Heroes Adrift (28 page)

“Sure they would. They're smart.”

Border laughed again. “They're smart,” he echoed mockingly. “It's a Pair. None of them know anything.”

“Like you would know,” Aryne said.

“Kai, I would know. I'm from up there. I lived in the coldest city you could ever imagine, and her right whorish Majesty just loved Sources. We had a new Pair every other year, every single one of them as stupid as pigs. All they know how to do is channel. And that Pair must be dumber than most, to be sent to a place like this. So give up your ridiculous little dreams of rescue, bitch. It ain't gonna happen. And don't try running away again, neither. I'll take you up north when I'm ready.”

Border was a Northerner? But he'd looked like every other islander I'd ever met. And he planned to take her north? Had she known that when she'd come to us?

“I'm not going to whore for you, Border.”

“Damn well better not. I see any man sniffing around you and I'll kill him and break every bone in your face. You'll be untouched when I take you north or there'll be hell to pay. By you.”

I was relieved to hear that Border never used Aryne as a prostitute, and never planned to, but really, what was his game?

There was no more conversation from inside the tent. That seemed to be all that we were going to learn for the moment.

Karish ducked and reached into the tent. I heard a yip from Aryne and when Karish reappeared he was dragging Aryne with him. It was a hard job. Her hands and ankles were bound.

Border, predictably, objected to that with a slew of vitriol. Karish literally dumped Aryne into my arms, and I dragged her away as Border came charging out of the tent and barreling into Karish, bearing him down to the ground with a painful sounding thud.

“Stop wiggling!” I snapped at Aryne as I lowered her to the ground. My objective was to untie her, but the ropes were thin and tight and already slick with rain. There was no getting them undone without the use of a knife, which I was currently not carrying.

I couldn't imagine why, when I left my packs on the ground, I didn't think a knife might come in handy.

Border got his knees up under him and started punching Karish in the face and upper torso. Having learned a little something from when we were in a similar situation, I left Aryne and jumped up behind Border, clawing my hands and sinking them into his face.

Border's hands rose up to mine and I pulled hard, trying not to think about what parts of the man's face my fingers might be sticking into. He fell backward and Karish scrambled away. Border twisted and suddenly I felt a huge mass shoved into my stomach, forcing all the air out of me. The pain was incredible.

The next strike went to my face, landing over my mouth and nose. My head snapped back and my vision blacked out. I landed on the ground hard, the impact stinging along my side.

I have no idea what happened next. I tried to pull myself away while curling in at the same time, trying to protect a stomach that was burning with pain. I still couldn't breathe, but no further blows fell on me. That was good, right?

I couldn't hear anything. My ears were ringing.

I probably would have shrieked when I felt a hand grip my wrist, if I'd had the air to do it. An instant later, the pain faded almost to nothing, and I relaxed. Taro.

His shields dropped. With no warning, damn him. He had to stop doing that. I hastily erected mine around him, and felt him channel.

Only the channeling wasn't the natural sort. It didn't feel like the forces of the world rushing through him and threatening to burst him open like an overripe fruit. Instead, it was like he was pulling the forces to him, luring them in and redirecting them. That meant he wasn't actually channeling a natural disaster. He was doing something else.

I didn't know what. It was all I could do to keep breathing and guard Taro. I wasn't being struck, and it seemed like Taro wasn't being struck. That was about all I could hope for at the moment.

I didn't really become aware of the vibrations and the rumblings until they abruptly stopped. It took me a while, though, to really hear what was going on.

Namely, Border swearing and yelling to be released, panic threaded through his voice. A few moments later, I blinked rain out of my eyes and saw what had happened.

Border was upright, sort of, but he was buried up to his waist, sunk right into the ground. And I realized what the channeling had been about.

Karish had involuntarily spent time with an insane Source who could do much more than channel forces. He could create natural disasters, and manipulate earth to such a degree that he could actually control how and where it moved. Karish had had ample opportunity to observe him and figure out how to do it himself.

This was the first time I'd seen him do something so precise. It seemed that he was getting better at this skill as time went on. Which made sense. The more he did it, the better he got.

Except the first time was supposed to have been the only time.

“What the hell was that?” Aryne demanded.

Taro released my wrist. Pain flooded back to my stomach and my face, but it wasn't as intense as it had been before. I climbed to my feet, a little unsteadily, and felt my way back to the bags Karish and I had left behind. I needed a knife to cut Aryne loose.

“Get me out of this or I'll kill you!” Border shouted.

I rolled my eyes. Knife in hand, I went back to Aryne and started sawing on the rope.

“Get me out!” Border ordered. “Right now!”

Karish went into the tent.

