The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

  She watched them from her perch on the bluff. Brown in their summer fur, squat and rounded, they bounded from task to task with the energy of cubs. The Kargans. Her people now. They had given her a house, a name within their clan—Gathalorra, or Master of the Lorrags—and their friendship. She would have traded all of it for a single room in the servants’ level of Galweigh House, if she could once again be a true human.

  She heard steps behind her and turned.

  “We are finished, kind Gathalorra,” one of the children said. He held up his berry bag to show her. The other children nodded, and made the grimaces that she’d learned to identify as smiles, and held up their berry bags, too. “Do you want some berries before we go home?”

  “No,” she said. “I had all the berries I wanted while I waited for you, and you worked hard for those. Save them all for night-meal.” The charming Kargan children, who were unfailingly polite and helpful and who treated her like a cross between their big sister and their favorite aunt, bounded down the bluff like wolf cubs released from their den. They yipped and snarled at each other, bared teeth and laid ears flat back, raised the fur on their spines . . . then laughed wildly at the fierce creatures they appeared to be, and pounced on each other. Two-legged puppies.

  In Calimekka, they would have all been murdered in the public square for being abominations against the gods.

  She thought about that sometimes.

  She waddled down the bluff so slowly that all of them were already in the long, flat boat and seated with their berry bags on their laps when she arrived. She shoved the boat into the water and clambered in, thinking that she wouldn’t be able to take them across the river for berries many more times. Her body was becoming too ungainly.

  She paddled carefully—she had only learned the art of boating the month before, and she still felt uncertain of her skills. Her taloned hands scrabbled to keep their purchase on the short, flat paddle, and her tail, which she tried to keep coiled around her while she knelt in the back of the boat, kept uncoiling on its own and striking the boat’s ribs and clinker-lapped boards, as if it were a thing apart and desperate for escape.

  “Da says the hunters are meeting tonight for the Spirit-Dance, and I mustn’t forget to invite you, in case you wish to hunt,” one of the children said.

  The men loved to have her hunt with them, because her keen nose took her to game not even they were aware of, and because her speed allowed her to run down the heavy golden caribou and the bulky, violent wixen, and her teeth and claws gave her the tools she needed to bring them down.

  But now, of course, she didn’t have much speed or much stamina.

  “Offer your Da my thanks for me if you see him before I do,” she said. “But I’m too near my time to hunt.” She’d been pleased with herself for the skill with which she’d negotiated the complex Karganese tenses, but from a few soft giggles toward the front of the boat, she guessed she hadn’t gotten them right after all.

  One of the older children, who would be hunting within the next year, ducked his head diffidently and said, “You mean, ‘If you see him before I do.’ ”

  “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

  The child shook his head and said, “You said, ‘If you see him before I do.’ ”

  Danya sighed. She couldn’t hear the difference. She’d always thought she had a good ear for languages, and she’d spent much of her life learning the handful of major tongues that served Ibera, but the subtleties of Karganese eluded her.

  “Say it again,” she said. “Your way. The right way.”

  The child’s ears perked forward, and he repeated the phrase. Danya said, “Now say what I said.”

  The child flicked his ears back and tipped his head and said exactly the same thing he had said before. Danya heard no difference at all. None.

  “I don’t hear it,” she said.

  She’d learned the Kargan face that meant puzzlement—lifted upper lip, lowered brow, fur around the eyes erect so that they seemed in imminent danger of disappearing. “Hear?” the child asked. Now the other cubs began to giggle.

  The Karganese were polite to the point of pain sometimes. She’d had the feeling before that she was missing something important when she spoke; she got that puzzled look more often than she could explain. But none of the adults would admit she was doing anything wrong. They invariably ascribed their puzzlement to their own stupidity.

  Perhaps she would be able to get something out of the kids, who didn’t seem as inclined to call themselves stupid.

  “What am I doing wrong?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”

  She looked at the kid and he looked back.

