Chapter Twenty-eight
Several days later, Taro had gone in search of chocolate, having eaten all of mine. He was pale and complained of a piercing headache. He was also impatient and restless and seemed unable to remain in the residence. So he left. To find chocolate.
After several hours, he still hadn’t returned. And now I was the one who was impatient and restless.
He was late, but that meant nothing, I was sure. He had met up with some friends, that was all. He was having a few drinks at a tavern. He had been dancing attendance on me for a while, and then had been laid low with a headache that had taxed him ever since he collapsed from wrenching himself out of a channeling. Of course he needed some time away.
But he had left late in the morning, and now the sun was setting. I was starting to worry.
As I wouldn’t have, had we not been sleeping together. Did that mean I had been a heartless, thoughtless wench before, or that I was a nagging, paranoid wench now?
Really, it only made sense that he was lengthening the leash a little. I slept like the dead for long hours at a stretch. When I was awake, I was usually no good for anything more than dragging my sorry posterior from the bed to a chair in the kitchen to a settee in the parlor. I was pretty much confined to the residence.
Maybe that was why I was so restless about Taro. I wasn’t worried about him; I envied him. Maybe it was time I ventured out a little, put some muscles back on my legs.
Or maybe not. Just because he said he loved me didn’t mean he wanted to spend every waking moment with me. It would be so humiliating if I were to show up and all he felt was exasperation because I would never leave him alone. I would hate to turn into a clinging weed, wrapping around everything in his life.
This was why it was so bad to fall in love. It turned a person into an idiot.
I was in the kitchen brewing coffee—doing it myself as Ben had not yet returned, and no, that didn’t prove anything—when I felt Taro’s protections lowering. I raised my Shields, of course—I would never do otherwise—but I was furious. He was getting way too cocky with his off-duty channeling, and we’d be having a nice little argument about that when I saw him next.
I quickly realized, however, that Taro wasn’t channeling an event that was not in our jurisdiction, or attempting to soothe pain or heal an injury. He was creating an event. He only did that when something was wrong.
I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea what kind of difficulty Taro might be in. He might be merely trying to stop someone else from doing something he considered wrong, or he might be in danger. The mere possibility that he might be in jeopardy meant I had to try to find him.
Only there was no way I could channel and search for Taro simultaneously, not properly. I needed help. Risa would have been my first choice, but I didn’t know where to find her. I couldn’t go out and find her while channeling, either.
I would need to get help from someone in the house. I hated that idea. I would have to ask for a favor from one of my colleagues. Worse, I would have to tell someone how I knew Taro was in trouble. We didn’t want people to know he could create disasters. Telling another member of the Triple S would all too likely lead to questions from the Triple S council, something Taro was desperate to avoid.
But it couldn’t be avoided. I needed help. So whom should I ask?
The name that first leapt to mind surprised me. Moving as carefully as I could while Shielding, I left the parlor and checked the kitchen and the private dining room before heading up the stairs to LaMonte’s suite.
Taro was still channeling. What was going on with him? It was difficult, holding up the Shields so long while climbing up stairs.
I didn’t know what I was going to do if LaMonte wasn’t in. Panic, I supposed.
I pounded on LaMonte’s door. I was so relieved when it opened that I almost couldn’t breathe for a moment. I couldn’t see his expression all that well—I wasn’t really able to focus on that kind of detail—but he was probably annoyed at being interrupted. I didn’t care.
“Taro’s in trouble,” I blurted out.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
He probably still looked annoyed.
“Are you Shielding right now?”
“Aye.”
“Come in.” He took me by the elbow, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on a settee.
LaMonte surprised me by kneeling before me as opposed to sitting beside me. “What’s happening?”
“Taro is in trouble. I need to find him.” Why was he making me repeat myself?
“Taro is channeling right now?”
“Aye.”
“You’re not on duty. Why is he channeling?”
“I don’t know. Can you find him?”
“How would I be able to find him?”
“You can feel where the event is.” He would have felt the event, like all the other Sources in High Scape, but would have ignored it as he wasn’t on duty. Apparently, only my Source felt the need to channel absolutely everything.
“I can’t determine its exact location.”
Oh, how disappointing. Now what was I going to do?
“Derek might be able to, depending on the nature of the event. He has a knack that way.”
Oh, thank gods. Where was Beatrice?
“But why would that information assist you?”
“Does it really matter?”
