The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

Danya considered that. She did not know how the spirit had found her, or why; she knew nothing of the person he had been. She did know, though, that she had no other allies, and was unlikely to survive to find them on her own.

  “Lead me,” she said. “I will follow.”

  Chapter 17

  Once in the sky and safely away from Galweigh House, Kait confronted the stranger who looked through her eyes, listened through her ears, and smelled the damp night air through her nose. The stranger kept silent, so that only the sense of presence and unfamiliar weight and the stranger’s occasional restless shifting inside the recesses of her mind convinced her that the silent, watchful presence was not a figment born of imagination and the day’s burden of grief and horror.

  Kait started the engines in midair once she was sure she was well past the point where any of the Sabirs might hear them. She fought the tailwind that kept pushing the airible north more than west. And when the airship was securely en route to Goft, she said, “Now you can stop hiding and tell me who you are. And what you are.”

  The stranger in her mind sighed. Does it matter? I can help you.

  “It matters. Are you a demon of the sort which possesses people and drives them to speak to the air and foam at the mouth? Or are you a god who wants to require a task of me? Or are you something else?”

  Nothing so grand as either a demon or a god. My name is Amalee Kehshara Rohannan Draclas.

  Kait froze when she placed the name. “You’re my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother?” Amalee Draclas was a martyr, dead nearly two hundred years, and victim of none other than the Sabirs. Her torture and murder, according to Family history, had been carried out in front of the walls of Galweigh House, in full sight of her husband and children.

  Yes.

  Kait didn’t know what to say.

  You doubt me.

  “Yes.”

  You’d be a foolish girl if you didn’t. I can prove who I am to you, though. And I can help you get revenge on the Sabirs.

  That her many-times-great-grandmother would want revenge on the Sabirs, Kait could well believe. But that she should appear as a voice in Kait’s head . . .

  Magic released me from the place where I had been imprisoned since the day the Sabirs murdered me. I have no body, of course. But I remember who I am, and my life before I was killed. And when I was released, I sought out a descendant. You were the one that survived.

  “That makes sense, I suppose, though I never truly believed in spirits that visited the living. I always thought the dead went between the worlds and were reborn into new bodies and new lives.”

  Your theory isn’t too far from the mark . . . unless sadistic torturers trap the spirit and cage it. I would surely have lived again before now, had they not done what they did to me.

  Kait recalled the mayhem that had pushed her over the edge of the abyss into unconsciousness. Many voices had fought for her attention. Some of them—no, most of them—had been frightening.

  I wasn’t the only spirit so trapped, Amalee said. And some of those with whom I’ve spent the last thou— . . . ah, two hundred years were evil. Truly evil.

  Kait accepted that explanation.“What happened to all those others?”

  Amalee didn’t answer.

  “Grandmother . . . what happened to all those others?”

  The response held an air of weary sadness. I don’t know. They might have gone between. Or . . . perhaps not.

  Amalee didn’t want to talk after that, and Kait needed to concentrate. The island of Goft made for a difficult target on a dark, windy night.

  And later, as she watched the lights on the Goft coast slide nearer and then drift slightly to her left, that difficulty became worse. Her fuel supply was dwindling rapidly, and she needed to come around into the wind so she could hold the airible steady while she jumped into Maracada’s bay. One engine sputtered and died; the airible hadn’t gotten its ground maintenance when it came in at the House. The other three engines were starting to choke and miss, making the sounds they made when the fuel began running out. She had only gotten to Goft because of the assistance of the tailwind. Facing a headwind, she would have been engineless and adrift long before. Now Maracada’s harbor lay beneath her, but she felt sure she would only be able to make one pass over it before the fuel and her luck ran out. She needed to get out of the airible quickly.

  She frowned and tugged harder at the rudder pull. At the same time, she shifted the ballast forward and nosed the ship down toward the surface of the water. She wanted to bring the airible as close as she dared before she brought the nose back up and released it to the wind. If she had to, she could crash it into the bay and sink the airible before she swam away, but Maracada was full of strong swimmers and divers and salvagers, and someone might dredge up the engines or the envelope and make use of the Family’s secrets. Far better for Galweigh interests if she could set the ship adrift on the easterly wind and let it crash into the trackless expanse of the ocean. No one would find it then.

