The Hero Strikes Back (31 page)

His mother cocked her head to one side, a gesture eerily like her son's, and she studied him for a moment. Then she began gathering up her gloves and purse. “You can be sure I find our association as distasteful as do you,” she said. “I promise you it won't continue once you assume your proper role. Do your part, and we never need have anything to do with each other again.”

I hated her. She had to know that she was cruel. She just didn't care. And watching her leave I just wanted to tackle her and pound her head against the floor until her skull cracked open and what few brains she had dribbled out.

That might stain the wood, though.

I waited until the door had closed behind her. I watched Karish rub his face with his hand, trembling with rage and pale with shock. “Taro, come here.”

He didn't respond.

“Taro.”

“She's going to get me killed,” he whispered.

“Or ennobled.” He didn't find that funny. Imagine that. “Come here, Taro.” He kind of drifted over the floor, as his mother had. When he sat beside me I draped my arms over his shoulders and stroked my finger though his black hair.

“What am I going to do?” he asked, his voice breaking.

“Well,” I said, drawing out the word, trying to think. “You told the Empress you didn't want the title. You told the court. You told your mother.”

“So?” Karish said after a moment.

“You were honest. You were forthright. Your mother is trying to circumvent your honesty.”

“And?”

“You have to act quickly. Before the Prince talks to anyone else about the possibility of reinstating you. If we do anything, it has to be before the Prince has committed himself. Slighting and humiliating him won't help us at all.”

“All I'm hearing is negatives here, Lee, and I kind of knew about them already.”

“It's time to use guile.”

“Guile?”

“Deceit.”

He frowned. “I don't like that.”

“You'll like being headless even less. I wouldn't care for it myself. I'd miss your mane.” I ruffled his hair.

“I don't think I can do guile.”

“Of course you can. It's in your blood.” He was an aristocrat, after all.

He growled. “What are you suggesting?”

“You go to your mother—”

“Oh, no!”

I grabbed the collar of his shirt before he could jump up and start pacing. “Hear me out, Taro.”

“What!” he snapped peevishly.

“You go to your mother tomorrow or the next day. You don't have to be particularly civil, though that would help. You don't have to act like you like her. But you take a page from her book. You stay calm. You tell her that her promising you she won't interfere with your life once you're the duke has put a whole new perspective on things. Complain about the shoddy way the regulars have been treating you over the weather this summer. That people are rude to you, and the shopkeepers don't give you appropriate service. No way at all to behave towards a duke. Tell her being a Source has brought you nothing but danger and inconvenience.”

“She's not going to believe I suddenly changed my mind.”

“Tell her you were bragging about being disrespectful to her in front of La Monte. And he chastised you about the deference that must be shown to one's mother, and a lady. You came to realize that you were behaving childishly.”

He quirked an eyebrow at that. “It's awfully weak, Lee.”

“Aye. It is. A good thing, then, that we are dealing with a person who shows a tendency to believe in whatever she wants to believe, regardless of how unrealistic it is. This is exactly what she wants to hear, Taro. Are you going to tell me she won't grab onto it with both hands?”

He didn't say anything to that. He couldn't deny it.

“The first day, you go to her and apologize. Not con-tritely. Not with any emotional fervor. Merely tell her you recognize that you have been behaving inappropriately, and it will not happen again. Use me, if you like. You could say after she left I started slagging her, and that made you angry. The second day you start complaining about being a Source in High Scape. The rigid schedule, the constant demands on your attention. And having to watch me all the time is a serious inconvenience. At least if you were a duke, you could hire someone to watch me. The third day you admit that she was right and you're feeling guilty for neglecting your family duty. Say you had a fight with one of your lovers, someone you'd been serious about but who wouldn't marry you because you were nothing but a feckless Source and she wanted a normal man with a normal life. The fourth day, you ask her for the password, so you can race back to Flown Raven and tell the family solicitor and attend Lord Yellows' ball as the Duke of Westsea.”

“And then what? Because I know you aren't suggesting I actually go to Flown Raven. You would never suggest that.” His tone plainly told me that I'd better not ever suggest that.

“You send it to your cousin. Tell her to race to the solicitor and get the title, and send you word when it's done, so you can somehow let it be known to the Prince that the title has been passed. Discreetly, and before he's made any moves about it himself.”

“Send the code through the
mail
?”

I couldn't help smirking at that. “How much do you care that the code might fall into the wrong hands?” And a ditch digger becomes the next Duke of Westsea. It would serve his mother right.

He sighed, and I felt some of the tension drain out of him. “It's going to be hard.”

“I know. But being honest isn't protecting you. Your mother won't let it. You have to move fast and I can't think of any other way to do this.”

“Me, neither,” he admitted.

“So you'll have to lie.”

“Aye,” he said wearily. “Won't be the first time.”

“And you'll be able to stay here. With people who care about you. And not just because you're so pretty.”

He snickered. Then he groaned. “This is going to be awful.”

“Poor boy,” I said. And this time I meant it.

Chapter Nineteen

It was a nice gown, especially considering it was a rush job. Tailor Dagong had not been at all pleased to take me on, and was downright temperamental about putting my gown before her other orders. Not that I could blame her. I had no doubt that customers were hellish to deal with, just in general. Ask them to wait even longer than they'd planned for a product and it could only get worse. I was afraid she would make the dress too tight, or make the seams rough, or enact some other form of subtle revenge that I probably wouldn't notice until after I'd been wearing the gown an hour or two. But so far so good. Too much pride in her profession, perhaps, to indulge in such petty punishment.

The gown was well-made, a simple cut that suited my frame as much as any garment could, the sleeves less narrow than the fashion to de-emphasize my too-broad shoulders and a less severe waistline that obscured the fact that my figure was other than hourglass. It was royal blue, as opposed to my usual dark green. It made my hair look really red.

