Decrypted (Encrypted #2)

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Understand?” Tikaya cried. “If I ever understand why someone would blow up a good, honorable man whose only crime was being born on the other side of an ocean, I’ll shoot myself.”

  She stomped her foot onto her father’s instep. Her sandal lacked the bone-crunching heft of Turgonian combat boots, but her anger lent it power. Her father gasped and his fingers loosened. This time, Tikaya succeeded in yanking free of his grip. She sprinted down the street, pausing only long enough to tear off her sandals so they wouldn’t slow her down.

  “Tikaya!” came her father’s cry from behind.

  She didn’t glance back. With her bare feet pounding on pavement, then grass, then finally the wood planks at the beginning of the boardwalk, she sprinted toward those flames. She dodged people who were fleeing in the other direction, bumping elbows and shoulders, but barely noticing. Someone tried to grab her arm.

  “Woman, you’re going the wrong way,” a man yelled. “Get out. The whole harbor’s going to burn.”

  Not likely, Tikaya thought without slowing. The cold, calculating minds who had planted the explosion wouldn’t have wanted to harm the Kyattese people or destroy any more of their own property than necessary.

  Ahead, the height and breadth of the fire had lessened as whatever ultra-incendiary fuel it had initially been burning dwindled, but flames continued to roar and wood snapped, flinging burning shards in all directions. The breeze sent smoke inland, stinging Tikaya’s eyes. Her vision blurred, but she kept going as far as she could. Shipyard 4 and Rias’s dock were gone. Utterly and irrevocably. The docks on either side were burning, their pilings and boards charred like skeletons in a funeral pyre. A portion of the boardwalk had collapsed, and water blocked Tikaya’s route. She kept running, of a mind to jump off and swim to the remains of Rias’s dock, despite the flames licking every broken board and piling, despite the heat searing her cheeks with the power of molten lava.

  Before she reached the jumping point, a board broke beneath her foot, and her leg plunged downward. Jagged wood gouged her flesh. Pain flashed up her leg, but she scrambled back, tearing the limb free without worrying about injuring herself. She had to—

  Someone grabbed her from behind.

  Her breath snagging in her throat, Tikaya whirled. She hoped it was Rias and was ready to fling herself into his arms. But it was her father, sweat streaming down his face.

  “Tikaya, there’s nothing you can do out here except get hurt. That freak of a ship is gone.”

  “I don’t care about the slagging ship,” Tikaya growled, hardly noticing the Turgonian curse on her lips. “I have to find Rias.”

  “If he listened to me, he went back to his room before any of this happened.”

  “His room was burned down! He’s been sleeping out here.” Tikaya thrust her arm toward the flames gnawing at the scorched pilings, all that remained of Rias’s dock.

  Surprise flicked across Father’s face before he clenched his jaw in grim acceptance. “That’s unfortunate then, but he knew he wasn’t welcome. You never should have brought him here.”

  “I?” Tikaya dragged her sleeve across her eyes and nose, knowing the smoke wasn’t entirely to blame for their running. Father was putting this on her shoulders? “I shouldn’t have brought the man I love and that I plan to marry home to meet my family? I’m sorry, but I thought that was the expected thing and that it’d be appreciated more than me disappearing to Turgonia or some other Akahe-forsaken country for the rest of my life. I thought you and Mother would like to see grandchildren if we had them. I thought—” Her voice broke with a choking hiccup. She was shrieking and she knew it, but she couldn’t find control.

  “Sir, ma’am, please return to shore,” called a voice from out on the water. A fireboat had drawn near, the first of several angling toward the flames.

  Footsteps sounded on the boardwalk. Policemen were jogging toward Tikaya and Father.

  “There’s nothing we can do here,” Father said, giving her arm a tug. “Let these people handle it.”

  Tikaya curled her toes around the edge of the boardwalk, as if she could grow roots and become as immovable as a giant palm. Wood floated in the water all around them. More than wood. A body drifted out from beneath the boardwalk, face-up, sightless eyes staring at the sky, flesh burned away like wax on a candle.

