Heroes Adrift (30 page)

There was no sign of Aryne, of course. And as the time to embark approached, I became less concerned and more angry, promising myself I could wring her neck when I found her. “If that girl makes us miss the boat,” I muttered, feeling fortunate that at least I didn't let Taro convince me to spend the rest of our coins. We might end up needing them, if we had to spend another night here.

We'd better not have to spend another night here.

“Relax,” said Taro. “She'll find us.”

“We don't know that.”

“Of course we do.”

I glared at him. He was just too sure of himself. The lowered shoulders, the easy smile.

Oh. That was right. This was what he was supposed to be like. What he'd been like before we came to this curse of an island.

We wasted more time looking for Aryne. Of course we didn't find her. And everyone else was getting on the boat, while we hung back on the deck and ignored the dark looks and warning comments from the ship's crew.

And then Aryne appeared by my side. “Are we going or what?” she asked, giving me an unconvincing innocent look when I glared at her.

I slapped her up the back of the head.

She returned my glare as she rubbed the afflicted area. “Don't need to get all maternal.”

“Get on the boat,” I snapped at her.

“It's a ship,” said Taro.

I gritted my teeth, and told myself the island was entirely to blame for my poor humor.

I loved home. I loved the dry air. I loved the dull shade of blue of the sky, the dull shade of green of the grass. I loved the fact that I could see for miles, with only the occasional tree. When I got off that damned boat, I was tempted to skip or dance or do something equally childish. Because I was home.

Not in High Scape. We hadn't reached High Scape yet, and I couldn't be sure when we'd get there. I just meant the mainland. The Northern continent. Anywhere, really, that wasn't Flatwell.

Taro had once more been seasick the entire way. And so had Aryne. I was beginning to wonder if it was a Source trait. And while Taro made for an ill-tempered patient, Aryne was a rather frightening one. She had curled up in her bunk and hadn't made a sound. She had seemed surprised every time I tried to bring her water or offer her the most insignificant comfort or consideration. She didn't expect to be looked after, and it gave me strange and sad ideas of what she had been taught to anticipate from people.

Not that she would ever talk about it. Every time I tried to ask what life with Border had been like, she just closed down, her eyes going almost blank and her lips thinning into a hard line, like I was going to try to physically pry the words out of her.

It was really none of my business. And it wasn't like there was anything I could do to make it better. The life she'd had with Border was in the past; there was no going back and fixing it. So there was no point in disturbing her by trying to make her talk about it in the present.

Besides, she had enough going on to discomfort her. As grateful as she was to get off the boat, she didn't seem to regain her vigor on land. As we journeyed toward Erstwhile, I could tell that Aryne wasn't happy with the strangeness—to her—of the mainland. Her skin became dry and cracked. She preferred sleeping on the floor to sleeping in a bed. She wasn't thrilled with the food. She never turned it away, of course, and she ate all that she was given. But there was a sort of grim acceptance about her, none of the joy she had sometimes shown while eating the fruit and meat on the island. And some of the food seemed to make her ill.

She watched us a great deal, Taro and I. I wasn't sure why, because I didn't notice her examining us like that on the island. There was a strange feel to her speculation, and it made me uncomfortable.

We were incredibly careless with her, in the beginning. It wasn't until we walked into the first merc shop, to acquire better, more suitable clothing, that we realized just how careless we were being. Aryne, whether she liked it or not, could not go striding around in the scanty clothing she was used to wearing. I wouldn't be caught dead in what I had left, not on the mainland. And Taro, well, he'd been wearing the same clothes for more than a couple of weeks and it was making him a little mental. And the merc, happy—or at least resigned—to provide Taro and I with new garments, balked at granting Aryne anything free of charge. Which was when we told him Aryne was a Source, on her way to the Academy.

Which was when we realized we had in our company an unbonded Source, and we were just letting her walk around free, with no thought at all to the possibility of a spontaneous bonding. The damage we could have unwittingly done to her horrified me.

