The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

  And though she had managed in her words to smooth over her rudeness, Kait realized she’d spoken nothing less than the truth. The girl was beautiful. Her eyes, enormous and pure jet-black, gleamed in a face as shiny and iridescent as the carapace of a beetle or the body of a hummingbird—in the sunlight that backlit her, she looked like a gemstone. Though her face shimmered mostly in purples and blues and greens, she wore highlights of ruby red and gold across her high cheekbones and long, delicate chin as she turned to pull the door closed. Once out of the sunlight, most of the iridescence vanished into a black as rich and pure as that of her eyes. Eyebrows formed of some wispy, delicate white stuff so light the faintest hint of breeze or even breath moved them arched above those bottomless pools of eyes; they seemed alive. The girl had braided the outer ends of the eyebrows where the hair grew long; the braids hung on either side of her face down to the angle of her jaw, the ends adorned with tiny polished beads and wrapped feathers. Her hair had the same almost magical life as her eyebrows. It was equally white, and caught up in one thick braid that she’d draped over a slender shoulder and tucked into the belt at her waist, looping it there like coils of rope. Hard not to wonder how long that hair would be unbraided, or to imagine what it might look like unbound. Amazing stuff. And her ears—Kait had seen their equal in the does and stags she’d hunted in her Karnee form. Same size, same shape, same ever-mobile nervousness; ears affixed to the sides of a face that they dwarfed. The nose was sharp-tipped, wide of nostril, mobile. The mouth—wide also, with full lips curved upward at the corners.

  The girl’s body, hidden beneath the draping folds of her white flax shirt, gray pants, and soft-soled boots, was impossible to guess at, other than that the arrangement of parts was more or less like a human’s, and that there wasn’t much to it.

  The girl, for her part, studied Kait with the same intensity that Kait studied her. They sized each other up for a long moment. Then the Scarred girl tipped her head at an angle, and frowned slightly, and said, “You aren’t like the rest of them.”

  Kait felt her heart pick up its pace at those words. “No?”

  The girl smiled, revealing a row of very white, very pointed little teeth. “No. You are . . .” She shrugged and the corners of her mouth twitched, as if she were amused by the enigma presented. “I don’t know. Somehow you are more of a predator. Like me. Somehow. Please don’t be offended. I would never say that you were . . . of my kind—I know that in your world that would be a deathcrime. But you have the smell of the hunter about you. And the mannerisms of the hunter and the hunted.”

  Kait nodded. Predators knew each other, and the girl was right. Kait was a predator, and denial on her part would do more to arouse the Scarred girl’s curiosity than to quell it. “I often hunted when I was at home. Deer, mostly. Sometimes other things. Now there are people after me, so I have truly become hunted. Your senses are good.”

  The girl smiled. Accepted the compliment, and perhaps the explanation, though something in her eyes made Kait think she considered it incomplete. Still, politely, she said, “I thought as much.”

  Kait changed the subject. “And you were listening at my door.”

  “Oh.” Those huge eyes went rounder. “Yes, well. Not really listening at your door—I simply hear very well, and the captain told me I must take you, when you woke, to the ship stores. He’d stationed me outside your door with that charge, because when you came aboard you carried no baggage, and he said he’d laid in a few things you might need. Clothes, toiletries, personals—you’re to have your pick of what we have, and then I’m to take you to the shower and let you change. I’ll clean the clothes you’re wearing for you while you’re at dinner. I think they aren’t as damaged as you might believe, though the dye in your vest will probably have to be redone.” She glanced at Kait’s feet. “And those boots . . .”

  “Don’t worry about the boots. With some leather oil and some hard wax, I’m sure I can work them back to something respectable.”

  The girl nodded. “I’ll be sure you have what you need.”

  “You’re the one who cleans this room, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s wonderful. If I could ask you one thing, though . . .”

  “Anything.”

  “In the sheets, the alaria . . .”

  A quick smile flashed across the girl’s face. “It’s too sweet for your nose, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “For mine, too. It isn’t a predator scent. It covers too much.”

