Resenting the Hero (35 page)

But I still heard them. They still reached me, called to me. I'd never been forced to listen to that kind of music for so long. I trembled with the power of it. When would it stop?

Karish lowered us both to the ground. Kneeling, he gathered me close and held me reassuringly tight. “You're not alone, Lee,” he said, his voice the most soothing sound I'd ever heard. “I'm here. I'll guard you through the music. Hold on to me, and I'll help you through it.”

Only they could understand me, the choir warned me. Only among outcasts would I find where I belonged. Others only wanted to use me.

“So many people admire you, Lee,” Karish was saying. “LaMonte thought you could do no wrong. You should have heard him lecturing me. A Source's sensibilities were no excuse for being such a sad trial to his Shield. Time to put aside my infantile habits and settle down to a proper job. He never knew the half of it, did he? And Val never blamed you for stepping in on Miho. Of course he was grateful to you, told me how lucky I was to have you. I know it. I swear I do. You can trust me, I promise you.”

“We need you. If you desert us we shall fail. Our lives will be destroyed, and you will be alone in your slavery.”

“Remember the bench dancing competition at Star Festival? You danced against the best in High Scape, and you beat them. Gods, you were magnificent to watch. You were so fast and sure. You were so much yourself. You were out to destroy every dancer you met, and you didn't care who knew it. You were beautiful. I didn't dare tell you what I thought. You'd rather hear your dog bark at a crow. But I didn't leave you that night, did I? I promised you I wouldn't, and I didn't. I always keep my promises.”

I thought the music would go on forever. It felt like it had. And I longed to follow it. I wanted to jump up and run and fight, wipe out every bastard that had ever committed any wrong. I thought my muscles would tear themselves apart in the strain to keep still. My mind was spinning so hard. Tears were flooding my cheeks, and I didn't care. I clung to Karish, and he stroked my hair and rubbed my back, whispering soothing nonsense and countering the lies of the music with lies of his own.

And eventually the music stopped. I wasn't sure exactly when, for it continued to whirl around my head long after the last beat had been sounded. But I became aware of the silence, aware that I was curled up in a tight ball with Karish on the floor, my face wet with tears, my breath harsh in my throat, my whole body shaking so hard I doubted I could stand.

Karish was still whispering. “You're so strong,” he said, the idiot. I was a total mess, an object of torment and ridicule, and we both knew it. “Thank you.”

For what? Not killing him? That was more his doing than mine. If he hadn't caught me, there was no telling what damage I would have done to one of us. I should have been thanking him.

“Well,” Creol said in a loud, flat voice. “That was disappointing.” He approached the cage, waving away one of the thugs and leaning against the bars. He didn't look angry or frustrated. Bored, maybe. “Congratulations, Taro. You have her well trained. She's completely under your thumb. Tell me, do you throw her your table scraps when she sits up and begs?”

I was supposed to feel insulted. Perhaps it was a last-ditch effort to make me angry enough to attack. Instead, I laughed. A chuckle, really, and a weak one at that. I didn't know where the urge came from, because it wasn't funny. But I laughed, and it felt good, though I was so exhausted the movement through my stomach and chest was in danger of killing me.

Creol frowned. I guessed he didn't like being laughed at. Go figure.

“I've wasted a great deal of time on you two,” he informed us. “Plans years in the making I have delayed because I was assured you would be of use to me.”

“I'll have to rush to make up the time. I hate rushing.”

I started laughing again, and this time it was louder. Karish squeezed me. Either he agreed with me or he was trying to shut me up.

Creol sighed. It sounded like regret. “I'll have to kill you both,” he said. “A public execution, I think. For my coronation.”

I would have liked to have raised an eyebrow, but it was too much for me right then. A coronation? As in crown? As in an Emperor? “You can't be serious.”

