Heroes Adrift (21 page)

Oh for the love of—She felt we hadn't performed adequately as good omens? How did you measure something like that?

My performance was bringing additional coin to everyone, not just me. Taro saved her son's life. What the hell more did she want?

Well, here was an idea. “Good omens can't lift your curse,” I told her.

Her eyes narrowed. “Kahlia has been speaking to you.”

Was she serious? Everyone had been speaking to me. “We'll leave as much as we can behind as security. We need the tent, obviously, the cookware and our clothes. Anything else we can, we'll leave behind.”

“That's not enough.”

“There is nothing else.”

“You could leave Shintaro.”

My mouth dropped open. “What?”

“You value him.”

“Not as security!” Besides, finding these people was his task. I was the one who was only along for the ride.

She crossed her arms. “Then I see no way that this can be done.”

“I can. Taro and I pick up and leave right now and do what we have to do, and your troupe be damned.” Please don't make us do that.

“You'd have to leave everything. What you have paid for would have to be left as payment for what you still owe.”

“Understood.”

She wasn't expecting that. “You would be leaving with nothing more than the clothes you came with.”

“Fine.” Not fine. Terrifying. But the whole reason we'd come to this Zaire-neglected island was to look for the Empress's descendants. I wasn't going to be controlled by this woman to the point that we couldn't even do what we'd come to do. We'd be on this damned island forever.

We'd manage. We'd figure out some way to manage. We'd already learned a lot about how to get on with these people. Maybe I could figure out some way to perform on my own, or challenge people to bench dancing in proper competition. Without having to worry about sparing feelings or fetching and carrying, Taro could get into some gambling and turn whatever I made into more. And Aryne—I'd forgotten about Aryne—maybe she could scrape together some coins with her laundering and tailoring.

We'd figure out a way. We'd have to.

“Fine,” Atara said back.

“All right. Let's go get our stuff, Taro.”

“No!” she cried. Then she sighed. “Stupid child. Stubborn.”

“You have no idea how stubborn,” I warned her. Just for effect. Secretly, I was extremely relieved.

“What do you propose?”

“What I said. We'll leave whatever we can behind as security. You give us clear directions where you're going to be. We'll catch up with you as soon as we're finished in Golden Fields.” I felt so bad about this. I was lying so very much.

“How long do you think it would be?”

“I have no idea.” I looked at Taro, who shrugged. “We really can't afford to take too long. We don't have the money. Maybe a couple of weeks?” Taro shrugged again.

“That wouldn't be too burdensome,” said Atara.

And if we couldn't find any of these descendants, we might as well just join the troupe forever. How could we go back with failure?

I was not going to think that way.

“I will perform while the troupe's in Golden Fields, of course. We'd just remain behind after you leave, and catch up after.”

She still didn't like the idea, and she drew out her decision, to make us worry. But she had already given her answer away, and when she finally nodded it came as no surprise.

So that was settled. Now we just had to worry about finding these people.

I wasn't a light sleeper, and I'd been getting accustomed to the various noises one heard during the night while sleeping in a tent surrounded by other tents. So I wasn't sure why I woke in the middle of that night. But I did wake, unusually alert, and I listened.

I heard a rustling in our own tent.

I rolled under the “wall” and clamped onto Aryne's legs. She fell with a thud and a curse, trying to kick me off, but I held on to both feet. “Taro!”

“What the—?” he muttered.

“She's trying to steal from us!”

“I am not!” she hissed. “Let me go!”

“Stay still!”

“Bog off!”

“Check her bag, Taro.”

“Wait a moment.”

I held the squirming child to the mat while Taro fumbled about. He lit one of the lanterns and yanked Aryne's bag from her clutches, despite her fluid and colorful objections. He upended the bag and rifled through the contents. “Nothing of ours here.”

“Told you!”

I released Aryne and she began shoving the articles back into her bag. “Doesn't mean you haven't got anything of anyone else's in there.”

“I didn't take anything! I'm not a thief.”

“Then why are you sneaking out into the middle of the night like one?”

“I'm tired of being your dogsbody. Work harder here than I did with Border.”

The twinge of guilt those words inspired was totally inappropriate. “You mean because we don't let you run around lifting from people like he did?”

“Go to hell!”

All right, so maybe that was a little harsh. “That still doesn't explain why you're leaving in the middle of the night.”

