Heroes at Risk

by Moore, Moira J.

  Who had the time to make this stuff up?

  What made people think any of it worked? Even though some of the rhetoric describing how spells functioned was intelligently written and appeared almost logical, it was still casting. When had a spell ever worked for anyone? Even the books didn’t point to any example for whom a single spell had worked.

  It was in the next book, a thicker volume with heavy gray paper, that I found what I was looking for, a lengthy chapter dedicated to the procurement and use of human ashes. And even the procurement was much more complicated than I would have expected. The ashes were to be harvested—and wasn’t that a horrible word for it?—during the night of the new moon. I couldn’t remember if the night we’d interrupted a harvesting had had a new moon. I never noticed such things. A copper bowl was considered best for holding the ashes, an ivory spade the best for digging them out. That particular item had to cost more than most could afford. The list of instructions for the making of the candles that circled the ash grove marker was more than three pages long.

  The book confirmed that the best source of ashes was someone who had enjoyed good fortune during their life. There was no definition of good fortune. I supposed that could be a subjective determination, but I had no doubt Taro would be considered fortunate. If he were dead, I’d have to be guarding his ashes, if I were able, which I wouldn’t be, because I would be dead, too.

  There were a lot of uses for the ashes. Often they were an ingredient in other spells. Sometimes they were put in a vial and worn around the neck—which was just disgusting—to increase the user’s general good fortune or the talent of the user when they lacked the skill to perform one of the more specific spells. There was even a recommendation to wear the ashes on a daily basis to improve health and mind. And then there was, of course, the practice of mixing the ashes into a paste and rubbing it into the skin.

  Just reading about it made my stomach gurgle and created the sensation of something thick and slimy coating my mouth and throat.

  A quick, loud knock on my door made me jump. The door opened and Taro stuck his head in. “Come to my suite,” he ordered and he closed the door.

  Sir, yes, sir. I tossed the book aside and went to Taro’s suite. He gestured at me kind of frantically until I closed the door behind me.

  A young man I’d never before seen was standing in Taro’s sitting room, leaning against a settee. He was pale and sweaty, and his dark and ragged clothes were dirty and rank. He looked at me with more intensity than I found comfortable. “Good day,” I said, hoping that would be enough to prompt someone to give me an explanation.

  “Good day, Shield,” he responded in a low voice that cracked unpleasantly.

  “Lee, this is Lan Kafar,” Taro said. “Lan, please go through there.” He pointed at the door to his bedchamber. “Lie down. We’ll join you in a moment.” And Kafar did as directed.

  We were going to join him? What the hell? “What the—”

  “He’s ill,” said Taro. “He’s from the riverfront.”

  “And you brought him here?” I demanded in a low voice.

  “He just showed up demanding to see me. He remembers those rumors about me healing people during the Harsh Summer. He says the healers won’t go to the riverfront anymore, and the hospitals turned him away.”

  “Because it’s contagious!” No matter what that Runner had said, I was sure it was contagious. Why else would they be closing the parks? Why would the hospitals refuse to treat people? And were they really? Were they allowed to do that? I couldn’t believe that. It was appalling if it was true.

  “He kept saying I was a healer, over and over, and getting louder and louder. People on the street were noticing.”

  “So you close the door.”

  “Dunleavy!” he said, clearly appalled. I didn’t think he had ever addressed me by my formal name before. “He’s ill and he can’t get treatment.”

  “No one’s dying from this illness.” And if every single member of the Triple S residence caught it, that could leave everyone in High Scape vulnerable to natural disasters. A whole lot of people would be dying then.

  “That’s not what he’s saying.”

  “So he’s claiming people are dying from this and you’ve brought him into the residence and exposed us all to it?” Seriously, what was he thinking?

  “The more time we stand here talking about it, the more of a chance the illness has to spread.”

  Was that true? Was that how it worked? I had no idea. “You don’t even know if you can do anything for him.”

  “And I won’t know until I try.”

