The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

  . . . the walls . . .

  . . . of the House itself . . .

  She stopped and smiled. She was an idiot. She’d wanted to get into the House. She’d fallen into her perfect opportunity to do so without being observed. The corridor was empty. Her Karnee senses picked up neither sound nor scent of anyone. If she just moved quickly enough, she ought to be able to get into the House through its service corridor without being caught. She broke into a lope, no longer wasting time checking warehouse doors.

  The corridor switchbacked along with the warehouses it had been built to service. Kait stopped before every switchback to listen and smell ahead of her for danger. Her road stayed clear. Near the House, she passed sounds of activity within the warehouses to her left, but she didn’t check the doors to those, either. She had taken the offensive. She intended to keep it. The Sabirs wouldn’t look for her within their midst.

  Finally she reached another termination to the corridor, but unlike the blank stone wall at the bottom of the hill, this wall was translucent, white with a hint of opalescence, smooth as good glass. The narrow, delicately etched white door set into it promised access to the Sabirs’ realm that lay beyond. If she could get through it. The door was, after all, of the Ancients’ make, and for all its apparent delicacy, created to survive both enemies and eons unscathed.

  Kait rested her hand on the smooth curve of the opening mechanism and pressed lightly. The mechanism recessed and the door slid open silently. She stepped into warm light that radiated from everywhere at once, and felt a brief pang of homesickness. The smooth, translucent white walls of an Ancients’ building rose around her, reminding her of her suite of rooms in Galweigh House. Home—lost but not forgotten. She pushed the wistfulness to the back of her mind and focused on her work. To her right, a staircase made of the same exquisite, indestructible stone-of-Ancients spiraled upward. While loitering beyond the gate, she had seen the top portion of an Ancients’ tower that stood just inside the walls of Sabir House. This had to be that tower. Excellent! She knew where she was. Beyond the stairs lay the only other door in the bottom floor of the tower, this one certainly leading out onto the grounds of the House itself. Or perhaps into the servants’ area, or the House storage rooms. No matter where it went, it led someplace she wanted to go.

  She listened carefully at that door and heard only more silence. Again, excellent. Eager to be on her way, she gripped the curved mechanism and pressed. It failed to open. She tried it again, this time keeping her pressure on the mechanism light. The door was still locked.

  She closed her eyes and swore softly but with great passion. She could go back the way she’d come, and go out through one of the occupied warehouses. But now, with the promise of Sabir House lying like an uncracked egg in front of her, the thought of merely escaping felt like failure.

  Well, she could tell Dùghall about the warehouses and the corridor—perhaps he would think of some magical way to get past the tower and its locked door.

  Frustrated, she retreated to the door through which she’d entered the tower, and pressed its opening mechanism.

  It, too, was locked.

  Nausea twisted her stomach and she felt lightheaded. She’d managed to trap herself. She took slow, deep breaths to ward off panic. She closed her eyes. She had seen only one window in the tower, and that had been all the way at the top. High up, terribly high up. High enough that she would kill herself if she leaped from it. But perhaps if she climbed the stairs, she would find a lower window facing inward, one she could safely jump out of. She could only hope.

  The sound of footsteps and voices reached her ears. Men, coming toward the tower from the corridor. The guards? Perhaps.

  She started to panic again, then relaxed. They would have the key that opened the tower door. They wouldn’t be looking for her. They would go out into the House, and she would find a way to follow them.

  She slipped up the stairs and around the first complete arc of the spiral, out of sight.

  Their voices grew louder, and finally she could make out what they were saying.

  “. . . dasn’t seem right t’ me that she got away. I reckon had we kept on, we’d ’a found her.”

  “The cap’n says quit, I’m for quitting. They’re after something freakish, you ask me, an’ I want nothing to do with it.”

  “Nor I.” The door opened and the first of the guards entered. “They decided to let her go, I say all to the good. Tellin’ us she might have a weapon could kill us all with a stroke, then sendin’ us out without telling us how. Let someone else get the reward. I’ll take my little daughter’s hug when I walk through the door t’night an’ call myself a rich man.”

