TWO HUNDRED FORTY-NINE: Strong Bricks

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Alden spent Friday morning sitting out in front of the cottage again, practicing his finger dexterity exercises while he tried to let his thoughts settle into their new, slightly different shapes. The ideas he’d examined on the inward path last night were clearer now than they would be later, and the wounds were still numb enough that he could think about them without getting too emotional.

Yenu-pezth had been willing to focus their discussion on confidence. He was sure he could have asked to talk about paint drying, and she would have found a way to make that helpful for him. This was a much more relevant topic.

He had been confident in ways he no longer was. He was becoming confident in new ways. The nightmares he’d chosen were a tool for gaining confidence by recognizing what he was capable of now that he was a little more powerful and experienced.

Sitting here, the question his brain wanted to mull over was one Rel-art’h had put in his head, though the knight couldn’t have known he was doing it when he was telling Alden that Stuart lacked the kind of confidence the family wanted him to have.

Don’t I lack it, too?

I’m not confident I’ll go bravely to my next binding and however many more there will be afterward. And I’m not confident that two or three things won’t fall on me at some point and make me loathe my affixation—my self—to a deadly degree. I’m definitely not confident I can do most of what knights seem to be supposed to do.

And it’s not like this is some new lack of confidence. I don’t remember feeling super sure I could handle these things on the day I chose to keep my authority sense either.

Does that mean I chose wrong?

By the art’hs’ standards, or by their standards for Stuart anyway, perhaps it did.

I’m a goner, I guess. Someone better plan my second funeral.

Alden set down the twig he’d been twirling.

Someone he didn’t recognize was walking along the stream with a bundle under their arm that was likely a change of clothes. The siblinghold had a heated outdoor bathing pool in that direction. Alden had glimpsed the edge of it through the trees once on a walk with Stuart, but even if he hadn’t, he could have guessed something like it was out there after seeing multiple people head that way and then return after an hour or two with wet hair.

Is that one a knight or not?

He couldn’t tell. The knight members of the family often wore their uniforms at home but not always.

If they are a knight, does that mean they were completely confident in their ability to live like they do now before they went to their first binding? Is that the expectation for everyone or only for the Primary’s favorite?

Or…only for people who have obvious disadvantages?

Like mind traps in their head. And painful childhoods. And being the wrong species.

I don’t think confidence like Rel-art’h talked about is necessary. Because I didn’t have it. I still don’t. And I don’t feel like I made a mistake when I said yes to keeping my authority sense.

If he was giving advice to a person in the exact same situation he’d been in when he’d chosen to keep the sense, as well as his memories of Thegund and Kibby, he would tell them…

That the choice I made was the less reasonable one. The more dangerous one. Not smart.

Affixation was worse than he could have imagined, and the complications that came with being what he was weren’t ones he wanted. He could see that he had, in some ways, been illogical.

But I was sure.

Not that he’d succeed. Not that he’d be happy. Just sure of a couple of solid bricks in his tiny confidence wall.

I wasn’t confident I could do it. I was just confident I wanted my memories and my magic.

Knowing what you want isn’t nothing. And wanting something you might not be capable of doing isn’t wrong, especially if you’ve got your eyes open to the realities of the situation and you’re not just imagining yourself to be much more perfect than you actually are.

Wanting something that might be too hard for you, knowing the risks, accepting them—that’s not a tower of confidence built on your illusions. It’s a few real bricks.

Surely, the point of the choosing season young Artonans had in the Rapports was to give them time to make those bricks.

And if Stuart’s got his made, then whatever happens…even if it costs his life…

His stomach twisted. Taking several slow, deep breaths didn’t untwist it.

Yeah. Okay. I understand why the whole family is losing their minds. The weird thing from an outsider’s perspective is actually that they don’t freak out and try to stop every one of their kids.

As for Alden’s own bricks, he’d found a few last night on the inward path that he doubted he would have recognized, or respected, without Healer Yenu’s prompting.

“I sent a message to Dalat-orni, who tutors the girl Kivb-ee, asking him if she has said anything to him about your time together.”

“Why did you do that?”

“For a perspective other than your own that might show me what you do not know about yourself. She has told him that you named her your instructor for language, that you make meals more creative and impressive than the ones she enjoys with the Quaternary, and that you are better than everyone other than her father at braiding hair.”

“I’m not that good.”

“Did you try to be that good for her?”

“Yes.”

“Was it hard?”

“A lot of the time.”

And he would do it again. He was confident that he would try to make bad situations better in small ways once he found himself stuck in them. A brave face, a wordchain, taping up signs to warn people that an ambassador’s residence wasn’t a place of refuge—he knew he was someone who could do that much. And he had significant evidence that he would do much harder things for some people he ended up in danger with. He hadn’t left Zeridee behind, and he was mentally stronger today than he had been then.