  She edged the rudder over farther and the airible tracked south to southeast. The full reach of Maracada’s bay spread out beneath her, crowded with ships, lively still with lights; in spite of the darkness crews ferried cargo in to shore or out to their ships in longboats or hurried to or from their liberties on land. She dropped closer to the surface of the water, and pulled the hatch open. She didn’t want the airible to strike the masts of any of the ships that lay in the harbor. To prevent that, she would have to act quickly. She checked that her dagger and her sword were both strapped tightly to her sides; she tightened the laces on her boots. She had to bring the ship as close as possible to the surface of the water, then nose it back up again sharply, and jump before it rose too high. She was a strong swimmer, far stronger than any normal human, and the surface of the bay looked calm enough; she didn’t fear that her clothes or her weapons would drag her under. She had quick enough reflexes to get out of the ship before it rose too high. But she was tired and her head hurt, and the pain and grief of the day’s events had caught up with her. She stared down at the rippled mirror of water below her and wondered how bad it would be to sink to the bottom of the bay and never rise.

  I’ve heard it’s a painful way to die, Amalee said. And while it would solve your problems, it wouldn’t do anything for your hopes of revenge.

  True enough. Kait resented her dead ancestor’s intrusion into her thoughts, but part of her was perversely grateful that she had been forced to face reality. Dead, she could do nothing to help any survivors, nor could she avenge the dead. She’d wanted to serve her Family. Now she was more than a very junior diplomat. Now her Family needed her desperately.

  She set the airible on the course she’d planned, steeled herself against the momentary paralysis of fear, and jumped as the ship began to soar upward. She’d judged her moment well—she fell clear of ships and dinghies and other obstacles—but she’d failed to anticipate the effect that dropping from a great height onto the surface of the water would have on her. She smashed into the bay as if she had hit dry land; the rock-hard water slapped her and slammed her and the shock stunned her. Then the bay swallowed her, and she felt herself slipping beneath the surface. The water closed over her head.

  Both her mind and her dead ancestor screamed, Swim, damn you! Swim! but Kait could not. Her body refused to respond. She was drowning and she knew it and she could only sink deeper into the swirling currents of the bay. Her lungs burned as she breathed in water.

  Her body, even in its stunned state, responded to that threat. It brought out its ultimate weapon. Kait felt a subdued fire along the sides of her neck, and without realizing the moment that it happened, she found herself breathing the salt water of the bay. She blinked, and discovered her eyes could make out shapes underwater even in the darkness. The Shift was only partial; her last Shift had been too recent, perhaps, or the shock of hitting the water prevented her body from doing more. But the Karnee reflex was enough.

  She cou
ld breathe, and after a while she could move, and after an even longer while, she managed to swim to shore. She dragged herself up onto a part of the sandy beach away from light and motion and humanity. When the Shift subsided and she knew she could walk among people again without drawing death down upon herself, she got up and brushed as much sand from her clothes as she could, dried both her sword and dagger on her shirt, and walked through the town and up the long hill to Cherian House, where her Family in Maracada resided.

  She had to wait with the guards at the gate of the House while someone who could vouch for her could be found and brought out. The someone, when he finally came, was a distant cousin of about her age who had joined her in Galweigh House for a year’s worth of diplomatic classes before he returned home and took up his duties as a trader. His name was Fifer, and Kait had always thought him both homely and dull. Time hadn’t done much to improve him.

  He stood inside the gate and studied her with sleep-bleared eyes. He didn’t offer a smile or a greeting or give her any sign that she was welcome. He simply stared; then sighed; then turned to the night gatemaster and said, “Yah. She’s my cousin. You can let her in.”

  “Hello, Fifer,” she said.

  “You have no more sense now than you had before,” he told her. “This is no hour to disturb a House. I’ve had to wake Father so he could greet you. And you look appalling.”

