The Hero Strikes Back Read online

  “I said nothing funny, Lee.”

  Now he was frowning, a little line appearing between his eyebrows. I walked up to him and touched it with the tip of my finger. “You’re so handsome when you’re annoyed.”

  He backed away from my finger. “I’m serious, Lee.”

  “That’s my job.” And he didn’t do serious well. It made him all melodramatic. “Can we go in now?”

  He scowled. “You don’t deserve it.”

  “What, going in?”

  “Going to the hospital.”

  I thought about that and tried to figure out how visiting a hospital would be a treat. “Huh?”

  “Come on.” He took my hand and started leading me down the street.

  We did indeed end up at the Western Center Hospital. One I’d been to many times. And it looked like a disaster had struck. It was busier than I’d remembered ever seeing it before. The rooms were filled and people were lying in cots in the corridors. The staff looked harried, moving from one patient to another without much of a pause. A couple glanced up when we came in and, after quickly deciding we didn’t need any help, ignored us.

  I pulled the wraps from my hands and head with relief. The hospital was warm and I was happy enough to be inside. I glanced around and after a few moments I realized most of the patients were very old, or very young.

  “Frostbite,” Karish told me. “I’d heard, because of the strange weather, a lot of people have been getting frostbite. Bad enough to need amputations.” I grimaced. “Some have been getting heart pains from shifting snow. Others are getting sick in their lungs. I can’t do anything for that last group, though.”

  I looked up at him quickly. He didn’t return my gaze, concentrating on a child wrapped up in a cot. Clutching a toy to her chest and staring at the wall, she appeared to be alone. “Ah,” I said. And I smiled, because I’d realized why we’d come.

  “Good afternoon, little one,” Karish said to the child, kneeling by the cot, his voice dropping into a low, soothing tone.

  She was perhaps six years old, though I was no good at judging the ages of children. She was tiny, and it was hard to believe that her body could contain all the organs necessary for survival. It seemed obscene to me that such a fragile little person had been left unattended in this dark and grim corridor. When she turned her head from the wall her eyes were dark and red with tears. “Who are you?” she asked in a soft, trembling voice.

  “I’m Taro. This is Lee. What’s your name?”

  “Keeva,” she answered solemnly. “Do you know my Da?”

  “No.” Karish stroked back her dark hair with a light hand. “Is he here?”

  “He’s at the shop. He couldn’t keep me at home.” The coat of tears over her eyes thickened. “I wouldn’t have been any trouble.” She sniffed and rubbed her nose. Her hand was wrapped in gauzy white cloth.

  “I’m sure he wasn’t worried about your being trouble to him,” Karish assured her. “But he can’t take care of you when you’re injured. He doesn’t know how. A person can’t know how to take care of a shop and be a healer, all at the same time.” He bent down to kiss her forehead, an action I thought was a little presumptuous but one she seemed to have no trouble with. Could sway all ages, he could. “But I know it’s hard to be away from home.”

  He glanced at me, and after a moment I felt his internal shields lower.

  This was different from when he was channeling events. Then, I could sort of feel the forces through him, or at least I could perceive them. When he healed people, I was aware of him drawing forces in, but I couldn’t see them myself. I couldn’t feel anything but him.

  “I had to leave home when I was very young,” Karish said, still stroking back the girl’s hair. “Lee left home when she was four.”

  It was a little difficult to concentrate on the girl’s face while I was shielding Karish, but I saw her look at the black braid on Karish’s left shoulder, and the white braid on mine. “That’s different,” she said. “You belong to Triple S.”

  We did, sort of, belong to the Triple S. In a way. I didn’t like the choice of words, though.

  “Doesn’t make it any easier to leave home,” Karish chided her gently. “And you’ll be here only a little while. Then you get to go back to your Da again.”

  “I miss Maxie,” she muttered, the bright eyes dimming as the tension of pain left her frostbitten extremities.