  I couldn’t believe how careless and selfish he was being. Aye, it was horrible to be ill, and if it was true that the healers were refusing to help, I was appalled and felt nothing but sympathy for the man in Taro’s bedchamber. But to expose us all to this illness to perform a task he had no duty to perform would bring us the ire of all the other Pairs, and so it should.

  “I’m going to try,” said Taro, having clearly lost patience with trying to persuade me. “You can join me if you choose.” He headed to the bedchamber.

  I was tempted to threaten him with a refusal to Shield him—really, this was something that required the both of us, and he shouldn’t be making unilateral decisions—but I always tried to avoid making empty threats. As if I would ever refuse to Shield him, even when he was being ridiculous.

  When I entered the bedchamber, Taro was instructing the man to lie out on the bed, and I winced as the man did so. All of that bedding would have to be burned. Taro sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m not a healer,” he said to Kafar. “I can’t be sure I can do anything.”

  “Neither can anyone else,” the man croaked.

  “I’ll do my best. That’s all I can promise.”

  The man nodded. Taro put a hand on his shoulder.

  Taro had learned he could ease the pain of others while he was at the Source Academy. Since we met, I’d had reason to believe he could actually heal some people. These were not abilities I’d heard of a Source having before meeting Taro, but I was coming to suspect there were elements to Source abilities that were largely unexplored. It made me wonder what else Sources might be able to do.

  Taro had always kept his additional abilities as much a secret as possible. He claimed that if the Triple S council suspected he could do odd things, they would order him back to the Source Academy for tests and he would never be seen again. He refused to say more than that. And while I couldn’t believe the Triple S would do something nefarious with Sources who fell outside the mold, I also didn’t believe Taro was lying. It was frustrating, though, that he wouldn’t say more.

  He couldn’t heal everyone; we knew that much. He seemed able to ease everyone’s pain, but he hadn’t been able to save a woman enduring a difficult childbirth, and he couldn’t mend broken bones. He could heal frostbite for some reason, which was what he was doing during the Harsh Summer. That was what created the rumors that caused his secret to grow legs and skitter away from him.

  Really, I was surprised there hadn’t been any repercussions before this.

  Shielding while Taro attempted to heal someone was a much more gentle experience than regular channeling. The forces were weaker, and Taro used a light touch, so light it almost felt like he wasn’t doing anything at all. His blood and mind worked at their usual pace, and he was in almost no danger. Sometimes I suspected I was superfluous during such occasions.

  “The illness is not contagious,” Taro announced.

  I saw Kafar’s eyes widen. I wondered if he was feeling something in this process. I’d never thought of that before. “Everyone says it’s contagious,” he said. “Often every person in a household is struck.”

  “That may be,” Taro answered as he continued to channel, “and I can’t explain why I know this, but this doesn’t feel like a proper illness.”

  “What is a proper illness supposed to feel like?” I asked.

  “Something other than wh
at I’m feeling here,” he retorted.

  “Can you fix it?” Kafar demanded.

  “I’m not finished yet.”

  So we let him continue. Shielding while he healed was a little boring, but it was a nice change from what we’d been doing recently.

  In time, Taro ceased channeling and I withdrew my Shields. He removed his hand from Kafar’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said with soft sincerity. “I can’t help you.”

  “Keep trying,” the man ordered. “You barely tried.”

  “I’m not a healer,” Taro reminded him. “I told you when I let you in that there would likely be little I could do.”

  “Why don’t you want to help me?” It was more a complaint than a question. “You’re a Source. You’re supposed to want to help people.”

  Why, that ungrateful little plonker. He comes to our house, a stranger demanding services that we have no obligation to provide, and after an attempt to provide those services is made, he starts throwing around accusations? How dare he? “He has no training in this and he’s doing this to be kind,” I said, making no attempt to dull the sharpness in my tone. “He is an honorable man and a Source, and you accuse him of lying.”

