My brothers and Taro spilled into the room. The sour stench of ale spilled in with them. All three of them were hammered.
“Mother!” Dias greeted cheerfully. “Lee!”
“Lee, my love,” Taro corrected him.
My mother stared at them. “What kind of behavior is this?”
“It’s fun!” Dias declared, throwing his arms wide, thereby releasing Taro, who would have collapsed if Mika hadn’t caught him. “You remember fun, Mother.”
“This is disgusting!” my mother exclaimed.
“Oh, relax, Mother,” Dias sneered. “There are no ledgers here. No suppliers. No workers. Nothing to do but enjoy ourselves. I’ve heard stories about how much you liked to enjoy yourself when you were younger. Do try not to be a hypocrite.”
So, Dias wasn’t a fun drunk.
Taro put a finger to his lips. “Shhh!” He leaned in to whisper in a voice we could all hear. “We can’t let them know we’ve been drinking. They’ll get mad.”
Mika rolled his eyes. “I did try to get them to slow down, but there was no reasoning with them.”
Ah, Mika was sober. I was glad one of them had been sensible.
Taro took a few wobbly steps before slumping into a settee. “I am not drunk,” he announced.
If an event happened in the next few hours, we were all dead. Alcohol shattered a Source’s concentration and altered the way his mind worked, making it difficult to Shield. I couldn’t believe Taro had been so irresponsible.
“So what do you have to say, eh?” Dias challenged my mother. “Going to punish me?”
I frowned at him. I really hoped that was just the drink talking. The idea of my mother punishing my adult brother was disturbing. And what kind of punishment would it be?
“You’re embarrassing yourself, Dias,” said my mother.
“No, my dear mother, I’m embarrassing you. Isn’t that the greater crime?”
Mother didn’t answer that. “Who saw you?”
“Everyone!” Dias grinned. “Even the Prides. That makes it the worst of all, doesn’t it?”
“How old are you?” my mother asked Dias. “Is this any way to conduct yourself?”
Dias dropped into the settee beside Taro. The piece of furniture creaked under the onslaught. Dias threw an arm around Taro’s shoulders and pulled him close. “Taro’s older than me.” Taro grinned and leaned his head on Dias’s shoulder.
“Shintaro’s not my responsibility.”
“Neither am I!” Dias shouted.
I couldn’t help wincing. Really didn’t want to witness some contretemps among my family, especially when one of the parties was drunk. That just couldn’t end well.
“All right,” said Mika, reaching for Dias’s hand. “How about you sleep this off?”
“Back off, Mika,” Dias snapped, pulling away. “I’m not your responsibility, either.”
“Shhh, shhh, shhh.” That was Taro again. “They’ll know.”
“They already know, Taro,” Dias said impatiently.
“Not if we don’t tell them,” said Taro in a solemn tone.
“You’re being stupid, Dias,” said Mika. “And you’re making a fool of yourself.”
“And the gods forbid we should make fools of ourselves. Now you’re starting to sound like Lee.” He turned to look at me. “This is all your fault, you know,” he accused me.
How did I become a part of this?
“Their perfect little girl,” said Dias. “So obedient and calm. Why couldn’t we all be like that?”
That was the first time I’d ever heard anything like that. My mother, when she’d visited me in High Scape, had admitted she was uneasy with me because I was cool and detached.
Taro laughed. “Obedient?” he sputtered. “Who the hell told you that?”
Actually, I was obedient, though I really didn’t like to think of myself that way. I always did whatever anyone told me: the Triple S, the Emperor, the Empress before him. I didn’t think I had a choice but to be obedient. So I didn’t know what Taro was talking about.
“Mother,” Dias said with some bitterness. “Before she was sent to her Shield Academy, she was quiet and easy and never made any trouble.”
“You were two when I was sent to the Academy,” I reminded him.
“That didn’t stop the parents from talking about you.”
All right, I could understand why he’d find that irksome.
“And then all our visits thereafter, how polite you were, how you never kicked at the restrictions placed on you.”
He really resented me for this. It baffled me.
“Mother’s been trying to get her to change her clothing since we got here,” Mika reminded him. “And she hasn’t.”
