It did not, unfortunately, change reality. “I am truly sorry, but Source Karish wasn’t able to do anything for Kafar.”
“Kafar is healed,” she announced. “He told us. He sent us here.”
There had to be a saying somewhere about how being kind could swing back to punch you in the face.
“He was reckless to make such a claim,” LaMonte interjected. “You have no right to be here. Leave.”
Not the best way to get the goal accomplished, I thought.
And as if in confirmation of that opinion, the woman looked back at her supporters, and almost as one they all took a step forward. I could almost feel the air they pushed before them. Their rigid determination sent a shiver down my spine. “All right!” I said quickly. “I’ll find Source Karish. Please stay calm.”
“What are you doing?” LaMonte demanded in a sharp whisper.
“Preventing a riot,” I whispered back.
I found Taro in his suite, reading a letter. It appeared to be a good letter. He was smiling and his eyes were sparkling. I wished I didn’t have to be the one to drive that expression off his face. “We’ve got a problem.”
“I love my cousin,” he declared with a grin. “She’s driving Her Grace insane.”
I was in full support of anything that tormented Taro’s mother, and I wanted to hear all about it, but it would have to be later. “I’m serious. Kafar told a whole bunch of people you healed him, and they’re all here.” I was surprised he hadn’t heard the noise in the street, even if his suite was on the other side of the building.
He folded up the letter. “I didn’t heal him. I told him that.”
“Apparently he’s better and he’s telling people you’re responsible. That crowd expects you to treat them. And there was a point when I thought they were going to push their way in whether we liked it or not.”
“We?”
“LaMonte and I.”
“Chris. Oh, that’s just lovely.” He sighed as he rubbed his face. “What should we do?”
“We?” I squeaked. “I have no idea.”
“Of course you do.”
“I really, really don’t.” All the options were bad. I didn’t know if we could get them to leave if we refused to try to help them, and they might turn into a mob. We could wait until Runners could be fetched to send them away, but the crowd would only return and we’d find ourselves in the same spot. Or Taro could pretend to try to heal them, and if they, like Kafar, thought they had actually been healed, we could find ourselves with a new, even bigger crowd. There was just no winning.
Taro swore and jumped up. I followed him downstairs, where Firth and Beatrice had joined LaMonte at the front door. Lovely. All my favorite people, all in the same place.
“Explain this, Dunleavy,” Firth ordered.
I contemplated the various hand gestures that might be appropriate in the circumstances. “LaMonte knows.”
“No, LaMonte doesn’t know,” the man in question stated. “LaMonte hasn’t been graced with adequate explanations himself.”
Taro ignored all of us. He could be good at that. “Who’s in charge here?”
It was almost entertaining the way the crowd eased back from the woman who’d been doing all the talking. She didn’t seem surprised by their actions. “Kafar said you healed him,” she said.
“He’s mistaken.”
“He’s better.”
“That’s wonderful, but it’s not because of anything I did. However,” he added quickly, for she had opened her mouth to object. “I will do what I did with him. I will do my best for you, and for everyone here, on the condition that not one of you mentions this to anyone else.”
“Pure idiocy,” LaMonte muttered.
I kind of agreed with him. I hated it when that happened.
“Do you accept those conditions?” Taro asked.
“Aye,” the woman answered.
“And the others?”
“They’ll hold to it. I’ll make sure.”
He suddenly seemed to gain in height as he said, “You’d better. You’ll be held responsible if they don’t.”
I was impressed by his delivery. He sounded sure, serious and authoritative. One would almost assume he had the means to punish people who failed to do as he wished.
“Get everyone lined up in an orderly fashion. For gods’ sake, get them out of the street. Send them in one at a time.”
“So you can do what, exactly?” LaMonte demanded.
“Demonstrate that I’m unable to heal them.”
“One at a time?” Firth felt compelled to toss in a coin, too. “That’ll take all day.”
At least.
“It will cause great disruption for all of us,” Firth complained. “Can you never think of anyone other than yourselves?”
I thought the fact that Taro wasn’t telling everyone to clear off demonstrated great thought for others.
“I take it, then, Claire, that you won’t be assisting in serving refreshments while they wait?” Taro asked.
Firth glared at him and stomped off. Beatrice wandered off after her. I had the feeling he really didn’t care one way or the other.
“You can’t use our residence for this purpose,” said LaMonte. “I forbid it.”
Taro laughed.
I wondered whether LaMonte’s deep red flush was due to anger or to humiliation.
“I really don’t think we have the option of saying no, LaMonte.” For what I believed was the first time in our acquaintance, I was trying to soothe LaMonte. The world had to be ending. “They don’t look like they’re prepared to leave quietly. It could have gotten messy.”
LaMonte snorted, but he didn’t actually dispute my common sense. He wasn’t prepared to help, though, either, and I was disappointed when he walked off. It would have been nice to have some assistance in dealing with all these people.
“Who first?” Taro asked the woman.
