Moira J. Moore - Heroes at Risk

by Moira J. Moore

  “Do you wear it for Taro?”

  What an odd question. “No.”

  She grinned. “You’ve just given me another reason to get you drunk.”

  And she’d given me another reason to kill Taro. He was the one who’d told her about the costume in the first place. It should have been me who stormed out on him.

  Chapter Nine

  Alone in my sitting room, wearing a light night shift, I sat cross-legged on the floor. I had pushed the furniture close to the walls to give myself plenty of space. I had lit two candles and set them on the floor before me. It was late, everyone in the residence asleep. It was quiet, not a sound coming in from the streets. I stared at the taller candle, letting the golden glow fill my eyes and wrap around my mind.

  I didn’t usually rely on such artificial relaxation techniques. I couldn’t remember doing it even once since leaving the Shield Academy. It seemed to me that it must be unhealthy to try to put the mind asleep while it still had thoughts to work over. But I couldn’t sleep, and I really, really wanted to. My mind was spinning so hard with so many thoughts, it was stiffening my muscles, shallowing my breathing and creating imaginary explosions in my ears. The thoughts in my mind were not resolving into any conclusions, just circling uselessly. It made sleep impossible, and it made me anxious.

  The shambles of my mind made it clear how very sloppy I had gotten since leaving the Academy. As time went by, I seemed to have less and less control over myself and my emotions and how I expressed them. That was dangerous. A Shield without self-control was useless.

  So, out of desperation, I had dragged out some old half-forgotten lessons about finding peace, and the tools to be used when simple deep breathing wasn’t enough. So, two candles. One tall and unobstructed. The second low, to accommodate the small metal arch that covered it. On that arch rested a small bowl filled with water and a few drops of dark bark essence. Staring at the flame of the tall candle, breathing in the soothing scent and blowing it out slowly, I followed the thoughts of serenity.

  The candle brings light.

  Lights shows truth.

  Truth brings knowledge.

  Knowledge crafts balance.

  Balance brings peace.

  Peace crafts clarity.

  Clarity is light.

  The candle brings light.

  A simple sequence of words, yet I couldn’t keep them straight. I kept remembering other words that didn’t belong. Colors flashed behind my eyes, soiling the golden glow of the candle. The explosions increased within my ears, and my heart wouldn’t slow down.

  So, eventually, I gave up and stared at the candle and got angry at the fact that everyone else was able to sleep.

  I heard the door to the corridor open with just the faintest of creaks. I looked up.

  It was Taro, of course. His hair was loose, his earlobe was bare, and he was wearing a nightshirt that covered more skin than mine. He slipped into the room and leaned back against the door after closing it. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re sitting on the floor in the middle of the night.”

  “Is there a better time to sit on the floor?”

  He tsked and crossed the room so he could sit on the floor on the other side of the candles. He had in one hand some crumpled paper, and I wondered if he’d received another letter from his mother. That always put him in a precarious mood. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing serious.” I didn’t want to talk about it. It was all so childish and embarrassing.

  “I will decide what is serious,” he declared.

  “Will you?”

  “Indeed.”

  That made me smile, for a moment. “Do you ever get the feeling that the Academies don’t really prepare us for the real world?” Though perhaps I was speaking too broadly. The Source Academy might be a very different experience, as Sources spent a great deal of time outside the limits of their Academy in order to practice channeling different kinds of events in different environments. While still closely guarded to avoid spontaneous bonding, it was a lot more experience and exposure than that granted to Shields.

  “Yes,” was his answer. And that surprised me. I’d really thought it was just me. “I think they think they’re being thorough. They tell us of things like illness and crime, the dangers of Shields in the grip of music, the friction that can accidentally happen with regulars.”

  “Aye,” I said. “That’s pretty much what they taught us. I guess there isn’t a lot more that we can expect from them. But they don’t tell us much about what it feels like when other Shields and Sources, people you live and work with, die. Or when the city you’re living in suffers some kind of devastation that Sources and Shields can do nothing about.”

  “Those aren’t trivial concerns,” said Taro.

  But those were concerns from a while ago. “The Empress dies. People are digging up ashes because they believe in luck. And spells. A woman burned her house down because she thought she could cast a spell and have it actually accomplish something. It’s like people are going crazy. Again.”

  “Or still,” Taro suggested.

  “Still?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not like they were sane while we were gone and only got crazy after we came back.”

  Now, there was an idea. Maybe we had brought the craziness with us. “I think I like that idea better than the possibility that they’re just getting progressively crazier with no end in sight.”

  “There’s always an end,” he said.

  “Aye, but some ends are better than others.”

  “We’re not going to get into a philosophical discussion, are we?”

  “I certainly hope not.”

  “Air is better blown to water,” Taro added.

  “Exactly,” I said, though I didn’t really know what that meant. I assumed it was something relevant.

  “How can a school prepare you for murderers and mad-men?” Taro asked. “Friends who would betray you to your death. People in authority who use their power to perform the most unnatural acts. People hating you because you can’t do things you aren’t supposed to be doing anyway. That’s a lot to expect of a school.”

