The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

  Anwyn laughed, but didn’t say anything out loud. He was still recovering from the effects of his last Scarring, and didn’t want to find himself in the way of any more rebound magic for a while.

  Crispin let go of the child’s hand and focused on the spell he was casting. It was a tiny spell, really—not one that would require the girl as a sacrifice. Anwyn thought he’d probably use her as a sacrifice anyway, both as a precautionary buffer—they’d all gotten leery of unexpected magical rebounds since the disaster—and because he took pleasure in the suffering of his sacrifices. But if he wasn’t greedy, they might be able to get another use or two out of her before she died.

  Crispin finished casting the spell, and Andrew and Anwyn both looked into the dancing flames in the cauldron. At first, nothing appeared.

  “Maybe the bitch’s son really is dead,” Andrew suggested.

  Anwyn laughed. “Not even we’re that unlucky. He made it look like we’d killed him for a reason, and it wasn’t so someone else could do it and get away with it.”

  “Maybe someone else made it look like we’d killed him.”

  “We’ve been over this before—”

  “Silence,” Crispin said.

  Images began to form in the flames. A square of white, then water . . . these resolved gradually into a high-prowed Rophetian ship moving across open sea.

  “A ship?” Andrew frowned and leaned farther forward. “Why would he be on a ship?”

  “Silence.” Crispin never looked away from the flames, but the growing exasperation in his voice sounded clear enough to Anwyn.

  They’d suspected from the moment the bloody mess in Ry’s room was discovered that he wasn’t dead. They’d been sure of it when the magical pointers and traces had all marked them as the killers; they knew they hadn’t killed the little bastard, though it would have been a good idea. They were at a loss, though, as to why they would be set up as the killers. Ry couldn’t return to claim leadership of the Wolves after faking his own death; his mother couldn’t hope to benefit from the sympathy he’d generated for her or the hatred his death had generated against them, since she was Sabir only by marriage; and for any of the other Sabir Wolves who might have eyed the position at the head of the pack, the removal of Ry and the blaming of the three of them for the death wouldn’t help to secure their ascension.

  So what benefit did anyone gain by the stunt?

  The three of them had discussed the matter, carefully secured a sacrifice, and after a month of avoiding any activities that might have made them look guilty of what they’d been accused of, they found both the time and the place to work their divination without drawing any attention to themselves. By the end of the month Anwyn was healthy enough to participate, too. The paths were finally clear for them to discover what Ry was up to.

  Now it looked like he was on a ship, and sailing away from Calimekka.

  And who did that benefit?

  “Can you bring in any more detail?” Anwyn asked.

  Crispin wore his frustration on his face. “He’s well shielded, and has shielded the people with him, too. I can’t even get a look at the captain or the crew. He’s been very careful.”

  “You’re certain he’s aboard that ship?”

  “The blood and hair we got from his room would not form links to anyone but him. He’s there.”

  “Mark the ship, then. Sooner or later, he’ll cease to be so vigilant. Sooner or later, we’ll be able to see what he’s doing, and what he’s hiding.”

  Crispin nodded. Andrew dragged the child back to him—this time she started screaming before he touched her, and kept screaming when he nicked the artery in her neck and the blood began to spurt into the cauldron. The three of them focused on the spell they cast, to mark the ship and everything in it magically, so that they could locate it again wherever it might be. Then they braced for the rebound, for the marking spell was bigger and fiercer than the divination spell. They funneled the backlash, when it came, into the dying body of the child. She shimmered and glowed and began to melt into a fur-covered, bat-winged monster, and at the same time she began to cry—pathetic little mewlings that grew weaker and weaker as her blood spurted into the cauldron to sizzle and hiss and smoke.

  Anwyn watched Crispin without seeming to watch him, and saw the weakness there that he saw every time they sacrificed a girl child. Amused, he looked away to keep from betraying himself to his brother. Handsome, arrogant Crispin had few weaknesses, but the one he did have was for little girls; he’d had a bastard daughter by one of the threesome’s toys, and kept her safely hidden from everyone. Anwyn suspected she was in the hands of a caretaker family somewhere in the New Territories, or possibly even in New Kaspera. But not even he knew.

