Heroes Adrift (15 page)

“Good gods, woman, what did you do to your feet?”

I jerked awake and grimaced at the sunlight glaring into my eyes. Momentary disorientation cleared into irritation. The bastard had opened one of the tent flaps. “Why are you waking me up?” One of the few days, apparently, when Kahlia isn't compelled to drag me out of bed before dawn, and he chooses to do it for her?

Granted, not before dawn. But I'd been asleep. By definition, he was waking me too early.

“Did the dancing last night do this to your feet?”

I buried my head under the hard pillow. “I guess.” It was too hot to stay under there. “No, I was walking around a bit, too.”

“Lee! Look at this, damn it!”

I sighed and looked at him. He was kneeling at my feet. Naked, of course, which was one of his most flattering states. And I could finally look at that gorgeous lean form without appearing intrusive and inappropriately personal. I could, for a while, just think about how incredibly beautiful he was.

Or he would be, once the sunburn healed. The scratches must have really hurt, though he hadn't seemed to mind them at the time. I wasn't sure I would have noticed it if he had.

It had been a terrible mistake to sleep with him. Just as I thought it would be. He could claim all he wanted that he wasn't nearly as experienced as the rumors said. His skill said otherwise.

To pacify him, I looked at my feet. A bit bruised and raw, but nothing too bad. “You had me expecting great bloody gashes.”

“You're not dancing until they're healed.”

“I'm taking on challengers today.”

“The hell you are.”

I wasn't thrilled about the idea either. I wasn't in serious pain but I was sore. However, I wanted to make as much money as soon as possible. I wanted our debts paid off. “They don't hurt.”

“Like that means anything. You could be gushing blood and you'd dismiss it as a scrape. Shield.”

I snickered at him. “What a little mother you are.” But it felt nice, how carefully he was cradling my foot. Which made me think of something. “Wait a moment. Let go of me.” When he did, the soles of my feet started stinging. Really stinging. “Ah.”

“Ha.” He raised an eyebrow. “Hurts, eh?”

“I wouldn't go that far.” But it wasn't comfortable.

“You can't dance today. I don't want you ruining your feet over this, doing permanent damage. Leave it for at least a day.”

“Did I bring in any money last night?” I remembered some coins being tossed to the ground, vaguely, but I had no idea what happened to them.

His face fell. “I didn't collect it.” And he started swearing at himself.

He was berating himself, harshly enough that I felt no need to add any criticism. I couldn't really blame him. I had been in no condition to think of it, either. But I suddenly remembered I was hungry, so hungry my stomach had curled into a hard, sharp knot. “Massage my feet again. I liked that.”

“Yes, ma'am.” He settled more comfortably on the mat, folding his legs, and carefully propped my feet on his shins. The stinging disappeared. So did the sharpest edge of the hunger. “Was last night about the music?” he asked in a quiet voice.

“I told you last night it wasn't.”

He shrugged. “The music might have still been affecting you last night without you knowing it.”

He was expecting morning-after regrets, was he? I was supposed to wake up, confused about where I was, slowly realize with dawning horror that I had made the most horrible mistake, and either tell him it hadn't happened or just freeze him out. Well, he was out of luck there. I'd made the decision to give this a try. I was still aware of the likelihood that this would, indeed, be the worst decision I had ever made, but once I picked a path of stupidity, I stuck with it. “It wasn't the music.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Not entirely. It could have been a bit about the music. I couldn't be sure. But I wasn't going to tell him that. He would jump to the worst conclusions, and possibly spend too much time brooding about how he had taken advantage of his insensible vulnerable Shield. A good nine-tenths of the decision had come straight from my own irrational mind, and he didn't need to know anything different.

But my Source wasn't stupid. “How can you be sure?” he demanded.

“I'm extremely talented.”

He smiled slightly and appeared ready to let it go.

“Are you two awake?” a voice called from outside.

Karish rolled his eyes, hissing a little under his breath. “No!” he shouted.

“Can I come in?”

“No!”

I nudged him with one foot. “Taro.”

“She is
always
here.”

“So you should be used to her by now. She's been good to us.” And we needed all the help we could get. I reached under the division between our cots and dragged out a wrap from the pile of clothes I'd been given. “Don't come out if you don't want to talk to her.”

“Oh, I'm coming out,” he muttered. “She's too lean.” Whatever that meant. He reached for his trousers.

I slipped into the tiny public rectangle of our tent. “Sorry for the delay, Kahlia. Please come in.” I shook one of the tea sacks to determine whether we had anything to offer her to drink. But of course we didn't. We'd used all the tea to ward off hunger.

She stepped into the tent. She was carrying some kind of pan—maybe for baking bread?—and thrust it into my hands.

It was about half-full of coins. Gray, brown and yellow. I took the pan and rustled the coins with an index finger. I looked at Kahlia again. “This is what we earned last night at our performance?”

“Yes,” she said, and her smile seemed oddly proud.

Thank Zaire. We could eat. “Is this a pleasing amount?”

“It is highly good, especially for a virgin night.”

“How much do I owe you and the others?”

“We've already taken our portions, and I have taken Ma's tax and given it to her.”

“Thank you,” I said, as polite as I could be in the face of such meddling, her going through my coins that way. “And thank you for collecting this for us. I forgot to last night.”

“We noticed,” she said and grinned, shooting a look at Karish.

And Karish, damn him, appeared almost smug.

