The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

  Chapter 6

  In her sleep, Kait heard breathing not her own and felt eyes watching her. In spite of her dreams—dreams of running and Shifting—she became aware of a stranger who entered her domain. She fought against the pull of sleep, knowing that she had to awaken, feeling that while she lay unprotected someone was discovering her secret, but she could not break free of the tenacious depths of the Shift-fueled dreams.

  The nightmares gripped her and tore at her. She saw the Sabir Karnee coming for her, and she fled, but he caught up to her. This time he did not come to rescue her from rapists and murderers; this time he came because he wanted her. He touched her and kissed her, and her mind cried out that her desire was a betrayal of her Family, that she should flee before she gave in to him. But she was weak. She did what she knew she should not do. She welcomed his embrace—and her Family died in droves at the hands of his Family while she fed her lust and ignored her duty. Then the dream metamorphosed, and she ran, wild and reckless, smelling the rich earth and the vibrant growth of jungle and forest and field, floating at incredible speeds with her feet never quite touching the ground. And all the while, something terrible pursued her. The scent of her pursuer rose out of the ground and poisoned the air she breathed. Honeysuckle. Sweet honeysuckle. It terrified her, though she did not know why. She careened along the edge of a cliff that appeared out of nowhere, and discovered in the same instant that she was running beside her cousin Danya. The two of them were girls again, exploring the grounds outside of the House, and she knew without knowing how she knew that the two of them had wakened something old and evil . . . and that the monster that they had awakened wanted to destroy them. Then the cliff fell away beneath them, and she and Danya fell silently. As she fell, Kait started to Shift again—terrified that her cousin would see her and discover the secret she fought so hard to keep. In spite of her attempts to control the Shift, her arms stretched into front legs, then thinned into wings . . . but she still fell. She dropped, helpless, into an abyss, and watched the ground loom closer and closer.

  With a snap, heart racing, mouth dry, she was awake. She didn’t move, didn’t open her eyes—because someone was in her room. The scent told her that the someone was her uncle Dùghall; the irregular purring snores told her he slept in the chair next to the door. When had he arrived, and why had he chosen to wait for her to wake instead of waking her? And more importantly, what had she betrayed of her nature while she slept?

  Her body ached, and she wished she could forget the disasters of the previous night. She wished she could forget the Sabir son.

  She also wished she could get past Dùghall without waking him so that she could get something to eat before she had to answer a lot of questions. She was ravenous—her body demanded a price for its Shifting, for its rapid healing and tremendous strength and speed. It demanded food in enormous quantities; if it didn’t get what it needed, it would drive her into despair, and then into a deadly, uncontrollable rage. The longer she waited to eat, the more out of control her moods would become. But the instant she opened one eye to survey the room, Dùghall woke as if he’d been slapped. His snore became a snort, his eyes flew open in bewilderment, and he shot upright, gasping.

  And there went any hope of breakfast before the interrogation she was sure to face. She said, “Good morning, Uncle,” and tried her best to look pleasant.

  He required a moment before he remembered where he was and how he had come to be there. Kait could see the information filtering out of the dreamworld he’d inhabited and into his eyes, and she saw pleasure leave him by degrees, replaced by . . . what? Worry? Fear? Anger? Whatever she saw there vanished beneath the diplomat’s mask of calm before she could identify it.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  How much did she dare tell him? Dùghall wasn’t the senior ambassador in Halles. He was peripheral to the embassy itself—he was important, certainly; in the islands where the Galweighs harvested their meager supplies of caberra, the natives worshiped Dùghall as a god and wouldn’t deal with anyone else. He had power and prestige, and he represented the Family at the moment as a respected elder statesman. But he was not the head of the Halles embassy, and thus he would not be the man who would decide what to do about the Dokteeraks and the Sabirs. If she followed protocol, she would tell Dùghall she couldn’t discuss the issue, and she would go upstairs to speak to Eldon Galweigh, to whom responsibility for the decisions would fall. But to Eldon Galweigh, she was a junior diplomat of no real importance. To Dùghall Draclas, she was a beloved niece and the young woman he’d sponsored into the diplomatic service. And Uncle Dùghall would be less inclined, she thought, to pursue difficult questions. So she said, “First, I ran into conspiracy.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “The Sabirs and the Dokteeraks.”