  She didn’t explain to him; she wouldn’t get his sympathy even if she told him what had happened, and didn’t need it anyway. She would hope for better treatment from her uncle.

  Fifer led her through the House into audience with her uncle Shaid, who was paraglese of the Family in Goft. When he’d delivered her, he stood by the door, waiting to be released, a courtesy his father pointedly ignored.

  The Goft paraglese seemed unrelated to his youngest son. Handsome, smiling, and affable, he greeted her in the house library with a glass of wine, some corn tortillas, and a bowl of fresh fruit one of the servants was finishing laying out as Kait came in. He appeared undisturbed that he’d been dragged from bed at such a dreadful hour.

  “Kait, dear child, you look like death. And why hasn’t my son taken you to get fresh clothes? I would have waited to see you.”

  Kait took the proffered glass of wine and sipped slowly. “I’m fine, Uncle,” she said. “What I have to tell you is more important than a change of clothes or a shower. Those will wait—the news I bring should not.”

  He showed her to the seat nearest the food and settled across from her. “Then tell me, dear. How did you end up at my door, and in such a state?”

  She told him the entire story, and watched as he grew pale. When she was finished, he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “Ah, gods. Galweigh fallen, and the Sabirs ascendant in Calimekka.” Tears glistened at the corners of his tightly closed eyes, which he knuckled roughly away. “And of the war in Halles? Have you word?”

  “No word. Dùghall, Tippa, and I left before daybreak of this day just past, before the battle was to begin—and I’ve already told you of our arrival in Calimekka. I had no way to get news before I escaped.”

  He rubbed his temples, sighed, opened his eyes. “Perhaps we have not lost the day there. Support from that direction would be helpful.”

  Kait thought of the men and women in Halles who had served her Family so faithfully, and bit her lower lip. “The Sabirs knew we would be back in Calimekka with our defensive forces away; they were ready for us in the one place. I have to assume they were ready for us in the other.”

  “Then we must act as if no help will come from the west.” He frowned. “A challenge, and a trial. . . . Well, we shall triumph somehow.” He straightened his shoulders and smiled grimly. “Kait, I must think tonight on how I’ll implement the rescue of any survivors, even before I consider the retaking of the House and the destruction of the Sabirs. Go shower and rest, have the night staff bring you something from the kitchen if you’re still hungry, and I’ll be sure you’re sent fresh clothing. Tomorrow when you wake, meet with me and we’ll discuss the layout of the House and anything else you can give me that will help us going in. I haven’t been to Galweigh in years, and though Fifer has, I’m afraid he hasn’t demonstrated such powers of observation as would make me want to base a battle plan on his recommendations.”

  He rose, and she rose, and, as she did, she heard a soft shuffling behind the wall of books nearest them. Shaid took no notice of the sound, and Kait wondered if his ears could hear it. Someone stood behind that wall, and had been very quiet there for all the time she and the paraglese had spoken, or else had just arrived. She wondered which.

  “Fifer, give her the Ambassador’s Room, please. That is well away from the busy parts of the House; she’ll need a good night’s sleep, and I would not have her disturbed. We’ll have much to do tomorrow, she and I.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Shaid hugged her tightly. “Kait, my condolences on your losses. We have all of us lost much tonight, but I know you’ve lost more than most. I want you to know that I’ll do everything in my power to bring the bastards to justice for what they’ve done. Not just for the Family, but for you as well.”

  “Thank you, Uncle,” she said, and bid him good night, and followed Fifer out the door.

  It closed behind them, and as it did, Amalee said, Wait. You haven’t heard enough yet.

  Kait thought fast. She caught Fifer’s sleeve and said, “Hold up, would you? I have something in my boot. Stay just a moment; I don’t think I can stand to walk another step without getting it out.” She leaned against the library wall and began tugging at the wet leather . . . but slowly.

  Inside the room, she heard the soft groan of a secret door sliding open. And Shaid’s voice saying, “That confirms the rumors, then.”

  “Rather neatly. One survives to tell the tale. What do you intend to do?” The other voice was female; the accent highborn, the tone cultured, the attitude coldly amused.

