The College, the single institution that existed to train those born telepaths or sorcerers or lifewitches, needed not only quite a large faculty to handle the thousand or so students studying there at any given time, but an immense body of support staff for the administrative duties for the College and the Assembly that governed students and graduates alike. Further staff took care of maintenance, security, housekeeping, hospitality, and countless other tasks—simply keeping everyone fed, considering the numbers and the varied necessary diets and the round-the-clock schedule, was in itself a gargantuan job. Lifetimes of tradition had worn it all into grooves that functioned more or less smoothly.
That meant that there were a great many people who needed an office, a place where they could do some kinds of work and take care of administrative responsibilities, speak privately with others and be found by those looking for them during their work hours. Despite the construction of several buildings specifically for the purpose, there remained spaces of all sizes, often in odd nooks and corners, that had been transformed into offices, and none ever seemed to be vacant.
Kisea bolted up two flights of stairs to the small landing offering access to the room she’d been given—one of several crammed in here on the top floor of a building otherwise primarily heavily-shielded rooms for telepath classes.
A red-haired girl sat quietly on the top step.
“Rioshai? I’m very sorry I’m late. The session with the sorcerers ran long.” She reached out with the hand that bore a gold-plated steel bracelet of flattened links around her wrist, supporting several charms, and the door unlocked and opened immediately. There were advantages to marrying a sorcerer who considered her safety essential. “Come on in and have a seat, anywhere you want. I came straight here, so my apologies for being a little overdressed for a casual chat.”
Kara who was Lady Jordan and her weaver sister-in-law Lori who had grown up the daughter of an alasir Lord were adamant: Kisea was in a unique and still unsettled position, in a world in which appearance was both armour and weapon. It would be a massive advantage if she learned to manipulate perceptions, not ignore and defy them.
Kisea had gone from her elder sister’s hand-me-downs, to clothing as something that should be functional and keep you from being noticed, neither attention-getting nor objectionable, and it should always allow you to move freely at need.
Her current life, on the other hand, seemed to involve an annoying amount of time and effort spent on how she looked. The roughness of her skin was smoothing out, the scars were gradually fading, and her body was regaining its proper healthy siren curves, after some three years of safety and consistent good food. That had meant some extra work for the Jordan Manor's head seamstress as far as adjusting her clothes, but fortunately, Nora was as sympathetic and patient as Kisea's female in-laws. She kept Kisea provided with trousers that were of wool as fine as a high lady's skirts, dyed in gorgeous and expensive colours and patterns. Blouses always felt restrictive to her, no matter how perfectly-fitted, so she'd reverted to wearing, under her intricately-tooled steel-studded tawny leather bodice, a simple hip-length chemise with a drawstring neck, though now they were fine bleached linen and sometimes had coloured details.
Her female in-laws insisted that in a society constantly aware of the countless factors that comprised class, appearance was vital. So her current trousers were the sort of loose flowing ones Lady Jordan often wore, a gentle challenge to conventional femininity, these ones rippling back and forth between vivid blues and greens in subtle waves and of a very lightweight linen; over that she'd tied an open-weave triangular shawl with a long fringe, with a black base but many vivid colours worked into it. Her dangly earrings were gold and pale green jade and darker stripy green malachite, delicately worked, a treasured thanks-gift.
Three things she always wore. Two narrow chains circled her throat: one supported a crystal she used to help enhance and focus her gifts; the other bore the crest of her husband's family—who, against all logic, accepted and supported and loved her. Around one wrist was her bracelet, which was never off her wrist while she was at the College.
She was certain that her lack of conspiculous ostentation made some less inclined to take her seriously, even though her current outfit was of far higher quality than anything she'd dreamed of only a handful of years ago.
Kara was right: the whole thing did work as some degree of armour against the extremely class-conscious, though she hated playing their game. It was absurd, but it worked, and she could only be grateful.
Rioshai shrugged, and sat down timidly in one of the three chairs. “It’s all right. Time and clothes both, I mean.”
Kisea closed the door, and took the seat across from her.
Given that Kisea wasn't regular full-time staff, she was grateful for the room she'd been given. It was on the third floor, but even in the summer heat this far south, the stone walls and floor and the narrow windows kept it at a comfortable temperature. Three leather-cushioned chairs dominated the space, but she did have in one corner a tall compact writing desk and a high stool, and in another a sturdy set of shelves. That left three corners still, the room being irregularly shaped, but the narrow one held the third chair, leaving the other two more or less facing each other at an oblique angle that could include the third at need.
