First, though, he asked me what I wanted to learn.
“Everything,” I said, taking a bite of toast.
He smiled. “I’m not sure I can accommodate that—”
“Tracking,” I said. “Can you teach me that?”
A light sparked in his eyes. “Yes.” He leaned closer to me. “Where do you want to start?”
“Who ordered the hit on my mom?”
His pale eyes had immediately flattened, returning to the dull cold of an infiltrator’s eyes. He leaned back in his chair.
I got up when he didn’t speak, found a pen in the drawer of the inbuilt cabinet under the wall screen as I grabbed a sheet of the ship’s stationary. Plopping the paper down on the table in front of him, I bent over where he sat, sketching an outline of the Pyramid from memory. I took a few minutes, delineating the nodes that I’d seen change places, marking tiers I’d seen, too.
Revik watched me draw, shifting slightly in his seat, his arms crossed.
I circled the man sitting on top.
“Him. He’s the guy, right? Who is that?”
Revik met my gaze from less than a foot away. I could tell he was grudgingly impressed, but I wasn’t sure by what. He wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin, fingering the glass of juice by his plate. He gave a short laugh.
“D’ gaos, Alyson.” His pale eyes flickered up. “The best trackers in the Adhipan can’t answer that question. If you want to learn how to track, start with something small, something you have a connection to. These things go in stages...”
“So you won’t help me?”
His eyes narrowed. “Did you hear what I said?”
“I heard you. It’s just that I really think I—”
“Alyson!” He gave another short laugh. “No!”
“But how is it different from tracking anyone else?” I persisted, leaning my palms on the table. “Personal connection, right? Or a connection to something that’s connected to him? How hard can that be? I met that Terian guy...and you two were friends, right? And aren’t there, like...a million Rooks? You must still be connected to a few of them.”
He stared at me, his eyes horrified, bemused...even a little wary.
Pushing me gently aside with one arm, he stood and picked up his plate, placing it on the room service tray, stacking it on mine with the covers.
“I’ll teach you tracking,” he said after another pause. “But you’re going to have to do it my way.” He glanced over his shoulder, surprising me by smiling. “...As far as the ‘everything’ request, I have some ideas. How open are you?”
Open, as it happened.
Partly to distract both of us, and partly because he had too much time on his hands—he was type A with a capital “A,” I was learning—Revik made me his project. I knew he wasn’t telling me everything in terms of his reasons, but then, after our little talk that morning, neither was I.
He pushed me to learn not one, but several languages, mainly the seer tongue, Prexci, and basic Mandarin. He also wanted me to learn Russian, Hindi and Sanskrit, but apparently wasn’t enough of a masochist to start me on those until I’d made some headway with the other two.
He lectured me on seer history, politics, culture, mythology, biology, law...especially law; he was big on law.
He obtained recordings for when he might be absent or asleep, covering subjects like the entire Sark Codes, a sort of bible for his people. He described the evolution of controls following the death of Syrimne, the only documented telekinetic seer...and let’s just say, Revik’s version differed substantially from what I’d learned in school. He explained how laws for seers under the Human Protection Act evolved to include mandatory registration, travel, employment and residency restrictions, forced implantation, sight slavery and how Seer Containment, or SCARB, grew out of a branch of the World Court.
He tested me, trying to gauge what I could do with my light. He didn’t pull any punches, either, pronouncing me worthless at blocking and not much better at reading, what he called “the basics.” He said my concentration had to improve about a hundredfold before I could do anything in the Barrier alone.
To teach me blocking, he’d taken to hitting out at me with his light when I wasn’t expecting it. A few times, he caught me off guard enough...and hit me hard enough...that I got a nosebleed, like he had in the car.
He also obtained permission to have Eliah, one of the Seven’s Guard, teach me mulei, the seer martial art. When I asked why he couldn’t just teach me himself, he mumbled something about how he wasn’t allowed. I heard the word “penance” muttered somewhere in that speech, but he didn’t explain to me what it meant.#p#分页标题#e#