Heroes Adrift (24 page)

“I am your sister. That didn't prevent you from killing members of my troupe.”

“It should have been my troupe.”

“Then you confess to killing them?”

His eyes widened. “No!”

Too late. I thought amoral liars were supposed to be better at it than this.

“How do you find?” Atara called out.

“Murderer!” was the almost unanimous decision from everyone who stood around us.

“The curse is real!” Yesit insisted. “I've come around only to watch it work. But there is a curse, and the only way to revoke it is for me to forgive you. For you to ask my forgiveness.” He gave a triumphant smirk.

Atara's eyes narrowed, and her lips thinned.

She wasn't actually considering letting him go, and begging his forgiveness, was she? He'd tried to kill Panol and Rinis. He'd practically admitted to killing others.

There was no curse. Just the belief in one. Don't let a murderer escape justice over fear of a curse that wasn't real.

“I am forced to wonder if you have been here every time your curse struck,” Atara said. “You have not been so very clever. Others have seen you at times, and we have been fools not to think you might have been more directly responsible for our misfortune than a curse. But in the end, it does not matter. Our people have died, by your hand or by your curse.”

“All you have to do is ask my forgiveness and it will end,” Yesit said, with a bit more desperation.

“I have only your word on that,” Atara told him. “Your word has no power.”

Excellent. So she didn't let superstition completely rule her reason. Because, really, if she turned him over to the authorities, the accidents would stop.

“Sacey, fetch Leavy's dancing bars,” Atara ordered, and Sacey ran off.

“Sol, my knife.” Sol nodded, and he was gone, too.

“No!” Yesit's face had paled. “Atara, don't do this. I beg of you. I meant no real harm. No one was supposed to die. Just be hurt and frightened. So you would give the troupe back to me. It was supposed to be mine. You know that.”

Atara didn't respond. She just watched him, her expression cool.

“Shouldn't someone go for those guards?” I asked Leverett. “The ones who arrested Kahlia?”

He appeared surprised by the question. “They have nothing to do with this.”

“Are they not the law enforcement here?”

“For the people of Sunset Shores. Not for the likes of us.”

“So what's going to happen to Yesit?”

“Execution.”

I stared at Leverett. “You're going to kill him?”

“It is Atara's right.”

In what perverse version of justice? “You can't do that!”

“Why not?”

“He hasn't had a trial! An Accounting!”

“We don't do Accountings.”

“Who is we?”

Leverett was clearly getting annoyed with my series of questions. “The troupe.”

“So, what, you have your own laws?”

Leverett shrugged.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. They were just going to kill him, right then and there. No weighing of evidence. No chance for him to defend himself. I looked at the others, and none of them seemed to find the plan objectionable. Some were cutting away the underbrush and stomping it into a flatter surface. Preparing the killing space. Sirok and Corla helped Rinis walk out to watch the death of her would-be killer. Rinis, pasty and sweaty and barely able to keep her eyes open, probably wasn't even aware of what was going on.

My bars were brought. Yesit's arms were stretched wide, and his hands tied to one bar. The same was done with his feet. “No!” I protested. “You can't do this. There has to be a better way.”

Leverett sneered. “And you would teach it to us, offlander?”

“There is a proper way to do things. To make sure he is actually guilty of the crimes you think he committed.”

“He's already confessed.”

“Not really.”

“This is our way, offlander. If you don't like it, go home.”

It wasn't a matter of me not liking it. It was just wrong. I opened my mouth to say so, but felt Taro's hand on my arm. He tugged on it.

“Let's go,” he said.

“Taro!”

“You want to watch?”

“Of course not, but we have to stop this.”

“We can't, and we shouldn't.”

“We shouldn't? Taro!”

He yanked me away with more force. “We don't have the right to interfere.”

“This is more important than what we have a right to do! This is a man's life!”

“This is their land, Lee. Their rules. We do not have the right or the knowledge to be telling them how to handle their own affairs. Just because we don't like something doesn't mean we can be telling them to change. We don't belong here, and we won't be living here long. We have to stay out of it.”

He was right. I hated it when that happened. I felt there was something I should be doing, but what would happen if we did stop it? Yesit would not be punished at all. He would be able to continue to injure or kill others. True, the troupe now knew to look for him, but he'd already demonstrated an ability for sabotage without anyone suspecting. It wasn't impossible that he would be able to continue.