Yes, yes, she had not been guarded on Flatwell. But Sources and Shields were practically nonexistent on the islands, and I was pretty sure the only reason she had the talent was due to her Northern blood. On the Northern continent, she might encounter an undiscovered Shield, and then both of them might have been sucked into some kind of obsessive bond that would have been disastrous for both of them.

That was when we commissioned a carriage, which made us so popular with the livery owner who had to provide it—and the horses—to us.

Neither Taro nor I had ever driven a carriage. That was embarrassing. And incredibly hard on the arms.

And keeping Aryne in the carriage, that was a treat. Because she didn't believe our explanation, and she hated being in the carriage for any length of time. The movement of it sickened her. Taro threatened to tie her into it if she didn't stay, and she claimed to be able to get out of any binds we put her into. Then went on to prove it. All in all, it was due to sheer luck that she didn't spontaneously bond with someone.

I was relieved when we finally reached Erstwhile. Because it meant we were done. This stupid, unsuitable task placed on our shoulders by an unreasonable monarch was over. We'd found a member of her collateral family and dragged her back. Now all we had to do was place Aryne in the Empress's care, and we could go home.

We went to the Imperial boarding house. That was Taro's idea, and for once I didn't dispute it. Aryne had never been in any such place, and I thought it would be interesting for her to sleep in such fine surroundings. A good introduction to her future. And perhaps a way to keep her in her room for more than half a moment.

I ordered a single room for all three of us. I wasn't going to slip the leash on Aryne until she was safe in imperial hands. Besides, it saved me from deciding whether I should reserve one or two rooms for Taro and I.

I was waiting for the time when he started to let me know our extracurricular association was at an end. It had already lasted months longer than I'd expected, and my only explanation for it was that we were still in relatively unfamiliar territory. But that would be changing. In Erstwhile, there were people he was used to dealing with, people who knew who and what he was. And I knew his dowdy little Shield was not going to hold his attention for much longer.

I was not going to let his waning interest ruin our working relationship, or our friendship. It wasn't his fault. He was the way he was, and there was nothing wrong with what he was. It wasn't his fault, either, that I was the way I was. We were just very different people, in what we needed from our lovers, and I'd known that going in. It was hard for me, but that wasn't his fault, either. So there would be no moods, no clinging, no blame. When the time came, it would be a graceful exit.

I could do graceful. I could. And any other, less noble reactions, well, they'd be worked out in private.

Still, I wished he'd get to it. The waiting was hard to bear.

At breakfast the next day, we received the summons from Her Majesty, for our immediate attendance. And I started to get nervous, because if she wasn't pleased, we were…well, we were in trouble.

Aryne was nervous, too. I could see it in the stiffness of her posture, hear it in her glacial silence. I wasn't sure why she should be nervous. I hoped she didn't know what this visit might mean for her.

We went in a carriage, and during the ride we put a blindfold on Aryne, which she just loved. And we were received at the front gate. There was none of the roundabout secrecy of our last meeting. We were taken into the palace proper, and brought into a waiting room. We didn't have to wait long. We never really did, for the Empress. Another reason why I liked her better than her son.

A footman led us through another maze of corridors and knocked on a door. When the door was opened by the maid from within, I stepped behind Taro, and he wrapped Aryne's arm in his and led her into the room. I followed a few steps behind.

The Empress was in a large parlor, sitting on a settee with another woman, some kind of lady in waiting, seated beside her.

I wondered if I was ever going to see her husband. I wondered if the Consort Prince even existed anymore. I risked a few fanciful imaginings of him being locked away in a dungeon somewhere.

“Source Shintaro Karish, Shield Dunleavy Mallorough, and…Aryne, Your Majesty,” said the maid.

Taro bowed, and I curtsied. Aryne stood still as a statue. “Curtsy,” I heard Taro whisper.

She tried, I had to give her that. But if it weren't for Taro, she would have fallen on her face.

I winced. I should have taught her how to curtsy. I hadn't even thought of that. What else had I not thought of?

Maybe her clothes. She wasn't, thank Zaire, in the scanty costume of Flatwell. She found the weather of the mainland too cold for that. But she certainly wasn't dressed as a princess, either. Or anything like what I would insist on wearing before the Empress.

