The Hero Strikes Back Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  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

  Epilogue

  With a mother like this . . .

  Karish was never meant to be the Duke. His older brother had had the title, and, from what I learned, had been thrilled to indulge in the aristocratic lifestyle, but he’d ruined everyone’s expectations by dying before marrying or having children. That left it to his mother, the Dowager Duchess, to choose the new titleholder. For some reason, she’d chosen her second son, the Source she’d been happy to send away to the Academy, the son who’d never had a moment of training in the duties of being a titleholder and a landlord, when there were several more qualified cousins clambering to take the title.

  Karish hadn’t wanted the title, for which I’d be forever grateful. He couldn’t be both a Source and a Duke, with all the Duke’s responsibilities. If he had taken the title, he wouldn’t have been able to work as a Source, which would mean he’d have no use for me. Bonded to him, I wouldn’t be able to work with any other Source. I would have been left with nothing to do.

  Karish pulled back and straightened his shoulders. “The Empress obviously misunderstands the gravity of the situation and merely needs instruction.”

  “And the fact that pursuing the title could get you hanged, what about that?”

  “That’s just the law. What is the law to her?”

  Marvelous. The blasted woman was going to get us both killed.

  Ace titles by Moira J. Moore

  RESENTING THE HERO

  THE HERO STRIKES BACK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  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.

  THE HERO STRIKES BACK

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / September 2006

  Copyright © 2006 by Moira 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.

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  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-0-441-01440-8

  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 belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Melissa Stone, keeper of my sanity

  Special thanks to

  In addition to the usual suspects . . .

  The people of O’Flynn Weese Tausendfreund LLP, for being the best group of people I could ever imagine working with, and for being so supportive of my writing.

  And Grecos, my favourite restaurant in Kingston, for letting me take over one of their tables for hours while I wrote.

  Chapter One

  I was not drunk, but I had every right to be, considering the circumstances. I was on the small side and I’d had little to eat all day. It was cold in the middle of summer. My married mother was on the other side of the room flirting with the new Captain of the Western Runners, and the too-good-looking brother of the hostess was trying to charm me. So, all in all, I deserved a drink or four, and I thought I was doing pretty well. I was still upright, my words weren’t slurred, and I hadn’t done anything to embarrass myself. Yet.

  I couldn’t work because my partner, Source Shintaro Karish, was still in Erstwhile, attending the Empress, whatever that meant. I hated not working. I hadn’t spent seventeen years of my life in an academy training to be a Shield just to sit around doing nothing. But I couldn’t work without my Source, and that was that.

  “Can I have another of these?” I asked Erin Demaris, the aforementioned brother of the hostess. I held out my glass, which until a few moments before had held the remnants of a dangerously tasty concoction involving strawberries, rum and crushed ice.

  “Certainly,” he said, taking the glass and twisting in his chair to hold it out to his sister. “Another berry frost, Risa.”

  His sister, Risa Demaris, turned from another conversation, her earrings chiming lightly as she moved. I looked at her with envy. Tall, leanly muscled, with tightly braided red hair, she enjoyed an air of power and fierce elegance. Her gorgeous brown skin glowed against her orange and gold sarong. I’d always hated the color orange, but she made it look tasteful and joyous. There was no way she could ever pass unnoticed in a crowd.

  I’d met her the previous year, when my Source had gone missing. She’d been one of the Runners assigned to find him. She hadn’t, because no one would have ever suspected a Source could be abducted away to another city by another Source. I’d found him myself, but only because I’d been deliberately led to him by one of the abductor’s followers.

  Many of the Runners I’d encountered upon our return to High Scape had seemed offended by my interference. Runners investigated crimes. Shields protected Sources while said Sources calmed earthquakes and tornadoes and all the other intense natural disasters that constantly threatened our cities. Never the two shall meet.

  Risa had invited me over for dinner. She was that sort of person.

  She glared at Erin. He grinned back at her, a wide uninhibited display of even white teeth. She snatched the glass from him. She pointed at me as she look
ed at him. “You’re lucky I like her,” she informed him before heading off to the kitchen.

