The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

  Aloud he said, “Certainly I’d like to meet your Reborn.”

  Chapter 31

  They sat cross-legged facing each other, the old man’s blood-bowl between them. “I won’t need to draw my own blood for the bowl,” Dùghall said. “I’ve already walked the light path many times, and my soul knows the way. But you’ll need a link.”

  Ry shook his head. “If you don’t spill your blood into the bowl with mine, I’ll leave now. I don’t trust a spell that calls for my blood but not yours.”

  Dùghall shrugged, and pulled out a tourniquet and a hollow thorn, and quickly poured a few drops of his own blood into the bowl. “I have no tricks planned for you, son. I only want you to understand what we fight for, and why. You want Kait—you make it plain with every word you speak and every gesture you make that she is your only reason for standing with us. So I am showing you the reason that Kait now follows the path of the Falcons, and that she and Hasmal and I stand with each other.”

  “I told you I’m ready to see your little show. Just don’t expect me to believe it.” Ry fumbled with the tourniquet Dùghall had used, and with the fresh thorn that Dùghall had given him; in the end he managed to add a bit of his own blood to the bowl, though it was nothing like the effortless process it had been for the old man.

  Then Dùghall spread his arms wide and began to chant in one of the old, old tongues. By listening closely, Ry could make out the rhythms and patterns of the language, and categorize it as a cousin of the Ancients’ tongues that he’d studied. But he couldn’t understand a word of it. He could, however, feel the effects of the words Dùghall spoke into the darkened room.

  A shield swirled into existence around them, at first invisible but then gaining radiance and luminous form as it strengthened. Within the shield, Ry felt peace descend on him. It was a tranquillity he had never felt when in contact with magic before—it was truly beautiful and strangely gentle; to his mind beauty and gentleness were the antithesis of magic. He sat within the shimmering globe, suspicious but shaken, and waited for Dùghall to begin entertaining him with some clever light show. The old man, though, said, “There is nothing to see. Close your eyes and I will lead you along the golden thread.”

  He closed his eyes as he was told, and discovered that he could clearly “see” a spiraling golden rope that led from the blood-bowl and away. Heading south.

  He sensed the old man with him, but with eyes closed, and within the shell of the shield, Dùghall didn’t feel like an old man. He felt huge, as powerful as a force of nature, as terrifying as the leading edge of an enormous storm sitting off the coast. Ry knew the storm could strike and destroy everything in front of it, but he had no way of knowing if it would.

  Follow, Dùghall told him as he moved into the core of that glowing rope, then along it. Ry found that he could follow, and that as soon as he’d placed himself within the rope, it drew him forward, impossibly fast. He had no control, but he wasn’t afraid. Love surrounded him and infused him, becoming stronger and more wonderful the nearer he came to its source.

  They arrived at the birthplace of all that love. Ry could see nothing, but he had no doubt what was going on. A newborn infant lay in his mother’s arms, quiet and at peace. Ry felt the power that poured from the baby, magic already fully formed and trained with skill and precision . . . but magic controlled by love. By compassion. By hope and optimism. Joy flowed through him, an internal radiance as brilliant as the light of the sun and as gentle as the kiss of a light breeze on the petals of a flower.

  The infant offered himself as a gift to the world. Newborn, he already knew that he would live his life serving others, teaching them, leading the world toward the beauty of the place he already inhabited. Ry could see that it was not beyond reach, that place of perfect happiness. Inhabiting it, he could see that he could create such beauty within himself, though until that moment he would never have imagined such a thing could be possible.

  We do not fall in love, he discovered. We do not stumble into joy, or trip over compassion on our way somewhere else. We choose the path of love, and joy, and compassion, and acceptance, and by following that path we leave the path of hatred behind. They are opposite roads going in completely different directions, and those who walk love’s road will have lives filled with love, and will have no room for hatred.

  He felt like an idiot for suspecting Dùghall of trickery. No one who had spent time in the presence of the Reborn could even consider wasting time trying to trick people into becoming the Reborn’s followers. The Reborn reached out and touched, and his love overcame all obstacles. No trickery could do what he did simply by existing.

  I have a place for you, the Reborn told him.

  And Ry said, Take me, I’m yours.

  Welcome, friend.

  At last he had to leave that peaceful presence and return to his body, and to the darkness of the little workroom. He opened his eyes, and sat in silence across from the old man, letting the tears flow down his cheeks. He was shocked at his reaction—but he could understand it, too. His meeting with the Reborn was his first encounter with genuine love. He had been appreciated before that, but not loved. His mother considered him a useful playing piece, his late father had looked at him as someone who would someday take his place and carry on his work, his other relatives saw him as a potential threat or a potential ally. But love, joy, compassion, hope . . . those were not feelings that had a place in Sabir House.

  The Reborn had come to change that. He had come to teach love.

  Ry looked at Dùghall, and wiped the tears from his face. “I’m with you,” he said. “No matter what, no matter the price, I’m with you. I understand now.”

  Dùghall nodded, and leaned across the again-empty blood-bowl, and hugged him. “I’m glad to have you on our side.”