  To my shock, the indignation seemed to drain right out of him, and his eyes lowered. “I am sorry, Source,” he mumbled as he sat up on the bed. “This was my last hope.”

  Really? He didn’t look to be in that bad a shape. He was of a decent weight and he seemed able to move easily. Of course, I wasn’t a healer. I didn’t know.

  “You are certain this isn’t contagious?” Kafar asked Taro.

  “Completely.”

  I was very uncomfortable with Taro’s claim, but no one was asking me, and it wasn’t like I actually knew anything about any of this.

  “My sister lives on Gray Fields Row,” Kafar said, naming an area outside of the riverfront area. “She said I can move in with her for a while and help her with her shop if I can prove this thing doesn’t carry. I can say you said it’s not contagious?”

  Sounded to me like his sister really didn’t want him anywhere near her. How could anyone prove the absence of a contagion?

  “Aye,” said Taro. “I can’t promise she won’t get ill, but she won’t get it from you.”

  “And I’ll get better?”

  “I can’t answer that. I really don’t know.”

  “Have you tried all of the hospitals?” I asked.

  Kafar glared at me. “Now you are calling me a liar?”

  For all I knew, he’d merely been told the hospitals were refusing to treat people, and he hadn’t investigated it personally. Or he’d tried only one hospital. Perhaps the others weren’t following the same policy. But I didn’t try to defend myself. Clearly he wasn’t in the mood for logic.

  “We’ll see you down,” Taro said as a means to hint the man out of the room.

  Kafar didn’t object to being herded down the stairs and out the front door. I fought the urge to order the man not to tell anyone else about Taro’s talent. I supposed Taro’s failure would take care of that.

  “How do you know this thing isn’t contagious?” I asked Taro.

  He shrugged. “The illness doesn’t feel natural to the body.”

  “I would think illness is never natural.”

  “Aye, it is. It is unpleasant. It involves a breakdown of the natural workings of the body. But a natural illness is a natural reaction to a breakdown within the body.”

  “I don’t understand,” I confessed.

  He scratched the back of his head. “To be honest, neither do I. All I can tell you is that there is something off about what that man is carrying. It’s not natural, so it can’t spread from person to person.”

  Huh. I still didn’t know what that meant. However, Taro wasn’t in the habit of claiming abilities or accomplishments he didn’t actually have. If he said Kafar wasn’t contagious, then he wasn’t contagious.

  But I still thought Taro should burn his bedding.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Like most of the wealthy, Trader Fines lived in the North Quad on the outer edge of the city limits. He surprised me by having a house made of wood, more sensible than stone in a place where earthquakes could be prevalent. The house wasn’t particularly large, either, being only two stories and squarish in frame. It was set far back from the road and was shielded from public view by trees as opposed to wall and gate.

  It was kind of ugly, from the outside at least. But most buildings in High Scape were, in my opinion.

  I had no interest in being there. I’d felt terrible all day, my stomach gurgling unpleasantly. Our watch at the Stall had been nothing more than a long test of endurance with my head in my arms on the table. Not sleeping, of course, just tired and queasy. There were no events, which in a way was a good thing, because it might have given me a nasty headache to try Shielding while feeling under the weather, but it was also a bad thing, because there was little to distract me from my discomfort.

  I’d worried that I’d picked up something from our uninvited guest from the riverfront. Taro was certain that wasn’t the problem. That didn’t reassure me at all. He wouldn’t know. He wasn’t able to do with me whatever he did with the people he healed, as I was his Shield. I couldn’t Shield him while he tried to heal me; it just didn’t work.

  After our watch, I had gone to a hospital to see what was wrong. I had no difficulty getting a healer to see me, though perhaps that was because I was a Shield and didn’t live in the riverfront area. She said I was suffering from too much bile and that would wear away in time if I drank enough water. It was nothing serious.