  Kait should have been relieved that the plot had already fallen into the hands of those capable of dealing with it, but she was perversely disappointed. She’d hoped that, by telling the Family what she’d discovered and by thus saving them from betrayal and defeat, she could expiate the sin of desiring the Sabir Karnee. She closed her eyes. “You already knew.”

  “I recognized one of the Sabirs being led through the midst of the Naming Day party by an irate houseman. I have no idea what he was doing there.”

  Kait met his eyes and told him. “I know.”

  She reeled off the conversation she’d heard between the Dokteerak paraglese and his servant.

  When she finished, Dùghall sat for a moment staring at her, his face pale and his lips and knuckles white. At last he said, “Good gods, girl, that’s a nightmare. They plan an attack during the wedding itself? Actual battle? I had thought at very worst the damned Sabirs were attempting to curry favor—perhaps arrange a marriage of their own to weaken our alliance.” He looked down at the backs of his hands for the longest time. Then, quietly, he said, “If I can verify this, you will have obtained valuable information, Kait-cha. Tell me, how did you come by it?”

  Kait had given the answer to that question plenty of thought as she made her way home the night before. She’d already fixed her lie firmly in her mind. “I felt ill, and sent Tippa to the carriage ahead of me. I told her to go ahead home—she was flirting with three Gyru-nalle princes and somehow had managed to get herself drunk, and I didn’t see any sign of the chaperones who were supposed to be with her. I wanted her out of the Dokteerak House before she did something stupid. As it was, I’m afraid it was a near thing.”

  “I’ve . . . heard . . . from the princes already. Last night. Some colleagues of theirs on the Dokteerak staff drugged both chaperones and dragged them off, intending to make both women look like they’d indulged in too much of the Dokteeraks’ wine and had been sporting with some of the concubines that were on hand for the evening entertainment. They hoped to humiliate our Family.” He waved her on. “We’ve already dealt with that. Continue.”

  She glanced at him sidelong, curious. In Tippa’s condition the night before, she would have been able to tell him little that would have been useful; considering that, Kait found herself wondering if perhaps Dùghall’s methods of acquiring information were as unconventional as her own. How had he known to go after the three princes? How had he managed to locate them? She leaned against the stone wall, pulled her blankets up around her shoulders, and said, “I went down a side corridor, thinking I might find a fountain from which to draw a drink of water. I became dizzy, and leaned against a statue, and when the dizziness passed, I realized that I heard voices. I listened to what they were saying; I moved behind the statue to hide when I found out what they discussed was of interest to us. When the paraglese left, I saw him go.” She closed her eyes, remembering the pale, squat man who strode down the corridor past her, so close that she could feel the breeze when he passed. He’d looked remarkably like a toad, she realized. She glanced at her uncle. “He ordered a visiting paraglese in from the Territories killed to give himself an excuse for leaving his party.”

  Dù
ghall frowned, and for a moment she wondered what she’d said wrong. But he said, “Damnall. That’s one confirmation of your story. One of our runners came to the embassy not long after Tippa arrived to inform us that the paraglese Idrogar Pendat from Old Jirin died of a sudden fever last night. It doesn’t fill me with joy to discover his death was . . . convenient.”

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  His thin, humorless smile wasn’t comforting. “I’m not. Pendat assumed that he would be welcomed into the Dokteeraks’ House and kept safe because he was among his own Family. But new faces in any House create opportunities for many sorts of change, and if the visitor isn’t careful, he often finds himself a pawn in another’s game. Sometimes a dead pawn.”

  “But he was Family.” To Kait, Family was sacred.

