The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

The three of them stood there staring at each other for a long time. Finally Jaim nodded. “Perhaps.”

  Yanth looked away. He sighed heavily and shook his head. “I won’t quit,” he said. “I don’t have your faith in our victory, but I won’t quit.”

  Dùghall glanced through the gap in the tent flaps at the brilliant white field beyond. “None of us will. We have that thought to hang on to. Now—we’ll have to have a ceremony for Trev, and we need to bury him today. You get him ready. Meanwhile, I’ll cast around to see if I can find out where Valard went—if magic was involved, there should be traces of it still about. And after that, we’ll go on doing what we must do.”

  He left the two of them preparing Trev’s body for viewing. He trudged over the packed snow, wishing he could be as certain of their eventual victory as he had sounded while talking to them. He dreaded the future, and the present terrified him, too. He hoped what he had told them was truth, because the only thing he was sure of in his life at that moment was fear. He had enough of that to fill an ocean.

  Chapter 48

  Kait and Ry came upon Calimekka at night, when the city sprawled like an endless bed of embers beneath the cloud-blanketed sky. Kait had seen the city that way many times; her old friend Aouel had taken her up in the airible for night flights when she sneaked out of Galweigh House on nights she couldn’t sleep, or when she wanted someone to talk to. So she saw the change in the heart of the city and recognized it, and pointed it out to Ry, for whom this aerial view was a first.

  “The white lights in the center of the city—those were never there before.”

  Ry looked where she’d indicated, and angled his wings to take him closer to those lights.

  Kait followed. She didn’t like what she saw. In the center of Calimekka, surrounded by shining, translucent white walls of the sort only the Ancients knew how to create, lay a fairyland of pristine white castles, shimmering white fountains, lovely white roadways and paths. Gardens of flowers and fruits and trees and shrubs, artfully illuminated by the white light, glowed like jewels. In one of the gardens, a few men and women, dressed in styles she’d never seen before, danced to the strains of music that sounded foreign to her ears. She circled above them, silent, keeping her magical shields drawn tight around her to hide her presence, and she recalled the bustling markets and fine neighborhoods that once stood where that huge, empty city-within-a-city now sprawled.

  “We’ve found them,” Ry said softly.

  “We have.” She stared down. “Now we have to decide how to reach them.”

  * * *

  A week later, Kait and Ry stood together in the cool, sweet-scented air of the Calimekkan dawn, dressed in the clothes of well-off commoners, waiting before the great white gate of the new Citadel of the Gods. Others stood with them—tradesmen hoping to sell food or cloth or worked silver or glassware; peasants hoping to find work; beggars who saw the wealth behind the closed gates and, unfamiliar yet with New Hell, hoped they might find generosity.

  Ry’s shoulder pressed against Kait’s, but they didn’t speak to each other or look at each other or give any indication that they were together. Kait’s heart thudded heavily in her chest and her dry mouth tasted of sand and fear. Her shields were pulled in close and tight, and she thought that their confining closeness added to her anxiety as much as the press of the crowd or the fear she smelled in those around her.

  Fear clouded the air more heavily than the jasmine that grew in the gardens beyond the gates. But Kait, like everyone around her, swallowed her fear and waited, listening to the soft chimes that rang in the white-walled gardens, watching for movement in the city-within-a-city.

  At last a woman stepped out of the first building on the right and moved toward them, her rich blue skirts swirling around her ankles as she walked. Her skin was black as onyx, her eyes as gold as the finely worked bracelets that jangled at her wrists. Her black hair, braided with ribbons of deep blue and cloth-of-gold, hung to the ground. She stepped to the gate and opened it, and stepped back. The merchants filed past her and set up their stalls on the pristine white streets, strangely subdued. She turned to the beggars and sent them off to the center of the Citadel, telling them they could sit and beg by the great fountain there.

  Then she turned to the workers. “How many of you are here for day work?” she asked. She smiled and her voice was warm, but Kait could find no warmth in her eyes.

