Heroes Adrift (5 page)

“Neither are we,” Karish said rather desperately.

“But you have done it before, haven't you? With Creol and that mad Lord Yellows.”

“That wasn't due to any kind of skill on our part. Just a sort of luck.”

“Fortunately, this time, you won't have to rely on luck.” The Empress removed from the seat beside her a small package. “Maps of Flatwell, marked with the last known location of the Bryants. And orders granting anyone who travels with you passage back to the mainland.” She held the package out to me. “You are not to tell them who they are. I will do that.”

We were supposed to convince strangers to travel to another part of the world, without telling them why? Was she drunk? I pulled in a quick fortifying breath. “With all due respect, Your Majesty, this is highly inappropriate. There is no good reason to send Karish on a task such as this, and dozens of reasons not to.”

The Empress narrowed her eyes at me. “Were you not paying attention, Shield Mallorough? I am sending you to look for descendants of my royal sister. These descendants are contenders to the throne. Who should I send? Runners who could be bought? Imperial guards who report more faithfully to their own superiors than they do to me? Or someone who has already demonstrated skill in this area, who has proven himself resistant to the lures of wealth and power?”

Just wonderful. That's what came, I supposed, of Karish letting people know he wasn't a spineless weasel. Maybe his act as an empty-headed peacock had been the best way to go after all.

“Take the package, Shield,” the Empress ordered. “And be at the docks at first light tomorrow morning. You'll be sailing on the Wind Dancer.”

I took the package automatically, my mind suddenly a little frozen.

I looked to Karish, waiting for him to bedazzle her with his stunning smile and talk her into agreeing that yes, sending us on this kind of task was the depth of stupidity. And he was smiling. But it was a soft curve of the lips, reflective rather than alluring, and he said nothing.

“You may go now,” the Empress said, slapping her reins. The horse jolted into a trot.

What? Wait! No! She couldn't just dump that kind of information—that kind of job—on us and then dismiss us. I mean—what? Go to the Southern Islands? Hunt down exiled members of the royal family? What the hell was this?

“She's the Empress,” Karish said.

“Huh?” I knew that.

“That's who the hell she thinks she is.”

He was so cocky. I hadn't even gotten that far in my mental ranting yet.

“This is stupid. This is so incredibly stupid. Sending a Source out to do the work of a Runner.”

“We've done it before.” He pulled on his horse to get us moving back toward the stables.

“By accident!” I pulled my horse around to follow him. “And no we haven't! You were kidnapped by Creol and I was led to him by Kelly. And we just happened to be there when the Yellows thing exploded. You said that yourself.”

“Of course I said it to her. I didn't want her knowing what really happened.”

“That's exactly what happened!”

“We can do this, Lee. We go to the last known location of the Bryants and start asking around.”

“As simple as that, eh?”

“Aye.”

“Nothing's ever as simple as that.”

“Stop scowling, Lee. This is a good thing.”

I looked at him. And yes, he was excited, the smile still playing about his lips, his eyes glowing. He had clearly lost his mind. “How do you figure that?”

“We get to go to the Southern Islands!” he announced gleefully, as though I hadn't been right there hearing the conversation.

And why was this a good thing? “Yay,” I said flatly.

“Are you serious, Lee? You have your choice between standing around among the Empress's court, being polite to arrogant parasites while you're slowly being driven insane with boredom, or exploring an area of the world that few Northerners have ever seen. Which sounds better to you?”

“I'm not sure. Remind me which one doesn't involve being on a boat.”

He frowned. “What's wrong with being on a boat?”

“Besides the tendency to capsize and kill everyone on board? Nothing, I'm sure.” Plus there was something about the thought of all that open air and water that made me want to shiver.

“You're afraid of boats?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he pressed his lips together, as though wishing he could snatch back the question by the act of shutting his mouth.

But that was what it came down to, an irrational fear based on no experience with an activity others had no difficulty with. “Apparently so.”

“You never told me that.”

He appeared to be accusing me of something. “I didn't know until just now, did I?”

“Don't worry about it, Lee. It'll be fine.”

I gritted my teeth. “Oh, I'm sure it'll be a treat until the boat sinks.”

