The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

  “They’re gone,” she said, and realized that tears were pouring down her cheeks. “It’s over. And we’ve won.”

  Chapter 11

  Crispin, again in human form, dressed in his bloody silks, stalked through the crowd on Silk Street. Men and women scattered before him—he wore his Family status like a battering ram that none could ignore or overlook. When he reached the stairs that led to the apartment he’d rented for Ulwe, he took them three at a time.

  He knew before he opened the door that she would not be inside; at the door itself, he smelled the presence of his cousin Ry. He snarled, but slammed the door open anyway; he might find something that would tell him where she was headed.

  She’d been there, safe. Had he woken earlier, had he run faster, he could have reached her before his accursed cousin. She would have been with him, where she belonged. Now . . . now she was a captive, a hostage. And Ry hated Crispin as deeply and passionately as Crispin hated Ry. He might hurt the child, torture her, even kill her, just because knowing that he could hurt Crispin would give him power the bitchson had never had in his life.

  Except, Crispin thought, that Ry had never had much stomach for the real exercise of power. He’d avoided Family politics—he’d kept himself to the sidelines while others jockeyed for position in the hierarchy of Wolves. He’d tried to give the impression that he was above all that . . . but Crispin thought Ry simply didn’t have the balls to spill a little blood for his own advancement.

  Ulwe might be safe for a while.

  Crispin paced through the apartment. No signs of violence, no smell of fear. The woman he’d hired to care for the girl—through intermediaries, damnall, since that had seemed wisest at the time—was gone, the place left neat and orderly. No note from Ry, no note from Ulwe. Ulwe might believe Ry was her father, and he might be willing to pretend to be Crispin in order to keep her compliant.

  Crispin hurried back outside, following Ry’s scent and the smell of his daughter. He sniffed the air, retraced his steps down the stairs, and turned after them, moving through the crowd. They were staring at him, he realized—men and women with cold eyes and hostile faces.

  If he didn’t catch up with her, he would come back and question them. They might be able to tell him something useful.

  The trail led well down Silk Street in the opposite direction from the one he’d come, heading south and east. It took him out of the Merchants’ Quarter and into the Pelhemme District, through neighborhoods where no sensible person would take a child. Then, at a heavily trafficked intersection, the scent trail vanished completely. He fought his way across traffic to each of the four street corners, but the ground did not carry any further marks from either Ulwe or Ry.

  So they’d taken a carriage. They could have gone in any direction, they could already be almost anywhere. And the longer he took getting back on their trail, the more difficult it would be to hunt them down.

  He stared around him, clenching and unclenching his hands, feeling the tips that dug into his palms Shifting from neatly manicured human nails to hard, sharp points. He wanted to kill Ry, but Ry was temporarily beyond his reach. He noted shapes lurking in the shadows, and felt eyes watching him. Yes. Yes. One of the bits of human scum who inhabited the neighborhood would have seen them. A young man of Family, a lovely young girl—in this neighborhood after twilight—yes. One of the doxies or the pimps or the street jackals could tell him which way his daughter and her kidnapper had gone.

  He turned toward a shadow, smelling hunger and rage and anticipation in the waiting darkness, hearing the quickening of breath and the soft snick of a blade leaving a scabbard, and he smiled.

  “Ah, good sir,” he murmured, pacing into the deeper blackness, letting a tiny trickle of his rage escape from his control, letting his hands—and nothing but his hands—embrace the Karnee tide. “I almost hope that you don’t want to help me.”

  The man moved toward Crispin, long dagger in hand, feral grin on his face. “I’ll help y’ to yer grave, y’ pretty bastard. None here’ll cry Family when y’ fall.”

  Crispin laughed and flexed his claws.

  And then the sky lit with blue fire, and a wave of wild magic tore over and through him, and darkness denser than blackest night rolled over him, blinding him, deafening him, and dropping him to the ground like a bolt-felled steer.

  He felt a quick, hard pain in his side as he fell, and another, and another. His last thought was, He’s stabbing me! The whoreson is stabbing me!

