Encrypted (the emperor's edge)

by Lindsay Buroker

  “ I’ll risk it.” Rias rested a hand on her shoulder. “Keep your back to me in case they’re invisible again.”

  She sandwiched between him and the other launch, with the smokestack guarding their right side and his sword ready on the left.

  “ The sand,” Rias said, “is for throwing at the invisible attackers? Will it disrupt the spell?”

  “ Possibly, if I catch them by surprise, and their concentration lapses, but if nothing else it’ll outline them for a few seconds until they compensate.”

  His rumbled, “Ah,” sounded pleased.

  On the rear horizon, a third Nurian ship floated into view.

  “ Rust,” Rias spit. “He needs to take down one of those ships before the reinforcements arrive. Come on, Bocrest. Think. Don’t be so stodgy and predictable.”

  A fiery projectile the size of a cannon ball arced toward them. Tikaya tensed. It clipped the yard closest to their smokestack, and shards of wood rained upon them.

  She gulped.

  “ You all right?” Rias dusted splinters off the top of her head.

  “ Yes, but it’s inconsiderate of these Nurians to muss my hair. I’d at least like to look good when your people toss me on a funeral pyre.” Her attempt at nonchalance might have worked if her voice had not cracked on the last word. When she had been fleeing the Nurians, she had been too busy to worry about her mortality. Standing here gave her too much time to think, to wonder if she might very well dodge the assassins only to fall to a random cannonball.

  “ Don’t worry,” Rias said. “No funeral pyres at sea. We just wrap your body in your hammock and toss you overboard. Only the fish will judge your hair.”

  “ I’m vastly reassured, thank you.”

  Rias chuckled.

  Oddly, his blase attitude did reassure her. If he was not worried, maybe she did not need to be. She leaned back against him. If not for the guns roaring and the lightning streaking the night, she might have noticed the heat of his chest against her shoulders, the lean hard muscles beneath his clothing, and the gentle breaths stirring her hair. Actually, she noticed them anyway.

  “ Rias?”

  “ Yes?”

  His murmur was soft, close to her ear, and a thrum warmed her body. Focus, she told herself.

  “ Do you want to escape or not?” she asked. “If you don’t… Well, that’s your prerogative, but it’d help me to know. I’ve mentioned it a couple times tonight, and, even though I chanced upon you breaking out of your cell, you seem to be more interested in what’s going on with the battle than getting out of here. I can’t help but think that it’s handy how we’re standing next to a couple boats, and the marines are all preoccupied.”

  “ It’d be suicidal to launch a boat into the middle of the Nurians,” he said. “Besides, based on the knots-per-hour average of this ship, the days it’s been since you were brought on board at the Kyatt Islands, and our northeasterly direction, I estimate us more than a thousand miles from the mainland. There aren’t many archipelagos in this part of the ocean. It’s likely we’d die of thirst before making land. Also…”

  “ What?”

  His long exhale tickled the back of her ear. “The fact that the Nurians are trying to kill you makes me believe we really need you.”

  “ We?”

  “ The empire. Bocrest’s family has been personally loyal to the throne for a long time. That Emperor Raumesys picked him over brighter men suggests this is a very sensitive mission. My people may have unearthed something that’s put them in danger. If the Nurians have found out, well, they’d be the first to help us on our way to the black eternity.”

  Tikaya pressed her hand against the cool wooden siding of the launch, dread curling through her gut for a new reason. If the Turgonian emperor had walked onto her plantation and asked for her help, she would have told him to shove sugar cane into his anal orifice. But Rias asking her to stay and help…

  She shook her head. She hardly knew him. And he was one of them. Surely, she owed him nothing.

  “ How can the empire’s fate even matter to you?” she asked. “After they condemned you and left you to die?”

  “ Strange, isn’t it? By the emperor’s decree, I’m dead to my family, my friends, everyone I ever knew, but it was the emperor who cast me out, not them. I still care that they are well, and I’m not sure the orchards where I grew up will ever stop being the place my mind conjures when someone says home.”

