Heroes at Risk

by Moore, Moira J.

  “Of course.”

  “Shintaro won’t mind?”

  “He had better not, not after I explain things to him.” Taro spent all sorts of time with all sorts of people, and although he had neatly avoided admitting it during our last argument, he knew as well as I did that a lot of people he ran with were in lust, if not love, with him. I’d never suggested he stop associating with his friends, and he had never offered.

  It didn’t seem right that he should be able to spend time with people who admired him while I wasn’t to have the same right. At the same time, it didn’t really disturb me that Taro was meeting with his friends, while it clearly disturbed Taro, a lot, that I met with Doran.

  Did my insisting on doing something that I knew made Taro upset make me mean-spirited?

  Would pandering to his feelings, while not insisting he observe the same behavior, make me weak?

  Would insisting that if I couldn’t see Doran, he couldn’t keep his menagerie be just plain childish?

  I would have to think about that.

  But in the meantime, I got to enjoy the company of a good and entertaining friend. There was no harm in that. Taro would just have to accept it.

  Chapter Eleven

  Taro was waiting for me when I returned to the residence. He was lingering in the parlor and jumped out as soon as I was through the front door. “What did you tell him?” he demanded.

  I was annoyed to be assaulted so quickly. I looked through the correspondence deposited on the table in the foyer, surprised to find a letter from Trader Fines addressed to me. I was tempted to read it right then, an indication that I didn’t appreciate his behavior, but that was just a little too rude.

  “I made it clear that you and I were—” What? I hated all the descriptors that immediately leapt to mind. They were either too saccharine or too coarse. “Together.”

  “And?” he prodded.

  “That any plans he might have had for the two of us were to be put out of his head, because they weren’t going to happen.”

  “And?”

  I just looked at him. And what? I had had nothing more to say.

  “And you’re not going to see him again?”

  “I didn’t say that.” And I wouldn’t say that. “I’m not going to talk about this anymore, Taro. I’m not going to be told who my friends are.”

  “He’s not a friend, Lee! He loves you!”

  I grimaced at the melodrama. “That’s an exaggeration, Taro.” Doran had never said so, and had given me no reason to believe that was the way he felt. And I respected him for it. He really didn’t know me well enough to fall in love with me. “I told him that any kind of romantic relationship between us was over. He argued about it for a bit, and then he accepted it and asked if we could be friends. And I was happy to agree. I’m not like you, Taro. I don’t have a lot of friends.”

  “You can’t be this naive! No one wants to go from lovers to friends.”

  “We were never lovers,” I reminded him in a sharp tone. “And are you saying you don’t stay friends with the people you’ve had as lovers?”

  “Not usually,” he muttered.

  “Really?” I said, my surprise evident in my voice. That was a bad sign for us.

  We were still standing in the front foyer, which meant we were in the way when Stone and Firth came clattering in. “Hells, not another argument,” were the first words out of Firth’s mouth.

  “We don’t argue that much,” Taro objected.

  “You argue constantly,” Firth snapped. “And it is much more bitter than it was before you left.” She poked me in the chest. Hard. “This is one of the many reasons why partners should never sleep with each other. It was incredibly foolish for you to let things go that far.”

  I stared at her. Why was I, of the two of us, responsible for letting things go anywhere? And where was this censure coming from? All the Pairs had thought we were sleeping together, I was sure, from the moment they’d come to High Scape, and there hadn’t been a hint of disapproval. Annoyance and a lot of eye rolling, certainly, but not actual disapproval.

  And Firth was always going on about sleeping with everything on two legs in her long, adventure-filled life. She tormented Taro every time she saw him, about how delicious she found him. What had all that been about, if it didn’t demonstrate a certain flexibility in her morals?

  And yes, sexual relations between partners was discouraged by the official policy of the Triple S. We were lectured about it the whole time we were in school. But while it was considered an extremely bad idea, it wasn’t illegal or even really immoral. I’d met a Pair who were married to each other, for Zaire’s sake, so how wrong could it really be?

  “Ignore her,” Stone said to me. “She’s just upset that Prince Albert died.”

  Hold on, the Empress’s husband had died? When?

  “Don’t tell her to ignore me,” Firth snapped. “What they’re doing is disgusting.”

  Disgusting. Disgusting? Seriously, where the hell was this coming from?

  “We’ve talked about this,” Stone said to Firth.

  “No, you lectured me about it. And where did you get the idea that you could lecture me, I wonder? You’ve been spending too much time with this one.” Firth nodded at me with a sniff, before turning on her heel and striding away from us, ascending the stairs with an uncharacteristic heavy tread.

  “She’s actually disgusted by us?” I asked Stone.

  Stone shrugged. “I believe so,” she said. Which surprised me. I had been expecting her to discount Firth’s accusations as an aberration.

  “But why is she only getting upset about it now?” Unless she had always disapproved of us and had been able to hide it better before.

  Stone frowned, looking puzzled. “She’s disapproved of it since she realized the nature of your relationship,” she said. “This is fairly new, is it not? At least, you weren’t sleeping together before you went on your trip.”