  He flicked his ears forward. “If you see him before I do.” He flicked his ears back and tipped his head to the side. “If you see him before I do.” He flicked his ears forward. “If you see him before I do.” He flicked his ears back and tipped his head. “If you see him before I do.”

  She was staring at him, suddenly beginning to comprehend the scale of what she had been missing. She swiveled her own huge ears forward and made sure she kept her head straight, and she said, “If you see him before I do.” She swiveled her ears back and tipped her head. “Not, ‘If you see him before I do.’ ”

  The kid grinned. “Almost. But it’s . . .” He perked his ears stiffly forward. “Like that, not . . .” He relaxed them slightly.

  She groaned. “What’s the difference?”

  He shrugged, a gesture that meant the same thing to him that it did to her. “My way is right, yours was . . . ah . . . rude.”

  That was the way of it. The kids would tell her what she did wrong, but couldn’t explain why. The adults probably could have explained why, but were too polite to admit that she wasn’t perfect. Now she knew why they never looked away from each other’s faces when they talked. Now she knew, too, that she had a second language she would have to learn, and perfectly, if she was ever going to communicate with the Kargans the way she needed to. A woman who could not speak fluently could not raise an army with eloquence, and Danya had nothing but eloquence with which to move her adopted people.

  She was resolving to never look away from the face of a speaker again when more giggles roused her from her reverie. She glanced at the children, and saw them looking ahead, to the bluff they’d just left behind. She’d been paddling in a circle.

  With a sigh, she shifted the paddle and fought the boat back to her original heading.

  Revenge would take time. Lucky for her it was the one thing she had in abundance.

  Chapter 27

  The Z’tatnean blade-hulled ketch slipped along the last stretch of the north coast of Goft, its triangular sail making the most of the sparse night winds. Black against black in the cloud-blanketed night, it drew no notice from the tenders of the watchfires on shore. Its destination was not Calimekka’s great harbor, but rather a rocky bit of shoreline fifty leagues to the north of the city. There it would drop its cargo; then it would return to Z’tatne.

  Its cargo, huddled in the bottom of the ketch and dressed in stolen Salbarian paint and finery, conversed in hushed whispers.

  “It’s going to be a long way to walk with us dressed like the gods’ damned harem dancers.” That was Yanth, who hadn’t been happy since he had to paint over his cheek scars, and who didn’t think the baggy, stiff, broidery-laden fashions of the Salbarians flattered his lean frame, and who had gotten loud and threatened violence when Dùghall hacked off his long hair. “I’d rather sail into the bay and take my chances at being recognized than prance down the coast in this ridiculous costume.”

  Kait studied him. She found herself liking Ry’s first lieutenant, even if the man did stand loyally in the Sabir camp. “The Salbarians always pack their goods overland from Amleri. If we go into Calimekka through the west gates, we’ll just be more of what the guards see every day. No one will notice us; no one will remember us. If we sail into the bay, we might as well paint, Look at me, I don’t belong here, on our
faces.”

  “How can it matter that much?” Yanth asked. “Who will pay any attention to a bunch of traders?”

  Dùghall laughed. “Spoken like a fighter. If they don’t carry swords, they must be invisible.”

  “I am a fighter. Not that anyone will believe it now.” He snorted. “Looking like this, not even my blade brothers would know me.”

  Ian, equally garish in Salbarian dress, sighed. “First, we don’t want your blade brothers to recognize you, and we especially don’t want people to believe you’re a fighter. If you’re a trader, you don’t have to pay warrior’s bond to enter the city, and your name won’t go in the Red Register. When you’re trying to be inconspicuous, that’s a good thing. Second, if you’re a trader in the wrong place, people will notice. But they’ll be people you aren’t used to noticing, and that will be bad for you.” He shrugged. “Believe me on this if you believe nothing else you ever hear from me—people know their own. You’ll be able to pass as a Salbarian trader only if you never speak, and rarely move. If you can do it long enough to get through the Circle of Gates, we’ll let you stop pretending to be a Salbarian and dress up as something closer to your nature.” He closed his eyes and leaned back against the hull of the boat. “A gaming cock, perhaps,” he muttered.

