Heroes Adrift (27 page)

“But if the child lived here—” said Taro.

“She was not here long,” Saya interrupted. “She went missing shortly after she was brought here. And she was never found.”

This was just ridiculous. We'd come all this way and gone through hell just to reach a dead end? “I understand you were working here when these events would have taken place.”

“Kai.”

“Do you remember this child?”

“No.”

Frustrating wench. “How can you not?”

“Many children go fly and then are caught again. I have no time to linger over events ten years by.”

I couldn't decide whether I found that appallingly cold or just good common sense.

“Are there any other such circles for stringless children?” Taro asked her.

“Not on Flatwell.”

Damn it, this was ridiculous. This couldn't be the end of things. But that seemed to be all the useful information that was available at the circle. So we took our leave, with no appointment to meet up later between Zilran and Taro that I could determine.

“We don't know for sure that Ara had no other children,” I said once we were out in the open again.

“The story holder told us she died having Nevress. He would have told us if there were others.”

“We don't know for sure.”

“And where else are we going to check?”

“The Bryants.”

“You mean the farmers of brown rye,” he said in a tone of flat annoyance.

“That can't possibly be where she got the name.” Please, let that not be how she got the name.

We headed to where the story holder's apprentice had told us the Bryants lived, but there was nothing there. No crops, no buildings, no people. And the nearest neighbors couldn't figure out who we were talking about.

I didn't know what the next step was going to be, but we'd burned enough of the day away. I was tired and hungry and frustrated. So we went back to the bunker to arrange for something to eat, and of course Aryne wasn't there, the aggravating little brat. Seriously, I was going to kill that kid.

Aryne didn't return before Taro and I went to bed. I assumed she was avoiding a confrontation, hoping we wouldn't yell at her if she snuck in while we were asleep. She would have been wrong. I was well able to hold on to anger through a night's sleep. Though I hadn't noticed in her any serious reaction to our yelling, anyway.

Then I woke up the next morning and learned that Aryne still hadn't returned. I was furious.

“Be reasonable, Lee,” said Taro as he tucked into a breakfast of fish and rice that I was too angry to eat. “She's believed her whole life that she's a slave, and that Golden Fields was something to fear above everything else. It's not surprising that stewing in a room alone for hours on end might prove to be too much for her.”

“So she goes out into the open where she can be caught?” I demanded. “That doesn't make sense.”

“Children often don't, I'm told.”

“No, she caught a faster ride up north.” And I should have been relieved about it. She really was a complication we didn't need.

“Then why did she leave all of her stuff?”

My cup of tea—a poor substitute for coffee, really—halted on its way to my mouth. “She did?”

“Kai.”

I set the tea cup back on the table. “Then where the hell is she?”

I didn't know what to think. Maybe she liked being out all night. In the Academy, there had been those who seemed to think being out when they were supposed to be in bed was thrilling all on its own. Yet I hadn't known Aryne to do anything simply for the pleasure of it.

Which was sad, now that I thought about it.

“We'll have to go look for her,” I said. I didn't know what was going on with her, but I'd felt awful about not looking for her the last time she'd gone missing, and I wasn't going to repeat that mistake. This time I was going to find her. And shake her.

Zaire, I was getting violent in my thoughts.

I shouldn't think so ill of her. She'd had a horrible life. And Taro was right. She'd believed her whole life that Golden Fields was a place to be feared. She couldn't be expected to just put that fear aside, no matter what facts had been presented to her. She was just a child. And a Source. Feelings would always rule her.

I just couldn't understand why the medicine man would tell her such a tale. What could possibly be the point of it? Had he stolen the child from her family, like what Saya had been speaking about? If he had, wouldn't he have returned her by now, and gotten whatever ransom or power he'd been looking for?

Or perhaps it had nothing to do with Aryne at all. Perhaps he had his own reasons for fearing Golden Fields.

Would he have disregarded his reasons, whatever they were, to come looking for her?

Oh, tell me he hadn't grabbed her.

But she would know better than to stay away so long. As far as she knew, we'd just leave her. We still had another task to perform. She had no way to know we'd reached a dead end.