  There were too many surprises happening in a single conversation. I had really thought the other Pairs had thought Taro and I had been sleeping together all along. They’d certainly acted as though that was what they believed.

  “I’d felt like she’d been avoiding us,” Taro commented. “But I’d thought it was just me.”

  “But she’s always talked as though she enjoyed . . .” Sleeping with a lot of different people. I wasn’t comfortable saying that about someone so much older than I. I wasn’t sure why.

  Stone rescued me. “She likes to talk,” she said. “And she likes to tease. But her morals are actually very firm.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?” I asked. “She really thinks what we’re doing is immoral?” That was a stupid question. I knew it as soon as it left my mouth. I just couldn’t believe she actually thought what we were doing was wrong.

  “Yes,” Stone answered, with no hesitation.

  “And do you think we’re immoral?”

  It took her a little longer to respond that time. “Not immoral, precisely,” she said finally. “Just incredibly foolish. I have to say I expected better of you.”

  And again, I was fairly sure the use of the word “you” was meant to refer only to me, not to Taro and me collectively. And seriously, what was that about? Why was I the only one to blame?

  “If you will excuse me,” said Stone, moving away.

  “Dee,” said Taro.

  Stone kept moving. “I don’t care to continue this conversation.”

  “No, I just want to know how Prince Albert died.”

  Stone hesitated and turned back. “They say he died in his sleep. Apparently, he has been bedridden for close to fifteen years, and demented for most of them.”

  Demented? I’d heard no such rumors, and I would have, wouldn’t I? If this had been going on for fifteen years? I had spent time at Erstwhile, staying right in the palace. People living in the palace, or spending their days at the court, they would have been aware of something like that, and spoken of it. Wouldn’t
they?

  “Thank you,” said Taro. Stone nodded and went upstairs, presumably following her Source.

  I couldn’t believe they had the gall to think there was something immoral about us. “Why am I to blame?” I muttered.

  “Oh?” Taro arched an eyebrow. “So you feel what we’re doing is blameworthy?”

  “No, no. Bad choice of words. But why am I the only one considered responsible?”

  “Because you’re the only one considered able to be responsible,” Taro said bitterly. “I’m just a Source, after all. Little better than a child.”

  “That can’t be it. Firth is a Source and she holds me responsible, too.”

  “She wouldn’t be the only Source to think that way. Sometimes we’re our own worst enemies.”

  That didn’t make sense, to think one’s own kind was inferior to another. And what did that mean, in Firth’s case? That Taro was incapable of making his own decisions, and that I was abusing a position of authority in the pursuit of sex?

  I felt a little sick. I’d never been despised before. Not by someone who knew me. I’d never been thought of as something vile and reprehensible. It was a disquieting position to be in.

  “Who is your letter from?” Taro asked in a welcome change of subject.

  I had forgotten about the folded paper I held in my left hand. “Trader Fines.”

  “The man who guided you during the parade?” Taro’s expression was flat. I had told him of my experiences at the parade, and he had read me a fine lecture about my idiocy in attending alone.

  He’d been right, but it was so aggravating to be limited that way. Talk about feeling like a child. “Aye.”

  “What does he want?”

  We moved to the parlor as I opened the letter. It was addressed only to me, though the invitation within was for both Taro and me. It spoke at length of Fines’s laxity in not inviting me sooner—revealing that he hadn’t been aware of my absence from High Scape, though there was no reason why he should have been—but his holdings had enjoyed a sudden expansion that had left him and his staff scrambling. He owed me no explanation. I hadn’t known he existed before the day of the parade. “Trader Fines wants us to come to dinner.”

  “You’re not going to refuse,” he said, because he knew me quite well.

  “Why shouldn’t I? It’s likely to be deadly boring.”

  “You said he said he knew your parents.”

  “Aye, as business rivals. Not friends.”

  “That you know of. And I wager that you haven’t even written to your parents to find out.”

  I didn’t respond to that challenge, because he was right. I hadn’t even thought to do that. Why would I? “It doesn’t matter what kind of relationship he has with my parents. That has nothing to do with me.”

  “They’re your family.”

  “Those ties are severed once you enter the Academy.” He raised his eyebrows at me to inform me that my opinion was stupid. “That’s what the rules say,” I insisted. While any child sent to a Triple S Academy could retain his place in his family, all obligations that would normally bind him were considered eliminated.

  “I know for a fact that doesn’t actually happen.”

  “Your case is different. No one expected your highly titled brother to die without producing an heir. And most families wouldn’t have expected a Triple S member to take on the obligation of a title. No one’s going to expect me to play nice with merchants because of my family.” They’d better not. I didn’t know the first thing about trade, and it wasn’t fair for anyone to expect me to play the game.

  “All right, then go to thank him for the kindness he showed you during the parade.”

  “Won’t that be just acquiring another debt to him?”

  “Not if you play it right.”

  “I don’t play things, Taro.”

  He winked. “That’s what you have me for.”

  “Fine. I’ll send an acceptance.” Clearly, I had no willpower at all.