“If you’re going to ask me to do something unorthodox, yes, it does.”
I supposed that was fair. Annoying, but fair. “That’s where Taro will be.”
“And you know this how?”
“He’s creating the event. It means he’s in trouble.”
And that was when I learned that LaMonte was truly a beautiful person. He didn’t imply I was lying. He didn’t demand to know how Taro could possibly create an event. He merely said, “Wait here. I’ll find Derek. Oh.” He paused before leaving. “Never tell anyone else what you just told me.”
Later, I would need to think more carefully on his words.
Then I had to wait while LaMonte tracked down Beatrice, convinced him we weren’t crazy and brought him back. The whole time, Taro was channeling and I was Shielding. Taro was keeping all of the forces moving slowly, which meant he was causing tremors instead of a full-out earthquake. So we had some time. No one was killing him yet.
It was difficult to hold on so long. Luckily, I’d had some practice with that recently.
It was Beatrice who came back to me. “Chris is flagging down a carriage,” he told me. It was the first time in my memory that he didn’t sound at least slightly petulant. “We’re going to find Shintaro.”
Oh, thank gods. “You know where Taro is?”
“I can’t just pinpoint the location from here.”
Then what good was he?
“We’ll have to track him down. I can do that.”
I supposed it was better than nothing. It was certainly more that I could do. Would it be enough?
“Come with me. Let me guide you. I’ll see you get to Shintaro. You just concentrate on Shielding. Don’t worry about anything else.” He took my wrists and gently urged me to my feet.
It was sweet of him to suggest I just put myself in his hands that way. It wasn’t something I could do with anyone other than Taro. It wasn’t as though I thought Beatrice would do me any harm. I just didn’t know him. Which was a sad thing to admit after living in the same residence so long.
LaMonte had a carriage waiting by the time Beatrice and I reached the front door of the residence. LaMonte climbed into the carriage with me and Beatrice joined the driver up top. The carriage jolted into movement, pressing me hard against the back of my seat, the hooves of the horses clattering loudly against the surface of the street.
I couldn’t recall traveling so quickly in a carriage before.
“Get out of the way!” I heard Beatrice bellow. “Move, move, move!”
It appeared Beatrice was taking this seriously. Who would have thought?
People out in the street shouted back. Some of the words were foul.
We took a sharp corner, and I was thrown against LaMonte. We seemed to take another quick corner, and I was forced back against the wall of the carriage. I clenched my fists in an effort to hold on to my Shields.
It was only a few moments later that I realized my left hand was actually digging my nails into LaMonte’s thigh. That was embarrassing.
I could swear the next corner the carriage took, a couple of wheels left the ground.
“Don’t kill us before we get there!” LaMonte shouted.
“Are we in a hurry or not?”
“All right, then, how about you try not to kill anyone else?”
Another sharp swerve had me tumbling to the floor.
“Don’t let go of Shintaro,” LaMonte ordered. “Maybe you should stay down there.”
That actually seemed like a good idea, what little thought I could spare to it. So I stayed on the dirty floor.
There were more curves and corners and people swearing at us. Then, finally, we began to slow down.
“We’re entering the riverfront district,” LaMonte commented shortly thereafter.
Huh. There was a reason that was significant. I couldn’t recall it right then.
The carriage slowed down. “Can you see him?” I asked LaMonte, meaning Taro.
“No. We’re not stopping. I believe we’re slowing down because Derek has narrowed the search to a particular area. He has to slow down to determine Shintaro’s exact location.”
I really hadn’t heard much past the word “no.” I hated that we had slowed down, even if that meant no longer getting thrown about the carriage. We had already taken too long.
And then the forces flowing through Taro intensified. “Something’s happening,” I hissed at LaMonte. “We have to go faster.”
“He’s going as fast as he can.”
That wasn’t good enough. I pounded on the side of the carriage. “Hey!” I shouted. “You have to go faster!” I reached for the window so I could shout through it.
LaMonte grabbed me by a handful of hair and pulled me back into my seat. “Derek knows how to do this. You do not. Let him work. Your sole task is to Shield Shintaro. You can’t properly do that if you’re worrying about what everyone else is doing. Settle down.”
Bastard. Damn him for being right.
Street after street after street. And despite the fact that we were going slower, the ride was much bumpier. A couple of times I was sure we’d lost a wheel and I’d have to swallow down a spurt of panic.