  Tikaya cleared her throat and tried to sound offhand when she asked, “Family?”

  “ Parents, brothers.”

  “ No children?” No wife?

  “ My wife didn’t want them.”

  So, there was a wife. The intensity of her disappointment surprised her.

  “ Ex-wife,” Rias said, as if reading her thoughts. “I know you owe nothing to me, Tikaya-in fact, I owe you a couple favors. But if you would stay and decipher the language and help-I can’t believe I’m saying this-help Bocrest solve whatever problem my people have gotten themselves into, I’d…”

  The request she had dreaded. She swallowed and waited.

  “ I have nothing I can offer you.” He sighed. “Not even my protection since I’m even more a prisoner than you. All I can promise is that I’ll do everything possible to ensure you escape and can return to your island afterwards. I imagine you have family you miss, people who are worried about you.”

  “ Yes.” If she died out here, would anyone even tell her parents what happened?

  “ Children?” he asked in the same offhand tone she had used.

  “ No.” Then, feeling the need to lay everything out, she added, “My fiance was killed on a science vessel that went down near the end of the war.”

  “ Oh.” A long beat passed, probably because he did not want to know the answer to the next question, but he asked anyway: “How did it-who sank it?”

  “ Your people.”

  She felt his shoulders slump behind her.

  “ I’m sorry,” he said.

  A twinge of guilt wound through her; it was not as if he had done it. If he had been on that penal island for two years, he would have missed the last year of the war, the year when things unraveled for the Turgonians and their people stopped paying attention to Kantioch Treaty dictates. Yet she could not bring herself to say it was all right. It wasn’t. It never would be.

  The attack had slowed, and Tikaya felt a stirring of hope, but then another set of lights appeared on the inky horizon. Another ship, bringing the total to four. The captains had probably just paused to confer-deciding on a final strategy-through communications practitioners. The attack would resume with all four ships joining in, and even the sturdy ironclad would sink under that assault.

  “ How come none of your people know about this shindig going on in the middle of the ocean?” Tikaya asked.

  “ I don’t know.”

  A great swirling gust of wind tugged at her dress and whipped loose strands of hair into her mouth. She looked up at the stack. The smoke was not affected, meaning the disturbance was localized.

  “ Nurian magic!” Rias wrapped his arm around her.

  A flash of yellow burned Tikaya’s eyes, and vertigo washed over her. A final burst of wind railed at her, her stomach dropped, then silence engulfed her.

  She blinked and tried to wipe away the yellow dots swimming before her eyes. Bile churned in her throat, and she forced a swallow. The world came back into focus.

  She was belowdecks, not in the ironclad but in a wooden vessel. She stood in a storage space full of Nurians pointing short bows at her, arrows nocked and drawn back. Crates, barrels, and a number of confusing machines, or perhaps practitioners’ contraptions, fenced the large hold. Rias still had his arm around her, and he held the sword out before them, but it did not matter with so many weapons pointed their way. A smug woman in black robes smiled in triumph.

  “ There, that’s easier,” she said in Nurian.

  She lifted a finger toward the bowme
n and opened her mouth.

  Tikaya scrabbled for something to say, something to sway the woman from giving the kill order.

  “ Don’t tell them,” Rias blurted in Turgonian.

  Barely, just barely, Tikaya managed to keep the bewildered expression off her face. The practitioner halted, finger still lifted, and frowned at Rias.

  “ I won’t,” Tikaya whispered back, also in Turgonian.

  “ They’ll torture us if they know what we know,” he stage whispered.

  Did the Nurian understand? None of the expressions on the bowmen’s faces had changed, but an assessing mien narrowed the woman’s eyes. Yes, she understood, and Rias must be counting on that, trying to pique her interest long enough to have a chance to do something.

  Tikaya lifted one placating hand and stepped toward the woman. “I understand you have orders to kill me,” she said in Nurian as she slipped her other hand into her pocket, “but I’m sure I can be of more use to you alive.” She caught the other woman eyeing Rias and added, “As can he. We’ve just escaped our cells on the Turgonian ship; we’ve no allegiance to them-they kidnapped us against our will.”