  “Is she your sister?”

  “Yes,” she said, her eyelids lowering. “No,” she corrected herself. “She died. She was really really little. Ma died, too.” Her voice was starting to slur.

  Her words sobered me. So young to deal with death. Too young, I thought, to be so matter of fact about it. I didn’t know what I’d do if a member of my family died.

  This was not the time to think about such things.

  “I’m sorry to hear about that,” Karish said in a soft voice. “You must miss them both.”

  “Uh-huh.” The eyes were closed. A long slow breath.

  Karish lifted his hand from her hair, his internal shields shifting back in to place.

  “Well done,” I murmured.

  Maybe someday I would tell him how proud I was of him, that he could do such things. Some day when he was willing to listen. I was moved to tuck a lock of his dark hair behind his ear.

  “What the hell?” a sharp voice shouted out.

  Keeva was startled out of her sleep. Karish and I turned, looking to the cause of the disturbance.

  Except, apparently, it was us. A man wearing the sturdy dark garments of a fisher strode up the corridor, reached out and grabbed Karish’s arm, pulling him close. Karish’s eyes widened in surprise and he arched back from the man, but he made no real effort to free himself.

  “Got nerve, so you do, showing up in here,” the fisher snarled into Karish’s face. “Prancing around your victims instead of working out there where you belong, doing your job.”

  “Sir,” Karish said, and that was all he was able to get out.

  The fisher shifted his grip, bunching his fists in the front of Karish’s cloak. “Fish stock is down, you know that? My nets have been empty for weeks. We found my—” His voice cut off, moisture rising in his eyes. He cleared his throat. “We found my son dead, curled up by the house. He got caught out in the blizzard. He almost made it home. He couldn’t find the door. And we never heard him.” He shook Karish once, hard. “How dare you walk among us now?”

  Karish laid his hands on the man’s wrists. I wasn’t sure whether he was trying to stop the man from shaking him again or to provide some kind of comfort. “Sir, I am so sorry, really, but . . .”

  “Why did you let him come in here?” the fisher demanded of me. He shoved Karish away, and Karish nearly lost his balance as he tried not to step into another cot behind him. “Take him out of here.”

  He was grieving. He was facing destitution. No doubt he could barely think straight. But helping the injured feel better was something Karish could do. In trying to lay undeserved responsibility on Karish, the fisher was preventing him from performing the good he could do. He shouldn’t be able to deny the others a respite from pain. “We are here to see people, sir,” I told him, keeping my voice mild and level. “Please know I am very sorry for your loss, but—”

  “Get him out of here!” the fisher roared.

  I was aware of the others. Patients, visitors, one member of the staff, all watching us. They showed no intention of interfering. “Sir, there’s nothing we can do right now.”

  “Lee.” A warning from Karish.

  Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten about the lie.

  “Nothing you can do!” the fisher echoed with incredulity. “Then what the hell are we keeping you for? And in right fine style, too.” His gaze raked over me, from head to foot and back again. “Better clothes than I’ve got, and I’ve worked hard every day of my life. And now, when we really need you, you’re useless.”

  What was I supposed to say? They never t
aught me how to deal with this sort of thing in the academy. No one ever warned me there would come a time when the regulars would accuse me, all out of the blue, of not doing my job. Worse, of being some kind of societal parasite.

  It was dealing with the farmer all over again. “Sir,” I said. “Please understand. This kind of thing, the snow, the blizzard, it’s not something we were trained to deal with.”

  “Not something—” he practically exploded.

  “But we’re working on it!” I said hastily, and without really thinking about it. Until after the words were out of my mouth, and then I had to work to keep the grimace off my face. Because there, I’d done it, even though I’d been hoping to avoid it. “We’re looking into it. We’re trying to see what we can do. But it’s going to take time.”

  I heard people speaking around us then. I couldn’t decipher the exact words, I didn’t know whether they had been reassured by what I’d said or not. But it didn’t feel like anyone was impressed.