I understood all that. But I couldn't help cringing at the visions in my head. The manner in which they knew how to prepare the killing space, with no discussion. They had done this before. And that disturbed me more than anything else.

I should be watching. If I wasn't prepared to stop it, I should watch. I wasn't sure why. It just seemed less cowardly.

And then I heard Yesit screaming. I didn't rush back to see what was being done to him. I just couldn't.

The next time I danced, there would be bloodstains on the bars.

Rinis went into labor that evening and died early the next morning. Taro eased her pain, which was all he was able to do, something neither Sirok nor Corla seemed able to accept. They kept asking him what to do, and kept shooting glances of disbelief at him when he said he didn't know. And when she died, well, Sirok definitely seemed to blame him, and it was all I could do not to hit him. The ungrateful bastard.

Karish walked out without a word.

I found Taro by the stream, scrubbing at the blood staining his hands and forearms. His shirt would have to go. The blood could probably be soaked out of it, but I wouldn't imagine Karish wanting to wear it again. I wouldn't.

If anyone saw him washing right from the stream, they'd have his head. I wasn't telling. “You did the right thing,” I said, to announce my presence. And because it was true. “And you did a hell of a lot more than anyone else here could.”

The skin on his arms was reddened with his scrubbing. “I'm not a healer,” he muttered. “Never been a healer. I'm sick of people expecting me to do things I've never been trained to do.”

He was thinking of last summer, I supposed, when the regulars of High Scape expected him to stop the blizzards from devastating their crops. Or maybe he was thinking of being sent out by the Empress to look for her exiled relatives.

Hell, maybe it went as far back as having to create an event to get away from Creol. Though he seemed to be getting more comfortable with that sort of thing as time went by. And I would have to worry about that later.

I sat down beside him, but not so close that I crowded him. “You're going to need soap to get it out from under your nails,” I told him.

He sighed and shook out his hands, sitting back from the stream. He held his hands out, away from his trousers, to let them dry. I didn't know why he bothered. His trousers had blood on them, too, and were almost soaked from his attempt to scrape every speck of blood from his skin.

His hands had gotten rough. He had never, since I'd known him, had the milky soft hands of most of the aristocrats I had met. Still, his hands had always appeared clean and almost untouched, the nails rounded and buffed. Now, his hands were browner than I'd ever seen them, a scar down the back of his left hand where he'd ripped the skin unloading the wagon one night, and two of his nails had been torn off during the trials of changing a wheel.

He still refused to don the skirts the men of Flatwell wore. His shirts and trousers were of a much lighter material than he wore in High Scape, but they were still heavy enough to keep him permanently flushed in the high temperatures of the island. And one day, his hair seemed to push him over some sort of line, because during the midday rest, he took a knife to it and cut it short. He insisted on doing it himself, and the result was a weird mess that wouldn't stay flat because of the curl in it. It stayed out of his face without needing to be tied, though, and I supposed that was the point.

He was still gorgeous, of course. The darker skin went nicely with his black eyes. I was sure there were people who would spend a fortune trying to imitate the attractive mess of his hair. He still had the finely drawn features that so thoroughly trapped a person's gaze. And though he moved more slowly than he used to, due to the heat and the heaviness of the air, he still had that surety of step and that grace I so envied.

It was just that a person might not look at him long enough to see that he was gorgeous, what with the terrible loose-fitting clothes and the cracked hands. And it kind of concerned me that Karish was willing to let himself be seen looking so ragged. I would have never said he was shallow or vain—well, I wouldn't mean it—but he had always cared about his appearance. His argument was that once one was out in public, one had a responsibility to present a clean and neat appearance. It was a way to demonstrate respect for oneself and others. I didn't quite agree with him, but I could sort of see the logic of his opinion.

I wasn't sure why he had decided to put all that aside. Perhaps it was just a lot more difficult for him to keep up his customary look, his clothes being unsuitable for the climate. It was possible that he had come to agree with my opinion concerning everyday apparel, that comfort was more important than appearance, and easier to manage while traveling. I hoped it wasn't a matter of him thinking there was no point in caring, since everyone on the island was blind and thought he was plain.