  He did know that she still lived, and thrived, and that Crispin, for all that he thought he hid it well, remained squeamish about the sacrificing and killing of little girls. Which was a useful thing to know. Knowledge was power, and Anwyn had decided long ago that where his older brother was concerned, he would take any power he could get.

  The child went limp in his arms, but not before the backlash had spent itself in her frail body. Anwyn said, “Here, Crispin, I’ll get rid of that for you.”

  Crispin handed the little corpse to him. Andrew giggled, and said, “Give it to me to play with first, won’t you?”

  Both brothers turned to study him with distaste. Anwyn grew wearier daily of his cousin—Andrew’s perversions had been amusing when first he and Crispin discovered them, and the two of them had even, from time to time, participated out of curiosity. But Andrew seemed to be both defined and encompassed by the lusts that drove him, and Anwyn thought that no matter how deep he and his brother dug into their cousin’s soul, they would find nothing but more layers of the same muck and scum beneath the surface. Which made Andrew tiresome company.

  “Not this time,” he said, and watched Andrew’s face pinch tight. “Crispin’s roses need fertilizer. If you want a toy, get one of your own.”

  Anwyn turned back to Crispin. “What do you want to do about Ry?”

  Crispin brushed the wavy golden hair Anwyn so envied out of his face and shrugged. “Not much we can do until we can uncover his reasons for leaving, for staging his own murder, and for destroying his own chance to ever lead the Wolves. We’ll watch him. When we can prove he’s alive and on that ship, I suppose we’ll expose him. Then . . .” He smiled and glanced down at the cauldron. “Then I imagine we’ll kill him. Without making ourselves to blame for it.”

  Chapter 23

  The Peregrine slipped past another island in the Devil’s Trail. Smoke curled from a tall cone in the center of the island, and a thick black trail of new rock drove down to the shore between the burned skeletons of trees that forested either side. Kait thought that Joshan, the goddess of the high places, of solitude, and of loneliness, would feel right at home there.

  Kait paced the port deck, staring at the island, smelling the things that still lived there. The Peregrine ran close in, close enough that Kait could pick out the herd of deer that grazed at the edge of the burn line, where new growth had already started to come back. She growled softly and flexed her hands, and stared at them with hungry yearning.

  Forty days since her last full Shift. Forty days—that had always been the outside limit between Shifts for her. Her little demonstration for Hasmal had given her a tiny reprieve, but she needed to be able to let go. She wanted to run, to hunt, to chase, to kill, and prey was within her reach, and she couldn’t let herself go after it. She needed to give herself over to the other for a full day, and if she jumped over the side and swam to the island to hunt, by the time she could excise her demon for another two months the ship would be eighty leagues to the northeast. She turned away from the deer.

  She had to Shift. The need burrowed under her skin now, an unceasing and ever-worsening itch. She couldn’t leave the Peregrine, because she would never be able to rejoin it if she did. She was terrified to Shift aboard ship, thoug
h. She had no doubt that if she was found out, the crew would kill her. And how could she keep from being found out?

  She growled again, as the rich scent of the deer on the island swirled out to her one final time. Already the island lay behind them instead of beside them. Even knowing that she would be trapped if she jumped overboard, Kait almost couldn’t restrain herself.

  The hunt. The chase. The kill.

  Her fingernails dug into the palms of her clenched fists, and she realized that she felt points digging into her flesh, not crescents. She stared down at her hands in horror. She had claws now, not fingernails, and her smooth human skin wore the first faint down of beast fur. She looked around her, frantic. Perry the Crow, one of the ship’s lookouts, hung in the rigging at the top of the mainmast, staring ahead. Ian’s second-in-command, the dour Rophetian navigator Jhoots, stood at the wheel, also with his back to her. A few of the crew checked the coils of lines, or climbed through the rigging, shifting or tying sails at Jhoots’s command. So far, none of them had paid any attention to her. Thanks to the moonless darkness, if she could get off the deck before she Shifted from two legs to four, perhaps no one would.