  “Wait, of course. See what the Sabirs intend to offer in the way of prisoner exchanges, see if we can work out some sort of deal with them—and eventually retake the House, of course. Not soon.”

  “Which shall make having the girl around uncomfortable, I should think. She’s sure to want to mount a rescue immediately.”

  “I would rather,” Shaid said softly, “let the Calimekka line of the Family die out entirely. With our bloodline in primacy, we stand to gain legitimate claim to the Calimekkan estates, and we no longer have to have approval for our proposed trade routes. And we can do as we will with the colonies. If even one of them survives, of course, their whole line maintains primacy.”

  Kait tugged the boot free and made a show of feeling around inside of it while Fifer fidgeted, deaf to the conversation behind the door.

  “Then you don’t intend to let the girl worry you about a rescue.”

  “The girl? What girl? She must have died in an airible crash, or drowned in the sea, or been waylaid by bandits, for she certainly never reached here.”

  “Very wise, Shaid. Very wise. Shall I attend to the matter for you?”

  “Personally. The fewer people who might remember her, the better. I’ll make sure everyone else who saw her come in is given special assignments until we can be sure the rest of the main line is dead.”

  Kait pretended to find a stone and put it in her pocket. She started putting the boot back on again, and again made the process look difficult.

  “Now?”

  “No. Not until she’s in the room. Fifer will come back and tell us when she arrives. I don’t want any, ah . . . disturbing noises that might later recall themselves to someone’s memory. And no one else is currently on the third floor.”

  Kait gave the boot a sharp pull and it slid onto her foot. She had no idea who the woman in Shaid’s confidence was. She thought, since she knew her death had been planned, that she could probably protect herself from that first attack. However, she would still be where she wasn’t wanted, and where she
could not get help. She would lose time, and she couldn’t fight off the whole House if Shaid was determined to see her dead. Uncle Dùghall had been right in telling her that outsiders in a House offered opportunities, and need not expect a warm welcome.

  Uncle Dùghall . . .

  A tear slid from the corner of her eye and she brushed it roughly away. She would live, and she would avenge the people she loved, even if she had to do it alone.

  Now, though, she had to do the unexpected. And she thought, since Shaid had been kind enough to hand over one of his sons to her, the present would be the best time for a surprise.

  “I’m ready,” she said. “Would you mind taking me by the kitchen first? I’m starved, and I’d love to take some food up to my room with me.”

  Fifer regarded her with blank eyes. “You can call to the kitchen from the room and have something brought up to you.”

  “I’d rather eat on the way. I haven’t had any food since the day before yesterday.”

  He sighed. “It’s late and I’m tired.”

  “Fi-fer. I had to steal an airible, fly it here, then swim to the House from the bay. I bet I’m tireder than you are. Besides, I’m the one who found you when you got lost in the lower levels of my House. You at least owe me a few favors.” She tried to give him a teasing smile, though after what she’d just heard, all she could feel was rage.

  The stupid eyes regarded her with distaste. He sighed. “The kitchen.”

  “Yes. The kitchen.”

  He dragged down one hallway, took a cross-corridor, and trudged down a spiraling back stair lit intermittently by oil lamps, sighing on every other step.

  They went down two stories without speaking to each other. No servants passed them in all that time. Finally Kait asked, “What floor is the kitchen on?”

  “Ground. Of course. We’re almost there.”

  Kait casually rested her hand on her dagger. The next moment would tell a great deal. The archway that would lead to the kitchen appeared to their left, but it didn’t lead directly into the kitchen. Instead it led into a hall. A dark, empty hall. Good. The stairs did not end at the ground floor, but continued downward. Kait fell half a step behind Fifer and wrapped her left hand over his mouth. With her right hand, she pressed the dagger to his throat. “Listen carefully,” she said, “and don’t make a noise. I don’t like you, and I like you even less now that I know your father intends to have me killed tonight. But I won’t hurt you if you do as I tell you.” She tightened her grip to emphasize her Karnee strength, and felt the struggle go out of him. “You understand me?”