  Chapter 12

  Danya felt the wave of magic wash across her as she tossed the red cloak to the ground. The Kargans were oblivious to it, of course; they had no sense for magic—they were blind and deaf to its manifestations. But from the way that Luercas paled, she could tell that he’d felt it.

  He landed on the red cloak, but his dismount from the back of the lorrag was more tumble than leap. He said his lines, and the Kargans embraced him as the embodiment of their savior, and then hugged her—something they had not done since she had regained her human form. They began racing around the village to prepare a feast. Only then did Luercas get the chance to speak with her alone again.

  “You felt it?”

  “Of course.”

  He nodded. “You know what it was?”

  “No.”

  “That was the destruction of my old colleagues.” He chuckled and tipped his head back. Eyes tightly closed and grin spread across his face, he looked as satisfied as a cat in a sunbeam.

  Danya had never liked cats.

  She said, “You’re certain.”

  “Absolutely certain. That surge of magic you felt was the Mirror of Souls—it discharged the life-force it stole, back to the people it came from. And the only reason it would do that was if my fellow Dragons had been ousted from the bodies they took and dumped through the Veil. A lot of drained people are going to be suddenly bursting with energy tonight, and I’ll wager you Calimekka’s birth rate nine months from now will nearly double.” He shifted excitedly from foot to foot, looking very much the excited boy at that moment and not the monster he was. “I told them a thousand years ago that if they didn’t find a way to lay sole claim to the bodies they took, this would happen.” He smiled at her and spread his arms wide. “You don’t see the Mirror flinging my soul into the Veil, do you?”

  “No. More’s the pity.”

  His expression became solicitous, and he patted her shoulder. “Ah, Danya—you really must lose that bitter streak of yours. We’re well on our way now, girl. A handful of our enemies have eliminated the deadliest of our Iberan obstacles for us. We’re gods to the Kargans already; word of our presence is traveling toward the other Kargan camps even as we speak. We’ll be gods to the Hattra and the Ikvanikan and the Myryr peoples, too, before long. We’ll have our army of fanatics, we’ll have a clear path, and we’ll have our city, our slaves, and our immortality before a year has passed.”

  “I’m sure you’re pleased.”

  He opened his eyes and looked at her, surprised. “As you should be. My lovely child, we have only one more great obstacle standing in the way of our conquest of Ibera.”

  “And that would be?”

  “The destruction of the Mirror of Souls.”

  “I thought you said the Mirror couldn’t harm you because you were sole owner of . . . the body.” She’d almost said my son’s body, but caught herself in time.

  “The Mirror didn’t put my soul into this body, so it wouldn’t rip it out to replace it with the body’s rightful soul. I am this body’s rightful soul. Now, anyway . . . thanks to you.” He never let the opportunity to goad her pass by. She glared at him. He smiled sweetly and continued. “However, the Mirror of Souls was designed to remove any soul from any body, and to hold that soul in storage indefinitely. That’s how the rest of the Dragons and I weathered the centuries.”

  “So someone could use it to pull you out of your body—if they knew about you.”

  “If the operator knew how to perfor
m a removal.”

  Danya studied him thoughtfully. “Is it difficult?”

  “No.”

  “Pity I don’t have the Mirror of Souls.”

  “Isn’t it?” His eyebrow arched, and he said, “Perhaps you can entertain yourself with fantasies of reaching the Mirror before the people who have it destroy it. You can imagine getting hold of it and turning it on me and tearing my soul free from the moorings of this flesh—that picture ought to sustain you through the long journey ahead of us.”

  Danya turned and walked away from him, and this time he let her go. He laughed at her, but she thought, Well, yes, I can hope to get to the Mirror, you hellbeast. I’d take great pleasure in seeing you die, and greater pleasure if your death was at my hands.

  In the meantime, she had an army to raise and an enemy to conquer. And vengeance to mete out. She could cherish the thought of Luercas’s death while working alongside him. In fact, she thought that doing so would make their whole forced relationship much more tolerable.

