The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

  But Jaim arrived at no decision quickly. He weighed and considered and argued with himself until everyone was certain he would never say either yea or nay . . . and then without warning he would come to his conclusions. When he did, nothing could sway him. If Jaim had decided he must know the truth, he would starve to death waiting to find it out. And keep Ry starving with him. When Jaim spoke, Ry saw all his options fly out the door.

  They were his friends, had been for many years—but when he looked into their eyes, he saw no warmth, no willingness to laugh and be turned from their questions. He smelled on them the beginnings of anger and fear, and he knew he would finally have to face what he had done to them. He simply wasn’t sure how to go about it.

  “My mother . . .” he began, and stopped.

  They looked at him, expectant.

  He swallowed, tasting shame.

  “The day we sailed, I went to tell her I was leaving. All of you were already on the ship, waiting for me. But she refused to give me her leave. After all the deaths . . .” He closed his eyes, remembering that horrible confrontation with his once-beautiful mother, who lay in her sickbed, Scarred beyond recognition by the fallout of his Family’s abortive war against the Galweigh Family. “She didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. She insisted that since my father was dead, I take over leadership of the Wolves. I refused, telling her that I was coming after Kait. She was furious with me, and asked if you were all accompanying me. I told her that I sailed alone—that all of you were dead.” He heard their indrawn breaths, saw the shock and horror on their faces, and he looked down, unable to meet their eyes.

  “You told her we were dead?” Karyl, Ry’s cousin, fell back onto the bunk and covered his face with both hands. “Dead? You . . . idiot!”

  “I feared her reprisals against your families if she knew you were helping me defy her.”

  Yanth had gone so pale his scars disappeared. “Dead. So what advantages did you feel you got for us by our being dead?”

  “I told her that you died heroes . . . fighting the Galweighs in Galweigh House.” He shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  He saw them wince at those words.

  They had the right, he thought. He didn’t even dare recall the number of times he’d said those words before. So many of his disasters had seemed like good ideas at the time.

  In his defense, he told them, “Your families are now in high favor. High favor. Trev, your sisters will be presented to first-rank Sabirs when they are of marriageable age and will be eligible to carry title all the way up to paraglesa. Valard, your brother and father will have already been given the title of parat. You other three—your families were already parats. But they won’t be dead . . . and if my mother had any idea that you were helping me defy her, they would have been, with their heads on the city walls.”

  Valard crossed his arms over his chest and glowered at Ry, green eyes blazing. “That seems exaggerated. How much trouble could you have been in? Meanwhile, while we’re dead and will never be able to go home without destroying our families, you’ll go back a hero, eh?” He had always been willing to do anything for Ry, but at that moment he looked like he’d reconsidered.

  “Either we go back heroes together or none of us goes back at all. As far as everyone knows, I’m as dead as you are.”

  That gave them pause.

  “They think you’re dead, too?” Karyl asked. “So how did you accomplish that? And why?”

  “I made it look as if the Hellspawn Trinity killed me, because they knew I was going to make my bid to lead the Wolves. That was as much to convince my mother that I intended to comply with her demands as to get out of the House without breaking my word to her. You see, she told me if I didn’t stay and fight for leadership of the Wolves, she’d declare me barzanne. But she failed to consider that if I stayed and made a real bid for power, the Trinity would have killed me for real. And being ‘dead’ legally was better than being dead in fact. And far better than being barzanne.”

  His friends were stunned.

  “Your own mother was going to declare—”

  “Barzanne—”

  “By my own soul—”

  “Had she known you were alive and helping me, I have no doubt she would have declared you barzanne as well.” He looked into their eyes. “Your families would not have fared so well then.”

  “No.”

  They were nodding, agreeing, ready to forgive.

  “I’m sorry,” Ry said. “I never intended to involve you in such trouble. I never thought going after Kait Galweigh would be such a mistake.”

  His friends looked at each other, shrugged, looked at him.