I had to get him off that damned island.

I eased over closer to him, wrapping my hands around his arm and resting my chin on his shoulder. I felt him relax. “You have had a very hard night,” I said. “We'll go back to the tent so you can sleep, and when you get up you will have red wine and island chicken and those slimy green vegetables you like so much.”

“We don't have any of that,” he reminded me.

“Aye, but there must be someone in the troupe I can buy them from.”

His eyebrows rose in surprise. Kai, kai, I was a tightfisted wench who nagged him over every unnecessary coin he wanted to spend. But this was necessary. He'd had a hellish night, held responsible for the health of a woman who ended up dying. If getting a break from cold fish, rice and water would give him some pleasure, I was all for it. “Let's go before someone starts screaming at us for using the stream.”

We headed back toward the tents, trying to find a path and keeping an eye out for snakes. When we reached the camp, we found almost the entire troupe standing outside Rinis's tent, arguing over whether she'd died as a result of Yesit's curse, and whether it meant they should leave the troupe. I didn't know which I found more shocking, the fact that they thought Yesit's curse might still have power over them, or the fact so many spoke of leaving Atara. I'd thought they'd had more loyalty than that.

We didn't even slow down. I knew I was exhausted, and I just couldn't handle another confrontation of any kind. Still, I was curious about what I was hearing. “I don't understand,” I whispered to Karish once we'd entered our tent.

“Don't understand what?” Aryne piped up.

My annoyance at once more forgetting Aryne's existence made me want to tell her it was none of her affair. But that wasn't true. If the troupe suddenly shattered, it put all of us at risk. “Why they think the curse is still”—I was too tired to think of a suitable word—“in effect. The man who cast it is dead.”

“The only person who can break a curse is the one who cast it,” Aryne said. “If he didn't lift it, and now he's dead, it'll go on forever.”

“He admitted he actually made sure the accidents happened,” I reminded her. “He followed the troupe and sabotaged their acts. You saw him do it, with the snake.”

“Maybe he helped the curse along, but he still cast it, and 'cause he's dead, now it can never be lifted.”

Why would these people cling to the curse? They had the perfect opportunity to release themselves from a belief that crippled them. Instead, they found reasons to hang on. It didn't make sense.

Taro was looking through our bags, searching for something he apparently couldn't find. He seemed a little disoriented.

“Go to bed, Taro,” I told him.

Aryne chuckled. “Take to mat,” she corrected, because, of course, no one on this damned island slept in actual beds.

Taro was tired enough not to react to the orders except to obey them. I wanted to give Karish what privacy and space I could. From the bags, I pulled out towels, stretching them out on the grass under the ovcas of our tent, using one of the bags filled with clothing as a pillow. If anyone had a problem with me sleeping on the ground, they didn't wake me up to let me know. Too busy arguing over whether to ditch the troupe.

After sleeping a couple of hours, I asked around the camp for something good for supper. I was able to buy skins of red wine and three island chickens, but no slimy green vegetables. For the hell of it, I inquired about chocolate, but, of course, no one had any of that. I did get my hands on some nice sharp cheese, and sweet juicy yellow fruit that I knew Taro liked.

The sun was setting when Karish woke up. When he shuffled out of the tent, he had changed his clothes and scrubbed his fingernails. “They back yet?” he asked.

“No.”

“Everyone still here?”

“You expected people to actually leave?”

“If they're so afraid of this curse.”

“Hm.” I doubted they would leave Atara immediately. They all wanted to get out of Sunset Shores as soon as possible.

That evening, the members of the troupe held a funeral for Rinis. Although Taro, Aryne and I had no real wish to attend, I was surprised to be told that we weren't welcome, as we hadn't known Rinis for a full year. Something about only those who had witnessed a significant portion of a person's life were permitted to witness their return to the ground.

What these people chose to reveal and what they chose to keep private continued to baffle me.

When I woke the next morning, Kahlia and Panol had returned. Kahlia had been absolved of the theft. Apparently, one of Taroon's servants had taken the idol. He had been at the Accounting, and had been surprised to be found guilty when a member of a troupe was there to be blamed.

Taro and I barely had time to take down the tent before we were moving again.