  I watched him turn back around in his chair. Once upon a time blue eyes had been my preference. Not so long ago, the preference had somehow slid over to black. Erin had just the kind of dark come-drown-in-me eyes that had become so dangerous to me. Short black hair coiled close to the head, creamy brown skin, and that easy white smile. He was, I thought glumly, beautiful. He was also a good deal older than his sister, and he had the comfortable, settled confidence of the mature man. What was he doing talking to me?

  He was telling me about the law. He was a solicitor, of all things. But he wasn’t boring about it. He’d had me laughing, earlier, telling me about ludicrous obscure laws no one remembered, but for which people could still be prosecuted. Like it was illegal to hang one’s laundry outside on sevenday in Darkenwood. Or it was illegal to pretend to practice—though not to actually practice—witchcraft in Red Deer. And my personal favorite, in Gathering Place it was illegal to walk a pig on a leash on the street. Erin couldn’t tell me whether it was the pig, the leash, or the city street that was objectionable, though he did claim there were no similar restrictions on any other species of livestock.

  “So how long are you staying in High Scape?” I asked him, trying to keep him talking so I wouldn’t have to. He was a resident of Erstwhile, the Empress’ City. Where Karish was right then.

  And could I please stop thinking about Karish? Just for a moment? Please?

  Erin shrugged. “However long it takes us to patch together the Bill. There are only eighteen of us.” He rolled his eyes. “So it shouldn’t take more than a few years.”

  The Bill. Meant to create a new quota within the Imperial Council. Once it was passed, at least a third of the seats would have to be held by members of the merchant class. Or so said the rumors. Mother was very excited about it, and sometimes I suspected the real reason she was visiting me was to somehow watch the Bill being created. That or Prince Gifford’s visit, scheduled for later that summer.

  I still didn’t understand why the Bill was being drafted in High Scape instead of Erstwhile. High Scape was the economic center, but Erstwhile was the seat of political power. Then again, most of the merchants, the powerful ones, lived in High Scape. Were they actually being consulted?

  I’d heard most of the High Landers were spitting nails over the Bill. They had no interest in sharing power, or the Council’s Chambers, with merchants. The Empress was insistent on shoving it through. Her son and heir, Prince Gifford, hated the idea, and had declared his opposition so loudly that even I, generally ignorant of politics as I usually was, had heard of his views.

  Risa reappeared, a fresh drink in hand. “Here ya go, kid,” she said. “You’re lucky I like you, too. Do you have any idea how expensive ice is this year?”

  I was sure my stare was quite blank. “Expensive? Ice? It’s just frozen water.”

  Erin chuckled. “Sure, plenty of that in winter. Not so easy to come by in summer. Even one as cold as this one.”

  I looked at the drink in my hand. “Where does this come from, then?”

  Risa shrugged. “I buy it from the ice man, who delivers it in a big cube wrapped in burlap. It’s good for only a few days.”

  “And this costs money?”

  “Everything costs money, Dunleavy.”

  Well, aye, I knew that. Sources and Shields didn’t use money, as we were given free goods, services and shelter in exchange for our unpaid labor. Everyone else had to pay for things, though, and I understood the necessity of it.

  Still. Ice? Ice was something created by nature. It was like asking people to pay for air.

  And this was my third berry frost. I wish I’d known there was a cost associated with it. Because I didn’t want it anymore.

  But I didn’t dare say that. “Thank you, Risa. I really appreciate it.”

  “No worries,” she said with a wink. “Is the music all right for you?”

  I’d been too distracted to even hear the music for the past hour or so. I concentrated on the light lyrical strands floating from the flutist stuck in the far corner. “No danger of that making me go berserk,” I assured her. “Your furniture is safe. So are your guests.”

  Risa nodded, then slapped her brother on the shoulder. “Stop monopolizing her.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Do you see some kind of barricade around us?” he demanded with amusement. “Anyone is free to join us if they wish.”

  “Huh,” she said, unimpressed. Then she wandered away, her attention caught by someone else.

  “But,” Erin continued, briefly touching the back of my hand, “whether or not I’ve been monopolizing you, I have been monopolizing the conversation. So please,” he gestured at me, “What’s it like to be a Shield?”

  Ugh. I hated that question. I heard it so very often. I’d been out of the academy for a little more than a year and I was already sick of trying to describe my calling to people who couldn’t possibly understand. There were parts of it I just couldn’t explain, because I didn’t understand them myself. They just were. Other aspects were, as far as I was concerned, none of their business. But I had to tell them something.

