“Panol has been bitten before.”

  Maybe Panol needed to invest in some boots. Speaking of…I glanced down at my bare ankles. My pale skin was practically glowing. It probably acted as some kind of beacon to the snakes.

  “What he felt before was not what he felt with you yesterday,” Atara continued. “He says he felt you do something.”

  “I put the gel on him,” Taro said, sounding puzzled.

  That, of course, was entirely an act.

  “You have healing magic,” Atara declared. “Why do you hide this?”

  That’s what I wanted to know.

  “There is no such thing as healing magic,” said Taro.

  She cocked her head at him. “Who told you that?”

  Karish opened his mouth to answer, and then shut it without responding. He frowned.

  I couldn’t blame him. I would be similarly dumb. I couldn’t remember a single person ever telling me there was no such thing as magic. It wasn’t necessary. It was just something I’d always known. Because it was obvious. Of course there was no such thing as magic.

  Taro wasn’t prepared to make that kind of argument, apparently. Instead he said, “Whether such magic exists or not, I don’t have it.”

  “What about this thing you say you do when the earth moves. Is that not magic?”

  “No.”

  She frowned. “Then what is it?”

  “It’s an ability I have, to kind of reach in and guide the power of an event out. With my mind.” He looked back at me for help.

  I shrugged. What did I know of channeling? I wasn’t a Source.

  “Can anyone learn to do this?”

  “No. You have to be born with the ability.”

  “Just like magic,” she said with a triumphant smirk, and she moved a red bead into a line of white beads.

  “No, just like anything.”

  “People can learn many things and not have inborn talent.”

  “You can’t do anything without inborn talent.” She was looking mutinous. He sighed. “Can you sing?”

  She appeared startled by the question. “Somewhat.”

  “Were you trained to learn?”

  “No.”

  “I can’t sing. And no amount of teaching will enable me to sing. I have absolutely no talent for it, and I can’t hear the difference between notes. But I don’t think people who can sing have some magical ability. They just have an ability I lack.”

  Atara was not as impressed with the analogy as I was. “Can you explain how you can do this interference with storms?”

  Not storms. Typhoons, maybe. Tsunami. Big difference.

  “Can you explain how people sing?” Karish retorted, obviously not expecting an answer.

  “People draw breath and push it through their throats and shape their mouths to release the air with different notes.”

  “There must be more than that, because I do the same, and I have been reliably informed that I can’t sing.”

  By who? I’d never managed to get him to sing. I’d even tried to get him drunk for that very purpose. And I’d seen him drunk, but it hadn’t been enough to get him to open his mouth for anything other than speaking.

  Atara’s jawline firmed in that way that said she was gritting her teeth.

  Atara, unlike most of the other members of the troupe, had actual furniture. Tables with legs that didn’t fold. Dressers an arm length in width and waist high. A full-length mirror. She opened a drawer in one of the dressers and took out a palm-sized black box. She opened the box, curling her fingertips into the contents.

  She blew the contents, a fine, silvery powder, into Karish’s face.

  Taro sputtered and sneezed. I gasped uselessly and clutched at his arm.

  Atara grabbed up the nearest candle and sort of waved it around Karish.

  Please don’t set my Source on fire.

  The flame of the candle flared up oddly, here and there. No doubt in reaction to the powder hanging in the air.

  “It is there,” Atara announced solemnly.

  I avoided rolling my eyes. Barely. Charlatan.

  “We had a healer for many years. She died.”

  A victim of the supposed curse?

  “Will you take her place?”

  “I am not a healer,” Karish snapped, his temper finally showing through.

  “We gave her coin. We’ll give you coin, too.”

  He scowled. “What are you suggesting? You want me to lie to your people? You want me to claim to be something I’m not and take money from them, all the while endangering their lives because of my ignorance? I thought honesty was so important to you.”

  Atara’s eyes narrowed. “You speak so little of yourselves,” she said flatly. “The city you come from, these tasks you perform, this is all you tell us, and little enough of those. Nothing of your families, your raising. All we learn is nothing more than the answers of what we ask. When you are not working, you hide yourselves away. In your tents, or wandering apart.”

  What, she was the only one allowed to take time for herself?

  “How am I to know what to make of you? Whether you are speaking true or for your own convenience?”

  Karish had clearly had enough. Through my hand on his arm, I felt tension solidify his muscles. “Don’t you think I’d want to do this, if I could?” he demanded with frustration. “I’m useless. And I can’t learn anything that will serve anyone else. I have no skill with my hands. I have no talent for performance. I don’t know how to do anything your average regular can’t do for himself, and better.” He let loose a sharp snicker. “I don’t even have a face anyone wants to look at.”

  I scowled at Atara. Her stupid, brutal insistence. Her nosy, judgmental arrogance. Making Taro feel this way, feel useless.

  He wasn’t useless. I needed him. He kept me sane. I would have snapped and murdered everyone long before this, if it weren’t for him. And if he were slightly less useful on the island than he was at home, that was only because the island was full of idiots.

