Heroes at Odds (38 page)

“What about the crystals we already gave you?”

“They aren’t enough. I’m heading to the attic. I need you to get as many tablespoons as you can. And a knife. An Ottawa blade, if you can.”

“Thereby ruining the blade,” I muttered, but I hoofed it to the kitchen. There were, of course, a slew of people preparing for the evening meal. Which probably no one was going to be around to eat. “Please excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but I have to take all of your tablespoons.”

“Excuse me?” the cook demanded.

Having served myself a few times, I knew where all the tablespoons were, so I headed for that drawer and gathered up two handfuls.

“With all due respect, Shield, we’re going to be needing those soon.”

I didn’t know whether it would be wise to explain why I needed the spoons, so I didn’t. “Where are your Ottawa knives?”

“We don’t keep hunting knives in here, Shield.”

“Actually,” one of the young men said, wiping his hands on his apron and staring down at his feet.

“Orin,” the cook said with disapproval.

“They’re the best for dicing beef.” He opened a cupboard and reached behind some large pieces of crockery. He held out the knife, handle and blade the length of my forearm, the edge of the blade falling into a sharp angle at the tip. It looked kind of evil. It looked kind of beautiful.

I took it from Orin carefully, as though the handle itself could cut me. “Thank you.” I realized everyone had stopped working to stare at me. I gave them a weak smile before I got out of there.

When I reached the attic, Browne had already cleared a space in the center of the floor and rolled a dozen large aprin leaves, filled with moss soaked in red wine. The smell was unpleasant. I put the knife aside and, under Browne’s orders, placed the spoons on the floor, end to end, creating a circle an arm’s length in diameter.

As we worked, Browne told me the words of the cast, repeating them to give me the chance to memorize them.

Once we had enough moss rolls, we laid them in four rows within the circle, from edge to center. Browne poured salt over the four rows, and then laid four more rows just of salt. She picked up the knife and spat on the blade. “Be our focus, sharp and bright, fold the distance, so thoughts can touch. Draw from the sky, the clarity of words, help us seek, help us find, shorten the paths, our mind to theirs.” She thrust the knife into the floor.

There were, from what I witnessed, many flaws with the spell devised by the circle to communicate with everyone.

For one thing, the words didn’t rhyme and had no real flow.

It took two people to cast the spell.

It took too long to prepare.

And the information that could be related was basic and limited. All that could be communicated, really, was a visual of the casters’ location, and the order to come.

Browne and I stood on opposite sides of the circle. Reaching across the circle, Browne placed a moss roll into my left palm, and then added salt. She put a roll into her own hand and added salt. She reached back across the circle again. Palms up, we linked the fingers of our left hands together.

“Morgan Gidean,” said Browne.

“Morgan Gidean,” I echoed.

“Vic Ramna.”

“Vic Ramna.”

“Faye Berlusconi.”

“Faye Berlusconi.”

“Olan Roddin.”

“Olan Roddin.”

And so we went through every name in the circle.

“Hear us,” we said together. “Our minds to yours. Our lips to your ears. Hear us. Hear us. Our minds to yours. Our lips to your ears. Hear us.” And so on.

As we spoke, I imagined the manor, concentrating on the front main entrance.

Soon, I felt a strange pressure on my mind. At first it was one thin layer of something—it felt like paper—covering my whole head. From the inside. And then, after a few moments, there were little breaks in the paper, pressing in.

It was a disagreeable experience.

That sensation, I realized, was caused by other minds contacting mine. More and more breaks in the paper. I assumed that each break represented one mind, which meant there were going to be roughly seventeen breaks in the paper. The paper protecting my brain.

Really didn’t like the idea of that.

But I kept speaking in time with Browne. I was thoroughly used to the jittery sensation I felt when a spell was successfully cast, but the vibration that developed in my voice and in Browne’s surprised me. The two voices vibrated in unison. That was just weird.

