The Hero Strikes Back (29 page)

“Damn it.” Then his hands were in my hair which, considering how tightly bound my hair was, wasn't an easy operation. He seemed to be trying to press every curve of the surface of my skull.

“Ouch! Damn it, Karish, what are you doing?”

“Checking for blood. There doesn't seem to be any.” He pulled his hands out of my hair and sat back on his heels. “Leave it to you to stick your head out in the path of flying debris.”

That, I thought, was a little unfair. “You got injured last time. It's my turn.”

“What last time? That makes no sense.”

“Hm? It did when I thought it.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

I stared at his hand. I could see his hand. It was just that all the lovely colored spots moving about in front of my eyes prevented me from counting his fingers.

“All right, I'm taking you to the hospital.” He pulled me up by the shoulders.

“I'm not going to hospital,” I objected. “I feel fine.” Well, fine might have been overstating the case a little, but I wasn't in any pain. I felt kind of numb. Almost like I was floating.

“Like that matters. You Shields don't feel anything someone hasn't spent a day and a half pounding into you first.”

The ground moved. Just a bit. Not so much a swaying as that the sidewalk had decided it really didn't want to be touching my feet anymore and so had distanced itself a little. “I'm fine,” I insisted. “I just need to lie down for a while. It'll all go away then.” Too bad, really. The colors were so pretty and made such interesting shapes. Like clouds twisting and performing just for me.

“And you will lie down,” he agreed, wrapping an arm around my waist. He felt good. Safe and solid and warm. “In a hospital.”

“All right.” I really didn't care. If he wanted to waste the time and effort of taking me to the hospital, that was his fallacy. But, “Hey, you can heal me!”

“Shhh!”

It was too much effort to check if there were any people near enough to have heard me. It would require turning my head.

“It's not healing, and whatever it is I need to be shielded while I do it. By you. I don't think that would work right now.”

“You don't need me to shield you.” Not to heal. He'd done it without me before. I suspected he really didn't need me to shield him at all, ever. He was just afraid to try it alone.

“Now's really not the time for a foray into your delusional beliefs in my exaggerated abilities.”

Even with my mind as clouded as it was, I recognized the warning signs of all the multi-syllabic words. “You have been in an evil mood all morning, Karish.”

“My partner just collapsed at my feet. Forgive me if it's made me a little testy.” He got us moving. I groaned in complaint. I just wanted to lie down. “And stop calling me Karish, damn it.”

Aye, aye, aye, don't get into hysterics over it.

“Karish. Taro. Stop a moment.”

“Leave it alone, Lee. I'm taking you to the hospital and that's final.”

“Do you
want
me to throw up on you?”

He halted and let me go. Pain shot out from the back of my head, spearing through my brain and reaching down to give my stomach a good hard twist.

Throwing up in a public street. Just the kind of classy, professional image I'd hoped to create for myself. And the act of vomiting made everything hurt, my head and my stomach and my throat. It also drained what little strength I had left. After a few painful moments of retching up nothing but bile I leaned weakly against the wall. “Oh, gods.”

Karish rubbed my back, and the pain in my head eased. He carefully pulled me from the wall and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. Ah, that felt good. “I'm sorry,” he whispered into my ear. “You scared me.” He kissed my temple, twice, hard.

“I'm fine.” In fact, I suddenly felt pretty warm and relaxed.

“We won't know that until we get you to hospital. Come on. We'll take it slow.”

Yes. Agonizingly slow. That strange disconnected floating sensation grew stronger the whole time, and I found it harder and harder not to trip over my own feet. Karish flagged down a carriage, the fourth he tried to catch. I lasted a couple of blocks and I had to scramble back out to throw up again.

Oh, no, that wasn't humiliating.

So we had to walk to the nearest hospital, and it was pretty crowded by the time we got there. I was so happy to stop moving that I didn't care that I had to sit on the floor. I heard Karish barking orders at someone but couldn't quite understand the words. A fog had drifted into my mind and it made it hard to perceive things.

