Maybe some Nurian war hero had acquired it, then bartered it away, or given it as a gift. But her ancestors had largely been farmers, not traders or world explorers. She stuck her head down between a sofa and a wardrobe to dig deeper into the pile of fishing gear. Beneath the harpoons and hooks, she unearthed a leather messenger bag. Her heart sped up again. Though the history of clothing wasn’t her specialty, she had a colleague who studied military archaeology and maintained a small museum in his office. Tikaya had seen this very bag and knew it was Turgonian marine issue from the late 300s.
She eased it out and unbuckled the straps. Mindful of the piece’s age, she tried to take care, but her fingers were shaking with the excitement of the find. It might be nothing, she told herself. But it could have to do with everything.
“Tikaya?” Mother called.
She twitched in surprise, and the flap came open, spilling its contents.
“Elloil says it’s important and that he can’t stay long.”
“Just a minute,” Tikaya called. “I… caught my dress. It’s more treacherous than a dig at an ancient Nurian battlefield back here.”
An old cap had tumbled out of the bag as well as a leather journal and letters threatening to disintegrate with age. Horrified that she’d dumped them so carelessly, Tikaya feared that touching them would make matters worse. She picked up the cap. It didn’t look like part of a military uniform, but a bill designed to keep sun out of one’s eyes might make it a sailor’s garment. The straps on the leather journal were secured with a small lock. Someone’s private diary? She rifled through the bag, looking for a key, but nothing else remained inside.
“Maybe I’ll get to put Rias’s lock-picking instructions to use, after all,” she said.
“Ms. Komitopis?” That was the policewoman, a note of suspicion in her voice.
“Yes, yes, coming.” Tikaya put the journal, cap, and letters back in the bag and carried it most of the way to the trapdoor. Before reaching the exit, she tucked the gear behind a painting where she could find it again later. She started toward the door, but changed her mind, went back, and pulled out the journal. She untied the sash belt of her dress, slipped the book into her undergarments, and arranged the material and belt so that others shouldn’t notice the bulge. It’d probably be fine if she left it, but who knew if that policewoman might come up and snoop around?
“You’re becoming as paranoid as Rias,” she muttered, picking her way toward the trapdoor.
When Tikaya climbed down, her mother was waiting, the policewoman not two feet away—and eyeing the attic opening suspiciously.
“Ell’s on the back lanai,” Mother said.
“What does he want?”
Mother spread her arms. “He doesn’t talk to me, possibly because I so often let him know how disappointed his mother is in his career choice.”
“I thought you two were sharing confidences now.”
Mother blinked. “What do you mean?”
Tikaya glanced at the policewoman, wishing she’d disappear. “He said you sent him off to keep an eye on me last night. Or maybe just in general,” she added when no hint of understanding entered her mother’s eyes. “To keep me out of trouble.”
“No…” Mother sniffed. “As if I’d send that perennial teenager to keep someone out of trouble.” She strode down the hall, muttering about sloth and family underachievers.
A bang sounded from downstairs—a door hitting the wall. “Tikaya, what’re you doing in there? I’ve got to get to the beach—giving some visiting foreigners some lessons.”
Tikaya hustled through the house, though Mother’s words had roused new suspicions in her mind. If Mother hadn’t sent Ell to follow her, who had?
Ell was pacing on the back lanai, bluish smoke wafting from a cigarette. “Tikaya,” he blurted when she stepped outside. “I’ve got news for you. Rias is…” He trailed off when the policewoman stepped outside. “Oh, right. Forgot about that.”
Forgetting her suspicions for a moment, Tikaya grabbed his arm. “What about Rias?”
“He’s, uh…” Still eyeing the policewoman, Ell took out his tobacco tin. “Well, they let him go.”
“They did? Did they… the telepaths, what did they do to him? Is he all right?”
“I don’t know exactly, but he seemed the same as usual when I saw him.”
“You saw him?” Tikaya barely resisted the urge to grab Ell by the collar of his oversized hibiscus-dyed shirt to shake more details from him.
