Moira J. Moore - Heroes at Risk Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Praise for the novels of Moira J. Moore

  Heroes Adrift

  “A lovely installment in a consistently entertaining series.”

  —Locus

  “Good entertainment in the romantic fantasy subgenre . . . Heroes Adrift is well paced, never bogging down . . . a pleasant way to spend the time.”—Grasping for the Wind

  Resenting the Hero

  “This incredible romantic fantasy will appeal equally to fans of both genres. The sexual tension between the two protagonists is so strong that readers will feel sparks fly off the pages.”—The Best Reviews

  “An enchanting fantasy that introduces two interesting and complex protagonists and a fascinating world . . . The tale has everything—magic, mayhem, a hint of romance and a thread of wry humor.”—Romance Reviews Today

  “[A] fast-paced plot . . . The various threads come together in a satisfying way.”—SFRevu

  “A wry twist on classic fantasy . . . Resenting the Hero is a funny book with occasional dramatic spans . . . a good choice for a rainy afternoon.”—Infinity Plus

  “An entertaining read . . . sure to be a hit with romance as well as fantasy readers.”—Fresh Fiction

  Ace titles by Moira J. Moore

  RESENTING THE HERO

  THE HERO STRIKES BACK

  HEROES ADRIFT

  HEROES AT RISK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  HEROES AT RISK

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / September 2009

  Copyright © 2009 by Moira J. Moore.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

  without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in

  violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-13830-4

  ACE

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Seán and Cate, who surprised me

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my mother, who is my most dedicated PR agent, to Jack Byrne, my agent, and to Anne Sowards, my editor.

  Chapter One

  The residence of the Source and Shield Service was unimpressive in appearance, a plain, large square of a building. Simple in style, drab in material, anyone would look right past it. It was boring and forgettable.

  But to me, it was beautiful. I had been away from it for over a year. I couldn’t wait to get settled back within it. And it seemed to me that the carriage we had rented was taking its own sweet time to draw up before the building and come to a complete stop. Once it had, Taro and I leapt out with our bags, and I thought about kissing the ground.

  “All we need are fires!” Taro announced as he kicked open the front door to the residence.

  I looked at him and couldn’t help grinning. He was healthy and relaxed, his black eyes practically glowing, his black hair mussed by a hard day of travel. It was good to see him finally back to himself. While he had been steadily improving in body and disposition since we’d returned to the mainland a few months earlier, I realized just then that he still hadn’t regained his usual buoyancy. Not until we’d gotten home.

  “Aye, we certainly do.” I, of course, had no idea what his words meant. Shintaro Karish was, in many ways, the most stereotypical Source I’d ever met, which meant that at times he was compelled to make incomprehensible statements. I was a Shield, the fairly average Dunleavy Mallorough, which meant I was very sensible, and knew when not to bother twisting my brain trying to figure out the meaning of my Source’s words.

  Besides, all I needed to know right then was that his words were expressing his joy in being home. A joy I shared. The Triple S residence in High Scape and the Shield Academy in Shidonee’s Gap were the only homes I’d ever known. Well, the only ones I remembered. I had spent seventeen years in the Academy, and then had been sent straight to High Scape. In the three years that my official address had been the Triple S residence of High Scape, I’d spent more time away from it than in it. Still, it felt like a proper home, a place I belonged, and a place I had the right to bar others from entering. That was all a home was, really.

  “It’s probably too much to expect that any of the others are in,” Taro commented, and he carried both of our bags into the foyer.

  He wouldn’t let me carry my own bag, unless I wanted to get into an argument over it, which I rarely did. Sometimes I just grabbed my bag and we got into a tugging match, which made me feel ridiculous, so I would let go. Taro, of course, didn’t look ridicu
lous. Just patient and lordly. He was good at that, damn him.

  Seven Pairs were needed to keep High Scape stable. It was one of the hottest sites in the world, constantly barraged with earthquakes and tornadoes and other natural events that would normally tear down the buildings, bury the crops, and decimate the population. Sources were born with the ability to channel the power of these natural disasters and keep the land stable. Shields were born with the ability to make sure Sources weren’t killed by the forces that swirled through and around them.