“And what does Mother do when Lee throws her orders back in her face? Nothing.”
I hadn’t thrown anything in anyone’s face. “So you’re annoyed with me for being obedient, and you’re annoyed with me for being disobedient. Make up your mind. You don’t get to ride both horses.”
“And what do you have to do?” Dias demanded. “Snap your fingers every once in a while to stop a storm or something. Ridiculous.”
By Zaire, he was one of those people who thought we did nothing. My own brother.
He’d seen something of what Taro went through when he channeled. He had been worried about me because of it. This didn’t make sense.
“Hey hey hey!” Yes, that roused Taro. “That’s not true. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, please. Have you ever had to get up before dawn because you had to work?”
“We did. And in the middle of the night, too. All sorts of times. In High Scape.”
“And here?”
“Here we’re on duty all the time,” I said. “Day or night.”
Dias snorted. “You’re on duty now, are you?”
“We are.” I looked at Taro. “And you’d better hope nothing happens now, because he’s pretty much useless. Thank you ever so much for bringing him to this.”
“Trying to blame this on me, are you?”
“He’s not drunk so much since he got here.”
“Maybe he needed to escape from your perfection, too.”
Bastard.
“Shut up, Di,” said Mika.
“You go to hell,” Dias snapped back.
“Mika, take him to your room,” my mother ordered.
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Dias. “Get us some wine, Lee.”
Like hell I would.
Mother gasped suddenly, her eyebrows raised. “Oh, Zaire.” She looked at me. “Shintaro doesn’t get drunk. You mean that.”
“Never when he might have to channel. Never. He has a high sense of responsibility.” I looked at my Source, sprawled in the settee and smiling happily at nothing. “Less than half a candle mark ago, I would have thought this”—I waved a hand at Taro, and he waved back—“impossible.”
“And Dias isn’t usually so . . .”
“Obnoxious?” I suggested.
“Not even when he drinks to excess.”
“Ah.” It could be just the influence of Flown Raven. It seemed to have an odd effect on people. Taro had been a mess when we first arrived. “Our situation is a little stressful.”
“No, that’s not it. It’s about the contract.”
“The marriage contract?”
“Aye. It had some odd clauses. Clauses I’d never seen, not in any other contract I’d signed or witnessed. I didn’t think anything of it, at the time. I had no prior knowledge of family contracts. It didn’t seem strange to me that they would be written differently from business contracts.”
I was curious and irritated. “What in the world could any contract have to do with everyone’s behavior right now?”
“It says something like”—she frowned, trying to remember the words—“when the parties are to marry, the groom and his family are to be housed, clothed and fed by the bride’s family. Failure to meet this obligation on the bride’s family’s part will result in weakness and disharmony within the bride’s family.” She looked at my brothers and my Source.
I didn’t know anything about contracts, but a clause like that sounded absurd.
And yet, in this very short time, Mother was, I thought, uncharacteristically critical, Dias was, apparently, uncharacteristically hostile, and Taro was uncharacteristically drunk.
“How could such a clause be enforced?”
“I had no idea. I still don’t. I only know that the Prides came here to complete the contract, and we did not house them. They are rooming at a tavern in the village. And now, look at what we have.”
“I don’t have a home,” I reminded her.
“We have to hope our presence in the manor enables us to consider it ours for the purposes of the contract. I’ll ask Her Grace if she’ll allow the Prides to room here.”
“You can’t possibly think it will make a difference.”
“It wouldn’t cause any harm.”
Hester walked in. “Her Grace requests the presence of Holder Mallorough,” she announced.
“Get us some wine,” Dias ordered.
“That won’t be necessary,” I told her.
“Lee!” Dias shouted.
He really needed to calm down. “You can go now,” I said to the maid.
“Her Grace is waiting for you in her office,” Hester said before she left the room.
I rose to my feet as my mother did. “I’m going, too.”
“It’s only to be the signatories of the contract.”
“Cars isn’t a signatory, his wife was.”
“She’s dead. Adaptations must be made.”
“So my attendance can be another adaptation.”