  Kait suppressed a smile. The idea of Salbarian disguise had been Ian’s, and even when he’d presented it, he had been less than optimistic about their success in infiltrating the city without drawing unwanted attention. Now Kait thought he looked resigned. “Third,” he said, “we won’t be walking down the coast road. That would draw attention. I have connections—friends from years ago—not too far from where we’ll be putting ashore. They used to take some of my cargo for me, in exchange for favors I did for them. They’ll take us into the city the same way they transported some of the larger cargo.”

  “I always suspected you went into piracy.” Ry gave his brother a disgusted look.

  Ian narrowed his eyes at Ry, and Kait could see the hatred there. “Smuggling,” he said. “I didn’t have the stomach for the cold-blooded murder that pirates and Family indulged in. I provided goods that were hard to obtain to people who had a need for them.”

  “You’re saying I’m a cold-blooded killer?” Ry asked.

  “I know you are.”

  “If I were, you would have been dead long before now: I swore your death when my magic revealed your . . . liberties . . . with Kait, before I even knew it was you who had taken those liberties. Only the fact that I honor Kait’s agreement has kept you breathing until now. I’ve never killed in cold blood.”

  “Not by your own hand, perhaps. But when you hired the assassin to slaughter my mother and my sibs, her knife marked you with their blood as surely as if you’d spilled it yourself.”

  Kait could see the shock in Ry’s face. “They’re dead? Delores and Jaine and Beyar?” he blurted. “When?”

  Ian faltered for an instant. Then his lips stretched into a feral smile. “You’re good. A man could believe you innocent if he didn’t know better.”

  “I am innocent. I never wished your mother or your siblings any harm, and certainly didn’t pay to have them killed.” He frowned, puzzlement creasing his brow. “I didn’t like you, Ian, and I thought Father showed questionable sense in choosing a mistress who was so young and pretty, and terrible lack of judgment in trying to hide all of you in Sabir House . . . but I also know Mother. If I’d been Father, I would have kept a mistress, too.”

  “And when Father told my mother he would legitimize the lot of us, you thought that would be just fine, did you?”

  “I never knew of it.” He shook his head. “I swear . . . if Father had taken Dolores as his na-parata and made all three of you my full sibs, I would have been relieved. Then one of you could have moved into the line of succession and I would have been . . .” He faltered and his face bleached white. “Ah. I would have been free to pursue the things that interested me. And that would not have suited Mother’s ambitions at all.”

  “Your mother’s ambitions?”

  “My mother was determined that I would succeed my father as head of the Wolves, and that she would guide them through me.”

  “Then you’re saying that Imogene hired the assassin? But when I caught him, he said you had done it.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “He was bargaining for his life at the time.”

  Ry managed a harsh chuckle. “You spent much of your life around Family, Ian. Do you think a hired killer would dare betray the Family member who hired him? More to the point, do you think he would have been mad enough to betray Mother? Even had you let him live, she never would have. And the things she did to him before he died—and to anyone he’d ever cared about—would have made your threats meaningless.”

  Ian stared at his hands, his expression both thoughtful and uncertain. When he finally looked up, Kait thought he looked peaceful. “You believe Imogene knows you’re alive, and that she has declared you barzanne?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  Ian nodded. “And if she knows I am alive, she will surely still have her price on my head. You agree?”

  “Yes. She would never rescind an order for assassination.”

  “Then we find ourselves on the same side.”

  “Not precisely. We find ourselves standing against my mother. And we both want to get the Mirror of Souls back from whoever has it. But so long as you still seek Kait’s favor, we remain enemies.”

  “Agreed. But enemies with a common cause. Before the gods themselves, I revoke my oath to have your life.”