  I was a Shield; Taro was my Source. All we were supposed to do was keep High Scape calm. But when Taro had been abducted by Stevan Creol, I’d found myself playing amateur Runner trying to find him, with an incompetence that made me cringe every time I thought of it. Stevan Creol had been a Source with a lot of anger he didn’t keep nearly repressed enough. He had been taught how to prevent disasters while in the Source Academy, just like every other Source, but once he was released from the Academy he discovered how to create natural disasters, something no one had ever thought of doing, because why would they? He had been using that perversion of a skill to try to destroy High Scape as a means of expressing his frustration with his lot in life. During his captivity, Taro had picked up the same skill, because Creol had liked to show off and Taro has eyes. It turned out to be a handy talent, one Taro had already used more times than I liked.

  I was the one who had figured out how to kill Creol while he was attacking High Scape. I did it by manipulating his Shields while he channeled. Words couldn’t describe how very uncomfortable I was with that. I didn’t know whether the fact that no one other than Taro knew about it made me feel better or worse. I had no desire to admit to my actions and face the consequences. We wouldn’t be executed or placed in prison—Pairs were considered too valuable to be unrecoverably destroyed—but we could be sent to a cold site for the rest of our lives, where no one needed or respected our talents. It would be a waste, and it would be hell.

  Yet shouldn’t I be punished for killing someone? How could something like that just pass away, like it had never happened? Was there anything I could do to make up for that?

  I thought about it a lot. Good ideas never came to me.

  After that mess, we had very little time in High Scape before Empress Constia, unhappy with the quality of her son and heir, had sent Taro and me to the remote southern island of Flatwell to search for the descendants of her exiled sister. It was Taro who was wanted for the job, for my illustrious Source had first managed to catch Her Majesty’s eye and then earn her trust. I was just dragged along to make travel more comfortable for Taro, whatever that was supposed to mean.

  I was fully justified in resenting the Empress for this folly. We were a Pair, and we had responsibilities. To pull us off our roster for personal use was an abuse of her position. I didn’t care why she had felt Taro was the only person she could trust with such a delicate task. She had unlimited wealth and ultimate power; she could have sent anyone. She should have sent someone better suited to the task. She could have paid them enough that they would have done the job and kept her secrets.

  What made the whole situation even worse was that the one descendant we found, Aryne, was not to the royal taste. Not properly educated, Her Majesty declared, and lacking that certain quality that every ruler needed. Apparently, being clever and resilient didn’t mean much.

  Fortunately, we hadn’t told Aryne she had the potential to be the future ruler of our world. Even more fortunately, she was a Source. So she’d had a place to go when her great-aunt hadn’t wanted her. The Source Academy.

  That was one good thing that had come out of that ridiculous trip. Aryne had gotten out of a situation of ignorance and abuse, and was on her way to a much better life. Provided she hadn’t run away from the Academy yet.

  Now we were finally home. Perhaps, after disappointing just about everyone who had ever expected more from us, we would be left alone to do what we were supposed to do. Be a Pair. Channel and Shield.

  Please.

  “Do you think our rooms are still ours?” Taro asked.

  “Why wouldn’t they be?”

  “They might have brought in another Pair to replace us.”

  I stared at him, shocked. I had never thought of that. “They wouldn’t do that.”

  “We’ve been gone a long time, Lee,” he said. “And we’ve been gone a lot. A volatile place like High Scape, maybe they need a Pair that’s not unreliable.”

  We weren’t unreliable. Things outside of our control kept pulling us off the roster. “They’d better not.”

  That didn’t come out quite the way I’d meant.

  Taro snickered.

  Ben Veritas stepped into the corridor from the kitchen. “Source Karish, Shield Mallorough, welcome home.” He reached out to take the bags from Taro, who eased them out of reach. Ben was a regular, neither a Shield nor a Source, of late middle age, retained by the Triple S to clean up after us and make our meals. I found him disturbing, though I wasn’t sure why. There had been people at the Academy who prepared our meals and cleaned up after us, usually Shields who had been through the Matching ceremonies for decades and hadn’t managed to bond to a Source. They hadn’t disturbed me at all. There was just something in Ben’s manner, like he was watching us more closely than he should. “You should have sent word ahead of your arrival. I would have had a hot meal ready for you.”