“Indeed so.” Ell must have sensed her urgency—her fingernails were digging into his arm after all—but he took his time rooting around in his tin, pulling out two already rolled cigarettes. “Smoke?”
“You know I don’t…” She stopped, catching the slight widening of his eyes. “Fine, I’ll take one if it’ll get you to spill the news.”
“Good, you know I hate to smoke alone.”
Ell pressed two cigarettes into her hand. Tikaya recognized one as a fake, a tightly rolled paper with nothing in it. Keeping her back to the policewoman to hide the motion, she slipped the extra into her pocket. She held the real one up, so Ell could light it for her, then held the noxious thing to her lips, pretending to inhale.
“Where’d you see him?” Tikaya asked.
“He’s back at the shipyard.”
“They’re going to let him return to work on his submarine?” Tikaya couldn’t believe it.
“Not exactly. He didn’t say much about the telepaths, but I guess he’s been giving permission to finish building a ship, not a submarine, and to hurry up about it. Once it’s seaworthy, he’s to sail away from Kyatt and never return.”
Tikaya rocked back on her heels. “He said that? It was his choice or…?”
“Some high minister’s order, I gathered.”
“And he agreed to it?” she whispered, gripping the railing.
“I don’t figure he had a choice.” Ell put a hand on her shoulder. “Sorry, Coz. I know you were hoping for… I don’t know, marriage or something, I guess. I liked him a lot too. He treated me better than—” he glanced toward the house, “—lots.” He lowered his hand. “I need to grab some food to take with me. Don’t tell your mother, all right?”
Ell hustled into the house. Tikaya, imagining Rias leaving forever, barely noticed him go. Would Rias ask her to leave with him? Was she ready to go if it meant forever? Or… what if he wasn’t planning to ask her? What if whatever he’d suffered at the telepaths’ hands had convinced him that she wasn’t worth it, that it was time to go home?
The fake cigarette—before she formed premature conclusions, she needed to see if that was a note from Rias. She turned and headed for the house. The policewoman, who’d stood beside the door during the conversation with Ell, followed her inside. Tikaya thought about going back to the attic, but the lighting was poor, and her escort might decide to follow her up the ladder this time. She veered into the water closet, opened the window for light, and yanked out the rolled paper. She released a relieved breath when she recognized Rias’s handwriting. By now, she could decrypt the code quickly and read the words straight through.
Tikaya–
I know you are concerned, but I am well. The telepaths were debating over what to do with me (at the same time, I was debating whether to simply consent to their intrusions of my free will) when High Minister Jikaymar strode in, said nobody would be touching my head, and dragged me off to the side. He told me I could go where I wished, but that it’d better be to the docks. He wants me off Kyatt as quickly as possible, and he’s allowing me to build a ship, but bluntly stated that I’d be stopped, one way or another, if I attempted to create a submarine.
I don’t have to tell you that these allowances are surprising, if not ideal. The paranoid, as you would call it, side of me wonders if it’s all part of some trap they hope to spring. If not, I must assume someone spoke to Jikaymar on my behalf. Is it possible your president has returned?
With love,
Rias
Tikaya stuffed the note into her pocket and strode out of the water closet. She had to go see Rias, but she wanted to retrieve the rest of the items in the attic so they could examine everything together. As she turned into the hallway, she almost crashed into the policewoman. Oh, right. Tikaya couldn’t leave the house. How ironic that Rias was now free to walk about, and she was confined. She couldn’t count on him coming to visit her right away either, not when her family had made it clear that he wasn’t welcome. Did he even know she was confined to the house? He’d been pulled away before her sentence had been given, hadn’t he?
“Is everything all right, dear?” Mother asked from the doorway to the kitchen, the kitchen that overlooked the back lanai. She held a spoon dripping batter in her hand, so she’d been working in there. Tikaya wondered how much of the conversation her mother had overheard.
“I need to get a message to Rias,” Tikaya said. “Do you know if anyone is about who isn’t busy?” She didn’t know who that might be, as she hadn’t seen many people that day. The house was quiet due to planting time.