Hell, there we were again, looking for someone. We were no good at this. Why were we always ending up with this sort of task?

But at least we had a place to start. If it weren't for the medicine man, I wouldn't know where to begin looking. And if the medicine man had nothing to do with Aryne's disappearance, well, we were all in a knot, because I didn't know what our next step would be.

We headed to the market. I didn't expect him to actually be there, especially if he were responsible for Aryne's disappearance, but other traveling merchants might know him, and might notice him if he had been in Golden Fields at all. But those merchants who did know of him said they hadn't seen him.

There was a traveling medicine man there. He refused to talk to us unless we bought something, which led me, for one, to believe he had something useful to say. So we bought a small bottle of something useless, and he told us he hadn't seen Border. Border never came to Golden Fields. The parasite.

I was all for dashing the useless potion to the ground right then, but Taro thought the bottle was pretty and wanted to keep it.

“The livery,” said Taro.

“What about it?”

“If he was here, and he didn't stop in the market, which he wouldn't under these circumstances, than he had to leave his gear—what did he have, anyway?”

I searched my memory. “A kind of stall, but it had wheels. So it could be dragged.”

“By a horse?”

“I don't think I've seen a horse on this island. People seem to use mules or some kind of steerlike animal.”

“All right, he'd have to leave that somewhere while he was looking for Aryne. And that's probably the livery, because he wouldn't know anyone who lives here if he's avoided this place for so many years.”

That made sense, so we got directions to the two liveries in Golden Fields. The first one we went to had had no one leaving a stall like Border's during the past few days. The second one was on the outskirts of the settlement, and had held such a stall.

The first piece of positive news. I almost went into shock.

“He left yesterday afternoon,” the livery woman told us.

“Did he have a young girl with him?” Karish asked her.

“Kai,” the woman answered.

For some reason, it felt like my heart was pounding right in my throat. “What did she say?” Because she had to have been saying something.

“She was asleep. Or ill. He was carrying her.”

My gods. Why hadn't I heard about this from any of the market people? “Who did you report this to?”

The woman stared down at me, jaws working as she chewed on the end of some kind of wheatlike stalk. “No one.”

“A man comes here alone and leaves with an unconscious child and you don't tell anyone?”

“Told lots of people. Don't think that's what you meant, though.”

No, that wasn't what I meant. I couldn't believe a man could carry away a child who clearly didn't belong to him without anyone doing anything about it. Maybe that was what he'd done the first time, too. Though, clearly, he didn't need to avoid Golden Fields because of it. “He didn't happen to say where he was going, did he?” I asked without much hope.

“He went that way,” was the response we got, as the woman pointed to the only road out of town.

And he'd left the day before, damn it. “Do you have any horses?” I asked her.

She snickered. “No.”

Some livery. But it didn't matter, really. We didn't have enough money to buy a horse. But how else could we catch up with Border? He'd have to know we would figure out that he had taken Aryne, and there was only one road out. He would be driving his animal hard, and probably taking some weird turns.

We ran back to the bunker to get our gear and pack up Aryne's. We spared some time to buy some travel rations. And then we headed back out at a brisk walk, speeding up to a jog when we had the energy, slowing right down to almost a stroll when the midday heat hit.

As predicted, Border left the road. Or so we assumed. There were other wheel tracks, though not many, and when they turned off it was to follow a path to a house or some other useful location. When a set of ruts turned off the road into untouched grass with no particular destination in sight, we took the chance that those wheels belonged to Border.

We could be going in the wrong direction. We were assuming that Border was being really stupid, or that he thought we were really stupid and wouldn't have the first clue how to follow him. And we didn't, not really. We were lucky that we weren't buried in the forested part of the island, which I thought would make following a person impossible, or that there had been no rain to wash away wagon tracks. And that we'd thought to look for wagon tracks at all was probably due only to the fact that we'd been traveling with the troupe and noticing the deep impressions their wagon left in the ground.

Walking off the road was harder work, and it was harder to see the wagon ruts. At times, the tracks made sharp turns to the right and left, for no reason I could discern. I couldn't imagine what Border's destination was.