The girl in the second chair, eyes down and hands twisted together, the muscles of her shoulders and neck visibly tight, was a model of apprehension. Her very modest clothing could have fit in within any rural human village, long skirt and laced woolen bodice and the ties of her chemise tight enough to show not a hint of collarbone let alone more; the soft slate blue was well-dyed and the fabric was fair quality, the linen pale and mostly smooth, suggesting that she came from a household with a steady but not extravagant income. Her fox-red hair was neatly braided, and so long Kisea wasn’t sure she’d ever cut it. Still young, she had yet to grow into an adult siren’s healthy curves, though there were hints there under her concealling clothes of her small breasts developing, her narrow hips widening, her rounded abdomen smoothing out—a process already well begun, starting to catch up with her human classmates.
Those long-fingered hands had some calluses, though not heavy ones.
Kisea had done her homework. Rioshai, for all her siren name, had grown up in the house of her human father after her siren mother died while she was very small, and her father’s human wife, not married even long enough for a child of her own, had accepted Rioshai’s presence with mixed feelings.
She sighed to herself. At least Rioshai wasn't going to find herself outlawed and on the run to hide her telepathic gift, or worse, but she still had some difficult realities to face about her future, both immediate and long-term.
“I should have asked you to come a little later, I suppose. I was doing my orientation talk for the sorcerers who are here for testing and their next levels and all. They had a lot of questions.” Some of which had been borderline rude, and several had been outright hostile. While Rioshai was so young that it should both help Kisea with her own siren stress response and protect Rioshai from anything that leaked, Kisea was going to have to be careful to keep her morning pushed aside. She would have preferred a little time to find a quiet corner with Olisai, but she'd already been worried about Rioshai having to wait for her.
Rioshai shrugged noncommittally, her eyes fixed firmly on the floor near Kisea’s feet.
“I promise not to do anything evil to you,” Kisea said lightly. “No physical or telepathic contact. Your teachers asked me to talk to you, and that's all I intend to do. I'd suggest finding someone you're more at ease with, if possible, but there's still a serious shortage of options in that direction for controllers. If you're really uncomfortable with me, Genaro has graduated as a full telepath, he's still here to specialize. I'm sure he'd make time, and I promise not to be offended.”
“Sorry,” Rioshai said quietly, eyes flicking up towards hers. “It was... a big shock. I wondered a bit, after the orientation class you did, because you said short distance range and strong projection and strong ability to connect to non-telepaths, and I knew I had at least two of those, but...” She trailed off.
“Of course it's a shock. Until my husband and I did what we did three years ago, no one ever questioned that being a controller meant being a monster who would inevitably use your gift for selfish purposes regardless of how many lives are destroyed in the process. They still tell stories that take for granted that any controller is an evil that the hero has to fight, and that exaggerate our abilities to such a degree it has very little to do with reality any more. And even though the College officially recognizes and protects controllers now, there are individual teachers who do so only grudgingly, and across the rest of the world where new ideas are absorbed only very slowly, it can be worse. No one wakes up and thinks, 'I wish I were a controller.' No one finds out they are, or even that they might be because they’re showing all the early signs based on our depressingly-limited knowledge, and can just shrug as though it doesn't make any difference.”
Rioshai nodded. “I know... being half siren wasn’t a big deal in our village, my father’s respected and no one would dare touch me, but I have some idea how siren-blood are treated in lots of places. I wasn’t really sure how I was going to cope with that. I... I have no idea what I’m going to do now.”
“You aren’t alone. I’m here, and Genaro, and Elaia. It’s a small pool so far, but that’s a place to start, and we’ll do everything we can to help. With only four of us, we need to look out for each other. And, of course, once you graduate you can go home if you choose to. Because they all know you well, you might have a better chance of teaching them the truth about controllers and being accepted. I'll do anything I can to help with that.”
“But they might not. They... They didn’t say much to me directly, but I know some of them already weren’t very happy about me being half siren. But sirens aren’t scary. Controllers are. People don't always listen when they’re scared.”
