The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

  Marcue didn’t let her finish. “Unless you have also spent time in the Galweigh dungeons, and have spoken to the Galweigh guards to be sure you know differently, assume the guard who watched over you was chosen the same way. Assume that when your Family discovered you stolen away, the person he once loved was murdered while he watched, and when she was dead, that he was killed, too. Loyalty can be bought and sold, child, and even given away for free . . . but fear can make the price of a man’s loyalty higher than even the richest buyer could pay.”

  The girl stared at him for a moment, horrified. “My Family would never hurt Quintal. He has guarded me since I was born. And his wife and daughter . . . his daughter was my companion until just last year, and his wife works for our seneschal. They are a part of the Family.”

  She leaned forward to hide her face against her thighs. She wrapped her thin arms under her legs and began to cry again. “No one would hurt them,” he heard her insisting again and again.

  “Oh, please,” Marcue whispered. “Don’t do that. I’m sure you’re right. Your guardsman will be fine, and his family, too. Meanwhile, Danya, you’re safe here. Your Family isn’t going to let anything happen to you. They’ll pay to get you out—any day now, someone will come down the steps to release you.”

  She didn’t raise her head. The guard could barely make out her reply, muffled as it was. He thought she said, “It’s Theramisday.”

  And what did the fact that it was Naming Day have to do with anything? He asked her as much.

  “Because,” she said, lifting her head, “the Sabir diplomat who came down and talked to me just after I got here gave Theramisday as the last day that my Family could come to an agreement on the terms of my release. If the Sabirs didn’t get what they wanted then, they said they would take it by other means, and my life would be worth nothing to them.”

  The guard tried to smile at her. “They always say things like that when they’re dealing with each other. I can’t even tell you how many threats I’ve heard the Sabirs giving . . . and you have to know the stories I’ve heard of the Galweighs are no better.” He shook his head and his smile grew more confident. “But all those threats won’t mean anything when it comes to you. What could they gain by hurting you?”

  She gave him an eerie look, one that seemed to bite with knife-edged teeth straight through his skin and into his bones. That stare chilled him from the inside out, and made him wish that there were more people in the dungeon than just the two of them. Then she looked away and the awful feeling passed. She said, “You’d be surprised.”

  Perhaps I would after all, he thought, but he said nothing.

  From far above, he heard the first soft, rhythmic thuds of boots on the curving stairs that led down into the dungeon. The hour was far too early for his relief to be coming, and too late for someone from the kitchen to be bringing meals for him and the girl. So then, who came?

  Danya moved into the farthest corner of her cell and pulled herself into a tiny bundle, huddled behind a little pile of straw. She said, “It’s time for the bad news now. But perhaps you could still find a way to save me.”

  The child was determined to get him killed. He shook his head.

  She watched him, eyes like those of a fox in a trap—terrified yet cunning, too. “I’d consent to marriage in my own right, if that’s what you wanted. Even if you demanded both marriage and a name in the Galweigh Family, I could promise that, and you would have it. I will promise it. I do. If you’ll just get me away from here.”

  Her hand in marriage? He smiled sadly at her and said, “How old are you, Danya? Not old enough to be thinking of marriage, I’ll wager.”

  She said, “I’m eighteen. Old enough to give legal consent.”

  She was eighteen? He wouldn’t have guessed her age at more than thirteen, and she wouldn’t have made a particularly well developed thirteen-year-old. If she was eighteen—and he wasn’t sure he was willing to believe her about that—she might be in more trouble than he’d guessed. As a legal adult, she couldn’t count on the safeguards promised to children by the Family treaties. As an adult, if her Family wouldn’t ransom her and she couldn’t offer her own ransom, the Sabirs really might do what they wanted with her.

  But they would start a war if they hurt—or killed, but that was unthinkable—the daughter of a Galweigh. And none of the Families and subfamilies in Calimekka wanted a war.

  Did they?

  The footsteps grew louder. He thought he could discern three separate pairs of feet coming down the stone stairs.

  “Save me. Anything it is within my power to give, you’ll have.”