  They started up the stairs.

  Kait swallowed hard, suddenly and completely scared. They didn’t know about her and they weren’t coming after her, but she had no idea what lay above her. There might be no place to hide between where she stood and the top of the tower.

  But there might be. She concentrated on that, and fled up the stairs, years of practice in sneaking through Galweigh House making her flight nearly soundless. The guards behind her covered her few scuffles and the sound of her breathing with their casual chatter and their heavy, thudding footsteps.

  They were in no hurry and she was running, so she gained ground.

  The ceiling neared, and she could see an archway ahead. She ran faster, trying to think of what she would do if there were already guards in the room. She lunged through the doorway in a state of near-terror.

  It was empty.

  Even better, it was clearly the guards’ destination. Uniforms hung from racks all around the room’s perimeter, and a lunch table stacked with papayas and melons and squashes sat in the center. She could see nowhere to hide in the room, but the stairs continued upward, with another ceiling overhead and a door, standing ajar, visible from the stair on which she stood.

  With the guards’ voices ringing loudly behind her, she raced upward again.

  She slid through the door, saw that no one was in the room with her, and pulled it almost closed. To keep it from closing completely—because her luck with closed doors had not been good that day—she grabbed a stick of wood from the wood bin and wedged it between the door and the frame.

  Then she stood shaking, her forehead pressed against the cool, smooth stone-of-Ancients, and listened to the voices below her. The men were changing, gathering up their belongings and getting ready to go home for the day. They didn’t sound like they would be coming up that final flight of stairs. She turned, leaned her back against the door, and studied her hiding place. She was in the watchroom she’d seen from the ground. The top of the tower.

  The wood bin sat to her immediate left. Left of that, a squat, ugly metal table hunkered between two arches, covered with a dark cloth held in place by lead weights at each corner. She frowned at the lumps beneath the cloth, curious about what might be there, but she didn’t investigate. The center of the room held a tall, long, heavy wood table edged with metal rings, upon which rested coiled rope, chains, locks, and balls of wrapped gauze. Beside the table were several chairs, none of them comfortable-looking; and in the eastern corner a brazier that had a fire going in it, though the fire was down to coals; and beside the brazier three buckets of water. The room itself was beautiful. Architecture with the Ancients’ unmistakable preference for simplicity and elegance. Arched doorways punctuated the walls at intervals, and through them she could see the delicate parapet that had looked so fragile and lovely from the ground below. A breeze blew through from the western arches, laden with the scents of jasmine and frangipani and freesia. The wind was cool, and that high up, blew hard. She could see why anyone using the tower would need to have a fire going.

  The view through those arches was fantastic. The sun was beginning to drop below the mountains to the west, and the sky had turned orange and blood red around it, with streaks of violet stabbing into the red and deepening into rich blue when they reached the eastern edge of the sky
. In minutes it would be dark. Already the city sparkled with lights, a million gems tossed onto a velvet cloak and glittering with inner fire.

  Kait missed the long twilights she’d discovered in North Novtierra—darkness there crept up quietly, and sunsets hung in the sky for what felt like forever. Had this scene taken place in North Novtierra, she would have had most of a station to enjoy it. In Calimekka, the night charged down on the day like an angry bull, tramping the brief, fragile sunset into oblivion in mere moments.

  She moved forward, drawn to the westernmost arch and to the flaring sunset. She stood for several moments taking it in. Then, below her, she heard the voices of the guards growing fainter. They were leaving. If she followed them down, she could wedge something behind the tower door before it could completely close. She guessed that they would head into the Sabir compound; she could follow them in and still find out something useful for her uncle.

  She hurried to the door. The stick she’d wedged into it was gone. The door was shut, though she hadn’t heard it shut. The wind? Could the wind have blown the wedge out of place and closed the door while she stood watching the setting sun? She didn’t see how, but she couldn’t think of what else might have happened.

