Blade Kin by David Farland Page A

true. Tull was like her father, like a Spirit Walker, always scheming and thinking about tomorrow. The similarity had never occurred to her. She had married someone like her own father.
    “I am neither human, nor Pwi,” Tull said. “I am Tcho-Pwi, No People, the Un-family. I can wear your clothes, even look like a Pwi, but I cannot be Pwi at heart, just as I can never be completely human. I don’t feel kwea as strongly as you do. I feel no animosity emanating from the knife as you do. To me, it is just a piece of wood and metal. Yet, in some things I do feel kwea. I feel love emanating from you. I feel the kwea of our time together, and even though I love you, I fear that perhaps the human part of me will never let me crave you the way that you crave me. I am not a Pwi. Even if I were, you know how I have lived. You know how my father beat me, and kept me chained to the wall as if I were one of his dogs. My past is so dark, I cannot find pleasure in it. And when I look at the future—I cannot see much reason to hope for happiness.
    “Maybe that is why, when I’m with you, I wish time would stop, so every moment would become endless. I guess that what I want most of all is for just a few days to forget about the world, all of its past and all of its future, so that I can enjoy you.”
    Fava stood for a long moment. “I understand … I think. If I could give you those days, I would. But I don’t know how to do it.”
    “Fava,” Tull said, “your father has asked me to become his student, to learn to Spirit Walk.” Tull touched her shoulder. For a moment, Fava felt a foreboding. Chaa would take Tull from her as certainly as if he were a slaver dragging Tull to a distant land. By the tone of his voice, Tull was asking permission to go.
    Fava nodded thoughtfully, considering whether to give that permission. “He asked you this two nights ago, when he took you aside at the lake. Didn’t he?”
    “Yes,” Tull answered softly.
    Fava watched him standing there, a little too far away by Pwi standards, and his face was closed, secretive. Tull still hid something from her. She could read him for the moment, read him as easily as if he were a Pwi, and something in her craved to be able to read him always, hungered to grow so knowledgeable about him that his body would become like a paper with words written on it.
    “You are hiding something from me,” Fava said. “You keep doing this to me. You keep secrets, and the secrets keep us apart.”
    Tull sighed deeply. “I didn’t wait for your permission,” Tull said. “I didn’t ask for your advice. Last night, I crept out of the house and met your father. He gave me seer’s tea to help open my spirit eyes.”
    Fava’s nostrils flared, and the blood ran hot and angry in her veins. She tried to control her words, to keep from saying angry things, but the words seemed to fly from her mouth. “Am I even a wife to you? Do you pretend to give yourself to me in the wedding circle, and then sneak out of our bed?”
    Tull stepped back, his face a mask of surprise, as if he had never imagined that Fava was even capable of becoming angry. “I’m sorry,” Tull said. “I just wanted to protect you!”
    He stepped close as if to hug her, and a strangled cry escaped from deep in Fava’s throat. “You don’t need to protect me!” Fava shouted. She slapped him in the chest, hard. Fava knew her Pwi strength. If Tull had been a full-blooded human, the blow might have broken some ribs. As it was, he stepped back, obviously stung.
    “Can’t you see? Can’t you see what you are doing?” she said, and she stood, gasping, struggling for words. If Tull had been a Pwi, he’d have known. He’d have seen the hurt and hopelessness in her eyes when she learned that he had kept a secret of such magnitude. If he had been a Pwi, he would never have picked up an unfriendly knife and showed it to her. If he had been Pwi, Tull would have felt the kwea of her love radiating to him,