  He felt her fear as if it were a blanket wrapping itself around him, smothering him. “You can’t guarantee the safety of my parents,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, girl, but I can’t help you.”

  She screamed—fear and rage, in equal parts. She ripped handfuls of straw from the floor and flung them at him. He drew well back from the line and steeled his face to impassivity. Above him, the pace of feet on stairsteps quickened. He grew uneasy. Perhaps she had reason to fear. Perhaps. But so did he.

  The first man appeared from around the curve of the staircase. His long cloak, which swirled against his riding boots and billowed behind him, also effectively hooded his face from view, but Marcue knew him anyway from the ring on his right hand. A wolf’s-head ring, gold, with tourmaline cabochon eyes that glowed in the torchlight, with a mouth opened in a vicious snarl. The wearer of the ring was Crispin Sabir, one of the Sabir Wolves.

  A wave of queasiness washed over Marcue. The girl had reason to fear. Crispin Sabir was mad. Evil. Cruel beyond words, beyond human comprehension. If even one one-hundredth of the stories Marcue had heard about him were true, the man kept corpses in his quarters and planted them in his private grounds the way gardeners planted roses. Marcue had seen him torture a man once; that memory would never leave him. If he had known the girl would end up with the Sabir’s Wolves instead of with their diplomats—

  “Why is she screaming?” Crispin asked, and Marcue swallowed and said quickly, “She’s afraid. She heard you coming down the stairs and she said something about this being Theramisday.”

  “Theramisday. Gregor said he told her about that. I’m glad she remembered,” Crispin said.

  The second man appeared as he said it, and if Marcue had been sick at the sight of Crispin, with the arrival of Andrew Sabir his heart sank, weighted with dread. Andrew Sabir. Better a visit from Zagtasht, god of the underworld. At least Zagtasht was sometimes known to show mercy. Andrew was a massive man, twice as broad through the shoulders as the leaner, taller Crispin, with a chest like a beer barrel; he kept his head shaved in the manner of the Sloebene sailors, with a single braid above his left ear; and he was ugly as red-eyed evil. He grinned as he caught sight of the girl, and said, “Do you want me to shut her up, Crispin?”

  “Not at all. Let her sing a bit. I like the sound of it.”

  The third set of footsteps on the stairs approached slowly. Marcue heard a hissing slide, then a thud and a grunt, then the normal click of boot heel on stone. A pause. Then the sequence repeated. Over and over, louder and louder. And throughout, a curious scraping that he hadn’t heard at all until the other two men were off the stairs.

  Marcue shivered, and not from the chill and the damp. He’d heard stories of the creatures the Wolves kept hidden in their chambers. He’d heard, too, that they consorted with demons and monsters. And that shuffle-step on the stair (what was that scratching sound?) might just be a kindly old Family diplomat limping down to tell the girl her ransom had been met . . . but Marcue didn’t think so.

  “We have news for you, little Wolf,” Andrew said.

  Crispin glared at him. “Wait until Anwyn gets here. He doesn’t want to miss this.”

  Andrew laughed, a creepy high tittering giggle that made Marcue want to retch. “News,” he repeated. “But maybe Anwyn will want to give it to you himself. We’ll all want to give it to you.” He
giggled again.

  The girl stood and faced the men. She wasn’t screaming any longer, and Marcue could see no sign of tears. She’d drawn strength from someplace; she’d found a measure of courage from deep inside herself; now her chin went up and her shoulders came back and her body wrote defiance in the air with her every move. She glared at Andrew and said, “So what is your news, Wolf?”

