Resenting the Hero (25 page)

She nodded happily. “Thank you. You're very kind.”

Aiden didn't look pleased, but he raised no objections, which was just as well, as they wouldn't have done him any good. I supposed he was in pain, but that was no reason to be so brusque with a stranger. The woman introduced herself as Alison Lynch. I helped her settle herself and her horse, and in return she shared with us some of the delicious little seed cakes she had picked up on her travels.

I'd tolerate anyone who gave me food.

“Where are you headed?” Lynch asked.

“Middle Reach,” I answered, then added too quickly, “I'm not posted there. Just on vacation.”

“I live in Middle Reach,” she said, with that flat tone I was beginning to recognize, and I realized I'd put my foot in it. “I'm coming back from vacation. Middle Reach isn't exactly the place to relax in comfort.”

I nodded at Aiden. “He has family there.”

“Ah.” She understood, and she didn't seem too offended by my instinctive denial of residency. A woman of honesty and sense, I thought.

I couldn't help but be curious about how she had ended up in Middle Reach, but it was none of my business, so I didn't ask.

Lynch stayed with us through the night. I was happy to have her with us. She was someone new to talk to, and she didn't remind me of what had happened in High Scape or why I was going to Middle Reach. She told me of her vacation, two months spent knocking around Under Range. According to her the scenery was lush, the food was divine, and the locals were sinfully alluring. I decided I'd have to go there sometime. We wandered into politics, of which I was pretty ignorant but which she made seem interesting, and fashion, which not even she could make a worthy topic of conversation. Aiden was sullen and silent the whole time, so we talked about how stupid most men were and didn't you often want to smack them and tell them to grow up?

But with all that chattering it wasn't until the next morning, after we had decided to go on to Middle Reach together and had eaten and mounted and were on our way, that Lynch asked me where my Source was.

“We're taking separate vacations,” I told her.

“I see,” she said, her words clipped with disapproval.

It surprised me. Few people felt partners should spend every moment of their lives together, and no one within the Triple S expected it, as far as I knew. “You've taken a holiday apart from your Source,” I reminded her.

“Aye, I know that sort,” she said sharply. “Unbearable is he? Or is it she?”

“He,” I answered reflexively. “He's not unbearable.”

Aiden snorted.

Lynch laughed bitterly. “You don't have to keep up appearances for me,” she assured me. “I know exactly what you're going through. Why do you think I'm stuck in Middle Reach?”

I loosened my grip on my reins, then looped them back up a little more firmly. It was something to look at while I didn't answer. I didn't want to get into that kind of conversation, not with such a new acquaintance. I was disappointed in Lynch. She hadn't struck me as the type to complain about something so personal to a stranger.

“So let me guess,” she went on, apparently not needing my participation to spur her on to what was clearly a favorite topic for discussion. “He mistakes you for a servant and expects you to be always fetching things for him. He expects you to make excuses for him when he offends someone. Takes all the credit for work you both do. Blames you when things go wrong. Speaks for you with others. Belittles your ideas and your opinions. And in other words acts like he's your master and you're his lackey.”

Well. No resentment there.
“I am fortunate enough not to have that kind of relationship with my Source,” I said, and perhaps I sounded a little lofty.

“Huh,” said Aiden.

“How long have you been bonded?” Lynch asked.

“About three months.”

“That explains it. It'll come.”

She sounded so sure of that, and I resented her certainty. She didn't know him, and she didn't know me. “I don't think so,” I objected as civilly as I could. “He's not that way inclined.” And neither was I.

“Really?” she challenged me. “So nothing I've said strikes any bells?”

I hesitated. I wasn't sure what to say. For certain, Karish never expected me to do things for him. Well, he'd expected me to keep him in chocolate while he was in the hospital, but that was the sort of thing one did for an invalid. I was expected to settle any feathers he ruffled, but that was one of the Shield's traditional duties, and I hadn't even had to do it yet. Karish often confused people but rarely offended them. And it wasn't that he claimed all the credit, but that regulars gave it to him without realizing my part in our work.

Karish's behavior could be made to look bad, taken out of context. But I was fully familiar with the context. “Not really,” I said.

“Now there's a ringing refusal,” Aiden commented dryly, the first full sentence he had spoken in hours. “What about when all those Pairs in High Scape died? You were the one who had to write all those letters to their families.”

I glared at him. I knew how he felt about the relationship between partners, but did he have to talk about it in front of a stranger? “Actually, Karish helped me with them.”

Lynch pounced on that. “Just the way you said that suggests it is your job,” she said.

“It
is
my job.”

“Aye, and why is it your job?” she demanded.

I shrugged, working to hide my growing irritation. Which I shouldn't have been feeling in the first place. When did I get so emotional? “You'll have to ask the Triple S council about that.”

“No point. It's ruled by the Sources.”

“It's an even split, plus a regular.”

“The numbers are even, but the power isn't.” She waved a hand dismissively. “Forget about the council. Last night you seemed to be a woman capable of thinking for herself.” I cocked a brow but otherwise ignored the shot. “Tell me why it's always the Shield who has to write the condolence letters, and deal with the innkeepers and the shopkeepers and the Runners and the outraged parents and spouses, and make reports to the Triple S, and study all the research done on all the sites.”

Again the list, stated so baldly, did sound bad, but again it was a matter of things being taken out of context. “Sources are by their nature distracted and possessed of a bizarre manner of expressing themselves.”
Don't wince, girl, even though you sound like a textbook, but do try to tone it down a little.
“This can cause problems in their dealings with regulars, so it is better for everyone if—”

“That's tripe, Dunleavy,” Aiden snapped. “Sources are allowed to be flighty and useless, so they are. I've met your Source, don't forget. He doesn't strike me as incapable, but he lets you do everything.”