  “Time,” the fisher muttered through his teeth, tone dripping with disgust. “Aye, and what is time to me? I’ve already lost everything.”

  I couldn’t even imagine what that felt like. “We are sorry, sir. Really.” Words were useless. Hollow. But there was nothing else I could do.

  He pulled in a deep breath, making an effort to calm himself down. A man of dignity, who knew there was no point in haranguing us further. He nodded at Karish. “Get him out of here.”

  He had no right to give me such an order, but our continued presence wouldn’t benefit anyone anymore. The damage had been done. I grabbed Karish’s arm. I resisted the urge to repeat my sympathies to the fisher. That would only make him angry, and it wouldn’t do anything to make me feel better, either. But it was a hard instinct to fight.

  Karish showed some reluctance over leaving, but after a couple of discrete tugs he was following me.

  People watched us leave, silently. I could feel their attention. A dark weight that seemed to press up against me and made me wish I could just disappear.

  I didn’t understand it. No matter how rationally I took it apart, how objectively I looked at the phenomenon, I couldn’t understand the abrupt change of opinion. A month earlier Karish was admired and adored by everyone. Now people were blaming him for all of their problems. It didn’t make sense. And it wasn’t right. How could people be so damned fickle? Even when things were going so badly, how could someone just reach out blindly, grab the first person they encountered, and pile blame on them?

  High Scape had three other major hospitals. We went to each one. No one kicked us out of any of those, but they watched us. Watched Karish. Long looks. Whispers. What is he doing here? Why isn’t he doing something about this? How dare he come around here eyeing his victims like a lord looking over his livestock and deciding where culling was needed?

  Karish heard. The man wasn’t deaf. But he acted as though he didn’t. He spoke quietly with those patients who would talk to him. Sometimes he merely asked them their names and about their families. Sometimes he gently flirted with them, unerring in determining which patients would be offended and which could be made to smile with the attention. Under the cover of touching their hand or shoulder or “accidentally” brushing against them while straightening their blankets, he channeled some of their pain and eased them into sleep. And possibly, for all we knew, accelerated their healing a little.

  Then, late at night, when we left the last hospital, Karish let his head fall back and breathed out in a long tired sigh.

  I clapped him on the back. “You all right?”

  “Just lovely.”

  Oh, no, that didn’t ring with insincerity. “If you’re not meeting up with someone”—and how likely was that?—“why don’t you walk me to the Lion and let my mother fuss over you?” Because I didn’t want him to be alone. A part of me always worried about what he might get up to, when he was distressed and alone. His judgment seemed to get a little . . . skewed . . . when he was upset.

  He chuckled, but it was a weak, weary sound. “I love your mother.”

  Well, of course. “And she adores you. More than me.” A sad fact of life. I considered being jealous. “Come, Taro. I’m serious. You look exhausted. And the Lion is closer.” And it had gotten even colder, though I wouldn’t have thought that was possible. I could feel these strange prickles over my nose and cheeks.

  “I am exhausted,” he said, “which is why I’m going home and getting some sleep. So I can be in top form tomorrow while we sit in the Stall and do nothing for seven hours.”

  “Well, not quite nothing,” I reminded him.

  He sighed. “Oh, aye. I’d forgotten. While we sit in the Stall and do something futile for seven hours.”

  “Taro . . .” I needed him to think there was actually a point to it. If he didn’t believe in it he wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything.

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry.” He tried to rub the back of his neck under his cloak.

  I felt tempted to run my fingers through his hair. Which was odd, because I couldn’t even see his hair. Good thing we were once more all bundled up, so I couldn’t make a fool of myself no matter how much I wanted to. But he seemed to like it when I did it. And he just looked so tired. He’d put up with a lot that day, bending his abilities in unnatural ways, while working under the weight of disapproval and hostility. And he’d stuck with it for hours, when he didn’t have to, when no one had asked him to. Perhaps it was his way of making up for being unable to do anything about the weather. Or maybe he was just that decent.

