“I’m not here for rum,” the marine said. “I seek the cryptomancer, and I believe you are she.”
Tikaya did not have to feign surprise. “The what?”
“The one who broke our codes during the war. The one who thwarted our best cryptographers. The one who—” his jaw tightened and a muscle in his cheek jumped, “—gave our decrypted messages to the Nurians. That meddling cost us a dozen ironclads and thousands of men.”
“Your people tried to take over our islands to serve as a strategic outpost.” Her hand flexed on the machete. “You sank more than a dozen of our ships, including a peaceful archaeology vessel with my—” She stopped herself. She might have every right to condemn this man, but it was stupid to do so when he stood across from her holding a rifle. “We wanted no part of your war. We did what we had to do to protect our freedom. I don’t know who your cryptomancer is, but I am certainly not that person. I am a simple plantation worker, helping my family grow sugar cane and make rum.”
“A simple plantation worker who speaks flawless Turgonian,” the marine said.
She stifled a grimace. If those thoughtless first moments were her undoing... “The Kyatt Islands are in the middle of many nations’ trade routes. Our children study several languages in school, and many of our people are polyglots. You’ll find the true experts working at the Polytechnic.” A place and job she had not returned to since losing Parkonis.
For the first time, a hint of uncertainty lurked in the marine’s dark eyes. She held her breath, willing him to believe her.
He eyed her up and down, and she shifted her weight, abruptly aware of how the dampness of her dress pronounced her curves. There were more things to fear from a strange man than being shot. She tried to ease backward, but dense cane blocked her.
The marine reached for his belt, and she crouched, brandishing the machete in both hands.
“If you touch me, I’ll cut off your...” Tikaya knew the Turgonian word for penis, but some cursed ancestor with a sense of humor momentarily sucked it from her mind. “Man part,” she finished feebly.
The marine’s eyebrows lifted. His hand had unclasped not his belt buckle but an ammo pouch, and he pulled out a scrap of paper. “You’re not my type, and if that’s what you people call a fighting stance, it’s amazing you can even defeat the sugar cane.”
She should have felt nothing but relief, but embarrassment flushed her cheeks. The marine approached, the paper extended. Though he did not act as threatening as he might, her muscles tensed. The Turgonians had slain hundreds of her people, including the one who mattered most.
Tikaya wanted to tell him to take his note and leave, but curiosity kept her silent. What could he possibly have come all this way to show her?
He stopped a pace away from her, holding out the paper. Reluctant to close the final distance, she did not move for a long moment. He waited. Mosquitoes whined, reminding her that darkness approached. Tikaya lowered the machete and accepted the note. Even with her suntanned skin, his fingers were dark next to hers.
Though he did not try to touch her, she sidled away to study the paper. It was not a note at all but a page of symbols. Someone had painstakingly copied complex symmetrical markings interlinked in small groupings. Her teeth caught her lip. She had seen many languages, but she had never seen this one, if it even was a language. It could be anything.
“Where did you get this?” she asked, gaze stuck to the paper. After a moment, she realized she had asked in her own tongue instead of his and switched, repeating the question.
“My commanding officer.”
“No, I mean...”
“My commanding officer,” he said again.
Tikaya snorted. “Is it a language or...” She stopped herself from saying substitution cipher. If she hoped to plead ignorance of this cryptomancer, she had best not say anything related to cryptography.
“You tell me.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve seen—” She caught herself again, this time short of admitting she had studied dozens of languages, living and dead. “We see a number of languages here on the island.”
Tikaya tried to watch him, to gauge his reaction, but the symbols kept drawing her eyes back, demanding her attention. What if it was a previously undiscovered language? Something from ruins the Turgonians had dug up on their continent? They were not a people known for archaeology, nor sharing secrets. If she were to translate a new language and bring awareness of it to the global scientific community, it would assure her a place in the history books. A tempting thought, that.
“Does it mean anything to you?” the marine asked.
