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He stood for a time, silent. I could not tell if he was thinking. I could not tell if he had understood what I said at all. Dutiful sat slumped in his chair, chin sunk to his chest and arms crossed, glowering. He plainly hoped that Thick would leave. But after a moment, the little man sat down again. “Stop the music,” he said. He closed his eyes. Then he opened them again and, squinting at me, said, “There.”

I had not realized how his steady Skilling had been battering my walls. In the stillness that followed, I felt an immense sense of relief. It was like the pause in the storm, when suddenly the winds cease howling and silence flows in. I gave a great sigh and Dutiful suddenly sat up straight. He rubbed at his ears, looking puzzled, then looked at me. “All of that was him?”Advertisement

I nodded slowly, still recovering myself.

A great uncertainty dawned over Dutiful’s face. “But I thought . . . I thought that was the Skill itself. The great river you speak about . . .” He looked at Thick again, but his attitude toward the little man had changed. It wasn’t respect, but it was wariness, which often precedes respect.

Then, like a sudden curtain of rain, the music swept to life again around my thoughts, separating me from Dutiful like hunters fogged from one another by mist. I glanced at Thick. His face had fallen back into its normal lax lines. The realization came to me that Skilling was, to him, the natural state. Not-Skilling was what required his effort. And where had he learned that?

Did your mother talk to you, like this?

No.

Then how did you learn to do this?

He frowned. She sang to me. We sang together. And she made the bad boys not see me.

Excitement filled me. Thick. Where is your mother? Do you have brothers or—

“Stop that! It isn’t fair!” The Prince sounded as petulant as a child.

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It startled me from my thoughts. “What isn’t fair?”

“You two Skilling to each other where I can’t hear. It’s rude. It’s like whispering behind someone’s back.”

I heard the jealousy in his voice as well. Thick, the half-wit, was doing something that the Prince of all the Six Duchies could not. And I was obviously enthused about it. I’d have to go carefully here. I suspected that Skillmaster Galen would have created a rivalry between them, to urge each to try harder. But that was not my goal. Instead, these two must be hammered into a unit.

“I’m sorry. You’re right, that was not courteous. Thick just told me that his mother used the Skill to sing to him, and that they sang together. And that sometimes she used it to make bad boys not see him.”

“Then his mother has the Skill? Is she a half-wit, also?”

I saw Thick wince to the words, as I had once cowered from the word “bastard.” That cut me. I wanted to correct the Prince, sharply, but knew that was hypocrisy. Was not that how I thought of Thick, as “the half-wit”? For now, I would let it pass, but I would privately make sure that Thick never again heard that epithet from our lips.

“Thick, where is your mother?”

For a time, he just stared at me. Then, with the inflection of a wounded child, he said slowly, “She di-ed.” His voice drew out the word. He looked around himself as if he had lost something.

“Can you tell me about it?”

He scowled in thought. “We come to town with the others. For the crowd time, for the Spring Fest. Yes.” He nodded at having recalled the right name for it. “Then, one morning, she didn’t wake up. And the others took my stuff and said I didn’t travel with them anymore.” He scratched the side of his face miserably. “Then, it was all done, all gone, and I was here. And then . . . I was here.”

It was not a very satisfactory account, but I doubted I would get more from him. It was Dutiful who asked gently, “What did your mother and the others do when they traveled?”

Thick took a deep breath, as if aggrieved. “Oh, you know. Find the big crowd. Mother sings and Prokie drums and Jimu dances. And Mother goes ‘Don’t see him, don’t see him’ while I go about and get the purses with my little silver scissors. Only Prokie took them, and my tassel hat and my blanket.”

“You were a cut-purse?” Dutiful asked incredulously.

What a use for the Skill—to hide your son while he cuts purses, I thought silently.

Thick nodded, more to himself than to us. “And if I do good, I get my own penny, to buy a sweet. Every day.”

“Had you any brothers or sisters, Thick?”

He scowled, pondering. “Mother was old, too old for babies. So I was born stupid. Prokie said so.” pqdm.com