“Miho speaking to you yet?”

  I shrugged. I hadn’t told Karish about my Shielding Tenneson, and I didn’t know who had. A couple of days after it had happened, he had greeted me with a smug smile when I came in to visit him. He’d asked me why I hadn’t told him I was brilliant. I’d said I’d assumed it was obvious. “Apparently not.”

  “You can’t blame her.”

  I most certainly could, but I didn’t bother saying so.

  “You’ve proved to her that she’s useless.”

  And Zaire knew I understood how that felt. “So you’ve said before.”

  “You did her job. You Shielded her Source.”

  I was drawn into the argument despite myself. “I should have let him die?”

  “Of course not. I’m not saying you made the wrong decision. You did the only thing you could, and Tenneson should be forever grateful. But surely you can understand how she feels.”

  “I’d understand if she feels ashamed for falling apart, but she has no right to be angry with me for having to do the job she refused to do.” Especially not for so long. She should have forgiven me before then. Not that she had anything to forgive me for.

  Change the subject. “What’s the first thing you’ll do when you get home?”

  “Take a bath,” he muttered. “It’ll be a nice change not to have an audience.” I cocked a brow at that, thinking of all the people who would be desperate to attend him. He mimicked my expression. “Unless, of course, you’d like to scrub my back.”

  “I dream about it nightly.”

  He grinned.

  “How are you?”

  “One of the healers could give you a total rundown of all my bodily functions.”

  “No, I mean about your”—I paused, gesturing vaguely, wondering what idiocy had caused me to even bring it up—“family.”

  “What aspect of it?” he asked coolly. “That one of them apparently wants me dead? Or do you want to know whether natural grief has struck me yet?”

  Definitely a bad idea. “Whatever.”

  “I got a lovely little missive from Her Grace. Care to hear about it?”

  “Probably not,” I said uncomfortably.

  “Oh, but you should. It is the essence of elegance and style as she informs me of my duty to attend her. She wants me in Flown Raven. She wants me there immediately. Yesterday would be even better.”

  “She doesn’t know you’re in hospital?”

  “I wrote to her about it. Not in explicit detail, of course. Far too likely to upset a lady of her delicate sensibilities.” He snickered, and I didn’t ask. “But I let her know some ruffian had thought to use me as a whetting stone and that as a result I was spending some time in hospital.” He smiled that bitter little smile he seemed to use whenever he thought of his family. “She chided me for allowing it to happen.”

  “For allowing some thug to attack you?”

  “Shows an unseemly lack of control, don’t you know. I am a duke, after all. Or almost. I owe a lot to our revered name. I can’t allow such distasteful disruptions to occur in my vicinity.” His accent grew stronger in the last phrase, and I knew he was quoting her.

  I studied him for a moment, trying to interpret his expression. “No,” I decided finally. He was pulling my leg. He had to be. No one would say something like that. Not to her own son. Not to anyone, really. Not only was it heartless, it was just plain stupid.

  He patted his clothes. Apparently he had the letter on him somewhere. “Want to see it?”

  He was serious. I shook my head and thought of how I had misspent the night we had bonded. We should have spent the night with my family. Father would have grilled him on gambling, Mother on politics, Kaaren and Dias would have teased him to tears, and Miko would have drooled all over him. I knew now that he would have gotten on with them beautifully. I wondered if he had any idea what a normal family was like. His mother sounded like a horror, and the thought that he would have to live in close proximity with her was depressing.

  The door opened without anyone knocking. I quickly sat up on the cot.

  I’d seen Healer McLean before, on my visits to Karish. He was a tall, dark, stern-looking middle-aged man who always made me feel I had no right to be there. I couldn’t help being what Karish called my most Shield-like whenever I was around the healer.

  McLean nodded a greeting to me, then said to Karish, “You can go now. Can’t say I’m sorry. You’ve brought a lot of confusion with you.”

  He also didn’t have the greatest bedside manner.