  “Optimism is despised by nature,” said Taro. “Besides, we’re going out to eat.”

  “We are?” I asked. It was the first I’d heard of it.

  “We have to celebrate our return. Delicacies excellently prepared and accompanied by chilled goblets of the best wine. Brought to you on trays carried by handsome young men and women. Sometimes there’s music.”

  I was starving. And one of the good things about eating in a tavern was the variety of possible dishes. I wasn’t sure I wanted to just sit at home, tired though I was. I wanted to really soak in High Scape again, walk down the streets, hear the familiar accents and turns of phrase, really feel that I was back. I’d missed it.

  “I thought I heard you two.” Source Kyna Riley came clomping down the stairs. “Shintaro, Dunleavy, welcome home.”

  “Kyna!” Taro crowed, dropping our bags and throwing his arms open and hugging Riley whether she liked it or not. Fortunately, Riley remembered Taro’s exuberance, and she accepted the embrace with only a roll of her eyes. “Tell me all the exciting things that have happened while we were gone.”

  Ben silently picked up our bags and carried them upstairs.

  “How can anything exciting happen in your absence, Shintaro?” she asked, and there was the slightest bitter edge in her tone that informed me that all was not calm on her sea.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Giles and I have been transferred to Ice Ridge.”

  “Ice Ridge,” I echoed. That had been a cold site, the last time I’d looked.

  “A volcano erupted a few months ago and has been giving off little spurts ever since.”

  “And they’re just sending a Pair now?” I used to have high respect for the Triple S council. I now found myself becoming distressingly disenchanted. It wasn’t my fault. They kept indulging in behavior that smacked of ludicrous incompetence.

  Riley shrugged. “Ice Ridge isn’t important to anyone.”

  Which may have been the cause of her bitterness. A transfer from High Scape to Ice Ridge was taking a big step down in prestige.

  “They have the best oranges!” Taro protested.

  They did, actually. “Was anyone hurt?” I asked.

  “No lives lost, but a lot of structural damage, and they can’t rebuild with the ongoing events.”

  I wondered why we hadn’t heard of this during our travels from Erstwhile. I would have thought that was the kind of news that would get around.

  “We’re not the only ones being transferred,” Riley added. “Vera and Lauren left for Blue Rock a few weeks ago.�
��

  This was disappointing. Triple S Pairs never stayed in one place for too long, but assignments usually lasted at least a few years. “Do you know who’s coming to replace them?”

  “No one,” said Riley, “as far as I know.”

  “Why not?”

  “High Scape’s been a lot calmer for the last year. Not quite cold, but, I don’t know, it might be on its way there. I haven’t channeled in weeks. So we don’t need as many Pairs.”

  High Scape was known for its frequent turbulence. The population practically prided themselves on it. Certainly, hot spots and cold sites could switch designations, but usually it took decades. What could have caused such an abrupt change? Creol couldn’t have been responsible for all of the natural events in High Scape before his death. And I refused to believe that the half year the Reanists had spent sacrificing aristocrats to their gods had actually accomplished the stability they had claimed to seek. That was just ridiculous. “Do you know how many Pairs are going to be transferred?”

  “Not yet.”

  And if they had to send Pairs away, why couldn’t they send the annoying ones? Like Beatrice and Benedict? Or Wilberforce and Ladin?

  I couldn’t help feeling oddly deflated. I’d had an image of what to expect from home. And that had included all the Pairs. Even the ones I didn’t like. I hated change.

  Riley was looking at me with an expression of puzzlement. “Are you all right, Dunleavy?”

  “Of course.”

  “You look different.”

  That was probably the remnants of the southern sun. While I never got as brown as Taro, I’d turned a kind of golden beige. It made my hair even more blazingly red than usual, too. Those effects had faded a great deal during our journey home, but there was still a hint of additional color here and there. However, Riley wasn’t supposed to know where we’d gone, so I couldn’t tell her any of that. “Oh,” I said, because I was a witty person.