The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

  “That’s a wizard’s bag,” Rrru-eeth said, and behind her, glowering Manir the cook nodded.

  “Saw one just like it at the executions in Calimekka once,” he said. “Had the same things in it, and the parnissas used it to prove the wizard done ’is magic. Nasty business. And now we have a wizard among us. Or two, p’haps, since that skinshifter hid those things before she brought him to us, so we wouldn’t know what he was. And we find oursel’s in a Wizards’ Circle, and like enough to die with our crewmates before we get out.”

  Murmurs of agreement moved through the quiet cluster of crew like the rumbling of the earth before a volcano erupted, and those murmurs had much the same feel to them.

  “So we say, throw them to the sea,” Rrru-eeth said.

  Neither Kait nor Hasmal was anywhere to be seen. Ian looked at his crew, realized he had a problem that could turn dangerous, and weighed his options, all in a split instant. He leaned forward and sighed. “I didn’t want to tell anyone what we were going after until we actually found it. But Kait has a manuscript—in a language I can’t read, so don’t ask me to take the manuscript and throw her to the sea—and her manuscript tells where we will find an Ancient city that hasn’t yet been discovered by anyone else.”

  The stillness of the crew changed in character. Greed invaded where a moment before only hatred and prejudice had been. He could see it in the faces of the men and women before him—in the way their eyes shifted, in the way their mouths tightened, in the way they suddenly looked at each other, obviously weighing options on their own.

  He sighed and said, “You would have found out when we arrived, and discovered you were cut in for your regular shares. But I didn’t want to tell you what we were looking for, in case we never found it.” He paused, clasped his hands together, and said, “We have to keep her on the ship, and because they’re friends, we have to keep him, too. Without them, we have no hope of ever finding that city. And I want to be rich as a paraglese. Don’t you?”

  They murmured among themselves, and stared thoughtfully at their feet. “You’re sure she knows where such a city is?” Rrru-eeth asked.

  “No.” Ian shrugged. “I’m taking a chance, because I think the rewards will be worth it if she does know the location . . . if, of course, we live to find it. I’m taking a risk. You signed on under my command; I assumed both the risks and the chance of reward on your behalf. But I didn’t come this far to throw away my only chance at this opportunity when we’re almost there.”

  He waited. They looked at each other, and he could almost see their thoughts. Wait. We can get rid of the skinshifter and the wizard once we’ve found the prize.

  Rrru-eeth crossed her arms over her thin chest. “So we find this city and claim it. And then . . . ?”

  Ian met her eyes and kept all expression from his face. In a flat voice, he said, “What do you think?”

  She saw what she wanted to see. Her arms uncrossed, she nodded with satisfaction, and said, “Then we’ll wait.”

  * * *

  In the ship’s infirmary, Kait sat next to Hasmal and held a mug of beer to his lips. “Drink,” she said. “It will do you good.”

  He looked like a corpse. Black circles ringed his sunken eyes. His lips were blue, his skin chalk-white and waxy. “I don’t . . . think I can drink . . . anything,” he whispered.

  “Drink. You’re going to need your strength.” She sighed. “Maybe sooner than we could wish.” She slid one arm under his neck and lifted his head enough that he could swallow. When he managed a long swallow, she let him lie back.

  “What do you mean, sooner than we could wish?”

  Kait wasn’t looking forward to telling him the bad news. “I hid your bag of implements before I took you out of the storeroom. Then, as soon as you had help, I went back to get it. In the meantime, someone else had already found it. It’s gone, and your secret is probably now as well-known as mine.”

  Hasmal frowned weakly. “Your secret? How?”

  He didn’t need to be more specific. Kait said, “I got scared when the people started dying. The water . . . it ate them. When I saw that happen, I Shifted. I couldn’t stop myself. Almost everyone saw.”

  “Not good. And they found my bag?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not good.” He groaned. “Though I don’t even know why I’m still alive. I . . .” He closed his eyes and licked dry lips.