  Karish grinned. He smiled too much, I decided. “You’ll miss me,” he promised the healer. “You know you will. I’ve brightened your days and put a spring in your step. That’s why you want me gone. You’re holding on to your professional ethics by the fingernails, and you’re afraid that if I stay just one more day it’ll all break loose.”

  For an instant the healer’s professional demeanor slipped, and he shot Karish a look of unalloyed disgust. A moment later it was gone. “Any questions?” he asked in a flat voice.

  Karish shook his head.

  “Good.” Another nod and he was out the door. I had the feeling he would have hurried more if he hadn’t thought it beneath his dignity.

  “What was that about?” I asked.

  Karish shrugged and rose from his chair with less grace than was usually at his disposal. “He wants me so badly it scares him,” he said matter-of-factly, offering a hand to help me up.

  I ignored it. He still looked a little fragile, and I was afraid I might break him. “Everyone wants you, eh?” I said, hoping the sarcasm came out clearly enough. While I didn’t doubt for a moment that he was right, for him to speak of his appeal so blatantly was too immodest for my liking.

  “He does. But he doesn’t like my character. Thinks I’m quite a flighty, useless creature. And it disgusts him. How could he possibly lust after someone he doesn’t respect? He isn’t an animal, after all, but a highly trained professional. So he’s angry and confused.”

  If Karish felt the sting of McLean’s dislike, he hid it well. “So you decided to play with his mind.”

  “Not really. I just spoke the truth. It’s not my fault his mind and body are in conflict with each other, so he shouldn’t take it out on me. If he were a true professional he would handle it better.” Another one of those annoying grins. “Like you do.”

  I just looked at him. So he thought I shared the healer’s predicament, did he? He couldn’t have been more wrong. I didn’t despise his character. Not much. And I didn’t lust after him.

  Not much.

  “Going to deny it?” he prodded.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said mildly. What would it accomplish? He would believe what he wanted to believe. “Ready to go?”

  His smile dimmed just a little.

  When we got back to the residence, there was a small, folded piece of parchment with his name on it, left on the shelf in the foyer on which all of our mail was deposited. He opened it and read it quickly. I knew it was none of my business, but I asked anyway. “It’s not bad news?” Because I didn’t think either of us could take any more bad news.

  He handed it to me. It was a note:

  Dear Taro,

  We knew you’d be too tired for company so we decided not to mob you on your first day back—though a few heads had to be cracked together before they saw the wisdom of this. But we wanted you to know that we know you’re coming home today and that we’re thinking of you. We’ll be there as soon as you want us.

  Love,

  It was signed. A quick count showed about thirty names. Karish didn’t seem moved by the tribute. Used to it, I supposed.

  There was a second letter for him, a proper letter in a proper envelope. It was sealed with wax, and I remembered seeing that seal before. He slit the letter open, and I wondered if I should leave him to it.

  A part of me thought I should accompany him to his suite, make sure he got settled in and had everything he needed. But I wasn’t his mother, and it would probably just make us both uncomfortable.

  He started swearing. “What’s wrong?”

  “Another letter from her.”

  His mother. “Oh.” Yes, I should definitely leave him to it. I thought about escaping up the stairs.

  “Can’t even fake some interest, is that it?” he snapped.

  “Just trying to mind my own business.”

  “It is your business.”

  All right, so I supposed I should stay. He obviously needed someone to rant in front of, and I appeared to be the only one available. “Only indirectly.” I went to the living room to settle into a chair. He could follow me if he chose.

  He chose. “Believe me, she won’t let it be indirectly. Not once we’re living there. She’ll be showing unprecedented interest in my life. And yours.”

  I froze. “Once we’re living there?”

  “Aye.” He refolded the letter and crammed it back into its envelope.

  “I’m going with you. To find out about this fellow who attacked you. But once he’s found and you’re the duke, I’m not staying there. I’m not going to live there.”