He cocked his head to one side. “Not completely, but then you never know how things might end up. I mean, you're both here now. So when I attack High Scape tomorrow, you won't be able to do a thing about it. After I destroy the world's richest city, I could take a look at doing the same to Erstwhile. Her Imperial Majesty is an elderly woman, after all. It's unlikely she would be able to survive a serious disaster. And even if her son does, well, we all know how resolute he is, don't we? How hard would it be to convince him to turn over the throne? Especially if I promise him his life and all the money to play with that he wants? Yes.” He nodded, as though thinking this all out for the first time. “It definitely bears looking into. And so, my first public ceremony celebrating the first Source to be crowned Emperor would be an excellent platform for executing the traitors who'd so foolishly tried to stand against me.” And he winked at me.

“Hey!” Aiden called out. “You can't kill her!” He came striding over to the cage, lyre in hand.

Creol looked at him with genuine surprise. “Why not?”

“You told me you wouldn't kill her,” Aiden accused him.

The tension in my chest eased just a little. Despite all that had happened, the knowledge that Aiden hadn't meant to kill me made me feel the tiniest bit better. I still despised him. He was still a total bastard for putting me through the most dangerous, humiliating, gut-wrenching experience of my life. And for lying to me all this time. And manipulating me with degrading ease. But at least he wasn't a murderer.

No, he'd been saving that honor for me.

I was beginning to get myself under control. My breathing was smoothing out, the sweat was drying, the shudders had shrunk into the odd tiny shock beneath my skin. Wanting to present a slightly less pathetic sight to my audience, I withdrew from Karish. I sat cross-legged on the dirt floor, elbow on one knee, my chin resting on my palm. Karish looked at me and smiled at my casual pose. He leaned back on his hands, his long legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles. We couldn't have looked more bored if we were stuck at a cricket match.

Creol seemed a little disappointed by Aiden's response, as if it were just too mundane for his taste. “Oh, that,” he said. “You assured me she would make a decent Shield, but she'll just get in my way. I have to kill her.”

Aiden drew himself up to his full considerable height. “I didn't bring her to Middle Reach so you could kill her.”

Briefly, I closed my eyes. So he
had
been a part of it all along. And now I remembered. He was the one who had suggested I read Karish's letters, where I would have to see the correspondence from Creol. He was the one who had convinced me to come to Middle Reach when everyone else was thinking of Flown Raven.

I wondered when it had all started. When we had met for the very first time? He had been the one to approach us, after all, when Karish and I were bickering at the Star Festival. He'd had a shot to make at Karish for being a Source and then he'd tried to separate us. And he'd been so understanding about my crippling him—I bet he hadn't planned on that. What an excellent actor. And since then he'd been lecturing me about the abusiveness of Sources. I'd ignored it all as ignorant ranting.

I was such a fool.

“Well, aye, as a matter of fact, you did,” said Creol.

Aiden's face assumed a most unattractive shade of red. “You said,” he ground out between his teeth, “that the music would drive her to kill Karish, and then she would be free. You promised me that.”

I felt a certain shallow sympathy for Aiden. It was hard to find in all the anger and pain and sense of betrayal, but there was a small sliver of it that I could catch and hold up. He had believed all the wrong people. So had I, but I hadn't willfully endangered anyone's life. And he hadn't gotten the results he'd hoped for. Well, that and an empty sack was worth an empty sack, but it had to hurt.

“And you promised to have her ready to kill Karish and to Shield me,” Creol said to Aiden.

I couldn't believe that was really the plan. I was supposed to Shield Creol while he deconstructed High Scape? Why?

“I was supposed to have more time,” Aiden protested. “She wasn't supposed to find out so soon. I would have had her ready if I'd had just a few more days.”

“Then it's your fault that I have to kill her, because if you had kept her away from the center tonight, as you were supposed to, we wouldn't have had to rush things like this. It's your carelessness that's causing this. Really, one would almost think you wanted me to kill her.”

