Psychic

12. Noted

In the palace infirmary, Tolaymus barged through the door and quickly approached the foot of the bed where Reno was laying. The palace doctor was nearby taking blankets off another bed. He began to do it quietly so he would be able to hear Tolaymus. He had been told never to work on Reno without the approval of the Head General.

"Well, this was unexpected," Tolaymus spoke loudly at Reno, who was watching him blankly. Tolaymus approached the side of his bed slowly. He lowered himself to Reno and whispered, "I know what you did."

Reno stared placidly, never breaking eye contact with him. "What did I do?"

Tolaymus stood up straight, looking down at Reno disgustedly. "Fortunately for you, this is something I can work with. You will find Marlene. You will bring her back. You will find Kiyoshi and bring him to me alive. If you return to Sakorin without Marlene, if she is brought here by anyone other than you, if I see you and you have not found her, I'm going to take you to the marshes, cut off your hands and feet and let the insects fight over your body."

He grabbed Reno's foot, pulled it up slightly and slammed his ankle down over the footboard, shattering any bone that was not yet broken. The board cracked as well. Having anticipated the action, Reno only clenched his teeth, not wanting to give Tolaymus the satisfaction of reacting. "Now, see what you can do about that," Tolaymus told the doctor as he left the infirmary.

* * *

Kiyo approached Rai while they were still walking through the sandy desert. He could tell that she was still angry with him but he did not want to allow things between them to stay that way. He did all the talking at first, telling her about what happened to him when he was in the palace. "I took these when I was in Tolaymus's room." He took out the few bits of paper he found in the palace from his pocket and held them out to Rai. "You want to check them?"

She started throwing the useless notes to the wind. "Trash, trash, trash. Is that it?"

"My back pocket," Kiyo remembered. He pulled out a handful of more papers and handed them to her.

She weeded through them quickly. She threw one into the wind then pulled it back with her telekinesis, looking at it again. "Hmm. Nope." She let it go again and sighed quietly.

Kiyo scratched his neck slightly and bit his bottom lip. "Oh, here's another one," he pretended to remember suddenly. He handed her the one that had fallen off Reno's sword.

After she studied it for a while, she held it out to him. "Can you read that language?"

"No."

"I thought General's were supposed to be smart." She glared at him, still clearly irritated. "Hey, Ken, come here real quick."

"What?"

"This paper Kiyo found. It's got some weird language on it," Rai told him, waving the paper. Ken stopped and waited for Rai to approach him.

"Let's see." As he looked over it, he asked her, "how many kids were taken?"

"Nine."

"There are nine things grouped into three different categories here. Why the General would keep a record of anything like this is beyond me though. Seems like a trap. Where did you find it, Kiyo?"

"With the other stuff," Kiyo lied quickly.

Rai pointed at the paper, "we don't have anything better. It's obviously a list, right? It has the right number for our kids that got took."

"I know the language," Ken mumbled, as if to himself, "but I can't read it. We'll have to go to another region to get it translated."

Rai raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms. "So let's do that."

"And it won't bother you if this turns out to be a waste of time?"

"If we don't get it translated, what else are we going to do? Travel to every city and check with the slave trader there? How many of those are there to a region?"

Ken rubbed the back of his neck, burning from standing in the sun. "A lot."

"What do you thin Kiyo?" Rai mumbled staring at the note.

He rolled his eyes down toward the sand away from her and Ken. "Get it translated," he grumbled.

"I can get us to Port Brine faster. We won't have to walk anymore. Guys, move in closer." They approached her and she held her hands out quickly. "Hey, not that close." They all took a step back, waiting to hear if she approved of their distance. "Okay..." She put one hand on the floor and turned it quickly. The sand beneath their feet hardened. They could see that they were standing on a circle of firm sand while the dunes around them continued to move with the wind. Rai took several quick breaths, as though she were about to run a mile and slowly raised her hand up off the sand. It looked as though she were fighting the pull of a magnet in the floor. As she lifted her hand, the circle they stood on came up into the air.

"Ooh, fancy," Marlene sat down with her legs hanging off the edge. The others copied her.

"Why didn't you do this before?" Ken wondered, looking back at Rai.

"Too much energy," Kiyo responded to him. "Everything she does with her telekinesis takes some of her energy. The heavier the item or person, the more power she exerts to move it and it can run out."

* * *

Reno stood staring at the ceiling while the doctor was writing something on a clipboard. All doctors working in palaces were psychic healers. Their services were reserved for the Generals and lieutenants. Reno's ankle was back to normal in about an hour and did not require a cast.

"You're always in here," the doctor whispered to Reno as he wrote. "Broken this and that. Fresh wounds even if there was no fight and he's always there. Right behind you."

"And?" Reno responded quietly.

"I don't get it. Why do you tolerate it?"

He turned his head to the doctor slowly. "You know what happened to our last doctor? I found her hanging from the ceiling." Reno went quiet as he thought for a bit then turned back to the ceiling. "She tried to be nice to me too."

"Just a thought."

"I'll pretend I never heard it."