The Hero Strikes Back (11 page)

I'd never been so cold. The frigid air tingled and scraped against my skin. I had to keep blinking strangely aching eyes. My breath rasped in my throat. My feet hurt. I'd made the mistake of stomping them once, in an attempt to warm them up, and it had felt like something very fragile within them—bones, maybe?—had sharply shattered.

Beside me, I heard Karish's teeth rattling. I could see his breath streaming out like smoke. For once he was keeping his hands strictly to himself. His arms were tightly crossed as he tried to control his shivering. The other Sources in the Stall were in just as bad a state, hunched over and stiff with cold, their Shields quiet and withdrawn as they all struggled with a level of discomfort none of them had ever before experienced.

The fire blazing in the stove looked real pretty, though.

“We will tell the regulars we have a plan,” La Monte said through chattering teeth. No attempts at an appropriate introduction this time. Just straight to the point. Bless the man.

“We've had an answer back from the council?” Riley asked.

“No,” La Monte snapped. “But I've had a brick narrowly miss my head and a horde of non-apologetic regulars telling me to get off my ass to do something.” He paused, so we could all be shocked by his news and his manner of relaying it. “So I told them we were working on it. I'm not going to wait until the council puts together a commission that will look into the matter and give us a report in a couple of years. The regulars looked ready to throw ropes over tree branches. I had to say something and telling them I was waiting to hear back from the council wasn't going to cut it.” He clapped his hands together to warm them. I thought of bones shattering. “They weren't terribly impressed with my answer but at least they left without stoning me.”

All right, I supposed there wasn't much I could say against that. A brick at his head! What was that about? It certainly wasn't a rational or productive response to circumstances. What was that like, calmly walking down the street, minding your own business, to find your peace broken by a projectile flying at your head? La Monte was obviously rattled to be using something other than the pristine language that was his habit, and I couldn't blame him.

“Anything to say, Dunleavy?” he asked me archly, the prat.

Well then, yes, I did. “What are we going to say when nothing happens?” Because, while I understood La Monte's use of the lie, the problems with the lie still existed. “When whatever we're supposed to be doing doesn't work?”

“There was alliteration happening all over the place in that sentence,” Karish muttered.

“This will pass,” La Monte announced in a calm, resonating voice. All he needed was a mountaintop.

“You keep saying that and it keeps getting worse.” I knew I sounded like a nag, but it was true. We had just descended into all new levels of cold, hadn't we?

“It will pass. All things do.”

Lord. “What if the regulars acquire better aim before that happens?”

La Monte set his jaw. “They won't. They wouldn't dare.”

I would wager that had someone asked him, a week earlier, if a regular would ever throw a brick in his general direction, he would have said they wouldn't dare.

“Now, Dunleavy, I know you're anxious to contribute and prove your worth,” Wilberforce interjected in a voice I assumed was supposed to sound soothing and patient. “But wisdom as profound as Chris's can come only with time and experience. Believe me, you will get there, some day.”

Blank face, blank face, blank face, and above all ignore the giggling—yes, the giggling—coming from Karish's chest and throat. “One can only hope.”

La Monte, being more perceptive than Wilberforce, shot me a hard look.

All right, here goes. “Perhaps we should try actually doing something. Now that we've actually told them we are.”

Karish's posture shifted beside me. An ice-cold hand wrapped around mine and squeezed. I glanced up at him. I wasn't going to give away his secret. He would, though, if he didn't stop being so paranoid.

Hammad started snickering. “I was never that young.”

“Haven't we already been through this?” Garrighan drawled.

“What's the harm in trying?”

“It's not what we do,” said Hammad.

“But we're telling the regulars that it is.” Didn't they see the long-term repercussions of telling them that? Could they really be that blind? It was so obvious.

“It's a necessary fiction.”

“Also known as a bald-faced lie.”

“Dunleavy, we are not having this discussion again,” La Monte snapped. “You have made your feelings quite clear. And apparently the injury I've suffered hasn't changed them.”

Ah, guilt. I recognized the emotion. I knew what it was. I'd even experienced it from time to time. But had La Monte managed to inspire it within me with his heavy-handed attempt at emotional manipulation? Not at all.

“If you feel compelled to disturb everyone with your speculations about what might be happening,” La Monte continued, “and rile people up with pretensions of an ability to solve every problem, then by all means be my guest. But we,” and he glanced about at all the others, none of whom appeared prepared to contradict him, “know what we're going to be doing.”

He did everything but cross his arms and nod and say “So there.” What a bastard. Speculations. Pretensions. Like he knew what the hell he was talking about. Getting a brick thrown at him didn't make him right.

But there was no point in saying any of that, because everyone else agreed with him, or at least planned to follow his lead, and the horse was most sincerely dead.

So I tilted my head in acknowledgement. “So sorry to have bored you all,” I said coolly. I didn't understand it, though. Why didn't any of them even want to try?

“Ya done it now,” Karish said, but I didn't know to whom, nor in reference to what.

“I've got somewhere to be,” Rayne announced. “I'm not on duty, there's no reason for me to be out here risking black fingers.”

“Hear hear,” said Stone, pulling her cloak about her more tightly and shifting her feet, ready to go outside.

I didn't sigh. I didn't clench my teeth. It was to be expected. There was no reason for any of them to listen to me. I was the youngest, the least experienced. And it wasn't as though I had a real plan or idea.

Or, apparently, any powers of persuasion.

Beatrice and Benedict were on duty, and so remained in the Stall. The rest of us trudged back over the snow-covered plain. No one spoke. It was too cold to speak. We just hurried along as quickly as the deep snow allowed us.

Once we passed the city's ring road the Pairs split off in different directions. Karish stuck with me. I supposed he thought to walk me home. How entirely unnecessary of him.