  “Do you think I don’t know I’m here only on sufferance?” Karish continued. “That I’m tolerated only because I belong to Lee? That you’d happily leave me in any village—or a ditch—and go on your happy way with the Flame Dancer?”

  I glared at him. Like I’d ever consider going on without him.

  It appeared Atara felt equally insulted. “We do not,” she interrupted coolly, “value people like trinkets. We do not feel them animals to perform for us, or serve us, or to be discarded.”

  I was happy to hear it, but I thought Taro could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

  “I would love to be able to do something more than fetch and carry. I would love to bring in enough coin that Lee doesn’t feel paying off our list of debt is her sole responsibility. But I will not lie and swindle people for money. I will not.”

  Atara stared at him for a long, tense moment. Then, something in her air, something almost imperceptible in her posture, seemed to relax. “You cannot do this?” she asked.

  And this time it seemed an honest question, rather than a challenge.

  So Taro relaxed a little, too. “I cannot,” he said. “I am sorry.”

  Don’t apologize to her.

  “It is, indeed, unfortunate. We need a healer.”

  Don’t you dare try to make him feel guilty.

  “I have been on the Northern continent,” she said. “When I was a younger woman, before my mother died. She thought it important for me to see a broader world. At some time, I would like Kahlia to do the same.” With her fingertips, she moved a number of beads around with a light touch and no apparent design in mind. “The air was so dry. It made my skin peel, and I felt always thirsty. And dirty. As though dust were clinging to my skin, and no amount of washing could rid me of it. The food was so heavy and thick, it seemed to layer the bottom of my stomach for days. It became so cold in winter, I felt as though my very bones had turned to ice, and I would never be warm again. My fingers and wrists and ankles hurt.” She held her hands before her, bending her fingers as though testing them for pain. Then she shrugged, putting the black box back in its drawer. “They called my prognostication witchcraft. Some would offer money to me, to do it on their behalf, as though I would sell my gift, like Corla.”

  I kept my eyebrows from rising up, but only just. So it was all right to have someone selling their gifts for the benefit of the troupe, but Atara was too good to do it herself?

  “Others, though, they drove me out of town. They thought I was evil.” She smiled at that, strangely enough. Then she looked at Karish. “I had forgotten how difficult such things could be.”

  Taro tilted his head in his approximation of a bow. “I can imagine.”

  He was completely relaxed. I had anticipated an evening of trying to get him out of whatever mood this conversation was putting him in, and probably failing, but it was unnecessary. His arm beneath my hand was loose and fluid. The tension had drained out of the air. He was so changeable.

  Atara seemed pretty relaxed, too, so I thought I’d dare a question. “This trip up north you took, was it before Kahlia was born?”

  “Kai.”

  “How long before she was born?”

  Atara raised an eyebrow. “Her father was a Northern man. I would not recommend traveling while pregnant.”

  I was stunned that she answered the questions so easily. And she didn’t even hint that I had no business to be asking those questions. These people were so strange.

  I guessed that meant Kahlia wasn’t one of the line after all. Which was too bad. It would have been so handy to have our problem so easily solved.

  We went back to our tent. I flipped aside the entrance flap and stepped inside, ready to shut out the rest of the world.

  Only the thief was sitting in there, waiting for us.

  Chapter Fifteen

  She was just sitting there on the mat, cross-legged, her hands resting limply on her knees. A small, leather bag lay on the mat beside her. Her relaxed air suggested she hadn’t been caught in the act of stealing. Indeed, I wouldn’t have even suspected her of it, from her posture, if I didn’t know what she was.

  Aye, she didn’t look startled, or guilty. But a thief obviously didn’t feel guilty about stealing, and if she had any experience at it, she’d know how to prevent reaction to surprises.

  She looked like she’d been waiting for us. Certainly, she made no move to run.

  “Empty your bag,” I ordered.

  She rolled her dark eyes and sighed hugely, but she didn’t utter a word of protest. She jerked on the laces of the bag and upended the contents on the floor. A shirt, a skirt, a bracelet, a needle and some thread. That was all the bag held, and none of it looked familiar.

  “Stand up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I told you to.”

  I heard a faint sound from my side. Like Taro was trying to hold back a snort. I didn’t look at him. Neither did the girl.

  She did indulge in another eye roll, though. She stood, shaking her long dark hair off her shoulder.

  She didn’t smell too wonderful, and she had horrible posture. She’d better hope her spine didn’t grow into that shape once she was an adult. She’d be gorgeous if she were clean. She had the wide eyes, the lovely cheekbones, and her mouth would probably be pretty if it weren’t being held in a scowl.

  She was as scantily clad as any other islander I’d seen, the fabric of her clothes faded and in some places worn almost indecently thin. I couldn’t see anywhere that she could be hiding anything, and I wasn’t about to search her with anything other than my eyes. “What do you want?”

  “You’re a cool one,” she muttered.

  No. I was just in a bad mood. “Speak.”

  “What are you?” she asked.

  “Northerner.”

  “Not that!” she snapped with impatience. “I know that. But you’re not like regular Northerners.”