And then images of all the people we were calling crowded into my mind. There were no words for them in the spell to indicate that they were or were not coming, but I could feel a sense of compliance.

Browne stopped speaking and pulled her hand from mine. The images disappeared, and I was suddenly all alone in my head again. And a little dizzy.

“All right.” Browne knelt down and scooped up the moss rolls and salt, dumping them into a small burlap sack. “They’re all coming. Now we have to get those crystals.”

We gathered up all the spoons and the knife and, having nothing in which to carry them, piled them behind a hideous settee. I’d come back for them later.

“We need big bags,” Browne said. “As many as we can find. They have to be strong.”

“Should be some in the cellar.”

“Then let’s go.”

I glanced out the window, surprised to see that the sky was still light. It seemed to me that with all that had happened, it should at least be evening.

I couldn’t wait for this day to be over.

When Browne and I returned to the manor, struggling under the weight of potato sacks full of the cave crystals, there was a crowd of people gathered in the inner garden. Fiona was standing on a chair, trying to speak. The muttering of the tenants made it hard to hear her. That was nowhere near a surprise.

They were all holding the implements of their occupations, though. I wondered what they’d thought the reason was for being summoned. They couldn’t have anticipated Fiona’s intentions.

“This is necessary to stop the attacks,” I was able to hear Fiona say.

“You don’t even know if Kent is behind this,” called out the hated voice of the Dowager Duchess. She was there to stir things up. I could expect nothing less. “You just want his estate. Westsea isn’t enough. You just want more and more, and you’re willing to throw the lives of these people away to get it.”

“Of course, that’s not—” Fiona began, but the Dowager ran right over her.

“There have never been any problems in Centerfield. You cared about your tenants there. But you have no trouble causing difficulties for the people here so you can blame Kent in a false justification to take his land.”

I couldn’t see the Dowager, but she certainly had a piercing voice when she wanted.

“I’m not going to try to kill people,” I heard a nearby whaler say. He didn’t shout it, there was no way Fiona or anyone any distance away was going to hear him, but his tone left no doubt about the sincerity of his words. “That’s just stupid. I’ll leave.”

“And go where?” the woman beside him asked. “How many estates serve whalers? Lord Ducal gambles all the profits away. The roads are atrocious. Lady Sky is said to be mad. And then there’s Centerfield.”

“There has to be somewhere that the titleholder isn’t expecting me to shove a harpoon through someone’s stomach.”

He had an excellent point.

“This is a proper mess, isn’t it?” a voice said from behind us.

Browne started and then turned to glare at hulking Yonhap for sneaking up on us.

He was unmoved. “So what are you going to do about this?” he asked.

“This isn’t our responsibility. We’ll wait over there.” She pointed. “We want the casters to meet somewhere discreet. Then we’ll find somewhere to get to work. Her Ladyship doesn’t want the other tenants to know about the crystals.”

We moved to a corner of the manor. This incidentally enabled us to better see Fiona, Taro, a row of footmen, and the Dowager.

And Daris. What was she doing there?

“How much more can you be expected to take?” the Dowager was asking of the crowd. “No Karish has ever demanded this from you. No Karish ever would. He wouldn’t have to. Kent would have never dared to threaten a Karish in this manner.”

I wondered if that could be true. I could understand how it might be. People with long histories in a region were probably thought of as belonging to that region, as much a part of it as the trees, accepted as immoveable objects. A newcomer was weak and more easily blown away.

I really hated it when obnoxious people were right. It felt like it unbalanced the whole world.

I saw Younis, Thatcher, and Netan looking at the crowd curiously before joining us. “What’s going on?” Thatcher asked.

“Her Ladyship has lost her mind,” said Browne.

Well, that was a little blunt.

“Then why are we here?”

“I’m waiting for everyone to get here so I can tell you all at once.”

“That’s Olson,” said Thatcher, looking over the crowd. “And Matt.”

“And Cowell,” Netan added.

