Chapter Twenty-two
“Where do you and Source Karish go so long at night?” Ben asked me as I enjoyed tea and a huge chunk of fresh bread. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that, Ben.” I had slept late that day after another fruitless wait at the hub. We weren’t telling anyone what we were doing, mostly because they would think we were insane.
“I suppose I shouldn’t have asked.”
“There’s nothing wrong with curiosity.” But his curiosity made me uncomfortable, so I searched for a change of subject. “This bread is incredible. I don’t think you’ve made it before.” It was heavy and dark and rich with nuts.
“I don’t make it often. It is a laborious recipe.”
“Oh.” I felt guilty about the fact that I was on my third piece. I was always so hungry after a night at the hub, and the bread had been the only readily available thing to eat.
Ben smiled. “I made it to be eaten, Shield. Please have as much as you like.”
I watched Ben clean up some of the crumbs I had spilled on the counter. I wanted to tell him to stop. I could clean up my own crumbs. “How is Sara, Ben?”
He stilled for a moment, but quickly resumed his wiping. “She is hopeful that she will be vindicated at the trial.”
“Has new evidence come to light?”
“She isn’t telling me much about it. She’s afraid what might happen if the information got into the wrong hands.”
“I see. I understand.” I didn’t really, as I didn’t know what kind of information and whose were the wrong hands, but he clearly didn’t want to talk about it, and I could respect that.
“But you’re kind to ask.”
“No, not at all.” But I was very uncomfortable. I shoved another piece of bread into my mouth.
I went back up to my room to read the last of the spell books. I would be getting rid of them soon. I didn’t like how obsessed people were getting with the idea of casting. While I really didn’t think I’d be punished for having the books, I couldn’t help feeling leery about the sheer lack of logic people were displaying about spells, and I didn’t want to get caught up in anything crazy. So the books would be gone.
After I read them. Because some of them were entertaining. In fact, some of them were hysterical. There were points where I wondered if the writer was insane. Or had been smoking something creative.
There was just so much about the practice of casting that was ridiculous. Wearing wool when it was hot and silk when it was cold. Honey gathered under a full moon—neat trick, that—or blood gathered from a sheep slaughtered at the mark of noon. Powerful locations included the peak of a mountain, the crossing of two or more rivers and the east end of a ravine. Some spells needed a particular timbre of voice, soprano or alto or tenor or bass. And the tools needed, all made out of materials that, if not expensive, needed to be constructed in ridiculously complex fashions.
Seriously, who had the money to cast spells? Who had the time?
But aye, an entertaining read.
Then Ben knocked on my door, telling me Doran had come to see me.
Damn it, I hadn’t seen Doran since before he’d sent me that yellow-flowered monstrosity. I had sent it back to him. I’d also sent a note telling him not to be an idiot.
I knew I needed to have it out with him, but I really didn’t want to. I just wanted him to accept the words in my messages and just go away. That was cowardly of me, but I felt Doran was being too pushy.
I didn’t want what was sure to be an unpleasant conversation overheard by everyone in the house. I asked Ben to show Doran to my sitting room, and I quickly hid the book I’d been reading in my bedroom.
“Lee, dearest, I’m so glad to finally be able to see you,” Doran said upon his entrance. He made no effort to make the emphasis on the word “finally” at all subtle.
I had to admit, there was something that irked me about the belief that a person who showed up unexpectedly should be able to see you, just because you happened to be there when they arrived. “I am very sorry,” I said, as an apology was expected. “Things have been busy here.”
“But you’re up for anything now, aren’t you?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” I didn’t know that I would ever be up for the conversation we had to have.
He grinned. “Want to go dancing?”
What was he doing? He had sent me all that stuff, and I had sent it all back. Why was he pretending nothing had changed?
He was going to make me say it. That was ungentlemanly of him. “Doran, we have to talk.”
“We are talking.”
“Doran, I’m being serious.”
He sobered. “You look a little pale.”
“I’m always pale.”
“I don’t think you should make final decisions when you’re not at your best.”
“This is a decision I’ve made. Are you really going to make me say it?”
“You don’t have to say anything. I understand what’s going on. Shintaro is handsome and a Source and he’s full of flair. But he’s not the sort to last. And if I have to wait, I will.”
“You can’t mean that.” No man with any pride would.
“Don’t tell me what I feel.”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t mean you’re prepared to wait until Taro’s done with me and you’re going to step in. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t think of you in such base terms, but yes, I’m prepared to wait.”
This was unbelievable. There was no way I could inspire such insanity in a man. What was I supposed to say to this?
There was a knock on the door. “Lee?”
Ah, hell, Taro. What was the best thing to do? I wanted to get this conversation out of the way before I talked to Taro. On the other hand, had Ben told Taro Doran was there? “I can’t talk to you right now, Taro.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m here,” Doran answered.
Taro, of course, charged in. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“You’re not suggesting you have a right to control who Lee sees, are you?” Doran asked, attempting to sound innocent.
