The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

  Child, I haven’t slept in a th—in two hundred years.

  “Can you wake me when we have to leave if I am asleep?”

  Yes.

  “Good. Then be quiet until the town rings Huld. I’m exhausted.”

  Huld. Of course. A pause. And how do they ring that now?

  Kait sank into welcome darkness.

  Kait? How do they ring Huld now?

  She fought the embrace of the dark god a moment longer. “The same way they always have.”

  The pause she got was not encouraging.

  “Three bells. Different tones. You’ll hear them.”

  Odd that her ancestor didn’t remember that. Perhaps nearly two hundred years of being dead made you forget things.

  The dark god brushed her cheek with his lips, and she lost the thought in the feathery comfort of sleep.

  Chapter 19

  The last of the screams had died away not long ago. Silence owned the House for the moment. Dùghall rose and tapped the airible pilot, Aouel, on the shoulder. “They’ve fled,” he said. “But we’re going to have to get outside and close the gate before they return. Can you kick the door open?”

  Aouel, haggard-faced and sleep-drugged, struggled with Dùghall’s words. “Fled? The Sabirs? Why? Are you sure?”

  “I don’t know why, and we don’t have time to figure it out. They all started screaming and ran away; they aren’t out there now; we have to get to the gate.”

  He could have opened it himself with magic, but he couldn’t have explained to the other survivors how he got it open—and he didn’t want to do anything that might link him with the suspicious disappearance of the two bodies from the room, or the flight of the Sabirs from the House.

  On the other hand, the method by which a big, strong young man would go through a locked door was understandable by everyone. Nothing suspicious about it. And Aouel used that method. He ran at the door and hit it with his shoulder. It shuddered, but held. He hit it again and again; after six or seven solid crashes, the frame splintered around the catch and it burst open.

  The noise woke the other sleepers. Dùghall told them only, “The Sabirs ran away.” Then he ran out into the hallway and trotted toward the stairs that would take him to the ground floor, and eventually to the gate, following Aouel, who, being younger and in better shape, didn’t have to go slowly to keep from jostling his belly uncomfortably. Behind them, Dùghall could hear the other survivors coming out, chattering to each other about what could have possibly made the Sabirs leave. Good. They could puzzle out some answer to their miraculous rescue while he wasn’t present.

  He followed Aouel, who charged through the House and out onto the grounds, tore through the gardens and across the manicured paths and the exercise grounds and the airible ground to the guardhouse by the gate. He managed to keep the younger man in sight, though sometimes only barely. He made it past the shrubs in time to see the gate close.

  He smiled, bending over with his hands on his thighs, wheezing. Closed. His left palm hurt like the very hells. His lungs burned. The world faded in and out of a gray haze filled with tiny points of light. His heart felt ready to explode out of his chest. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. If he’d been missing legs or arms, that would have suited him fine, too. The Sabirs were out. Gone. Beaten again.

  Aouel crunched up a graveled path between flower beds and stopped at his side. “You going to die on me, old man?” He sounded like he was breathing hard, too.

  Dùghall raised his head. “Not today, young rooster. Not today.”

  “Good. Because there’s something you need to know.”

  Dùghall straightened and looked up into the Rophetian’s frowning face. His momentary feeling of triumph melted away. “What?”

  “She took the airible.”

  This made no sense to Dùghall. He had, in the back of his mind, registered the fact that the airible was gone, but he hadn’t considered what it might mean. Aouel apparently had. “Who . . . who took the airible?”

  “Kait.”

  Dùghall snorted. “Nonsense. You have to realize that she couldn’t have taken it. Even had she known how to fly it, she had no ground crew to release the ropes—and where would she hope to take it or land it? The bastard Sabirs took it, and I hope it crashes with them and they burn to cinders.”

  Aouel didn’t look at all convinced. “Kait took it,” he insisted.

  “How, son? How could she have?”

  “Look on the ground over there.” Aouel pointed, and Dùghall saw ropes still locked through the landing winches.