  Jaim said, “The man who knows the future makes no mistakes. But such a man isn’t a man. He’s a god.”

  Yanth shook his head slowly, then grinned. “True. And you just think you’re a god.”

  “You don’t hate me?” Ry asked.

  Valard sighed. “Not yet. Figure out a way for us to be heroes, and to go home again, and we’ll forgive everything.”

  Karyl leaned back on one elbow and smiled slowly. “At the least find us an island inhabited by beautiful girls we can take as wives, and set us up like parats. With a beautiful young wife, my own land, and decent weather, I’ll forgive and forget almost anything.”

  “At the least, you say?” Now Ry was smiling. “It isn’t enough for the five of you that all of us are alive and healthy?”

  Yanth tugged at the front of his shirt, smoothing the silk. He didn’t bother to look up as he said, “Ah, but we know you. You’ll do everything you can between now and the time we find a safe harbor to get us all killed. Yourself included.” Now he did look up, and his eyes were full of laughter. “All we want is moderate compensation for the hell you’re sure to put us through.”

  Ry decided to tell them what he knew, though not precisely how he’d learned it. If his dead brother’s spirit had crossed the Veil to offer him counsel and beg his help, surely that was a secret the two of them could keep. “I’ve discovered through magic that Kait is going after an artifact that returns the dead to life. I’m going to take her home as my wife—but all of us are going to carry home that artifact, and any other wonders we find in the Ancients’ city she’s discovered. With a ship full of such riches, my mother will be able to resurrect my father to lead the Wolves again, and be able to have my older brother back. And we’ll be heroes.”

  And he would be freed from the cloistered life of dark magic and intrigue his mother had planned for him.

  Yanth frowned. “I would think you would have said something before this, if only to let us know we had as much stake in reaching Kait as you do.”

  “I didn’t know if she would find her city, or if she would find the Mirror of Souls—and why give you hope when there was none? Or, for that matter, why let you know how bad things were when we might yet hope for a chance of reprieve? Lately when I’ve looked through her eyes I’ve seen both ruins and an artifact that I believe is the Mirror—so now you can find out about the trouble we’re in and find out that we might hope to get ourselves out of it at the same time. Meanwhile, as we try, your families are safe.”

  What he didn’t know and would not tell them was whether Kait still lived. Perhaps he’d brought all of them to the other side of the world for nothing—that inexplicable link that bound him to Kait was as silent as if it had never existed. He had followed her across half a world, a madness he still could not explain even to himself. He had thrown away his name, his Family, and his future for a stranger who was the born enemy of the Sabirs, a woman he had met in the flesh once, and that in a dark alley in front of the corpses of the men who would have killed her. He did not know if she could love him. He did know she had every reason to distrust him, and perhaps even to hate him.

  And now he could no longer tell if she still lived.

  He stared out the porthole. She was ahead of him somewhere. And he would give anything to find her still alive.
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  Chapter 4

  Imogene Sabir had placed her chair carefully beneath the beam of sunlight that poured through the high window of her study. Though she couldn’t see the sunlight, she could feel it; ever since the attack on the Galweighs, when the rewhah—the magical backlash that came from using magic as force—nearly destroyed her, her bones craved its heat.

  Finder Malloren stood before her, but not in the attitude of profound obeisance required when one of his station faced one of hers. He mistook her blindness for lack of ability to see, which was his error, and one for which she would eventually make him pay. With her heightened Karnee and magical senses, she could not only determine his physical position, but also his mental impressions of her, while her sense of smell picked up a secret he thought he kept from everyone that she could, at some time in the future, threaten to expose. She thought doing so would make him virtually her slave.

  When she had time for such amusements, she decided she would play with the Finder a bit.

  Meanwhile, however, she listened to his presentation of his latest hunt.

  “. . . This long after the fact, it was hard to find anyone around the docks who remembered anything. I had to pay a lot of money to people who might be able to put me in touch with people who might have been there. It was difficult—”

  “But if you’d failed,” she interrupted, “you wouldn’t be standing here right now, expecting to be paid. I already know my son is alive. That humiliating scene Crispin orchestrated proved that clearly enough. I just want to know the rest of the story.”

