Heroes Return (36 page)

“Where do the candles go?” Taro asked Reid, reaching for them.

“I have to set up,” I told him.

Fiona rubbed her hands together. “Shouldn’t you get started?”

“I need to know this before I do,” I answered.

“Every moment he’s out there is a moment he could be killed.”

“I can’t help him if I can’t do this correctly.” Let me read, woman.

I would have liked the chance to practice the spell a few times, but three people were watching me read, Fiona fidgeting all the while, and I couldn’t concentrate as I should. Knowing that circumstances wouldn’t change, and aware that Dane was in real danger, I put down the sheet sooner than I liked and picked up the candles.

I placed the candles on the floor in a large square. I placed the fans within the square. Then I picked up the candle Reid had been using, the mint and the water, and moved back within the square. I put the mint in my mouth and chewed it fifteen times before swallowing. “Sharpen my mind.” I drank the glass of water. “Narrow my focus.” I lit one of the four candles. “Winds of the north, bide by me.” The second candle. “Winds of the south, bide by me.” The next candle. “Winds of the east, bide by me.” And the last. “Winds of the west, bide by me.” I felt a strange clicking in my stomach, the strange jittering sensation, and a brushing feeling against my skin.

I picked up the fans and stood with one in each hand, down by my sides. I closed my eyes. “Bide by me, winds of all. Bide by me, winds of all. Bide by me, winds of all.” The brushing against my skin grew stronger and wound around me. “I seek the wind to the west above the sea.” The brushing against the right side of my body suddenly became a stronger force, nearly pushing the fan out of my hand.

The next step was to raise the fans and use them to shape the wind. But I couldn’t raise my right hand. “Bide by me, winds of all,” I ordered. The pressure on the right grew stronger. “Bide by me, winds of all!”

I couldn’t raise my right hand. I could move my left, but that wasn’t what I needed to do.

What was wrong? Had I missed a step? I imagined the paper in my hands again, going through each part of the ritual in my mind.

And the brushing and the pressure and the tingling disappeared. I had lost it all. “I have to start again,” I said. “I need more mint and water.”

But I had developed a crushing headache. And when I tried the spell again, the brushing was lighter and I couldn’t capture it with the fans. The third time I tried, nothing happened at all, and my headache was practically blinding me.

“I’m sorry, Fiona,” I said to her. “I’m not able to do it.”

She nodded rigidly. “Thank you for trying.”

That was a horrible thing to hear. Gratitude for pathetic failure when someone’s life might depend on success. I didn’t know why I hadn’t been able to do it. It had been simple. And it shouldn’t have tired me so much. The other spells hadn’t tired me at all.

It was frustrating. I’d been having little difficulty performing the variety of spells I’d chosen to practice in private, when it didn’t matter. Now, the one time when someone had needed it, I had failed. That irritated me. I breathed deeply to stay calm as I collected the items off the floor. Why hadn’t it worked?

Fiona left the library without another word, which made me feel worse. She remained secluded for the rest of the day.

We heard nothing of Dane before we went to bed that night.

I slept terribly. I woke up too early and, to avoid waking Taro, I moved to the sitting room and raised the shutter so I could stare out the window for a while.

What was I doing anyway, playing with spells? That wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. I was a Shield. All this fiddling about with rituals and poetic phrases wasn’t for me.

And now there were two more people, Fiona and Reid, who knew that I was casting spells. I was sure Fiona would keep my secret, but would Reid? I had no idea. Certainly, he seemed a nice enough fellow, but not as discreet as one might like. After all, he’d shown me parts of the translated book before he’d shown Fiona. He might decide it would do no harm to tell some person, someone he trusted for no good reason, and that person might choose to tell someone else, and so on.

It might get back to the Emperor. Would he really have me flogged?

Or it might get back to the Triple S council. I didn’t want that to happen, either. Whether the council believed casting was real or not wouldn’t matter. They would think I was either a fool or something that needed to be contained. I really didn’t want to receive any more attention from them.

