Encrypted (the emperor's edge)

by Lindsay Buroker

  Utter weariness overcame her, and she closed her eyes.

  Rias was still with her when she woke. He had removed the body and knelt on the ground with his head next to hers on the cot, his hair touching her cheek. Her breathing seemed smoother, less labored. Somewhere beyond the tent, voices rose in argument. She listened, but could not make out words. That she even noticed the goings on outside seemed a good sign.

  She wiggled her fingers experimentally. They responded. Her toes did too. Yes.

  She eased her arm from beneath the blanket before she could think to favor her shoulder, but no blast of pain accompanied the movement. Perhaps the antidote had healed the injured joint as well. She would test it later. For now, she gave in to the urge to slide her fingers through Rias’s hair. It was thick and black, save for those silver strands at his temple, and surprisingly soft.

  He lifted his head, and she let her hand drop. The shaman’s concoction might have healed her, but weakness weighted her limbs. He winced as he adjusted his position-falling asleep on one’s knees could not be comfortable-but the pained expression turned to a pleased smile when he saw her watching him.

  “ It worked,” he said.

  “ I think so,” she rasped, voice rougher than Sergeant Ottotark’s manners.

  Rias held up a finger, moved away, and returned with a canteen. He slid his arm behind her shoulders and propped her up to drink.

  “ Not so bad being sick,” she said, “when someone’s willing to carry you around and take care of you.”

  “ Well, don’t make getting poisoned your new hobby. It’s hard on-” He cleared his throat. “It’s hard.”

  Tikaya leaned against him and tried to recall the events of the day. What had brought the Nurian into the tent? Then she realized: “When you spoke so the bird could hear, talked about an antidote, that was a trick? To make the Nurian think he needed to come personally to finish the job?”

  “ A trick, yes, also known as a hopeless stab at making something happen. I feared the sawbones didn’t have antidotes in his kit, and, as it turns out, I was right.”

  “ Ah.” She shuddered to think how close she had come to dying. “Rias, if someone does succeed in killing me up here, and you make it out, will you do me a favor? Please find a way to let my parents know what happened.”

  He placed his palm alongside her face, traced her cheek with his thumb. “I’m planning on making sure you live, but, yes, of course.”

  “ Thank you.” Weariness dragged her lids down again. “I love you,” she murmured before falling asleep.

  The next time she woke, darkness still wrapped the tent, and Rias was gone. Agarik sat on a nearby cot, whittling a piece of wood.

  “ Is it still the same night?” she asked.

  “ Yes.” Agarik lifted his head. “Near midnight, I think.” His fresh scar appeared garish by the lantern light, but he smiled and said, “I’m glad you made it.”

  “ Thanks. Me too. Is Rias around?”

  His lips flattened, and he looked down, fingers gripping the carving too tightly.

  “ I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to imply-I appreciate your company too.”

  He snorted. Agarik’s annoyance surprised her since she had only seen him irritated in Wolfhump and everyone had been irritated there.

  “ Is this about…” She thought about the number of marines who knew she and Rias had shared a room in the fort. If Bocrest had said nothing of their sleeping arrangements-and why would he gossip with his subordinates? — everyone likely assumed they had slept together. “Agarik, I’m sorry, but he was married so…even if it wasn’t me…”

  Agarik waved a hand and met her eyes. “It’s not that. I mean, of course a fellow dreams, but…it’s just unfair that you don’t even know who he is and you get to be his friend.” As soon as the words came out, he winced. “Rust, that was pitiful. I sound like a child. And I should be sorry, not you.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “You almost died today, and I’m sulking because the only time my boyhood hero speaks to me is to inquire about you.”

  “ Your… boyhood hero?” Tikaya caught herself gaping and closed her mouth. “How old are you, Agarik?”

  “ Twenty-three.”

  He was younger than she had thought, but that still meant Rias had to have been someone of note for at least ten or fifteen years. Not just an officer, someone distinguished enough to have been known and discussed all over the empire. The night before she had resolved to ask Rias his name. She was tired of being in the dark. She had to know.