  Kait raised his head and gave him more beer. “Don’t talk. Just drink and get better.”

  He pulled his head away from the mug after a moment and said, “I need to tell you this. It’s important, and I don’t think I’m going to live.”

  “You’re going to live. Don’t talk like that.”

  “Shhh. Just listen.” He let her force another swallow of beer down his throat, then said, “The water is alive.”

  “I saw—” Kait started to interrupt.

  “Alive,” Hasmal said a bit more loudly.

  Kait could see that the effort cost him strength, and fell silent, letting him tell her what he needed to in his own way.

  He looked at her, then nodded faintly. “I did a divination to find out the danger we faced. A city once stood here, filled with more people than I can imagine. It was greater than Calimekka, perhaps ten times greater. The spell that the Dragons attacked it with devoured city, people, and land and dropped the edge of the continent into the ocean. And when it did, it trapped the souls of every living creature in the basin that it carved. Water flowed in and the magic that permeated the crater poisoned it. The magic bound up the souls of the dead in the water, and souls and magic combined imbued it with life. And memory. The sea beneath us remembers each of the millions of lives that ended, because each of those lives was, in effect, its life. It has died horribly millions of times. It wants revenge.”

  Kait felt sick.

  Hasmal continued. “The Reborn needs at least one of us. And you are the braver. And the one more likely, I thought, to be able to survive. While I was the one who had the magic to get us to safety. So I made a deal with my god, Vodor Imrish. I offered my life and my soul to him if he would get you safely to the city and to the Mirror of Souls, and he accepted. I think. He told me he accepted. Except I’m still alive, so perhaps he didn’t.”

  Kait held the hand of the man who’d told her he was not brave and thought about him offering his life in exchange for her safety. Brave, she thought, was a relative term. In her eyes, no one could have been braver. She told him that, but he only shrugged.

  “I think it takes more courage to live than to die sometimes. I thought I had the better end of the bargain, considering the trouble the world will see before the Reborn overcomes it.”

  Kait could still hear the many voices of the sea crying out. “How will we know if we’re safe?” she asked.

  Hasmal looked at her with disbelief. Then he closed his eyes and began to laugh softly. “I have no idea,” he admitted. “I forgot to ask for a clear sign.”

  * * *

  Ian yearned for the comfort of his own cabin, and for the pleasures of fresh air and daylight, and for the sight of the sea that he loved. But the survivors huddled together belowdecks—captain, crew, and passenger—leaving the ship to tend to itself, because attempting to sail it while fighting the living water of the Wizards’ Circle would be certain death. So they hid and prayed that the ship wouldn’t hit a reef or a cliff and sink, taking them all with her; only that course of action might permit them to survive.

  A day passed. Then two.

  Ian woke on the third day to find sunshine blazing through the deck prisms, and to hear nothing but the lapping of water on the sides of the ship. He asked Rrru-eeth if she heard voices outside, and at last, after two days of gloomy answers in the affirmative, she told him, smiling, that she did not. The crew cheered her acute hearing and her news. Ian cheered with them.

  Then he drew a deep breath. “We have to take the wax from the hatch. And we have to go up on deck. I’ll go first, but I’ll
need volunteers to go with me.”

  Jayti volunteered, as did Rrru-eeth. Hasmal and Kait both offered. Ian accepted all four, and the five of them began peeling the wax away from the bottom sill. Everyone else stood well back. A few crew members left completely for other parts of the ship. Ian understood. His heart felt like it had risen into his throat and would choke his breath at any moment. Still, he was as eager to be out of the confinement of belowdecks as he was terrified of what he would find when the hatch opened.

  Nothing came in between the hatch and the sill; Kait had stood with wax and flame at the ready to stopper the gap again, but she didn’t need to use it. When the last of the seal came down, Ian said, “I’ll go first. Then the rest of you, in whatever order you prefer.”

  Kait made a face. “And if something happens to you, who will get this ship back to Calimekka?”

