“So you can hurl more explosives at him?” Tikaya asked. “No.” As if she knew where Rias had gone, anyway. Not far with the limited energy in his battery. “You needn’t welcome me. I’ll settle for not being shot.”
While Yosis stewed on that, the woman disappeared for a moment, then returned with a coil of rope.
She tossed the end down. “Tie up your dinghy and climb up.”
Tikaya obeyed and soon found herself being escorted below decks. The woman had disappeared, leaving Yosis to prod Tikaya along. She wondered if she was about to find out who was captaining this ship. If so, was that person in charge of the entire mission? Was he or she the one who’d ordered the wreck destroyed, along with the explosion in the harbor? What if it was someone prominent amongst her people? The president, perhaps? Was it suspicious that he’d been unavailable ever since Tikaya had returned? Or what if her hypothesis about her family being strong-armed proved incorrect because one of them was involved here? Father or maybe Grandpa?
Sweat dampened Tikaya’s palms as Yosis guided her down a narrow passage, ducking frequently to avoid low beams. He knocked on a polished koa door. Several seconds passed, and Tikaya found herself tracing patterns in the whorls of the rich wood with her eyes. Muffled voices came through the door, but she couldn’t make out the words. Yosis huffed and shifted his weight, but he didn’t raise his voice to call. Not-in-charge, his body language said. Tikaya nodded to herself. She was about to meet those who were. If they decided to let her in.
“Come,” the call finally came.
Tikaya glanced at Yosis, and he jerked his chin for her to open the door. She licked her lips, turned the knob, and pushed. It wasn’t a captain’s cabin but a conference room. Or perhaps war room was the better term. Bathymetry maps scattered the surface of a table that occupied most of the floor space.
Two people sat in high-backed wooden chairs at the end. High Minister Jikaymar and the woman who’d stood beside Yosis at the railing. She’d lowered her hood, but it took Tikaya a moment to identify her, as they’d never spoken previously. High Minister Tosii, that was it. The woman who presided over the College of Practitioners and set policies and precedents for all things Science-related on the islands. Well, Tikaya thought, numb to learn she faced people who were effectively the president’s left and right hands, Tosii certainly would be the one with the skill and power to craft those explosives or else she’d know exactly who to recruit to Make them. Though the rank of the people behind this was cause for concern—she wasn’t dealing with some crazy fringe group of zealots here—she was relieved that none of her relatives seemed to be involved. At least not on this ship.
“Sit down, Tikaya.” High Minister Jikaymar sighed and waved to a chair. Dark circles smudged his eyes.
Yosis started forward, but Jikaymar waved him back. “You have duties up top.”
“Are we still looking for Starcrest, sir?” Yosis asked.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Jikaymar gave Tikaya a tired look. “Is there any chance that we’ll find him?”
“He submerged as soon as I rowed away, so I suppose it depends on how well you can track him.” Tikaya shrugged, as if it mattered little to her.
“Yes, that’s worked so well.” Tosii snorted and tugged a hairband off her wrist. She scraped her disheveled brown locks back into a tail. She and Jikaymar both looked like people who hadn’t slept, maybe in several nights. “We thought we’d have no trouble finding his energy source, but it’s too sophisticated. However did you get Iweue to work on that for him? You’d think she’d be the last one to help you with your new beau.”
Tikaya must have been wearing a blank stare, for Tosii explained, “Her work is good, recognizable, and she weaved some sort of deflection field into the outer layer. I can sense that it’s out there, but not where. We’ve almost hit rocks twice now as I tried to guide us toward it.”
“I didn’t know about that feature,” Tikaya said. She’d have to give Iweue a hug next time they met.
Tosii’s lips twisted down, her expression wry as she peered into Tikaya’s eyes. “Yes, I see that.”
A telepath. Not surprising. A good one too. Tikaya couldn’t even feel the touch inside her mind, not like that clunky probing that Gali had done. She decided not to point out that the High Minister of the College of Practitioners probably shouldn’t be rifling through people’s minds unasked; after all, she was the one who had a hand in making such laws.