  Kait nodded. “I like the lavender, though.”

  “As do I. Very clean. Not very concealing. The diaga—but, no, you are diaga, too.” She frowned, a delicate operation that set her eyebrows dancing. “Most of your kind like the alaria. But I won’t use it for your things. Just the lavender.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you ready, then? To go get some new things and take your shower and go to dinner? You’re to sit at the captain’s table tonight.”

  “I’m almost ready. Tell me your name first.”

  “The passengers always call me Girlie.”

  “But that isn’t your name.”

  “No. But my name is hard to say.”

  Kait waited.

  The girl trilled her tongue, the note going from low to high and ending with a soft whisper.

  Kait had always been good at imitating sounds, and years of studying the other languages of Ibera had sharpened both her ear and her tongue. “Rrru-eeth?” she said.

  The girl laughed, and the laugh was as musical as the name. “That’s it exactly. Exactly. Not even Jayti says it so well.”

  “Jayti?”

  “My lover. He’s diaga, but he’s wonderful. You’ll come across him sooner or later; he’s one of the sailors.”

  Kait nodded, thinking that for a human man to have a sexual relationship with a Scarred woman would be an immediate sentence of death by torture and mutilation for both Rrru-eeth and Jayti should the fact and either of the participants ever touch land in Ibera at the same time. So she wasn’t the only one on the ship keeping deadly secrets.

  They went to the storeroom. Kait found clothes there that fit her—plain working clothes, sturdy enough for her needs, if not of the quality she’d known all her life. Sword oil and a whetstone and cleaning rags. Personal items. She restocked, and Rrru-eeth took her to the tiny shower, and she bathed in little spurts of cold water, and washed her hair, and dressed in the new clothing. Both women returned to Kait’s cabin long enough to put all of her new things in the drawers built into the bottom of the bunk and onto the shelves at the foot of it. Then Rrru-eeth took Kait to the galley, where the captain and the crew were gathering for dinner.

  There Kait discovered that miracles sometimes happened—and better yet, that they sometimes happened to her. Hasmal son of Hasmal sat at the long trestle between a crew member so Scarred Kait could not tell whether it was male or female, and a lean, hard-eyed woman who had one hand on his forearm and who seemed to be regaling him, nonstop, with some story he didn’t wish to hear.

  Rrru-eeth caught Kait’s indrawn breath and expression of delight, and said, “An old lover?”

  “Simply an acquaintance, but one I’d hoped to get to know better . . . before circumstances changed. I never thought I’d see him again. Now . . .” She couldn’t hide her smile. “Excuse me for just a moment.”

  Hasmal didn’t become aware of her presence until, standing directly behind him, she said, “Hasmal son of Hasmal, if ever I thought the gods might like me, that moment is now. Imagine finding you here, of all the places in the world.”

  He turned, and in the first instant she could see that he didn’t recognize her. Easy enough to understand; he’d seen her only briefly, and then she’d been dressed for a party, and in the company of her younger and prettier cousin. She decided she must not have made much of an impression on him. Then, in the second instant, the flash of recognition widened his eyes and drained the color from his
skin. He said, “You!” in a voice she would have reserved for a meeting with a walking corpse. His eyeballs rolled up in their sockets so that she could plainly see a rim of white underneath each. His muscles sagged, and he flopped like a child’s rag moppet, and slid under the table before anyone could catch him.

  Bewildered, Kait looked at the pale lump of him that lay under the table, and then up to the crew staring at her from every other seat in the galley. The captain had apparently witnessed the entire exchange; his expression was complex, but the clearest emotion Kait saw there was bemusement.

  She held out her hands, palms up, and tried to find words. None came.

  Ian Draclas came over and pulled Hasmal out from under the table, and made sure he was breathing. Then he glanced up at Kait. “I would not have thought that you were the one. When we’ve eaten, please come with me to my cabin. You and I need to talk.”