“Actually, I think they prefer to have it called a ship.”

“Don't even start with me.”

He laughed. “It will be fine, Lee, you know it will. After all, why do ships sink?”

Icebergs? “They capsize.”

“Why do they capsize?”

I really didn't want to be thinking about it in any great detail. “Waves. Wind.”

“Bad weather.”

“Well, aye.”

“You'll be able to handle that.”

“What have you been drinking?”

“What did we spend all that time experimenting last summer for if it wasn't for you to learn how to manipulate the weather?”

“For you to learn to manipulate the weather.” Only it hadn't worked out that way. He'd been unable to see the details, the fine elements in the forces that allowed a person to nudge the weather this way or that. I'd been the one to see it. I'd been the one to do the nudging. With nasty results. “I never became competent at it.”

“Maybe you lacked sufficient motivation.”

I couldn't help it. Years of training went down the drain. I slapped him up the back of the head. Lacked sufficient motivation, indeed. Last summer had been a nightmare.

“You are upset, aren't you?” He rubbed the back of his head, as though I had really hurt him. “Most people who travel by ship survive the trip, Lee.”

“Aye, most people,” I grumbled. “But knowing my luck—”

“Your luck?” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Do you consider yourself unlucky, Lee?”

I had to think about that. And be embarrassed by my behavior. Because yes, I was acting like a child. “No, I suppose not.” But I was still scared, and it was humiliating.

“It will be fine, Lee, I promise.”

It always irked me when people made promises about things over which they had no control.

We did not see the Empress again. Which was just as well, because I would have been tempted to try to show her the error of her thinking. Sending us out to do a task like that was just stupid. And an insult. We already had a task to perform, an essential one. We should have been left to perform it.

We spent most of our single day in Erstwhile attempting to learn what we could of Flatwell and finding appropriate gear. Only no one really knew anything about the Southern Islands—except that they were hot. I managed to get my hands on some light trousers that fit well enough, a couple of pairs of boots, and a couple of bags in which to carry them. Durable travel clothes. I would pick up something more suitable once I was there. Anyone wishing me in something more fancy could go hang.

To describe the sea voyage, well, there was a mixture of good and bad. Or fascinating and awful. I found, to my surprise, that I liked being on a ship. The subtle rocking of the boat, the feeling of the wind against my skin. All the gadgetry with the names that didn't make sense, and the ranks of the sailors that I couldn't keep straight.

The food was damn awful. The sleeping accommodations were uncomfortable. The sailors took issue with Karish and I being a Pair. Not because it meant we didn't pay for our journey, but because they found the nature of our work almost immoral, and a lure to bad luck. They threatened to toss us overboard if we interfered, as they put it, with any storms we might face during the voyage.

What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. I wasn't going to let their superstition sink us.

Karish was seasick the whole time, poor fellow. He couldn't find his balance on the boat, he claimed the constant wind was driving him crazy, and he couldn't keep down anything more substantial than water and light broth.

The captain claimed she'd seen other passengers react just as badly, and to her knowledge none of them had died of it. It wasn't terribly reassuring to hear. She appeared to feel that the death of people so fragile that they couldn't handle a sea voyage was no great loss.

Karish was a terrible patient, and I was no nursemaid. We spent most of the trip bickering. Not that that was so very different from how we usually spent our time.

I did get bored in time. I'd brought nothing to read, and there was no useful place for anything like bench dancing. The ship, large as it was, was just too confining. I was beginning to long for the ability to walk with a healthy stride without having to continually turn corners or ease by ropes or other people. The ship's sailors were too busy to talk during the day, and at night they either gambled or played music to which it wasn't safe for me to listen.

That was the one irksome thing about being a Shield. The sensitivity to music. Depending on the music, and the Shield, the effects could be like alcohol or worse, driving us to behaviors in which we normally wouldn't engage. Mournful music could send us to tears. Martial music could make us violent. The music the sailors most often liked to play, I could only call raucous. There was no telling what I'd do at the sound of it, and Karish was in no shape to keep me under control.

I missed Doran. I couldn't tell anyone I missed him. I didn't feel comfortable talking about him.

