The Zaanics Deceit (Cate Lyr #1)

by Nina Post

  “If you’re worried about something,” Jake said, “I think Xavier scared the forger enough to throw him off his game for a while.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he knows we’re watching him.” Jake left something on a side table then headed for the door. “My card. In case you misplaced the other one. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Don’t forget your wallet.” She slapped it on his palm. He started to say something but she closed the door after him and locked it. Within a few moments, she heard him leave on the bike.

  Cate went to the bedroom and started to unpack her bag. The first thing she pulled out was a folder that contained the black-and-white photo of her father that Benjamin gave her at his house. In the photo, her father’s hair was like a wave frozen at its white crest. His eyes were both vigilant and defensive, and his bearing was self-assured. He was dressed in a crisp collared shirt and pressed slacks. Cate didn’t know who had taken the photo. Her mother?

  She propped the photo against a vase on a table in the living room, then returned to the bag. She took out a few more things and put them on the bed, then pulled out another photo, one she used to keep in her fabric box. It was a color photo of her mother, wearing jeans and a fitted white fisherman’s sweater. Her blonde hair was cut in her usual sleek pageboy cut. Her bright gold-green eyes were amused and slightly exasperated, possibly because storm clouds loomed over Angel Island and the Bay in the background and the photographer didn’t want to let her go.

  Cate put the photo on the same table.

  The door knocker hit three times again, and she jumped, startled.

  “It’s me,” she heard on the other side of the door.

  She recognized the voice and swung the door open. “Were you waiting around for me to get here?”

  “Hello to you, too.” Benjamin stepped inside then looked around. “This is a nice little place. Good job, me.”

  “Yes, good job. Though it feels like witness protection.” So he did rent the house — or was the woman also involved? If she was, then how did they know each other?

  “Tea?” she asked.

  “Sounds delightful,” he said, but his smile was too quick and his forehead tensed.

  Cate went into the kitchen to see if there was a kettle. And tea.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked him from the opening between the kitchen and the main room. He seemed high-strung.

  “No, just … it can wait,” he said. “Let’s have some tea. That flight was interminable.”

  She found an electric çaydanlık seti, a double teapot with a larger çaydanlık as the base and a smaller demlik on the top. In a cupboard near the fridge was an unopened package of Çaykur Çay Çiçegi — black tea.

  “You’re in luck,” she called out. “I have some.”

  “I’m always in luck,” he replied.

  Benjamin had pulled her into this situation — a “war”, as the woman called it — just when she had achieved a delicate equilibrium, just when she had settled into a life that was never meant for her. A life she couldn’t have imagined before the ceremony. A life that she could see now wasn’t much of one.

  She put a few spoonfuls of the tea in the smaller kettle, poured water in the bottom kettle, then waited for the water to boil while Benjamin surveyed the house. She could reluctantly admit to herself that maybe he had done her another favor. Because as tentatively proud she was of how she got back on her feet, she had closed herself off, and now she almost felt like she had a family again.

  When the water came to a boil, she poured half of it over the tea, stirred the leaves, then let it sit for ten minutes. She peeked out of the kitchen, slightly wary of Benjamin, and concerned about his anxiety, which wasn’t like him at all. Anxiety was something she had shared with her father. He had power and wealth but lived with anxiety and suspicion (even more than she did, though most people didn’t notice it) and that left no room for genuine friendship or love. The ceremony solidified that in her mind. With all that suspicion, though, her father was still credulous enough to believe what her sisters told him.

  She poured some steaming tea the shade of dark amber into two small, tulip-shaped glass cups then added some water to the tea. The saucers she used with the cups had a cheerful pattern that looked like a flower. With tongs, she dropped two sugar cubes beside each cup.

  When the kettle turned off, she poured the rest of the water over the leaves to let it steep. Her anxiety was exhausting, taxing, and time-consuming, and it gave her a very low tolerance of risk. Even though she was in a high-risk line of work, her job was to design the jobs, not carry them out herself. She limited her risk by staying home and supervising things remotely. After that kind of rejection from her own family, all she wanted was to hide in one of those padded sumo wrestler suits so no one could get to her again. But that wasn’t what she wanted anymore. She was a Lyr, even if she was banished. She felt protective of the language and was determined to discover its secrets.

  And she wanted people in her life, so she had to take the risk. If Benjamin or anyone else would turn into an enemy, then she would deal with the disappointment when it came. If it came.

  Cate set the mug of the black çay on the counter and Benjamin took it with a wry smile. “Looks strong.”

  “It’s prepared koyu,” she said, “because I like it strong. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

  “I have tickets to the City Opera tonight.” He wouldn’t sit, and wasn’t looking at her.

  “You come here and somehow find an opera already?”

  “The Metropolitan Municipality Arts and Culture Palace is presenting Murad IV, an opera in three acts by the late Turkish composer Okan Demiriş. Have you heard of him?”

  “No. Does that surprise you?”

  “Pity, and no, not particularly. Murad was Sultan of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-seventeenth century. He was known for his brutality. Apparently, Murad banned alcohol, coffee, and tobacco in Constantinople, and violations were punishable by execution. He enjoyed patrolling the streets himself to look for rule-breakers.”

  “Let me guess,” Cate said. “He died of cirrhosis of the liver, or lung cancer.”