  “If you would also swear to remove yourself as Kait’s suitor, we could be friends.”

  The corner of Ian’s mouth twitched. “No. Not that. Kait will choose one of us, or neither of us, but I won’t clear the field for you without a fight. I could ask you to do that, but I suspect your answer would be the same. So I won’t.”

  Ry’s smile was thin. “It would.” He shrugged. “Then we won’t be friends. But nevertheless, before the gods, I revoke my oath to have your life . . . and thus we can be allies, at least until Kait makes her choice.”

  “Allies, then. For now.” Ian reached out his hand, and Ry clasped it.

  Both of them looked at her, and from their expressions, she thought perhaps they expected her to declare one of them winner at that moment. She wouldn’t play their games. Kait turned to her uncle and asked him, “Do you truly think we’ll be able to reach the Mirror?”

  Dùghall nodded. “Prophecy was clear. The Falcons will triumph over the Dragons. In order for us to triumph, we must acquire the Mirror of Souls and undo the evil the Dragons have done with it. Therefore, we will prevail.”

  “Well, not us, necessarily,” Hasmal said. He’d been quiet until then, lying with his head resting on his rolled-up cloak. Being short, blond, and heavy of bone and muscle, Hasmal could never have been mistaken for a Salbarian. Instead, he wore clothes intended to make him look like a homesteader from the New Territories: a much-patched homespun broadcloth shirt dyed a dull mustard yellow, ankle-wrapped breeches of tight-woven gray cotton, boots that were plainly both handmade and ill-fitted, and a much-patched cloak. Yanth, on seeing the costume Hasmal had been given, offered to pay him to trade. Kait had found that hilarious. Hasmal continued, “If any Falcons reach the Mirror and win it back from the Dragons, the prophecy will be satisfied. But we might all get killed.”

  “Thank you so much for your encouraging words,” Kait said. “That’s exactly what we needed to hear right now.”

  “It is,” Hasmal said, his voice thick with stubbornness. “If you get to thinking that the prophecy guarantees you’ll survive, you’ll do something careless and get yourself killed. And maybe everyone with you, too. The prophecy only promises that the Falcons will triumph over the Dragons and that the Reborn will be restored to his place as the leader of humanity. Nowhere in the Secret Texts does it say ‘Kait Galweigh will go into Calimekka to steal the Mirror of So
uls back from a whole nest of furious wizards and walk out alive and in one piece.’ ”

  Dùghall said, “He’s right, Kait. All of you. I prefer to think of our mission as being divinely planned and divinely protected, but we have no assurance that we will succeed. Our only assurance is that someone will—that the Reborn will ultimately crush the Dragons.”

  Valard, darkly pessimistic, said, “If you ask me, we should join the Dragons. No matter what your prophecy says, they sound like they have a better chance of winning this than we do. You say there are probably hundreds of them and possibly thousands, and you think they’ll have managed to put themselves in positions of power. They have the resources of Calimekka at their disposal, and probably, because of that, the resources of all of Ibera. And you’ve already admitted that their sort of magic is better than yours.”

  “Stronger. Not necessarily better.”

  “If you ask me, stronger is necessarily better.”

  Kait had spent the last two days in the Z’tatnean ship listening to variations on this argument. “We aren’t strong enough to beat them in a fight,” or “We don’t have enough people to get through their guard,” or “No matter what your prophecy says, this whole mission is doomed to failure,” or “Why can’t we just get our families out of Calimekka and take them somewhere safe to live in peace for the rest of our lives?” Ry’s lieutenants seemed to have few loyalties or interests beyond maintaining his friendship. When he had volunteered to come with her to get back the Mirror, they had immediately exerted every effort to get him to change his mind. When it became clear that he didn’t intend to back down, they told him that they were going with him to help him. But it was clear to Kait that they would help only as long as Ry was involved—that they had no interest in the Reborn, and that their real interest, outside of Ry’s goodwill, lay with their families in Calimekka.