Aiden's response to this was to try to smash Creol's face in with his lyre. He was obvious about his intention, and Creol had plenty of warning. He ducked. The lyre met the bars of the cage with almost explosive results. Keys and strings twanged and splinters flew.

Two new thugs came running to restrain Aiden.

“Bad form, Aiden,” Creol chided him. “Obviously you can't be trusted to do your part for the cause. You're far too emotional, not to mention incompetent. But for all that, I'm going to give you a great reward. I'm going to let you die with your . . . friend. Terribly poetic, don't you think? Something someone like you can appreciate.” Aiden struggled against his captors to no effect. “Who knows? You might even convince her to forgive you for trying to sell her to me. I hear starvation can addle the wits.” A dismissive wave of the hand. “Take the fool away.”

The two thugs grabbed Aiden by his hands and his feet, swinging him between them to carry him away. “Dunleavy!” he called as they carted him off. “I did it for you! You can see that, can't you? You were supposed to kill Karish. You would have been free!”

I grit my teeth.
Someone shut the man up, please.
He was carried out of the civic center; the door closed behind him. I could still hear him shouting, but the noise was easier to ignore.

Lynch had been freed during this little melodrama. She wandered over to the cage to stand beside Creol. She looked at me with a sad smile. “I'm sorry it had to happen this way, Dunleavy,” she said, offering her hand for shaking. “I think we could have been good friends.”

I, of course, didn't move from my comfortable seat on the dirt floor. I stared at her and wondered if she was insane. Not that it mattered. I looked at Creol. “What's going on?” I demanded.

He smirked. “Alison, dear,” he said to Lynch. “You've heard all this before. People are starting to drift. Could you gather everyone back together and tell them the meeting will resume once we've dealt with our prisoners? Gary, Mark, why don't you give her a hand?”

Prisoners. Well, at least he was finally being honest about it. No more “our poor Dunleavy.”

“Yes, Stevan,” Lynch said dutifully, and she was echoed by the two thugs. The three of them wandered away.

Creol leaned against the bars of the cage and gave me a condescending grin. “A delay tactic, Dunleavy?” he asked. “Are you hoping to lure me into bragging about myself to give time to the Runners who are desperately searching for you?” He snickered. “I've probably seen all the same plays you have, Dunleavy. Only no one who knows you're in Middle Reach has had time to get worried. And there are no Runners here. So I can brag all I want, and no one will show up in time to rescue you.”

I hadn't been thinking along the terms of rescue. I knew that if we were going to get out of this we'd have to do it ourselves. I was just curious. “Why is Middle Reach so important to you?”

“It's not. It's a mud hole. It's not important to anyone. But half the population is crazy and the other half certain the entire world is using them as a dumping ground. It's an excellent place to start. A bunch of malcontents stuck together, feeding off and feeding into each other's bitterness. Give them a target, and they can develop into the most useful army.”

“To do what?” I asked. “You can't really hope to become Emperor.”

He laughed. “No. Someone with brains will figure out who I am and have me killed long before that's a possibility.”

And the getting killed part disturbed him not at all. “So why are you doing this?”

He shrugged. “What else am I going to do?”

Uh, how about not leveling High Scape?
“What's this about, Creol?” I said, hardening my voice. Perhaps he would respond to the simulation of authority. “There has to be a reason for this.”

“Aye, and the reason is that I can do it. And I'm bored. I have nothing to do, Dunleavy. Sometimes I'm so bored I think I'll go out of my head with it.”

He was out of his head. Or maybe it was all just an act, and he didn't feel like telling me why he was doing all this stuff. So my curiosity would go unsatisfied. How terribly important.

“I can tell her the rest if you've got something else to do,” Karish offered, sounding friendly and helpful. I wondered what was wrong with him.

“Ah, but that would be rude, would it not, to neglect to tell Dunleavy myself that it was I who arranged to have you killed.”

That hardly came as a surprise. So Karish's title had had nothing to do with anything. “You didn't manage to pull that off, either,” I sneered.