  “ To answer your original question,” Agarik said, “last I saw him, he was heading off to a meeting with Bocrest. The captain’s finally given up trying to keep him at prisoner status. He told the men to treat Rias like an officer for the duration of the mission.”

  Tikaya found herself gaping again. “Er, how long was I asleep?”

  “ While the captain was up on the mountain, the marines setting up camp down here had some time to chat. Things came out.” The mischievous glint in his eyes suggested the source of those ‘things.’ “Not that many men were surprised. Most of us had pieced together who he is and started deferring to him anyway. Ottotark about shi-had an accident, though.”

  She flexed her fingers and eyed her nails. “And he’s who, again?”

  She hoped Agarik would let it slip, but he shook his head. “He should be the one to tell you.”

  “ Of that I have no doubt, but he hasn’t.” He almost had, the night in Wolfhump, probably because he had not been sure they would live to dawn.

  “ Have you asked him?”

  “ Yes.”

  “ Oh.”

  Agarik scratched at his scab, caught himself, and scratched around it instead. A breeze buffeted the side of the tent. She would get the answer from Rias as soon as she saw him. No more waiting. In the meantime, there was little point to dwelling on it. She should rest, or study Lancecrest’s journal. The notes would help her along on her translations. She would love to be the one who-

  Love! Her memory triggered. She had told Rias she loved him before falling asleep. She bit her lip. Had he responded? She could not remember. Had he felt awkward? Alarmed? Dare she hope-pleased?

  Tikaya swung her legs off the cot. “I need to talk to him.”

  Agarik lifted a hand. “You can’t go anywhere. You were almost dead a few hours ago. You need to rest.”

  “ I did rest. I’m done now.” She stood and promptly fell back onto the cot, betrayed by straw legs.

  “ Really,” Agarik said dryly.

  “ I just need to get my muscles moving.” She stuck her legs out. Maybe a few ankle rotations and toe wiggles would improve the blood flow.

  “ Rias will be back by morning, I’m sure. You should rest.”

  “ I need to talk to him now. It’s, uhm…” Tomorrow they would be surrounded by squads of men again. She needed to talk to him tonight. Alone. And she was not about to explain that to Agarik. “I need to see if he has the journal I recovered,” she said instead. “I want to study it further before we go into the tunnels.”

  “ It’s the middle of the night, Tikaya.”

  “ Night is eighteen hours long here. It’s always the middle of the night.”

  “ You’ve a point there.” Agarik stood, head brushing the rafter of the tent. “I’ll get the journal for you if you stay here and rest, all right?”

  She smiled at him but did not answer. Whatever got her nanny out of the tent so she could leave.

  Agarik unfastened the flap and slipped out. An icy draft reminded her to dress fully before venturing outside. Fortunately, someone had piled her gear at the end of her cot where a portable stove burned. She checked for the journal in case Rias had tucked it in there, but he probably placed it elsewhere to make sure the Nurian would not find it.

  Outside, stars and a half moon brightened a wedge of sky framed by steep canyon walls. They must have arrived at the canyon where the tunnels began.

  A bonfire
blazing in the center of camp snapped and launched sparks into the air. Five tents, large enough to hold cots for all, stood back from it. The sleds lay between her tent and the next, and the dogs had burrowed into the snow and slept with their noses tucked under their thick, fluffy tails. A surprising number of men were still awake and chatting fireside. Or perhaps they were awake again. Rias must have kept the camp quiet and had the men feign sleep to draw in the Nurian. A ceramic jug passed from hand to hand, and laughter gave the atmosphere a jovial feel, though some of the chortles sounded strained. No doubt rumors abounded concerning the tunnels, and, after the deaths they had seen, the men must suspect not all of them would make it out again.

  Tikaya stood, breath fogging the air before her eyes, wondering where to find Rias. She considered the other tents. Three stood dark, but light seeped from beneath the flaps of hers and one other-might that be a command tent?

  She padded to the entrance and debated whether to peek inside or wait for him to come out. If Bocrest led the meeting, he would not appreciate her interruption. She lifted her hand but let it hang as she considered how one knocked on a tent.

  The flap peeled back, and one of the sergeants almost crashed into her.

  “ What’re you doing?” He lowered his brows and glared at her. “Spying?”