  “W-w-well . . . yes . . . but I wanted you to know how hard—”

  “Your personal difficulties don’t interest me. Your results do. I pay you for the results, and for the costs you incur in getting them. If you want to be paid for the dramatic way you tell your story, I suggest you change to a different line of work.”

  She felt him flush—from humiliation at being spoken to thus, and from having to take it, and finally from anger at being denied telling his tale the way he chose. She sensed in him frustration, too. He had no doubt expected her to offer him a bonus when she heard how much work he’d had to do to bring her his findings.

  She smiled, and felt him recoil. That amused her, too. She wished she could see what she had become in the wake of the disaster. She could guess from touching her face and from the reactions of others that little of the human was left of her. She supposed she had become hideous, but she could not see her own reflection—in her mind she was still as beautiful as she had been the day she lost the last of her sight. She didn’t mind being hideous. Being beautiful had worked for her, but that was gone. She had discovered, however, that terror peeled as much cooperation out of people as beauty ever had.

  He said, “Yes. Of course. I cannot verify names—the people I have located were careful to keep their names from any records. Or from even having them spoken. Ironically, it was that care which finally allowed me to find them.

  “On the night your son disappeared and was presumed murdered, five young men spent the better part of the stations of Dard and Telt in a dockside tavern called The Fire-eater’s Ease, passing the time drinking, playing hawks and hounds, and dicing and betting at fortuna. They were obviously of the upper classes—four wore swords prominently displayed and the fifth wore two long daggers. All dressed well. From eyewitness accounts, I have that one was tall and slender with blond hair and scars on his face; he was reported as being a boaster and a dandy, dressed entirely in silk. Another, somewhat shorter, wore brown hair pulled back in a long braid, and seemed to those who saw him to be quiet. Thoughtful. A doxy who works there says she sat on his lap and tried to talk him into going upstairs with her, but he refused even though he was interested. She says he said he was waiting for a friend, and that when the friend arrived, he would have to be ready to leave immediately. He refused to tell her anything about the friend or where he had to go—refused so adamantly that she remembered him. He called himself Parat Beyjer.”

  “Parat Beyjer, eh?” Imogene chuckled, delighted in spite of herself. “Parat Beyjer? And tell me, were his friends named Soin, Gyjer, Torhet, and, perhaps . . . Farge?”

  She’d shocked him. “How did you know? I mean, none of them was named Torhet, but there was a Gyjer. A Farge, too. Another was named Rubjyat.”

  “The boys had classical educations. Beyjer was the ‘god of green’ in the classical mythos of ancient Ibera, when Ibera was still called Veys Traroin and included much of what is now Strithia, back when it was a member nation of the Empire of Kasree. Gyjer was the ‘god of purple’ in the same mythos. Farge was the ‘god of blue,’ and Rubjyat the ‘god of no color’—I wouldn’t have expected one of the boys to pick him.”

  Imogene could tell the Finder was interested in spite of himself. She sensed him leaning toward her, heard a slight quickening in his pulse and breath. “Why not?”

  “The god of no color was associated with disasters. I would have thought that the boys would have saved that name for my son when he arrived. Disasters are, after all, his specialty.”

  “Then you’re sure these are the right men?”

  “I’d bet your life on it.” She felt him tense as he caught the wording of her little joke, and she smiled again. “But just so I don’t make any irrevocable mistakes, tell me the rest of what you found out.”

  She heard him swallow. “As you wish. The one who appeared oldest to the witnesses wore his hair short—the doxy recalled him as well. Said that she thought he was balding, and had shaved his head to make the fact less obvious. He apparently was rude to her, telling her he had no interest in women of her sort. Another was remarkably pale, and had, two male witnesses said, a face like a moon. He was apparently adept with fortuna—won a great deal of money from them before he finally left the tavern. And the last no one recalled until I asked if they were sure there weren’t five men together instead of four. Then various witness recalled a fifth man who had occupied a chair at the same table.”