  The practitioner seemed to be only half-listening. She stepped closer, peering up at Rias, whose head brushed the ceiling of the hold.

  “ You look familiar,” she said in heavily accented Turgonian. “Who-”

  Tikaya hurled a handful of sand, and the woman gasped, swiping at her eyes. Rias lunged past Tikaya, pushing her to the deck. His body coiled, then he sprang, whipping the sword through the practitioner’s neck with a grunt.

  He landed and charged, taking advantage of the startled silence gripping the hold.

  For a stunned moment, Tikaya lay on her belly, staring at the decapitated head, the still-twitching body, and the blood. So much blood.

  The Nurians recovered, and bows twanged. An arrow grazed Tikaya’s arm and pinned her sleeve to the deck.

  “ Move,” Rias barked. “Find cover.” He was already attacking a third man.

  Yes, cover, of course.

  Tikaya tore her sleeve free and rolled toward the closest set of legs. An arrow thudded into the deck an inch from her ear. She kicked as hard as she could, and her heel smashed the inside of a man’s knee. He yelped and collapsed on her.

  Her first instinct was to shove him away, but another arrow slammed into the deck near her head. She tried to stay under him, to use him as a human shield. He drew back to punch her. An arrow lodged in his shoulder.

  “ Not me, idiot!” he screamed.

  He thrashed, still on top of Tikaya as he clawed at the shaft. A wayward elbow nearly tore her spectacles from her face. His frustrated cries of pain reverberated in her ears. His face, eyes squeezed shut, mouth contorted with agony, loomed inches from her own. Fearful of more bows aimed at her, she wrapped her fingers into his shirt and kept him from pulling away.

  Rias towered over the Nurians, head brushing the ceiling beams as he lunged about the space. He slashed bowstrings and pounded through the startled archers, who-after catching their own comrades in the crossfire-were dropping their bows in favor of short swords and cutlasses. Howls of pain and rage bounced from the wooden walls.

  The Nurians stopped shooting at Tikaya and focused their attacks on Rias, obviously finding him the greater threat. She spotted a bow within reach and grabbed it. The wounded man writhed, still trying to pull out the arrow, and she rolled away from him. She pried a quiver off a fallen archer and ducked behind a chest-high wooden contraption bolted to the deck.

  Her hands shook, and it took three tries to nock the first arrow. She willed her fingers to still. She could do this. Human beings or not, they were trying to kill her.

  Her first arrow went a foot wide of its mark, thunking into the frame by the hold’s only exit. She wiped hands wet with blood and sweat on her dress and sucked in a deep breath.

  A man with a raised hatchet drew up behind Rias as he squared off with two cutlass wielders.

  Tikaya’s nerves disappeared and she let an arrow fly. It struck the attacker between the shoulder blades, and he pitched forward, crashing to the deck at Rias’s heels. The man lay still. She had found his heart.

  She swallowed, mortified by the results of her reflexive act. Rias slashed his cutlass through the throat of the last man standing before him, glanced behind at the dead Nurian, and saluted her with the sword.

  The rest of their attackers were down as well. Dead. A tremor coursed through Tikaya’s body. She could not rip her gaze from the one she killed.

  Muffled shouts echoed from deeper in the ship. Reinforcements who had heard the skirmish. Her mind processed what it meant, that more would soon burst in, that she would have to fight, but the tremor returned to her hands, and she shied away from the idea of shooting anyone else.

  She was not a killer. If her family knew what she had done…

  Rias stepped before her, blocking the view of the body and breaking her thoughts. He gripped her shoulder with a bloodstained hand. She swallowed and met his eyes.

  “ More work to do before we’re safe,” he said, voice calm and steady, commanding her attention. “You can react later. Right now, I need you to watch my back so we can live through this. Concentrate on that, nothing else, understood?”

  Before she could nod, four men burst into the hold, swords leading. A flash of silver streaked toward Rias’s head. He jerked back, and it split the air between them to land with a thunk in the wood wall. A throwing knife.