And thus began what turned into a very long, hard day. Taro took them to the private dining room, as we hoped that would be less disturbing to the other Pairs than to have dozens and dozens of strangers traipsing up and down the stairs all day. Not that everyone in the house didn’t find a reason and a chance to complain anyway.
Every person was asked to sit in a chair. Taro put a palm on his or her shoulder. He didn’t spend nearly as long with any of them as he had spent with Kafar, but he did make an honest effort at channeling. After, of course, explaining that he couldn’t heal them, and he was merely humoring them.
No one seemed to believe him, which I found odd. They were trusting him to heal them, yet they thought he was a liar.
As a whole, they were a quiet, timid group. Even the bold spokeswoman seemed to lower her voice and her eyes once she was in the residence, moving from place to place only as instructed and asking no further questions. The one exception was a pretty young man who flirted with Taro with disturbing skill. He was also clearly terrified. I would have thought less of Taro had he not flirted back, a manner of making him feel better.
It was difficult working with these people. They were so desperate, so hopeful that Taro was providing some miracle cure. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t able to do anything.
I wanted to ask them about this illness, about which I was receiving so many conflicting reports. Were people dying of it, or were they not? Was it contagious or was it not? Did they know of the suspicions that it was a problem with the water? And even if it were, what could they do about it? People had to use water. But even I wasn’t so tactless as to treat them to an inquisition while they were pursuing a fool’s path to a fake cure.
Why weren’t the healers handling this, anyway?
Dare I ask Cree?
There were so many of them—that was the frightening thing. And I was under no illusion that these were all the ill people in the riverfront areas. These were just the most desperate of what was probably a much larger group.
The sun was dipping down by the time we escorted the la
st visitor to the front door. I had a blistering headache. It was an easy form of Shielding, but I’d never done it for hours at a stretch.
It was a relief to finally close the front door of the residence. I was tired and desperately wanted to lie down. But the sight that greeted us in the foyer stopped me cold.
On the table was a vase, an odd-looking vase of an earthy reddish brown color and a rectangular shape. In the vase were flowers with which I was unfamiliar, their blossoms an eye-piercing yellow. There was a small, dark, round cake balanced right in there among the blossoms, which was just bizarre. And hanging from the rim of the vase, a pair of earrings, short lengths of gold with small pearls at the end.
There was a small card leaning against the base of the vase, the script informing us that this floral thing was for me and from Doran. There was no other information on the card. “What the hell is this?”
“An expression of intent,” Taro said with a scowl.
“Intent to what?”
“Don’t be stupid,” he snapped.
“I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
“An intent to engage in negotiations for a contract of marriage,” he explained, almost spitting out the words.
Marriage? Was Doran insane? Why would he do that? Even if we had ever had a relationship close enough to suggest marriage, I had no property and no powerful connections. It was unnecessary and ridiculous.
“Flowers signify personal affection,” Taro continued. “ The color of the vase represents stability, the earrings represent financial security and the cake represents fertility.”
There was so much wrong with all of that. “Why would he send me something like this?”
“Excellent question,” Taro said shortly.
“Don’t you dare,” I warned him. “I told him that I wasn’t interested in anything like that.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m damn well sure.”
Taro didn’t answer. He just stormed off. I had no interest in calling him back, as he was acting like an idiot.
So was Doran. Really, the flower arrangement was quite hideous. Why did he send it? I didn’t believe for a moment that he was suggesting marriage or anything like it, because that was just insane. So what was he playing at?
“If you don’t want to start negotiations, you send it back.”
I looked up. Benedict was leaning against the wall near the entrance to the kitchen, a cup of what smelled like tea in her hand. “Throwing it away isn’t sufficient?” I’d planned on sending the vase and the earrings back, of course, but that seemed troublesome for the cake and the flowers.
She shook her head. “You have to send it back in its entirety. Anything less denotes acceptance of the gesture.”
That struck me as a deceitful way to handle things, and I was disappointed in Doran for engaging in that kind of behavior. He knew many of these little customs were outside my circle of knowledge. What if I had been alone when the flowers had arrived, and I’d thought the arrangement was nothing significant? I would have taken the arrangement to my suite, and no one would have seen it to warn me of its meaning. I would have sent back the earrings, possibly the vase, and kept the flowers, thereby accidentally committing myself to something.
I sighed and grabbed the ugly arrangement, leaving the residence to find the nearest messenger port. Really, men did the stupidest things sometimes.
Chapter Twenty
I slept in my own bed that night, as Taro had been acting like a plonker. And I had a vicious headache. And while it was sometimes nice to wake up snuggled up to someone, it was also nice to stretch out and have the whole bed to oneself.
I slept late for the first time in a long while. I woke with no nausea. That was lovely. And I had an appetite; I was really hungry. I went down to the kitchen and enjoyed a hearty breakfast of eggs and sausage. It was wonderful.