“What the hell are they doing here?” Thatcher asked.

“The Kent casters,” Browne reminded me.

That couldn’t be good. “Point them out to me.” They had no business here. They should be removed.

No, not removed. Restrained. We didn’t need them running back to Kent and warning him. Though he might know already. The casters had to be there for a reason.

This was going to end so badly.

“This has nothing to do with you!” someone shouted.

This created a thick silence.

The Dowager flushed a hilarious shade of red, and I realized that last comment had been made by a tenant to the Dowager. That was beautiful.

“You do not address me, you filthy little cretin.”

And there went all of her credibility. She was usually smarter than that.

Then Daris was laughing. If laughter could be said to be clumsy, hers was, stumbling from one pitch to another, stopping for a moment and then starting again. And she was swaying. She looked spectacularly drunk. “You’re all so blind,” she cackled, loudly enough to be heard by everyone. “It was so easy.”

For a few moments, everyone waited for her to continue. She just grinned.

“What was easy, Daris?” Fiona asked.

Daris laughed.

And a few of my memories slid into place. Memories I wanted everyone to know about. “You poisoned the fish,” I called out. “You helped start the fires and impeded those who tried to put them out.” Daris didn’t admit to this, but she didn’t deny it, either. “What did Kent offer you?”

The laughter drained from her face. “More than my own family ever did,” she said darkly.

Everyone started whispering. I didn’t know whether the knowledge that Fiona was being sabotaged by her own sister would win support from her tenants or cause them to believe the whole family was a liability and should just be tossed.

Out of nowhere, a dark cloud developed around two men, little darts of blue light spearing throughout. I wouldn’t have noticed it so quickly if I hadn’t been looking in that direction. What was that?

And those two tenants starting screaming, in fear, and in pain. Those around them drew back quickly, staring in shock as the men scrubbed their arms, torsos and legs, as though trying to scrape something off.

The Kent casters were whispering. No one around them seemed to notice. Or maybe they just didn’t realize that what they were hearings were casts.

“Browne!” I said, hoping she had an effective reaction to this.

“I have no idea,” she responded.

If she had no cast to deal with this, and couldn’t create one on the fly, I had no chance of using a spell myself. I had to think of another way.

The two tenants collapsed, still screaming, and another cloud developed on the other side of the crowd.

More and more clouds began to develop, enough that I could tell when one would appear by a slight warping of the air. I couldn’t hear anything but the horrific screams.

The first two tenants were bleeding from the eyes and ears. It was sickening.

I noticed Taro stepping back sharply, pulling Fiona off the chair and back with him. So when the next cloud appeared, it surrounded only the Dowager. Her screams seemed to be filled with outrage rather than fear.

Taro’s eyes were wide with shock.

Marcus and Cars came out of the manor, no doubt drawn by the screams.

So the thing to do was take the Kent casters down physically. They were all bigger than I, but that didn’t matter. Surprise was a fabulous tool.

I got a whole two steps before Thatcher caught my arm and jerked me to a stop. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I really disliked it when people who had no right to do so thought to put hands on me. “To break their concentration.” And maybe their noses.

“Fine idea,” said Browne. “Cheon, you take Olson. Biden, Matt. Spencer, Cowell. Just bear them to the ground and cover their mouths.”

The three casters ran into the crowd. None of them seemed to hesitate, seemed to realize or care that they might be bringing themselves to the attention of the Kent casters and risking being caught by one of the dark clouds.

Released, I tried to follow. This time, it was Browne who caught my arm. “Stay still.”

“I can’t just do nothing.”

“I’m not telling you to do nothing. I’m telling you not to be stupid.”

I fumed for a moment. I couldn’t do anything with a cast, and I’d been prevented from doing anything physical. What was I supposed to do? Just stand there?

“Can you see any of the other casters?” I asked her. “The ones who put us to sleep?”

“No, but they might not be the only ones he recruited. There’s no telling how many he’s got.”