  Tikaya clenched her teeth and squinted her eyes shut. It wasn’t Rias, but it was one of the Turgonians who had been helping clean up. If those men hadn’t escaped the flames, how could he have?

  Soft curses reached her ears. She caught her father saying, “…made a mess of it,” under his breath.

  Tikaya pried her eyes open. She scanned the water, not just searching for bodies but for the Freedom as well. With a wooden ship, there would have been floating boards. But the submarine was made of metal, even the detachable deck and wheelhouse. If its hull had been damaged, it would have sunk like a rock. She lifted her head. What if the body of the craft had survived the explosion? What if it was down on the bottom of the harbor, still in tact but filling with water? With Rias in it.

  “Can you help me get her home?” her father asked someone.

  With her back to him, Tikaya barely heard it. She couldn’t go home. She had to organize a search, a dredging of the harbor. And if nobody would help her, she’d dive down herself. How deep was the water there? Twenty feet? If the submarine had sunk straight down, she could—

  A hand gripped hers, and something cool came to rest on her arm. “Ma’am? There’s nothing you can do here. My men are here, and this is our job. Let us help.”

  “No, you don’t understand.” Tikaya turned and found herself staring into a policewoman’s eyes. They were sympathetic, but Tikaya didn’t want sympathy; she wanted a search team at her disposal. “It’s possible he’s still alive. We need divers to search the bottom of—” A yawn halted the rest of her sentence. How could she be tired now? She frowned down at the hand resting on her arm. The hint of something blue peaked out from beneath the policewoman’s palm. It took Tikaya a moment recognize it as one of the patches they used to subdue agitated criminals. In her own agitated state, she hadn’t noticed the telltale tingle of a Made item.

  Tikaya cursed and tried to pull her arm away, but the leaden limb barely responded. When she stepped back, she couldn’t feel her foot and she stumbled. Someone caught her from behind. Her father? No, a policeman. He gripped her armpits while the woman took her ankles. Tikaya tried to fight, but the weariness weighing down her limbs wouldn’t be bucked. They carried her down the boardwalk, away from the fire and away from Rias. Frustration charged her soul, but her body wouldn’t respond. Before they reached the end of the quay, unconsciousness robbed her of thoughts as well.

  • • •

  Tikaya woke in her room with her head throbbing and her tongue dryer than lava rock baking in the sun. Afternoon light slanted through her window. Late afternoon light. She jolted upright in bed, instantly aware of how much time had passed. Curse those policemen and curse her father for playing a role in all of this. From the very beginning, he’d been on their side. Their? She didn’t even know who they were. She had a vague notion of High Minister Jikaymar and others in the College of Telepaths, but that was it. And she still didn’t know how much of this had to do with whatever ugly portion of history they were covering up and how much had to do with Rias being Rias.

  Rias!

  Tikaya lunged from her bed and grabbed clothes from a dresser. She had to—

  “What, ’Kaya?” She paused, underwear dangling from her fingers, to consider the grim realities.

  By now, he’d either found a way to survive on his own, or…

  She didn’t want to think about or. After all that he’d lived through, all the attacks he’d endured, she refused to believe he’d succumbed to explosives planted on the dock. Unfortunately, if he was alive and well, she had no idea where to find him. She glanced at the sun outside her window. She’d been out at least twelve hours, probably more
like sixteen. Too much time had passed. He could be anywhere.

  She’d have to do what she could here and wait for him to contact her. Her thoughts went to the lock on the attic. If the answers she’d sought hadn’t been in the journal, maybe they were in those letters. She used a trip to the washout to check the house and see who was home. Mother’s humming came from the kitchen downstairs, and children’s voices drifted in through open windows, but nobody was about on the second floor.