  Dùghall said, “Not all Families are like ours, Kait-cha.”

  Kait nodded. She’d known the Sabirs were evil, and she hadn’t liked the Dokteeraks much when she’d been introduced to them. She still found it difficult, though, to reconcile her hazy images of evil with the reality of a man murdering one of his own Family to provide a convenient excuse for missing a party. That gave a face to the word “evil” that she would never have imagined on her own.

  She tried to block out her hunger by concentrating on Dùghall. She knew she needed to stay on her guard. But the aftereffects of Karnee Shift would not be denied; she wanted food. Food. Dùghall seemed to blur in front of her eyes and his voice came from far away, as if he spoke from the other side of a long field.

  “What happened to you on the way home?” he asked. “I couldn’t help but notice the blood on your legs and hand and face when I came in.”

  Her hands flew to her face and she felt herself flushing. “I thought I’d washed it all off.”

  He nodded. “So what happened?”

  She hadn’t had time to come up with a good lie for that. “I was . . . attacked,” she said. “While I walked home. Thieves.” She shrugged. “I was lucky—I cut one with the dagger I’d hidden in my skirt when he threatened me, and just then a stranger came along and chased off the others. I got a little bloody, but I was fortunate.”

  “You were indeed. The streets of this city are dangerous. You could have had much worse happen.”

  She nodded solemnly and said nothing.

  “If I can confirm the parts of your information that we haven’t verified yet, I’ll pass it on to Eldon,” he was saying. She continued to nod, thinking more of what she might find to eat than of his words. But what he said next brought her attention back to the present. “Meanwhile, we’ll have to make an appearance at the Celebration of Names today. The Dokteeraks have a parade and some sort of festival in the main city square. I want you to come along—you did a fine job of protecting Tippa last night, but even more than that, you managed to be in the right place at the right time to get information that your Family desperately needed. I never attribute opportunities of that sort entirely to luck. There is always some skill involved. Perhaps you’ll be fortunate again today. I’ll see that you get a commendation for your work last night, by the way.” He studied the backs of his hands. “Perhaps even a posting.” He glanced up, noted the delight in her eyes, and smiled. “No promises on the posting, though, Kait. You’re very junior.”

  “I understand.”

  He added, “But about the celebration, be ready to leave by Stura. The ceremony begins at Duea, and we’re to have places alongside the Dokteerak Family atop their old ruin of a tower.”

  Kait wondered if she’d heard her uncle correctly. “They’re plotting to kill us all, and we’re going to sit in their damned tower with them and pretend to enjoy their festival?”

  Dùghall smiled broadly. “Indeed, we are going to go and have a marvelous time. Further, we’re going to be understanding and magnanimous about the unfortunate situation last night with Tippa and the princes; our chaperone failed as badly as theirs at protecting her, after all, and in these days reliable help is hard to find.” His eyes narrowed and something lethal crept into his smile. “And while we play the fool, our people here in the embassy will be making sure that their plot against us turns around and bites them instead.”

  He chuckled, shook his head as if the whole thing amused him, then rose to leave. “Don’t wear anything orange. These Baltos think it’s an unlucky color the first month of the new year. You haven’t eaten yet, of course.”

  “No. Not anything.”

  “You’re hungry?”

  “Ravenous.”

  Dùghall opened her door, then turned again and said, “You’ll need to hurry. No time to go to the kitchen. I’ll have the staff bring something up for you.”

  “If they don’t bring me enough, I’ll devour whoever carries the food into the room,” she said, and perhaps some edge of her hunger crept into her voice, for Dùghall looked at her oddly. “Tell them to bring me something meaty. And not that spiced meat they love so much here.”

  He laughed. “All grown up and you still hate spices? I’ll just tell them to trot a whole lamb up to your room—you can have that as plain as you’d like.”

  Still laughing, Dùghall stepped out the door and closed it behind him, then poked his head back in. His face still wore its merry smile, and Kait grinned at him. “Forget something?”

  “Nothing vital. How did you get into your room last night?”