  “That would have been Jaim,” Imogene said. “He has the most remarkable ability to be unremarkable. It’s a gift.”

  “It would be,” the Finder agreed.

  “Well, then.” She rubbed the silk hem of her tunic between her fingers, a nervous habit she’d acquired since she lost the last of her sight. She considered her options. “You’ve found them. I have no doubts of that. So what became of them? Where are they now?”

  “The men who lost so much money followed them to the harbor, where the five men boarded a ship. No one recalled the name of the ship. So I checked the harbor records. Several ships sailed that night—the tides and winds were favorable. None would seem to be the ship they sailed in, for each listed a cargo and a destination, and none noted passengers, but one, the Wind Treasure, claimed to be sailing for the colonies with a cargo of fruit and wood. The log was signed out by one C. Pethelley. Merchant Registry lists no Pethelleys, Sea-Captains’ Registry lists two Pethelleys living but both are accounted for, and the Wind Treasure had never received a cargo, and never arrived in the colonies. It is a Sabir registry, a secondary ship that had been in dry dock for repairs, had just been returned to the water and recrewed, but was well-known to have had empty holds. I still cannot prove a connection between your son and his friends and this ship, but every other deep-sea vessel that sailed that night—and for the next week, in fact—I can account for. They went where they said they were going, and did what they said they would do.”

  Imogene snorted. “Oh, I doubt you can account for every ship. Piracy being what it is in these waters, I would expect there are dozens of ships he and his friends could have left on. So, tell me. Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know. The Wind Treasure has not signed in to any harbor whose records I could obtain. I’m waiting to hear from Kander Colony, Finder’s Folly, and the settlement in the Sabirene Isthmus, but I don’t expect the results will be positive. All I can tell you for sure is where they aren’t.”

  “I
see. You can’t tell me what I most wish to know.” She let him fidget for a long moment, considering possible outcomes for her displeasure. At last she said, “Still, you’ve been laudably thorough.”

  The Finder exhaled softly. “Then you’re satisfied?”

  She leaned back in her chair and sighed. “I’m convinced. All I requested of you was that you bring me enough information to convince me. Satisfied . . . well . . . my satisfaction lies outside your influence.” She twisted the silk hem, imagining it as her son’s face, wanting to shred it. “Do go. I need to be alone to think. My secretary will pay you before you leave.”

  “Will you be needing anything else?”

  “If I do,” Imogene said softly, “I know where to find you.” She made sure that sounded like the threat it was.

  Finder Malloren scuttled from her study like a bug whose rock had been lifted away, exposing him to the light.

  Imogene waited until she felt him leave the House, a matter of only a few moments. She stayed cautious around Finders—men and women who collected information for a living could collect it for many buyers, and Imogene knew Calimekka was full of enemies who would pay well for anything that could weaken or destroy her.

  Once she heard the outer door close, though, she rang the bell that summoned her secretary.

  When he entered the room, she said, “Porth, I’m going to require a talented assassin. The best you can locate. Not one already contracted to the Family, however. I want an independent.”

  Porth waited, saying nothing.

  “I have a bit of punishment to exact.” The Sabir paraglese—for the first time in two hundred years—had removed the Wolves’ right of self-governance by naming Crispin head of the Wolves and creating assistant positions for Anwyn and Andrew. This elevation of the Hellspawn Trinity to power over Imogene she could attribute directly to her son Ry’s actions. Because of him, she was shut off in a marginal corner of the House and relegated to near-powerlessness in the affairs of the Family. Now she found his friends far from being the heroes she’d believed them to be—heroes who’d died for the Sabirs at Galweigh House, as Ry had claimed on the day he was “killed”—his best friends had aped his lies and betrayals. They had abetted him in fleeing the city and her orders. “Ry and his five dearest friends have been having a joke. At my expense.”