  She tried the mechanism. It was locked. She stood still, trying to collect her thoughts, which began racing madly the instant she realized she was trapped.

  I can use that coil of rope, maybe the gauze, tie everything together, wait until dark, lower myself to the ground.

  There wasn’t enough rope to reach the ground—she could already see that.

  I’ll get close enough that I won’t be too badly hurt.

  Maybe.

  I’ll find a way out of here before someone comes.

  She rested her head on the door and closed her eyes.

  I’ll find a way out of this.

  Behind her, rhythmic clicking on the floor.

  She turned, and jammed the side of her fist into her mouth to stifle the scream that tried to burst free.

  Two men and a monster stepped through the arches from the eastern half of the parapet to face her. One of the men was Domagar Addo. Beside him stood a burly ox of a man with massive shoulders and a chest sprung like a water barrel. He had shaved his head, keeping a single braid above his left ear in the fashion of the Sloebene sailors. Either fights or bad bloodlines had given him a nose like a squashed mushroom and eyes as cold and flat as a snake’s.

  But both men were handsome next to the thing that stood beside them.

  Horns curled from its forehead, and scales covered its face and skin, and daggerlike spines rose from its shoulders and elbows. It had long claws on its hands, a thick, lashing tail, rows of triangular, serrated teeth. It alone among the three of them smiled at her. She wished it hadn’t.

  “Looking for this?” it asked, and held up the piece of wood she’d used to keep the door from closing. “It didn’t do the job very well, did it?”

  The instruments and ropes on the table, the lumpish things beneath the cloth, even the fire left burning down to coals—all of those things suddenly took on a new and sinister character.

  The monster said, “Nothing to say? Well, perhaps that’s because we haven’t been introduced. You are Chait-eveni.” Its smile grew broader. Its voice was the rasp of a file on metal. Kait shuddered. “And I am Anwyn Sabir, of the Sabir Wolves. This is my cousin Andrew. And I believe you know our friend Domagar.”

  Her hands twisted at the mechanism of the door at her back, trying anything to get it to open. But it held fast.

  Domagar said, “We began to believe that you would never follow the little path we made for you and find your way to us. But we’re so happy you did. We’re delighted to entertain such a clever girl.”

  Anwyn said, “We are indeed. We have an interesting evening planned for you.”

  Andrew Sabir giggled, a sound that made Kait’s skin crawl.

  Anwyn said, “Come, don’t be shy. You might as well join us over here. That door won’t give way, and there is no other way out. We intend to know you well before you leave us.”

  “If you leave us,” Domagar said. “Not something I’d count on.”

  Chapter 33

  Dùghall stared over Ry’s shoulder into the viewing glass. He could clearly see Kait, disguised still as a common laborer. He could see the table she faced, and the instruments of torture that covered the table sitting along one wall. He released his shield and sent a single tendril of his spirit-self crawling through the delicate strands of magic that connected the viewing glass to Domagar, the Dragon. He put himself in danger, because with his shields down, Domagar could follow the link back to him, if he became aware of it. Thus linked, however, he could not only see through Domagar’s eyes, but experience everything the Dragon felt and heard and knew through his other senses, too.

  He took a deadly risk, but he took it for Kait. He feared that he was going to watch her die, but he was determined that if he could do nothing else for her, at least he would find a way to make sure she was not alone when they killed her.

  The men Domagar was with were both Sabir Wolves. Domagar controlled them, though neither of them were aware of the fact. From Domagar’s mind, Dùghall could draw out little snippets of fact. That Domagar had been the name of the true owner of the body, and that his soul had been ripped out and replaced by the soul of a Dragon named Mellayne; that one of the two Wolves with him was also Karnee; that they didn’t know the girl they’d captured was a Galweigh or Karnee, and they had no awareness of the magic she controlled, but that they were sure she was more than an employee of traders; that they intended to torture Kait to find out who she was, who she worked with, what she wanted, and what she knew. And then they intended to kill her.