  Crispin and Andrew both grinned at each other. As they did, Anwyn slouched into the dungeon. Marcue had thought from his name that he would be human. Anwyn was a good Parmatian name, like Crispin . . . or Marcue, for that matter. The thing that skulked into the dungeon wasn’t human, though. He might have been one of the Scarred—one of the creatures from the poisoned lands whose ancestors, stories said, had once been men. If he was Scarred, however, he was from no realm that had ever traded in Calimekka. And if he wasn’t one of the Scarred, then he was a demon from the lowest pit of Zagtasht’s darkest hell. Long horns curled out from his forehead. His scaled brow beetled over eyes so deeply set they looked more like hollow sockets. His lips parted in a grin that revealed teeth long as a man’s thumb and serrated like a shark’s. He hunched forward, and Marcue could make out the ridge of huge spines that ran down the center of his back beneath his cloak. His hands were talons, though five-fingered, and while one of his feet fit in a man’s boot and grew from a man-shaped leg, the other was a cloven hoof attached to a leg that, beneath a man’s breeches, bent backward at the knee. That leg he dragged forward as he moved into the room.

  Marcue longed to run. He kept himself where he was only by the fiercest exercise of will, and he knew that his terror showed plainly on his face.

  The girl didn’t flinch. She looked at the monster as if he were someone she had known and disliked all her life. Marcue couldn’t even see fear in her eyes.

  Well, he was afraid enough for both of them.

  You should have helped her escape, a tiny voice in the back of his mind whispered. You are going to regret the fact that you didn’t for the rest of your life. The name Danya Galweigh is going to ride with you into the dark halls of nightmare when you sleep, and perch on your shoulders when you wake.

  The girl gripped the bars of her cell with slender, long-fingered hands and, in a voice that said without words that she was their superior and beyond anything they might do to her, said, “You’re all here now. Give me your news.”

  The monster Anwyn said, “Dear child, the diplomats still talk, and we will let them talk, of course—but they achieve nothing. Your Family is most unwilling to give us what we want.” He shook his head and looked from Andrew to Crispin, then back to the girl. “And the work of Theramisday has come and gone, and no decision that we will accept has yet been reached.”

  She frowned. “But you said the diplomats are still talking.”

  Anwyn smiled, and those horrible teeth gleamed. “Well, of course. If we had given your people our actual deadline, they would know to be watching for our next move. As it is, they think we’re still considering what they have to say, so they won’t be prepared for our attack.”

  Danya paled, and Marcue, pressed against the wall, ached for her. Her Family still thought they had a chance to get her back alive, when in fact she had become the trick that would make them vulnerable.

  Danya Galweigh didn’t collapse into tears, nor did she beg for mercy. She glanced at Marcue, then back at the monster, and said, “So now I assume you have come to kill me.”

  All three visitors to the dungeon laughed. The demon said, “Lovely girl, we wouldn’t dream of killing you. Yet. What a stupid waste of valuable resources that would be. How would we bring ourselves to kill someone so young and beautiful, so strong and full of life? No. We have a place for you among our number.”

  “Indeed,” Crispin said, “the central place of honor in the circle of the Wolves.”

  That meant nothing to Marcue, but it meant something to Danya. Her facade of courage and impassivity crumbled, and tears filled her eyes. “No,” she whispered. “Please, no. Not that.”

  Andrew tittered again. “Well, not that right away. After you have been the guest of the Wolves, you won’t be . . . well, you won’t be the same, and we hated the idea of wasting so much prettiness. So for the next few days, you’ll entertain the three of us. Just us.”

  She backed away from the bars. “Don’t touch me.”

  Crispin and the demon laughed, and Crispin said, “Well, brother, I don’t think she likes us.”

  The demon said, “She’ll probably like you well enough. But I think I shall like her.”

  Andrew said, “Guard, give me the key to her cell.”

  Marcue shuddered.

  I should have helped her. I should have . . . I had the time. I could have made an opportunity. I could have done something. Maybe I still can. Maybe I can find a way to get her out and lock the three of them in there—I can run with her and my parents before anyone is the wiser. Galweigh House isn’t so far . . .

  “Let me open it for you,” he heard himself saying. “The lock is stiff and tricky, and won’t open if you haven’t practiced with it a great deal.” His voice shook when he spoke, but he thought anyone’s voice would shake on being confronted for the first time with a demon. And what he said about the lock was true, actually, though he took nearly three times as long unlocking it as he would have normally. His delay came partly because his hands were shaking from fear, but more than that, the whole time he was scraping the key back and forth, he was figuring out how he would get the men and the monster into the cell and the girl safely out. By the time the door screeched open, he thought he had found the way.