“Where is he?” Mother asked.
“He might be back at the Pernici—, er, Pragmatic Mate, but he’d more likely be eating, sleeping, and working at Shipyard Four.” Sleeping being questionable, Tikaya thought.
Mother’s gray eyebrows twitched at the slip-up. She was well aware of the name of the hostel—and the dubious neighborhood it occupied. “That’s hardly a fit place for an upright young man.”
“The hostel or the shipyard?” Tikaya asked with a smile. “If you’d seen the not-entirely-floating shipwreck he acquired, you might find the Mate a superior abode.”
The pursed lips turned into a disapproving pucker. “I need to go to the market. I can relay your message.”
Tikaya hadn’t meant to send her mother off on errands for her, but as long as she was offering… “I don’t suppose you could give a message to Parkonis’s mother, as well? As soon as it’s permitted—” she glanced at the policewoman, “—I need to go over and see her, but I’d hate to stop by unannounced.” Actually, it was more that she’d hate to find that Parkonis was living with his mother until he settled in somewhere again. Tikaya couldn’t stomach the thought of knocking on the door and coming face-to-face with two sets of disappointed stares.
“Iweue?” Mother’s spoon drooped. “Are you sure she’ll want to see you right now? Or me?”
“No, but Grandpa wouldn’t help, and she’s the only other person I know who could Make an energy source to power a big engine. And Rias needs one.” Tikaya realized that might not be true if he no longer intended to build a submarine. Perhaps a standard Turgonian boiler and furnace system would suffice. She needed to talk to him before making further plans.
“I suppose it couldn’t last,” Mother said.
“What’s that?”
“You being the least needy and demanding of my children. Your brothers always craved attention, whereas you simply wanted to be left alone with your books and puzzles. Father and I worried now and then, you know.”
“Oh.” Awareness of the policewoman standing by caused warmth to creep into Tikaya’s cheeks. She didn’t want to have her failings deconstructed in front of strangers. “There’s no need to worry about me. I’ll just wait here while you go talk to Rias. I appreciate it. Thank you.”
“Parents always worry. We were relieved, though, when you started seeing Parkonis. I thought I’d finally get those grandchildren I’d pictured for so long. I used to tell your father that I feared you didn’t know one must plant a seed to grow a tree, and that suitably virile pips are scarce in the dusty archives of the Polytechnic.”
Tikaya winced. How had her mother drifted onto this topic again? And was that a smirk on the policewoman’s face?
“Yes, Mother. Would you like me to start the runabout for you? Bring it around front?”
“Though you and Parkonis did always seem more like friends,” Mother went on, caught up in some memory as she gazed out the window. “You didn’t stare at him across the dinner table, as if you wished the family would disappear, so you could tear off his clothes and assume a horizontal plane.”
“Mother!” Tikaya whispered. By now the policewoman’s smirk had turned into a hand-covering-her-mouth attempt to hold back laughter. Tikaya’s cheeks were no longer simply warm; they were being seared by a surge of molten lava. “I did not look at Rias like that. I was too busy being uncomfortable relaying our adventure to twenty pairs of judging eyes.”
“Dear, if that’s true, I can’t imagine how you look at him when you’re alone and… comfortable.”
Escape, Tikaya thought. She had to escape. “I’ll go get the runabout for you. The afternoon’s already growing long. You don’t want to delay. What if the market closes?” She headed for the front door, but her mother continued to muse.
“Though, I can understand the feeling. Parkonis was—is—a nice lad, but a touch scrawny and scattered, don’t you think? Your new fellow is quite handsome, especially when he’s roaming about shirtless. Intriguing stories behind those scars, I imagine. That one on his eyebrow, it looks like someone must have been trying to kill him.”
“I’m fairly certain someone was trying to kill him on all of the instances he received scars, Mother. And, shouldn’t you not be speculating on shirtless men when you’re married to Father?” Shouldn’t you not? Tikaya groaned to herself. How sad that a linguistics specialist could fumble her own language so.
