The Hero Strikes Back (17 page)

I was distracted from my mental images of mortification by an awareness that something was wrong. Something was off, or odd. The closer we got to the ring road, the stronger the sensation became.

Oh, enough already. Everything felt odd, all the time. There was no normal.

But there was something happening. Something scraping just at the edge of my awareness, and it made my ears prick up.

No doubt it was just the hot rain pounding holes into the street.

Or maybe the Runner whistles wailing even over the noise of the rain, a plaintive yet piercing note, falling and rising and winding its way through the city air.

I grabbed Karish's arm. He looked back at me, puzzled, and I let him go. I hadn't wanted his attention. I'd just been reassuring myself that my aristocrat was right where he was supposed to be.

“Are the whistles bothering you?” he asked me.

“No, I'm fine.”

“Well, let me know.” He looked at me for a moment longer, and he smiled. “You're all wet.” He pulled on a lock of my drenched hair.

“Imagine that.” Shields were allowed to do sarcasm.

He chuckled, stroked my cheek, and took my hand to lead me down the street.

We ran to the first mercantile we could find. A small place I had never been to before. We could barely fit in, packed as it was with people ducking in to get out of the rain. Bitterly complaining people, fuming that if it wasn't one thing it was another.

The people we couldn't help brushing up against fell silent. Then one of them said, “A Pair.” Loudly. With disgust. And after a few moments everyone in the shop was wordlessly staring at us. Not pleasantly. Not with admiration.

I raked back my wet hair. I remembered my clothes were drenched and hugging every curve I had. I tried to raise my head and look dignified.

This was not a hospital. There was no one there with a duty to keep order. Anyone could do anything they wanted. It made it all feel so much more alarming.

Alarming? I shouldn't be alarmed. No one was going to do us any harm. As La Monte had said, throwing a brick was a far cry from actually laying hands on a person to do them injury. None of these people wanted to do that. They were just frustrated.

But I didn't want to be there. I was uncomfortable. I shouldn't be uncomfortable. It was only silence. And attention. Nothing dangerous.

Karish's grip on my hand tightened.

“What do
you
want?” the man in the apron—the shopkeeper, I presumed—demanded in a hard, sullen voice. He crossed his arms and scowled.

To turn right around and head back out, to be honest. Why didn't we do that? Because it looked cowardly? Who cared? “Slickers, please, if you've got any left.” At least my voice sounded level and calm, like it knew what it was doing.

A woman to my left snorted. “Must be nice,” she muttered. But it was a mutter at high volume, if there were such a thing. She wanted everyone in the little shop to hear her. “Get caught in the rain? Don't hurry home. Just pick up another slicker.”

“Sure,” added the man beside her. “Life's real easy when you don't got to pay for nothing.”

The shopkeeper snickered with approval and headed for some shelves filled with folded leather slickers. He tugged out two and threw one at each of us. Threw them. Hard. I caught my bundle automatically, stunned at the treatment. “Don't have braids on them, so sorry,” he said without any sincerity whatsoever. “I'm afraid I don't keep Triple S garments in stock. Usually it's a good way to keep your sort out of my shop.”

Actually, that was a good idea. I was surprised more shopkeepers didn't think of it.

“Careful, Nate,” said one of the others. “Might end up in stocks for an offence like that. Not catering to a Pair.”

“I have money,” Karish offered. “Not with me right now, but—”

I grabbed his arm to shut him up. Not the thing to say. It made him look guilty, and he had nothing to feel guilty about. I didn't have any other slickers; it was well within our rights to ask for them. But at least he wasn't trying to charm anyone. I had a feeling that wouldn't have gone over well at all.

“Take money from a Source?” the shopkeeper demanded with hostility. “You really do want me to land in the clink, don't you?”

If anyone could land in jail for taking money from a Source in exchange for goods and services, it was news to me. Karish had said before that he sometimes paid for things when he had money. So was the shopkeeper ignorant or lying?

“Of course not,” Karish said, assuming a smile. Not a flirtatious smile, thank Zaire, but one that was just as dangerous. Patronizing. Another mood flip, and he was angry and not making much of an effort to hide it. “But as I do have it, it only seems fair to use it to—”

“I know
my
duty!” the shopkeeper snapped. “I don't take money from Sources. Even layabout Sources who do nothing but sit on their asses while the city's being torn apart and who still have the gall to come in here begging.”

I could practically see the tension suddenly developing at the small of Karish's back, racing up his spine, spreading through his shoulders and bringing his head up in the most arrogant angle. Lord Shintaro Karish had been released from his backroom of shame and was about to let his presence be known. So warned, I grabbed Karish by the arm and pulled him back towards the door. He, taken by surprise, almost fell with the first step, and flushed in immediate anger.

He couldn't keep his mouth shut, though. “You know nothing of which you speak, you insolent back-scrubbing peasant,” he snapped.

I wasn't sure what all that meant but it certainly sounded like an insult. Everyone in the shop stiffened, and I saw a hand or two clench into fists. “Not now, Taro!”

“You useless bastard,” the shopkeeper shot back. “Coming in here and making demands and acting all lord of the manor and doing nothing about any—”

Karish flushed. Nothing got to him like being called a lord. “You speak much for one who knows so very very little.”

Definitely time to leave. “Now, Taro!” I yanked on the door, I yanked on my Source, and we were back out in the rain.

I could hear shouting from within the shop. People venting, spewing out insults concerning worthless Sources and why had they been kept in the lap of luxury for all those decades anyway? But no one came out.

Karish lunged for the door. I lunged for him. The slickers landed on the ground.

I had no fighting skills whatsoever, but I was heavy and stubborn. “Leave it, Taro.”