  A few of the workers raised their hands.

  “Good. We have need of laborers in the Red Gardens. Please follow my servant; she’ll show you where to go.” A beautiful young girl dressed all in white stepped out from beneath the arch to Kait’s right and walked soundlessly down the street. The men and women who had asked for day work followed her.

  The woman turned back to the few who remained. “And the rest of you must be hoping for permanent positions?”

  Kait nodded with the others.

  “I thought so. Most have been filled. Unless you have special skills, we likely have nothing to offer you.” She studied Ry, and her smile became hungry. “I think, though, that some of you surely have special skills.” She stood there for a moment, her expression thoughtful; then, coming to a decision, she said, “Follow me, all of you. I know what I need”—her eyes flicked over Ry again—“but I can’t be certain what the rest of my colleagues are looking for.”

  She touched Ry on the shoulder before she led them off. “You stay close to my side. I believe I have just the right position for you.”

  Kait wanted to kill her right there. Instead she pretended indifference, and followed the woman through the nearly empty streets to a magnificent hall in the center of the new city. Inside, young, beautiful men and women whose silk robes outshone the parrots in their gardens gathered and chatted. They all glanced toward the newcomers as they entered, and a few evinced real interest.

  The golden-eyed woman spoke loudly, her voice ringing over the low hum of chatter that filled the enormous hall. “Here are today’s permanents. Who’ll interview?”

  “Ah, Berral, you didn’t bring us much to pick from,” someone said, and laughed.

  A few others joined in the laughter, but a muscular man with a broad smile rose from his seat at one of the small tables along the west wall and said, “I suppose it’s my turn.” He nodded toward a girl who looked to be about Kait’s age—a pleasantly rounded young woman with skin the color of milk and eyes as huge and frightened as a lamb’s in a slaughterhouse.

  “You,” he said. “What can you do?”

  “I read . . . and write,” she said, her voice shaking. “I can do sums. I know history and philosophy, drawing and rhetoric. I’ve been a champion at both querrist and hawks and hounds . . .” Her voice faltered as the people around her started to laugh.

  “She’s a trained monkey,” one of them murmured.

  “She might make a decent enough concubine,” another answered. “I’ve often wished for a mistress who knew a few games, and could talk about something other than her shopping.”

  “How are you in bed?” the first asked.

  The girl flushed. “I could care for children,” she said, “or keep purchase records, or maintain a library.”

  “We don’t have children,” a woman who leaned against the wall said. “And we never will.”

  At the same time, the man who’d asked how she was in bed said, “She has no talent, then, at the only skill that interests me. So what about you?” he said, turning to Kait.

  She said, “I cut and arrange both men’s and women’s hair.” She had decided that job would give her an opportunity to touch as many of the Dragons as possible, planting her talismans without raising questions. The Dragons would certainly have personal servants, but she knew from her own life in Galweigh House that there was nothing like the lure of a specialist to draw people out of their daily routines.

  “Do you?” Berral asked, now studying her with real interest. “Your hair is short. Interesting. And is red the original color?”
<
br />   Kait smiled. “Can’t you tell?”

  “I can’t.” She flipped her long braid over her shoulder and said, “What would you do with mine?”

  Kait pretended to consider for a moment. “Something with gold beads, I think,” she said. “To set off your eyes. And snow-peacock feathers to contrast with your skin. Full around the face to emphasize your bones—they’re good, but your current style hides that. And I think I’d work in a few sapphires if you have them.”

  “Lovely,” someone said behind her. “That would be perfect.”

  “What would you do for me?” a tall, angular woman with emerald eyes asked. Her hair was plain brown, long and wavy and unstyled.

  “A new cut first,” Kait said. “Your neck is long and slender as a swan’s, but all that hair covers it. Then a new color. Pale blond, I think—that would make your eyes even more striking. And then ringlets, with green silk ribbons woven through.”