  “Maybe if we hadn’t gone to the Academies, a more normal upbringing would have better prepared us for the real world.”

  He snickered. “Depends what you call normal, love.”

  True enough. If some smart and plucky servant hadn’t recognized him as a Source—and then promptly gotten fired— Taro might have spent the rest of his life locked up somewhere, by parents who thought he was embarrassingly mad. And that was assuming some event didn’t occur and he didn’t kill himself trying to channel it without a Shield.

  If I’d been a regular, I would have been sent to a boarding school that, from what my brothers told me, was far more rigid than the Shield Academy. That probably wouldn’t be considered too normal an upbringing by the average regular, either.

  “Speaking of which,” said Taro. “I received today a letter.”

  That was never good.

  “From Her Gracious Duchess of Westsea.”

  It took me a moment to remember who that was. Not Taro’s mother, the woman I always associated with that title. The current Duchess of Westsea was a cousin of Taro’s, and the woman to whom he’d given the means to acquire the title so he could avoid taking it himself. “Does she write to you often?” I didn’t really like the idea of his maintaining contact with that world. It might manage to lure him back.

  “This is only the second letter, the first being to thank me for helping her get the title and offering her services should I need anything. This one is giving me details about how things are going. Did you have any idea that there are all sorts of fishers belonging to the estate?”

  I’d never thought about it, but it made sense. “It is on the water.”

  “Aye, but how can there be both fishers and farmers on one estate?”

  “What can I say? It’s a crazy world.” I
found it more surprising that he hadn’t known that about his own land, though perhaps I shouldn’t have. He’d rarely been allowed out of his room before he was sent to the Academy. His parents had never visited him at the Academy. Perhaps they hadn’t written much, either, or hadn’t bothered to give much detail when they had.

  He tapped me on the forehead with the paper as a mild reproof. Then he unfolded it. “It was a lengthy missive, but I’ll just read the interesting bits.” He squinted his eyes in the dim light, and I almost scolded him for it. He’d wrinkle his lovely skin. “‘I have to confess, cousin,’” he read. “‘You have a reputation in our family for being a lack wit, or at least half mad.’”

  I clenched my teeth to keep from voicing my outrage. How dare they? And what the hell did they know, the thick-skulled provincials?

  “‘But have you met your mother? She’s truly insane. And sometimes I think I mean that literally. She will not stay in the dowager house. She invades the manor at any time of day or night, rousing the servants for mulled wine or chilled ale, waking everyone. She tried to give orders to my gardener about the ash on the east corner of the main plot. They have begun to rot, you see, and will collapse if they aren’t cut down. And yes, they are beautiful and have stood there for generations, but are virtually dead and will be a danger if they’re left to collapse on their own. So I ordered them cut down, and your mother saw one of the gardeners beginning to work at the first tree, because apparently she has nothing to do all day but watch what’s going on on my land, and she descended upon the poor man, denigrating his intelligence and his appearance and his lineage, and then she tried to fire him. My gardener. Fortunately, I’d been pretty close myself, seeing if there were any other changes that needed to be made to the garden, and one of the under gardeners fetched me over. When her imperious Dowager Duchess saw me coming, she changed her target and told me my lineage was nothing more than a graft onto hers and my upbringing had clearly been deficient if I thought I could stride into a position that was never meant to be mine and make changes to a place that would be mine only temporarily.’ ”

  “‘Temporarily’?” I interrupted. “What does that mean?”

  “Well, when you think about it, every titleholder has the title and the seat only temporarily. They don’t die with the holder. That’s the nature of it. The title’s been in my direct line for a few generations, though. Perhaps Her Grace feels that the recent transference to another line is only an anomaly.”

  “But there is no one else in your line. Unless you’ve got some other siblings you haven’t told me about.” Or maybe some children.

  He shrugged and resumed reading the letter. “‘While she was talking, I took the axe from poor Forrester and swung at the trunk of the nearest tree. The blade kind of bounced off the bark, which was really embarrassing. But it did shut the woman up, at least for a few moments.’ ”

  “I like this person,” I commented.

  Taro smiled and continued to read. “‘She started up again, though, once I gave the axe back to Forrester and he started chopping the proper way, but we all kept working. Or watching Forrester work, as a more accurate depiction of events. And then your mother, overcome by our brutal attack on her delicate nerves, fainted. It appeared a painful collapse. I think she was expecting someone to catch her.’”

  I snickered.

  “‘Her useless little companion pulled out a handkerchief and fluttered it around her mistress’s face, and then she looked at the gardeners, outraged. She demanded they carry your mother back to her home. I told her we were all busy and she would have to fetch one of the dowager’s servants to take her home. The little companion actually tried to throw some of her own orders around, warning us that the mistress would be most displeased. When that didn’t work, she walked off with a loud huff, and it was clear that your mother was miming her entire episode, with the sour expression she pulled at being left there to lie on the ground.’” Taro paused to laugh. “‘We kept cutting, and eventually a couple of handsome young men—whose functions within your mother’s household I’ve never been able to ascertain—came and carried her away.

  “‘The fun wasn’t over, though. A few weeks later, my housekeeper came to me and told me she had just had a lengthy audience with your mother, who had given her instructions for the menu, the music and the decorations for the ball I was apparently having.

