Word and Breath (Wordless Chronicles)

by Susannah Noel

  Largan flipped through the file of images—a standard background dossier on Jenson Talon. He didn’t have a need for it any time soon, but at least it had interrupted the conversation. “You ready?” he asked Mikel curtly.

  Mikel nodded and followed Largan into his office, smiling covertly. Obnoxiously.

  Then he started to fire off a bunch of questions about Riana. Some Largan didn’t know the answers to, and some Largan couldn’t possibly have known the answers to. As he fended them off, he felt more and more off-stride and was relieved when Smyde finally arrived.

  He was also starting to get suspicious. Mikel wouldn’t have come in and wasted everyone’s time like this unless he had an underlying agenda.

  When Mikel started bombarding Smyde with similar questions, Largan couldn’t help but feel a tiny twinge of petty pleasure. He’d never liked Smyde—the man was too narrow and unyielding for his taste—and it was nice to see someone else as the target of Mikel’s inquisition.

  “You must have been told this dozens of times already,” Smyde finally said acidly. “Riana Cole had no friends. She kept to herself.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Mikel leaned against the doorframe—hadn’t even come all the way into the office. “No one is that isolated. Who did she talk to in the office?”

  “Talon, mostly. But he’ll no longer be troubling anyone.”

  For just a moment, Largan thought he glimpsed a hint of satisfaction in Smyde’s face, and he wondered if there had been more animosity between the two men than he’d been aware of before.

  “No one else?”

  “She talks to others casually, but she doesn’t spend any time with them. If we suspected she’d had any friends at work, we would have already pursued those avenues of inquiry.”

  Mikel shook his head, the florescent light glinting off his fair hair. “So you’re telling me that an attractive, twenty-two-year-old woman goes into work and then goes home and has no sort of social life at all? You know of no friends or lovers in the eight years she’s been working for you?”

  Smyde looked annoyed by Mikel’s condescending attitude, but he answered the question directly. “Well, there was another Reader—several years back—with whom she spent some time. I suspected they might be involved. Reed Connor. But he quit years ago, and no one has heard from him since.”

  Mikel looked interested. “Do you think he might have kept in contact with Riana?”

  “I doubt it. He dropped out of the Common Directory.”

  “He went underground? Is that her connection with the Front?”

  “We don’t think so,” Largan put in, feeling more at ease now that they were focusing on real business. “There were no signs that Connor was involved with the Underground. He came from a family of trouble-makers, but he never made any waves. We’re pretty sure Jenson was her connection to those circles.”

  “Connor had a large inheritance, which disappeared at the same time he did. I always figured he got tired of it all and set up house on a free island outside of Union control. He was never a team-player.” Smyde’s mouth turned up in a sneer.

  Mikel seemed to have lost his interest in that topic. “So her only attachment was her sister?”

  “As far as we can tell.” Largan glanced down at the files he still had to go through before lunch and hoped this meeting was almost over.

  “And you’re both willing to look me in the eye and assure me that neither of you knows anything about the kidnapping of her sister?” Mikel’s eyes were steel as he leveled his gaze at them in turn.

  Largan met the other man’s eyes. “The Union was not responsible for the kidnapping. I told you that before.”

  “If I needed information from her,” Smyde said, “I wouldn’t waste my time with her sister. There are far more direct ways to extract information.”

  That was another thing Largan didn’t like about Smyde. He had no sense of subtlety or appreciation for nuance. If he’d wanted the information, he probably would have just tortured Riana until he got it.

  And never doubted the information he gained was reliable.

  “And you don’t know anything about the shooting either?” Mikel asked, his eyes shifting from Largan to Smyde. “That’s the thing that drove her into hiding.”

  “The shooting is not the work of the Union—not my office or anyone else’s.” Largan felt vaguely disgusted by the thought. “We do have some further information on that.” Pleased that both Mikel and Smyde turned to him with interest, he explained, “It’s definitely the work of a Zealot group. Overnight, they processed evidence from the scene and traced the weapon to an ex-soldier with the Union military. We’re pretty sure he was the shooter. He was discharged dishonorably and has ties to extremist circles—anti-reading, anti-Breathers, anti-everything. They want to destroy everything of value in the world because they’re convinced it’s a threat.” He nodded at Mikel. “You know the type.”

  “To my regret, I do,” Mikel murmured, with a rare expression of understanding in his eyes.

  On this, at least, the two agreed.

  Smyde looked visibly startled. “So you found the shooter?”

  “We know his identity. We haven’t yet found him or picked him up. We will.” Largan sighed, with another agonized look over at the work he still needed to do. “We’re acting on the assumption that the Zealot group found out our plans for Riana and didn’t want that project to succeed.”

  Mikel cleared his throat. “And what project is that?”