“I was ordered here by the Empress,” Border declared, and suddenly his islander accent was almost gone. “I am part of her personal guard. If you interfere with my mission, you'll both be hanged.”

That made me stare at him. He was sent by the Empress?

Oh. Suddenly, things made a lot more sense.

I looked at Aryne. “It's really important that you tell me the truth right now,” I said. “How long have you lived with this man?”

“All my life,” she said, and the absence of any kind of slang in her words or derision in her tone made me think she was telling the truth.

Hell. She was the heir. Or Border thought she was. And if he'd seen her as a baby, he would have seen her with the mark.

“We were sent to find her, too,” I told him. “Because she's a Source. She needs to go to the Source Academy. And we won't take ten years to bring her back.”

“I'm on a mission from the Empress!”

I sniffed, hoping the sound would denote disbelief.

Taro came out of the tent holding a rag and, I could see as he got closer, several small jars. He knelt beside Aryne. “Tell me which one smells like what he used on you, Aryne.” He quickly opened the jars and waved them under her nose.

At the third jar she gagged and jerked her head back. “That's the one.”

Taro dumped a bunch of the contents on the rag.

“Are you stupid?” the medicine man demanded. “I'm here under orders of the Empress.”

I had a feeling he really was. But so were we. And I suspected he was the reason we'd been sent and gone through all sorts of hell, because he'd felt like playing games and kept the child for years.

I found it interesting that with all his shouting, Border didn't mention why he had been sent to find Aryne. He clearly didn't want her to know.

Well, neither did we.

Border shook his head in an attempt to avoid the rag Taro held. Taro grabbed a fist of the man's hair, keeping Border's head still while mashing the cloth over his face. Border grabbed at his hands, and when he couldn't move them began striking out at random. He landed a few good shots to Karish's torso, but Karish held on grimly, and it wasn't long before Border's movements became slower and weaker. And when all movement stopped, Karish held the cloth over his face a little longer.

“You'll kill him if you give him too much,” Aryne warned him. “'Course, that might be what you're after.”

“No, we don't want him dead. We just don't want him able to follow us for a while.”

Having freed Aryne's hands, I went to work on her ankles. The ropes were tough, and the knife I had wasn't designed for such work. “What did he mean about being sent by the Empress to find me?” she demanded.

“I'm not sure,” I lied. “I have to think about it.”

“What does someone like that want with me?”

“Quiet. Let me do this and let me think.”

Karish was emptying the tent of everything he thought useful. He did the same with the wagon. I relit our lantern and took a good look at Aryne. She had a swollen lip and a blackened eye. Her wrists and ankles had been ripped bloody by the ropes. “See if you can find something soothing for broken skin,” I called out to Taro.

“You don't look so good, either,” Aryne said. “Your face is bleeding.”

I carefully touched my mouth. My fingers came away colored with blood that was quickly washed away by the rain.

“You'll look a treat tomorrow,” said Aryne.

Great.

I packed whatever Taro was stealing into bags, which he slung over the steer. He unhitched the steer from the wagon. I guessed that meant we were taking it with us. I felt not the slightest prick of remorse about stealing from that man. He deserved it.

Taro stuck a spade in the ground, close enough to Border that he could reach it if he stretched. He plunked Aryne on the steer and we headed off blindly, in the rain and in the dark, just to get a little bit of distance between us and Border.

We didn't go far. We just couldn't. Aryne was falling asleep on the steer and almost slipped off a few times. We weren't on a road, so we were in danger of walking into a crevice or something. I hated the idea of stopping so close to Border, but it was too dangerous to go on. We propped up a tent and tried to weigh the steer down by burying its reins in the ground and dumping everything we'd stolen from Border on top of them. After a brief argument, it was agreed that Taro would stay awake for a few hours to act as sentry, and then he'd wake me and sleep while I stood watch.

The argument of who would stand watch first was merely for form's sake on my part. I was exhausted. All the new ideas attempting to penetrate my brain were no match for the heavy fog already in residence. As soon as my head was on the hard islander pillow, I was asleep.

I was roused far too early for my liking, and it was still dark. Taro shoved a mug of cold tea into my hands and muttered something to the effect that everything was quiet before crawling into my blankets on my mat and collapsing. I then had to yank myself out of the blankets without spilling anything. Quite the accomplishment.

I sat out in front of the tent. I felt useless and stupid. The night was completely black, and we didn't dare alert any unfriendlies of our presence by lighting a lantern. It was raining and not silent enough. I had no weapon and no skill to use one. If I was anything more than useless out there, it wasn't by much.

