The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

  Kait, standing beside him, started. She knew how he had dreaded Rrru-eeth’s trial, and how he had fought the fact that he would have to hang her. He did not want her to die—even after all she had done to him and to all of them, he held the friendship they had once shared too dear.

  The Keshi stared, and Ry said, “Then what are you going to do to her? She’s a mutineer. A traitor. A murderer. You cannot consider setting her free.”

  “I can remand her over to your custody,” Ian said, his voice carrying to the farthest ranks of the Army of the Thousand Peoples. “As Family, and within your domain, you have jurisdiction.”

  But now Kait raised her hand. “She committed her betrayal on the sea. As the last yanar, the last speaker for the Galweigh Family, I cannot judge her actions here on land. If none is found who has true jurisdiction over her, I declare that she will be freed by virtue of mistrial.”

  Among the ranks of the Army of the Thousand Peoples, murmurs began and spread, voices growing quickly louder and sharper. Suddenly three archers leaped to their feet and loosed arrows in Rrru-eeth’s direction. All three sprouted from her chest. She gasped, then toppled. Ian cried out and dropped to one knee, and put a hand on her shoulder. Kait saw the tears that ran from his cheeks, and saw him turn his face to the wall.

  One of the archers, a lean, silver-carapaced creature, stepped forward and stared levelly at Ian and Kait and the others who had stood before the crowd. Through the translator who had been passing the proceedings on to him, he said, “We claim jurisdiction, for she is Scarred, and we are Scarred. She lived among humans and was accepted by humans. Treated as human. Befriended by humans. And she shamed herself, and shamed all of us who are not human. Thus has she been judged by her own kind—by the damned and the forsaken. For even the damned and the forsaken have their honor, and we will not have one such as she besmirch ours. This is our gift to you . . . our promise that if you will have us, we will live as humans within human lands, under human law. And those among us who will not live honorably . . . will die.”

  Kait turned to the observers—human, Keshi Scarred, and Scarred of the Thousand Peoples, and first in Iberan and then in Trade Tongue, she said, “We face a new world today—in Calimekka, the Scarred who have conquered will claim a place within the city, but the humans who have struggled and fought for their city will also claim a place. If the old hatreds rule, then each shall devour the other and none will prosper. If the old hatreds rule, all of us will lose the one thing we fought for—Calimekka itself.”

  She took a deep breath. “The Army of the Thousand Peoples is now Calimekka’s army—Danya offered it with her battle and sealed the bargain with her death. You”—she pointed to the Scarred company—“are now a part of us. As the last yanar of the Galweigh Family, I declare you human, that you may live freely and without fear or persecution within Ibera’s borders and Calimekka’s walls—I revoke the judgments of the parnissery and create a new law: Any creature who can state that he is human, by word, thought, gesture, or deed, shall be declared human. I declare this law by blood.” She drew her dagger and cut across her palm so that blood welled up, and held her hand in the air so that all could see the blood that ran down her arm. “Let gods and men attend.”

  She turned to the Keshi and said, “Give her decent burial. I will not have anyone gloat at the spectacle of death. Not now.” She knelt beside Ian and touched his shoulder lightly. “They did what had to be done, Ian. Can you forgive them?”

  He lifted his head and nodded slowly. “She would have been poison had she lived. But I could not remember the girl who had risked her own life to save all those children, and sentence her to death.”

  “Neither could I.” Kait closed her eyes. “But she would have been poison.”

  He rose. “Her death is a blessing.”

  “If you can see that, I have a favor to ask of you. Can you ride with the Army of the Thousand Peoples to their main camp? Tell them what has been decided. Bring them in. Lead them to homes where they can live. There are enough places within Calimekka’s walls for all of them.”

  Ry said, “Those who wait outside the gates have killed humans.”

  “And those within the gates have killed the Scarred, and reveled in their deaths. This is no easy thing they’ll do—building a city in which all of the Thousand and One Peoples can find a home. But Ian has given us a chance to win this . . . to win all of it.”

  Ian looked at her and smiled. “I always hoped I would see the day when the people who served aboard my ship could be people in the city of my birth. I’ll tell them.”

  He took a horse and a few of his men, and the company of Scarred rode with them, down the Avenue of Triumph. Toward the new world Kait barely dared to imagine.

  “The Calimekkans will try to kill you for this,” Ry said in her ear. “They’ll never know or never believe what we’ve done to save them—they won’t be able to imagine what the world would have been if we’d failed. They’ll know only that you were the one who told the Scarred they could stay, and they’ll do everything they can to destroy you.”

  “Probably. But Galweigh House is strong. We have Falcons here now. We have Ulwe, with her ear always listening to the voice of the roads. We have each other. And we have love, Ry, and how can something as small as hatred hope to stand against something as powerful as love?”

  “You want to stay in Calimekka, then?”

  “How can we not? Billions of souls lay trapped within the Wizards’ Circles—they must be released. Ibera is no more stable or secure than it ever was, and Calimekka is now weaker. We have much to offer . . . you, me . . . the Falcons. A new world awaits in the city below—and perhaps for the first time, if we stay and fight for what we need, it will be a world that has room for the two of us in it.”

  About the Author

  Holly Lisle, born in 1960, has been writing fantasy and SF novels full-time since November 30, 1992. Prior to that, she worked as an advertising representative, a commercial artist, a guitar teacher, a restaurant singer, and for ten years as a registered nurse specializing in emergency and intensive care. Originally from Salem, Ohio, she has also lived in Alaska, Costa Rica, Guatemala, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. She and Matt are raising three children and several cats.

  She maintains a large readers’ and writers’ Web site at www.hollylisle.com/ and offers a free biweekly writers’ newsletter, readers’ mailing list, active readers’ and writers’ communities, games and contests, sneak peeks at new work, and much, much more.

  Holly’s e-mail address is holly@hollylisle.com. She reads every letter and e-mail, though she cannot promise to answer all of them.