“Her name is Dunleavy!” Taro snapped back. “And if you had any honor, you would have taken the hints she’s given to you to leave her alone.”
“And yet, she agreed to see me today.”
Only because he’d left me no choice.
“Lee has manners. You apparently have no sense of what’s proper.”
“What do you know about what’s proper?” Doran scoffed.
“I know you come sniffing around like a vagrant hoping for a spare crumb instead of declaring your true intentions as an honorable gentleman would.”
I couldn’t quite figure out whom Taro was insulting more with that simile, Doran or me. And hadn’t that yellow-flower monstrosity been all about declaring unwanted intentions?
Doran was laughing with disbelief. “You’re not seriously expecting me to announce a challenge.”
A challenge?
“Not at all. Such requires a certain elevation of character that you clearly lack.”
Doran flushed. “You are hardly in a position to criticize someone else’s character.”
“And you are? Who are you? What do you do? Spend all your days playing and gambling while your mother and your sisters handle all of your responsibilities. You do nothing for anyone else. Just another useless lordling whose existence is irrelevant.”
Doran emitted another false laugh. “You mean what you would have been, if you hadn’t been born a Source?”
Ouch. That was a telling blow. Because it was true. I adored Taro, and he took his responsibilities as a Source seriously, but I had a hard time believing that if those responsibilities hadn’t been imposed upon him by an accident of birth, he would have chosen to be industrious in some other way. Would he have ever developed the gumption to break out of the seclusion in which his family had held him? Though, if he weren’t a Source, and didn’t express himself in the nonsensical manner Sources sometimes employed, his parents wouldn’t have thought him mad, and probably wouldn’t have locked him in his room until he was eleven. Instead, they would have raised him to be the second son he was, with an older brother who died from his philandering, and apparently a father and a mother who had much the same habits. Would Taro have been able to fashion himself into something different? I couldn’t help but doubt it.
“And everyone knows it’s the Shield who does all the work in any Pair.” Just like that, Doran had swung from forced humor to unreasonable anger. “Shields make plans and study maps and learn about things and write reports. Sources just flit around and open themselves to whatever disasters might occur. And from what I’ve been hearing, there’s been little of that around here lately.”
“That’s not fair,” I objected, wondering how he’d heard that. The regulars should never know whether events were happening or not, not if the Pairs were doing their jobs properly. Someone had to have been telling him that, and it hadn’t been me.
“No, it’s not,” Doran agreed, taking a different meaning from my words than I’d intended. “But it is correct, isn’t it?”
“No,” I asserted, my voice weaker than I liked. All the tension in the air was giving me a headache.
“As though your opinion mattered,” Taro sneered. “What would you know of Sources and Shields? Nothing but what we choose to let you know.”
“I know you’re not lovers,” said Doran. “Or, you’re not supposed to be. That’s considered something of a perversion among your kind, isn’t it?”
Nausea erupted in my stomach. It was breathtakingly painful.
“It happens all the time,” said Taro, bending the truth a little. “And you regulars love all those romance novels and plays that drone on about the love between Source and Shield being unlike any other.”
When had Taro been reading romance novels?
“That’s fiction,” Doran jeered. “Though I can understand if the distinction eludes you. There are other sources of information, you know, books that speak of what the bond is truly like, and what it’s supposed to be, and that bringing any sexual element into it is rare, because it is so very wrong. Base. A perversion of something meant to be pure.”
“Perversion.” That word again. I wanted to object to its use, but I couldn’t spare the air to speak. Horrible cramps were developing in my stomach, and it was all I could do not to curl into a ball and moan.
“I have to admit, I’m a little disappointed that Lee would allow herself to be lured into such perversion.”
Hey! Who the hell gave him the right to be disappointed in me?
“But she can’t be blamed. She was so young when she met you.”
I wasn’t that young. Twenty-one. Most were hard at labor and parenthood long before that age.
“I can imagine how someone like you would appear to someone so sheltered and immature. The noble bloodline and the flashy looks. And no doubt she was taught to worship Sources at that school of hers.”
These words sounded so familiar. Who had said them? Or was it just a common assumption made by all who met me? Did I really appear that weak? Was I that weak?
Apparently. I was sleeping with the man, after all.
“I am confident,” Doran continued, “that exposure to someone normal will assist her in seeing how wrong her infatuation with you is, and she will end it. She is, at her core, a sensible woman.”
I was seeing something, all right. A whole new side to Doran that I really didn’t like. I didn’t understand it. I thought Doran really liked Taro. He saw him as a sort of rival, and he couldn’t be thrilled with that, but everything Doran had ever said about Taro had implied admiration and respect. Where had all this disdain been hiding?
“And you think you are the someone normal she’ll be using as a comparison?” Taro asked with an unpleasant smile. “She is interested in you only for your similarities to me, because she considers you a safer version of me.”
That was not true. The two men were hugely different. Doran was less moody, less complicated, and I could be fairly confident that with him, I wasn’t merely one among many.