  “They cut the ropes.” He chuckled. “They cut the ropes.” He could just see those idiots struggling to get the airible off the ground, and he smiled. “If the Sabirs cut the airible’s ropes to take off, they’ll dance Brethwan’s jig getting back to the ground in one piece again.”

  Aouel was shaking his head. “The ropes weren’t cut. The Sabirs would have done anything to get the ship safely from here to their House. The ground crew would have walked there through the city if they had to. Those ropes were intentionally released, and only Kait would have done that.”

  Dùghall crossed his arms and waited for the explanation that was coming. The explanation he knew he wasn’t going to like.

  “There’s an emergency lever hidden in the pilot’s cabin,” the pilot said. “It releases all the landing ropes at the same time—a feature the crafters built in just in case one of us ever found ourselves overrun by enemies when we landed.”

  Dùghall frowned. “You could have pulled that lever and gotten us all off the ground yesterday . . .”

  Aouel shook his head. “Had I been in the cabin, I would have. But Kait had taken ill with that spell, remember. Tippa and I were already in the hatch, ready to run for help for her. And the Sabir men threatened to kill Tippa if I moved anywhere but out of the airible.”

  Dùghall remembered. “Yes. That seems so long ago, but you’re right, of course. About that, anyway. As far as this nonsense of Kait taking the airible . . .”

  Aouel rested a hand on Dùghall’s shoulder and said, “She knew how to fly it, Parat Dùghall. She knew where the hidden lever was, she knew how to operate the lifters and the engines, and she had flown that particular ship several times.”

  Dùghall could do nothing but stare, speechless.

  Aouel saw the look and winced. “I taught her myself,” he added.

  For the longest time, Dùghall could think of nothing to say. Finally, however, he managed to croak, “Why?”

  Aouel shrugged. “She wanted to learn. And she was quick, and clever, and . . .”

  Dùghall felt his knees sag. “Then she isn’t hiding somewhere just outside the gate.”

  “No.”

  Dùghall had been so sure that at least one of the people from the Family that he truly loved was safe. Now he knew nothing. “What emergency features did the crafters build in to land the ship, in the event that you had to release the ropes?”

  Aouel pursed his lips. “We weren’t to land it. If we used the emergency release, we were either to get it to friendly territory and crash it within our own grounds, or we were to fly it out to sea and sink it.”

  “And there are emergency boats aboard for such an eventuality?”

  “We . . . ah . . . were always given to believe we would . . . ah . . . go down with it, so to speak.”

  “You’re telling me she has no way to get safely to the ground.”

  “None. At least none that can be assured. The best she can hope for is that she will crash in friendly territory, and that the crash won’t hurt her too much. But if the ground crew didn’t refuel the ship when it landed—and I cannot imagine that they would—she may not be able to get to friendly territory.”

  Dùghall glared at the pilot, and thought of Kait. She could have been an extraordinary diplomat, he thought. She could have done wonderful things for the Family. Or beyond the Family. She had been special. Now he could only assume that she was dead, and
that her promise had died with her.

  “I should have you hanged,” he told Aouel. “I won’t. The Family has lost enough people. But Kait’s death is on your hands, and I will remember. And someday I will hold you accountable.”

  * * *

  The ship no longer rocked gently from side to side; instead, it surged and plunged, as if climbing one hill, sliding down the other side, and climbing the next, over and over. Hasmal’s hammock moved with a life of its own. For a moment he puzzled over the change. Then a contented smile spread across his face as he realized what it meant. The Peregrine had put out to sea and was on its way somewhere, and anywhere would suit Hasmal just fine because it meant that he had finally escaped.

  He pulled on his shoes and dashed up the companionway to the main deck. A low line of islands lay off to the left, but the Peregrine sailed in a clear sea. The captain leaned against the tiller, eyes squinted into the low morning sun, a contented half-smile on his face. Several sailors, including the Keshi Scarred crew who hadn’t dared show their faces abovedecks the whole time the ship lay in Iberan territory, draped themselves in the ratlines, enjoying the stiff breeze and the sunshine. Hasmal sensed their joy at being free again, and understood it well. He shared it himself.