  Chapter 13

  Kait looked up at the creak of the door. Ry staggered into the room, gray-faced and sweating, half-leaning on a lovely young girl. The girl said, “He passed out in the carriage, and it was all I could do to get him up the stairs.”

  Kait managed to get to her feet and helped the girl to get Ry to the bed. “How do you feel now?”

  He sprawled and closed his eyes. “I’ll survive. You beat them, didn’t you?”

  Kait nodded. “Dùghall found out how to use the Mirror. He told me.”

  “And waited until I was gone, sneaky bastard.”

  “You couldn’t have helped. And you had something to do that only you could do.”

  “I’ll still break his skull the next time I see him. You shouldn’t have had to face that alone. I should have been here with you.”

  Kait didn’t point out that Ian had been with her. That, she thought, would be terribly undiplomatic. Instead she said, “The Dragons are defeated. Gone. And you are here with . . .”

  “Ulwe,” Ry said. He managed to sit up. “Ulwe, I present to you Kait Galweigh, who is my love and who will someday be my parata. Kait, I present to you Ulwe Sabir, daughter of Crispin Sabir, who gave me news you don’t want to hear.”

  Kait arched an eyebrow and glanced quickly from Ulwe back to Ry.

  Ry read her look. “Ulwe knows I’m not her father. She knew it even before I got to her. She . . .” He shrugged. “She uses some magic I’ve never seen before.”

  “It isn’t magic,” Ulwe said. “I have no magic about me.”

  “You knew I was coming before I arrived,” Ry said. “You knew that I wasn’t your father. You told me that Crispin was after us. How else could you have known any of those things but by magic?”

  Ulwe said, “I’m a be’ehan khan jhekil. A roadwalker. And I know you named me with my birth father’s name, but that is not my name. I’m Ulwe Foxdaughter Walks-the-Road, of the Seven Monkey People.” Her smile as she said this was a very adult, knowing smile. “Names matter to the Seven Monkey People. I had to work hard for mine.”

  Ry nodded to the girl and said, “My apologies. I would not willingly have named you wrongly.” He smiled at Ulwe and asked, “But what is a roadwalker?”

  The girl pulled off her shoes, climbed onto the bed, and tucked her feet beneath her. With her hands folded in her lap, she said, “If you stand in the center of a still path, the path seems empty to you. You think of that path as going to different places that you might wish to be. But the path doesn’t go to those places. It is there already—the path that is still where you are standing is a busy road thirteen leagues away, and twenty-three leagues beyond that, it is the very heart of a busy city. The same road that feels your slow footsteps is at that same instant feeling the footsteps of uncounted others on its body. The road lives. It listens. It hears voices and thoughts and feelings. And if you know how to ask it, it will tell you what it hears.” She gave them an apologetic smile. “I’m not a very good roadwalker, though. My nante can hear the road’s voice from anywhere that it goes. I can only hear the near voices. And I can’t hear old stories—only new ones. The road can tell me what it heard yesterday, or sometimes what it heard the day before . . . but I can’t hear what it says of those who walked it a month ago, or a year ago.” She sighed. “But I’m human, so it’s harder for me.”

  Kait and Ry exchanged startled glances.

  “Who isn’t human?”

  “My nante. I told you—I was adopted by the Seven Monkey People.”

  Kait shrugged and spread her hands palm up. “I don’t know of them.”

  “My father sent me to Stosta when I was an infant. I don’t know what happened to my mother, but considering what I’ve found out about my father, I imagine she’s been dead a long time. A wet nurse accompanied me, but she died shortly after she and I reached the city of Stosta, and there were no wet nurses available among the Stostans—we arrived in a plague time, and the same sickness that killed my wet nurse had left many others dead as well. Orphaned infants would have been nothing but a drain on the survivors. So I was taken to the parnissery, where my papers were given to the parnissa. I was to be exposed, and news of my death sent back to Calimekka.