  Largan didn’t need the distressed noises Smyde was making to immediately shut Mikel down. “That’s confidential. Find Riana and do your job.”

  Mikel frowned thoughtfully, and Largan experienced that flash of suspicion again. What was the Breather doing here anyway? He could have gotten all of this information from a phone call. In fact, he hadn’t learned anything particularly helpful at all.

  Something else was going on. Mikel wasn’t here to get information. The cool nonchalance in the Breather’s manner wasn’t going to convince him otherwise.

  Tired of undercurrents, Largan asked bluntly, “So what did you want, Mikel? You’re not the kind to pay a social call.”

  Mikel’s smile was slow and knowing, and there might even have been a glint of respect in his eyes. “Riana Cole called me last night.”

  And there it was. The something Largan had been waiting for.

  “What? What?” Smyde almost sputtered as he advanced on Mikel. “And you’re just now telling us? What did she say? Where is she?”

  Mikel arched his eyebrows, and Largan was glad he wasn’t the target of that look of vaguely disgusted disdain. “I’m telling you now. Would you like me to go on?”

  When Smyde kept sputtering, Largan snapped out, “Shut up!” Then he nodded at Mikel. “Continue.”

  “She called me last night. She wouldn’t say where she was, and she wouldn’t agree to meet with me. She was scared. The shooting had rattled her badly.”

  “Why did she call you?” Largan asked, thinking as quickly as he could.

  “I’m not sure. I told you I formed a connection with her, and I don’t think she has anyone else. That’s why I was asking about her friends and colleagues. She’s looking for someone to help her, but she’s not sure who she can trust.”

  “How did you end it?”

  Mikel answered Largan’s question. He ignored the clearly frustrated Smyde as if the man wasn’t in the room. “She hung up on me. Something spooked her before I could talk her into trusting me.”

  “Did you at least get the number she called you on?” Smyde asked.

  Mikel narrowed his eyes unpleasantly. “As a matter of fact, I did. She wasn’t calling from her phone. It was a public telephone in the train station. She’s a smart girl, and she’s not going to take unnecessary risks.”

  Largan nodded, agreeing with this assessment. Despite Mikel’s pursuit of his own agenda, at least the man was smart and competent. “Can you give me the phone number of the public te
lephone? I’ll send someone to check it out.”

  Taking the piece of paper Largan handed him, Mikel checked his phone and scrawled down the numbers.

  Largan understood what was happening now, so his next words were more a statement than a question. “You think she’ll call you back.”

  “I do. She’s scared. She needs someone to help her.”

  “We need to get busy then,” Smyde put in urgently. “We can tap your phone and maybe—”

  Mikel cleared his throat, his eyes never leaving Largan.

  “How much more do you want?” Largan asked, mentally sorting through his budget and trying to determine how much extra he could pull from other line items.

  “This is a different assignment than the one I signed on for,” Mikel said mildly, while Smyde sputtered some more. “A more difficult one.”

  “How much?”

  With a slight, ironic gesture of his hand, Mikel said, “Five-thousand should do it.”

  Smyde made an exclamation of outrage, but Largan kept his face impassive. It could have been worse. Mikel wasn’t one to barter. His demands for compensation were met, or he simply walked out the door.

  There was too much riding on this to deny him five-thousand extra. This was the first positive lead they had on Riana Cole’s location.

  “Agreed. I’ll set you up with Veda in Communications. She’ll take care of your phone. You’re to report as soon as you hear anything more from her. Set up a meeting, and we’ll figure out what to do from there.”

  Mikel nodded, looking infuriatingly pleased with himself.

  Smyde looked anything but pleased. “Is that all you needed from me? I have a lot of work to do today.”

  Largan waved him off.

  Mikel was still leaning against the doorframe, and he didn’t move even as Smyde approached. For just a moment, there was a silent standoff between them. They clearly disliked each other, but Largan sensed even more than that in their expressions.

  Mikel looked at Smyde as if he were nothing.

  And Smyde looked like he wanted to murder the Soul-Breather.

  Interesting, Largan thought idly.

  Finally, Smyde managed to leave, but he had to push by Mikel bodily in order to do so.

  It actually made Largan feel better—in the most ridiculous of ways.

  At least he wasn’t the only one who hated to see Mikel appear in his office.

  And at least there were other people who earned more of Mikel’s loathing and condescension than he did.

  In fact, if he wasn’t mistaken, the nod Mikel gave him as he left seemed almost, almost like respect.

  ***

  Riana wasn’t sure how or why, but she and Connor had fallen back into their previous easy friendship without any difficulty at all. It didn’t seem natural, after so many years, but there wasn’t any awkwardness or stiffness between them at all.