“What could I say to them?” he asked me all out of the blue.

Caught up in my own thoughts, I let myself frown. I thought about what he had said. I turned the words around, took them apart, examined each one individually, put them back together and studied the whole, then said, “What?”

“At the Stall, when you were talking about trying to do something about the weather. I couldn't tell them about what we were trying. There really wasn't anything to say.”

“Ah.” I didn't want to talk about it.

“I mean, there's nothing to report yet. And I'm sorry, but I don't want them finding out about . . . things unless we have something real to tell them.”

“Fine.” It was done. There was no point in hashing it out.

“Damn it, Lee!” he snapped.

I looked up at him. What was his problem now?

He did a weird sort of step and slide thing that had him suddenly in front of me, facing me, and I had to stop. “Will you just admit you're angry?”

Talking about beating dead animals. “I have nothing to be angry about.” Not with him, anyway. And it was too cold to stay angry with La Monte.

“You're telling me you don't think I failed you or something by not speaking up back there?”

Actually, I hadn't thought about it. “I am perfectly capable of speaking for myself.” And perfectly used to being summarily dismissed. Really. That was the lot of the Shield. Sure, it would have been nice if Karish had said something. They would have listened to him, and thought about what he said, at least for a moment. But most likely they would have eventually chosen the same path regardless. So the fact that he decided not to throw in his lot with the losing side, well there was no point in getting upset about it. And, anyway, I would never dream of expecting Karish to speak when he didn't care to, just to support me.

“I could have drawn lines by your spine.”

More mental dissection was required to translate that, but the fact that I could pleased me. Then I rolled my eyes. “You might have noticed it's a bit chilly today.”

“You're angry, Lee.”

I had to admit I was starting to get there. I hated it when people told me how I felt. I shrugged. “Fine. I'm angry. Can we go somewhere inside now?”

“Damn it, Lee.” He couldn't drive his hands into his hair because both his hands and his head were wrapped. He tried, though. It almost made me smile.

I waited a moment, thinking he planned to continue, but apparently he could think of nothing more to say. “You get irritated when I say I'm not angry and you get irritated when I say I am angry. I can't win.”

“Because you're just saying whatever you think will shut me up,” he accused me.

“Aye, but it's not working.”

“Argh!” was his response, and he charged on down the street.

And I started laughing at his antics. He was so excitable. Sometimes it was exhausting just listening to him, but there was also something exhilarating about it. Karish seemed so unconcerned with whether people knew what he was feeling. After years of being told how distasteful it was to impose one's strong emotions on others, it was refreshing to be with someone who wasn't similarly constrained.

“I said nothing funny, Lee.”

Now he was frowning, a little line appearing between his eyebrows. I walked up to him and touched it with the tip of my finger. “You're so handsome when you're annoyed.”

He backed away from my finger. “I'm serious, Lee.”

“That's my job.” And he didn't do serious well. It made him all melodramatic. “Can we go in now?”

He scowled. “You don't deserve it.”

“What, going in?”

“Going to the hospital.”

I thought about that and tried to figure out how visiting a hospital would be a treat. “Huh?”

“Come on.” He took my hand and started leading me down the street.

We did indeed end up at the Western Center Hospital. One I'd been to many times. And it looked like a disaster had struck. It was busier than I'd remembered ever seeing it before. The rooms were filled and people were lying in cots in the corridors. The staff looked harried, moving from one patient to another without much of a pause. A couple glanced up when we came in and, after quickly deciding we didn't need any help, ignored us.

I pulled the wraps from my hands and head with relief. The hospital was warm and I was happy enough to be inside. I glanced around and after a few moments I realized most of the patients were very old, or very young.

“Frostbite,” Karish told me. “I'd heard, because of the strange weather, a lot of people have been getting frostbite. Bad enough to need amputations.” I grimaced. “Some have been getting heart pains from shifting snow. Others are getting sick in their lungs. I can't do anything for that last group, though.”

I looked up at him quickly. He didn't return my gaze, concentrating on a child wrapped up in a cot. Clutching a toy to her chest and staring at the wall, she appeared to be alone. “Ah,” I said. And I smiled, because I'd realized why we'd come.

“Good afternoon, little one,” Karish said to the child, kneeling by the cot, his voice dropping into a low, soothing tone.

She was perhaps six years old, though I was no good at judging the ages of children. She was tiny, and it was hard to believe that her body could contain all the organs necessary for survival. It seemed obscene to me that such a fragile little person had been left unattended in this dark and grim corridor. When she turned her head from the wall her eyes were dark and red with tears. “Who are you?” she asked in a soft, trembling voice.

“I'm Taro. This is Lee. What's your name?”

“Keeva,” she answered solemnly. “Do you know my Da?”

“No.” Karish stroked back her dark hair with a light hand. “Is he here?”

“He's at the shop. He couldn't keep me at home.” The coat of tears over her eyes thickened. “I wouldn't have been any trouble.” She sniffed and rubbed her nose. Her hand was wrapped in gauzy white cloth.

“I'm sure he wasn't worried about your being trouble to him,” Karish assured her. “But he can't take care of you when you're injured. He doesn't know how. A person can't know how to take care of a shop and be a healer, all at the same time.” He bent down to kiss her forehead, an action I thought was a little presumptuous but one she seemed to have no trouble with. Could sway all ages, he could. “But I know it's hard to be away from home.”

He glanced at me, and after a moment I felt his internal shields lower.

This was different from when he was channeling events. Then, I could sort of feel the forces through him, or at least I could perceive them. When he healed people, I was aware of him drawing forces in, but I couldn't see them myself. I couldn't feel anything but him.