Feels all right to acknowledge that, he thought, as he stood and stretched.

His Earth day would start with a meeting he had scheduled with the volunteer coordinator at an Apex healing hospital. He needed to get ready for that.

A while later, before he left the cottage, he added a note to the study journal and set it on Stuart’s cushion:

“When we tell someone we’re going to build something, and they say it’s not possible, we should probably ask ourselves what they actually know about the project before we accept their opinion. Are they just counting the bricks we’re holding without respecting what they’re made of? And are they measuring how far we have left to go without seeing our determination to get there?

“This applies to brothers who say a friendship won’t work. And to lots of other things, I’m sure.

“That’s what I think after thinking all morning. See you tonight.”

He would trust Stuart to apply the thoughts to knighthood, in addition to friendship, if he wanted to.

******

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Alden flew from Matadero to his interview in a drizzle that made the nonagon much less fun than usual. He hadn’t passed a single potential entruster on his way from the teleportation alcoves to the hangar, so he’d left the cube with only normal human amounts of rain protection instead of magical shielding. He’d thought keeping his shoes and socks in his messenger bag so that they didn’t get wet was the right call, but now, he’d been sitting in the volunteer coordinator’s warm office for several minutes wearing those dry shoes, and his feet still hadn’t thawed.

The coordinator was a woman in a navy blue polo shirt who had an office that was barely big enough for a desk and three chairs. She spoke to him mostly in Chinese, and she had the air of a pleasant person who was trying to get his business taken care of well but quickly.

After a couple of references to his course requirements for Instructor Marion’s class and mentions that he’d probably be doing all of his volunteering here at this branch of Anesidora’s healing hospital system since it was closest to campus, Alden realized he hadn’t communicated well enough in his application and when he first sat down here and introduced himself. There was no natural opening for him to correct it since the “interview” had been five questions before they’d moved straight into her explaining expectations for volunteers. So he awkwardly interrupted her flow to make the point that he was afraid had been missed.

“I want to be here,” he said, scooting even closer to the desk. “Seeing what kinds of jobs there are and learning how I could make a difference in this setting is important to me. It’s convenient that I have a class next quarter that gives credit for something like this, but I wanted to do this anyway. I don’t mind traveling down to F and the other hospitals. I hope you’ll let me. I hope I’ll be useful, and if I am useful, I don’t think I’ll just quit volunteering here for good once my class is over.”

The coordinator paused for about ten seconds, which seemed like a much longer period of time given the pace she’d been going at. She took a sip from a disposable cup rimmed with lipstick marks, her brown eyes darting around to check whatever she had on her interface.

<<Do you think you might be interested in a career in healthcare, then? You’re in the hero program at your school, so I assumed not. We do have a job shadowing agreement with Celena North, but students who want to do that need to be in pre-med sciences or have the Healer class.>>

“I don’t have to job shadow, just volunteering is fine with me. I don’t know for sure what career I want, even though I’m in the hero program, so I’m trying to explore options. I’m serious about doing my best at whatever you give me here.”

<<You’ll probably be surprised by how boring most of your volunteer hours are, even if I give you permission to volunteer through the System.>>

“Volunteer through the System?”

She picked up her cup again. <<We’re not a normal hospital, and we don’t serve a normal population. Some Avowed Healers don’t even do scheduled work. They just wander in when they’re in the mood to practice their talents. Most are better than that, but…we have a lot of powerful, irregular ways to help sick and injured people. The System does the bulk of our organizing and decision-making for us. Keeps things running smoothly.>>

“So if you give permission I can volunteer through the System, and it will decide what I do?” Alden asked.

<<Not quite. It would recommend you to staff members, and then they’d have to confirm.>>

“Can I volunteer that way?”

<<Usually I’d make someone your age work for a couple hundred hours before I considered it.>>

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

That sounded like a long time. “I think my skill might be easier to make use of if the System helps people understand when I can help.”

<<Some wizards work here. They have a tendency to accept the System’s recommendations even if the task is inappropriate for someone who isn’t used to a medical setting.>>

“I speak Artonan.”

She wasn’t swiftly rejecting him, and she’d brought up the possibility of letting him volunteer through the System in the first place. He didn’t know why she was considering it for him, but she seemed to be.

“I’ve used my skill on injured people before without freaking out,” he added. “I ET’d with a classmate recently. Whether I’m doing boring jobs or hard ones, I’ll try to be professional and learn from the experience. I won’t pester busy doctors or healers. I’ve helped dispose of dangerous and disgusting things in an alien lab before.”