The Hero Strikes Back (22 page)

He shrugged. “Sometimes I did. Not often. The door was usually locked.”

“You were usually locked in your room?”

“Almost always.”

“And not for punishment?”

“No. At least, I don't think so.”

So it was true, not just an exaggerated accusation thrown out in the middle of a bitter argument. True, the Dowager hadn't denied it, but I pictured her as the sort who believed explaining herself was demeaning. “But why?”

He stared into the wine. That was why I'd given it to him. Not just to loosen his tongue but to give him something to look at when he couldn't bear to look at me. “They didn't want me talking to anyone.”

“Just because you sometimes said things that didn't make sense? All children do that.” Hell, all people did that. Last I heard, it wasn't a crime.

“Westsea children don't. I guess my brother didn't.”

That was a crock. There had to be something more to it than that, though Karish might not know himself. Not that I thought Karish could have done anything worth getting locked in his room for eleven years, but there had to be something more.

“I did have a tutor, actually, for a short while,” he said, dipping the tip of his index finger into his wine. “I don't remember him very well. I was quite young. I don't think he liked me much.” I imagined Kairsh as a child. He must have been adorable. Mischievous, I had no doubt, but adorable. How could anyone not like him? “I remember him strapping me. I think . . . I think he was the one who decided I must be crazy, and he told my parents. And because my grandfather had lost his wits, they believed the tutor. He was dismissed, and I never got another.”

I stroked the back of his hand where it rested on his thigh, and when he raised it I slipped under so we could twine our fingers together. I wondered what would ease the tension practically singing through his muscles. Nothing I could do.

“After that, it was just maids, coming in to dress me and bring me food and clean out the chamber pot.” Another dry chuckle. “It was the strangest thing. Even now I don't understand it. They came in four times a day, one for each meal and to dress me in appropriate morning, afternoon and evening attire, and again to prepare me for bed at night. They expected me to mind my manners, and sit up straight, and use the right cutlery. But no one cared that I didn't know how to do anything useful, lace my own boots or write my own name.”

Valuing form over substance. Many fell into that trap. “Other than that, you were alone?”

He ducked his head. “Aye,” he whispered.

And why did I feel so bad? I wasn't the one who had gone through it. “So what did you do?” Alone, a small child kept in a single room. It was disgusting. How dare they?

“I don't know. I don't remember very well. Time just passed. I had the toys given to me when I was an infant.” I heard him swallow. “Sometimes my brother came to visit me.”

And the tone of his voice told me that was not a good thing. “What did he do?”

He took a long draught from his goblet. “Played games.”

“What kind of games?” No, no, no, don't tell me. I don't want to hear this.

He squirmed a little. He didn't want to tell me. “Nothing terrible.”

Terrible enough, if he brought it up. “That's what you say now, as an adult. Is that how it felt to you at the time?”

He looked down at our linked hands, rubbing the side of my palm with his thumb. “He'd come and bring a new toy,” he said slowly. I got the feeling he was choosing his words with particular care. “And I'd be so happy he had come to see me, so happy to have someone to talk to. So excited. And then he would give me the toy, and encourage me to play with it.” He paused. I didn't want to hear the next part. I clenched my teeth, preparing for it. “And then he would take it from me, and shout at me because I'd ruined it by touching it.” I blinked, my heart twisting. “He was so big, so much older than me, he seemed like an adult to me, and he could get so loud. He would smash the toy, a top or a wooden horse or something, under his foot, right in front of me, and then he would leave. And I couldn't understand what I'd done so wrong. I'd only done what he'd told me to.”

I hated boys. They were all monsters.

“Then he would come again,” Karish went on, “a good while later, and he would tell me he was going to come back the next day, to take me outside. Take me out for a ride on a horse, or to go swimming. I'd never done either, I didn't really understand what they were, but he made them sound so exciting. And it didn't really matter whether they were or not. All that really mattered was that he was going to take me.” For a moment his voice lifted, as though he were once more experiencing the excitement he'd felt as a child. “But then, he wouldn't come back.” He whirled the wine around in his goblet. “He never came back. Or so it felt. Only he would. Months later. With another toy. Or more promises that he forgot. And sometimes he shouted. Sometimes he lifted me off my feet, shaking me. I hated that, but then . . . it was the only time he ever touched me. The only time anyone but the maids touched me.” He pulled in a long breath. “Every time he came, I was so excited. And every time he came, I was so scared.” He paused for long moments, just breathing and rubbing my hand. “Because I never knew what to expect. I never knew whether he was going to be angry or kind. I think that's what made it so hard. The unpredictability of it. Of him.” I felt him shiver. “But I was overreacting,” he said after another pause, trying to make his voice stronger and calmer, but it cracked. “I know that now. He never did me any harm. But you know Sources. Always overreacting to things.” He smiled, a pathetic wobbly effort.

As I had often told him. And no doubt countless others as well. And yes, sometimes he did overreact. But this was different. And perhaps this was not the worst story I had ever heard. Perhaps there were people with much grimmer childhoods. But did it matter? This was his experience. And it was cruel enough.

“The academy must have been a shock.”

“Huh.” He smiled again, more genuine, but sad. “All of a sudden, there was all this activity. I got all these new clothes and a trunk and all this extra attention from the staff. They were giving me all these instructions on how to behave. They cut my hair for the first time that I remembered.” He slowly reached back and pulled the tie out of his hair. The dark locks slid down, softening his features. “I thought it meant something. I thought maybe I was old enough to join the family. I thought that was what it all meant, that when you're young you're kept out of everyone's way, but once you're old enough, you're allowed to be with people.”

Only instead he'd been bundled into a carriage and sent away. And I remember him telling me that no one had told him why he was being sent away. How much effort would it have taken to explain things to him?