  “ Huh? I mean, no, I-” She looked at her still raised hand as if that would explain her intent.

  “ Who is it?” Captain Bocrest asked from within.

  “ The woman,” the sergeant said over his shoulder. “Standing outside, spying.”

  “ I’m not spying!”

  “ I got to piss.” The sergeant shoved past her. “Out of my way, girl.”

  “ It’s Tikaya,” she informed his back.

  He threw a rude gesture over his shoulder. No one called to invite her into the tent, but she walked in anyway. Six marines, Bocrest and his senior ranking men including a scowling Ottotark and the sawbones whose brother she had killed. No Rias. She swallowed.

  “ Sorry, for interrupting,” she said, “but I’m looking for…that journal. I thought it’d be useful to finish translating it before we head in.”

  The glowers facing her seemed more suspicious than her presence called for after what she had been through with these men.

  “ For our benefit?” Ottotark growled. “Or so you can deliver it to the archaeologists inside?”

  “ I don’t know what you’re talking… Oh.” She recalled the Nurian’s speech before he had tried to kill her. Those moments when she had been so close to death were fuzzy, but she did remember archaeologists being mentioned. Rias must have relayed the information. “I don’t know who’s in there. There are a lot of archaeologists in the world.” Though she had to admit that at least half of the renowned ones came from the Kyatt Islands and most of the other half had studied there at one point or another. “Chances are I don’t know any of them, if that’s what you’re worried about-the folks I know aren’t the types to go hunting for ancient weapons caches. And, anyway, I wouldn’t betray Rias.”

  “ You, the cryptomancer who slagged us all in the war, wouldn’t betray ‘ Rias?’” one of the sergeants asked.

  “ Quiet, Karsus,” Bocrest said. “He hasn’t told her.”

  “ No? Oh, yes, that relationship’s going to work.”

  The ire in the room evaporated and was replaced by sniggers. Tikaya set her jaw. She preferred the hostility. This was one more reason for her to talk to Rias tonight. She was damned if she was going to be the only one in camp who did not know.

  Bocrest reached into the rucksack beside his cot and pulled out the leather journal. He tossed it to her. “Go. Figure out what’s in there that’s worth torturing people over.”

  Naturally, she bumped into the returning sergeant on her way out. He growled at her, and she skittered away with an apology. She stopped a few paces beyond, bent over, hands on her knees, fatigue making her limbs heavy.

  What further cane fields would she have to harvest for these Turgonians to prove she was sold on working with them? Then again, was she? She cared what happened to Rias and Agarik, but she would not cry over the rest if an avalanche swallowed them. What if she did encounter scholars she knew and respected inside? Men and women-how she missed having female colleagues to talk to! — with a ship anchored somewhere, a way back home. What if she did have a chance to switch sides?

  “ Tikaya?”

  She straightened and turned toward Rias’s concerned voice. She hoped the darkness hid the guilty flush that heated her cheeks.

  “ Is something wrong?” He wore parka, cap, scarf, and he even carried snowshoes and a rifle. Where had he been? Scouting the tunnel entrance? “I thought you’d sleep until morning.”

  “ I, uhm, wanted to talk to you.” She had been looking all over for him, but had not given much thought to what she would say.

  “ Of course.”

  Rias leaned the rifle and snowshoes against the side of a tent, and she joined him in the shadows, wanting to be out of eyesight if anyone else from the meeting came out to relieve himself. He wrapped her in a hug, and she slid into his arms, though the amused eyes of the men in the tent nagged her mind. She had to know. Tonight. She waited for Rias to release her, but he held her in silence for a long moment, arms tight. She breathed in the tang of weapons cleaning oil and black powder mingling with his warm male scent. Men laughed around the fire, trading jokes, boasting of brave feats.

  “ I’m sorry,” he finally whispered.

  Sorry? Was that in response to her proclamation of love? He was sorry he didn’t love her back?

  Then he added, “I used to be faster. You shouldn’t have been-I should have seen the condor sooner.” He sounded so distraught. It brought a lump to her throat.

  “ Oh, Rias.” Tikaya wriggled her glove off and laid her hand on the side of his face. “That’s not your fault.”