So I was happy, for a variety of reasons, when Flatwell came into sight. It didn't take long to pack up all of our gear, which was carried to a small rowboat.

Karish was surly as he made his way out of his cabin, clutching the walls. I didn't say a word, and I didn't touch him. I walked a couple of steps behind him, close enough to catch him if he fell but not close enough to crowd him.

He really did look gaunt, with dark circles under his eyes. Rather as he had looked after being captured by Creol. Also how he'd looked when he first returned from Erstwhile the previous summer. I didn't like how easy it was to put him in poor health. I never would have considered Shintaro Karish at all delicate, but after this, I feared there was some inherent weakness in his blood. Maybe it was inbreeding.

We got into the dinghy, already loaded with our gear, and two crew members rowed us to shore. The ship itself wasn't stopping at the island, merely dropping us off on the way somewhere farther south.

I had never seen water so brilliantly blue, or such glaringly white sand. The air smelled strange, salty and heavy. Just beyond the beach there was dark, dense greenery. There were no buildings in sight, though I could see a road, nothing more than a beaten path really.

“You remember which way to go?” one of the men asked me.

“Aye, Captain Vo told me.” The proper harbor was on the other side of the island, and the captain didn't want to spend the time to get there and allow us to disembark. She promised me she had set other passengers down at this location, and they never experienced any difficulty finding their way. And she had given me directions which indicated to me she knew her way around.

Then again, if such previous passengers had gotten lost and were never found, she wasn't likely to hear about it, was she?

One of the crew leapt out of the boat and pulled it farther up onto the shore. Once we were on dry land I grabbed up my two bags and stepped onto solid earth. I waited until Karish had likewise disembarked. Then we watched the two sailors shove off back into the water and row back toward the ship.

The beach was soft and white and very narrow. Only a few steps would place us within the thickest greenery I'd ever seen. Odd trees with thin trunks and huge leaves completely blocked any distance of viewing. I could smell the forest, too, dense and a little bitter.

“Zaire, it's hot,” Karish muttered, stripping off his cloak and shoving it into his pack.

It was warm. And there was a moist heaviness in the air that wasn't pleasant.

“I knew it was hot in the South, but I didn't think it would be this bad this late in the year.” He tugged on the thin cotton of his shirt, a light sheen rising to his skin.

“I think I might have mispacked.” I hadn't expected it to be so warm either. I had defined warm as what we experienced in High Scape during the summer. This was different. “The sooner we reach civilization, the sooner we can get some more appropriate clothes.”

We had been told by Captain Vo that there was a village called Pink Shell only a few miles from the shore, where we could pick up some proper clothes and some food. Or we could find a place to stay, if we had to, though from the sounds of it the accommodations would be fairly rustic.

The footpath was disturbing in its obvious state of impermanence. It was nothing more than a tiny little break twisting through what felt like solid walls of dark vegetation. Strange chirping sounds and rustles, and the feeling that I couldn't see anything more than a few feet in front of me, combined with the almost total lack of sunlight, and it was suffocating.

Although it was only half a mile until the first sign of life, neither of us was in the kind of shape we had been in before the voyage, and it took us much longer than it should have to get there. Even I was starting to feel uncomfortable in the heat. I was looking forward to sitting somewhere dark and drinking something cool.

I was set for disappointment, however. The first building we saw was not, as far as I could see, part of a larger establishment. It appeared to be something of a shack, made of strange round strips of something like wood, solitary and sad looking. A withered old woman was sitting on the porch, her dark skin deeply lined and her iron gray hair cropped short. She was drawing on a pipe with a long, curved stem. I had never seen the likes of the shirt she was wearing, sleeveless and collarless and cropped short under the breasts. She wore a dangerously short skirt. Dark writhing lines were tattooed from her ankles up to her knees, and from her wrists up to her elbows.

I looked beyond her, to the windows of the shack, hoping to see someone else. She appeared to be alone.

“Excuse me, ma'am,” I said, approaching the porch. “Are we anywhere near Pink Shell?”

She looked me over, gaze raking me from head to toe. After a long moment she pulled the pipe from her mouth. “I'm the road keeper.”