  Tikaya fetched a few hairpins and crafted them into the tools Rias had shown her. Picking a lock that dangled over one’s head wasn’t the easiest thing, especially given that her sole expertise in the area lay in thwarting the security system on a three-hundred-year-old diary. Her arms soon burned from holding them overhead. She stuck with it, though, and a satisfying click reached her ears. She unclasped the padlock, pushed the door open, and pulled herself up. In the darkness, she had to grope her way to the spot where she thought she’d left the rapier and satchel. When she patted around and didn’t find anything, she grew concerned that Father had removed the items—curse her, why hadn’t she done this days ago? She clenched her jaw, determined that she’d search her parents’ bedroom if she had to, but she remembered that she’d tucked the rapier and satchel down out of sight. She dipped her hand between two pieces of furniture and found the items. As soon as she had them, she scurried out of the attic. She dropped as softly as she could into the hallway below, then winced when the door fell shut above her with a thunk. Afraid the noise would draw someone, she stuck the sword scabbard and satchel between her legs and reached up to slip the lock back into place. It snapped shut, and she turned to head to her room, only to halt in her tracks.

  Her mother stood in the hallway, not three feet away.

  “Uhm,” Tikaya said. “Good afternoon?”

  “After the night you had, I doubt it.” Mother regarded the scabbard and satchel. “Let’s talk, dear.”

  Trying not to feel like a child caught stealing cookies from the jar, Tikaya rearranged her purloined gear and trailed Mother down the hallway. She eyed the stairs, thinking of bypassing the lecture and heading out to look for Rias, but Mother might have information that could prove useful in finding him.

  They entered Tikaya’s room. Mother sat on the side of the bed and patted the quilt next to her. Tikaya shook her head. She couldn’t sit. She set the sword down and paced.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Tikaya.”

  “Oh.” Mother didn’t realize that Rias wasn’t dead. Or at least that Tikaya refused to accept that Rias was dead, not until she saw the smashed remains of his submarine and his body washed up on the beach. The image pumped a fresh feeling of dread into her. What if those things had happened while she’d been unconscious? What if Mother knew for certain of which she spoke?

  “He seemed… Well, he’s not what I’d envisioned when I told you to bring me home a son-in-law and a father to my grandchildren, but I saw that he made you happy.”

  “Yes,” Tikaya murmured, even as she sought a way to end this conversation. If Mother wasn’t going to object to her pilfering artifacts from the attic, she wanted to get on with examining them. She fiddled with the strap on the dusty satchel.

  “Now that he’s gone, it’d be wise if you stopped investigating whatever it is you’re investigating.” Mother eyed the desk. “I didn’t say anything about the skull, but—”

  Tikaya lifted her head. “You saw that?” She’d been careful to hide it every time she left her room.

  “I dust in here, dear. I’m fairly certain I came in to collect dishes several times last week without you noticing. You’re not the tidiest of people when you’re wrapped up in a mystery.” She held up a hand before Tikaya could voice an objection. “As I was saying, whatever history you’re trying to dig up, I get the feeling everyone would prefer it didn’t surface.”

  “I’ve gotten that feeling too.”

  “And?”

  “And that makes me all the more curious to know what everyone’s hiding.”

  Mother shook her head slowly. “That curiosity is what got your young man killed.”

  He’s not dead, Tikaya almost said, but she didn’t know that. Not truly. She closed her eyes. What if…?

  A touch on her arm brought her mind back to the room.

  “Let this one go, Tikaya,” Mother said. “It’s not worth dying over. And your father’s worried that’ll happen to you.”

  “Father knew. He knew about the explosion at the dock. Ahead of time.”

  “And he tried to save you, to pull you away from there, didn’t he?”

  “Mother, do you know what it is they’re trying to hide? And who exactly is involved? Is Father…?” Tikaya closed her eyes. She didn’t want to believe her own father could be responsible for an attempt to murder Rias, but…

  “I don’t know, and he won’t tell me.” The bed frame creaked as Mother shifted her weight. “You know I married into the family, so I’m not an original Komitopis. Even after all these years, it’s possible there are family secrets I haven’t been privy to.” She glanced at the sword on the bed. “Your father’s not sharing anything with me about this, but since you returned with Rias, he’s been tenser than a boar cornered by hunters. He did tell me that everything he’s done has been to protect the family. And you. He specifically said that you’re in danger and need to go back to researching ancient and distant cultures.”

  Tikaya sighed. “I understand, Mother. I’ll think it over.”

