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could do this too?”
    His master sighed.
    “No, not exactly.”
    He rubbed his hand through the pale bristles of his beard, and then returned it to his pommel. Master Gershom lifted the heavy sack from his shoulder and tucked it under his free arm.
    “I’ve kept this information from you for your own safety. Sometimes children can’t be trusted to keep to themselves that which might cause them harm.”
    What?
    “Who did you think I’d talk to? Are the sheep planning a revolt?” The words burst from his mouth, and Enoch was surprised to find a thick surge of bitterness welling up inside his chest. “You should have told me!”
    “Hold on, boy—you don’t even know what I have been protecting you from. I had my reasons.”
    “You kept me stupid and useless!”
    Master Gershom’s voice was suddenly dangerous and low. “Enoch, you are walking the fine line between my patience and my hand, a line you’ve never tread before—and that is the only reason you still have your teeth. You’ll not speak to me like that again.
    “I taught you what you needed to know when you needed to know it. This talent is something unexpected and unasked for. It does not always arise in your line, and even then the full realization has rarely developed. Your ability to see patterns and your . . . discomfort around people is genetic and relatively benign. In fact, in ages past it was considered a genetic flaw. A weakness.”
    Enoch was confused and didn’t know what to say.
    His master tried a different approach. “Your father was a great man, Enoch, but he struggled to talk with people in the same way that you do. Like you, he was brilliant with patterns. With tactics. But he didn’t have the ability to—” and here he motioned toward the Unit on his back.
    Enoch felt as though his chest shook, his heart was beating so loudly. This news was making him feel anxious. Angry. Scared. It was worse than his fight in the village. He had to gain control.
    Constrain. Calm. Control.
    Master Gershom waited, watching Enoch’s face, his breathing, his tightly clenched fists. Enoch knew he was being tested even now.
    Constrain. Calm. Control.
    His muscles unhitched and his breathing slowed. Enoch tilted his head up to his master and nodded. Master Gershom held his gaze for another second and then continued.
    “There was a rare chance you would develop this ability, Enoch. Rare enough to pull you from your mother and hide out here in the wild. This ability can scare the powerful and anger the weak. Your family wasn’t the first to fall after the Schism.”
    “Schism?” asked Enoch.
    “A disaster which broke the world. The end of a golden age. Mostly dark legend now, but it provoked the lowest acts of a frightened people. The most despicable of these acts was called the Hunt—a calculated genocide.”
    Master Gershom looked down at his hands and sighed.
    “The Hunt scourged this land seven times over the centuries. The creatures of the First Hunt—their description would chill your blood. They passed into legend, were slain by their prey, and have not been seen for many lifetimes.
    “But I did witness the Seventh Hunt. This one was performed by men, by those who knew the folk they pursued. We don’t need tales of monsters. I’ve seen the things that frightened men will do to other men when fear overwhelms them, Enoch. Monster is too small a word. And this fear didn’t end when the Seventh Hunt departed into the west.
    “There were those who worried that the last Hunt had failed, that it wasn’t wide enough in scope to truly root out all of the Worldbreakers. It didn’t help that those remaining families with ties to the Pensanden also happened to be the wealthiest citizens of the Old Cities. A few of the families fought against the Hunt. Most of them doubled their guard and locked themselves away, waiting for the fear to subside. The wise ones fled.”
    Enoch didn’t understand half the words that Master Gershom was speaking,