  “There,” he said, and stepped back, keeping himself beside the door and leaving the key in the lock.

  “Very good,” Andrew said. “That did look very difficult.”

  Marcue nodded and took another step back. He tried to catch the girl’s eye, but she was looking at Andrew, who stepped into the cell first. Crispin followed, and Marcue wished with all his heart the second one in had been the demon. Crispin would have been so much easier to shove.

  He watched both men close on Danya, and backed up another half step, hoping to spot the demon, who had inexplicably vanished. He felt his fear in the tightening of his gut and his testicles, in the pounding of his heart, and he thought, Come on! Come on! Move in front of me, you bastard, before it’s too late.

  Then he felt the point of a needle at his throat.

  “It probably would have worked,” the demon said from behind him. He felt it rest one hand on his belly. The other tightened around his neck, and the monster picked him up, strangling him and dragging him backward at the same time. He kicked and struggled, trying to pull the hand away from his neck and finding that he might have bent the bars of one of the cells with his hands more easily. He couldn’t breathe at all, couldn’t make a sound. The demon took him to the stone wall directly across from the cell (to the rows of manacles, why is he taking me to the manacles?) and released his throat just as the world was beginning to turn gray and his pulse was threatening to explode out the sides of his skull.

  Marcue vomited and gasped in air, choking, his throat on fire, and the demon laughed. It grabbed one wrist and locked it into a manacle, then caught the other one. “You couldn’t have saved her, but you might have gotten all three of us into the cell.” The demon smiled at him (horrible smile) and added, “But you think too loudly, and with your whole body. Not a good survival trait, that.”

  Marcue became dimly aware that the girl was screaming. He looked past the demon to see her held between Crispin and Andrew. She was staring at him. Screaming for him.

  The monster fitted his other wrist into the manacle, closed it. Locked it. Smiled at him.

  Terrible, terrible teeth.

  Terrible.

  The girl, screaming, “Let him go! Let him go!”

  “We were just going to take her up to our quarters,” Crispin said from inside the cell. “Just going to go on our way and leave
you to your job. But, naughty lad, you let yourself think of a prisoner as something besides a prisoner, and you are going to have to pay for that.”

  “I don’t think,” the demon said, “that he should leave life without at least a little entertainment, though. Do you, Crispin?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Killing him slowly,” the demon said. “Letting him watch us with the girl as he dies. So that at least he dies amused.”

  Andrew giggled. “Do it,” he said. “Do it.”

  The demon turned to face Marcue and said quietly, “A voice speaks to each of us in the still silent places—a voice that tells us to stand, to have courage, to do what is right.” He smiled. “And if we’re very, very clever, we hunt down the source of that voice, and kill it.”

  He dragged one dagger-tipped finger down Marcue’s gut, and the fabric of his tunic fell away, and the link mail under it rattled. The demon clicked his tongue, and ripped the link mail in half from top to bottom. Sliced away the padded quilt shirt underneath. Exposed the bare skin of Marcue’s chest and belly.

  “Such smooth skin,” he said. “Mine looked like that once. Enough so that I think I would have had to kill you anyway. I miss my old self.”

  “Don’t,” Marcue said. “Don’t hurt me. I didn’t do anything.”

  “You wanted to. Wanting to was enough.”

  “You don’t know that. You can’t know what a man thinks.”

  “I can. I do.”

  “Let me go.”

  “We’re going to let you watch. The mating of Wolves—not a sight many men have ever seen.” The demon laughed, and dragged its claw down his belly a final time.

  white

  red

  pain agony pain

  terror and blood and stink and

  the incredible noise of screaming someone screaming inside his head and he wanted it to stop he called to the pain to kill him and it didn’t

  the weight of something hot and slick and stinking sliding away from him, landing on his feet

  faintness, but faintness that abandoned him at the last instant and left him to the cruel ministrations of the waking world