Selfish is the Heart Read Free Page B

pointing to his chin. The sun had scarcely peeped over the horizon and yet sweat trickled down the line of his spine. He tasted salt when he licked his mouth. He opened his eyes.
    Above him he heard the hushed titters of his audience, which he ignored. Instead, he bent to lift his shirt from the ground where he’d tossed it. With swift fingers he smoothed his hair back from his face, grateful he’d kept it shorter than fashion dictated. It fell over his eyes but not down the back of his neck.
    The creak of a window caught his attention, and he looked upward. Once a novitiate had fallen from the third story as she leaned to get a better glimpse. Fortunately she’d fallen into the cart of straw and manure Felix the gardener had parked by the flowerbeds in preparation for their fertilization. The girl had been bruised and humiliated but she’d lived.
    Though he glimpsed the forms and faces of several novitiates in the shadowed rooms of the Motherhouse, none of them were hanging from the ledge. Yet. Someone had cranked open the window either to allow in a breeze or to get a better look at him as he exercised, but now had retreated. It was better that way. Cassian found it easier to teach the young women in service when he didn’t have to face them as admirers.
    His other admirer was not so silent. “How long did it take you to learn the Art, Master Toquin? How long to become a master?”
    “I’m not a Master of the Art, Kellen. I just practice it. I could practice it every day for the rest of my life and not master it.”
    Kellen, tousle-headed and blond, frowned. “I don’t think I’d like to do something every day and know I’d never become good enough at it to be called a master.”
    Cassian smiled but stopped himself from ruffling the lad’s hair. “There are many skills in life that can’t be completely mastered. One can become proficient, and that should be enough.”
    Kellen followed Cassian to the pump in the yard where he ran the water, frigid from its source deep underground. Cassian splashed his face, blowing great breaths at the chill, and dripping, swiped at his face. Kellen already had Cassian’s jacket ready, held out like an offering. Cassian took it.
    “You needn’t play the part of my fetchencarry, Kellen. I’m quite capable of gathering my own belongings.”
    “I know,” Kellen answered cheerfully. “But I like watching you.”
    It would be a number of years until the lad discovered the joys of living in a house filled almost exclusively with women. Right now, all he saw were the pains. Cassian took the jacket, hung it over his arm. He meant to return to his quarters for a bath rather more private than he had opportunity for now.
    “Do you?”
    “Oh, yes. The Mothers say I’m to learn what I can from you, at any rate. Not the Art,” Kellen added. “I don’t think they care much for that.”
    “No, I don’t suppose they do.” The Art was a man’s domain, though Cassian had heard tell of women who practiced it. He couldn’t quite imagine what they’d ever need it for, but he’d heard stories. “Mothers don’t always understand the importance of the same things men do.”
    Kellen laughed, eyes crinkling. “No!”
    “I was a good deal older than you are now when I first took up the practice. I should think you’d be able to learn faster than I did.”
    Kellen’s grin did its best to break Cassian’s heart, but he’d grown accustomed to making it into stone. The Art was not the only thing he’d long practiced. The lad leaped into the air in a fair impression of Striking Serpent.
    “Like this?”
    “Very good. Not quite.” Cassian hung his jacket on the pump handle and showed Kellen the form. “Like this.”
    Kellen did it again, better this time. He stumbled a little when he came down, but his hands were in the right place. In the bright morning sun, his hair shone like gold. His eyes, though filled with merriment at the moment, were dark. Cassian didn’t like to look