  The woman smiled. “You must do just that for me.”

  “After she does my hair,” Berral said.

  “And then she can do mine.”

  “Come, girl. We’ll find a place for you, and get you what you need, and you can get to work. I haven’t had my hair done well in a thousand years.”

  The green-eyed woman and a svelte redhead started to lead her off. Behind her, she heard Berral say, “And what do you do?”

  She heard Ry’s voice answer, “I do tapputu—it’s a form of massage that uses perfumes and oils and herbs. Excellent for the skin, and soothing.”

  Berral sighed. “Then we must put you to work with the hairdresser. I’d thought to make you my concubine—but my friends would never forgive me if I kept a masseur to myself. Perhaps, though, I’ll have you spend nights with me.”

  “If you’d like,” Ry said.

  Kait kept her anger from her face. She consoled herself with the knowledge that as soon as Ry touched the woman with a talisman, Dùghall or Hasmal would summon her Dragon soul into one of the tiny Mirrors, and Ry would have one less admirer.

  She hoped he marked her first.

  Chapter 49

  Danya crouched in the back of her little house, staring at the boy who had named himself Luercas. He was paying her no attention, at least for the moment. He’d caught a tundra-vole and was playing with it on the bearskin rug, amusing himself at its expense.

  At that moment he looked like a normal eight-year-old boy—solidly built, golden-haired, fair-skinned, with bright eyes and an engaging smile.

  What he was doing to the vole wasn’t normal. And he’d only been born a few months earlier. And he could change the way he looked. When he was outside of their house, he chose to look like the Kargans—he could skinshift at will, assuming any form he liked. He had been Scarred by the magic that had coursed through his body before his birth, but the Scars had been advantageous. He already knew Karganese before he was born, and because he was outwardly a sweet-natured child, and because he could make himself appear to be Kargan, and because he spoke with the seeming innocence of childhood, yet offered the wisdom of adulthood, he drew the Kargans to him like bears to fish. They admired him, they listened to him, and when he offered them advice in that diffident, childlike voice, they took it. He knew their prophecies and their legends well enough from watching them before he took over the infant body to know how to make himself fit. To the Kargans, he seemed like the savior they’d hoped would come to take them back to the Rich Lands. That, he told Danya with a laugh, suited his plans perfectly.

  The vole shrieked in agony, and Luercas chuckled.

  “Stop it,” Danya said.

  “Oh, please. It’s a pest. The Kargans kill them all the time, and I don’t see you racing out to protest.”

  “They don’t torture them. They don’t sit there soaking in the poor thing’s pain.”

  “They don’t garner any magic from the poor thing’s death, either, which is a complete waste. I’m doing two useful things when I kill the vole—I’m ridding the village of one more pest, and I’m giving myself a bit of energy that I don’t have to take from the villagers. Or you.”

  He turned and smiled at her, his blue eyes as cold as the frozen river, and she hated him even more. She said nothing, and after he’d stared at her, he turned his back to her and returned to torturing the vole.

  “We’ll be able to leave here soon,” he said.

  “Leave?”

  “Certainly. We’ll be returning to Calimekka before long.”

  Danya snorted. “Going to walk across the frozen wastes again, are we?”

  “Not at all. We’ll travel in good weather. And we’re going to go in style, you and me.” His shoulders rose and fell in a casual shrug. “And then you’ll have your revenge.” He chuckled. “You’ve certainly earned the right.”

  Revenge. She thought of Crispin Sabir and Anwyn Sabir and Andrew Sabir lying in a pool of their own blood, screaming. She thought of hurting them the way they’d hurt her, of destroying them the way they’d destroyed her. She stared at the index and middle fingers of her right hand—at the talons, rather; dark and scaled and claw-tipped. Her reminder of her right to their lives. Everything that had happened to her and everything she did was their fault. And her Family’s; the Galweighs hadn’t rescued her. And Luercas’s.