  She wasn’t thinking clearly. Hunger had dulled her reactions. Worse, the question took her completely by surprise and his tone was so casual that she didn’t sense the danger in it. She glanced at the window through which she’d climbed before she could stop herself. The logical lie came an instant too late, but she tried it. “I came in through the front door, of course,” she said, but Dùghall’s smile had vanished so quickly and so totally that she realized he’d been acting when he asked how she’d come in—that he’d been planning all along to ask that question, and that he had delayed asking her so that she would relax. So that she would think he had forgotten that she had come in without being seen or checked in at the gate.

  He ignored her lie; instead, he came back into her room. Strolled to the window. Pushed open the shutters and leaned out and stared down at the ground. Her room was three stories up, and though the stone was unpolished, it offered no visible handholds. She knew what he saw, and she knew that a human woman could not have climbed up the wall and in that window. When he pulled the shutters closed and turned to face her, she couldn’t begin to guess the meaning of the look on his face.

  “We’ll talk later, you and I,” he said. No trace of his previous good humor appeared on his face. But he didn’t look angry, either. She couldn’t read him at all. “Meanwhile, eat and get ready to accompany me to the Celebration of Names.”

  This time when he left the room, he didn’t return. She stared at the window, hating the stupidity of her response and wondering if she had, with that single thoughtless glance, destroyed her chances in the Galweigh diplomatic corps . . . if she had betrayed herself . . .

  Or worse, if she had betrayed her parents and sisters and brothers.

  * * *

  Dùghall hurried toward his room, lost in thought. Kait presented mysteries within mysteries, and he would have to take whatever time was required to divine the secrets she kept hidden. The Family couldn’t entrust its diplomacy to anyone who kept secrets from it—agents with secrets gave enemies easy tools for blackmail.

  Whatever Kait was hiding, however, appeared potentially useful. If all her information about the Sabirs and the Dokteeraks checked out, she’d won the gold ball in the spying game, and he wondered how she had really done it. Mind-magic? Some form of invisibility? Access to an artifact that gave her new talents? Whatever she’d done, she’d be the best diplomat the Family had ever had if she could do it again.

  Maybe she’d learned how to fly. That had been an impossible bit of wall she’d gone up—and with the guards doubled and on alert, he thought the invisibility theory gained another point in i
ts favor, too.

  Further, he didn’t believe for a moment her tale of a minor attack by thieves and a rescue by a stranger. First, she’d had long scars on her leg and her hand, and blood all over her; a minor attack would have done less damage. Second, she hadn’t managed to meet his eyes with confidence while she told him the story. If she was going to survive as a diplomat, he would have to teach her some of the finer points of effective lying.

  Kait’s secrets could wait, though, until he made sure that her information was sound. If the business between the Sabirs and the Dokteeraks proved to be true, she would be worth any time she took.

  Dùghall went directly from Kait’s room to his own, and once there made a show of stripping off his morning clothes and putting on the broad black silk pantaloons and elaborate red silk brocade robe that were his official garments as chief Galweigh ambassador in the Imumbarra Isles. He knew he was being watched—someone always watched his room from the hidden panel along the north wall. He’d discovered that the first night, and had pretended to remain oblivious. Knowing for certain that a spy was watching was almost as useful as knowing one wasn’t.

  Once dressed, he opened one of the half-dozen wig boxes he had in the room, pulled out an elaborately braided wig, and settled it on his head. From another box he pulled out the spike-adorned headdress that would hold the wig in place. He settled the headdress in place so that the rib bearing the seven spikes ran from ear to ear, wiggled it a bit to be sure it was firmly on, then drew out the tuft of beaded feathers that fit into the tip of each spike and slipped them into their sockets.

  He’d not intended to go so formally attired to what was basically a semiformal event, but the wig, the headdress, and the brocade robe all had special characteristics about them that suited his purposes at the moment, and the spy would think it odd if he donned them, then took them back off again before going anywhere.