Arms slid around my waist, and I smiled as I leaned back against Taro’s chest. “You worry too much,” he said in his rough morning voice. “And Fiona shouldn’t have asked you to try that.”

“She was worried. I don’t blame her.”

“And no one blames you for not being able to do what you’re not trained to do.”

“I think I forgot part of the ritual or something.” And I’d been too disappointed to check. “If I’d remembered it correctly the first time, I might have been able to do something.”

“They didn’t give you enough time to learn the spell.”

I knew that. Everything he said made sense. I still felt guilty about it.

He buried his nose in the hair behind my ear. “Stop thinking about it,” he whispered, and he licked my ear.

I giggled.

Lila entered the room and curtsied. “Sir, madam, Her Ladyship wanted you to know His Lordship was killed at sea yesterday.”

I put my hand over my mouth to cover the gasp. Taro tightened his grip on my waist. “How is Her Ladyship?” he asked.

“I couldn’t say, sir.”

I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. I pulled away from Taro and sat down. Dane couldn’t be dead. I liked him.

“That’s all, Lila,” said Taro, and Lila left. He looked at me. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know.” It wasn’t my fault, but I could have saved him, perhaps, if I had been careful and done the spell right the first time. That was my failure, no matter what anyone said, and it was bitter.

Chapter Twenty-six

The wind picked up again. There were no warnings sounding from the Wind Watcher, but we could hear the wind itself causing the manor to creak, see branches torn off trees. It was bad enough that no one wanted to be out in it, and it felt to me like a constant reminder of Dane’s death.

I couldn’t believe he was dead. He had been alive just two days ago, large and smiling and kind. And what a stupid reason to die. Whaling wasn’t something the Duke needed to be doing. Why had he been out there?

I should have been able to do something. I shouldn’t have tried the spell. I should have used channeling. At least then I could do something. Even if the results had been unpredictable, it probably would have been enough to stop the wind.

I was driven to go to the library and get from Reid the sheet on which he had written the wind ritual. I read it over carefully. I saw, to my surprise, that I had performed the ritual correctly. “So why didn’t it work?”

“Pardon?” Reid asked, looking up from his translations.

“Why didn’t the ritual work?”

“Maybe you just don’t have the power to make it work.”

“I’ve been able to make other spells work.” And hells, I shouldn’t be admitting that out loud when there might be Guards creeping about.

“Perhaps those spells were easier.”

Well, aye, they had been, but surely if I was able to perform one spell, I should have been able to perform another. “Can I have this copy of the ritual?”

“Why?”

“I want to try it again.”

“This isn’t the sort of thing you should be playing with.”

“I’ll be careful, but I want to try again.”

“I’ll need that back.”

“I’ll be sure to return it. Thank you.”

Daris breezed in. She looked surprised and annoyed to see me. “Well, if it isn’t our little Shield mouse,” she drawled. “Creeping around listening to things not meant for her ears and interfering with things that are none of her business.”

What had I done to deserve that? Well, what had I done that she knew about?

“You can go now,” she said with a little wave of dismissal.

Although I had no reason to stay, her attitude annoyed me. “I am discussing something with Academic Reid.”

“I’m sure the riveting details of when the road to Ursedon was built is fascinating to the two of you, but as a member of the family that hired the Academic, I have precedence. Leave now.”

Really, she was annoying me, so much that I wanted to smack her. Which was a shocking reaction on my part. I was supposed to be calm in the face of trivial annoyances. And that, more than anything else, kept me from arguing further. “Thank you for your assistance, Academic.” I gave Daris my brightest smile. “Have a wonderful day.”

So I left the room, but I didn’t go far. It was childish and rude of me, but I lingered by the door, out of sight of the occupants of the library. It was none of my business, true, but Fiona was going through a horrible time and she didn’t need to be taking any abuse from her drunkard of a sister. If I could warn her of any upcoming problems, I would. It was my duty as her guest.