“Please,” Doran sneered. “What she appreciates about me is how I am different from you. I’m stable and reliable.”
“How romantic.” Taro snickered.
“Deride it all you like, but it doesn’t change this basic, fundamental truth. You’re the sort a woman plays around with. I’m the sort she marries.”
What a pile of bull. How dare he say something like that? How dare he? And what did he know about it, anyway? And when did he turn into a bastard?
I wasn’t marrying anyone. The mere mention of marriage was stupid, and I didn’t believe for an instant that Doran was actually interested in marrying me. This was a game he was playing, only I couldn’t decipher the point of it.
Taro didn’t seem at all moved by Doran’s insult. There was no real reason why he should be, I supposed. He knew Doran was no threat to him. Yet he didn’t seem anxious to end the argument. “If you are the sort one marries, surely you have an understanding of procedure, duty and tradition.”
“I’m not going to issue a challenge over Lee,” said Doran. “It’s barbaric and stupid.”
“No more than trying to slither your way in between us without properly declaring your intentions.”
“I did declare my intentions,” said Doran. “To Lee.”
Taro looked at me, and I would have crawled under the settee to avoid his gaze if it wouldn’t have taken too much effort. “I said properly declaring your intentions.”
“To you?” Doran snorted. “Why do you keep trying to draw me into a lineage challenge? Do you think yourself at an advantage, because you’re higher born than I? From what I’ve heard, your parents kept you in a box in a cellar until they shipped you off to the Academy.”
“Get out.” The words were out of my mouth before I’d formed any intention of saying them. They were spoken too softly, though, for either man to hear me.
“You would be the sort to listen to rumor,” Taro sneered.
“No rumor,” said Doran. “Straight from a member of your own family, who was only too willing to tell me how everyone thought you a mad idiot, and that some still weren’t convinced they weren’t at least half right.”
“Get out!” This time I’d pulled in a deep breath before I spoke, the words coming out in a shout that broke the air of the genteel restraint the men had been exhibiting.
Other than silence, I couldn’t say what Taro’s reaction was. I was looking at Doran, who was watching me in shock.
“Get out now,” I ordered.
He seemed surprised by my words. How was that possible? How could he think I would just sit by and watch him denigrate my Source in such a foul manner? “Lee?”
“That’s Shield Mallorough to you. Leave.” I was infuriated when he didn’t obey. This was my room in my home.
“Lee, I know it’s appalling of us to argue in front of you, but you mustn’t overreact.”
“Get out now!” I shouted again, and the effort it took caused my stomach to crush in on itself so hard I couldn’t help a little yip of pain, pressing a hand to my stomach as I curled up on the settee.
Taro knelt on the floor beside the settee, putting a hand on my arm. The pain eased immediately, and I could breathe again. “You may leave now,” he said to Doran.
“I can help.”
“Stop being selfish,” Taro snapped back. “We will take care of her.”
“As you’ve done so well so far.”
“Get out. And send Ben up on your way out. Tell him she has a fever.”
I was aware of Doran hesitating before I closed my eyes and concentrated on trying to breathe without causing more pain. I heard the door open and close, and I assumed Doran left.
“You’re on fire,” Taro said. “I’m taking your gown off, and I’m going to put you in some cool water in the tub, all right?”
It sounded good to me, especially as, now that he’d mentioned it, my skin felt hot and blistery. Cool water sounded wonderful.
Taro unlaced my gown with light hands. I couldn’t help him, for once he’d removed his touch from my skin, the crippling pain jolted back into my stomach.
The door burst open. Ben carried in two buckets. “Why isn’t she in the tub yet?” he demanded with uncharacteristic heat. “Put her in the tub.”
Choosing not to bother with removing my chemise, Taro lifted me from the settee and carried me to my water closet, where Ben was pouring the water into the tub. Showing off his upper body strength, Taro lowered me into the tub with no apparent difficulty.
I admit it, I squeaked at the first touch of the water. “That’s freezing!”
“I assure you it’s not, Shield Mallorough. It merely feels that way, because of your fever. Please have a care of your hand. The poultice can’t get wet.”
Aye, aye, aye, the useless poultice, mustn’t get it wet. Made bathing difficult. Made everything difficult. And right then, I was pretty sure my burned hand was the least of my worries.
“No, no, no, have to get out,” I groaned.
“We need to get the fever down, Lee.”
“Going to vomit.”
The next thing I knew, Taro was propping me up and I was throwing up into a basin Ben thrust beneath my face, and it was so humiliating. Painful, too, twisted around so I could aim for the basin, my knees and ankles smacking against the sides of the tub with the force of my retching.
“You have to fetch a healer,” Taro ordered Ben. “Tell them who you work for. Tell them they’re in danger of losing a Pair.”
I thought that was overstating the case a little, but I was too busy throwing up to say so.
“Aye. Don’t let her get too cold. And make sure she drinks something.”
“Send in one of the others, if they’re about. I’m going to need some help.”
Lovely. I was going to have an audience.
Then I was throwing up again, and dignity lost its priority.