She hugged the bag close to her. “Figured you'd try to stop me.”

“If you could slip away from Border as easily as you did, you couldn't feel you'd have any problem getting away from us.”

She pouted mulishly.

“What's going on?”

“Nothin'.”

“If you're going to leave, why don't you wait until morning?”

She picked at a ragged thread on her bag. “Why're you going to Golden Fields?”

“The troupe is going to Golden Fields.”

She glared at me. “You and him are leaving the troupe to stay in Golden Fields. I heard you.”

Eavesdropping. Lovely. “We're looking for people.”

“To buy?”

It was my turn to stare. “To buy? As in buy people?”

She sneered. “That's where the slave pens are. Everyone knows.”

“Everyone knows? Who's everyone? I've never heard of such a thing.” Slave pens? Was she serious? I'd never heard of any slaves in the Southern Islands, not at any time before coming to Flatwell, not at any time since. “I've never seen anyone who could be a slave.”

“You ever asked?”

“Of course not.” Why would I even think to?

“There you are.”

“What's she saying?” Taro asked.

He had pulled a shirt on over his head. His hair was wild and his eyes widened with the shock of being pulled out of a deep sleep in the middle of the night.

He was stunning.

“That there are slaves on the island. That they sell them in Golden Fields.”

“I've never heard anything like that,” he said.

“Why would you?” Aryne demanded scornfully. “You're offlanders.”

“Why would they bother hiding it?”

She clearly didn't have a response to that.

“I don't care what you didn't hear,” she snarled. “I'm not going to Golden Fields.”

“What difference does it make to you, one way or the other?”

“None of your mind.”

“Well, the troupe is going to Golden Fields. If you're basing your decision on wrong information…”

“I'm not. You are. And you've got something planned for Golden Fields. I heard you.”

Damn it. We'd been so careful. “We're just looking for people there. Family. Not to buy anyone. And it has nothing to do with you.”

“I'm not going.”

“Why not?”

“Told you. None of your mind.”

Irritating little brat. But she appeared frightened in a way I hadn't seen in her before. There was something significant going on there.

“Are you afraid of someone who's there?” Taro asked.

She tightened her grip on her bag before she said, “No.”

She was lying. “Who's there?” I asked her.

“No one!”

“There is something there that you're afraid of. You can tell me now or you can tell me hours from now after I've done nothing but nag you about it.”

She made a run for it, but I grabbed her arm before she could take so much as a step.

“Let me go!”

Taro wrapped his arms around her waist and sat her down. “Be civilized,” he ordered her.

“Bog off!”

“Calm down,” I said, and I snatched the bag back from her. I figured she wouldn't leave us without it.

“Eh!” she objected.

“Calm down. Be still. Tell us what is going on. And if I'm satisfied, you get your bag—with everything you own in the world in it—back.”

She made a grab for it and Taro restrained her.

“Talk, or you don't get this back.” I felt like such an awful bully. But I didn't know what else to do, and the options weren't good. Trying to drag her to Golden Fields against her will, letting her take off, letting her remain behind and then rejoin us. All would cause ridiculous complications.

She started swearing, and I didn't understand half of what she said. And then, finally, she said, “I'm a slave, right!”

Taro was shocked into letting her go, and she got moving. She didn't leave, though. She just squeezed into the opposite corner of the tiny room.

“You are not a slave,” I said.

“What do you know?” she quite rightfully demanded.

“There are no slaves!”

“Like you would know.”

“So you are saying you are Border's slave?”

“Nah. Not really. He didn't buy me. He stole me.”

“That's what he told you?”

She rolled her eyes. “He says he ‘rescued' me. I figure he says that so I'll feel obliged to him my whole life. I figure he stole me, though. That's why we never go to Golden Fields. He's dragged me all over this damn island, but we don't go anywhere near Golden Fields. I figure whoever he stole me from might come after him or something.”

“Has anyone been after you that you know of?”

“Nah. But if we go there, it'll be pushing it.” She made another grab for her bag, no doubt feeling I was relaxing my vigilance. I proved her wrong by yanking it away from her reach.

“I don't know what they do down here,” I said, “but up north we don't have slaves.”

“Ain't up north, now, are you?”

“That doesn't matter. I didn't leave my personality back on the boat.”

“That's a subject for debate,” Taro muttered.

I shot him a glance. What was that about?