  Torture rape transformation pregnancy pain birth murder slavery.

  That had become the mantra that fueled her rage, that kept her breathing from one day to the next. She was Luercas’s slave now because no one had helped her then. And they were going to pay for her suffering. All of them, somehow, would pay.

  Chapter 50

  Kait felt she and Ry were making progress. The first few days, they didn’t plant any of their talismans—they wanted to earn the trust of their clients and build up word of mouth within the Dragon enclave. And their strategy seemed to be working. Kait decorated hair, grateful that much of her diplomatic training had been based on the assumption that she might have to operate from time to time without servants, and would still have to represent the Family appropriately.

  When she took them, she’d complained about the hairdressing classes as a complete waste of her time. She wondered if she’d ever have the opportunity to find the woman who had trained her, to apologize for her condescension and to admit that she’d been wrong.

  “Whatever you do, do it well,” her mother had said to her, and her father had added, “No knowledge is ever wasted.”

  She’d argued with them, too—cocksure certain that her station in life, her talent and her intelligence would keep her from ever needing to know a menial trade. She owed them an apology, too, and would never get to give it. Dùghall was certain both of them had died in the massacre.

  Now she stood all day on a breezy veranda attached to one of the Dragons’ public baths, liming and hennaing and curling hair with curling irons or straightening it with flatirons; braiding in beads and gems and ribbons and adding her own touches that no one else had thought to duplicate—working a tiny little cage and a live songbird into one creation, a lovely ivory dancer into another. She shaped men’s beards and mustaches, too, and did her share of liming and hennaing and curling on her male clients, as well. Her business picked up steadily.

  After the first week, she started touching her clients with the talismans.

  She saw Ry for a moment in the morning when she arrived at the veranda, and sometimes at night when he left. They gave each other no more acknowledgment than any strangers who worked in the same building would. Ry went into the baths and massaged muscles and egos. Kait noted that he did a good business, too.

  But it didn’t last, of course.

  Kait arrived at the veranda one damp, gray morning, nodded politely to Ry as he went past her into the bathhouse, and started the fire in the little oven on which she heated her curling irons and flatirons. She laid out the pots of henna and lime, the towels and brushes and razors, and gave her fingertips a light coating of melted wax—that so the talismans didn’t embed the
mselves in her hands as she picked them up. Then she dumped a handful of the talismans into the waist pocket of her work apron and turned to watch a group of musicians setting up their instruments on the far corner, away from the bath’s fountain. Some of the Dragons were early risers; she’d learned to have everything ready as soon after dawn as she could.

  Her first clients that morning were men. They were not as young-looking as most of the men she’d worked on before, but they had the same haughty attitude she’d come to associate with all the Dragons. They acted as if she were invisible except when telling her what they wanted. That treatment suited her perfectly, and she was as deferential as she knew how to be. She trimmed and shaped their beards, braided and ribboned one mustache and beaded another, and worked their long hair into the heavy coils that many of the men favored, hiding one growing bald spot as she did. Several women came out of the baths by the time she finished and were waiting on the benches by the fountain. They came toward her, laughing and murmuring secrets to each other, and the men rose as if to leave. But instead they merely backed to the edge of the veranda and waved the women forward.

  Kait smelled something wrong about them—the scent of excitement she associated with hunters who have cornered their prey. She couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary about the situation—sometimes, after all, her clients had stayed to watch her work on their friends. But her gut warned her that something was about to happen. She tensed and moved closer to her stove and her irons, all the while bowing to the women and asking them to decide who would go first.

  A handful of men walked out of the bathhouse door nearest the musicians and stood listening to them play.

  Three more men came out of the bathhouse door beside the fountain and ambled slowly toward her, seemingly deep in conversation with each other.

  A carriage rolled to a silent stop in front of the bathhouse, and a dozen soldiers in Sabir green and silver helped a veiled, misshapen figure to the ground and up the walk.