The white braid on my left shoulder was a glaring accent that ruined the whole look, as far as I was concerned. Too bad I couldn't wear white sometimes.

I was not looking forward to this evening. It was not going to be fun. Aristocrats had no use for slip collectors. Being a Shield didn't really increase my value in their eyes. And the only people I'd know would be Karish and his mother. Loved him, wanted to kill her. Balanced, eh? Then there was the Prince. I didn't want to deal with royalty. That sort was barely human.

“I don't want to be late, Lee,” Karish called in from my living room.

“We won't be late.”

“There'll be a whole line of carriages. It'll take us ages just to get to the front door.”

“So we won't be any later than anyone else.” What was his rush? Wasn't there a certain cache to being late?

“Come on, Lee. You look gorgeous.”

Liar. He hadn't even seen me yet. But I supposed there wasn't any point in stalling any longer. Deep breath in and I went out into the living room. Karish stopped pacing at my entrance.

He looked stunning, of course. A long sleek doublet of dark blue—an unfortunate coincidence—that framed his slim shoulders and lean waist. The high stiff collar was completely buttoned, and I wondered when he'd gotten so modest in his dress. The doublet was decorated with subtle black brocade that blended perfectly with the braid on his left shoulder. Why did Sources get the black, while Shields were stuck with the white? There was so much more that could be done with black.

I didn't like the outfit, though, for all its beauty. It made him look unreachable and hard and rigid. Not like him.

A carriage was waiting for us. The driver wasn't too impressed with the delay, especially as she wasn't going to be getting paid. People were still tense, and still resented us. The weather had tilted in turns from hot to cold, from humid to blasting rain, with only the odd day of reasonable weather sprinkled here and there. The loss of lives and livelihoods continued.

But it really wasn't our fault. Or I hoped it wasn't. I really hoped my experiments weren't just making a bad situation worse.

“So how are you going to handle it?” I asked Karish once the carriage was moving.

“I'm still not sure,” he admitted. “The Prince has no reason to love me. Merely bringing the subject up could be interpreted as pursuing the title, if someone wanted to look at things that way.”

“You can't afford to wait too long,” I warned him. “He'll hate you if he asks the Empress about this and learns the title has already passed. He'll think you made a fool out of him.”

“I know that,” he said sharply. “Give me time. I only found out myself yesterday.”

He had gotten a letter from his cousin, confirming that she had used the code and officially received the title from the solicitor. “When will you tell your mother?” I bit back a grin. I wanted to be there when he told her. Even though I knew it wouldn't be as fun as I found myself imagining it would be. The Dowager would probably just deny the reality of it. Order Karish to go back to the new Duchess of Westsea—what was her name again?—and try to wrest the title back from her. Or she might ask the Prince to interfere again. On the other hand the impossible might happen and she might actually accept that her will had been permanently foiled. And that, I wanted to see.

“I don't think I'll tell her at all,” he said. “I think I'll let it be an unpleasant surprise. Let some gossipy hag drip insincere sympathy all over her, condoling with her about her wastrel son's idiocy, and Her Grace will have to actually ask someone what the hell is going on.” He chuckled, a brittle flat sound. “Or better yet, she'll nag at the Prince for not acting on his promise, and he'll get to tell her. Oh, I would like to watch that.”

That didn't seem like a good idea to me. I mean, yes, there was a certain vengeful appeal about it, but that sort of petty behavior tended to blow up in a person's face. “Are you sure that's how you want to handle it?”

“Yes.” He drew out the
s
sound. “This is all her fault, interfering in things that don't concern her. This will teach her to leave me alone.”

He was tense beside me, and I decided to drop it. Perhaps he was right. Maybe that sort of social humiliation was what it would take to keep the Dowager out of his life. And, coincidentally, out of mine. I might not like the means but I would certainly appreciate the ends.

As the carriage drew up to the long driveway to Lord Yellows' manor, I began noticing mounted Runners trotting up and down the street. They weren't being particularly discreet, but maybe that was just me. I'd known they were going to be there and why they were there. Maybe no one else noticed them, or thought their presence was standard procedure. Karish didn't comment on them.

The huge crush Karish had predicted did not materialize. We had to wait only a few moments in front of the large manor of Lord Yellows as the carriage before ours disgorged its passengers. Karish helped me down to the sidewalk—such a gentleman—and we started our climb up the obligatory long staircase.

I had never been to Lord Yellows' manor before. It looked much like I would expect a manor to look. One of those huge stone monsters that weren't practical in a region subject to earthquakes. Lots of windows that were no doubt a nightmare to keep clean. Probably hard to heat in the winter. But very pretty.

I wouldn't want to live in it. Even with a horde of servants to take care of it.

I wondered whether the manor at Flown Raven looked like it. If it were bigger. It was probably bigger. The title of Westsea was apparently a powerful and wealthy one. Fortunately, I was unlikely to have to find out for myself.

“It's not too late to back out, is it?” I muttered to Karish.

“Hush.” He squeezed my hand.

A servant met us at the door. I was momentarily distracted by his livery which was, frankly, weird. “While the shirt, vest and trousers were normal enough, on his head he was wearing some kind of wimple, worn low over his eyebrows and draping over his ears.

He relieved us of our wraps and escorted us down a long, wide corridor. I tried to be discreet as I examined the portraits and hangings and furniture. I didn't want to look too much like a rube among all these High Landed and their servants.

I didn't like it. Too many things fighting for attention, pictures on the walls and knickknacks covering every flat surface. So busy with stuff I wanted to close my eyes to give them a rest. And probably no fun at all to keep dusted.