  Kait nodded, still speechless. She was the one? What one? And why had Hasmal reacted with such . . . such terror, for certainly she could find no other word . . . to her presence? She had been delighted to see him. Pleased that there was someone on board that she knew, even though she didn’t know him well. She had certainly been hopeful that he could teach her that trick of his for creating a wall of peace around himself—the same one that Dùghall had replicated just before disaster struck.

  She frowned, and while several of the sailors carried Hasmal out of the galley, she took her seat next to the captain.

  Dinner was a hushed affair.

  * * *

  In the long ward, in the cloud-dimmed light of late afternoon, the Wolves who still survived lay separated by cold white rows of narrow, empty beds. Ry stood next to his mother, who still lived, but who now had no sight at all, and whose Scars would have given a younger Ry screaming nightmares. Might still give him nightmares, he acknowledged, though he kept his horror and his revulsion from his voice when he spoke to her.

  “Who still lives?” she asked him. “Your father?”

  “No, Mother. I’m sorry . . . but he did not survive. Nor did Audrai,” who had been his older sister.

  “Elen?”

  “Of course. She’s fine, and if you wish, I’ll tell her you’re ready to have her visit you.” Elen, seven years younger than he was, would not even be old enough to train with the Wolves for another two years. She hadn’t been in the circle that day, and so had been, like him, completely spared.

  His mother showed neither pain at the loss of her husband and elder daughter, nor relief at the survival of the younger. She had never pretended deep love for her children or for Lucien, and she didn’t pretend it at that moment. Her concerns were with succession; with the direction that the Wolves would take now that Lucien was gone, and that was where she focused her attention. “Who looks to have the best chance of leading the Wolves?”

  “That you could accept?” Which wasn’t what she’d asked, but Ry wasn’t ready to deal with the question she’d asked just yet. He sighed, looking down those nearly empty rows. So many dead. Uselessly, pointlessly dead. “Tomey will be well soon.”

  “Tomey is both weak and stupid.”

  “Tomey is pliable. Not stupid. With your support, he could be encouraged in an agreeable direction.” “Agreeable,” of course, being defined as what his mother wanted. In all the years that Lucien held the leadership of the Wolves, that had been the definition of the word, and Imogene would not care to have it changed at this late date in her life.

  “Stupid. He’ll never take the leadership.”

  And that was probably true. Tomey was not stupid; in fact, he had a remarkable sense of self-preservation that would likely keep him far from any power struggles. Ry shrugged. Considered others his mother might not object to. “Gizealle is badly Scarred. She’ll live, but her injuries are as deep as your own. She’s going to need time.”

  “She might make a successful bid for power.”

  “Eventually. She’s more likely to support her brother’s bid.”

  His mother sucked air through her teeth and hissed, “Andrew lives?”

  “The whole of the Trinity lives. Andrew thrives. His Scarring was minimal; he has already returned to his apartments. Crispin was somehow untouched on the outside, though the physicks say he bears internal Scarring. Anwyn also lives, though barely. Of the survivors, his Scars are worst, though even before the disaster he bore more marks than most.”

  His mother rested one twisted hand over blind eyes and groaned. Though they might not have had support for a bid for power while his father lived, the Trinity—or, as the three cousins were called behind their backs, the Hellspawn Trinity—would likely be able to coerce a fair amount of backing from the Family’s new, weaker configuration. Especially since those most established in the topmost ranks of the Wolves’ circle were either dead or terribly damaged.

  “You’ll have to make your own bid now,” his mother said.

  Ry had known the conversation would turn in that direction. It had been as inevitable as sunrise, as summer rain, as death. Before he went in to visit her, he’d tried to think of any way he could stop her before she started, but there was no way. His fate was sealed the moment his father died and the Trinity lived; his mother would either bind him to a course he did not want, or else he would defy her and the Family will and end up shamed. Perhaps even disowned.

  “You’re the one who wants to lead,” he said softly. “Your ambition, your heart’s desire, your skill. Why not make the bid yourself?”