  She glanced out the window again. She couldn’t see the setting sun from the room, but lengthening shadows promised night would be upon them soon. Time to shoo Mother away so she could take a look at those letters. No matter what she said, Tikaya was going to get to the bottom of this. If Rias really was gone, she’d make sure she found out why he’d been murdered.

  Mother patted her leg and stood. “I trust you’ll do the right thing, dear. Just… stay safe.”

  As soon as the door shut behind her, Tikaya dug into the satchel and pulled out the letters.

  CHAPTER 16

  Night had fallen and the family had gone to sleep when a soft clack drew Tikaya from her reading. She stood up, picking her way past the two dozen letters scattered about on the floor, and checked the hallway. Darkness lay thick in the passage, and she heard nothing beyond the snores coming from her parents’ bedroom.

  “Your imagination,” she muttered, though she couldn’t help but hope Rias would stroll through the door.

  Tikaya returned to her cross-legged position on the floor amongst the letters, all recently opened. She’d felt like a deviant prying into someone’s personal wax-sealed envelopes, but none of them had ever been posted. Before she’d opened the satchel, she’d assumed they would be letters from the Turgonian soldier who had written the journal, but only one held his signature at the bottom. The rest were from other crew members, including two from the ship’s captain. The letters from the crew were addressed to wives, parents, or siblings back in the empire—the collection led Tikaya to assume that her lovelorn soldier had been chosen to take the missives ashore and post them. While a few of those letters had held clues as to the crew’s mission in Kyatt—find the ships from the long-lost colony and bring home any treasures within the holds—it was the two messages from the captain that had occupied her attention for several hours. They were addressed to a Fleet Admiral Dovecrest, and they were encrypted.

  At first Tikaya had assumed the old code would prove easy to crack—how sophisticated of cryptographers could treasure-hunting civilians from three centuries prior have been?—but the deciphering was going slowly. The admiral to whom the letters were addressed must have provided a key for the captain to use if he found anything worth sharing with the military. Naturally, that made Tikaya want to know what they contained more than ever.

  The clack sounded again.

  Tikaya lifted her head. “That’s not my imagination.”

  The noise hadn’t come from the hall
way but from outside. From the window.

  Hope poured into her limbs, and she sprang to her feet. Rias? Who else would be tossing pebbles at her window?

  She scurried around the bed, unlatched the pane, and shoved it open. A strong wind blew in from the sea, and clouds scudded across the sky, blotting out any moon that might have shed light over the yard or the cane fields beyond. With the family in bed, there weren’t any lanterns burning along the walkways, and Tikaya squinted, trying to see if someone stood below her window. She didn’t see anything, though she could make out the dark smudges that remained on the front lawn, evidence of the fire a couple of weeks earlier.

  “Over here,” came a low whisper, so soft she almost didn’t hear it over the wind, but she recognized that voice, and she almost scrambled out the window in her haste to greet its owner.

  Rias stopped her with a touch and slipped inside to join her. “It’s been raining and the roof is slippery,” he explained.

  Only the knowledge that sleeping kin occupied the adjacent bedrooms kept Tikaya from bursting into laughter—for all she knew, he’d been dead, and he thought she cared about the treacherousness of the roof? She slung her arms around him in a hold that a Turgonian wrestler couldn’t have bested and buried her face in his shoulder.

  Rias returned the embrace, though he didn’t seem as overcome with emotion—of course, he’d known all along he hadn’t been dead—for he lightly observed, “It’s good to know that news of my death wasn’t enough to force you to retreat to your bed and weep inconsolably into your pillows. I think.”

  “I knew you weren’t dead,” Tikaya said, voice muffled by his shoulder. It took another deep breath before she could loosen her grip enough to lean back and gaze into his eyes.

  “Truly? Because I wasn’t certain I was going to survive at first.”

  Indeed, a new scab ran from his forehead into his hairline, and a bruise blackened one eye. He’d changed back into the somber black Turgonian military uniform, a pistol, dagger, and ammo pouches hanging from his belt. He looked like a man ready to go to war.