I know I stared at her far longer than was polite. It took me that long to decipher what she had said. She had the thickest accent I had ever heard, speaking about three sounds for every vowel in each word, and slurring the consonants together. Once I was able to figure it out, I said, “Oh.” Was that an answer to my question?

“Road tax,” she announced.

“Road tax,” I parroted with no comprehension.

She rolled her eyes. “You got ta pay the road tax.”

“I have ta—” Was she serious? “You expect us to
pay
a road tax?”

“Everyone pays the road tax.”

“I'm a Shield.” See the white braid? “He's a Source.”

She looked at me blankly. “So.”

So?
So?
“We don't pay taxes.” Or anything else.

Her eyes narrowed. “Neither do thieves. 'Til they hang.”

“Hang?”

“Nice shirt” were the next words out of her mouth. “Like the braid.”

“What?”

With a sigh of impatience she spoke again, slowly and carefully, like I was an imbecile. “I like your shirt.”

What did that have to do with anything?

And how could she possibly? Even I knew it was drab and shapeless.

“Give her your shirt, Lee,” Karish hissed at me.

“What?” Yes, I did feel like an idiot echoing the same word over and over again, but under the circumstances it was warranted. Everyone had gone insane.

“That's the road tax. Give her the shirt.”

“That's theft! I'm not giving her my shirt.”

“Coin'll do, too,” she said.

“I'm sure it would, but that's not the point. We're a Pair. Pairs don't pay taxes. We don't pay for anything. That's one of the benefits of being a Pair.”

“We don't need Pairs,” she said.

“That's not the point.”

“You pay or you don't pass.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. I pointedly looked down one side of the road, then the other. Just empty long stretches with no one but her and the two of us in sight.

“Dunleavy Mallorough!” Karish gasped with shock, apparently able to read my mind.

“She's the one violating the law, Taro.”

“This is a new place for us, Lee. Let's not start things on the wrong foot, all right? If she is so lacking in taste that she finds that rag appealing, count yourself lucky. She might have wanted something valuable.” Prat. “We can get this straightened out in Pink Shell, and get you another shirt. There's no harm in giving her that one for now.”

All right, all right. A proper bed and a bath were powerful motivators. Still, “I wonder if you would be so sanguine about this if it were your shirt she were demanding.” I yanked another shirt out of my sack. “I assume I may change in this structure?” I asked the highway robber, without pausing to wait for an answer. I swiftly changed and strode back out, ripping the white braid out of the garment as I did so. “You don't keep this,” I told her, indicating the braid as I dropped the shirt on her lap. “And this isn't the end of things.”

Karish whistled as I returned to him. “What's the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” I snapped.

“It's a sad state when I'm the voice of reason.”

“She just stole from me. Forgive me if that annoys me.” And I couldn't stand that I hadn't been able to do anything about it. I was never able to talk people around when they tried to pull that kind of stunt on me. And I shouldn't have to. Why couldn't people just do what they were supposed to do?

All right. Calm down. It was only a shirt. And I would come back for it, I would. Until then, it was to be put out of my mind.

It was a couple of hours before we found another sign of human life. The road flattened and widened and hardened. The green undergrowth and vinery pulled back from the road. We heard a collection of feet hitting the dirt, and light voices shouting.

It was a pack of kids running down the road. We had warning of their approach, but they had none of ours. Two of the group—boys or girls or both I couldn't tell, as they all wore the same colorful loin cloths, earrings and bangles, with hair the same length, bare breasted and barefooted—stopped and stared at us while the others just giggled and parted to go around us. “Kiyo!” they all cried out, more or less in unison. The other two became unfrozen and ran after.

“Kiyo?” Karish asked.

I shrugged.

“They do speak like we do, don't they?”

“Did you not hear that wizened thief down the road?”

“That's just accent. They're the same words, though.”

“I've never heard that Southerners were incomprehensible or anything.” Hell, I'd never even thought of the possibility of them using different words than us. And why should I have? Everyone used the same words. I had read in history books that there had been different languages when we had first Landed, but the trials of survival and the loss of so many caused a merging of the languages. As far as I knew, that had never changed. “There hasn't been much contact with them, but they haven't been completely isolated. And we did understand the road keeper.” The morally bankrupt old bat.