Kisea backed up a step towards Matt, and he let his hand fall so he could wrap his arm around her waist and steady her against him, halfway enfolding her in opalescent white. She turned to bury her face in his shoulder, shaking. No matter what, no matter she'd seen enough to know that any terrible thing could be rationalized, she'd never really believed deep down that the Assembly was deliberately killing students who might be controllers.

“We've all had a recent reminder about what a controller can do,” another telepath protested. “There was almost a war between human and alasir because of one!”

“The Jordans,” Matt's mother Alina said drily, “are rather aware of that. Thanks to your strategy, what a controller or two like Kisea could probably have put a stop to easily nearly became a bloodbath and did cost lives. Matt's rather odd gift is probably a result of that, which puts him in a rather unique position where controllers are concerned, don't you think? If he can tell the difference between the one he loves and the one responsible for the prices he pays when he uses magic, why can't you?”

I guess that answers what she thinks of Matt protecting a controller.

“There have also been rogue lifewitches,” the male of the lifewitch trio pointed out acidly. “And, for that matter, rogue telepaths of all sorts, rogue sorcerers, and a wide range of criminal behaviour with no gifts involved at all.”

“It was done for a reason,” Gossethien snapped. “A reason that still stands as a valid one. One whelp with a defective version of the sorcerer gift decides that it's his place to pass judgement on decisions made and upheld for generations...”

“There is nothing remotely defective about Matt's gift,” Honora said. “Nor is he alone in passing judgement. I am appalled that my colleagues and friends would behave this way and try to justify the murder of children entrusted to our care!”

Even without access to her gift here, Kisea had been paranoid for too long to be entirely oblivious to her surroundings, and the sounds she was picking up from the spectator's side of the hall worried her more than a little.

“They're going to riot,” she whispered. “Most people didn't truly believe it any more than I did, they just wanted to be sure. Now they're scared and angry.”

“The controller gift,” Chimo said, “cannot be monitored the way any other gift can. They have a particularly insidious ability to change memories and manipulate people without those people even knowing it.”

“And people get hurt in riots,” Matt muttered. “I'd rather they weren't lynched or torn apart before we can get the full story, either. All right, how do we stop a riot?” It wasn't really directed at her, just thinking out loud.

“Non-telepaths,” the Speaker said, and there was winter chill in her carefully measured voice, “have no way of knowing whether any telepath is taking a walk through our minds, though we are expected to trust to telepath ethics and courtesy. By that logic, all telepaths should be executed for being telepaths as young as possible.”

“This is ridiculous,” Gossethien snarled. “You've destroyed more than you can understand, whelp! I can't fix it but I can stop you from doing any more!” He rose from his upper-tier seat and made a flicking gesture in Matt's direction.

Matt turned in place enough to shelter Kisea behind him, and held out a hand palm-out, fingers spread.

The fist-sized ball of livid red light froze in midair a finger's breadth from touching his palm, suddenly clearly visible; the rapid whirling slowed and stilled in the space of a couple of rapid heartbeats, and when he closed his hand, it vanished.

The utter silence in the Hall wasn't so much fear as profound shock.

And maybe, for those who understood sorcery, some degree of amazement that Matt had not deflected the attack, which would have been quicker and easier to do, but had effortlessly caught and dispelled it.

Matt would never deflect something if anyone innocent could be hurt by it. That's so much a part of him that his reflexes even act that way without thought.

“If you want that badly to fight,” Matt said, with all the ice of the far northern winter in his voice, “then at least extend your pretence of caring about others as far as not including the defenceless in it.”

“Goss!” The probably-human male sorcerer who had spoken earlier looked horrified. “You're involved in this too?”

“Sorceress, lower tier,” Kisea said urgently, spotting one whose white-streaked black hair had faintly golden highlights—some odd mix of races, there—making surreptitious gestures with her fingers. She was sure that one had been glaring at Doria.

Matt, rather than trying to catch the bluish streak of crackling light, split it before it reached them, and bounced it upwards.

It grounded itself through the crystals that disrupted telepath activity in the Hall; at least two fractured, the sound sharp as the crack of a whip, but all of them burned out simultaneously. Having her gift snap back to full force so abruptly made Kisea shake her head hard, briefly dazed.

“It's too dangerous in here,” Matt said. “Too many bystanders.” She felt power gather, felt him wrapping his mind around it and shaping it to his desires.

She'd rarely even seen Matt truly angry.

All she could sense from him right now was rage. Not hot and blind, though; superlatively lucid, so frigid it burned.

Everything that matters to him, everything he loves, everything he believes in, they've desecrated and threatened and injured.

The Hall, between one breath and the next, felt much emptier.

Kisea glanced around. The full Assembly remained, and the two of them.

Everyone else, including Kian and Shon, Nitarai and Garrick, even the recorder and the relay observer, was simply no longer there.

The sheer disbelief, not that Matt would do such a thing but that he could do what should have been impossible and do it quickly, cleanly, and still on his feet, froze friend and foe alike.

That anyone had any doubts at all who was responsible, Kisea thought highly unlikely.