“Are you ready to go?” Kahlia asked, although it was obvious to see that I was not. “We have to rehearse a little before the first of the challengers come.”

“Lee isn't dancing today,” said Karish. “Her feet are a mess from last night. She can't continue dancing on the bare ground. We're going to the mill and we're ordering a bench. She's not dancing again until she has one.”

“She should not be seen in the markets without her costume. Part of her show is her glitter. No one will believe that if they see her trudging about buying eggs.”

“You're not suggesting I spend the next two or so years hiding away from people when I'm not performing.” She'd better not be. That was a guaranteed way to make me homicidal.

“Are you going to meet the challengers today or not?” she asked me.

“I am not. I'm not prepared to ruin my feet over this.”

“I told everyone you'd be meeting challengers today.”

“You'll have to tell them you were mistaken. Or that I'm throwing an artistic fit.”

She shrugged. “They're your hides.”

Yes, they were. “Thank you for bringing us the coins. I really appreciate it.”

She shrugged again and left the tent without another word.

The next thing I knew, Karish's hand was wrapped around the back of my neck and I was being thoroughly kissed.

“What was that for?” I asked, breathlessly, once I could.

He just chuckled, gave me one more quick kiss, and then started pulling on some clothing. “I'm going to find us something to eat,” he said. “I don't know about you, but I'm starving.”

Karish traded a couple of coins for dried fish that was savory and flaky and the most wondrous substance to ever touch my tongue. The cold rice rolled in dried seaweed was also unusually tasty. I had clearly left all civilization back on the mainland, for I ate too much, too quickly and was rewarded with unpleasant stomach cramps.

After breakfast, we got a few directions and some recommendations and headed for the markets. I was oddly excited. I was going to spend money. I had coins, that I had earned, and I was going to use them to purchase goods. That excited me.

I was a sad, sad person.

We went to the mill first, and the miller told us she'd made dancing benches before. And thank Zaire for that, because I'd never considered the possibility of a miller not knowing how to build dancing benches. For a little extra, she could make sure the bench was ready for the next morning.

I hated handing over the coins without knowing whether I was paying a fair price. I had never paid much attention to the price of things, but even I knew that a meat meal should cost somewhere in the range of three coins rather than thirty. Dancing benches, I had no idea. I was probably the only Shield in history who'd ever had to buy a dancing bench.

I'd have to start paying attention to these things. Everything, not just benches. I was going to have to watch every coin.

An attitude not shared by Karish, apparently. “Duty's done, time for fun,” he announced, eyes gleaming.

That didn't sound promising. “We can't go wild, Taro. We have to save every coin we can.”

“That's a whole lot of money you earned last night, Lee. I'm still not totally pegged on the coins here, but I know that's a lot. More than even Kahlia was expecting.”

“Aye, and I didn't hear her recommending a shopping spree.” I was tired, and my feet were killing me.

He rolled his eyes. “Some clothes that are suitable for this climate. That's all I'm asking,” he promised. “That and a good meal.”

I could feel my eyebrows performing a little leap of enthusiasm at that. I couldn't help it. I was hungry again, and the thought of eating something other than cold rice and dried fish made my mouth flood with saliva.

Karish positively cackled. “Ha! Clothes first, though.”

To his credit, he didn't go berserk trying to buy things, clothes of every possible shape and huge. We bought two pairs of trousers for him—he couldn't be convinced to buy skirts and the fact that I teased him about his lovely legs helped not at all—that were looser and of a finer material than his Northern garments. I got two skirts that fell well below the knee but flowed freely about my legs. Two shirts apiece and a pair of sandals each, all of it made to measure and before our very eyes. It was fascinating.

And then…food.

Not the kind of food I was used to, nor what I was craving. At the first mention of a tavern, I'd had visions of chunks of beef drowning in gravy, topping a mound of finely whipped potatoes. There was no beef available in this tiny little town on the wrong end of the planet, and the only potatoes I saw were tiny and an odd green color and not at all appetizing, though the other patrons were gobbling them up eagerly enough.

I ended up with an incredibly savory fish stew with a side dish of thin, almost flaky bread. The wine with it was oddly sharp, but palatable enough.

The dessert was awful.

And I never thought those words could ever go together in a sentence.

Weird bland colors, strange gushy consistencies, and a flavor I could only describe as watered down sugar. Too much sugar watered down. How could anyone do so well in the main course yet fail so spectacularly with the dessert?

A cultural thing, I supposed, as everyone else ate it with apparent enjoyment.

I didn't know if I could last two years without a proper dessert.

“We should do something,” Karish announced when our half-eaten desserts had been taken away.

“Aren't we?”

“No. Something exotic, because we're in an exotic place. And,” his grin widened, “something to celebrate.”

I almost asked him if he always celebrated sleeping with someone for the first time, but I choked back that incredibly stupid question just in time. “It has to be something that doesn't cost any money.”

His eyes narrowed. “You're not going to turn into a nag about this, are you?”

“We are going to pay them back.”

“After we get back to Erstwhile.”

“We shall pay whatever amount of the debt is still owing if we find the line before we pay off the debt, but in the meantime we will pay off as much as we can.”

“We still have to live.”

“Celebrating is a requirement for living?”

“Obviously, or people wouldn't always be doing it.”

As arguments went, it was flawed. People didn't need to get drunk or paint their houses awful colors, but they did it all the time. However, I knew of a better method of getting my way. “My feet hurt.”