  “ I should have sent you with the main party.” His own glove came off and he laid his hand on hers.

  “ I’m sure that condor could have found me down there as well as on the mountain.”

  His sigh came out as more of a grumble. “I’m tired of people trying to kill you.”

  “ I’m not an enthusiast of the trend either.”

  Rias’s other hand slid under her scarf to rub the back of her neck. She closed her eyes, letting those strong fingers knead her flesh, even as she lamented the layers of parkas and wool uniforms between them. The voices of the marines faded from her awareness. Soft breaths tickled her cheek, and she opened her eyes to find his face close. Shadows cloaked his eyes, but she sensed his intent and leaned into him, head tilted back.

  His lips brushed hers, questioning at first. Tikaya parted her lips, invited more. His kiss grew firm, confident, and she thought of the experienced warrior she had followed through the Nurian ship. Heat flared through her body, and she forgot about her questions, the camp, and the freezing air. She might have forgotten a lot more if someone had not crunched around the tent and stopped to stare.

  “ Well, well, well.” Ottotark.

  She winced and drew back. Of all the people to stumble upon them.

  “ Ignore him,” Rias breathed, nuzzling her ear.

  A small grin stretched her lips as it dawned on her that she could. If Bocrest had told the men to treat Rias like an officer, that would mean he outranked the sergeant. As much of an ass as Ottotark was, he seemed loyal to his uniform and the chain of command. Surely, he would leave them alone if Rias ordered it.

  Tikaya probably should not have looked so smug as she cast a dismissive glance Ottotark’s way, but she could not resist, not after all the torment he had thrust upon her. She slid her hands under Rias’s parka and kissed him deeply. Let the bastard watch.

  Ottotark guffawed.

  Startled, she broke away. That was the last reaction she expected. She looked at Rias, eyes questioning, but Ottotark spoke first.

  “ The captain really needs to let you live.” He was pointing a
t her, laughter punctuating his words, but his tone seemed designed to carry to the whole camp. “I’d love to accompany you back to your island so I can tell your mom and pop that you were out here fucking Fleet Admiral Saskha Federias Starcrest, the man who personally recommended taking over your islands to the emperor.” Now it was Ottotark’s turn to be smug. Very smug. “But don’t let that stop your plans for the evening. I can see you’re enjoying yourself. Carry on.” There was far too much pleasure in the cruel sneer he launched at them before walking away.

  Tikaya felt lightheaded. She had to remind herself to breathe. All she could do was stare at Rias’s shoulder.

  “ I’m going to kill that man,” he said.

  No denial. No explanation about how Ottotark was wrong. No claim that it was a lie.

  “ You were right,” Tikaya choked. “My people have heard of you, and you’d never be welcome on my island.”

  She stepped back.

  Rias grasped her arm. “Tikaya, please. Let me-”

  Shaking her head, she pulled her arm free. She had to get away. She had to think. She had to-she didn’t know.

  “ I’m sorry,” Rias called after her.

  She stumbled, not sure where to go. Not back to the fire and the marines. If she returned to her tent, Agarik would be waiting to yell at her for leaving. She definitely did not want to go anywhere she would have to look at Ottotark. But neither could she go out where yetis and wolves and grimbals waited to devour silly girls thousands of miles from their homes.

  Tikaya finally sat down behind the sleeping tent. She drew up her knees and buried her face in them. She ought not be so stunned. There had been clues all along. She just hadn’t wanted to see them. Had she really thought someone who so readily took command and led the way into battles was an engineer? That love of mathematics made him the best cursed strategist of his generation. Starcrest. How often had his name come up in the documents she decrypted? The youngest fleet admiral in the history of the empire. The man who, as a captain, had been responsible for the sinking of a hundred Nurian ships. And the man who, as an admiral, had guided every battle, every skirmish that allowed the Turgonians to again and again best the preeminent mental scientists in the world, with only mundane technology on their side. It was not until after his death that the tides had turned, ending in a stalemate. Yes, his death. She vividly remembered decoding a note that said a Nurian assassin had killed the admiral. He was supposed to be dead, not exiled. That was why she had never considered her Rias might be the legendary admiral.