“Catalyst.” I tried the word on my tongue. It sounded like a spice or a healing herb. Both of those were things that changed other things. A spice that flavored a food or an herb that saved a life. Catalyst. Once it had meant my father, in some of his scrolls that I had read.
Dwalia used the word to pry at me. “The one you might use to set the world on a different path. Your tool. Your weapon in your battle to shape the world. Have you seen him yet? Or her?”
I shook my head. I felt sick. Knowledge was welling up in me like vomit rising in my throat. It burned me with cold. The dreams I’d had. The things I’d known to do. Had I provoked the manor children to attack me? When Taffy had struck me, the web of flesh that had kept my tongue tied to the bottom of my mouth had been torn free. I’d gained speech. I’d gone out that day, knowing it must happen if I was going to be able to speak. I rocked in my wrap, my teeth chattering. “I’m so cold,” I said. “So cold.”
I had been ready to trigger that change. Taffy had been my tool to do that to myself. Because I could see the tumbling consequences of being where the other children would see me. I had placed myself where they could catch me. Because I had known that I had to do that. I had to do that to put myself on my path. The path I’d seen in glimpses since before I was born. Anyone could change the future. Every one of us changed the future constantly. But Dwalia was right. Few could do what I could do. I could see, with absolute certainty, the most likely consequences of a particular action. And then I could release the bowstring and send that consequence arrowing into the future. Or cause someone else to do so.
The knowledge of what I could do dizzied me. I didn’t want it. I felt ill with it, as if it were a sickness inside me. Then I was ill. The world spun around me. If I closed my eyes, it went faster. I clutched at the blankets, willing myself to stillness. The cold gripped me so hard I thought I had already died from it.
“Interesting,” Dwalia said. She made no move to aid me, and when Odessa shifted behind her she flung her hand out and down in a sharp motion. The lurik froze where she was, hunching her head between her shoulders like a scolded dog. Dwalia looked at Vindeliar. He cowered into himself. “Watch him. Both of you. But no more than that. This was not predicted. I will summon the others and we will pool our memories of the predictions. Until we know what has been seen of this, if anything has been seen, it is safest to do nothing.”
“Please,” I said, not knowing what I begged of them. “I’m sick. And I’m so cold.”