  That seemed to surprise him, which I found odd. Why would he assume I’d stay in Flown Raven? “Where would you go?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know. Back to Shidonee’s Gap. Maybe I will teach at one of the academies.” Horrible thought. “Maybe the council will let me work with my family.” Though I didn’t have the slightest interest in doing tradelike things. “Maybe I could be a professional bench dancer.” But again, only if the council allowed it. So none of those were likely.

  “Lucky you.” His eyes narrowed. “You can pretty much do as you damn well please, while I have to be hauled out to Flown Raven and live in that mausoleum and deal with—” He cut himself off abruptly. He rubbed his forehead, a gesture of fatigue. “I don’t want to take the title,” he said. “Why the hell should I have to? It was never meant for me. That was made perfectly clear through my entire life. They got rid of me as soon as they could find an acceptable reason for it.”

  I was the wrong person to be hearing all this.

  “They never had the slightest use for me, and now they want me to drop everything and rush over there to be their duke and listen to them verbally slice each other for fun. Taking me away from everything I’ve worked for. I’ve earned.” He started pacing, his agitation giving him vigor. I watched him, and I didn’t know what to say. He needed someone he trusted to confide in, someone who could give him adequate advice. “She barely knows what a Source is, what I do. She doesn’t know what it means that I was posted here. But she doesn’t hesitate to order me to leave it all behind.”

  The idea of a grown man’s mother ordering him to do anything struck me as too bizarre.

  “I wish I didn’t have to take the title,” he muttered. He stopped midstep. He seemed to think for a moment, and he frowned. “I don’t have to take the title.” He looked at me. The truest smile I’d seen from him in a good while spread over his face. “Lee, there’s no law that says I have to take the title. I can abjure it!”

  I said nothing. Yes, he could refuse the title. In theory. That sort of thing had been done a couple of times. But no one liked it when that happened, and there were repercussions Karish had possibly not considered. He would lose his name, part of the legal severance from his family. He would lose his status. And if he even so much as hinted that he wanted the title back, he’d be committing a crime with sanctions like incarceration and execution.

  He couldn’t really want to give up being the Duke of Westsea. Going to Flown Raven, being a duke, it would be a change, and maybe he didn’t like that, but once he got used to the idea, he’d love it. Who wouldn’t, all that money and power and prestige?

  Karish was watching me. I hated it when he did that. “Lee, I will refuse the title,” he said.

  “I heard you the first time.”

  “But you didn’t believe me.”

  “Of course I did,” I lied smoothly.

  Karish knew it was a lie. “You will believe me.”

  I nodded. I was too depressed to say anything.

  Karish, on the other hand, was thrilled. He was glowing. He really thought he was going to refuse the title and be happy about it. He really thought he could stop being Karish and not care.

  It wasn’t that simple. A family was more than a collection of annoying relatives. It was part of a person’s identity and their only real connection to the rest of the world. No one could cut that connection without doing great damage to themselves.

  As for him not wanting the title, that was ridiculous. For the first eleven years of his life he had no doubt been taught that the duchy was the only prize worth having, a prize he would never possess. Some part of him had to want it, and once he was back in Flown Raven, surrounded by his own kind of people, the coronet held before him, he would step into place.

  And I couldn’t think any less of him for it. It would be only human of him, and it would be, in a way, his duty. The impact it would have on my life, that I would find it devastating, was irrelevant.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A Runner tracked me down to Aiden’s house, where she gave me the news that Karish had been abducted. People had seen four men assault him and toss him into a carriage that was driven away at a neck-threatening speed. Neither the men nor the carriage had been recognized by anyone, and there had been no further word of their whereabouts. That was all the Runner said, before suggesting that I make an appearance at the Lower Western Runner Headquarters and running off on other business.

  I could claim with all honesty that I never fainted. I had always been healthy, my clothing had always been loose, and I had never been one to indulge in hysterical fits. But standing there in Aiden’s doorway, staring at the space in which the Runner had stood, my vision went black, my mind shut down, and for a moment I wasn’t quite sure where I was.