“There's a risk of that too,” Kisea agreed, gently, because to tell her anything else would be a lie. “There's still a lot of misinformation and fear and distrust out there. The sad thing is that it'll be out there for years still. The lifewitches fought for acknowledgement decades ago, and they're just starting to be accepted outside the immediate area of the College and Perifaithe. It's going to take a long time for us to convince people that not only are we not monsters, but we can do things to help them.”
Rioshai sighed. “It makes sense to be nervous of someone who can get inside your head and take over what you say and do and even what you perceive, or someone who can remove or change your memories. Those are awful things to be able to do.”
“Yes, they are, sometimes, done for the wrong reasons with no consent, although I’ve done all those things to help someone. Like most things, it's not so much what you can do as it is what you choose to do. And when people believe the exaggerated versions, they're even more nervous. There's a big difference between thinking the person having a conversation with you could be inside your head manipulating you without your knowledge, and knowing that we're extremely obvious and basically helpless when concentrating that completely. Or thinking we can dominate multiple minds for days or months constantly, rather than a single mind for even a short time being tiring.” She always covered that at length during the orientation, but had found that she couldn't emphasize it enough: controllers were not gifted with power that put them on a par with at least minor gods. They were just people with a sometimes alarming, sometimes lifesaving gift that had clear limits.
“I don't even want... I mean, I came to the College because I had to, it was pretty clear a long time ago that I was going to be a strong enough telepath to need to learn control over it. But I don't know whether I want a job as a telepath anyway.”
“What do you want to do?”
“It's, well... I really like cooking. And baking.” Rioshai blushed and looked down again. “My father’s a stonemason and my mother runs the house but my father’s sister is a cook at the local tavern. I’ve been helping her for as long as I can remember, but more recently, the local baker started paying me a bit to help him and I’ve learned a lot there too. I really love taking a bunch of raw ingredients and turning them into something that tastes good.”
“The world is always going to need good cooks. Everyone needs to eat. There's no reason you have to choose a job that's based on being a controller. You do need to know exactly what you can do and how so that you don't do it by accident or instinct if something happens—if someone threatens you, for example. Which also means learning how to do minimal damage while defending yourself. Using controlling to protect yourself does have limits. I could show you scars from times when there were too many at once and I surrendered so I'd survive. But if it's only one or two, it can be very effective. That's better than a lot of siren-blood get. Even in mixed villages where you have a better chance of being understood, or in Jordan where Lord Jordan is so adamant about racial equality, things still happen.”
“And if we know what we're doing, then the next Alina Jordan, fighting a real renegade controller, can be another controller, not a regular telepath.”
She hadn't expected that leap. “That too. The attempt at killing us all before we could become a threat failed. Monsters happened occasionally anyway, whether obvious or not. We need a different approach to a genuine renegade: a controller like you or me or Genaro or Elaia, or better still all of us, could not only end the whole situation with very minimal risk, but we can also heal at least some of the damage done. Have you met the others yet?”
“I’m only finishing my second semester. I’ve been concentrating on classes until now. I did meet Genaro once, one of my teachers asked him to do some exercises with my whole projective class a couple of months ago. I knew who he was before that, he’s not exactly very quiet or subtle and everyone knows who he is, but I never had a reason. I’ve never met Elaia.”
“You might consider introducing yourself to them. After all, there aren't many of us, I think we need to stick together, hm?” There were people who felt that encouraging controllers to befriend each other was asking for trouble; Kisea, and others, had explained at length and repeatedly that emotional and practical support would only reduce the chances of any individual controller feeling isolated and disconnected enough to do bad things. “Controllers seem to be turning up roughly one each year or two, instead of the one each generation we used to be told. Genaro, of course, technically has graduated already but he's still here to focus on mindhealing. His boyfriend Dillon understands controllers very well by now and has absolutely no fear of us, he's someone else to keep in mind as a potential friend. Elaia has one more semester before she graduates, and she has a circle of supportive and sympathetic friends of all races. Friends are one of the most valuable treasures in the world. Take my word for it. The last thing you want is to be entirely alone with something big and scary that most people don't understand.”
“I can probably track them down.” Rioshai hesitated; Kisea waited. “What about teachers? I know they aren't all comfortable with... with us. Just... little things I've heard, nothing really obvious, just... things.”