  Domagar said, “If you cooperate with us, you have my promise that we won’t hurt you,” and Dùghall became aware of voices around him muttering, “Don’t you believe him, Kait!” and, “Kill them and get out of there,” and, “Shift! Shift!”

  He focused his attention on his physical surroundings for an instant. Hasmal and Ian and Ry and all of Ry’s lieutenants were now crouched around the viewing glass, talking to her as if she could hear them.

  He returned himself to his connection with Domagar. Kait had a dagger in one hand and was saying, “Stay back and ask me what you want to know, and I’ll tell you. Come at me and I’ll kill you.”

  All three men laughed. Through Domagar’s eyes, she looked so frail, so helpless. A slender young woman surrounded by three wizards.

  The Scarred one limped to the table that held the torture implements and picked up a flaying knife and a set of finger dicers. Dùghall shuddered and tried to think of something that he could do that would protect Kait without leaving himself open to attack. He had to remember that his first duty as a Warden of the Falcons was to survive, so that he could rescue the Mirror of Souls and get it to the Reborn; only if he didn’t jeopardize his own survival could he take steps to save her. He was taking unacceptable risks just by linking into Domagar.

  “Do something,” Ian was saying. “Do some magic that will save her.”

  “Magic doesn’t work that way,” Ry said. “She’s shielded so tightly nothing I could do would reach her. Maybe we could attack them, but hitting them hard enough to save her would rebound an equal attack onto us, and we don’t have sacrifices to take the rewhah. We’d die, but she wouldn’t live.”

  Hasmal interrupted. “No sacrifice would be required for magic that caused no harm. If we could get through to her, we could . . . maybe we could lift her out of there, or do something else of that nature. But you’re right. Her shields cover her so completely that no magic leaks out at all, and if nothing can get out, nothing can get in.”

  Ian said, “But they’re going to kill her.” His voice was anguished.

  Dùghall tried to keep his focus on the scene around him in the Sabir tower. The Wolves, the Dragon . . . and Kait.

  The Scarred Wolf, whom Domagar’s mind named Anwyn,
said, “Girl, you’re not in a position to make choices. Not now. Not ever again. Come to me. If I have to come to you, I promise you’ll pay doubly for it.”

  The other Wolf began to laugh. His laughter was the uncontrolled, high-pitched tittering of a madman. Dùghall, looking at him through Domagar’s eyes, was overwhelmed by the hopelessness of the situation. Domagar’s memories insisted the shaved-skulled madman was Karnee, which made him the one among the three who posed the most immediate physical danger to Kait. He was most likely to discover that she was the same sort of creature he was.

  The mad Wolf, Andrew, said, “She’s not going to come to you, cousin. Not by herself. You’re too ugly. She wants someone handsome to help her talk. Someone like me.”

  “I’ll kill them,” Ian was muttering. “If they hurt her, I’ll destroy all three of them and the rest of the Sabirs, too.”

  Ry said, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. You haven’t the skill or the power to destroy even one of them. They’re wizards.”

  “I’ll find a way,” Ian said.

  Dùghall’s mind kept racing in circles, looking for something—anything—that might allow him to save his niece. If he could create a tiny reversed Mirror of Souls, he could capture the Dragon soul in Domagar’s body in it, which would return Domagar’s true soul—the soul of the devout young farmer—to its rightful place. He thought. Or it might kill the soulless body. Could that help her? A dead body in the room would be worthless—worse than worthless, because it would give away the presence of observers, and alert the other two. But a devout young farmer might try to come to the rescue of a poor trapped girl.

  Could he create the Mirror quickly enough?

  He looked at the rings on his fingers. The form of the ring was essential to the structure of the Mirror spell. He’d seen that, had figured out that the purity of the metal the ring was made of mattered, too. He had good rings. But he would also need three wires. He said, “One of you. Get me wires—three short wires. Fast.”

  A brief pause, while the men stood thinking.