Impossible Things by Kate Johnson

reckon we should go to Admin first and see about your room. It’s useless trying to get anything out of them after dinner.’
    Ishtaer nodded, and he turned a corner in what she thought was the opposite direction from the one she’d come in by.
    ‘So, you’re from the Saranos? What’s it like there?’
    I have no idea.
Vague memories jumbled together in her mind, some half forgotten, some possibly invented. Kael had kept suggesting things to her, and now she wasn’t sure if she’d just agreed to the things that sounded realistic, instead of actually remembering them.
    ‘Different,’ she said. ‘I—they don’t really have Chosen there.’
    ‘Yeah? I thought they were part of the Empire now.’
    She shrugged. ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’
    ‘You grow up there?’
    Ishtaer nodded. She bit her lip. Then she said, ‘I don’t really want to talk about it.’
    ‘Fair enough,’ Eirenn said easily. ‘Generally when people ask about where I’m from it’s so they can make fun of it.’
    ‘You’re not from the Empire?’
    ‘Oh, yeah, but out in the arse end of nowhere. When my mark manifested the major concern was how the hell they were going to get me all the way to Ilanium. That is, not the major concern, but not far off.’
    ‘What was the major concern?’ Ishtaer asked politely, because he seemed to have left that one hanging there.
    Eirenn laughed. ‘Right. I’m used to people knowing. And if you can’t see …’ she felt the slight breeze of him waving his hand in front of her face, and said nothing. ‘So. Drumroll, if you please.’
    Ishtaer didn’t know what he meant by that, so she just said, ‘There’s something wrong with your leg. The … the right one, I think.’
    Eirenn was silent a moment. ‘How the frilly heck did you know that? Did Madam Julia tell you?’
    ‘Why would she tell me? I could tell by the way you walk. The sound of it, and now I’m beside you I can feel that you slightly favour one leg over the other.’
    ‘I’m impressed. And yes, it is the right leg. Want to take a guess at what’s wrong with it?’
    She thought for a moment and listened to a few more footsteps. He walked as if he couldn’t bend his foot or ankle, but she didn’t think he wore a cast or splints, and could sense no injury anywhere. It was possible he had some wasting disease, or had suffered from one as a child, and his leg had needed to be splinted for strength or to keep it straight, but that didn’t feel quite right to her either.
    ‘It’s a wooden leg?’ she guessed eventually.
    Eirenn laughed, the sound one she’d later categorise as admiring. ‘I’m twice impressed. It is indeed. You don’t get many around here. I guess it’s more common out in the Saranos? I mean, if they don’t have Chosen there aren’t Healers, right?’
    ‘Right.’ She chewed her lip again. ‘What happened?’
    ‘Rock fall. I lived up in the mountains, you see. Farming. Mostly goats and sheep. The land is practically vertical around there. All it takes is one footfall in the wrong place and half a hill shears off and slides down. Just one goat hoof on the wrong pebble. It was like a river,’ he added, almost wistfully. ‘A river of stones. Beautiful, really. That is, until it landed on me. Then it was less beautiful, and more intensely painful. And like I said, no Healers, so it just got chopped off and I was considered lucky.’
    ‘Lucky?’
    ‘Could’ve killed me. Or the wound could have been infected, or … Well, anyway. When my Militis mark appeared a few years later no one really knew what to do with me. Think they were ashamed to send a one-legged boy off to the Academy.’
    ‘But the Academy accepted you?’
    ‘Oh, sure. I can fight, you see, I’m good with a sword, although my footwork’s not up to scratch. And I’m ace with a bow and arrow. Strong, too. They said the gods must just have a sense of humour.’
    ‘They said that about me, too,’ Ishtaer said, and he briefly squeezed the