  “The former. But don’t worry. I can’t go.”

  “Why not?” Cate remembered something. “Wait, I have a gift for you.” She went rummaging in a bag then handed him a long box, nodding at him to open it. When he held it up, she could tell he was intrigued. “It’s a meerschaum pipe,” she said. The cream-colored mineral was expertly carved into a bearded male head with a prominent chin and traditional headdress. “I thought you could pretend to smoke it at home while you listen to …” she turned her hand up to encourage him to finish her sentence.

  “Mahler’s Symphony No. 9.” Benjamin paced. He was clearly on edge about something, or maybe he had restless energy to burn after his long flight. He gestured to the photos. “I’m glad you have those out.”

  She nodded.

  “I talked with Noah,” he said.

  “You did? And?”

  Benjamin examined the leaf of a plant. “I told him that you had to leave for a while and couldn’t be in contact with anyone.” He held up a finger. “However, I said that I could pass along a message, if he wanted to give you one.”

  “Did he?”

  Benjamin reached into his pocket and took out an envelope. He handed it to Cate, and she tore it open.

  Cate,

  Benjamin tells me that you have to leave and can’t talk to anyone, EVEN ME, but offered to get a message to you. While my imagination fills in the blanks, I want to tell you that five years ago, I hated your family’s guts. You were the only friend I had, and you weren’t in my life anymore because of them. I wanted to push them off a cliff or beat them senseless with a giant foam bat for a good part of the afternoon. But here’s the thing. You can’t disappear again. The older I get, the harder it is to make — and keep — friends. So call me. Okay?

  Noah

  She nodded and put t
he folded paper back in the envelope. “Thank you.”

  “But don’t worry about the part at the end.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s meeting us.”

  “Meeting us where? Here?”

  “No.” He stopped wearing down the rugs on the floor and paused. “I’m sorry to do this to you, Cate. You only just arrived. You probably haven’t even finished unpacking yet.”

  “Do what, Benjamin?”

  “It is critically important that we move the second Zaanics book right away.”

  “I haven’t even had a chance to translate the beginning of the first book to see what kind of havoc Gaelen’s going to wreak.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Benjamin said. “We have to leave now. I already have our tickets, and don’t argue with me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Cate thought about whether Zaanics would end up being more of a curse or more of a gift. But perching on a hill in Qaasuitsup, Greenland in December definitely made her lean towards the former, even if Noah and Benjamin were at her side.

  The bitter Arctic wind picked up speed. Cate turned towards Benjamin, who was holding the second Zaanics book. “Why do you keep asking me to go to these places with extreme climates?” she asked Benjamin through chattering teeth.

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “Qaasuitsup means ‘Place of Polar Darkness,’” she pointed out.

  “Which evens out with Micronesia.”

  “And where will you want to hide the third book — in a volcano?”

  Cate reached into her pocket and took out the note that Jake Dumont had left wrapped around his business card. The brief message was written in the same elegant script as the note she received at the hotel:

  Never forget that you are loved. Protect the language as I have protected you, and we will be together again in this lifetime.

  She put the note away and walked towards Noah, the snow crunching under her boots with each step. He wrapped his gloved hand around hers and gestured with his other hand towards the sky. In the distance, Cate saw the luminous green waves of the Northern Lights, and knew that her ancestors would be proud.

  Acknowledgments

  The following people and resources were helpful while writing this book:

  King Lear, William Shakespeare; A Concise Dictionary of Middle English, Mayhew and Skeat; A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barbara W. Tuchman; The History of Medieval Europe, Lynn Thorndike; The Masks of God, Joseph Campbell; The Divine Comedy, Dante (I, Musa; II, Sayers); City of God, Augustine; Encyclopedia of Society and Culture in the Medieval World, Pam J. Crabtree.

  Thanks to my friend Meric, who lives in Turkey, for the information and translations — any mistakes in that arena are mine, not his. My thanks to David Peterson, who not only led the creation of the language but also helped figure out how to incorporate it into the plot of the book itself. Since the language and the book were created simultaneously, this proved to be a challenging task for both of us. I am also grateful for his encouragement and edits. My thanks to my mother, for her enthusiasm and encouragement. And my profound gratitude to my husband, as ever, who consistently read and edited, who was crucial to the production of this book, and who endured my countless questions, even while brushing his teeth.

  About the Authors

  Nina Post

  Nina Post is a fiction writer who lives in Seattle. She is the author of six novels, including The Zaanics Deceit, Danger in Cat World, Extra Credit Epidemic, The Last Condo Board of the Apocalypse, The Last Donut Shop of the Apocalypse, and One Ghost Per Serving.

  To learn more about Nina, please visit her website at http://www.ninapost.com and sign up for her newsletter at http://www.ninapost.com/newsletter/.

  David J. Peterson

  Photo by Jake Reinig

  David J. Peterson is a writer and language creator. He’s worked on television shows such as HBO’s Game of Thrones, Syfy’s Defiance, Syfy’s Dominion and the CW’s Star-Crossed, and created a language for Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World. He’s also Nina Post’s biggest fan, and considers it a privilege and an honor to have worked with her on the book you hold in your hands (or that your e-reader is currently holding in its memory). He is fond of pigeons, on most occasions.

  To learn more about David, please visit his website at http://davidjpeterson.co/.