The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

  As quickly as that, he found himself a guest of the Gyru-nalles instead of a slave. She led him out of the tent, and he saw that the wagons were lined up, and that people were tying spare horses to the backs of the wagons, and that outriders already moved along the enormous train, shouting orders.

  She showed him into a beautifully painted wagon which she identified as her personal residence. A driver already sat on the high crossplank, reins in hand. She waved to him and shouted something in Shombe, then ushered Hasmal into her home on wheels.

  He was immediately enchanted. He had never seen the inside of a Gyru wagon before, and he hadn’t imagined how delightful such a tiny space could be. The structure formed a single room, with a stone-polished, close-planked wood floor and a painted wood ceiling high enough to permit him to stand upright easily. A padded bench seat ran along one wall below a genuine glass window, and along the other wall were a pantry, a built-in floor-to-ceiling bank of drawers, and between them another window and an area for food preparation. The front of the cabin was given over to a deep closet with a ladder that ran up one side to a loft, which a thick down mattress and several cushions completely filled.

  She had everything anyone really needed, he thought, and she took it with her everywhere she went. For a moment, he was envious.

  Then she moved one of the cushions on the long bench seat, and lifted the hinged lid of the compartment beneath. From the storage space, she pulled out a pair of worn, dark green leather pants and a dove-gray silk shirt. She tossed them to him, and he put them on, conscious that she was watching him. They didn’t fit him too badly, considering that Gyru men were, on average, tall and lean, and he was short and muscular. The clothing was very fine—better than what had been stolen from him the day before.

  “Whose are these?”

  “Yours, now. They once belonged to a . . . friend . . . but he has since moved on.”

  “Thank you, then . . .” He paused. He didn’t know her name. “. . . Lady.”

  “Never a lady,” she said with a chuckle, “though always a woman. You may call me Alarista.”

  Which wasn’t her name, he knew. Gyrus never gave anyone their real names—they felt possession of the real name gave one access to the soul. He nodded. “Alarista. You may call me Chobe.” That had been his nickname as a child, and would not cause him to commit the social error of forcing his real name on her, thus making her partly responsible for his soul whether she wanted to be or not.

  When he’d dressed, she sat him down and offered him a drink she called kemish, which she told him was made from the seeds and fruit of the cocova plant, and from red peppers and ground dried fish, and which tasted bitter and spicy and fishy—it was the most noxious thing he had, in fact, ever been asked to drink. His people made confections from ground cocova and honey that were sweet and smooth and marvelous; he’d never imagined anyone would find a way to make cocova taste terrible. Still, he was a guest, and more importantly, the guest of a fellow Falcon, and as a guest he swallowed the noxious stuff and smiled and pretended he loved it.

  When they’d finished their drinks, she finally got to what was on her mind.

  “When you told Ffaunaban about the curse you were under, I told him that was nonsense, and that you were just trying to tell him something that would frighten him into letting you escape. But I couldn’t permit such an assertion to go unverified.” She smiled at him.

  “Of course not.” He waited without adding anything about the curse, because she was going somewhere with this, and anything he added would only take away from the information she gave him.

  “I did a divination. What I saw was . . . frightening.”

  He kept waiting. Maybe she knew more than he did. Maybe she would tell him what she’d found.

  She sighed. “We can’t keep you with us, as much as I would like to; I’ve never had the opportunity to meet a Falcon from outside of my own people. But the doom you carry on you will, according to my divination, swallow us in order to reach you.” She sat looking at him, her hands folded primly in her lap, her head held high. “We have always made a point to offer sanctuary to those oppressed by the forces in power. But the forces that want you . . .” She shrugged delicately. “Not even I could suggest that my people stand between you and the gods.”

  He hoped she would say more, perhaps tell him specific details of the doom her divination had foretold, and why it had fallen on him. But she had taken his route of silence; she watched him, and now she waited.

  “Then you intend to release me? To set me free?”

