Free Heroes Adrift by Moira J. Moore

shells from the table and put them back into her bag.
    I guessed the challenge was over. I took the coins and Karish’s hand, depositing the former into the latter. “Gamble them away in good health.”
    He looked offended. “Hardly away,” he objected. “I don’t lose.”
    â€œExcept to me,” I reminded him with a smirk.
    â€œAye, no point in breaking a trend.”
    I frowned, trying to decipher that.
    â€œHey!” The gamester waved both hands at us. “Go, go, go! I—”
    I couldn’t clearly understand the rest of what she said, but hey, I could catch a hint with the best of them.
    We moved on. Unfortunately, for both the gamester and us, nearly half the crowd moved on with us. I ended up with a lot of people touching my hair. And yes, it was red, a freakish color even at home, but couldn’t they just look at it?
    We soon came across a contortionist. In a costume more paint than cloth, the young woman stood—sort of—on her hands. A fixed smile on her face, her back was bent nearly in half to allow her feet and shins to dangle over her shoulders. Looking at her made my spine hurt.
    â€œCan you do that?” Karish asked.
    I looked at him with disbelief. “Can you?”
    As before, however, the performer lost a good part of her audience once they became aware of us. And again with the hair touching. Here was this woman turning herself inside out for their entertainment and they would rather stare at me. Didn’t I feel like a freak? “Let’s move on.” I didn’t want to detract from the profits of the performers.
    So we moved on. To the jugglers. Gorgeous young men dressed in mere strips of red cloth hurling long shiny knives at each other. Drummers and tumblers. Tightrope walking and trapeze artists, a snake charmer and some kind of fortune-teller.
    At each location, the spectators seemed more interested in us than in the performances. I was used to a certain amount of attention due to being a Shield. This was different, more invasive. It was definitely time to get off the street.
    I had to ask to be pointed to a boarding house. Which, I discovered, was called a bunker. At least I was getting used to the accent, and if I listened carefully enough, I could understand what was being said.
    The bunker was only two stories high, which was as high as any building I had seen so far. Two vertical flaps of cloth, pretty but insubstantial, served as a door. We ducked under and were yelled at before we’d moved more than a few feet past the door.
    â€œPlease,” a man cried quickly, shuffling out from another room. “Kindly remove your, er, sandals.”
    We looked at our feet, and then at the neat collection of sandals piled on the step just inside the door. “We’re very sorry,” I said. We hastily pulled off our boots and added them to the collection. They looked out of place, not to mention ugly, next to the dainty beaded sandals.
    â€œThank you, madam, sir. You need a room?”
    It was difficult to see whether this was a place in which we’d want to stay. I could see nothing but walls, bare walls of dull yellow wood, the foyer nothing but the small square in which Karish and I stood, a narrow hall crossing before us. It smelled clean, though, and it was quiet.
    â€œDo you have two rooms available?”
    He nodded. “Three grays for each room. That includes nightly bath and morning fruit.”
    â€œAh.” They really must have had next to no exposure to Sources and Shields. It made sense, as they didn’t seem to produce any. “I am Shield Mallorough. This is Source Karish.” I stressed the titles and waited for him to realize his mistake.
    He nodded and beamed a smile. “Please call me Vikor. May your sun rise high.”
    Did that mean he’d understood? “You are aware that Sources and Shields do not pay for goods and services?”
    His smile didn’t dim a