  But where could she hide?

  Not her room. Rrru-eeth would be by in the morning to clean it. The door had a lock, but Kait didn’t trust Rrru-eeth’s hearing, which she suspected of being keener than her own. The Scarred girl would catch the change in her Shifted voice, or her breathing, or gods only knew what else.

  Down below, the crew slept. But below them lay storerooms. And below that, the bilge.

  Moving casually, so that she would not draw attention to herself, Kait went below. She paused halfway down the gangway. Most of the off-duty crew slept in hammocks strung from the cross braces, hammocks that swayed with every rise and fall of the ship. Their snores played an interesting counterpoint to the slapping of water outside the hull and the creaks of the ship’s timbers. She would have no trouble at all getting past the sleepers. But along the far bulkhead, close to the doorway that led to the storerooms and gave access to the bilge, four people played a game of hawks and hounds, and one of the players was Rrru-eeth.

  Kait felt her clothing loosening and tightening. She swallowed hard and stared through the forest of posts and strung hammocks at the players bent over their game board. She had so little time. She tried to hold her fear in check; Rrru-eeth, predator that she was, would notice fear as quickly as Kait would have in a similar situation.

  Calm, then. Calm.

  She dropped the rest of the way down, and stood as straight as she could. Then she walked through the swinging hammocks as if she belonged among them.

  She made one reassuring discovery. Rrru-eeth wouldn’t smell her as she passed. As Kait moved farther away from the gangway, the fresh night air succumbed to the miasma created by more than a dozen poorly washed bodies and their various gases. The cloud of belches and farts and sweat and dirt was thick enough it was almost visible. Kait thought she could probably herd cows through the common room without anyone being the wiser, if she could just keep them quiet.

  Rrru-eeth’s ears swiveled toward her as she moved nearer the doorway; Kait kept her steps confident and steady, and prayed she would be able to maintain her form human enough to walk on only two legs until she was out of earshot.

  “That’s five to you,” one of the men said, and Kait heard the rattle of dice.

  “Six. I go again. . . . Nine. . . . Again. Eleven.” “You’ve missed your point three times. Do you want to stand hounds or hawks?”

  Rrru-eeth said, “If it were my play, I’d demand to see those dice. You haven’t made your point once tonight.”

  Kait was almost to the door. They were paying her no attention.

  A steady voice tinged with annoyance. “Maybe he’s just unlucky tonight.”

  Rrru-eeth again. “Maybe. Though I’ve never seen him so unlucky before.”

  Kait stepped through the door, and almost breathed a sigh of relief, and behind her heard, “I’ll let the three of you settle this. I’m for the head.”

  Kait’s heart leaped for her throat. The head—what she had mistakenly called the water closet until a few of the amused crew had corrected her—lay at the lowest level of the Peregrine, and all the way aft. The exact way she’d hoped to go.

  The shock of fear pushed her heart faster, and her breath hissed in and out, and she heard the growl starting in the back of her throat. Felt the fizzing in her blood, and the red-hot animal rage, and she Shifted into the beast . . .

  . . . darted into the deep shadows as the man came around the corner . . .

  . . . huddled there as he strode past her, close enough for her to touch . . .

  . . . and all the while, in her mind, she felt the fury of the other, that she should hide instead of attacking, that she should cower like prey when she could easily kill the man who endangered her.

  Kait, small and weak in the back of the other’s mind, still somehow kept the beast chained until the man was past. Until she could slip through the patchy darkness, lit only by two storm lanterns, to the narrow trapdoor that opened into the bilge. She dropped down into the bilgewater, ignoring the stink, and let the trapdoor drop shut above her. She curled up on a timber brace, and let the rats come to her, and when they did, she killed them, snapping their spines with a single toss of her head.