“Don’t be naive, dear. Of course a woman’s allowed to speculate. I’m certain that Akahe doesn’t judge us for what’s in our minds, and being married doesn’t mean we must suppress our fantasies. Why a good fantasy can enhance one’s intimate relations with one’s spouse. It’s all perfectly acceptable.”
Tikaya had no response for that. She hustled out the front door, nearly slamming it in her haste to escape. As much as she’d wanted an advocate for Rias, having her sixty-year-old mother displaying salacious interest in him wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind.
CHAPTER 10
Tikaya had wanted to delve into her attic finds as soon as possible, but Mother left her with a number of cooking tasks to perform in her absence. She could hardly object when Mother was out running errands for her. If the policewoman hadn’t been lingering, Tikaya would have tugged out the journal, cut open the lock, and devoured the contents while stirring soup on the cooktop. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d read while attending to household chores, though all the scalds, cuts, and spilled pots had resulted in numerous parental warnings on the folly of such practices. As it was, a couple of hours passed, and numerous kin came and went before she could escape the kitchen.
Hoping she could leave her watchdog below, Tikaya left the soup to simmer and headed for the trapdoor. When she reached up to push it open, she met resistance. A shiny new padlock dangled from the latching mechanism.
She stared at it, dumbfounded.
The attic hadn’t been locked two hours earlier. At least, she didn’t think so. Was it possible her mother had come ahead and unclasped a lock before asking Tikaya to “organize”? But, no, she’d lived in the house most of her life. There’d never been a lock on the attic. Her brothers and cousins had gone up there to smoke during their rebellious teenage stages, which Ell had yet to grow out of. No, somebody had locked the trapdoor within the last two hours.
The hallway floor creaked as the policewoman stopped a few steps away.
“You don’t know anything about this, do you?” Tikaya doubted the woman carried padlocks in her pockets or would presume to secure a room in someone’s house, but she didn’t know who else to suspect.
“No, ma’am.”
“Did you by chance see anyone head this way while I was cooking?”
“At least a dozen people were in and out of the house this afternoon.”
For a long moment, Tikaya stared at the lock. Unbelievable. She’d ask at dinner, though she couldn’t believe this was a coincidenc
e. Someone in the family must have heard she was up there. Someone who knew about the Turgonian artifacts? Or was there something else up there that she had yet to discover, something important? She thought of Ell—he’d gone into the house, supposedly for food, hadn’t he? Had Mother let him know she’d been up in the attic when he came? He couldn’t possibly be in on some familial conspiracy, could he?
Growling, Tikaya stalked down the hallway, brushing past the policewoman and heading for the other wing of the house. At least she still had the journal. Maybe it would hold the answers she sought.
When she reached her bedroom, she paused with her hand on the knob. “Mind if I have some privacy?” she asked the woman tagging along after her.
“So long as you don’t decide to escape out the window.” The policewoman smiled, but there was a speculation in her gaze, as if she thought Tikaya might do just that.
“I promise to stay inside.”
“Very well.”
Tikaya shut and locked the door. Before she took the three steps to her desk, she’d practically torn her undergarments off in her haste to pull out the journal. It wouldn’t be long until dinner, and whoever had locked the attic might confront her then or forbid her to research the family history further. She didn’t think anyone would search her room, but one never knew…
Intending to force open the lock, Tikaya pulled a letter opener out of the drawer, but she paused. The three-hundred-year-old journal wasn’t as ancient as many of the artifacts she’d studied, but it was a piece of history. Tamping down her growing sense of urgency, she fished a couple of hairpins out and applied Rias’s picking techniques.
Despite its age, the diary lock was in good condition and proved far simpler than the one at the library. It released with a soft click.
“Hah,” Tikaya said. “So, at the age of thirty, you deviate from pure academics to embark on a life that involves beating up professors and prying into people’s diaries.” For a moment, she wondered if she should blame Rias’s warmongering Turgonian influence, but she was too busy unfastening the leather straps and easing open the book to wonder for long.
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