Finally, we stopped. Finally. “Are we there?” Wherever there was. LaMonte was between me and the carriage door. Why wasn’t he moving? Was he really going to make me climb over him?
The door opened, and LaMonte still didn’t move. Beatrice was standing in the way. “There’s something strange going on,” he announced. “There’s a group, about six, I’d guess. They’ve got fires lit, and that’s never a good thing. Shintaro’s there, and I think he’s alive. I couldn’t see too well, but he seems to be tied up.”
“They’re doing this out in the open?” LaMonte asked in disbelief.
Beatrice shrugged. “They don’t seem to be worried about being seen.”
“Good,” I said, frustrated with the chatter. “So let’s go.”
“That’s a bad idea,” Beatrice objected. “We should bring the Runners here. These people obviously mean harm and they outnumber us. We could just end up tied like Shintaro.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I’m not wasting more time looking for Runners. They’ll kill him before we can get back. Or move him.” And if I had to bite and pull hair to get out of that carriage, I would.
LaMonte spared me that humiliation by saying, “I agree with Dunleavy, Derek. We should at least keep watch while you get the Runners.”
Beatrice sighed gustily. “Fine. We circled around after we spotted them so we wouldn’t be noticed. You take this street up two blocks and then you go left. Follow that street until it ends. They’re all gathered up against where the rivers meet, down by the wall. It shields them from the river traffic.”
They were at the hub.
And we were, at long last, getting out of the carriage. I let LaMonte lead me down the proper streets. The ground was shaking, but not enough to do significant damage. Taro was developing a delicate touch with that.
There were no hiding places to allow us to stand and watch. The buildings just stopped suddenly and there were no trees, just dead, flattened grass between the last rickety building and the solid stone wall that stood where the three rivers met. Moving any farther would bring us out in the open.
I didn’t care. Nor was I concerned about the lack of cover. I didn’t need to hide. I knew what Taro could do.
So I started running toward the group. That was surprisingly difficult, running while Shielding Taro, and I couldn’t run as fast as I normally could.
“Dunleavy!” LaMonte hissed in horror.
I ignored him. He’d have to run and tackle me if he wanted to stop me, and that would get everyone’s attention as easily as anything else.
I didn’t want to take the chance he’d try, though. “We’re here, Taro!” I shouted. “Bury ’em!” I could barely see him, between the thickening darkness and my focus on my Shielding, but there was his form huddled against the wall.
The forces grew stronger, just for a few moments. There were varying shouts of alarm. But there were also people running around. Whatever Taro was doing, he wasn’t burying people. That was something he had done before, and it was the easiest way, I thought, of dealing with these people. But maybe he couldn’t bury more than one at a time.
I was hit from behind and struck the ground with a painful pounding. That hurt a hell of a lot, and I got a mouthful of dirt out of it. The weight was heavy on my back. I kicked out and connected with nothing.
“Stop channeling,” I called out. I couldn’t think while I was Shielding.
The tremors stopped.
That seemed to surprise the person on top of me, who gasped. I pushed at him, and his shock enabled me to wiggle out from under him. He grabbed at my legs and I kicked him in the face. I thought I heard a crunch.
I scrambled free, but I was merely tackled again, by two people. And when we were all on the ground, I heard a voice say, “How fortunate. You were the one we wanted anyway.”
That made no sense.
The two pulled me to my feet and then dragged me to the wall next to Taro. And then I saw the problem. Taro was blindfolded. He couldn’t see to bury people.
I had little strength left, but I saw a rope in someone’s grip. I kicked and I scratched and I bit, and I was able to reach out and pull the cloth from Taro’s eyes.
His protections went down, my Shields went up, and the ground began to heave, sharply. Everyone fell, and that was all Taro needed to sink each person far enough into the ground that they couldn’t easily escape.
“What the hell was that?”
Heh. We made LaMonte swear.
Six people. Three men, three women. One of them was Ben Veritas.
He really had been trying to kill me.
There were two bonfires going. A table had been knocked over, dumping books and rods and bowls of powder on the ground. Taro was naked except for the ropes that bound him. That wasn’t as shocking as the bruises on his face and body. Had he acquired those in the course of his abduction or after his capture?
I thought about suggesting he bury his captors all the way.
Then LaMonte was beside us, and apparently he was one of those people who was always prepared, because he was draping a cloak over Taro’s lower half while I worked on the bloodied ropes binding his wrists.