  In a day, when the Shift passed, she would have to come up with an excuse for her absence from her room. For her enormous appetite. In a day, she would have problems, and the crew would wonder about her, and Ian would have cause to distrust her. But had she stayed, even if she had been able to keep everyone from her room, Rrru-eeth would have heard the change in her voice, would have heard the clicking of her claws on the plank floor, and she would have known something was wrong. She would have known. This way, as long as she wasn’t found out while she was still in Shift, the worst they could all do was wonder.

  * * *

  Crispin Sabir strode into the Hall of Inquisitions prepared to face his accusers. He wore his formal clothing—silk breeches and velvet cutwork tunic both dyed forest green, the finest white Sonderran lace at his throat, cloak of cloth-of-silver with an enormous Sabir crest in the center, the two trees worked across the back in thousands of tiny drilled emeralds. On his right hand the golden wolf’s-head ring, the tourmaline eyes glowing in the dim light as if the beast lived. On one hip his sword, on the other his dagger, both bearing his insignia. His soft black boots gleaming with polish, his silver cloak pin burnished to a sheen.

  Andrew and Anwyn had already been questioned. Both had been able to provide independent alibis for their whereabouts the night of Ry’s supposed murder. Crispin intended to do more than that.

  Grasmir Sabir, majestic in simple silk, with the emerald-studded chain of the paraglese around his neck, sat ready to condemn Crispin for the murder of his cousin Ry. To either side of the paraglese sat half a dozen members of the Family, none Wolves. In fact, no other Wolves had been permitted in the room for any portion of this trial, not even as observers. This fact pleased Crispin, and worked in his favor. He noted the predominance of the trading branch, who had for years tried to oust the Wolves from any positions of power and tried to eliminate their influence in the Family councils. Today, Crispin intended to deal their faction a crushing blow. He had his alibi, and his proof, and something else. As he took his place in the low seat beneath the dais, he smiled a tiny, secret smile.

  “This inquisition into the murder of Ry Sabir, son of Imogene Valarae Sabir and Lucien Sabir, deceased, is reconvened. This is an ongoing investigation into the means of his death, and the guilt, implied by both the dead man’s letter and physical evidence within his room, of Crispin Sabir. Before we bring forward the evidence against you, Crispin, have you anything to say for yourself?”

  “I have.” Crispin stood, knowing that he looked regal; he was easily a match for the paraglese, and far outshone the rest who stood against him. He heard the murmurs of approval from t
he onlookers, all Family who had few or no dealings with the Wolves. He smiled, this time for everyone to see, and from beneath his cloak produced a device of glass and metal—a long spindly framework of the Ancients’ unrusting steel built to reveal a glass globe within. The device had several levers and switches on it, and a gear train running from the switches to the globe.

  “May I bring this forward for your inspection?”

  “If it has anything to do with this investigation, you may. What is it?”

  “My alibi,” Crispin said, and carried the device forward and set it on the dais. “If you would switch the blue switch at the base to the right, you will see what I mean.”

  All of the Board of Inquisitors gave him suspicious stares.

  “It’s a device of the Ancients,” Crispin said. “One the Wolves discovered some years ago which we have made use of from time to time.”

  The paraglese toggled the blue switch, and a faint light began to glow within the glass sphere. Nothing else happened.

  “Very pretty,” he said, “and I could see where it might be useful at night, when I wanted to read at my desk instead of by the fire. But I fail to see how it proves your innocence. Or even suggests it.”

  “You have some of Ry’s hair, and some of his blood. Don’t you?”

  “You know we do. Both were found where he was murdered.”

  Crispin nodded. “Take a single hair, and slide it into the slot at the base of the device.”

  The paraglese narrowed his eyes and said, “I fail to see the purpose of this.”

  “Please. I promise I’m not wasting your time.”

  The paraglese called for the evidence box, and put on a pair of fine white calfskin gloves, and opened the small metal casket with care. He pulled out one of the silver boxes inside of it, and from that box withdrew a hair. Crispin showed him where to put the hair, and when it was in place, said, “Now, in order, and counting to five in between each switch, toggle the green, yellow, and orange switches to the right.”