  Ian grinned. “I have one of the best crews sailing. Even if I’m dead, they’ll get you back home again.” If he were dead, they probably wouldn’t, he thought. He was going to have the hells’ own time convincing them to take her back with them as things stood. But they were a superb crew, and they were people he’d known for years. Some of them were even friends. He’d make them understand.

  He hadn’t given up his dream of marrying his way into the Galweigh Family through Kait—but he liked her more than he ever thought he would. He thought, in spite of her . . . well, her affliction . . . that he might even love her. Funny, that. He’d been certain until she walked into his life that he was immune to love.

  With thoughts of love and possible imminent demise on his mind, he climbed up the gangway and out onto the deck. Into the sunshine. He looked around, and gasped.

  “What?” someone from below asked. The hatch started to swing shut.

  “The city,” he said wonderingly. “The city is right ahead of us.”

  Below, he heard Hasmal say, “Vodor Imrish did it. He actually did it.”

  “Did what?” Kait asked.

  “Gave us wind for the sails and got us all the way to the city. It was what I . . . ah. What I asked for. When I prayed. But I didn’t think he would give us all of that and still let me live.”

  People poured out onto the deck then, and shot up into the rigging to get better looks, and leaned against the rails. Ian Draclas stood where he was, staring up at the cliffs ahead of them. Tangled greenery couldn’t completely hide the lean white spires of Ancient architecture, or the occasional pillar or buttress. It lay there, all right, waiting for him for more than a thousand years, like a jewel in a pile of rubbish. Just waiting, untouched, ripe, and rich. He could feel it. He could feel his fortune, fame, power—all of it tucked away behind sealed doors at the end of long-forgotten streets.

  His palms itched, and his mouth went dry. The gods had to love him, to deposit him and the Peregrine safely in that beautiful bay, on a sunny day in the month of Drastu. Fitting, he thought. Drastu was goddess of fertility, of the egg and the womb—and, by correlation, the goddess of the conception and birth of new work, new ideas, and new wealth.

  “You’ll have a shrine from me, Drastu,” he murmured before he turned to direct the dropping of the anchor and to select the crew that would first go ashore.

  They took two of the Peregrine’s three longboats and rowed to the rocky shore.

  “This first day, we’ll do a preliminary exploration,” he said. “Never go anywhere alone, never let yourself out of calling distance of one other group, never put your weapons down.” He cleared his throat. “Especially never put your weapons down. We have no idea who, or what, we’ll find here, and we have to assume that if we find inhabitants, they’ll be hostile. Be careful. Things you can pick up and carry in one hand you can bring out today. Bigger things will have to wait. If you find something that is both good and big, mark the spot and we’ll go back to it as soon as we can.”

  “Do we get to keep what we find?” Jayti asked.

  “If you find something that you especially want for yourself, mark it. Small things shouldn’t be a problem. However, we divide the treasure by shares, and the only way we’ll be able to figure shares is to sell everything when we get back to Calimekka. Or Wilhene.” He didn’t like the idea of Wilhene, which was a Sabir city, but the brokerages there sometimes offered better prices than those in Calimekka.

  The whole time he was giving them the rules, he was trying to figure out how he could make sure none of them walked off with something irreplaceable, and at the same time he was wondering how he could get more than his share. And he knew that most, if not all, of them were thinking the same thing.

  Kait and Hasmal stood together. There, he thought. Right there was the money crop. Kait knew where the city was, and presumably had an idea of what might be found in it. Hasmal had bargained with his god to get them out of trouble and to the city. (Ian needed to find out more about Vodor Imrish, too, he decided. A god who would get that deeply involved in his worshipers’ lives deserved a few new converts. He had a few favors he thought he would ask of a god who paid attention.) So when groups paired off, he appended himself to Kait and Hasmal, smiling all the while. “As my passenger,” he told Kait, “you deserve the attention of the captain.”

  “I thought I was more than your passenger,” Kait said once the three of them were alone. “Though I can understand why that’s changed.”