  The upside to being asked the same question about eighty thousand times was that I had developed a nice neat answer that usually addressed every element of a regular’s curiosity. “I was born with this ability,” I said, my voice immediately dropping into the sing-song of a well-worn recital, “and my parents sent me to the academy when I was four years old. I don’t remember this happening, but I have been told it was not a traumatic experience for me. It rarely is for Shields. My family was able to visit me often and I feel I know them well.” Or as well as I could, under the circumstances. “I enjoyed my classes, mostly. I really do have a little more difficulty feeling things like pain—or the cold—than regulars, and I had to be taught how to feel them when I was a child. I am, however, extremely sensitive to the effects of music, which is why Risa is showing such care. It can make me very emotional, sometimes violent, and it is kind of Risa to invite me to a gathering like this, especially when my Source isn’t available to watch me.” I hated, really really hated, that Karish was needed to keep me under control at times. It was so humiliating. “I really am bonded to my Source, and no, that does not mean we are in love or can’t bear to be out of each other’s company.” I knew I was wasting my time there. I’d read enough novels and seen enough plays to know regulars loved romanticizing the Pair bond. Every Pair in every piece of fiction, tragedy or comedy, ended up lovers. “All it really means is that I can shield Karish better than I can any other Source.” Well, no it could sometimes mean more than that. We could make each other feel better with proximity and touch, easing aches and injuries. I always beat him at cards, because I could somehow tell how he felt about his hand. And the big disadvantage: When one partner died, the other died with them. But I didn’t tend to discuss that sort of thing with regulars. Give them a little bit of information about the emotional and physical impacts of the bond and they started weaving weird fantasies. “Shielding is difficult but also exciting. Basically it entails making sure the forces the Source is handling during an event or disaster don’t crush him and kill him.” A simplified version of events, but it was really hard to explain to people who couldn’t do it.

  Erin blinked, looking a little stunned. Then he smiled. I had a feeling he had realized his question wasn’t exactly original. Smart lad. “And what is it like to be a Shield for Lord Shintaro Karish?”

  Ooh, hated that question even more. “Karish is a thorough professional.”

  But Erin didn’t want to know about that. They never did. “That’s not exactly what I asked,” he said, which was kind of true. “And one hears things about him.”

  It was my turn to shrug. “No one can help what people say about him except those that do the talking.” And if some of the rumors were based on fact, well, that was no one’s business. I wasn’t going to def
end Karish’s actions to anyone. He was a good, decent man and an excellent Source and what he did in his free time with consenting adults was purely his affair.

  Another bent smile. “I see.”

  And that was it. Apparently he was ready to drop it. How unique of him.

  Something shattered, the sharp sound exploding across the room, halting music and conversation. “Damn it!” I heard Risa hiss.

  Erin was on his feet. “What happened?” he demanded.

  “The damned bottle exploded. Just as I was opening it.”

  “She’s sliced her hand up pretty bad,” I heard someone say. Bardma stood beside Risa, holding the Runner’s hand and peering into the blood. “I can’t see any glass,” she said, “but it’s hard to be sure.”

  Erin looked down at me. “Excuse me,” he said to me. He was off before I nodded. He took Risa by the elbow and led her towards the kitchen. I knew nothing about medical aid, and it didn’t appear life threatening, so I decided not to follow him.

  Bardma knelt down to pick up the pieces of broken bottle. “Careful,” I said, grabbing up some serviettes to mop up the wine. At least the wine was white.

  “It’s the Spring Vale, too,” Bardma muttered. “Too bad. Though it’s not like she should be splashing out on that sort of thing.”

  I had no idea how much money a Runner earned, and if the number of coins were told to me it wouldn’t mean much anyway. But it always seemed to me that every time Risa threw a party, she served the best of everything. “Risa is very generous,” I said.

  “Hmph,” was Bardma’s response. For some reason this resulted in an uncomfortable silence.

  “What was that lovely piece you were just playing?” my mother asked the startled flutist.

  She blinked. “Uh, Twilight Sonata,” she stuttered.

  “Please, start it again. It will soothe my nerves after hearing about poor Lord Greenmist.” My mother laid her hand against the base of her throat, as though she were worried about fainting. An oddly fragile gesture from a woman I knew to be robust and calm.