“No, I don’t even know if this is logographic or syllabic or alpha...” Great Grandmother’s eyeteeth, she was saying too much again.
Indeed, the soldier watched her through narrowed eyes. Time to end this conversation and get out of these fields before darkness fell and he changed his mind about her being his type.
Tikaya held the paper out for him. “I don’t recognize it. I can’t help you. You should try at the Polytechnic.”
He stared at her, face unreadable. Cicadas began droning, and a bead of sweat slithered down her spine. Then he took the paper, returned it to his pouch, and walked away.
* * *
A pair of whale-oil lamps burned on either side of double doors marking the front of a large grassy mound. The earthen-walled structure held her family’s distillery and processing equipment, and the clank-thunk of machinery echoed from within. Tikaya paused to prop her bow against the door frame as she entered the chamber. Cool, dry air offered a reprieve from the muggy evening heat, and her steaming body welcomed it after the run from the fields.
She almost tripped over a passel of laughing, sandy-haired toddlers throwing wads of bagasse at each other. Running into her nephews and nieces usually made her smile, but now she froze, mid-step, thinking of the marine. His presence represented a threat not only to her, but to her whole family, a family big enough that they joked how it was impossible to be lonely any place on the plantation. That was why she had returned this past year. The flat she shared with Parkonis near the Polytechnic had been too empty after his death, but now she feared she had endangered them all.
“Tikaya,” her brother, Kytaer, called. He stood before a press, feeding sugar cane into the rollers. The long stalks cracked and flattened, and juice flowed into a collection bin below. “Glad you stopped by so I could warn you.”
She tore her gaze from the tussling children. Warn her? Had the Turgonian already been here?
“Professor Meilika is in the house,” Ky said. “She’s joining us for dinner. She and Mother have been conspiring all afternoon. About you. How to get you back deciphering runes on broken tablets and potsherds and all that.”
Tikaya exhaled slowly. Nothing new. Good. That meant the marine had not been by. She still had time to warn everyone and figure out what to do. No, she knew what she had to do. She had to pack. She could not stay here. If any of her family came to harm because of the role she accepted during the war, the guilt would torment her forever.
One of her nephews bumped into her leg and fell on his bottom. She picked him up before he could decide if the tumble was a big enough calamity to cry over. She swiped bagasse off his dusty trousers and directed him back into the game with a playful swat on the backside. A lump sprang into her throat at the idea of leaving them indefinitely. But for fate, she might have had little ones of her own by now.
“Children, time to wash up for dinner!” That was Ky’s wife, calling from the path, somewhere between the house and the processing plant.
The youngsters trundled out, voicing mutters of “aw” and “do we have to?”
“You’re looking particularly glum and thoughtful,” Ky said when he and Tikaya were alone. “Did Mother and Father already talk to you?”
Tikaya had seen neither of her parents since early morning, so she arched her eyebrows and joined him at the press. Like their father,
Ky shared her uncommon height. For him, though, it had always been an advantage, making him a boyhood star at swimming and running. For her... Well, at least she could reach the high book shelves in the library without a ladder.
“I heard them talking,” Ky explained. “You’re getting the wasting-the-talent-Akahe-gave-you lecture again soon. I know Father appreciates an extra hand during the harvest, but he’s worried you’ve been here moping too long. And Mother...wants you living in town again where you can find a ‘nice young man to make babies with.’”
Tikaya winced at the familiar words. Ky patted her on the shoulder.
“Sorry,” he said. “Are you all right? You look preoccupied. If you were puzzling over some ancient runes, I’d know why, but I can’t imagine the mysteries of the cane fields are putting those thoughtful creases between your eyebrows.”
“I ran into a Turgonian marine,” Tikaya said to hush her brother’s garrulousness. She usually found it endearing, but tonight his chatter grated.
Her words did the job. He gaped for a long moment before saying, “Where? When? You haven’t been to town for—”
“Here. Just now. In the north field.”
