Heroes Return (18 page)

“Dunleavy?” said Fiona. “Are you all right?”

I uncoiled and relaxed my hands. “Taro’s channeling ended too abruptly.” As soon as I said it, I regretted opening my mouth. That was not the sort of thing to be telling regulars.

“Do you think something happened to him?”

“Oh, no,” I lied. “That sometimes happens. It doesn’t mean anything.”

But maybe something had happened just as his channeling was finished, something to do with whatever those idiots did when they were out killing whales. He could be badly injured and on his way to death, and I’d have no idea until he actually died.

Why the hell hadn’t I objected to his going whaling? When did I get so stupid?

I had to get out there. I jumped to my feet and ran out of the sitting room, hearing, “Dunleavy, where are you going?” from Fiona behind me. I didn’t stop to explain. I ran to the kitchen and out the back door, blind to everything that wasn’t immediately in front of me.

I crossed the gardens at a run, trotted through the strange twisted path through the ridge, and had to skid to a stop, as the loose rock on the other side made for some unstable footing. I picked my way down a tiny path worn into the cliff and down to the rocky shore.

There were no docked boats yet, but one was rowing up to the shore, and Taro was in it. Sitting up and unsupported, thank gods. I breathed a deep sigh of relief.

Sometimes I thought I shouldn’t let him go anywhere. Bad stuff always happened to him when I wasn’t around.

Tarce caught up with me, gasping. “You run damned fast.”

I didn’t answer, too busy watching the small boat that was bearing my Source back to land. Two men were rowing the boat with long, sure strokes, two others were just sitting there, and Dane was leaning close to Taro and saying something to him. Everyone looked all right.

After an age, the boat pulled up to the wide strip of rock that served as a beach. The two rowers jumped out and pulled the boat more firmly onto the shore. Taro and Dane jumped out with, again, no sign of an injury. The two rowers immediately pushed the boat back off the beach and began rowing back out to sea.

“What happened?” I demanded.

“He just went blank,” Dane said, though I hadn’t been asking him. “I never even thought about the possibility of him . . . uh . . . having to do his thing in the middle of whaling.”

“Don’t feel bad. Neither did either of us. Taro?” I prompted.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Taro snapped. “Do you know what that is?” He pointed out at the water.

“Water?”

“No! What we were traveling in!”

Zaire, calm down. “The boat.”

“What kind of boat is that?” he demanded.

How the hell did I know? I thought about the boat I’d seen. Sturdy, kind of wide for its length, which had been about four men long. “Some kind of shore boat for the whaling boat.”

“That
is
the whaling boat!” he nearly shouted. “A whole group of idiots go out in a bunch of boats like that, and they attack a whale! They find a whale and get as close as they can to it—Do you hear me? They get close to it! And the strongest idiot throws a harpoon at the whale, with some kind of floating weight attached to it.”

“A drogue,” Dane supplied helpfully.

“And the animal thrashes about, and nearly kills us all, but instead of doing the intelligent thing, all the boats get closer, and all the other idiots throw their spears at it, and it was dangerous and careless and just completely insane.” Then he glared at Dane. “What is wrong with you people?”

Dane laughed and slung an arm around Taro’s shoulders. “It’s the right kind of insanity, my friend. But not for you. Those little spells of yours are too dangerous. Now, it’s time to go back to the house. You need a whiskey.”

Taro didn’t object. So we all went back to the house and then to the sitting room, where Dane insisted that Taro drink a whole tumbler full of whiskey. It was a good thing Taro had a head for alcohol.

After he had obediently downed the last drop, I announced he and I had Triple S business to discuss and we went back to our rooms. I looked in every corner to make sure Lila or someone else wasn’t lurking about. When I felt we were clear, we sat in the settee closest to the center of our sitting room. “What happened?” I demanded.

“Nothing happened. The event was successfully channeled.”

“We felt tremors here. Didn’t you?”

“I couldn’t feel anything but the boat,” he muttered.

“That is the second time we . . . leaked. That’s a problem.”