Tosii’s expression grew even wryer, as if she were following right along with Tikaya’s thoughts.
“You’ll likely find it very difficult to find him then,” Tikaya said aloud, for Jikaymar’s sake. “He has the chest and little reason to linger around the wreck, not like before. Also, he has a Nurian warning him when the charges are coming.”
“Does he now?” Tosii murmured.
“Chest?” Jikaymar frowned.
Uh oh, maybe that hadn’t been the right thing to mention. If they knew for a fact that chests weren’t involved, they’d know Rias had nothing that mattered. Aware of Tosii scrutinizing her, Tikaya thought of the skull and the arrowhead. That alone might be enough to rouse Turgonian suspicions and bring a fleet.
Tosii winced and stretched a hand out, laying it flat on the table. “It’s not right that we should be blamed, or punished, for the choices our ancestors made seven hundred years ago.”
“Do you truly think the empire will seek reprisal after all this time?” Tikaya asked.
“Of course they will,” Jikaymar said. “During the war, they were busy with the Nurians, and they were fighting on multiple fronts. Now that they’ve signed an armistice with the Nurians…” Jikaymar shook his head. “However temporary that peace may be, it’s got the president, all of us, concerned. And with reason. We’ve long feared that, with nothing else to distract them, they’d set their sights on Kyatt again.”
“We fought them off before,” Tikaya said, more to keep him talking than because she disagreed with his concern.
Jikaymar lifted his arms toward the ceiling. “At what cost? We barely fought them off, and that was when their forces were split. Now they could afford to send their entire fleet to our doorstep. And this would be just the excuse they’d need.”
Tikaya wanted to say, “Yes, and what is that excuse exactly?” but they wouldn’t be fooled by anything so simple. She groped for a better way to get them to admit it.
Tosii’s eyes narrowed. Erg. Tikaya tried not to squirm.
“You don’t know,” Tosii said.
Jikaymar dropped his arms. “What?”
Tosii closed her eyes, lips flattening as she concentrated.
Tikaya tried to keep her out, but she couldn’t even feel the woman’s deft touch inside her mind.
Scant seconds passed before Tosii announced, “He didn’t show you what was in the chest.”
“I have hunches,” Tikaya said. “There’s a Turgonian woman’s skull in my room with a Kyattese arrowhead in it. And we have other evidence that proves their lost colony ship sank down there. Not that they’d need evidence. They already want our islands. Any excuse…” Tikaya didn’t know whether she was having an effect on them with her words or not, so she closed her mouth. Let them make the next move.
“So, they have a chest,” Jikaymar told Tosii. “And she hasn’t seen what’s in it, but Starcrest has. Does she think they found anything or that he’s just bluffing?”
“She doesn’t know. She thinks it might be a bluff, but she’s not sure.” Tosii snorted. “Starcrest played that well.”
“He’s very smart,” Tikaya said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d pieced everything together before we ever went down there and only sought some proof to send back to the emperor.” She didn’t truly believe Rias had meant, all along, to send anything back to the emperor, but she couldn’t be entirely certain. He’d been harder than ever to read when he’d been briefing her on his terms.
“Yes, we all know he’s ‘very smart,’” Jikaymar said
, imitating her voice when he said the last two words. “That’s why we were so terribly tickled when you brought him here to nose around.”
Tikaya bristled. She wanted to say that she hadn’t forced him to come and it wasn’t her fault, but… he truly was only here because of her. If all this ended up being detrimental to her people, to her family, it would be her fault.
“What are his terms?” Tosii asked.
For the first time, Tikaya felt like she might have a little power. At the least, they needed her to negotiate with Rias. “Tell me first what really happened back then. Until I know, I won’t know who I’m negotiating for here.”
“You’d better not be negotiating for the Turgonians,” Jikaymar growled.
“I am negotiating for my and Rias’s safety,” Tikaya said. “You have been trying to kill us.”
Tosii winced.
“We were trying to destroy the wreck before you got to it. If you’d stayed away, you never would have been harmed. Even Starcrest, we didn’t want to kill him—Fircrest said that’d be a huge mistake—but he wouldn’t stop with that sprite-licked underwater boat.”