“That's better,” Matt said to Gossethien. “Nobody else to get hurt. The doors are sealed, so nobody leaves and no one interrupts.” He unfastened the clasp of his cloak, let it slither off his shoulders, and kicked it aside, never entirely letting go of Kisea. Apologetically, he looked at the lifewitches. “Sorry. Too close to the others for me to get you out too. Keep yourselves safe. So, my love, think you can handle five telepaths long enough for me to deal with the sorcerers? There are only two, it shouldn't take long.”

“Telepaths who would have sentenced me to death, in my teens, just for existing? Oh, I think so.” Unfortunately, she wasn't going to be able to stay on her feet; she retreated towards the bench, and Matt kept pace with her, his gaze never leaving the two hostile sorcerers. He caught and dispelled a second ball of light, this one a sickly rot-green she was just as happy not to come into contact with, as readily as the fire. Did they really think he could only do that trick a limited number of times, or only with limited types of attacks? It would be true of anyone else, but if they assumed it about Matt, then they no more understood his gift than they did hers.

“Four,” elderly Doria said. “I will not fight.”

“Traitor,” one of the other telepaths, a human woman, said furiously. “You think anyone will be any gentler with you for confessing?”

“Parvynne,” pleaded one of the other sorcerers of the alasir-blood sorceress. He might be human or might be a mer who kept his hair cropped short to hide the coloured tips, because his hands looked like they might be webbed. “Please...”

She hissed a curse and flung a spell at him. Though Matt cried a warning, the other sorcerer crumpled and slid off his seat bonelessly.

Etanynne bolted from her own to kneel beside the fallen possibly-mer sorcerer.

The human woman who had called Doria a traitor glowered at them, and any object not bolted down or absurdly heavy began to tremble. The other three shifted position to bring themselves close enough together, hand clasping hand, which would let them communicate faster than words and unite their abilities. Kisea deflected a cautious exploratory touch easily, her own shields constructed over long years of fear, and began to turn her awareness inwards and more focused so she could retaliate.

“Get over by Etanynne,” she heard Honora say quietly, probably to the other two lifewitches. “I'll protect us all.”

She does know Matt, she knows very well he'd rather have her keeping the vulnerable safe than actively helping him.

And she knows he doesn't need anyone's help.

Except maybe mine.

“Baldwin,” Honora added. “I suggest you see what you can do about Idella.”

“This is insanity,” human Baldwin muttered.

“It is,” the human woman, presumably Idella, agreed sweetly. “So why don't you stay out of it? Or better still, help Goss and Parvynne put the whelp in his place?”

Kisea could feel Matt weaving shields around them both, barriers to protect her from sorcery even if he was distracted. Through her eyelids, she saw a flash of light.

“I'll stay out of it if you will,” Baldwin said.

Kisea felt the shift in power just before something crashed from the direction of Baldwin's voice.

“Not a good enough offer,” Idella said.

To Kisea's inner senses, her opponents, Chimo and Biserai and a human man she didn't know but guessed as a Southerner since he was blonde and tanned, were all armoured in mirror-bright plates of steel from head to toe, leaving nothing exposed to the world. Positioned back-to-back and guarding all directions, they were busy adding rows of barriers around themselves.

She prowled around the perimeter, allowing them to see her. No shiny ritualistic armour for her; her defences were constructed mainly from instinct and fear and need, and made her think more of something organic, built up from bone and horn and leather around herself, extra layers added to reinforce places that had been damaged or weak.

Their defences were strong ones, she had to admit, well-crafted and sturdy. She might be able to hammer her way through, but it would take time and it would mean a risk of causing damage to her opponents, and she wanted them alive with memories intact.

Had they read the information she'd offered her interviewers? Did they think that a few words could really measure and define her abilities?

She laid a mental hand against the outermost barrier and shoved experimentally; she might have been trying to push against a stone wall, for all it yielded.

She circled around them a few more times, eyeing the outer barrier, testing it here and there. This bit had a dominant feel of Chimo, that bit of Biserai, this other bit was unfamiliar.

Stone walls generally had doors of some sort, though, if you knew where to look and how to open them.

Around, and around, probing... even though the barriers, she had a faint sense that they were getting nervous, a trio of hares smelling a lynx in the darkness and knowing they had nowhere to run.

Even hares could kick or bite viciously; telepaths generally didn't fight directly, because most lacked offensive gifts of any kind, but she knew Biserai was a strong projective, knew nothing about the others, and there were crude blunt attacks that any reasonably strong telepath could attempt that might do damage if they got very lucky. And hares could kick hard enough, in a panic, to break their own spines, which she couldn't allow.

She chose the spot she wanted, but kept going, around once more, gathering herself.

Shon and Kian, sparring with staves, on the way here: sitting and watching them, she'd been impressed and delighted by Shon's graceful control and by Kian's speed and precision. She needed both right now, to hit exactly the right spot too quickly for them to reinforce it and do it with enough power to break through but enough control to go no further. Like a staff in her hands, and she needed to snap the metal-capped end hard and fast right... there.