“Are you going to give me my bag?”

“Are you going to take off as soon as we close our eyes?”

“My right, ain't it?”

“Not when we let you join us with the understanding you'd be going north with us and going to school.”

“What do you care?”

“We don't know what it'll do to you if you keep developing outside of the academic environment. We hear nasty stories about Sources and Shields who don't go to school.”

“Like what?” she demanded skeptically.

“Like going crazy.” That was a gross simplification of what happened, but since I was no expert, that was what I was prepared to go with.

“Still no mind of yours.”

“You're a child. We can't just let you wander around loose. Especially if you are, as you claim, a slave. Someone else might snatch you up. Someone who'll work you much harder, and much differently, than we would.”

She made a rude noise. I wasn't sure which part of my response she found difficult to believe; that I was concerned about her welfare, or that there may be guardians worse than us out there.

Perhaps she would be better able to accept a self-serving reason. “I'm not prepared to let you go when you do so well keeping my costumes in order, and when you bring in as much money as you do.”

Taro shot me a look of amazement, but made no comment. Fortunately, Aryne was looking at me, not him, and didn't notice.

She didn't bring in much. I suspected she was keeping most of the money she made, which was fine with me. I wasn't about to live off the proceeds of a child. I took what she gave me because I had a feeling Aryne was more comfortable dealing with people with mercenary motives. If I took her on out of the goodness of my heart, she'd no doubt be wasting a lot of time being suspicious and waiting for the other shoe to drop. As long as she believed that all she had to do to keep me happy was throw a few coins my way, she would be easier to manage.

That was the theory I was working with, anyway.

I was putting aside all the money she gave me. The intention was to give it back to her once we had deposited her at the Source Academy. Of course, she wouldn't need it then. But I wasn't sure what else to do with it.

“You'll get a lot more for me if you sell me,” she said.

“What can I say to convince you we have no intention of selling you?”

She thought about it a moment. “You could tell me about these people you're looking for.”

Well, that had been predictable, hadn't it? To anyone whose brains were actually working.

What to say? It had to be convincing. So it would be good if there were no lies involved. I wasn't really that good at lying.

And I really shouldn't be disappointed about that, even though it made life more difficult at times.

“We've been hired by someone wealthy to find members of her family,” said Taro. Bless him. “She doesn't like the person who's due to inherit. So she asked us to find lateral descendants, to see if she thinks they'll manage her money better.”

“What does she care, if she's dead?” Aryne demanded.

“Things like that are very important to Northerners,” Taro told her. “Some people spend their whole lives scheming to get inheritances, others molding their heirs so that they'll treat the money properly after the first holder is dead. Wars start over it.”

And he would know.

Aryne studied him, her natural inclination to distrust him in conflict with the fact that everything he had said was the absolute truth. Some significant omissions there, but that was the bare bones fact of our task. Why hadn't I thought of that?

“We were told Golden Fields was the last place any of these people lived. We're going there to ask questions and see if we can find out what happened to them.”

“Slavers, were they?”

“Not to my knowledge, no. Not to the knowledge of the woman who hired us, either.”

“What are you going to do with these people you find?”

“Take them back north, to meet her. If she likes them, and they like her, she might choose them to carry on after her.”

Aryne smirked. “Her heir won't like that, eh?”

“I don't imagine,” I said. But that, fortunately, was not our problem. He didn't even know we were down there, or it would be. “That's all we're doing, and the reason we're here. That's the only reason for us to go to Golden Fields. You're just a”—burden that had dropped into our laps—“new duty that popped out of the blue.”

“Huh?”

“We have an obligation as members of the Triple S to report anyone we find who may be a Source or a Shield, and to bring them to the Academy if we can.”

“Huh.”

“So what's your decision?” I asked.

“I still don't want to go to Golden Fields,” she said, but not with that same mulish air. It was fear at work, not stubbornness.

“You could be sick the whole time,” I suggested.

“Eh?”

“Once we arrive at Golden Fields, you could develop a mysterious illness. No one will expect you to go out of the tent, and no one will want to get near you. You can recover once it's time to go. No one in Golden Fields will even know you're with us, never mind that you're a slave.” Or whatever she was. I was going to have to look into that. “I won't have you taking off while we're there, though. You either come with us, or you leave and go your own way, and that's the end of our arrangement. That's the deal.”