  Rias leaped away from Tikaya and charged the Nurians.

  “ Curse me.” She tore an arrow from her quiver. He had almost been killed because he was trying to keep her from falling apart. She nocked the arrow, forced her hands to still. React later. Yes. She could do that.

  Rias led the Nurians about the hold, dodging behind crates and apparatuses, slashing to keep the men at bay, and evading their attempts to surround him. With agility surprising in someone so large, he kept them in each other’s way and remained on the outskirts so he only had to face one at a time. More, he kept them from paying attention to her.

  Good.

  Tikaya lifted the drawn bow and selected the man farthest from Rias. She was not going to be the idiot who shot someone on her own side. The arrow took the Nurian in his chest, and he lurched backward, hands clutching the shaft. Horror and pain wrenched his face. Her own heart twisted in sympathy, but she smashed down the emotion. React later.

  Her next arrow felled a second man even as Rias sliced the throat of the third. The fourth skidded to a stop, realizing he fought alone.

  He backpedaled for the exit, and Tikaya had him targeted, but she hesitated. Even if he meant to run straight to his captain, how could she shoot someone fleeing?

  Rias lunged after him, and the man jumped back. His heel caught on a downed comrade, and he pitched to the deck, cracking his head on a crate.

  Rias dropped beside the man, gripping his throat, and Tikaya winced and looked away.

  “ Live or die?” Rias asked in accented Nurian.

  Surprised, Tikaya looked back.

  “ Live?” the Nurian croaked, eyes darting with fear, as if he did not expect to be that lucky.

  Rias glanced toward the door, then laid his sword on the ground while he tore pieces from the man’s colorful clothing. With quick efficiency, he gagged the Nurian and started on ankle and wrist bonds.

  “ Who would answer with die?” Tikaya asked.

  “ Most of my people,” Rias said. “To live when the rest of your team died would be an unacceptable disgrace to many.”

  With some vague sense that someone should be standing guard, she stepped over the bodies to watch the exit. Another hold stretched before her, lit by glowing orbs hanging from the beamed ceiling. No one else waited to charge.

  Rias finished the bonds, leaving the Nurian wide-eyed on the deck, and snatched arrows from partially spent quivers. When he had a fistful, he joined Tikaya.

  “ I want to take control of the ship,” he s
aid.

  “ Take control?” She gaped at the audacity. Surely, the best they could manage would be to run for the upper deck and leap over the side. But, no, who would find them in the cold, dark waters? Even if the Turgonians spotted them, and that was unlikely, they had their own troubles.

  “ We’ll have another fight when they realize what’s going on.” He held out the arrows, enough to stuff her quiver, and watched her face. “You’ve got my back?”

  She guessed at what he was really asking: can you, a philologist from an island full of peace-loving academics, keep from collapsing in a weepy heap when I need your help?

  Tikaya grabbed the arrows and jammed them into the quiver, angry with herself for that weak moment that made him question her. “I’ve had it so far, haven’t I?”

  “ Yes.” Rias gripped her forearm. “You’ve been magnificent.”

  She snorted. Right. He didn’t know how lucky he was her trembling fingers hadn’t loosed an arrow that turned him into a eunuch. “Will you still think that if I insist on taking a side trip?”

  “ What?”

  “ I want to search the captain’s cabin for orders and find out why these people are trying to kill me.” And maybe she could finally get answers about what this secret Turgonian mission was all about.

  “ We may not have time,” Rias said.

  Tikaya lifted her chin. “We’ll make time.”

  His eyebrows flicked upward, but the surprise lasted only a second. He nodded once and gave her a Turgonian salute, a fist thumped over his heart. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “ Jeela, is it done?” a tinny voice asked from the center of the room.

  As one they stared at the dead practitioner. The voice emanated from within her black robe.

  Rias pointed his cutlass. “Can you answer that?”

  “ Uhm.” Tikaya knelt by the dead woman, trying not to look at the bloody stump where the head should have been, and patted the blood-sodden robe. She found a glowing opal pendant, the chain broken, just as the voice spoke again.