“Fine,” my mother snapped. “Mika, make sure these two don’t drink any more. They’re already an embarrassment to us all.” I followed her out of the room, and as soon as the door closed behind us she asked me in a low voice, “What is Taro like hungover?”
“Usually it only takes a hot meal to perk him up, but I’ve never seen him this drunk before.”
“So you don’t know whether he’ll be fit to run a race tomorrow.”
Hell. I hadn’t thought of that. “No, I don’t.”
“Damn it.”
Fiona and Cars Pride were in her office, bent over her desk. A map covered the entire surface.
“What is she doing here?” Cars demanded, glaring at me.
“I came to observe.”
“Well, you can’t observe. Get out.”
“Cars Pride,” Fiona snapped. “You will be civil or you will leave.”
“You don’t see Marcus here, do you? We know how to follow legal procedure.”
Fiona was clearly working to hold on to her patience. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave, Shield Mallorough.”
“I understand,” I said. I didn’t really, but I wasn’t going to make things difficult for Fiona. “I’m really just here to request that tomorrow’s race be postponed a day.”
“No,” Cars responded bluntly.
“Why?” Fiona asked.
“Taro’s indisposed.”
“Indisposed?”
“He’s drunk,” Cars announced.
Fiona looked at me. I nodded. “You don’t think he will be able to participate tomorrow?”
I hesitated. I didn’t know how well Taro could run while hungover. I wouldn’t have wanted to do it.
And Cars saw my hesitation, of course. “Then he forfeits,” he said with satisfaction. “The first test goes to Marcus.”
“No!” I said quickly. “There’s no reason why the test can’t be delayed.”
“Except that tomorrow was the date agreed upon and we don’t agree to change it. Especially for the reason you’re seeking the change. It’s not our fault Karish is so irresponsible.”
He wasn’t irresponsible. My brothers did something to him. Or something did. I needed to get a look at that contract. “Then tomorrow it is.” Was there a point? Could Taro possibly win?
“Then, if you would please excuse us.” Fiona gestured toward the door.
Fine, fine. I couldn’t believe Cars wouldn’t allow the delay. After all, he was seeking to become part of our family. Wouldn’t he want to be less of an ass?
The race was going to happen no matter how hungover Taro might be. This would not be pretty.
All right, stop worrying. He won’t let you down. It’ll be fine.
It’ll be fine.
Chapter Twelve
I slept poorly. I was worried. I tried to talk myself out of my concern. It was only the first test of three. If Taro lost it, he would win the next two, I had no doubt. And if he lost all three, I still wouldn’t marry Marcus, because the very idea of me marrying anyone was stupid. And my family would just have to handle the damage to their reputation. They were the ones responsible for this mess.
Though maybe the Cars would sue my family if Marcus won and I failed to marry him. They seemed the sort to do that.
But that wasn’t the only thing keeping me awake. I couldn’t stop thinking of what Dias had said, the accusations he had made. I couldn’t believe he held such opinions of me. He barely knew me and I was his sister. Shouldn’t he be starting from a position of liking me? And he’d never even asked me what being a Shield was like, not since we were young children. Why would he hold such thoughts and not talk to me about them?
Thinking while stuck in bed had to be one of the biggest wastes of time.
It was a good hour before dawn when Taro groaned and scrubbed at his face. “Oh, gods,” he mumbled.
“Good morning, darling,” I said in the sweetest voice I could fake.
“Not morning, yet,” he muttered.
“Ah, but it will be soon, and you have a race to run.”
After a few long moments, he said, “Mm?”
“You’re running a race in a couple of hours. Isn’t that grand?” I could tell by looking at him that my words were making no impression. I waited.
In a little while he said, “Oh gods.”
“Feeling wonderful yet?”
“Oh gods.”
“It’s going to be a beautiful day.”
“Woman, leave me alone.”
“Normally, I might.” It would depend on how much he’d annoyed me the night before. “But you have to run a race in not too long.”
His eyes still closed, his brow furrowed in a frown. Even needing a shave he was too cute. “A what?”
“A race.”
“A race?”
“A race.”
His eyes opened. They were bloodshot. “A what?”