Night came and we had to stop. Even with a lantern, it was too dangerous to keep going when we weren't even on the road, and we couldn't see the wagon tracks at all. It was damned frustrating. I had no idea whether Border would need to stop so soon, or for so long, with an animal to draw his wagon.

We rose early the next morning and got moving. We kept to the same pace we'd held the day before. We didn't talk much, and I was glad of it. I was oddly anxious, and I hated knowing that we could be completely wasting our time. Certainly, we could still see the tracks of the wheels, but what if they were the wrong wheels? The temptation to go back to the road was so strong, and it took so much effort not to suggest it.

I was not made for this kind of work.

And what did he want with the girl? Why was she so important to him that he'd come all the way to Golden Fields just to get her?

I supposed that all depended on why he'd taken her in the first place, when she was younger. I had no answers for that, either. I couldn't imagine why anyone would steal a child, especially when one had no desire to love and raise them properly. All right, Saya had given me a reason for that, for stealing children. But not for keeping them. Children were nothing but work and expense, when you didn't love them.

Not that his reason for taking her mattered at all. He clearly hadn't been treating her properly. She clearly didn't want to stay with him. And she had a much better life waiting for her at the Source Academy.

The day passed without our catching up to Border. Or to anyone else. When the light of day began to fail again, my anxiety grew tighter and more intense. I worried that the longer it took us to find Aryne, the less likely it would be that we ever would.

Then again, did it matter? I had no idea where else to look for the Empress's relatives, and I didn't like the idea of going back home without finding them. A part of me thought we might as well spend the rest of our lives wandering this damned island looking for Aryne.

And then, it started raining.

And Karish started swearing.

I always enjoyed listening to Karish swear. He was so good at it.

We kept going. We had to go as far as we could, before the rain washed the wheel ruts away. And then, once that happened, I didn't know what the hell we were going to do. Keep going in the same direction, and hope that Border didn't change his?

Night came. Karish didn't suggest we stop. Instead, he lit the lantern, and we pressed on. Maybe he could see the tracks better than I could. Maybe he had an instinct or a hunch, and if he did, I wasn't going to interfere. I followed him.

Our first hint that we'd found our quarry was the beautiful lilt of Aryne loudly swearing.

Followed by the sharp crack of someone being slapped. Aryne was silenced.

I wanted to rush forward with a roar of anger. How uncharacteristic of me.

In a few more steps, we could see the faint outline of a tent, glowing from within. Taro blew out the lantern. He and I quietly divested ourselves of our packs, leaving them on the ground. I kept the money with me, though, just in case we found ourselves in circumstances where we had to leave everything behind.

We crept up quietly, the glow of the tent the only source of light. Because we were moving so slowly, it didn't hurt at all when I walked right into the wagon. The steer, still hitched to the wagon, didn't stir. It was asleep, I imagined.

I wondered how fast a steer could travel. Not nearly as fast as a horse, I supposed. Thank Zaire the islanders didn't seem to use horses. We would have been completely out of luck if Border had had a horse.

“Not being drugged again,” I heard Aryne mutter.

“Don't need to drug you again, do I?” Border's hateful booming voice chortled. “Just need to keep you tied right and tight until you remember your place. But if you're not going to eat it's not my nevermind. More for me, and you've gotten fat.”

We stepped up closer to the tent. It wasn't a big tent, though it seemed constructed on the same lines as every other tent I'd seen on Flatwell. Tall enough to stand in. From their voices, though, both of the occupants were low to the ground.

“Leavy and Taro have loads more money than you,” Aryne said, and it seemed an attempt to taunt him. Why would she do that? “They always had lots of food.”

“Probably why they left you behind. You ate too much.”

“Didn't leave me behind. And they'll come find me, too.”

For some reason, it pleased me that she thought so.

Border laughed. “You're so stupid,” he said. “Why would anyone but me give two nuts about a useless, stringless little wench like you?”

“'Cause I'm a Source. They think I have to go to one of their schools.”

“Sure, when you fall into their laps. But they're not going to go out of their way to find you. There are millions of Sources up there, properly raised. Who aren't thieves. Believe me, they're relieved to be rid of you. And even if they weren't, even if they weren't like every other lazy, overindulged Pair in existence, they would have no idea how to find you.”