  “In a fashion. We’ve sent pigeons to our agent in Costan Selvira, and passage has been arranged for you aboard a ship. We’re breaking camp now—we’re going to take you there, give you back your belongings, see you aboard the ship, and watch until it leaves the harbor. Once we’re certain that we have sufficient distance between you and us, you may do whatever you wish; until the time that your ship leaves harbor, however, either a guard or I will accompany you.”

  “Then I’m a prisoner.”

  Her laugh was as lovely as her smile. “Well, you aren’t a slave any longer, and I’d rather you considered yourself my personal guest, but if you decided to try to . . . ah, escape my hospitality before you sailed with your ship”—she shrugged again, a movement that he noticed did interesting things to her breasts—“my people would be forced to shoot you before you ran ten steps.”

  “Why? Why not just return my horse and my things to me and let me leave?”

  Her laugh this time was heartier than before, and the corners of her eyes crinkled with merriment. “Because—and you will pardon my frankness, please—I don’t think you have either the sense or the skills to get yourself as far away from my people as I want you to be. You apparently have neither the ability to ride a horse nor the woodsense to know when you’re riding into an ambush, and I think, for all your intelligence and whatever skills you do possess, that you’d end up someone else’s captive before you’d gone a furlong.” She leaned forward, and her silk shirt gapped enchantingly over her bosom, affording him a clear view of her right breast and most of the left one.

  Hasmal was having a hard time feeling indignant.

  “So you are going to make sure I end up a long way from here.”

  “As far as the sea and the ship will take you.”

  “I suppose I can’t complain. I’d planned to do something similar; as long as I leave my doom behind, I’ll be content.”

  She hadn’t moved, and he became aware that he’d been talking to her chest. He flushed, looked into her eyes, and realized that she knew exactly what he’d been looking at . . . and that she seemed amused by his scrutiny. He stared down at his hands, feeling like an oaf and an idiot, and to change the subject, asked, “What am I to do in the meantime?”

  She didn’t answer him. After a moment he looked up to find an enigmatic half-smile on her lips and a smoldering look in her eyes. Her voice dropped to a low, husky purr, and she said, “I imagine we can think of something.”

  Chapter 11

  Kait walked down Freshspring Street with Tippa at her side and a retinue of soldiers disguised as servants and minor functionaries at her back. They were ostensibly on a mission to buy additional silks and glassware for Tippa’s trousseau, but in fact were simply out to be seen, to convince the Dokteeraks and the Sabirs that the Galweigh Family suspected nothing and would walk into the wedding trap when the bells rang in the station of Soma the next day.

  Tippa, poor dim child, still suspected nothing. She’d been told that her parents and the other notable members of the Family would be arriving by airible that night, after the dedication service, and that those who had arrived so far were simply distant relatives from Goft and the colonies. She accepted the whole tale as sacred writ, and tried to spend time meeting these “relatives,” much to everyone’s chagrin. So Kait got the twofold job of keeping her out in the public eye and away from the newly arrived soldiers, who needed the time to finish going
over strategy.

  Thus this buying expedition, which had resulted in the purchase of five bales of sapphire-blue silk, and the order of a hundred ruby-red spun-glass goblets at a price Kait couldn’t begin to believe, and the acquisition of a set of silver decanters shaped like leopard cubs that Tippa declared “precious” and that Kait found ridiculous. Thus, also, Kait acquired a blinding headache that came partly from trying to push away the incessant pounding waves of evil that had grown worse instead of better since the night of the Naming Day party. In part, however, she thought the headache had to be from hunger; she’d had only a light morning meal, and that had been at sunrise. Already the Invocation to Mosst was ringing through the streets, and the sun, directly overhead, beat down on her.

  The fragrant smells of meat and bread and pies and a multitude of other delicacies filled Freshspring Street from one end to the other; the silk houses and metal changers and craftsmen’s shops shared the narrow street with bakeries and fish houses and mead brewers—and Kait, smelling the various offerings, thought that if she didn’t get something to eat soon, she would go mad.