Then Taro strode in. He was scowling. “Where’s Laidley’s gesture of affection?”
I rolled my eyes. “I sent it all back. Thanks for telling me what would happen had I failed to do so.”
“It’s not my place to interfere.”
“It’s not your place to cause trouble.”
“No, that would be Laidley.”
Was he really willing to have me promised to Doran, or whatever would have happened, just because he was annoyed with me? Why was he annoyed with me, anyway? Doran was the one who was playing games.
“I don’t want to talk about Laidley.”
“Then why’d you bring him up?”
He sort of growled, then took a deep breath before saying, “There’s something strange about this illness.”
“So you’ve said.”
“Kafar was ill when he came here. I could feel it. There was nothing I could do for him. He was still ill when he left.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded. “I could feel it.”
“Sometimes you’re not sure how much you’ve done for someone.”
“Not this time. There really was nothing I could do for him.”
“All right.” What was this about?
“But he moved in with his sister. And he got better.”
“Maybe he just got over it. If they don’t die, they eventually have to get better. It’s possible he’s not even truly better. He might just feel better for some reason and think he’s healed.”
“Perhaps, but the most logical explanation is that he actually is better.”
I had to give him that. “Aye, that’s true.”
“So maybe there’s something in the riverfront that’s making people sick.”
“Risa thinks it’s the water.”
“It can’t be the water. The water goes everywhere. The illness would be more widespread.”
“It has spread beyond the riverfront area.”
“But not everywhere the water goes. And most of the illness is restricted to the riverfront.”
“If it’s not the water, what else could it be?”
“I have no idea. But the logical assumption is that there is some unnatural element in the riverfront that’s causing this. Maybe it’s something only they are eating. Maybe it’s something only they use to build their houses. But it’s something that’s in the riverfront and nowhere else.”
All right, I could go with that theory for the purposes of discussion. “Do you want to tell Risa about this?”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to have to explain to her about why I think this is unnatural. She won’t believe me.”
“Why not? You’re a Source. She’ll believe you can do anything you say you can do.”
“I’m not worried about her believing me. I just don’t want someone else learning about this little trick I have. Besides, this sort of thing isn’t really the responsibility of the Runners. It’s an illness, not a crime.”
“But they must be investigating it, if Risa thinks it’s the water.”
“I don’t know where she got that idea. The rumors are that the Runners aren’t really doing much about this. They can’t. They’re too busy with other things, and the riverfront illness doesn’t fall within their sphere of authority.”
“Whose authority does it fall into?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea. No one’s, it seems like. Or maybe the healers, but they’re not going down there.”
“That’s alarming.” Was that possible? How could something so serious not have a group of people meant to deal with it?
“I think we should go to the riverfront and see what we can find out.”
I nearly choked on my tea. “What in the world makes you think we could find something the others can’t?”
“Why wouldn’t we be able to see something? We’re reasonably intelligent people.”
“Why would you even want to do this? You’re the man who got so furious when people expected us to do something about the weather during the Harsh Summer. You resented the fact that they expected us to do something beyond our res
ponsibilities.”
He sniffed. “I resented the way they expressed their expectations. They were obnoxious.”
That was true. Obnoxious and violent. But this was bizarre. This wasn’t our task. I’d made a promise to myself not to get involved in things that were not my business. It rarely worked out.
“We’re not doing anything else, Lee. We’re off the roster.”
That was true, too. If we couldn’t be useful one way, we might as well try to be useful in another. Not that I thought we would find anything, but it would do no harm to humor Taro. “When did you want to go?”
“Might as well go now.”
I sighed and finished off my tea.
We left the residence. It was a bright, mild day. A market day, which meant most people would be haunting the merchant stalls.
The riverfront technically referred to the banks of all three rivers, along their entire length through the city. In reality, it was concentrated in the center of the city, where the three rivers met and crossed. The riverfront of the wealthy quad was kept empty, but the other five quads were filled with dye makers, trash collectors and manure mongers. It was a very fragrant area. And loud. And dirty. The buildings were narrow and dark and a lot of the windows were broken or gone altogether.
“So what are we looking for?” I asked Taro.
“I have no idea. Just something that jumps out as being strange.”
I wasn’t familiar with the area. How would I know what was strange? It seemed to me we were going to waste an afternoon just wandering around. “This all looks unusual to me.”
“You’re such a snob, Lee.”
“So you spend a lot of time here, do you, Taro?”
“There’s nothing here that I want.”
“How convenient for you.”
People were staring at us. I imagined they didn’t see Sources and Shields around there very often.
They looked awful. Pale with dark circles under their eyes, green and greasy. Those who moved did so slowly. Many were just sitting or lying in doorways.
“Let’s ask someone,” Taro suggested, leading me to a thin woman with lanky brown hair, sitting in a rocking chair in front of her hovel. “Excuse me, ma’am,” Taro said politely. “I’m Source Karish. This is—”
Heroes at Risk Page 20