I really hoped Border wasn't awake yet. If he came after us right then I could easily be overcome without even getting a word out. But then, he didn't just have to wake up. He had to dig himself out, a dangerous task at night. And then he'd have to decide whether to leave the wagon behind or try dragging it with him. And if he did look for us at night, he would need a lantern, and I would see him long before he saw us. So, all right, I could provide a useful warning.

And hey, it had stopped raining.

I was hungry, but my stomach still felt a little tender from the scuffle with Border.

Really, all the brawls I was sucked into were just shocking. Shields weren't supposed to fight. My professors would be appalled. So would my mother.

All right, Border claimed to have been sent by the Empress to look for Aryne. I had taken him for an islander, but once he dropped the accent he had sounded pretty much like any other Northerner I'd ever heard. And why in the world would he claim to be a member of her personal guard on a mission if it weren't true? There were so many other things he could have said that would have made so much more sense.

If he spoke the truth, if he had truly been one of the Empress's trusted personal guards, sent on this mission and never returning, it might be some explanation as to why she had been so unorthodox in her next choice. But then, why didn't he go home, if he'd found the heir?

Unless Aryne wasn't the heir. Perhaps his luck had been as bad as ours, and he'd feared returning in failure. Maybe he preferred Flatwell to his life up north. I would imagine being in the military involved a lot of hard work and a lot of stupid rules. He'd have a lot more leisure as a traveling medicine man on Flatwell.

But no, he'd spoken of taking Aryne up north when he was ready. Why would he do that if she weren't the heir? But if she were the heir, why would he go to the effort of taking care of her himself instead of sending her back home? Either way, it didn't make sense.

The rest of the night passed with no appearances from Border or anyone else. Karish began stirring as the fore-light of the sun began creeping up in the east. He dragged himself out of the tent, looking a sorry sight. His black hair was sleep mussed and not in an attractive way. He had slept in his clothes. His left eye was puffy and bruising.

My poor boy.

He gasped when he saw me, lifting a finger to my face but withdrawing before contact could be made. “Shall I go back and kill him?”

“Don't be silly.” There were far better reasons for killing Border than my banged-up face.

He looked back into the tent, then looked at me, raising his eyebrows in inquiry.

I shrugged in response. I had no idea what to think of Aryne.

“We should start getting ready to go,” he said.

I agreed. “Aryne,” I called into the tent. “Time to get up.”

Her answer was a groan.

“I'll dig out something to eat,” I said.

“And I'll load up the cowlike thing.”

Steer, I thought.

I pulled out some cold rice and clumsily wrapped it in dried seaweed. It was fare I was getting really sick of, but it was filling and portable. “I mean it, Aryne. You have to get up. We don't want to give Border a chance to catch up.”

She grumbled and crawled out of the tent, looking as much a mess as Karish. I shoved one of the rice balls into her hands and rooted around for something to put on her chafed wrists. They looked even worse in the light of day.

“So what he said about the Empress sending him to look for me,” Aryne mumbled around a mouthful of rice. “That true?”

“Swallow, then speak,” I chided as I rubbed some cool green gel on Aryne's ankles. “I have no idea whether it's true or not.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Kai, you do.”

“Never met the man before coming here.”

“Doesn't mean you don't know what he was talking about.”

I was really tempted to tell her to just be quiet. I was surprised by the impulse. This was all about her. Of course she had the right to know what was going on. Why did I think I could tell her to shut up? Was it because she was a child?

On the other hand, I, too, was under orders from the Empress. I looked at Taro, to see if he was listening. I wanted to make sure he knew exactly what I was saying to her, in case she talked to him about it, too. He looked up at me briefly. “The woman who sent us wasn't looking for a member of her own family, but a member of someone else's,” I said.

“Who was this woman?” Aryne demanded.

“The Empress.”

Aryne barked in laughter.

I shrugged. “There's no real need for you to believe me. Especially since you're a Source.”

“What does she want with me?”

“She didn't tell us.”

“So all that stuff about finding some heir…”

“We made that up.”

“You lied,” she accused me.

“That is another way to put it,” I agreed blandly.

“So am I this person you're supposed ta be looking for?”

“I don't know.” But I might as well embrace the opportunity. “We've been told that a lot of people on this island are tattooed with the mark of their family. Do you have a mark like that?”

Her eyes widened in shock. “He said it was a slave mark!” she exclaimed.

“Border?”

“The bastard.”

It really couldn't be this easy. “What does it look like?”

Her answer was to flip up her skirt with no thought to modesty. “Aryne!” Karish blurted out, holding his hands over his eyes.

And there it was. The same tattoo the Empress had shown me. Much darker lines, thicker and more crudely done, and the gut-wrenching image of some kind of blade digging into the tender flesh of an infant made an unwelcome appearance into my brain. But that was definitely the same kind of flower. “Please put your skirt back down, Aryne.”