Before they could seal the hole she'd made, she darted through it.

The psychic equivalent of a second staff swung in her direction, and she recognized Biserai as the driving force behind it; she blocked it, deflecting it away, and retaliated with the follow-through though she really didn't expect to connect.

Biserai parried and retreated, back inside the layers of shields, and the apprehension Kisea had sensed was clearer now.

The second layer of protection was more like a flexible tough membrane that yielded to some degree under her touch. Her previous approach would simply be absorbed and bounce back harmlessly.

Shon, years ago, driven away from everything he'd ever known because he stood up for someone even in the face of the King's disapproval, against his father and Lord's orders.... he still had his sword, though, his father had left him that, and she'd watched enthralled as he poured all the despair and grief into a mixture of improvised shadow-sparring and the ritualized patterns of moves that had begun as a way to teach and become an art of their own.

She visualized his old sword, the hilt long enough for two hands but the whole sword light enough for one, the blade always kept shining-bright and razor-sharp, as she circled back around to the point that felt thinnest.

One swift slash upwards at an angle tore through the membrane and left a gaping hole she stepped through.

This time, the attack crashed down on her the instant she was through, and she barely had time to deflect it; it struck her glancingly, but slid off her armour without damage beyond an instant's alarm and discomfort.

I need to be more careful.

She didn't bother striking back, just turned to the next barrier.

They did learn, she had to give them that. This one was a precariously balanced composition that her inner senses translated as leaning outwards at the top, looming over her as she circled it and tested it. It was prickly, too, not enough to really hurt but enough to sting when she touched it.

That was almost amusing, given the analogies she'd found inspiring thus far. Bring it down from far enough back that she wouldn't be injured—or, more accurately, so distracted that she'd be vulnerable to a real threat—as it fell?

She ignored the prickly feeling as trivial and irrelevant, searching for the right spot. Once she had it, she spiralled outwards, still circling but putting a bit of psychic distance between them. They were too canny to relax, though that might have made this easier.

Kian with his bow, careful to never loose until he was certain of a clean kill, except when his family had been threatened and he wanted nonlethal damage. With a static target for practice, loosing arrow after arrow in a smooth rapid rhythm and placing them all close together in a tight cluster, making it look effortless and as natural as breathing.

A small and tightly focused ranged attack at a single spot in the barrier might not bring it down in a single shot, but a series of them would, she was sure.

She visualized Kian's bow, his arrows with the drab fletching and the bright red-and-yellow bands on the shaft, colours that should have told her how closely his life was tied up with the Jordan House if she'd actually allowed herself to think about it. Around, and around, and at the right spot she aimed and loosed. Another arrow appeared the instant the first was away, and she sent it off as well, and a third and a fourth...

She lost count, didn't really care, intent only on repeating it as quickly as possible to bring it down before they could repair it. She had a sense of some attempt at that, but they couldn't keep up. The whole thing crumbled and collapsed into a jumble that melted away.

She abandoned the image of the bow and ran across the space, just before they slammed a replacement barrier, a simple one like the original outermost one, in its place.

There were three of them, but all these elaborate and complex shields took energy to build and energy to maintain. How many more lay ahead?

Not that it mattered. Nothing they threw at her could do more than slow her. With her own emotional energy and Matt's feeding her, adrenaline and fury pulsing with every heartbeat, her awareness that she could keep going even exhausted and injured for less reason than her life and Matt's both, she would not be the one to falter first—even if they were fighting for their lives.

So many years afraid of them.

They don't scare me now.

But they always feared me.

We could have been on the same side. Because of their choices, we can never be.

So I'm going to show them why they should fear me.

Now that's an interesting barrier.

It translated as a broad shallow ditch coated with ice, strewn liberally with knife-like ridges that she had no doubt were sharp enough to cut painfully, even if the damage was minimal. The sheer depth of the cold was of more concern. It might not be technically an offensive attack, but a barrier that could drain all the energy from her would leave her helpless.

She circled it, thoughtfully, looking for the narrowest spot.

She'd met people who had been drained of the strength to keep fighting a war they felt doomed to lose, of the drive to keep trying, of hope.

And she'd helped them, she'd given them back their lives.

She glanced down, not just visualizing her boots but remembering the grateful cobbler who had given them to her, calling up the memory of the tormented brother of the leather-worker who had made her bodice, the weaver who had her beloved husband back and had given her a warm coat that had saved Kisea's life multiple times. Others who had nothing to give but thanks, like Rylina and her mother; some who had offered hospitality, coin, much-needed provisions, things that made it possible for her to keep going but were ultimately symbols. Each time, she'd faced down their fear, their pain, felt it herself in the process but each time she'd won against it.

All with the gift that these three had wanted her to die just for having.

She wrapped herself, not just in the memory of her coat and boots, but a cloak woven of all the other memories, and simply walked across the ice-field.

She could feel the bitter chill beyond, feel it trying to reach her, trying to sap her of energy and will and motivation, to turn her into a hollow shell, but against her confidence that she had battled emptiness repeatedly and won, it failed.