  “It hasn’t changed,” he told her. “I love you, Kait. But I’ve had to work hard to get the crew to agree to keep you on board—they wanted to throw you to the sea when they found out what you were, and they would question my motives if I seemed to be still . . .” He shrugged, at a loss for words. “Still infatuated. I’ve had to make some concessions for the sake of appearances.”

  He knew he sounded weak-willed to be letting his crew influence his public actions. Intelligent captains, however, did not invite mutiny by ignoring the legitimate concerns of the men and women beneath him.

  “I understand. I didn’t expect them to welcome me once they knew. For that matter, I was sure you would want to be done with me, too.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “I won’t ever want to be done with you.”

  Her wan smile told him more than words could have. She didn’t believe him. He needed to make her believe him; his future as he wanted to envision it depended on that belief.

  At least he had time on his side.

  Chapter 29

  Kait stared up the steep cliff, at the tops and sides of buildings that peered out from beneath a thousand years of forest growth and a thousand years of detritus. She could make out no roads or signs that there had ever been roads; no doors or windows; few intact roofs. The remains of the city lay like the half-buried bones of an ancient battlefield—one where both sides lost and no one came along to collect the bodies.

  Listening to the wind blowing through the branches, smelling plants and animals unlike any she had ever known, feeling the sun on her back altered by latitude and season, she felt a combination of hope and despair too vast and rich to put into words, even to herself. In that jumble of ruins lay her Family’s single fragile magical hope of escape from the deaths it had already suffered. Somewhere, a thousand years ago, in the midst of destruction, the blasting of spells, and the end of the world, someone had left the Mirror of Souls in this city, in one of the buildings above her. Somewhere. And she had no idea what this Mirror looked like, no idea how it worked, no idea how to even begin looking for it. From that depth of ignorance came her despair.

  Hasmal rested a hand on her shoulder and whispered, “Has she told you where to find it?”

  “No. I don’t think she knows.” Kait frowned; Ian worked on the rocky beach to the north of them, hiding the longboats with several of his crew.

  Amalee told Kait, I don’t know. Things here are very different than I re—than I thought they would be. But with you able to sense magic, perhaps you’ll be able to track it down that way. She projected frustration and disgust. If you can’t, you’ll just have to hunt thro
ugh the buildings one at a time. And I thought the hard part would be getting here. I had no idea how difficult things could be when we arrived.

  “She isn’t going to be of any help,” Kait said.

  I got you here. And I can identify the Mirror when you find it.

  Kait ignored that protest.

  Hasmal asked, “Then where do we start looking?”

  Kait closed her eyes. She had a faint headache, one that felt very much like the headache she’d had when she attended the Dokteerak party. The headache that Dùghall had later identified as being caused by magic.

  Interesting that Hasmal’s use of magic doesn’t give me a headache like that, she thought. Perhaps his magic is very weak.

  She let the thought drop. With her eyes closed she began to turn in a slow circle, trying to find one direction that made the headache worse or better. She found nothing. So she opened her eyes and began to walk, first along the rocky beach toward Ian and the longboats, then away. Again, she could sense no difference in her level of pain. Her headaches let her know something magical waited nearby, but weren’t sensitive enough to guide her toward it. Or, she realized, the entire city could be soaked in magic. Or there might be artifacts scattered around evenly enough that no matter which direction she went in felt the same.

  “We’re simply going to have to start looking.”

  Hasmal sighed. “There must be an easier way. The city might be larger than it appears to be from here.”

  Kait had studied what was known of the cities of the Ancients with her tutors. Some of them had evidently been quite large. And though this one seemed to fit neatly around the rim of the bay, it might run inland. She nodded, and, feeling grim, picked a direction at random.

  “If it’s any consolation,” Hasmal said, “the fact that we ended up here together seems to indicate that the gods themselves favor our endeavor. So perhaps we’ll just happen upon it.”

  “Perhaps. In the meantime, though, try to think of some way that we can find it without luck or the intervention of the gods. I would like to get home while I’m still a young woman, and while I still have hope of saving the people I love.”