  “Dunleavy?” I heard a voice say. “What’s happened?”

  The voice seemed very far away, yet it grounded me a little, helped my mind return to the then and there. “Karish is missing.”

  “What?”

  “Karish is missing.” Want me to go for three?

  He’d just gotten home. He’d had no chance to get better. Why did these things keep happening to him?

  Aiden, now able to walk without relying on a crutch, put a hand on my shoulder. “You’d better sit down,” he told me. “You look like you’re about to drop.”

  I was not. I was in perfect control of myself. Shields were trained to be calm in difficult situations, not fall apart. However, it was very early, and I hadn’t had much sleep the night before, with one thing and the other, so my legs were a little weak. So I sat down.

  My hands were shaking. I stared at them, alarmed. They weren’t supposed to do that.

  I snarled, suddenly irritated. “Idiots!” I spat. “Why would they deliver news like this with so few details? Heartless bastards!”

  “I’m sure they had their reasons.”

  “I’m his Shield!” I snapped. “You don’t palm off this kind of message to a man’s Shield. Irresponsible, insensible, incompetent, clueless little bureaucrats!”

  He sat down beside me, a little too close. “I’m sure you’ll learn more when you get to Headquarters.”

  His mild tone was getting on my nerves. “Aye, I’ll learn more, if I have to carve the information out from their tiny little brains.” I jumped to my feet and strode to the door.

  Aiden followed me. “I want to go with you,” he said.

  I froze for a moment. I kind of wanted him there, for the company, but I was afraid that if he were there being all supportive I might fall apart. I would hate that.

  “I know you don’t need me there,” he said in a flat voice. “And I know this is Triple S business. But I’d like to come. Will you let me?”

  That tore it. If he had gone all demanding and strong and insisted on coming, it would have been easy to refuse him. But he had asked, so I had to let him go. I nodded.

  I hadn’t been told how long ago Karish had been taken. Still, I was expecting Karish’s horde to be at the Headquarters before me and was surprised to see no familiar faces. So while the message I’d received had been far from satisfactory, it appeared that I had been the first to get it. That made me feel a little better.

  I could be petty sometimes.

  As soon as we arrived, one of the Runners offered to escort me to the captain’s office and asked Aiden to take a seat somewhere. “I don’t know how long this will take,” I said to him. “You don’t have to stay.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve got nothing better to do, and I need to rest a little, from the walk.” Ah, that was right. We had moved a little fast. I hadn’t given a thought to his leg. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll try out some of my repertoire on the rogues. That’ll be fun.”

  I was reluctant to leave him, but I couldn’t admit that. I followed the Runner to the office. After a swift knock he opened the door and let me in, closing the door behind me.

  Upon my entrance an elderly man rose from behind the desk, holding out a hand. “Captain Mulroney,” was his introduction. “Are you Shield Mallorough?”

  “Aye, sir.” I shook his hand.

  “Please take a seat, Mallorough.” Mulroney took his own advice and settled back behind his desk. “And let me assure you than I am aware of the danger you’re in right now. I promise you we will find Lord Shintaro, and we will find him soon. No one’s going to lose their life over this.”

  Sure. I’d believe that once we had Karish safely back, thanks. “Please, sir, can you tell me exactly what happened? The message didn’t give me many details.”

  “We haven’t got many details, yet,” Mulroney admitted. “Obviously,” he gestured at me, “he’s not dead. He would be, if murder were the goal. But it’s too early to say what the goal might be. For now, we just want to talk to as many of Lord Shintaro’s acquaintances as we can. You and the other Pairs and his friends. Would you be able to give us any names?”

  “If you give me a bit of time,” I said, thinking of the list that had been waiting for Karish at the residence when he’d returned from the hospital. “And they can probably give you others.”