  “I wasn’t born Sabir.”

  “You’ve led the Family—in fact, if not in name—for twenty years. You still carry the Sabir name. Most of the Wolves will follow you. The few who don’t you’ll drag into line. Or disown.”

  She forced herself into a sitting position, and he cringed. Her deformities became more clear and more terrible once the sheets fell away. “If I were still Unscarred,” she said softly, “with my sight, with my strength, with my beauty, even then they would not follow me. None but a Sabir-born has ever led the Wolves. None but a Sabir-born ever will. This is the truth that I have come to know and come to hate in all of these years—and that you, too, must accept. I am the only Wolf living who can truly lead the Family as it needs to be led. But you are the one who must stand before me and appear to lead. They will accept you, Ry, as they never will me. Your place is at the head of the Wolves. Your time is now.”

  He crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “And what of your insistence that I father a horde of children before I stand in the circle?”

  Her face tightened. “Too late for you to take a bride. I always told you that you needed to be thinking of the future. But no matter. You must have bastards running around all over Calimekka. Claim the most promising of them, and bring their mothers into the Family. If the mothers are disgraceful, we’ll keep them out of sight until we can dispose of them entirely; if they’re reasonably acceptable, we’ll make them paratas. Either way, we’ll legitimize the children and make them your heirs.”

  He smiled, knowing that she couldn’t see his face, but knowing that she would hear the smile in his voice. “I have no bastards, mother. I have fathered no children, legitimate or otherwise.”

  Anger flashed across her face like lightning; there and gone, but threatening to return at any instant. He didn’t care. “Are you sterile?”

  His smile grew broader. “Not that I know of. I’ve simply been careful.”

  She knotted the covers in her hands. Her ruined face darkened with rage—rage at him, that he had let her down by failing to plow the fertile fields of the women that had been presented before him, and probably rage at the universe that had deprived her in one stroke of her beauty, her strength, and her power. “Then Elen will bear children to carry on the line, and either she or they will take your place when you can no longer hold it. We have no time now for you to decide you want the children you didn’t want before. The place at the head of the Family is open, but the fastest and the strongest and the smartest
will fill it. And that will be you.”

  “With you behind me.”

  “Yes. You don’t have the experience to hold the position on your own.”

  He didn’t have the experience to hold it at all. And he wasn’t his father, to welcome living under his mother’s control for the rest of his life. Even if he had never met the Galweigh woman, he would have fought being pushed to become the true head of the Sabir Family. With her on his mind, though, the entire thing became unthinkable.

  “No,” he said. “I can’t.”

  “I didn’t ask you if you could, son. I told you that you would. We cannot permit the Trinity to take over the Wolves, and you at least will have my backing and the heritage of your father’s reputation to back you up.”

  “I can’t.” He sighed, and said what he really meant. “I won’t.” Then he told her a lie with the merest hint of truth in it. “The Galweigh Karnee sailed northeast. I’ve heard rumors that she goes to raise an army of the Scarred to bring against the Family. I am leaving to stop her.”

  His mother lay back in the bed, and all emotion erased itself from her face. “Nothing you can do is as important to the Family as taking your father’s place.”

  “I wasn’t asking your permission,” he said. “I came to visit you to tell you good-bye. Nothing more.”

  She held herself still and silent, and he wondered how much that show of self-control cost her. She never was a woman who kept her feelings hidden. He waited, knowing that she would not let him leave unless she had the final word; he waited, too, because even if he could not say that he loved her, he still respected her. He owed her the show of respect that she had earned by her position over him, both as his mother and as the longtime leader of the Wolves. He waited, and she let him wait.

  At last, however, she said, “You are decided that you will leave?”

  “I am.”

  “And you are taking your friends with you, no doubt.”

  He lied to her again, in spite of his respect, in spite of the honor she deserved, in spite of his yearning to keep his integrity. One lie made the next easier. “My friends were killed in the battle at Galweigh House. I travel alone.”