“They wanted to kill me for my ashes,” he said. “You were the preferred target, and when that didn’t work they went after me.”
How could they be so stupid as to try to murder a Pair? Was the alleged power they received from the ashes supposed to prevent them from getting caught? Had that worked for anyone yet? My attack could be explained away as a freak illness, maybe, but how could they disguise this much more blunt assault?
I looked at Ben, who was sunk to the ground up to his knees. He appeared to be wearing some kind of robelike garment of a deep blue. I would have expected him to be angry, glaring at us and shouting. At the very least, he should be trying to free himself as his collaborators were, digging up the soil with fingernails. Instead, he stared down at the ground silently, his shoulders hunched, sort of collapsing in on himself. He seemed pale. I noticed he was trembling.
“It was for my daughter,” he said suddenly. “For Sara. She is going to trial. She is going to be hanged.”
Only if she was found guilty. And how the hell were our ashes going to influence that? Was there honestly some spell out there that could determine the outcome of a trial?
“Are you claiming she didn’t kill the mayor?” Taro demanded.
“What difference does that make?” Ben demanded in return with a flash of heated anger. “She’s nothing but a servant. She has no money and no one to speak for her.”
In another flash, the anger disappeared, and to my horror, Ben started crying. Loud, hacking sobs that had to hurt. It was painful to watch. It was difficult to believe that he was acting purely to garner our sympathy.
“It’s not right,” he blubbered. “You have everything, easy lives and food and clothes and everything you ever wanted, just because you’re born what you are. You don’t even have to work, if you don’t want to. And you’re not even needed here. High Scape’s gone cold and isn’t getting any more events. You’ve all said it. So where’s the harm?”
“For gods’ sake, man, shut up!” one of the women hissed. Ben didn’t even glance at her.
Where’s the harm? Was he crazy? “So you used me to get to Taro.”
Gasping, Ben raised wet eyes to me. “I didn’t need Source Karish,” he said. “His death would merely be an unfortunate consequence of yours.”
“I thought you needed the ashes from someone lucky.”
“A woman of no birth, beauty or exceptional talent,” he said, “Paired with a highly skilled, noble Source. Who is more fortunate than you?”
It was unfathomable that a man who had been trying to kill me had the power to make me feel insulted.
It wasn’t that what he said didn’t make sense. I was the lucky one, wasn’t I? Maybe not for the reasons so many people thought. Family connections didn’t matter to me. I didn’t care what family Taro came from. In fact, I could really do without his mother, and I thought he could, too. And while I admired his abilities, I didn’t think skill in anything made anyone a superior or inferior person. But he was a good man. He was someone I could trust and rely on and feel comfortable with. And those were the qualities that made him a superior Source, partner, friend and lover.
So maybe I should just appreciate all that, instead of worrying about the fact that I didn’t deserve it. So I didn’t deserve it. I was lucky. There were worse things.
It was made clear to me how very stupid I’d been by believing in Ben’s innocence for so long. But Ben had worked for the Triple S for decades. He had always treated me so kindly. So what if he’d made me uncomfortable? That had just been my own foolishness. So what if his daughter was suspected of murder? Why did that mean I was supposed to suspect him, too? There was no sense in that.
Every time I’d assumed the worst of someone, I’d been embarrassingly wrong. And a lot of times when I’d trusted someone from the start, I’d been dangerously wrong. There was just no winning. Understanding people should have been part of the formal curriculum at the Academy.
People had planned to kill me before, and I’d never imagined having to say that about myself. But with Ben it felt so much worse than the others. Because we lived in the same house, and he acted like he thought well of me. Really, what was wrong with me that people were prepared to do such things to me?
LaMonte called out when he saw the Runners approaching, and Taro unearthed all the crazy people. They immediately began gathering up all their casting gadgetry in the hopes of running away. All except Ben, who sat on the ground and stared into space. There were a solid twelve Runners galloping through the shoddy streets, because Taro had always been considered an important person. Ben’s group was easily rounded up.
They claimed they had been buried by Taro. Taro claimed he saw them all snorting something. Taro was believed.
We took Taro home, where he was pampered and spoiled. Everyone was outraged that a man of criminal tendencies had been living among us, going so far as to attack two of us. The fact that no one else had suspected Ben didn’t make my oblivion any easier to accept. Would I ever reach a point where I could see what was right in front of my face?