  And then I felt Taro’s inner protections fall.

  Really, I should stop expecting not to have to Shield merely because we weren’t on duty. Time was, Taro would warn me when he was going to channel in unusual circumstances. It was odd for him to desert that courtesy. I’d have to talk to him about this, after he finished channeling whatever he was channeling.

  It wasn’t long before I knew what he was doing. It was an event from that place of cliffs and water. Or at least, it was the place that inspired those images in my mind, and filled my nose with the scent of salt, and my mouth with the impression of water. As with the first time, Taro let the forces rush through him too quickly, pushing the workings of his body and his mind too hard. The anger that behavior inspired in me made it a little bit easier to Shield him in the slightly chaotic circumstances.

  And when the forces dissipated and Taro’s inner protections were resumed, I glared at my idiot of a Source. “I asked you not to channel like that again,” I snapped.

  “No, you ordered me not to,” he responded in a cool tone. “When did you develop the delusion that you can give me orders?”

  When I saw him acting like an idiot. “We are both put at risk when you—”

  But he turned on his heel and walked out of the room, his lack of interest in any further conversation clear. Arrogant prat.

  Chapter Twelve

  I curled up on the settee in my sitting room with the bag of books and pamphlets I’d gotten from the printers. Taro and I didn’t have a watch at the Stall that day, and I was finding it more and more important to learn something about this spell casting everyone was talking about. Really, where did it come from? How long would it take to go away?

  I picked up a book at random and upon reading the very first page noticed with shock and discomfort that it had first been written a good seventy years before. So much for the theory that this belief in spells had been created by the effects of the Harsh Summer or the Riverfront Ravage. People had believed in magic for at least seventy years? What had happened seventy years ago, to get that belief started?

  I found it amusing that the first chapter of the book was dedicated to the discipline and hard work needed to achieve results. Because wasn’t casting all about trying to gain things one couldn’t acquire because one lacked the discipline or the will to do the hard work? If casting required all of this effort, wouldn’t it be easier just to get things the natural way?

  I found it less amusing that many of the methods described in the book for getting into the proper frame of mind to cast spells were similar to the methods taught to Shields to stay focused and calm. It was enough to make me wonder if a Shield had written the book.

  Of course, that was ridiculous. Being a Shield had nothing to do with casting spells. It had nothing to do with magic of any kind.

  Being a Shield, or a Source, was a talent one was born with, like being able to sing or having skills with one’s hands. There was no magic. We didn’t create forces that weren’t already there. Even Taro’s ability to heal and my ability to influence the weather—both skills that were not, as far as I knew, the usual skills associated with Sources and Shields—were still just the manipulation of forces that were already there. From what I could determine, casting spells was about creating something from nothing. Which was what made it impossible.

  We had encountered people who claimed what Taro and I did was magic. It was not. I knew that. So, that there were similarities between what a spell caster did to prepare and what a Shield did to remain calm was disquieting, but not particularly significant.

  I almost got drawn into a description of the history of the use and development of spells. The book I was reading claimed the tradition of using spells was brought to the world by our ancestors, when they’d relocated here from some other world several hundred years ago. That the knowledge had been lost and then rediscovered. But that was ridiculous. From all we had learned of the Landing, the ancestors had had enormous and complicated machinery at their dis
posal, machines that let them fly between worlds and communicate over great distances. Such people would have had no use for spells, no reason to dream up such beliefs.

  Of course, the machinery hadn’t worked on our world, for some reason. But that had merely caused most of the ancestors to leave this world. The failure of the machines was no motive to suddenly start believing in spells. It didn’t make sense.

  It was something I wanted to look into further, but later. Right then, I wanted to read more about what kinds of spells people were going to attempt, killing cows and setting houses on fire. Actually, spells about the ashes, those were what I wanted to know about first. The bit with the ashes was what I found most disturbing.

  I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, though. Was there going to be a spell mixed in with all the others that dealt with ashes? Was there a separate section dealing strictly with supplies, of which ashes would be one? I didn’t know, and the book I was examining didn’t have any kind of index, so I skimmed through the pages. Within the one book, there was an astounding array of subjects, or goals, for the spells. Love spells, of course, a popular subject for plays. Raising people from the dead, which I kind of expected, grief being what it was. I wasn’t surprised to find spells that gave one a talent, or attempted to direct another person’s will. I was shocked, however, to find spells allowing the caster to inflict an illness or death on another person, or to render them unable to have children. That was horrible. What kind of twisted mind came up with such things?

  I was almost tempted to wonder if having such books criminalized wasn’t such an awful thing, after all. I didn’t want anyone encouraged to try such terrible things, even knowing they wouldn’t work. When the spells failed, having sparked a person’s imagination, said person might then move on to more reliable methods of accomplishing the same things.

  As I continued to read, I was surprised by the degree of complexity some of the spells required. While some needed nothing more than facing the right direction, closing one’s eyes and reciting a few words, others took months in preparation, lists of ingredients several pages long, multiple participants and several sonnets’ worth of incantations.