  He walked aft, and nodded to the captain. “So we got our cargo.”

  The captain smiled. “And got you out to sea promptly, just as I promised. You wanted to be at sea awhile, you said. You should be pleased with our destination.”

  “Really?”

  “I should think. We’re sailing all the way to North Novtierra. I hope you had everything you wanted with you—we won’t be doing more than looking at land for a very long time.”

  Hasmal laughed out loud. “Good news,” he said. “Ah, Captain, you cannot know what good news that is.” He settled against a rail and stared down at the rushing water.

  “Thought you’d feel that way, even though you never said what it was you were . . . avoiding.”

  The captain didn’t say “running from” but Hasmal heard the words anyway. He shrugged and told a half-truth. “Nothing extraordinary. A woman. Expectations. A future I didn’t fancy.”

  Ian Draclas laughed out loud. “I didn’t think when I took you on that you had the criminal eye, Has. Many a good man has taken to the sea to escape a woman. Truth be told, my first voyage was for that very reason.”

  Hasmal glanced up at him, curious.

  “A young girl took a liking to me, and told her ferocious father that I’d taken her maidenhood, and that she wanted to marry me rather than see me hanged in the city square. I . . . ah . . . I thought a girl who would lie like that to her father would lie like that to her husband, and besides, I had no wish to settle down to life as an apprentice to a shopkeeper, no matter how fine his wares or how rich his coffers. So I found a berth aboard a ship heading north, and I never looked back.”

  Hasmal nodded, thinking of the doom he had finally averted. “There are fates worse than marriage or death, but those are bad enough.”

  The captain laughed.

  Hasmal closed his eyes and felt the warmth of the sun on his face and smelled the richness of the salt air and realized that he could breathe for the first time since that night that he’d cloaked himself in magic and crashed the Dokteerak Naming Day celebration because he could. Free, free, and free; he’d broken from his doom, escaped his unwanted fate, won his battle. And if he was on a ship bound for gods-knew-where, and if he hated the ocean, and if he got sick from the constant motion, no matter. He would pay the price to be his own man.

  Vincalis, the ancient poet, philosopher, and patron sage of Falcons, had once said, “The Art chooses the moment and the man, and rides that man like a nag until he bursts his heart and dies; only the fool ventures within magic’s grasp without good reason.”

  Maybe I’m a coward, but I have no wish to die for the Falcons. I’ll not be magic’s horse again. And I’ll never again tempt fate for the sake of curiosity, Hasmal told himself.

  He had convinced himself on Naming Day that he had good reason to slip unnoticed within the walls of Dokteerak House; Stonecutter Street, indeed the whole of the Bremish Quarter, was alive with rumors of preparation for war among the city’s Family, and with stories of foreign messengers representing not one but two enemy Families, and with speculation that the upcoming wedding was not all it seemed on the surface, he thought he did himself and his family a service. And the city itself stank with dark magic. So he had invoked Falcon magic in order to observe the byplay of the Families—telling himself all the while that self-preservation and not idle curiosity impelled him—and by doing so he had wakened the interest of the other world in him, and tied himself to those Families and events, and had only narrowly averted binding himself to their doom.

  “Don’t play on the gods’ playing fields—you won’t like their games, and in any case, they cheat.”

  Vincalis again. Words to live by.

  I’ve learned my lesson, Hasmal prayed. Thank you, Vodor Imrish, for gentle kindness in delivering your good Hmoth boy from the hands of the meddling Iberan gods. I promise I’ll never mistake prying for self-preservation again.