  Chapter 32

  Inside the secret corridor within the wall that surrounded Sabir House, Domagar crouched at one of the spy-slits. “You see her? Lean girl, bleached blond hair in a braid, work clothes, moving right now past the fat sausage vendor. Bland girl—doesn’t catch your eye.”

  The spy who had followed the two traders to their inn squinted out his own slit and said, “Yes. I see her. What of her?”

  “She’s the girl who was sitting next to you in the inn. I happened to get a good look at her face as I was leaving . . . met her eyes and I saw that she recognized me and wasn’t happy about it, though I was certain I’d never seen her before. It took every bit of my concentration and most of the trip from the inn to here to realize that she’s the same girl I approached when I heard she was trying to sell artifacts. The one who said her name was Chait-eveni. When she claimed to be a trader, she had an Imumbarran accent and wore Imumbarran clothes. Had black hair then. And she was pretty. Striking, even. But now she’s dressed like any Iberan laborer, plain as hell, and she damn near disappears into the street while you watch her. Did you speak to her?”

  The spy had to think about it. “She didn’t leave much of an impression, really. But . . . yes. I guess I did speak to her. Briefly.” He frowned thoughtfully, and he stared harder at the girl. “She had no accent. None whatsoever. In fact . . .” The spy who had followed the two Hmoth traders to their inn closed his eyes for an instant, recalling the woman next to him. Her voice, her scent, her way of eating. “In fact, this is so odd that I should have made note of it at the time. I heard traces of Family in her voice. And I should have noticed it in her table manners, too, if I’d been paying closer attention.” He looked down at his hands and muttered, “That isn’t like me, to be so inattentive. It isn’t.” He looked back out again, and started. “Where did she go?”

  “She hasn’t moved,” Domagar said.

  The spy kept looking, then said, “Oh, you’re right. She hasn’t.”

  “She slides out of the mind. I don’t like that. I can’t see why, but she does.”

  “I was afraid it was just me,” the spy said. “As I think about her now, I realize that she was the most in
teresting thing at our table—because of the contradictions. But I didn’t see it at the time. She was a polite eater, if you know what I mean. One bite at a time, didn’t speak with her mouth full, sipped her drink instead of gulping it. Didn’t spit. And she had no stink of sweat or work to her, though the day was hot and the laborers around her smelled strong enough. She . . .” He paused, wanting to be sure he was right. “She smelled distinctly of flowers. And herbs. Good clean smell.”

  Down two spy-slits from both of them, Anwyn Sabir stood beside the captain of the Sabir guards. They had been watching the girl, too. “There’s something dishonest about the whole lot of them,” Anwyn said. “Whatever they’re doing, it isn’t about trading for the artifacts my brother wants.” He turned to the guard captain. “So let’s find out what they’re really up to. Bring her in.”

  Kait sighed. She’d waited long enough; her friends would begin to wonder where she was. She’d given the man she followed plenty of time to report what he’d done. If he’d intended to leave by the gate through which he’d entered the House, he would have done so already. Therefore, either he was a permanent resident of the Sabir House or he had gone out one of the lesser gates. Either way, there was nothing more she could do.

  As a form of further disguise and because she was once again hungry and thirsty, she bought a hot sausage on a stick from a fat young man with a shaved head, and had an ale-monger fill her tin work cup with a bronze fifth-preid’s worth of rice ale. She sipped and nibbled as she started back to her rendezvous with Dùghall. She concentrated on looking like a weary laborer trudging back to her job, however reluctantly. She kept her shields tight, even though she had seen nothing that would indicate that anyone in Sabir House was aware of her presence.

  She wished she had more to tell Dùghall. She wished she could have thought of some way to follow her target clear into Sabir House. She was certain there were things in there that she needed to know. She wished . . . but caught herself wasting her time on wishes, and turned her attention to the task at hand.

  The street she was on pitched steeply down a hill. It was not, she suddenly realized, a normal street. Buildings on both sides hemmed in the horizon, while the street switchbacked left and right half a dozen times, leaving the person on it perpetually blind to what lay before and what came up behind. The builders of Sabir House had no doubt designed it that way. No alleys split off anywhere, making the street one long corral, and not even the buildings would offer hiding places to someone in need. Every one was a warehouse marked with the Sabir crest or with crests of allied Families. All of the doors were closed and, in most cases, padlocked. Kait had been too intent on not being spotted by her prey to pay attention to the details of the approach on her way up, but on her way back down, she realized she didn’t like the setup. Not at all. The advantages of the long, narrow, twisting, exitless street with its blind approaches lay exclusively with the Sabirs.

  A few boys scurried into view around the sharp curve in front of her. Their heads were down and they kept their eyes forward. They said nothing to each other; they carried fenny sticks and a fenny ball tucked under their arms. They gave no indication that they were friends, though from the sweat on their faces and on their clothes and the labored sound of their breathing, Kait would have guessed they had been playing a game in the street only moments before.

  Their silent, hurried progress set her teeth on edge. Suddenly everyone coming toward her seemed nervous to her. Chary. Watchful. She smelled the air, and she smelled fear. She dropped the uneaten half of her sausage into a gutter, poured her ale, and tucked the cup back into her belt. Her heart beat faster.