  “‘I confronted your mother, who had not only sent out dozens of invitations to this ball in my home and in my name, but had also received all the responses. Which were all positive. And all humor aside, it was a little disquieting to talk to her about it. She really thought it was perfectly acceptable to plan this huge undertaking in my name without telling me about it. Because she believed I was too stupid or too badly raised to know what was required of me as the Duchess of Westsea, or how to go about it. She didn’t care that she was insulting me grossly, or that she was engaging in behavior to which she flatly had no right. It was baffling. And frustrating. I’ve never so badly wanted to hit a woman in my life.

  “‘So now I wonder if I should revoke the gratitude I expressed to you in my last letter. It seems to me you’ve enjoyed a lucky escape, and I wonder if I’ve been had.’”

  “Zaire,” I breathed. “She’s blunt, isn’t she?”

  “She has to be, if she’s dealing with Her Grace.”

  Actually, it seemed she did have the knack for handling Taro’s mother, though it was difficult to be sure from a letter. Maybe she could give Taro lessons. Though, truly, I was hoping we could spend the rest of our lives without seeing the Dowager Duchess ever again.

  “She has something to say about our favorite royal, too.” Taro flipped to another part of the letter. “‘Our Emperor-to-be has sent notice of a new tax against everyone with servants. Can you believe it? I am to pay three sovereigns a year for every adult in my employ. It is sheer robbery, in my opinion, and I have informed him that as he has not yet ascended to the throne, he lacks the authority to tax me, and he can just wait until he has the right before his gets his grubby little hands on my money.’ ”

  I put my hand over my mouth, as it had gaped open in shock. “And she says your mother is mad?” I mumbled through my fingers.

  “She certainly doesn’t seem worried about making enemies.” He folded the letter up. “I think she will be good for Flown Raven. I’m pleased I chose her.”

  I really wished I had been there when the Dowager Duchess had feigned a faint and no one had bothered to catch her.

  Taro reached around the candles and caught the fingers of my right hand, turning it over. “I never really let you explain what this was about.”

  I didn’t want to go back to our discussion of earlier that day. I didn’t want another argument. I didn’t think I could bear it well, not right then. “This woman set her house on fire trying to cast some kind of spell. She had two young children with her.”

  “And you rushed in to rescue them,” he commented in a soft voice, one corner of his mouth curled into a small smile.

  He was just gorgeous in the candlelight.

  I shrugged. I didn’t know if I was thinking of rescuing anyone. I didn’t think I was thinking at all, really.

  “And just out of curiosity, what would you have done if I had gone rushing into a burning building?” he asked.

  The very idea made my chest tight. “Slapped you up the back of the head,” I admitted.

  He leaned forward so he could reach around with his free hand and give me a gentle tap on the back of the head.

  “But you’re different,” I said solemnly. “You’re so much more fragile than I.” I was joking, but only a little. It was sort of true. As a Shield, I was resistant to things like extreme temperature, and pain was much less acute to me than it would be to Taro.

  “Fragile!” he roared. He placed the candles to one side and grabbed one of my ankles, jerking me to him so I collapsed onto my back. My admonishment to stay quiet was obscured by giggles as he pulled me b
eneath him. “I’ll show you fragile.”

  He felt so good. Strange and safe and sure and exciting and so many other things. I loved pushing my hands through his hair. I loved the low tones of his voice whispering against my ear. I loved the taste of his skin.

  I loved being forgiven when I acted like an idiot.

  Chapter Ten

  The next morning, Ben had prepared a white, milky glop to put on my palm, and he appeared to be waiting in the kitchen for me to show up so he could apply it. It did take a bit of the sting out of the burn, and Ben seemed so pleased about being able to do it. I was happy to be able to do something that made him feel appreciated.

  Taro was already out, helping a friend change residences. Apparently, the fellow was falling behind on his rent and skipping out. While I couldn’t approve of anyone slithering out on their financial obligations, it wasn’t unlike an action Taro and I had been considering not too long ago back on Flatwell, and the rent Taro’s friend was expected to pay for that hovel was criminal.

  Taro’s absence meant I got to go book hunting, something that would have bored Taro into incoherence.

  All this casting craziness, it had nothing to do with me, and there was nothing I could do about any of it. Screaming at people to start making sense was surprisingly ineffective. But I felt driven to find out where these people were getting their crazy ideas. If nothing else, it had to make for interesting reading.

  So I headed out to the nearest print shop, and I asked for materials about spells, and the printer looked appalled. “Of course we don’t sell such filth here!” she exclaimed.

  “Filth?” I echoed. “How is it filth?”

  “Encouraging people to believe in casting. It’s unnatural.”

  I didn’t disagree. Believing in casting was unnatural. Still, that didn’t mean books about it could be classified as filth. “You print a circular with a mystery series. The descriptions of the deaths are horrible. Really graphic.” I didn’t like serials, as a rule, preferring to read a full book in a sitting or two. I’d started the serial to which I was referring because I’d thought the writing was unusually good, but the gruesome nature of the murders had put me off.