  * * *

  Kait had no idea how long she’d slept. She only vaguely remembered Amalee waking her to get her aboard the ship she’d hired. She remembered even less of paying the captain, explaining that she had no gear, and moving into her cabin. That she had succeeded in doing all those things, though, was evident. She lay in a comfortable bunk in a clean, tiny cabin, on top of the covers and still with her boots on. Her clothes were a wreck. She wished she’d had a chance to buy new ones, and to acquire a few other supplies while she was at it; she could only hope that Captain Draclas had women among his crew, and that one of them might be willing to sell some of her things to Kait to cover her until their next harbor.

  Feeling better?

  Amalee’s “voice” startled Kait. She jumped, and her long-dead ancestor laughed.

  “I’m fine,” Kait muttered. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  I’m sure. But you can’t imagine how lonely I’ve been. It’s wonderful to have someone to talk to again, and it’s wonderful to be heard.

  Kait stretched, yawned, and sat up. The cabin smelled of oak and cedar, of wood polish and candle wax; it held an aura of honest hard scrubbing—its soapstoned floor gleamed white as bone, and its worn sheets and carefully darned blanket were spotless and scented with alaria and lavender.

  Don’t you want to talk? I have so many things to tell you—

  “Frankly, no. In the morning, I want to be alone with my own thoughts.”

  It’s well after midday, and probably not long before sundown.

  Kait unbraided her hair and wished she had a convenient place to wash it. Though no longer damp, it still had that unpleasant, heavy, gritty feel that came from having soaked in seawater.

  “How about this, then? I like being by myself, and I have things I want to think about alone. So go away and don’t talk to me until I ask you to. Whether it’s morning or night.”

  A gentle tap sounded on the cabin door. Kait froze.

  “Parata? Are you awake?”

  “I’m awake,” Kait said.

  “Do you have company?”

  Kait rubbed her hand over her eyes and sighed. “I was—talking to myself. I woke out of sorts.”

  “I’m your cabin girl. May I come in?”

  “Enter.”

  The door opened. Kait wasn’t prepared for the creature who presented herself for inspection. Of the Scarred, Kait had only seen those who trespassed the borders of Ibera and were executed in Calimekka’s Grand Square. Always she had seen them from a distance, and more often than not, she had looked away. She had never been within arm’s reach of one; for that matter, had never expected to be.

  And here stood a creature Scarred beyond anything Kait could have imagined, and the creature identified herself as Kait’s cabin girl. In Ibera, the girl would have been criminal
by virtue of her existence—which proved, Kait supposed, that they weren’t in Ibera.

  Matrin’s Scarred came in two varieties—those like Kait whose Scars were hidden, either all or part of the time, and those like this girl, who wore theirs for all to see. The girl would come from an entire tribe of creatures just like her, a tribe that was only one of an unknown and perhaps unknowable number of similar tribes. The visibly Scarred were sometimes called the Thousand Races of the Damned. They came from the twisted lands surrounding Wizards’ Circles; ancient magic run amok had ripped the humanity from those who, a thousand years earlier, had inhabited those lands. Ancient magic had twisted the survivors as it had twisted the lands, and in doing so had given birth to numberless races of monsters. Monsters barred from Ibera, the last home of humanity.

  Kait vaguely recalled that captains were by law rulers of their ships and that as long as they and their crew were aboard those ships, all aboard ship were subject to no law but the captain’s . . . but the fact that an Iberan captain would hire on Scarred crew had never even occurred to Kait. She had thought of Captain’s Law as simply a matter of maintaining discipline over crew, not as truly setting up a foreign country within tiny wooden confines.

  Kait stared because she couldn’t help herself; because she felt herself confronted with heresy; because she felt herself a hypocrite for being herself a creature of heresy and still being shocked; because she didn’t know what else to do.

  The girl, caught under her gaze, lowered her head and whispered, “If you are displeased with me, I can leave. There are others who can take care of you who are not . . . what I am.”

  What you are . . . Kait thought, disgusted with herself. What you are is an honest version of what I am.

  “Please come in,” Kait said, making her voice gentle. “And please forgive my rudeness. I have never seen one of the Scarred before—you simply took me by surprise. I did not realize any of the Scarred could be so beautiful.”