“Lee?”

“Mm?”

“There are a lot of people from the parade here, Lee. Some of them are in pretty bad shape. We'll have to wait a bit, all right?”

“Mm.” I didn't mind. I wasn't too uncomfortable. In a few moments I'd be drifting into a nice warm sleep.

“Forget that, Dunleavy.” A hand grabbed my chin and shook my head. Only a little, but it was enough to irritate.

I pushed at his hand. “Stop that.”

“Open your eyes.”

“They are open.” Weren't they?

“Open your eyes and look at me.”

“I know what you look like, Taro. Don't worry. I still think you're pretty.”

A sigh of annoyance from him. “I've got a mirror. Drink this.”

“Hm?”

“It's water.”

That seemed like a good idea. In theory. In practice, what goes down must come up. Karish managed to grab a bowl from somewhere just in time, quickwitted lad. And I had thought losing control due to music was humiliating. I hated being sick, being injured. It was such a waste of time.

“All right, so water's out,” I heard Karish say.

“Go home, Karish.” I didn't want him hanging around while I was being so pathetic.

“What?” The word was sharp. It hurt my ears.

“Go home. Or wherever. You don't need to wait here.”

“I'm not leaving you alone here,” he snapped.

“I'm in a hospital, Kar—Taro. I'm perfectly fine.”

“Just shut up, Lee.” He sat beside me and pulled me nice and close. I couldn't help sighing at the pleasure of it. “And keep your eyes open.”

“You might have some thought to my pride.”

“Right now I couldn't care less about your pride, not when it's making you stupid.”

“You do stupid things for pride all the time.”

“I'm allowed. I'm a Source. You're a Shield. You're supposed to know better.”

“What utter tripe.”

“You know, Lee, sometimes your eloquence just overwhelms me.”

“Oh, shut up.”

And the prat wouldn't let me close my eyes. He was being ridiculously over-cautious. Sleeping for a while would do me no harm. But try telling his Lordship that. He knew everything.

Not that I could really blame him for being paranoid. If I died, so did he. It wasn't pleasant, watching your partner and having no idea how serious their injury was, if it would mean the end of both of your lives.

Besides, it was nice to have him there. I wasn't sure I could remain upright without him. And he was so comfortable to lean against.

It wasn't so very long before a healer could see me. He knelt beside me and touched my forehead.

“Where do I take her?” Karish asked.

“Nowhere yet,” the doctor told him, his voice curt. He pulled the pins out of my hair. I felt my hair fall down my shoulders with the ache hair changing directions always gave me. “What happened?”

“She says she was hit in the back of the head. Maybe with one of the stones that were being thrown about. Have you heard what—?”

“Yes, I've heard about the Reanists,” the doctor said impatiently, putting his hand on the exact wrong spot on the back of my head.

I grit my teeth and said, “I can feel that.”

Karish's mind was going in another direction. “Reanists?”

“That's what they say. Name?”

“Shintaro Karish.” Karish asked.

“
Her
name.”

“Dun—”

“I'm asking
her.
”

“Dunleavy Mallorough,” I said.

“Where do you live?”

“Second building, West Carriage Street.”

“What year is it?”

“578.”

“All right, she looks fine.”

“She looks fine?” Karish echoed him incredulously. “She was throwing up all the way here. She can barely stand on her own.”

“She gave her head a jar but there's no damage to the skull and her eyes look fine. Take her home and let her sleep. Wake her every couple of hours and ask her questions to make sure she remembers who she is. If you have trouble waking her or she can't answer the questions, bring her back.”

“Why can't she stay here for a while until you're sure she's all right?”

“Because we're filled to the rafters with people suffering from broken bones and severe bleeding,” the doctor snapped. “There is nothing wrong with her that time and rest won't cure.”

“Told you,” I sang.