“Fircrest?” Tikaya didn’t recognize the name.
“We’ve had to work day and night to create those abominable explosives,” Tosii said, ignoring Tikaya’s inquiry, “something sturdy and powerful enough to sink to the bottom of the ocean. We never would have—our people don’t create weapons.”
“Seven hundred years ago, someone created a bow and arrows and drove one into a Turgonian woman’s skull,” Tikaya said.
“If we share this story, you’ll have to agree to our terms,” Jikaymar said. “Or rather Starcrest will. Nothing spoken of here must make its way back to the Turgonians.”
“I can’t assure you of that, as he may already know the story. I’m the only one who’s—” Tikaya decided the word ‘clueless’ spoke poorly of her and switched mid-sentence to, “—missing information. I can, however, give you my word that I won’t share any of this with the Turgonians.”
“You wouldn’t have anyway. As if they’d listen to someone who played an instrumental role in their defeat during the war.”
“Actually, they would,” Tikaya said. “They respect enemies who challenge them.” Well, Rias had anyway. Every other Turgonian she’d met, with the exception of Corporal Agarik, had wanted to take her face and grind it under his boot. Turgonians only seemed to respect those who challenged them with swords. “Either way, you have little to lose by telling me the truth.”
“I doubt that.” Jikaymar’s eyes narrowed. “What is at stake if we don’t cooperate? I can’t believe the president wished to allow him to stay and build that monstrosity. We know Starcrest has built weapons into his craft.”
Of its own accord, Tikaya’s mind pulled up the memory of Mee Nar describing how the torpedoes could be made to detonate beneath a ship, resulting in the craft being hurled into the air with such force that it snapped in half like a reed toy.
Tosii sucked in a quick breath.
Tikaya thought to assure her that Rias would never do something like that, but she had no interest in assuaging the woman’s concerns. Besides, if she was reading all of Tikaya’s thoughts, Tikaya hardly needed to voice anything.
She watched Tosii for a further reaction, but the concern never left her face. Another Gali type perhaps, who thought Starcrest was brainwashing her, or at least using her to further his own goals, and those of the empire.
Tosii’s lips stretched in what might have been a pitying smile.
“Where is the president?” Tikaya asked. “It seems he’s of a different opinion of how Rias should be handled.”
“He’s an optimist,” Jikaymar said. “If he wasn’t, we already would have learned… Never mind.”
Tikaya considered him through slitted eyes. “Does the president have something to do with why you didn’t probe Rias’s mind when you took him prisoner? And why you took that bracelet off him?”
Jikaymar’s face twisted with disgust. “That had nothing to do with the president. Lord Fircrest, the Turgonian spy-cum-diplomat on the island, heard that Starcrest had been apprehended and came to my office and demanded to know what we planned to do with him. After being appalled that we’d put a lizard tracker on Starcrest—the man was actually stuttering—he informed us that the emperor would retaliate with great swiftness if he found out someone had been sifting through his former fleet admiral’s thoughts. You don’t reach that lofty a rank in the Turgonian military, he said, without becoming privy to numerous secrets that are worth killing over. I wasn’t willing to risk any of my people to some imperial assassin.”
“Knowing the empire,” Tosii said, “the entire island might have been a target. Just to ensure those secrets were squashed.”
Tikaya sank back in her chair. She hadn’t known there was a Turgonian diplomat living in Kyatt, but she imagined he would have been following Rias’s arrival closely. She doubted his warning had been hyperbole. The story of the tunnels alone, not to mention the powerful artifacts contained within, were secrets the empire would probably kill to keep undisclosed. She thought of the relic raiders who’d been dragged off to the Turgonian capital for who knew what fate. It was probably only Rias’s protection that had kept her and Parkonis from being targeted. She shuddered.
“Fircrest said the smartest thing we could do to ensure our people’s safety was to get Rias off our islands as quickly as possible.” Jikaymar sighed ruefully at Tosii. “In hindsight, we should have given him a ship.” He turned back to Tikaya. “As for the president, he’s been busy of late. We’ve taken matters into our own hands.”