  “I’m sorry you had to lie to that fisher,” Karish muttered.

  So was I. I was committed to the story now, and there was no backing out of it. I was going to have nightmares about everyone finding out that we’d been blowing windless. But it was done. “I didn’t have to lie. I wasn’t lying. We are working on it, remember? This was part of the deal.”

  He looked at me. “You felt you were lying to him, and with you that’s all that counts.”

  I shrugged. “Then I’ll just have to get over my delicate sensibilities, won’t I? And you’ll have to figure out some way to fix things.”

  He grunted. “Lucky me.”

  I almost winced. That had been careless, and thoughtless, and stupid. Let’s just pile a bit more pressure on him, shall we?

  I widened my eyes at him, though the effect may have been ruined by the scarves wrapped around my face. “But Taro,” I said in a lilting voice, “You’re my hero.”

  He groaned.

  I swallowed down a laugh. “You’re everyone’s hero.”

  “Shut up, Lee.”

  “The Darling of the Triple S.”

  “That wasn’t my fault!”

  That made me pause for a moment. That wasn’t his fault? What exactly did that mean? “The hope of High Scape.”

  “Will you stop?”

  “Defeater of the evil Stevan Creol and favorite of the Empress Constia.” I was kind of getting into this. He squirmed so well.

  “I swear if you don’t stop I’ll . . .”

  “What?” I challenged him.

  “Do something you don’t like,” he muttered.

  As threats went, that was a little weak. “Like what?

  From the way his eyes crinkled up I knew he was grinning behind the wraps around his face. And didn’t that send a thread of alarm through me?“I am walking you to the Lion,” he told me. “Where I will turn you over to your mother. Let her deal with her impossible, wayward, disrespectful child.” And once more he had me by the hand and was leading me down the street.

  As punishments went, that was rather disappointing.

  Chapter Eight

  Shopping. With my mother. Ugh.

  It had been a good idea. In theory. Because, as life or circumstance or fate would have it, Her Grace, Dowager Duchess of Westsea had agreed to eat dinner at my mother’s boarding house. I couldn’t have been more surprised. I had simply accepted it as a fact of life that
there was no way the Dowager Duchess of Westsea would step foot into such plebeian company without being carried in after being drugged or beaten into unconsciousness.

  With Karish’s teeth-clenched delivery of the acceptance had come a wave of complete shock that nearly matched my own. He hadn’t anticipated the possibility of her saying yes, either.

  I had no idea what else had happened at their little meeting, but the way Karish refused to talk about it told me it had not been fun. I began to think that this might be as bad an idea as Karish had warned it would be. I might have enjoyed watching the Duchess mince her way through an evening with her social inferiors, but I didn’t want to see Karish being tied in knots.

  The invitation had been delivered and accepted, however. There was nothing to be done to change that.

  That meant I needed something to wear. My mother had declared my wardrobe inadequate for dining with a duchess, and I had to agree with her. Therefore, shopping. For clothes. With my mother.

  Ugh.

  I had envisioned arranging for one outfit and then going home. Because, while I liked nice clothes well enough, I hated shopping.

  Silly me.

  “But look at this fabric, Lee. I mean, just feel it.”

  I couldn’t be more bored. Really. And I’d been bored, in my life. Certain classes at the academy came to mind, where I’d been tempted to pound my head against my table until my skull cracked because it would break the monotony and possibly get me out of the room for a while. This was worse. At least in class I had been able to let my mind wander a bit and think of more exciting things. My mother expected me to pay attention to her, and respond when her voice rose that slight amount at the end of her sentences. “I’ve felt dozens of fabrics this morning, Mother. They all feel the same to me.” All right, big lie. Even I could feel the difference between linen and silk. But I was desperate to get out of there.