  “But my nante—her name is Kooshe, which means fox—came through the gates of the city and walked straight to the parnissery. When she arrived, she demanded to see the parnissa. She told him that she had come for the baby. A number of orphaned babies were there, lying naked on the stones of the inner courtyard. A few of them were already dead, others were still quite healthy. I was in between—I had been outdoors overnight by that time, had not been fed in two days, and was weak and sick.

  “The parnissa directed her to the healthy babies and said she could have her pick, but she said she had come for the baby that had crossed the Western Water.

  “She walked straight to me, picked me up, and told the parnissa she wanted my things. She said that she would care for me until it was time for me to go home.”

  Kait said, “She knew you were there?”

  “The road told her. The road brought her to me.”

  Ry said, “So this stranger came out of nowhere and saved your life. Why?”

  “The road told her my story, and when she listened, she decided that it was time for the Seven Monkey People to meet a human. She took me to the Seven Monkey People’s kezmoot, their hidden clan city, and the People healed me and fed me. When I was old enough, Kooshe taught me to walk the road with her, telling me always that when I returned to the city of my father, the road would tell me how to survive. And when at last the message came from my father that I was to come home, Kooshe put me on the ship that brought me here, and stood on the dock waving until the ship sailed out of sight.” Kait saw tears form in the corners of Ulwe’s eyes.

  Ry looked startled. “You sailed all the way from the Sabirene Isthmus to Calimekka by yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t she come with you?” Ian asked. “That’s a terrible voyage for a child alone.”

  Ulwe’s smile became sad. “This place would be death for her. In this city, she would be called Scarred, and the road has told me what happens to the Scarred.”

  Ry and Kait exchanged glances. Ry said, “But if she was clearly Scarred, how could she enter Stosta? How could she enter a parnissery and demand that she be given a human baby—and why would the parnissa give it to her?”

  Kait added, “No Scarred can enter the gate of a parnissery and live—that’s the law.”

  Ulwe looked from Kait to Ry and back to Kait. She said, “The two of you still live, and both of you are Scarred.”

  Kait’s skin crawled. Ulwe had looked at the two of them—looked through shields and careful disguise and lifetimes of passing as pure human, and had divined their secret. She had blurted out the secret that meant their death if it was discovered. She might only be a child, but she was a dangerous child. Kait said, “We look human, and the parnissas don’t
know about us.” Her mouth tasted bitter with the sudden rush of her fear.

  Ulwe said, “The Stostans don’t know the Seven Monkey People exist. They think they are alone in the Red Hills. The Seven Monkey People can make themselves hard to see—when they don’t want to be seen, they can . . . bend a picture of the world around them.” She gave an apologetic shrug. “I have never been able to find words for this. And I can’t do it, so I can’t show you.”

  Kait thought it sounded a bit like shielding. She nodded, but said, “She spoke to the parnissa in order to get you, though.”

  “When they must be seen, they can make people believe that they are what the people would like them to be. For a short time, anyway. And if there aren’t very many people. One person alone is easy for them. Two or three is still not too bad. More than that and the . . . trick . . . doesn’t work very well. My nante doesn’t look human. But the road told her when one parnissa would be there alone—the one who hated to hear the babies crying as they lay on the cold stones. She went to him when he was tired, when he felt guiltiest that he wasn’t feeding them or caring for them. He wanted someone to save the babies, and was willing to believe what Kooshe wanted him to believe—that she was a human who wanted a baby of her own.”

  Ry was staring thoughtfully into space. Kait looked at him, curious about his sudden stillness. He seemed very distant. “The settlement in Stosta is ours,” he said after a while. “It’s been there for nearly a hundred years. My Family has been pulling caberra spice out of those hills, and logging in them, and gathering rubber and kaetzle and a multitude of other riches from the surrounding land, for the whole of that hundred years. I’ve read the reports from Stosta’s paraglese when they arrived with the tax ships. No one has ever seen anyone except for settlers there. No one has ever found any sign of other habitation.”

  Ulwe grinned. “The Seven Monkey People have five cities as big as Stosta within the Red Hills. Two of them you could walk to in less than a day.”