“I'll have one of the attendants fetch you some daiova leaves. In a few hours make her some tea, let it cool before you let her drink it. She should be able to keep it down. Tomorrow she should be able to eat light food, broth and fruit and the like. Watch her balance for the next few days. Don't let her stand on anything high or off the ground. Definitely no bench dancing.” The doctor stood.

“That's it?” Karish demanded.

“Aye.” The doctor was moving away.

“Hey!” A pause. “This is unbelievable!” Sounding his most aristocratic. “This is absolutely inexcusable. I'll have that man dismissed.”

“Not now, though,” I murmured. I was so tired. “I want to go home.”

I ended up in a carriage again, this one without extra passengers, and this time my stomach stayed somewhat stable. That was something, at least.

Karish left me in my room to change into a sleeping gown while he fetched me some water to rinse out my mouth. Then I climbed into the bed. Nice big bed with cool clean sheets. I rolled up in the blankets. But when I closed my eyes, the bed started rocking and spinning.

“Here.” Karish sat on the edge of the bed, holding out a mug. “Don't swallow the leaf. It's mint.”

I could have given him a look for assuming I couldn't recognize mint, but it would require moving my eyes too much. I took a sip of water, swished it through my mouth, and spat it back into the mug. I let Karish take the mug from me. So I had no dignity left. I only had to live with it for another sixty years or so.

“Would you feel better if I lie beside you until you go to sleep?”

I nodded. Carefully. No dignity, no pride.

He stretched out beside me and put an arm around my waist and gathered me close. It felt so-o-o-o nice. Except . . . “You're—”

“What?”

“Nothing.” No need to point out that he was shaking. He probably already knew. And I understood. I'd been a wreck, when he'd been injured and no one was sure he was going to live.

He buried his face in my hair. “You're all right,” he whispered into my ear. “You're all right.”

I laid my hand on top of his. “We're both all right,” I said. “We're both going to be fine.”

I'd never liked the idea of the bond. It was, I thought, an unnecessary chain. Two professionals shouldn't need it. And it wasn't right, to link the life of one person to another so thoroughly. Neither of us were careless with our safety, but accidents happened. One person shouldn't have to walk around knowing that at any moment they might die because their partner has. It wasn't right.

And yet . . .

At least he couldn't leave. No matter what I did wrong, he couldn't leave.

Chapter Eighteen

Karish spent the night in my suite. It wasn't strictly necessary—I felt better after a couple of hours—but he snapped at me when I suggested he could go. And I had to admit, though not to him, that being taken care of was wonderfully luxurious. Dangerous, though, as it inspired laziness. Late the next morning I was still wearing my sleeping gown. And I was a bad influence on him, as he wore a loose-fitting pair of trousers that had seen better days and an ancient shirt that had been stretched shapeless. We looked like a pair of hags when Risa came calling.

“Well,” she said with a smile after Karish had let her in. “This looks cozy.”

Please don't start. Risa was one of the few people who believed Karish and I weren't sleeping together. That didn't mean she didn't like teasing us about the possibility. “Good afternoon, Risa,” I said. “Is something wrong?”

“I figured I might find you here, Dunleavy, when you weren't scheduled for a watch, but I didn't expect to find the two of you looking so . . . comfortable.”

Karish rolled his eyes. “Lee got herself knocked on the head at the parade.” Risa frowned at that and crossed the room to the chair where I was lounging. “I'm staying here until I can be sure she won't sink into delirium and reveal any sacred Triple S secrets.”

“Are you all right?” Risa asked me.

I nodded. “Hard head,” I said. “How did you know we weren't on watch?”

“Have a seat, Risa,” Karish invited. “Can I fix you some tea?”

“Aye, that'd be good.” Risa settled on the sofa. “We try to keep track of where the Pairs are,” she told me. “Just something we feel it's good to know, in case of emergencies. It's been hard this last year or so, though. You guys have been switching things around so much.”