  A few old women appeared from around the corner in front of her, their scarves and skirts tucked up, their heads down. They scurried up the street, carefully not looking around them. They stank of fear.

  Now she was certain. Something lay ahead, and because of the design of the street, ahead was the only way she could go. Did this stir have anything to do with her? Perhaps not. The Sabirs might have sent their guards out to collect an impromptu street tax from the vendors, but then why would the boys have ceased their fenny-ball game? Why would everyone be hurrying toward the House instead of away from it?

  She pulled a few strands of her hair down over her face, slumped her shoulders, hung her head, and tightened her “don’t-see-me” shield until people coming toward her barely managed to avoid her before veering out of the way. She thought of a story for why she was on the street—her foreman had sent her to look for a mason he’d sent up the street to get his lunch. She swallowed, and tried to look inoffensive.

  Rounding the next corner, her heart slid up into her throat. Ten guards in green and silver had cordoned off the street, and were requiring identification papers before they would let anyone pass.

  Kait’s falsified papers identified her as a black-haired Imumbarran trader named Chait-eveni Three-Fast, daughter of an Imumbarran stardancer mother and a Gyru-nalle trader father. She looked as purely Iberan as she was, and that dichotomy was going to cause her grief. She knew within the Galweigh districts, traveling with obviously falsified papers (or legitimate papers but an obviously falsified appearance) was a crime, punishable by imprisonment and hard labor. Within the Sabir district of the city . . . well, the Sabir district had a reputation for being a tougher, meaner place to make a mistake.

  This was about her. Sometime in the last station, she’d made a mistake. Somehow, she’d allowed the spy to catch sight of her. Or he had planted a telltale on her. Or . . . what she’d done wrong didn’t matter as much as what she could do to get away.

  Some workers came out of a warehouse to her left. They looked like she did—equally shabby, equally weary. Any animation they exhibited at leaving work dissolved when they saw the roadblock. The door swung slowly behind them, almost closing. But not completely. Kait could see that the latching mechanism had caught on the doorframe, keeping it from shutting all the way.

  Her first lucky break.

  She took a deep breath and ducked into the warehouse. She quietly pulled the door closed behind her. Pins tumbled into place as it locked itself. That didn’t bother her. Warehouse doors often required a key from the outside only.

  But the darkness inside was nearly complete—she’d expected lights, movement, voices, some sign of life. The only smell in the air was dust, however, and the only sound that broke the silence was her breathing.

  A crew had just walked out the door behind her. They’d been in the warehouse for a reason. If they shut the place down behind them, she should still find some sign that they’d been working earlier—stacks of goods, or a smell of life in the air, or something. She sighed, and the emptiness echoed her sigh back to her from all four directions.

  She didn’t even hear any rats.

  She looked around once her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Four walls rose up the height of five men, supporting a trussed ceiling; the walls to the left and right of her were unbroken by any window or door. The floor between those walls was completely bare. Directly across from her, though, a single door like the one behind her pierced the wall. No light showed underneath, but perhaps the door merely fit its frame well. All sorts of activity might be in progress on the other side.

  She leaned her back against the door that led out to the street and pressed one ear to it. She heard shouting outside, and screaming. If they were truly looking for her and they didn’t find her among the people in the street, they would search the warehouses. This one held no hiding places. But perhaps the laborers had been working behind that other door. Perhaps there she would be able to find a hiding place.

  She hurried across the bare floor and rested a hand on the other door, and offered a quick prayer to Nerin, who watched over his followers during his station, that the laborers had left it unlocked. Then she turned the handle. The door opened.

  Quick thanks to Nerin.

  More darkness, but now punctuated at intervals by distant light. She was in a long, curvin
g corridor with tiny windows set high along the outside wall. The corridor ran both to her left, back up the hill toward the House, and right, down the hill and toward safety. She paused in the doorway, holding her breath, every sense straining for evidence that she was being pursued. The corridor was empty for a long distance in either direction. Perhaps entirely empty. She stepped into it, pulled the door shut behind her so that she would not make her trail obvious to anyone who might step into the warehouse, and turned right. She passed other doors on her right. She tried each, hoping one would open for her, but all were locked. She quickly reached a dead end—the place where the Sabir warehouse district ended and lower Calimekka resumed. If she could just get out through the wall . . . but it was stonework of high caliber, and thick. She stood about parallel with the place where the guards had set up their roadblock. The horrified realization grabbed her; she was standing in the corridor through which those guards had traveled to get ahead of her. More could come along at any time, or those could decide to go back.

  The warehouse had been safer, if only marginally. She ran back the way she’d come, trying doors as she did. She didn’t remember which one had been the one she’d come out of, and in the dim light, they all looked the same.

  It was only when she’d traveled twice as far up the hill as she’d gone down that she realized she’d passed her warehouse. The door had locked itself behind her. She was trapped in the corridor.

  She wished the doors were lighter, or the locks were simpler. She felt certain she could have kicked a lighter door in. But she felt equally certain that the massive warehouse doors wouldn’t give way for her.

  Which meant she could stay where she was, or she could head back toward Sabir House, hoping to find another warehouse with an open door before she ended up inside . . .