Still staring at her, Ky shoved the lever that turned off the press, and the clank-thunks faded.
“He was looking for the cryptanalyst from the war,” Tikaya went on, voice sounding loud in the new silence. She lowered it. “I think I persuaded him I wasn’t that person, but I’d be surprised if their research doesn’t lead them back to me again. Tomorrow morning—”
A clank sounded near the entrance, and a metallic canister rolled across the cement floor. Smoke billowed, and acrid fumes stung Tikaya’s eyes. Oh, Akahe, she did not have until tomorrow morning.
“What is—” Ky started.
She grabbed his arm and yanked him deeper into the distillery even as another canister clinked through the doorway. Smoke hazed the entrance, but she glimpsed men slipping inside. They did not know the layout of the distillery; that ought to be an advantage.
She led her brother past the press and around two massive molasses vats.
Ky gripped her shoulder and whispered, “Turgonians?”
“I assume so.” Tikaya tugged to keep him moving. The earthen back doors had grass growing on them; she hoped the soldiers had not recognized them as an entrance and posted guards.
They eased past copper pipes and the towering stills, and she crooked her toes to keep her sandals from slapping against the hard floor. Smoke curled into her nostrils and tickled her throat. She dared not cough.
She thought of her bow, still propped by the front door. Blighted banyan sprites, why had she even bothered carrying the thing around the last year?
In the back, rows of rum barrels lined the walls, and the double doors came into sight. She froze. They already stood open. Beyond them, in the fading light, grass swayed under a soft breeze.
“I didn’t leave the doors open,” Ky whispered.
If men waited outside, Tikaya could not see them, but that meant little. Perhaps they were crouched beside the doors, ready to pounce. Maybe they were already in the house, threatening her family. Or worse. If anything happened to her kin, it was her fault. She swallowed. She had to make sure the soldiers focused on her.
“I’ll run,” she whispered. “They should only want me.”
Even as she readied herself to sprint, Ky grabbed her arm. “No.”
A shadow moved behind him. She opened her mouth to yell a warning, but she was too late. The butt of a rifle thudded against his head, and he slumped to the floor.
Tikaya turned to run and crashed into a broad chest. Hands clasped her arms. She twisted, trying to free herself, but the steel grip held her fast.
She screamed. A hand clapped across her mouth. She tried to bite it, but the grip smothered her with its power.
A damp rag pressed over her nose. Terror roiled in her belly. She sucked in a deep breath, thinking they meant to suffocate her, but a sweet insidious odor flooded her nostrils.
Fuzziness encroached on her mind, and her thoughts scattered. Blackness tunneled her vision, and a moment later, the world faded away.
2
The ground was vibrating. No, Tikaya realized as awareness returned, not the ground, the floor. Cold, textured metal chilled her bare calves and seeped through the back of her dress. A rocking rise and fall accompanied the vibrations.
She opened her eyes to a dim, fuzzy cell. Her spectacles were missing. Unimaginative gray steel surrounded her. The monotone color marked the bulkheads and even the sturdy gate dividing her from a corridor. No portholes allowed a view of the outside, but the swells of the sea and the reverberations of a nearby engine told the story: she was locked in the bowels of a Turgonian warship.
And her brother—had the marines brought him too? She remembered the sickening thud of that rifle butt striking his head. She prayed they had left him alive, where her family could tend him, but a selfish part of her wished he was in the brig with her. The idea of being alone on a ship full of hostile marines...
She shuddered.
Tikaya rolled onto her belly. No pain lanced through her body, but stiff muscles suggested she had lain on the deck for hours.
Across the corridor, a second gate marked another cell, though darkness—and her poor vision—shrouded the interior. She stood and pressed her face between the bars. A blurry lantern burned at the base of a ship’s ladder leading up. No guards stood within sight.
She probed the small lock set in her gate. She could not even get a fingernail into the fine hole. Alas, picking locks was not a typical course in the Kyattese school system.