  Still, the last thing I wanted to do after a long, uncomfortable watch at the Stall was eat a formal dinner with strangers. Taro had insisted that we go. It would be terribly rude, he said, after having accepted, not to show up for any reason other than a genuine calamity. I wondered what it said about me that I didn’t care at all about being rude, especially to someone like Fines, who was probably too used to having people fawning all over him. But I had to admit Taro had a point.

  I dressed nicely, but not too nicely, because this was a merchant’s dinner, and not an aristocrat’s ball. I was a little pale, but that was easily obscured with face powder and a light-colored lip ointment. I pinned up some of my hair with a wooden hair comb and let the rest hang loose, and in my ears I put small hoop earrings of yellow gold. These were both items that Taro had picked up in the market, on a whim, and their understated elegance appealed to me. My gown was of a simple cut, with long loose sleeves and a relatively modest neckline, light green in color with cream-colored piping, so that my white Shield braid had a chance of blending in with the ensemble.

  Taro was dressed in his most severe style. All in black, his shirt buttoned up to the throat and down to the wrist, his hair tied tightly back at the nape of his neck. The only brightness about him was the harmony bob he wore on his chest and the small emerald stud he wore in his ear.

  His choice of outfit told me he viewed the evening with extreme discomfort. He felt he was going to be out of his element, and perhaps an object of ridicule or abuse. Which just made me wonder all the more why the hell we were even going.

  We took a carriage. Even were I in top form, the walk would have been a bit of a challenge, and I wanted to arrive at the home feeling as fresh as possible. We were met at the merchant’s door by an older woman who curtsied before taking our wraps, which custom required we wear though the weather didn’t demand. This process distracted me, at first, from the mural in the small room that acted as the foyer. The entire wall facing the entrance was painted dark green, and rising from the floor was some kind of sun, painted in silver, with its rays spreading out in stark lines and stopping only when it reached a corner of the wall.

  It was quite ugly. And it gave me bad memories of eating dinner in the house of another rich man who also had atrocious taste in decorating and had served a positively vile meal, and had then tried to sacrifice us to his bloodthir
sty gods. “Trader Fines doesn’t believe in anything, does he?” I whispered to Taro.

  “Not that I’ve heard of,” Taro whispered back.

  Not that that really meant anything. Neither of us had known Lord Yellows was a Reanist.

  The servant led us around a corner to the left, through a short series of three doors and into a parlor. “Sir, Source Karish and Shield Mallorough have arrived,” she announced with another curtsy.

  The parlor, thankfully, was much more tastefully decorated than the foyer, not too fussy but with enough color and enough knickknacks to appeal to the eye without being overwhelming. I did, however, notice small and less vibrant replicas of the silver and green sunrise above each window. They clearly weren’t meant to be as obvious as the image in the foyer, but they seemed of serious significance to Fines.

  That didn’t mean there was anything sinister about them. I knew that. Yet their existence made me uncomfortable, and I wondered if I really wanted to know what they represented.

  “Dunleavy, Shintaro.” Fines, who had been standing near the unlit fireplace, saluted us with a drink. “Delighted you could join us. What can I get you to drink?” Taro was given a glass of wine, and I took advantage of the lovely light sweet juice chilling near the liquor stand. “Please sit, and I’ll introduce you to Dean Gamut, the finest actor in High Scape, maybe in the civilized world.”

  That actor was a middle-aged man, a head of abundant black hair with the gray dyed out of it, his skin ruddy and rough, his neck thick along with his body. I’d seen him on the stage a few times, and he was brilliant. He usually looked more handsome on the stage, but for me it was really his deep voice that took my breath away, and he was an exceptional actor, sliding from laughter to lust to rage and every subtle shade in between with dignity and grace.

  “Ayana Cree, the foremost healer in High Scape. She has her own practice. She doesn’t work through any of the hospitals.”

  That surprised me, and it must have shown when I looked at the older lady, sharply thin with beautifully styled iron gray hair and dark brown eyes that appeared strangely warm in her stern face. “It allows me more control,” she said in a low voice. “My choice of treatments, medicines, suppliers and staff.”