And then the Empress's eyes were on me. “Why, Shield Mallorough,” she drawled. “I don't think I've ever witnessed such a pronounced expression on your face before.”

What in the world did that mean?

“There is something different about your appearance,” she continued.

“I am still a little dark from my stay on Flatwell,” I said.

“That's not it,” she said. But then she was looking at Taro and Aryne again, and I didn't have to speak anymore. “Why are her eyes covered? Is she blind?”

Her Majesty's tone suggested Aryne had better not be.

“Aryne is a Source, Your Majesty,” Taro said. “No one knew what she was, when we found her. But she is a Source, and we have covered her eyes to prevent any possibility of spontaneous bonding.”

“Do you feel I might be a Shield, Source Karish?”

“It is unlikely, Your Majesty.”

“Shields and Sources are discovered long before they reach adulthood, are they not?”

“Usually, Your Majesty. But here is Aryne. I was eleven before my family realized I was a Source.”

But that was because his family was comprised of cretins.

“Still, neither of you were adults at the age of discovery. We are all adults here. Remove her blindfold, so that I may see her eyes. We will take the risk.”

Taro removed the blindfold, because there was nothing else he could do.

The Empress stared at Aryne. “Was she the only one you found?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

The Empress studied Aryne for several long uncomfortable moments. “Who taught you to stand that way? Source Karish, what have you been doing with the girl?”

“What's wrong with the way I stand?” Aryne demanded.

Well, the slouch, for one thing.

“At least she is comely,” the Empress muttered, and that seemed to knock some of the wind out of Aryne. “Shield, take the girl away. I need to speak with your Source.”

The order really grated on me, and apparently that showed up on my face, too, because her gaze hardened as she watched me. I tried to gain control over my expression as I curtsied lower than was my custom, and I put my hand on Aryne's shoulder and applied pressure until she realized she was to curtsy, too. I also kept her from turning around and putting her back to the Empress as we stepped back toward the door, where the maid let us out.

“She thinks high of herself, don't—”

I clapped one hand on her mouth, the other on the back of her head, and hissed “Quiet!” into her ear as she tried to back away. I felt her mouth open under my palm. “You will not bite me,” I warned her in the hardest voice I could drag up.

One tense moment, and then I felt her mouth close.

“You will not speak ill of the Empress in her own home, understood?” I wasn't going to let her create enemies for herself when she didn't even understand the significance of the danger.

A pause, and then she nodded. I lowered my hand and she asked, “What would she do to me?”

“Anything she felt like.” Not true, in the strictest sense. The days when monarchs could rule without a single thought to law were long gone. Still, no one would be quick to question the Empress on anything she chose to do to a strange orphan from the Southern Islands.

Realizing that Taro still had her blindfold, I pulled a handkerchief out from my sleeve.

“Ah, not—” she whined.

I was tired of forcing the issue. “All right, I really don't care. You can risk bonding with some undiscovered Shield and falling madly in love with him or her—”

“Madly in love?” she echoed, her lip curling with disgust. “You never told me that.”

“What did you think we meant when we said you'd become unhealthily obsessed with a Shield you had spontaneously bonded with?”

“Not that.”

Not that I thought the two were identical, or that falling madly in love was the only direction an unhealthy bond could take, but hey, whatever worked. She turned around and let me tie the handkerchief on her with no more fuss.

She stayed silent as we were led back through the palace to the exit and the carriage that had brought us. I was wondering why this meeting was held in the palace, while the first had been out in the seclusion of the pasture. I'd assumed the first location had been due to a paranoid concern with being overheard. Why wasn't privacy important this time?

Perhaps the fact of our success had changed the Empress's priorities.

Aryne said nothing during the carriage ride, too, which was a little puzzling. I would have never called her talkative, but she usually had a comment to make whenever something struck her as strange or stupid.

But back in our room at the boarding house, the handkerchief came off and the mouth opened. “So that's your all powerful ruler, is it?” she asked.

“Kai.”

“Doesn't look like much.”