  “Wouldn’t you like a pie?” she asked Tippa, who had already turned her nose up at python-on-a-stick, and whole roasted parrots beautifully braised in their own juices and stuffed with corn and sweet yams, and a peccary stew that had smelled like heaven to Kait.

  Now Tippa sighed that pained sigh of hers that indicated she thought herself surrounded by idiots. “Cousin, don’t you see? I can’t eat food from these places. I’m to be an adrata in this city, and I may someday be paraglesa. You should know that I can’t allow myself to eat street food like a commoner.”

  Kait, eyeing a beautiful rolled-crust mango pie that sat on the counter of one of those common cookeries, was not about to be put off yet again, and for no better reason than that eating common food was below the station that her cousin wasn’t going to attain anyway. So she said, “One of the things I’ve learned in the diplomatic corps is that if you would be truly beloved by all the people, you must find ways to make them believe you care about them. And what better way to begin showing that you care than by sharing their food without shame?”

  Tippa frowned down at her feet, and Kait could see her lips moving. Finally she looked up. “You’re certain that eating the street food won’t make us seem . . . base-born?”

  Kait schooled her face to sincerity. “I’m positive.”

  A pause. Another sigh. Then, “Very well. We’ll all eat. I was a bit hungry.”

  So they waited in line behind the workingmen and the merchants and the salesgirls, and they bought two of those beautiful pies, and the soldiers got themselves pastries. Then they visited another shop, where they ate stuffed parrots. After that, a meadery, where they indulged in strong red mead served in containers made of the leaves of bassos trees, curled and sealed with wax to form hollow cones. Kait thought the idea of disposable cups wonderfully clever—it was the first thing she’d seen in all of Halles that had genuinely impressed her. Finally, just before they reached the last silk shop on the street, they stopped at an icery.

  The shopkeeper bowed graciously and asked them what they would have. Ice was even rarer in Halles than it was in Calimekka, because it had to be brought in not only from the mountains, but overland as well, and the prices marked on the man’s board were astronomical. Still, the heat of midday made frozen confections irresistible to both women—and Kait, in a moment of largesse, bought her cousin and herself plus all of the mock functionaries and mock servants little bowls of shaved ice flavored with fruit juices and honey. They stood against the building savoring these treats and trying to stay out of the sun when Kait suddenly became aware that she was being watched. She stiffened slightly but managed to avoid giving any outward sign that she knew what was happening—she and Tippa were supposed to be drawing attention, of course, but this was different.

  He was somewhere in the crowd. The other Karnee. The one she had met and wanted.

  She had been at least slightly aware of him since the moment they had parted. She could tell through stone walls when he paced outside the embassy, hoping for a glimpse of her. She could feel her heart begin to race sometimes in the middle of the night in acknowledgment of nothing more than his existence. She felt herself drawn to him, as if he were a lodestone and she were iron; something beyond her reach and her understanding made her desire him even though she knew that her desires were a betrayal of her Family’s well-being. He was a hunger that she dared not confess and dared not sate; he was both potion and poison, and even the contemplation of indulging her craving felt as compelling and as unforgivable as Shift.

  Now he was close to her—not within smelling distance, or perhaps just downwind—but close enough that she could feel this other hunger building inside of her like a madness. Animal passion, she told herself. Karnee lust, the weakness of your inhuman other self. Don’t give in to beast behavior.

  The lust raged unabated.

  And for the thousandth time since the night of the party, she thought of Hasmal son of Hasmal, and of the wall of peace that he carried with him. For the thousandth time, she chafed at the presence of the inescapable others; she had never had time during the daylight hours to make good on her promise to find him. She suspected her uncle’s design in that fact, and not just bad luck—though Dùghall had not asked her what else had happened before she arrived at the embassy and climbed the wall that night, she thought he suspected more went on than she’d admitted. And he seemed determined to have her observed to ensure that nothing else happened without his knowledge.