“That the mark you were looking for?”

I hesitated before answering. If I said no, I'd have to come up with a reason why we were leaving the island without the person we were looking for, which I had no doubt Aryne would see as another lie. I certainly wasn't able to think of a decent excuse right then. And we were leaving the island. I wasn't wandering around it any longer than I had to, just to attempt to convince Aryne that she wasn't anything special. “Kai,” I said.

Taro frowned, but he didn't jump in.

Aryne stared at me. “I'm a heiress!” she crowed.

“Don't be ridiculous, kid,” I said with as much of a sneer as I could muster. “I have no idea why they want you, but you can bet if you were someone important, they wouldn't have sent the likes of us to find you. Do you really think they'd have an heiress subjected to the kind of travel we've been doing?”

Hell. She was a princess. And we were subjecting her to bad food and harsh conditions. Taro and I were going to be in so much trouble.

It was too, too bizarre. Aryne was a descendant of the Empress. And both a Source and a Shield. How could one person be so many extraordinary things?

What was that going to mean? Which role was she going to play? Technically, a Source had to go to the Source Academy, regardless of title. Even if she didn't act as a Source once she'd bonded, she needed the training and protection the Source Academy would give her. But if she became the chosen heir of the Empress, would the rules be bent for her? Had that ever happened before? While in history there had been members of the royal family who'd had talent, they had never been any of the ruling members.

It was too early to worry about that.

A part of me was hugely relieved. I'd really had no idea how we were going to go about finding these people. Now we had at least one person to bring back with us. We hadn't failed.

But she was a princess. Did this mean I had to watch what I said for the months it would take us to get back home? She could decide to cut my head off because she didn't like what we'd had her eat for breakfast.

I'd worry about it all when we got off the island.

We packed up the tent, piled the bags and Aryne on the steer, and got moving. That was when we realized we had no idea where we were. We'd gotten totally turned around while following Border. On Aryne's advice, we kept an eye out for a stream and followed it once we found one.

I was worried about Border finding us again. The steer was so damned slow, and the medicine man would know his way around much better than Karish and I. There were two of us against him, to fight him off, but he, I assumed, would be trained to fight. And if he killed one of us, the Pair bond would kill the other. We were very vulnerable. And he, being a Northerner, would know that.

We followed the stream for two days with no sign of Border or anyone else. They were a hard two days. I kept imagining I could hear someone following us, and that was a good way to go insane. Taro and I slept the nights in shifts, and during the day we didn't stop unless we absolutely had to.

On the third day we finally, finally reached a settlement. We traded the damned steer and just about everything else of Border's for a handful of coins. The tiny settlement was called Silk Purse, and we learned that in following Border we'd been traveling in the opposite direction from where we now wanted to go, which was Promise Harbor. I couldn't raise the energy to be annoyed. That was just the kind of luck we were having.

We rented a single room in a bunker for a night so we could dry out everything that was still damp from the rain and eat some hot food. I took the first watch that night, standing by the door just outside the room, bored out of my mind while still managing to jump at every unexpected noise.

All I could do was think. Sometimes I got so tired of thinking. But so much had gone on that hadn't made sense, and I hadn't been able to talk about it to anyone. Talking was the best way to void one's mind of unwanted thoughts. So when Taro slipped out of the room to relieve me, I asked him in a whisper, “Is she asleep?”

He nodded.

“Are you sure?”

He shrugged.

Good enough. “What do you think Border was playing at, keeping her all those years?”

“I can't be sure,” he whispered back. “But I'm thinking he came here and realized she was cut off from everyone who might know who she really is. He thinks if he takes her back immediately, all he gets is a slap on the back and a job well done. If he raises her, makes her loyal to him, he has a future”—he hesitated—“you know, in his debt. Who knows what kind of power and wealth that could bring him, in time?”

Seemed a pretty long-term plan with an uncertain outcome to me, but lots of people did things that made no sense. “He might have tried a better job at garnering her loyalty.”

“Probably felt saving her from slavery was all he really needed to do.”

Zaire. What a bastard.

This poor girl. A third generation victim of politics she knew nothing about. And it wasn't going to end, either. We were going to deliver her to the Empress and then Aryne was going to become some kind of pawn between the Empress and the Crown Prince. And neither of them were going to be thinking about her, at all, or her best interests. She was going to be completely on her own.

I slipped into the room. Karish had left the lantern on, the flame turned low, and I could see the girl sprawled on the mat by the wall farthest from the door. She had kicked off all the sheets, and her sleeping gown was bunched up under her armpits. It'd be delivering her into a life of material ease. I couldn't say with any confidence that it was going to be a life that was any better.