost.I know there are fragments of Tulan that survived in the practices and origin stories of some of the neighboring cultures—but they’refragments.For all of the rest of it, there’s just me.”
Shame burned.“I should have told you ages ago, only… Well, I don’t even know why I didn’t.I suppose it’s because it all felt so terribly strange and not at all the sort of thing a proper academic ought to entertain as an idea, never mind run around having inside one’s brain—”
“I understand,” Neil cut in with an aching note in his voice.“I know exactly what you mean.”
And he did, Ellie realized.
She was momentarily overwhelmed by how lucky she was to have him in her life.How rare was it that the boy who became her brother just happened to be someone who understood and shared her intellectual passions?
There were things he’d overlooked from within the shell of his own privilege, but he’d learned to recognize that, and he’d done better.Now the two of them shared the burden of these strange gifts, and they had the opportunity to support each other as they learned what it all meant.
“So what’s next?”Adam pressed.
“We get the astra,” Constance declared stoutly.
“But we don’t know where it is,” Ellie pointed out.
Neil shifted uneasily.“That’s not entirely true.”
Ellie narrowed her eyes.“You must know it is absolutely killing me not to be able to ask you a million questions about this mysterious power of yours.”
His expression softened.“It doesn’t make you think any differently about me?”
“Beyond being extraordinarily jealous?”
Neil looked flabbergasted.“Jealous?”
