Free The Kanshou (Earthkeep) by Sally Miller Gearhart Page B

losing your whole identity.  Do you know how dangerous that is?"
    "For you .  .  .  yes.  But does it occur to you that identity remains, even in surrender?"  Jez moved both her hands in deep strong movements on Zude's neck.  "Anyway," she added before Zude could reply, "that's not why you couldn't do it."
    "No?"
    "No.  You're just too scared to give over your power."  Jez gave Zude's muscles a parting squeeze and began to gather her gear. 
    Zude was unruffled.  "Bullseye," she said.  "I'm not just scared.  I'm smart.  Power's not meant to be given over.  It's meant to be used."  She touched Jez's hair at the wet temple.  "And you know that too, my love.  I've seen you do it.  Even when you're empowering someone else you still hold back a wild card, in case she blows it and you have to rescue her."   
    Jez's lips tightened and she lowered her gaze.  When she looked at Zude again her eyes were sad, but she smiled.  "Bullseye," she said.
    Zude gave her head a short jerk of satisfaction.  Still, something remained unsaid.  Carefully, she took a deep breath, put her hands around her knee, and leaned back in a balance.  "So how can you hope to be a Kanshou, Bella-Belle, if you want to give away all your power?  You're a cadet in one of the three great Kanshou Academies of the world.  You've signed on for a four- or five-year lesson in how to win, how to disarm, how to overpower a violent offender."  She sat up straight and searched her lover's face.  "What are you doing here, Jezebel?"
    Jez's eyes roamed the weapons along the fencetop.  "I've been asking myself that very question, Zudie," she whispered.  She stood up, kissed her stunned lover firmly on the lips, and wound her way down the path.
    Zude's eyes followed her to the turn.  Then she lit the cigarillo and inhaled its poison.        
    * * * * * * * * * *
    Cadet Jezebel Dolalicia did not share with her lover the escalation within herself of knowledge that came unbidden to her, of unorthodox skills that she acquired effortlessly.  She didn't talk, for instance, about a particular encounter with Fourth-Form Amah Cadet Sarawak Ardis, The Banjar.
    Ardis claimed a birthplace dead center on the equator in the high mountains of Borneo and an early education on the rubber plantations where her mothers flattened bulky latex slabs into thin sheets for export to Shanghai.  She boasted with a wide grin that her prognathous jaw was built for devouring white women and offered to prove that to Jezebel early in their acquaintance.  Jezebel declined the offer to be devoured, claiming that her brown blood disqualified her.  She and Ardis nevertheless sustained a flirtatious comaraderie and commiserated frequently over sore feet on parade weekends.
    Then one day Jez was on the dentist's couch enduring the irritating but painless dislodging of a deeply impacted wisdom tooth.  The sonar waves were playing over her cheekbones and tantalizing the edge of her sinuses.  She felt the tooth break free.  Then, just as Captain Yuan lifted the offending molar out of the small incision she had made, Jez was suddenly blasted in her belly with a wave of panic and a sense of imminent danger.  When she began shaking involuntarily, the concerned Captain Yuan consigned her to an observed recovery room.  There Jez focused on the terror and found to her astonishment that she was in clear mental communication with Ardis The Banjar, three miles away. 
    "Jezebel!"  The voice was ragged.  "Is that you?"
    Jez formulated a silent question, "Where are you?"
    "I'm for the Great Goddess's sake at the top of the practice 'scraper, on a construction girder.  Looking at Food Street 30  stories down.  I'm the last one up here and I'll be here until I faint."
    "You won't faint, Ardis.  When you fly you don't . . ."  Jez caught herself.  "I forgot.  You don't fly."
    "Right.  I'm a lowly Foot-Shrieve cadet."
    Jez felt the stiffness of a tall figure clinging to upright