“They aren't allowed to treat you any differently than any other student,” Kisea said firmly. “No matter what they personally think.” That was a subject she needed to bring up yet again to the Telepath Assembly when she met with them tomorrow. “The official College policy is that we are equals, with our own Oath that takes our gifts into account, and we are entitled to the same safety, respect, and education as any other student. I’m only here at the start and end of semesters, I have things to do in Jordan too. If anyone is giving you a hard time, tell me if I’m here. If I’m not, tell Genaro or Dillon or Elaia, or go to one of the senior lifewitches. One or two of the younger ones have gotten the idea that picking on us distracts people from picking on them. No one likes being on the bottom, and unfortunately there are always people quite happy to kick someone else down to make sure there's still someone under them. The senior ones are all at least in favour of us being treated fairly, and a few are quite passionate about it. Olisai Liriu in particular is an excellent person to go to and she’s generally easy to find, just ask at the infirmary. They’ll know where she is.”
“She's the teacher who officially supervises when you do orientations, isn't she?”
Observant, this one. “Exactly. She's my truly wonderful friend and feels very strongly about us. Are you going home over the break?”
“I’m supposed to be. It’s a long way, and I stayed here over the last break, but I haven’t seen my family in a year. I’m supposed to go with one of the trains.” Many students lacked the resources for a trip home twice a year during the five-nineday breaks between semesters. For a small fee, families could arrange for students to join a group escorted by a guide plus protection to get them home and then bring them back at the start of the semester. Sometimes even that was too expensive or would involve so much time it wasn’t worth it. “I don’t have to tell them right away, do I?”
“Of course not. You’re showing every indication of having the controller gift but it hasn’t even officially manifested yet, and you’re entitled to tell them when and how you choose. It will be a hard secret to keep here at the College, unfortunately, since people will make assumptions based on the company you keep.”
“That... oh well. I just don’t think I want to talk to my family about it yet. I need to get used to the idea first. And think about what to tell them and how to answer questions and things like that.”
“That’s perfectly reasonable and sensible. I’ll be around when you get back for next semester, of course. I need to do orientation classes.” She always dreaded those, facing groups of new students, fifty or so at a time, to explain to them the reality of controllers. Although the ongoing education classes of the sorcerers at semester end were worse. “I’ll be away through most of the break, though, back to Jordan. Always things to do.”
Rioshai tilted his head inquisitively. “Won't it take you half the break just to get there and back?”
“Unfortunately, close, since it’s about nine or ten days each way. But I can get a lot done during that three ninedays in the middle.”
Rioshai considered that. “Are you sorry you're a controller?”
“That's a tough question.” Though it was one she'd heard before, in variations. “Being a controller has nothing to do with having no family of my own—that was because my mother, married with two children already, had an encounter with a siren whose name I don't even know. Being a controller is directly responsible for ten years running the roads with no home and not daring to trust anyone, which led to... some very bad incidents that I wouldn't wish on anyone. But it's also directly responsible for being able to help a lot of people who had given up because other mindhealers couldn't or wouldn't help them, and that's a wonderful feeling. It means that I can counteract some of the side-effects my husband Matt faces when he uses magic, which he has because his mother Alina did fight a genuine renegade controller who had an absurdly-powerful old focus crystal. And it's part of why Matt and I were able to face down the Assembly and force them to admit to murdering students in secret. I think it isn't so much about wishing I were something other than what I am, and more about wishing the world had less ignorance and fear and hatred in it to make life hard for all of us who don't fit into narrow categories.”
“Hm. I think I need to think about that.”
“You are what you are. Nothing can change it. But you can change how you see it, and what you do with it, and you can work at changing how others understand it, even if it's just one person at a time. But right now, take your time about getting your head around the idea. That’s the first and most important step.”
The tolling of the mealtime bell was somewhat muted on this side of the building and through the closed window, but it was unmistakable. The College population including nocturnal alasir, diurnal humans and sirens, and various crossbreeds and individuals of less common races which might prefer any time of day, the bell rang every six hours to announce the availability of a more-or-less generic hot meal.
“I can introduce you to the others, if you like,” Kisea suggested. “They're all half and half siren and human, so they all keep daytime schedules. They'll be on their way to lunch, I'm sure.”
Slowly, Rioshai nodded.
Kisea stood up and crossed the room to the door to swing it open.