Obviously. But that didn’t mean… “You didn’t do something to him, did you? To ensure he wouldn’t return to the capital?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re not criminals or scheming murderers who would—”
“You almost did.” Tikaya pointed downward.
“It’s not our fault you insisted on prying and got in—”
“Enough.” Tosii flung a hand up.
“Tell me what you’re defending,” Tikaya said. “Let me be a part of the solution rather than an impediment. Regardless of what you think, I do have Rias’s ear.”
Jikaymar sat and fumed, but Tosii cupped her chin with her fingers. Considering the offer?
“It is part of her family’s history,” Tosii said. “She would have likely found out one day anyway.”
Tikaya shifted in her chair. Just how many people in her family knew? Mother didn’t, Tikaya was certain, but Father, yes, and Grandpa maybe. Her cousin, Elloil? Surely nobody would have included him on a sensitive matter. Despite her roaming thoughts, Tikaya clasped her hands in her lap and waited. If Tosii was thinking of sharing, there was no reason to say anything.
Before speaking, Tosii shared a long look with the still-fuming Jikaymar. There was nothing blatant about it, but it might have held a trust-me-I-know-what-I’m-doing undertone. Tikaya resolved not to take any offered information for fact.
“Our people left their ravaged homeland in the Southern Hemisphere hundreds of years ago,” Tosii said, “and found their way here. It was not the first place they stopped. They were driven from mainland ports by people who feared they carried the plague. They sought uninhabited islands instead, but all the places they found had cities or at least tribes on them, and news of the devastation—and sickness—down south had spread even to these remote places. Again and again, they were driven away at spear point. When they finally found a promising island they thought uninhabited, the dense jungle interior turned out to house cannibals with sharpened teeth and necklaces made from the finger bones of their eaten enemies. Again our people were chased away.”
Tikaya nodded, though she wanted to prod Tosii to move the story along. This part was in the history books. Though she supposed time wasn’t a concern at this point, there was always the possibility that Rias would fear for her safety and make a move.
Tosii frowned at Tikaya. “Yes, the his
tory books tell us all that, but what they don’t dwell on is the fact that our people were hungry, sick, and extremely weary to the point of desperation. When they found these islands, which were full of animals to hunt, sea life to fish, and fruits and vegetables to gather, their hopes finally rose. With the warm tropical climate so different from the hot and cold extremes of the mainland they’d left behind, they believed they’d found paradise. The first island they explored, Nimu, was uninhabited and they believed they’d finally found a home. They started recuperating and building houses, but one day someone saw smoke arising from Muiele.” Tosii waved to indicate their main island. Outside a porthole, the cliffs and beaches had grown visible as dawn’s influence spread. “They’d avoided it because of the active volcano, and they hoped it was merely smoke from lava flows that they were seeing. They sent a team to investigate and found… another group of people in the process of building a town. At first, our ancestors thought they’d found more refuges from the desecrated continent, but these people had darker skin and hair coloring, and they spoke in an unfamiliar tongue that seemed to be an offshoot of Nurian.”
“And did these early Turgonians arrive first?” Tikaya asked.
“It’s impossible to say. We believe both groups arrived at approximately the same time.”
Tosii rattled off the response quickly, and Jikaymar glanced at her. When he noticed Tikaya following the glance, he dropped his gaze to study the table.
“Though I usually decrypt documents rather than spoken words,” Tikaya said, “even I can see that’s code for, ‘Yes, the Turgonians were here first.’”
“Believe what you wish,” Tosii said. “Both groups could have shared the islands. With more than ten in the chain, there was plenty of room for the two peoples to grow and prosper.”
“But the Turgonians weren’t interested in sharing.”
“No. They had only one ship in the harbor at the time, but they spoke of their colonizing mission, saying they’d soon be building more ships and going off to find the rest of their people to bring them back. Our ancestors tried to negotiate, but the Turgonians were intractable. They wouldn’t share the islands.” Tosii met Tikaya’s eyes. “A linguist by the name of Jeo Komitopis was doing the translating.”
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