Jean Lorrah - Empress Unborn

“Guilty?” Julia asked. Then she realized, “Yes. We feel guilty for being able to Read when Pyrrhus can’t- and that doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“No. It just allows us to sit here and do nothing.”

“But what can we do?” Julia asked.

“I need your help to find out. Pyrrhus must have skills-he has survived for the past five years. Wicket said Pyrrhus saved his life, and that they had some plan in mind-something they are doing together. I would like you to find Wicket this morning. I think he will talk to you more readily than to me. Find out their plan- perhaps we can help them achieve it. Find out their skills. Perhaps we can offer them work.”

Julia considered telling Aradia what she had Read from Wicket at the award ceremony. His plan with Pyrrhus might have included picking pockets in the crowded marketplace. But since she had no proof of dishonest intentions, she decided not to reveal her own breach of a Reader’s courtesy, if not the Code itself.

“Pyrrhus should not awaken until late this afternoon,” Aradia continued. “I have the feeling that his first inclination will be to put on his clothes and his sword and leave Zendi as fast as he possibily can.”

Wicket obviously suspected the same, for Julia found him at the hospital, still at Pyrrhus’ bedside. The ex-Reader was the only patient left in the four-bed ward.

“Did you stay here all night?” Julia asked Wicket.

“Didn’t have anyplace else to go, did I?”

It was obvious he had slept even less than she and Aradia, for his eyes were red and ringed with deep circles. He also needed a shave.

“If Pyrrhus wakes and finds you looking like that,” said Julia, “he will leave without you.”

Wicket’s eyes widened. “You’re not supposed to-”

“I didn’t Read you,” she assured him. “It’s obvious Pyrrhus doesn’t want pity, but the minute he sees you he’ll know you cried for him all night.”

“Couldn’t help it,” said Wicket. “I mean, I knew he’d been hurt-you don’t get a spiky shell like his unless life’s been pretty bad to you. But I never guessed-” He blinked back new tears, then looked over at Pyrrhus. “Can he hear us? I mean-can you tell when he’s going to wake up?”

“Aradia says not until late this afternoon. It’s safe for you to leave him, Wicket. He’s not going to run away. “

The man stood. “Yeah. Need a bath and a shave. Besides, he can’t leave without me.”

“Why not?” Julia asked.

“Got all our money, haven’t I?” Wicket replied with a hint of his earlier cheerfulness. It increased, as if he were donning armor piece by piece, until he was as she had seen him yesterday: charming, friendly, forgettable. “You’re right,” he admitted. “I can’t let Pyrrhus see how I really feel.”

“Let’s go out into the courtyard,” said Julia. “The rain’s stopped. If you’ll tell me something about Pyrrhus and yourself, maybe we can help you.”

“Dunno how,” Wicket said skeptically, but he followed her out to the hospital courtyard, where they sat on a stone bench that had already dried in the morning sun.

It was turning into a pleasant day. Recalling that she had promised to go with Galerio to the horse market that afternoon, Julia was glad the weather had cleared. Or perhaps the weather controllers had cleared it.

She considered what to ask Wicket, and decided on the least suspicious of her questions: “What kind of work do you do?”

“Odd jobs, mostly. Farm work, you know.”

Julia reached over and turned his right hand palm up. It was an agile hand, not soft, but certainly not the calloused hand of a workman. “Wicket, there’s never any use lying to a Reader, even if to preserve your privacy she is not Reading your thoughts.” She took his hand between both of hers, finding small calluses on several fingers and a place on the palm that he would use to apply pressure to the end of some tool, perhaps an awl.

“You work with your hands,” she told him, “with tools or instruments. Harnessmaker, maybe, or jeweler.

Weaponsmaker, possibly.”

Wicket’s bright brown eyes widened. “How old are you?” he asked.

“Thirteen.’

“How could you know all that, with so little experience of life?”

“Wicket… didn’t you know it at thirteen?”

“Well, yeah-but I didn’t grow up in an Academy, did I?”

“Neither did I,” Julia told him.

“Oh, right,” he said. “You’re a savage. You’d’ve grown up hiding the feet that you could Read-or you wouldn’t’ve grown up at all.” He shrugged. “I’m a locksmith. Lost me trade when all the Adepts flooded into the Aventine lands-a lock’s not much use, is it, when there’s all these folk around can open it with one twist of their minds.”

“And what have you been doing since?” Julia asked, quelling the suspicion that Wicket had picked far more locks than he had ever installed.

“Bit o’ this, bit o’ that. Pyrrhus and I do mostly bodyguarding.”

“Bodyguarding?” she asked increduously.

“You haven’t seen Pyrrhus in action,” Wicket explained. “Best swordsman I’ve ever seen, and he can shoot an arrow, throw a knife, a spear-a rock, if that’s all that’s handy-and never miss. An’ I guess I just come along as part of the package,” he added with a shrug.

Julia guessed that Wicket had other talents he wasn’t mentioning. “How did you two meet?” she asked.

“He saved my life.”

“How?” Julia asked when she realized he intended to stop there.

He peered at her again, those guileless brown eyes suddenly shrewd. “How come you get to ask all the questions?”

“What do you want to know?” Julia replied.

“Did you know Portia?”

“Yes, I knew her-and yes, she is really dead. There can be no mistake about it. I was in the rapport that killed her, too, Wicket-and my Reading powers were unimpaired.”

“I want to know about her anyway,” said Wicket. “Will you tell me, if I tell you about Pyrrhus and me?”

“Ill tell you what I know,” Julia agreed. “But first tell me how Pyrrhus came to save your life.”

“It was after the fall of the Empire,” said Wicket. “As I said, I’d pretty much lost me trade, so I took whatever work I could get. There was this rich lady, a senator’s widow, who wanted a cask of jewels transported to her country villa. She thought it’d be safer than in the city. I took on the task.”

“A senator’s widow trusted you with her jewels?”

“Why not?” Wicket asked with a look of insulted innocence. “I’d worked for her husband, installed the locks in their homes. I warned her, with all the Adepts spillin’ down into Tiberium, those locks weren’t safe anymore.”

“I see,” said Julia. You frightened her into letting you take her jewels . “But why hire you instead of armed guards?”

Wicket might not be a Reader, but Julia was sure he knew she was interpreting what he said through her experiences as a child in the streets of Zendi.

“A coupla minor Adepts could take out armed guards, and what were they armed for if they weren’t carryin’ somethin’ valuable? So it was safer for one person, lookin’ not worth robbin’,‘t’smuggle the jewels over the roads.

“Only an hour outside the city gates, I was set upon by brigands,” Wicket continued. “Dunno how they guessed I was carryin’ a treasure-nless one of em was a Reader. Disguised as city guardsmen, they were, chargin’ me with theft. They took and tied me to a tree, and broke open the casket. And then they started torturin’ me.”

“Torturing you?” Julia asked. “Why?”

” ‘Cause when they smashed it open, the casket had just a layer of gold an’ jewels across the top, y’see.