  She supposed she should resent his dropping out of her life without a word—after he’d claimed to be her friend. She still remembered the years she’d had an embarrassing crush on him. He was always so cute, so smart, so funny. He always made her feel special. He must have known about her infatuation, but he’d never alluded to it. After a while, Riana had grown up and realized relationships were more trouble than they were worth.

  They had been good friends, though, and she had been hurt and upset when he’d first disappeared. Often, in the last three years, she’d worried about him, wondered if he was doing all right.

  He’d cut her off completely, and she might have been angry about that. But he hadn’t been lying on a beach on some free island, drinking fruity drinks and living off his family inheritance. He’d sacrificed a lot for the movement he believed in—he’d lost more than she had in the interim—and she just couldn’t make herself resent him for it.

  At least not now. Not with so much else going on.

  She needed him. He felt safe and familiar, when nothing else in her life offered that anymore. She could relax around him in a way she couldn’t relax with anyone else. She couldn’t give that up right now—not to indulge selfish indignation over his abandonment.

  So that morning, when she went over to his office to work on discovering what her grandfather had taught her regarding the Old Language, she didn’t let him apologize about dropping out of her life as he had.

  He tried. Looked genuinely regretful as he explained it had nothing to do with his trust in her or the depth of his friendship with her.

  It was nice that he tried to apologize, but she brushed it away with a smile. It didn’t matter. It was past. He was here now, and he was helping her.

  He looked rather unsettled by her response, but he didn’t press the matter.

  They spent the next three hours writing out the fragments of sentences she could remember from her grandfather’s lessons to her as a child.

  Eventually, it was getting close to lunch, and she was exhausted and hungry and drained. Her memory was vague and blurry, and she wasn’t convinced she’d correctly remembered even the sentences they’d written out.

  Connor was focused completely on the puzzle. She remembered this about him, how completely he became absorbed in whatever project held his attention. He had a couple of ink marks on the back of his left hand, and his collar was askew. He’d taken off his jacket an hour ago and rolled up his sleeves the way he always did when he was distracted. His hair was a mess—he’d tugged on it far too many times that morning.

  He chewed on the end of the pen as he stared down at the pages lined up on the coffee table in front of them.

  “What about this?” He pointed out the sentence she’d written about the rabbits swimming in a race across a pond. “Is this the way he spelled out ‘water’?”

  She peered down at the word, written in her halting Old Language script. Everything was starting to look the same, and her head hurt. “I think so. It’s been so long since I’ve read the Old Language that I can’t be positive. Why?”

  “It’s spelled wrong.” With the pen, he precisely added a few curved lines to the letters. “It’s supposed to look like this.”

  Riana leaned over closer to the notebook pages. “I don’t know. I thought it was like I wrote it out. But maybe I just forgot.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe that’s the way he taught it to you.”

  “But why?” Riana groaned and rubbed her scalp, loosening her braids in the process. “It’s not like he was teaching me a different language. All of these sentences are basically the Old Language. None of this makes any sense.”

  “Not yet. But we’ve only just started. Can you remember the end of this sentence here? The one about the turtles?”

  “I can’t remember, Reed. I’m sorry. I don’t have the perfect memory you do. And it’s all starting to blur together.”

  Connor sighed and put down the pen. “We’ll take a break.” He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Does your head hurt?”

  “A little.” She lowered her hands, not wanting to complain about something so trivial when everyone was trying so hard to help her out.

  That thought made her glance over to the clock on the desk, wondering how Mikel was doing.

  “He’ll still be at the meeting,” Connor said softly, reading the direction of her thoughts.

  “Yeah. I know. I just want him to...to hurry up.”

  There was a long silence, as Connor’s blue eyes scanned her face. “You’ve gotten close to him.” His tone was matter-of-fact, not pitched with any particular interest. “Is there something there, do you think?”

  Riana shot him a quick glance and saw nothing but mild kindness on his face. She was a little embarrassed to be talking about it, but she appreciated that he was trying to act like a friend.

  Jannie was the only other person she’d been able to really trust with something so personal.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I mean, there’s something there, I suppose. But I don’t know how much of it is real and...and lasting.
His purpose in getting close to me originally was...was...”

  It still hurt, thinking about it. It still felt so much like a betrayal.

  “I know,” Connor murmured. He leaned back against the couch they both were sitting on and watched her with quiet reflection. His hands were relaxed in his lap. “His feelings now appear to be genuine.”

  There was an odd note in his tone that made her eyes dart back to his face. But he still looked like his normal self—clever, sweet, and rather rumpled. “Yeah, I guess they are. But that makes it even harder. It’s just too much. I have so many other things to worry about that I can’t begin to even think it all through. And he, I mean, he wants...” She cringed and looked away, feeling a hot flash of confusion overwhelm her. “I don’t know.”