He scowled. “Fine. All right. I channeled, but I couldn’t control the forces the way I should be able to.”

And that was very, very dangerous. Sources were supposed to be in complete control of the forces they were channeling. Too much could go wrong if a Source lost control. It would kill the Pair and leave the people vulnerable to whatever event was happening. “In what way?”

“They went faster than I liked. And there was a raw quality to them, as though there was nothing between me and the forces. I never thought there was anything between me and the forces before, but now I can feel the difference.”

“It didn’t feel like that when you were channeling Flown Raven events while we were still in High Scape?”

“No. Channeling events from Flown Raven has always been strange, but I never felt so out of control. Maybe the distance helped me in some way.”

“If I tell the Triple S we’re having trouble, they’re likely to transfer us.” Which would be the best for everyone, I thought, though I had already gotten to like Fiona and her little family. “They’re already displeased about you being here.”

“No!” was his emphatic response. “Don’t tell them anything.”

“I know you don’t like any contact with them, but they already suspect you’re going to have trouble here.”

“Suspecting isn’t knowing.”

“And if we can’t do this—”

“I can do this. We just have to work on it.”

“Work on it how?”

“You’ll think of something. You always do.”

Wonderful. Put all the responsibility on me. “This place has a bad effect on you. You were almost lordly in your delegation.”

He grimaced and shoved his hands in his hair. “I hate this place,” he muttered.

Ah. For that, I couldn’t blame him. “Then let’s do something that will get us out of it.”

“By telling the council we’re failures? How can you be willing to do that?”

“We’re not failures. We just shouldn’t be here.”

“We will not leave by claiming I can’t channel. Don’t you tell them I can’t channel.”

“I won’t write anything without your consent.” I took his hand. I wanted to get him to relax. It seemed to me he’d been tied into knots since we got here. We sat on a settee, and I sat close beside him and laid my head on his shoulder. I breathed in, slow and deep, and let it out. In and out. And as I listened for Taro, I was aware when his breathing imitated mine.

Next step: with my free hand I trailed patterns on the back of his, keeping my touch light and teasing. He pulled his hand from under mine and reached across to trail a fingertip over the shell of my ear. It tickled and I lifted my head. Taro chuckled and leaned forward to kiss me.

But just before our lips met, Lila walked in. “A message for you, my lord.”

“I’m not a lord,” he grumbled. “I’m a Source.”

The maid extended the silver tray. Taro snatched up the missive and waited for Lila to leave. He frowned at the seal at the back. “It’s from Her Grace.”

“You mean your mother?” I asked, just to make sure. “Her Grace” could almost mean Fiona, though I’d never heard him refer to her by anything other than her personal name. And Fiona would never be so pompous as to send him correspondence while he lived in her house.

He stared at the envelope for a while, and I could tell he was deciding whether he should even open it.

He opened it. He read what appeared to be only a few lines. Then he tore the paper into pieces and left the settee so he could throw the pieces into the fireplace. “I’m to attend her at her residence immediately,” he told me. “I’ve been ordered to leave you behind.”

“Are you going to go?”

“No.”

“She’s just going to come here.”

“So let her. I don’t follow her orders.”

“But if you hear her out, she might then leave you alone.”

He snorted in derision. “You have met her, haven’t you?”

“She lives on the property. If we’re going to stay here, you have to figure out a way to deal with her.” Maybe that would convince him we should try to get transferred.

“Ignoring her has worked for years now. I learned it from the best.”

Aye, but unlike Taro as a child, the Dowager Duchess wouldn’t let herself be ignored. Still, it was Taro’s problem to solve and I wasn’t going to nag him about it.

“I have to go . . . be somewhere,” Taro said, and he practically ran from the room, making it clear that my presence was not welcome.

I sighed and picked at a loose thread in the cushion of the settee. So much for my ability to make Taro feel better.

Chapter Fourteen

A loud bang woke me and had me jerking upright, looking about without, at first, seeing anything. Then I blinked and Lila was there, at the window. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” she said as she messed about with the window. “I have to tie the shutters down.” She did so after a few moments, and then she closed the window.