“It was all so exciting. I was leaving my room. I was leaving the house. I was taking a ride in a carriage. It was all so new. And even though it was a servant in the carriage with me, not my brother or father or mother, I thought wherever I was going to be would be with them. I thought maybe it was some kind of vacation or something.”

I didn't understand how anyone could be so cavalier about a child's feelings. He was their son. How could he not matter to them?

I didn't want to hear any more. I could imagine it all too well. The exultation any child would feel when they knew they were leaving one stage of their life and entering a new one. And this one, thinking he was finally going to be receiving the time and attention and affection of his family, only to find himself dumped in an unfamiliar place surrounded by strangers, with his family nowhere to be seen. He must have been crushed.

He cleared his throat. “Of course, you know the rest,” he said briskly. “It was the academy. I never saw my father or my brother again.” He raised my hand to his lips, kissed the back of it. “I don't actually have a memory of my father. I don't know that I've ever met him. I only know what he looks like through portraits. He was . . . very blond.” A frown flickered over his features and disappeared.

“People at the academy thought I was so odd.” That surprised me, almost as much as the other revelations I'd suffered that night. I'd assumed he'd been adored at the Source academy. “They laughed at the way I spoke, my accent, the way I behaved.” Bastards. “I'd never been around so many people before. It was noisy and crowded and I never knew what to do. I had to be told to leave my room, to eat and to go to class. They thought I was impossibly spoiled, because I expected everything to be brought to me.” He laughed softly, and I mentally kicked myself for every silk sheet comment I had ever tossed at him. “It was years before I was able to leave my room on my own, on a whim, for no reason, without feeling guilty about it, without worrying someone was going to get angry at me for being out.”

I didn't think I had ever been so angry, at so many people, all at once, in my life.

“But people liked me there, I think. Once I learned how to behave.”

“Of course they liked you.” How could they not? “Not everyone is as blind as your family.”

He chuckled. “There's no of course about it, Lee. You don't know what I was like back then. I had trouble paying attention through an entire class. My mind always ended up drifting away.” Well, of course it had. He'd never had lessons before, he hadn't known how to keep his mind on one thing for any significant length of time. “I never had anything to say. I scowled all the time.”

“You had plenty of reasons to scowl,” I interrupted him, though I did have a difficult time imagining him as anything significantly different from the way I knew him.

“No no, not like that, Lee. You've said yourself that people shouldn't be imposing their negative feelings on other people all the time, that we all have a duty to be calm in public. You're right.”

Not when you're a child. Not when you're in real pain. I never meant that.

“It was so embarrassing. A teacher noticed me drifting during a class and got sick of it. He said no one was going to put up with my aristocratic airs just because my family never bothered to teach me proper manners, and I'd better shape up or I'd find myself working as an administrator or something after I was Paired. I didn't know what exactly that meant, but from everyone's reaction I knew it wasn't good.”

“You have incredible focus now,” I murmured, wondering had he'd managed to develop so far from such an unpromising beginning.

He shrugged. “I wanted to be good at something.”

It didn't seem to be much of an explanation, it seemed too simple. But not everything had to be complicated. And maybe that was the reason why Lord Shintaro Karish had gone out of his way to learn how to cook and how to fix cracks in the ceiling. After a childhood of not being permitted to do anything, he had wanted to learn to do something, and do it well.

“And I learned to smile.”

“You had to learn?”

“Well, no, I guess I just had to learn the effect a smile could have.” His voice took on a tone of bemusement. “If I smiled at someone, they would like me.”

“I'm sure it wasn't just because of that.”

But he didn't seem to hear me. “Someone could be angry at me, could be shouting at me or arguing with me, and sometimes if I just smiled at them, even though it didn't make sense for me to smile right then, it just seemed to stop them, and they'd smile back.”

That was because he had a killer smile, which was just bloody unfair.

“There was a skill to it, of course. The timing, what kind of smile, but I learned. Once I learned how to behave with people, they seemed to like me. It was only at the beginning of my time at the academy that things were . . . difficult.”

I got the feeling he was trying to reassure me. Instead he was disturbing me. I didn't like what I was hearing. “You don't have to put on an act to get people to like you.”

“I know that,” he snapped.

I didn't think he did. Not all of him. There was a part of him that believed people only liked him when he smiled, when he laughed, when he, to use words he'd uttered on more than one occasion, played the fool. And I'd had no idea. I was such an idiot. And I didn't think that was something I could fix. At least, not with words. It was something I'd have to think about. Later. “I'm glad to hear it,” I said. “Though sometimes I have my doubts. Because it made me crazy when we first met, when everything was a joke and you were always using that smarmy smile—”

“Smarmy!” he protested. I couldn't tell whether he was genuinely offended or not.

I plunged on anyway. Even anger was better than defeatism. “All that play acting kept me from seeing that you were fine and decent and full of all the traits I admire in a person.” So fine, from such barren beginnings. I wouldn't have thought it possible. Who had taught him what a person should be?

And unbidden from the back of my mind came a name. Professor Saint-Gerard. An elderly professor from the Source Academy to whom Karish still wrote. It looked like there was someone I needed to thank.

“Careful, Lee, you'll be making me arrogant.” And he finally looked at me. He frowned. He put his goblet down on the coffee table and stroked a fingertip below one of my eyes. “You're crying.”

I drew away from him sharply. I touched my cheek and felt moisture. Holy hell. When had that happened?

“You pity me,” he muttered. “Brilliant.”

“Oh, yes, poor boy,” I retorted, injecting as much disbelief into my tone as I could. “The celebrated Shintaro Karish, famously talented and adored by all.” Though I did pity him. Not for the person he had grown into, but for what he'd had to endure. How could I not feel pity for that?