“You met him once,” I reminded him. Again. “And I don't do everything.”

“Aye, you do.”

I could be tenacious when I was annoyed. “Sometimes Sources say things—”

“Sometimes everyone says things,” Aiden claimed impatiently. “And we all know Sources are sometimes incomprehensible. No one's going to break heads over it. But Sources have been taking advantage of the fear that we will for generations.”

“And while Shields are running around playing diplomat and nursemaid,” Lynch chimed in, “Sources don't have to be anything but Sources. Channel a few forces once in a while and live like aristocrats. Is that fair?”

Who said life was fair? “Sources are expected to write reports, too.”

“Aye, but no one cares if they don't.”

That was true. “They have to guard us from the effects of music.” And my, didn't that sound pitiful next to her list of complaints?

Lynch laughed again, an even harder sound than before. “Would you like to know how my Source ‘guarded' me?” I didn't, but she told me anyway. “He bound me.”

That was sometimes necessary. Some Shields were simply uncontrollable under the influence of music. “Are you particularly sensitive to music?”

“I'm particularly
in
sensitive. I'd be tone deaf if I were a regular. I was the joy of my professors. I have to be feverish or drunk for music to have any real impact on me. But Lang, my Source, didn't bother to learn whether I was sensitive or not, and certainly didn't risk having to go to any trouble for me. First time a festival was held at our site he had me bound, and no one objected because he was my Source and he had the right to do anything he wanted to me while there was music playing.” Her eyes had that look that said tears wanted to come, but she wouldn't let them, her face settling into hard lines. “Believe me, none of the regulars had any trouble understanding him, then.”

All right, I was shocked. Everyone had heard stories of Sources abusing their Shields, of course, a dangerous and stupid pattern of behavior considering the symbiotic nature of a Pair's relationship, but I had never before met a victim. Perhaps her bitterness was justified.

I had the feeling she was not the one responsible for their being posted in Middle Reach. “What did he do?”

“It's a very long story.”

Having Aiden with us meant we couldn't move as quickly as I'd have liked. “We have all day.” And she appeared to want to talk about it, else I wouldn't have asked.

She took a deep, calming breath. The tension around her eyes eased a little. Good girl, I thought. “Lang is addicted to drink,” she said, and her voice was smooth and even, as it was supposed to be. “I'm not certain when it started, but the rumors said he started giving his morning tea its extra ingredient when he was twelve, and by the time he was sixteen he was living his life in a constant haze. Everyone knew about it, and they tried to break him of the habit in the academy. They kept him in the infirmary for months at a stretch, punished him every way they could think of, but nothing worked. As soon as he was free he went straight back to the liquor. But it never interfered with his performance, he was always reliable, so there was nothing else they could do. They couldn't even figure out how he was getting hold of it.

“So they sent him out on the field, and the drinking got worse because there was less direct supervision. He was often drunk, but again, he could channel well enough, so there was nothing anyone could do. He was allowed to participate in the Matches when he was old enough.

“None of us wanted to be Chosen by him, of course. We had all heard of him, and no one wanted to work with a drunkard. Even Shields who were desperate to be Chosen would have rather been unChosen than Chosen by him.” She assumed an expression of disdain. “But I wasn't worried,” she said harshly. The disdain had been directed at herself. “I was sure I wouldn't be Chosen by him. I was a nice person, and a good Shield, so I wouldn't be stuck with him.” The sound she made in her throat might have been more laughter, or it might have been a sort of sob. “Stupid, eh? And strange, how we believe bad things can't happen to us simply because we don't deserve them.” She sniffed and got herself under control. “Anyway, I was Chosen by him, obviously, and while everyone was giving me these horrible looks of pity, even the unChosen Shields, I tried to convince myself that the rumors were only rumors, and he couldn't be nearly as bad as everyone said. I learned better that night, though, when he tried to ‘celebrate' our partnership by raping me.”

I squirmed a little. I never knew how to behave in the face of such revelations. Did they want me to ask for details or let them skip over the news without interruption?

“He was drunk, so I could fight him off,” Lynch said with a proud tilt to her head, “but you could say it set the tone for our relationship. He thought me something to be used at his will, and he resented it when I dared to fight back. And then he punished me.”

“Punished you how?” Aiden asked. He, I noticed, had been won over. But then only a cad could remain cold upon hearing Lynch's story, and Aiden was not a cad.

She shrugged. “Nothing you would really point out as cruel behavior, not if you were an observer. But when he spoke to me he often used that sort of patronizing tone one would use on a small child, and he had a knack for putting things in the worst light when he was speaking in front of others. For example, say he'd ordered some new clothes and had sent me to fetch them for him.”

I bit my tongue.
Just let Karish try sending me on such an errand and see how far he got.

“Say they weren't ready yet and I'd tell him so. The next time we met in public he'd say something like, ‘So you didn't manage to pick them up yet?' and the regulars didn't know enough to realize that's not one of my duties. Or he'd say things like ‘Did you remember to write those reports this time?' The sort of thing that would make me look lazy or incompetent in front of other people.”

I felt myself frowning, and I smoothed out my expression.

“And it wasn't just the way he talked to me,” Lynch was saying. “He was always touching me. Not in a sexual way, he had learned better than that, but he was always pinching me or tickling me, even though he knew I hated it. Because he knew I hated it, I suppose. And when I complained, he claimed he was just being affectionate and I shouldn't be so unfriendly.” She rubbed the back of her neck, a quick jerky movement, as though feeling her absent Source's touch right then. “He'd always go out of his way to scare me, jumping out from around corners or sneaking up behind me, slamming doors or dropping things with a bang. I was always a wreck around him. He'd claim it was my fault because I should always know where he was, and I wouldn't be startled if I were doing my job properly.”