“Wonderful day.” Tikaya realized she had probably been on the floor throughout the night and amended the last word: “week.”
Chains clanked in the cell across the way, and Tikaya jumped.
“Hello?” she asked in her tongue.
Maybe her brother was there, or others of her people had been taken. Maybe she was not alone against the Turgonians after all. The clanks stilled, leaving only the rumbling of the engine.
“Hello?” she asked again, this time in Turgonian and this time with less hope.
Silence.
Tikaya peered into the cell. Was that a human form slumped in the back corner? She tried other languages from the islands and coastal nations on the Eerathu Sea. Nothing elicited a response.
A hatch thudded open, catching her trying yet another greeting. Boots rang on the ladder, and a pair of marines strode toward her.
“Don’t poke the grimbal, girl.” The tall man in the lead jerked a nose sharper than Herdoctan potsherds at the opposite cell.
“Grimbal?” Tikaya frowned.
“Giant shaggy predators up on our northern frontier. They’re probably the most irritable beasts in the empire, and they’ll sink their teeth into you if you get anywhere near their territory.”
Tikaya stopped herself from saying she had heard of the creature and the expression—if she hoped to deny she was their cryptomancer, she ought not appear too worldly. It was curiosity about the other prisoner that had prompted her query. Her shoulders, and her hope of denying anything, slumped when the second marine drew close enough for her to identify without her spectacles: the man from the cane fields. No doubt he had arranged her capture when she failed to convince him she was no one of consequence.
She squinted to read the name sewn on his jacket: Agarik. He stood, hands clasped behind his back, watching the other marine, his superior, she assumed, though she did not know what ranks the pins on their collars denoted.
“How’re the accommodations, Five?” The speaker—his jacket read Ottotark—rapped a baton against the mystery prisoner’s gate. “A lot better than what you’re used to of late, eh?”
There was no response, not even a tinkle of chains rattling. Despite the silence, Ottotark chuckled at his own wit. He turned his attention to Tikaya and when his gaze lingered on her breasts, she forced herself not to step back.
/> “Where is my brother?” she asked. “Is he...”
“We left him in the distillery,” Agarik said. “He’s alive.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, hoping she could trust his word.
“So, the source of so many of our troubles. A woman.” Ottotark shook his head. “Seems strange you’d be involved in military matters.”
Tikaya bit back a response about how it was hard to remain uninvolved when invaders were trying to take over one’s whole island chain.
“I reckon you just sat in an office on a beach,” Ottotark continued, “and someone brought our messages to you. Is that how it worked?” The lamplight glinting off Ottotark’s dark eyes did nothing to warm them, and a challenge hardened his voice. He resented her. Every Turgonian she encountered probably would.
She lifted her chin. “What are you going to do with me?”
“For the trouble you caused us? We’re going to kill you, of course.”
Tikaya swallowed, or tried to. Her throat constricted, and her mouth was too dry.
“Sergeant...” Agarik frowned at the other man.
Ottotark bent over, hands on his knees, and laughed. The raucous noise echoed from the metal bulkheads. “I jest—we’re not killing you. Not now anyway. We need you to translate something for us first.”
Tikaya barely kept from snorting. After what the Turgonians had done to her people—to her—she would not even help them tie their shoes.
Ottotark fished a keychain out of his pocket. “Time for you to visit the captain.”
While Ottotark unlocked the door, Agarik slipped Tikaya’s spectacles through the gate. She blinked in surprise and met his gaze as she accepted them. Nothing so friendly as a wink or a smile suggested she had a secret ally, but he seemed someone who treated people, even prisoners, with respect.
She had barely hooked the spectacles over her ears when Ottotark grabbed her upper arm and jerked her into the corridor so she fell against him. The amusement on his face, however crude, was gone now. He grabbed her breast, even as his other arm snaked around her waist to keep her jammed against him.
Beginnings: Five Heroic Fantasy Adventure Novels Page 15