  Now, though, with Tippa and the soldiers with her, Kait wondered if she might suggest a side trip to Stonecutter Street, to Hasmal’s Curiosities, on the excuse that she had heard of something fabulous there that she wanted to buy for Tippa as a gift. She caught the attention of Norlis, who was the embassy master sergeant dressed up today as a junior undersecretary. He came to her side and in a low voice said, “My thanks, lady, for the ice. It was very fine.”

  She smiled. “A recognition of the . . . ah, the suffering you have done today.” Tippa would never have dared speak to a master sergeant in the same tones she employed on junior undersecretaries, and Norlis and his men, so disguised, had found themselves the targets of several petty tongue-lashings. Soldiers attached to Families held high rank and positions of great esteem, and Family members treated them with the respect any sensible person gave to those who, in moments of crisis, stepped in to save one’s life. Mere household staff hadn’t earned such respect and usually didn’t get it.

  Norlis flushed and shrugged. “It’s been a long morning, and difficult, but . . . all for a good cause.”

  “I have a request. I’ve heard that wonderful gifts might be found at a little shop on Stonecutter Street.” She stared off to one side and frowned, as if struggling to remember the name. “Had . . . Har . . . something Curiosities.” She met his eyes and smiled triumphantly. “Hasmal’s Curiosities! That’s it! I’d like to go there before we return to the embassy, to buy something special for Tippa and her new husband.”

  Norlis shook his head slowly and stared into her eyes, trying to figure out what she really wanted. Well, of course he knew that the wedding present story was a lie, because he knew as well as she did that there would be no wedding. But the expression on his face led her to believe that he would not have been enthused about her request no matter what excuse she had given. He said, “I know more or less where that is . . . but I could never take you there. It’s a dangerous part of the city; people dressed as well as we are go missing there in broad daylight, and the fact that we’re traveling in a group would be no protection.”

  She raised her eyebrows and silently mouthed the words, But you’re soldiers.

  He pointed to his belt, where only a poniard hung. She realized he carried no sword; none of the soldiers carried a sword. After all, what household servant could afford a weapon of war . . . and what could he hope to do with one if he had it? She fel
t a wave of pity for the warriors dressed in the functionaries’ red-and-black fusses and frills—they must feel naked without their blades and their own uniforms, which were designed for ease of movement, not to show off the fine curves of their calves and shoulders.

  On Freshspring Street, a block from the embassy and in an excellent neighborhood, the group had no real worries. Kait and Tippa carried only the smallest amount of actual cash—like the rest of the well-born, Tippa purchased the things she wanted with a letter of credit. Robbery would be a futile gesture, a fact even the poorest city inhabitants knew well. Kidnapping, though, was always lucrative, and with the soldiers mimicking functionaries even to the arms they carried, the group would be easy targets for a gang looking for such opportunities, if they were to allow themselves to get too far from home or to wander down the wrong streets.

  But she had to find Hasmal, to discover his secret for keeping the evil of the world from touching him. This was her last chance; when she and Tippa returned to the embassy, they would immediately begin to prepare for the dedication service. They would be under constant supervision until the moment they returned once again to the embassy, which would not be until the station of Telt, when the sky was fully dark and the Red Hunter joined the White Lady in the sky. And then she and Tippa would be hustled onto the last airible leaving Halles, and they would lift into the blackness, and Hasmal and his secret for peacefulness would be lost to her forever.

  She had to find him, and she could not. She knew she could order Norlis to take her there, and he would be duty-bound to follow her orders and to protect her with his life . . . but Family did not recklessly expend the lives of loyal soldiers. Kait had her duty, too, and it was to accept Norlis’s warning for her own safety and to protect Tippa. Kidnappings forced the Family into a position of weakness; look at poor Danya, still not ransomed while the Sabirs dithered over sacks of gold and inches of boundaries like matrons over fish in a market, and the Galweighs tried everything they could think of to get the kidnappers to accept some sort of deal and send her home.