“What’s going on?” It sounded like the world was being torn apart out there, the very ground being ripped up into the air.

“The wind is kicking up.”

Oh. That seemed an insufficient cause for Lila’s behavior. But then, I hadn’t grown up in a place where the wind regularly knocked over carriages. “Did the Wind Watcher sound the alarm?”

“Oh, no. It’s not that bad. A good thing, too. Her Ladyship has to visit the families of the tenants lost in the whale hunt yesterday.”

“People were lost? I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” Whaling was that dangerous? And Dane had had Taro doing it? What was the man thinking?

“Jacob Ikubi and Eller Le Royer. It’s my lady’s duty to give her condolences to the families as soon as possible.”

“But she doesn’t go out in the wind.” She had said so.

“Only when the Wind Watcher blows the horn. She hasn’t. It’s my lady’s duty to go out today. It has to be as soon after the deaths as possible.”

“Were one of those men someone close to you?” I asked gently.

Lila appeared offended. “They don’t need to be kin for me to feel for them.”

“No, no, of course not.” But it would better explain, I thought, why Lila was so emphatic in her assertion that Fiona had to go out that day, despite the fact that the wind, while less than deadly, was still pretty nasty. “We would hear the horn all the way out here?”

“The horn can be heard everywhere,” Lila said firmly. “Has ma’am decided where she will take her morning meal?”

I guessed that was the end of that conversation. “I’ll go down to the sitting room.”

“The others have already eaten, ma’am.”

Zaire, did that make me feel lazy. Still, I wasn’t about to order breakfast be brought to my room. That was a little too aristocratic for my taste. “That’s all right. I have no difficulty with eating alone.” In fact, sometimes I preferred it. I wasn’t always at my best in the morning.

The sitting room was empty, aside from the maid who was in the process of clearing away the remains of breakfast. I rescued some cold toast and lukewarm coffee and sat listening to the wind. It was so loud, crashing about beyond the shutters and wailing over the roof. It seemed pretty dangerous to me, even if it wasn’t strong enough to warrant the horn. I wouldn’t go out in it. Fiona was crazy.

So I went to the library. Reid was there, the table covered with papers and scrolls. He wasn’t working, though. He was watching three of the Imperial Guards, who were pulling books out of the shelves, flipping through them and dropping them on the floor.

I didn’t think their superficial search method was going to be fruitful, even if they actually stumbled across a book of spells. All the spell books I had seen didn’t have titles easily identifying them, and their nature couldn’t be determined by flipping through the pages. You had to actually read them.

I took a seat at Reid’s table. “Having trouble working?”

“They do make a racket.”

“You could give us a hand,” the Second Sergeant complained.

“That is not why Her Grace hired me.”

“I don’t understand you people,” the Second Sergeant spat. “People are causing a lot of pain and damage trying to fix their lives with spells. This is dangerous. It’s for their own good to have this trash collected and disposed of.”

I doubted the books were to be destroyed. They were no doubt to be sent to the Emperor. Did they know His Majesty was using spells himself? Did they believe it was something only the royal could or should use? Or did they truly believe casting was nothing more than pretense and fraud? I wouldn’t blame them if they did. That was what I had thought not too long ago.

The Second Sergeant had been waiting for an answer, and when neither of us gave him one, he made a sound of disgust and resumed ransacking the library.

It was an appalling way to treat books. I couldn’t bear to watch it for long. I smiled at Reid and left the library.

The books in the library weren’t the only books in the house. And the Guards had already searched our suite, the bastards. The door to our suite had a lock. It should be safe enough.

As I was climbing the stairs, I became aware of a noise pulling at my mind. I ignored it at first, but it nagged at my mind and teased my ears. Then I listened to it, and I finally realized what it was.

The warning note from the Wind Watcher.

Where was Taro?

I ran up to our suite. Taro wasn’t there. I checked with Cekina and with Bailey, and neither of them knew where Taro was. I tried all the rooms on the main floor, and Taro wasn’t in any of them, with no evidence that he ever had been.