“What is this book about?” I heard Daris ask.

“I have not yet given Her Grace my report.”

“You are to give that report to me first.”

“With forgiveness, you are not the person who retained me.”

“You do not seem to understand that I can bring you benefits or I can make your life very difficult.”

“I have no doubt, but that is irrelevant. I have a duty to the Duchess, and I will not breach it.”

I realized, belatedly, that I admired Reid, in a manner different from that which I had felt before I’d met him. He tended to blush easily, but he clearly had a spine. Daris struck me as the truly weak one. She resented Fiona for having the title and seemed to want nothing else. What had been her goal before Fiona had the duchy? Maybe she hadn’t had any. Or had she craved Fiona’s original title as well?

Huh. So this was the second time Daris had been ignored in favor of her younger sister. That had to sting.

Feeling assured that Reid could handle Daris, I stopped skulking about, eavesdropping in the hall. I returned to my suite, where Taro was playing with a deck of cards, his boredom evident in his slow, languid movements. “What do you think of Daris?” I asked him.

“She’s a weak, useless parasite.”

That kind of shocked me. “That’s a little strong.” Not that I really disagreed, but Taro was usually a bit more delicate.

“She does nothing.”

“Most aristocrats could be accused of that.”

“No, she does even less.”

“Really?”

“So they say. She just drinks and sleeps around. So does Tarce, but he’s harmless. He isn’t trying to betray Fiona.”

“I just overheard her trying to get information out of Reid. I don’t know what she thinks that book has that will help her.”

Taro snickered and then he sneered. “She’s just trying to search out every angle.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s rolling every die every which way to see what turns up.”

“Meaning that Reid and the book are not the only avenues she’s pursuing.”

“Aye.”

I crossed my arms. “How do you know that?”

He froze, briefly, in the act of turning over a card. “It’s what I’ve heard.”

If it hadn’t been for that guilty little hesitation, I would have taken him at his word. “Really?”

“Aye.”

“I think you have more immediate knowledge than that.”

Taro just kept turning over cards.

That he wasn’t denying it, that he wasn’t frowning at me in confusion, told me I was on to something. “The less you say, the more I’ll imagine.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ll assume the worst.” Really, I didn’t even know what to assume. I just knew something was going on.

He scowled. “She said she was prepared to make it worth my while to reconsider abjuring the title,” he finally admitted.

That wasn’t so bad, I supposed, but it was kind of stupid. “What is it with these people? Surely she knows that’s impossible.”

“Apparently not.”

“Do you think she’s in league with your mother?”

He snickered. “No.”

“Why was that a ridiculous thing to suggest?”

“Her Grace would have nothing to do with someone like her.”

I didn’t know about that. The Dowager associated with that Simone woman, housed her and encouraged her schemes, and Simone seemed no better than Daris.

“How would your getting the title back benefit her?”

He looked down at his cards and muttered something unintelligible.

“What?”

He heaved a big sigh and looked up at me, an expression of resignation on his face. “She offered to marry me.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“You heard me.”

She offered to marry him? Bitch! The nature of the relationship between Taro and me was obvious to everyone in the manor. How dared she try to interfere with that? “When did this start?”

“Pretty much when I got here.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “All of this hassle you’ve been giving me over Reid and you’ve been—you’ve been—” I didn’t know how to put it. “You’ve been having meetings with Daris!”

“I have not!” he flared. “And it’s not the same thing! I have no interest in Daris.”

I just raised my eyebrows at him. How come that argument wasn’t valid when I used it?

I didn’t know if he could read my expression, or if he’d figured out on his own that his argument was lame, but he clearly felt compelled to add, “There’s nothing appealing about Daris.”

That, I thought, was pushing it too hard. “She’s beautiful.” If one liked that sort of look.

“She’s an avaricious, small-minded inebriate.” He looked at me in a challenge. “Reid is an academic.”