He shook me off. Not hard. Just freeing himself to grab the door handle. So instead I threw myself at the door. The people in the shop must have heard the thud and wondered what it was about. Or perhaps they didn't care. They still didn't open the door.

Karish grabbed me by the shoulders to try to pull me away, eyes narrowed in a fierce stare. It was shocking. I'd seen him angry. I thought I'd seen him furious. I'd never seen him like this, so intent on doing damage that he couldn't even see what he was doing. I wedged my feet into the two lower corners of the doorway and pressed against the wood and refused to budge. I was not going to let Karish back in there. I didn't care what kind of fighting skills he thought he had, he couldn't win out against a half dozen men.

“Out of the way, Lee!” he snarled.

“We are leaving.”

“They have no right to talk to us like that!”

“Keep it down, Karish!” I hissed at him.

“Don't tell me to be quiet! I don't give a damn who hears me!”

No, he didn't. Not right then. He would after every tooth he owned had been punched out of his head, though. I grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled his face close to mine, and he let me because he still wasn't thinking all that clearly. “Every single person in that shop is primed to lay into us.” Actually, probably just him. That seemed to be the way things were going. “We are alone. The Runners are all involved in something else. Don't push them.” I flattened my hand on his shoulder, and felt him trembling.

“Don't
push
them!” He jerked out of my grip and paced a few steps away. Which meant he paced a few steps away from the door, and that was good. “Who the hell do they think they are? Blaming us for all this! Accusing us of dereliction of duty!”

“They are scared and,” I lowered my voice, “we are all lying to them.”

The truth, and reasonable, but if Karish heard the words he wasn't prepared to let them sway him. “I have had it up to
here
with people who haven't got the faintest idea what is going on telling me how easy I have it and that I have done nothing for it!” I wanted to shush him. He wasn't keeping his voice down at all. “You keep telling me to think about it from their side, but why doesn't anyone expect them to think? We're shipped off to school for years, with no choice in the matter, and we aren't allowed to leave. We aren't allowed to leave until they let us out, and until then we are watched and judged and controlled—” he shivered suddenly, such a strong jolt through his body that I could see it. I frowned. “And once we are let out they decide where we live and who we work with and they can change their minds about any of it any time they feel like it.”

They, they, they. Who was he talking about? The Triple S? Who was he angry at?

“We risk our lives doing this stuff. And no, we don't get paid for it, so instead we do have to go into shops and restaurants and
beg
for everything we have. We can't buy anything. We can't buy houses or land or accumulate anything that can be left for any children we might have. We can't do anything that isn't within the narrow little boundaries that the whole world has laid out for us and now they expect us to do the impossible and because we naturally can't they think they have the right to violate our safety and insult us in public? Who the
hell
do they think they are?”

He was furious. Really really furious. “Taro—”

“It's not right, Lee! They don't have the right!”

“I know, I know,” I said in a low, quiet voice. I reached out for one of his hands. He stopped pacing, but he wouldn't look at me. He was still trembling, his eyebrows drawn together in a fierce frown. “It's what you said, Taro. They don't understand. And you're not going to make them understand by shouting at them. What you will do is really tick them off.” I put a hand on the nape of his neck and pulled him down, so that his forehead rested against mine. “I don't want you getting the pretty face of yours—” he stiffened, “broken.”

“Damn it, Lee!” He tried to pull away but I had my fingers in his hair and I held him fast.

“Deep breaths, Taro.”

“I'm a Source, Lee. I'm allowed to feel whatever the hell I like.” But the trembling was easing a little.

“Not when it means risking your face. I'm the one who has to look at it. So breathe. In slow, out slow.”

Lips quirked in a sudden smile, eyes gleaming. Wasn't going to ask. Didn't really care. I could see the switch flick, could feel the tension draining from him, and that was all that mattered. I kissed his forehead. “Good boy.” It didn't solve the problem, and I wasn't saying he was wrong, but there wasn't anything we could do about it right then. I scooped up the slickers from the street and shoved one at him. “Put this on. Though right now I don't see the point. We're totally soaked.” And the slickers had picked up mud from the street. Lovely. “I want to go home and have a bath.” A cool one.

“Yes, ma'am.” He pulled the slicker over his head, once it was settled on his shoulders pulling up the hood. I followed suit, and was over-heated in a matter of moments. Leather and humidity, what a wonderful combination.

Karish was frowning. “The whistles are still going. That's not normal, is it?”

I listened. I hadn't heard the whistles after leaving the shop, not at first, distracted as I had been with the fear Karish was going to get himself beaten to a bloody mess. But there they were. And I'd never heard the whistles go on for so long. “I don't know.”

“I'm not up to any heroics today, Lee.” His expression suggested he was expecting opposition from me.

“This from the man ready to fight a half-dozen hot-headed regulars.”

“I wasn't going to
fight
them.”

“That's what you think.”

“No weird stuff, Lee.”

What did he think I was going to try to make him do? I didn't even know what was going on. “I just want to go home,” I assured him.

“Good.”

We headed home, miserable and wet and tense. I started thinking some kind of exotic vacation would be nice.

“You hear that?” I asked him. I wasn't referring to the whistling.

“Aye.”

A strange sound, at first barely perceptible over the roar of the rain and the lament of the whistles. A kind of short, repetitive sound. It was familiar to me, for some reason.

It was kind of on our way, anyway, so of course we headed towards it, because we were idiots.

Two people came running towards us from the direction of the noise. One of the young men had blood streaming from a cut on his face, thick enough to be visible in the rain, and they were running as though they were being chased. Only no one was following them.

“What's going on?” Karish called out to them.

Their heads whipped around to look at us. “There's some kind of riot!” the man without the injury shouted back. “Go home! I mean it!” They kept on running and disappeared down a street.

I exchanged a look with Karish. We started running. In the direction opposite to the one they were suggesting.