  Not like regular…Surely she didn’t mean that. Why would she even think to ask about that? “I’m a Shield.”

  “What’s a Shield?”

  Zaire. Where to start? I looked at Taro, and he just shrugged back. Revenge for my refusal to help him with defining a Source earlier with Atara. “I work with a Source.” I nodded at Taro. “When there’s an earthquake, a Source can”—here was the hard part—“use his mind to redirect it.” I looked at Taro again. He shrugged again. I supposed that meant my definition was good enough. “I protect him while he does it.”

  She sneered at Taro. “You need protecting?”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her. “All Sources need Shielding when they channel, little one.”

  The “little one” could have been an expression of affection. He used it because he knew it would tick her off.

  And it did. She thrust out her flat chest, eyes flaring. “I don’t need no Shielding when I link,” she declared.

  I stared at her. “You channel?” I asked.

  “’F’s that’s what you call it.”

  “And you don’t work with a Shield?”

  “Don’t work with no one.”

  It was supposed to be impossible for a Source to channel without a Shield and live. That was the reason Shields existed, after all. The reason we spent years in academies, the reason why we were Chosen by Sources and bonded to them for the rest of our lives. I’d known a Source who almost committed suicide by channeling without a Shield, surviving only because he changed his mind at the last moment. According to everything everyone knew and learned, Sources needed Shields to operate. And that was that.

  But Taro could heal without a Shield. He’d done it before he met me, though not since we had been bonded. He claimed he couldn’t. I thought he was just afraid to. Or was trying to spare my feelings. I’d often wondered if he could channel without me and survive, if he would just dare to try.

  Someone had been channeling. Taro had felt it.

  “Who trained you?” I asked.

  She snickered. “Nobody.”

  “Perhaps that’s why you’re so bad at it,” Taro said coolly.

  “I’m not bad at it!”

  “You’re very weak. You can’t channel much. You’d never handle the events up north.”

  “You can go stick yourself!” she retorted.

  For shame, Taro. Tormenting an eleven-year-old. Or whatever she was.

  I crossed my arms. “What do you want?”

  For the first time, the little creature looked uncertain. “Take me with you.”

  One shock after another. “Your pardon?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You want to join the troupe?”

  “No. North.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to. Been on this island all my life. Wanna get off.”

  “We’re not going home for at least a couple of years.”

  She bit her lower lip, glancing about as she thought. Then she said, “I can wait.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m your kind, right? Or”—she looked at Taro without much enthusiasm—“his kind.”

  What an odd sentiment. “There’s more to it than that.”

  She raised her chin proudly. “I can make you coin.”

  “I could not be less interested in the proceeds of theft.”

  “Huh?” she said, looking confused. Then she worked it out. “I can do other things. I don’t have ta steal.”

  I didn’t really want to know what other means of gaining funds she used.

  Really, Lee. Do you have to always assume the worst? Kids worked for money all the time, had all sorts of ways. Just because I didn’t know what they were didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

  Money had nothing to do with anything.

  “What about your father?” I asked her.

  “Got no father.”

  “The medicine man…”

  “Is not my father.”

  “He’s your guardian, though?”

  She shrugged. “Not really.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I lived with him.”

  “He takes care of you?”

  She snickered.

  “Does he have the right to tell you what to do?”

  “He’s no kin of mine.”

  Damn it. She knew what I was asking, even if I didn’t know the proper words for asking. “Does he feed you?”

  “When he feels like it.”

  “How long have you lived with him?”

  “Forever.”

  Good enough. “So he’s going to come after you when he finds you gone.”

  “Don’t see why. Always snarking about me being more trouble than I’m worth. Says I eat more than I bring in.”

  And she hadn’t been eating much.

  So this was the situation. This child, a thief, wanted us to take her from her guardian. Or whatever he was. We would have this child, a thief, with us for the next however long we were on the island, feeding her, housing her, and making sure she didn’t rip off the entire troupe and anyone else we met. Then, we were taking her to the Northern continent and…what…dropping her off? Fare thee well. Nice to know you.

  In theory, members of the Triple S were to take to the academies any Sources or Shields they discovered among the general population, but that wasn’t why we were on Flatwell. And I had no doubt that the Empress’s explicit orders trumped vague ongoing duties imposed by the Triple S.

  She was staring at me, an unnatural intensity in her eyes. She was too young to have such weight in her gaze. And she had the uncomfortable ability, it appeared, to know what I was thinking. “I’ll do whatever you want,” she said. “You gotta take me. I’m your kind.”

  And how had she known that? How had she known what we were?

  Had she felt Taro? The way he had felt her?

  That didn’t explain me, though. She’d come to me, asked me what I was first. If she didn’t know what a Shield was, she wouldn’t have thought to go to anyone other than Taro himself.

  She could be lying about the whole thing. Someone she knew could be the Source, working with a Shield as all Sources did. Maybe they had mentioned to her that they had felt Taro working, and she had spotted some kind of opportunity. But what?

  To get away from the medicine man? Could that be all?