Word and Breath (Wordless Chronicles)

by Susannah Noel

  “Wait here.” He ducked out of the office and disappeared.

  Riana blinked. She wasn’t sure if she’d gotten an answer or not, but she didn’t have anything to do except wait.

  There was a book on the desk. She was drawn to it irresistibly, the way someone else might be drawn to a piece of chocolate.

  Getting up, she walked over and opened the book. It was some sort of journal. And there was handwriting inside.

  So she did what she did best. She started to read.

  “Riana.”

  She jumped at the sound of her name and whirled around, feeling ridiculously guilty.

  Then the book and her shock were completely forgotten when she saw who had just shut the door of the office.

  “Reed!” she exclaimed, with a little leap of excitement in her heart. “What are you doing here?”

  Connor’s mouth quirked. “I see you haven’t changed. Still set on reading anything that comes into your line of sight.”

  She ignored his dry comment. “Where have you been? I didn’t know if you were even alive or not. No one knew—” She broke off, realizing something that answered some of her questions. “You work for the Front too, I guess. That must be why you disappeared. I guess I should have realized it before, but you were just gone...”

  She was babbling, and she should really stop. She just couldn’t believe Connor was standing in front of her again.

  He looked almost exactly the same. Same brown hair, tousled like it always used to be. Same wire-framed glasses and corduroy jacket. Same rueful smile and kind blue eyes.

  He moved across the office toward her, bumping into the corner of the desk and then cringing self-consciously.

  Same adorable clumsiness.

  She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him until now. “Why didn’t you tell me before you left?” she asked. “I thought we were friends.”

  “We were. We are. But I couldn’t tell you.”

  She sighed and wondered what the whole story had been. Maybe later he’d have the chance to tell her.

  But now she remembered why she was here. And what had led her here. With a pang of memory, she said hoarsely, “I guess you know about Jenson, then. He saved my life.”

  “I know,” Connor said, his mouth twisting and grief rising up in his eyes. “I know he did.”

  Riana stared up at him—at Jenson’s cousin—and she realized how much Connor must have lost yesterday. As much as she’d lost herself. And she saw that, Connor-like, he was pushing his own grief into the back of his mind so he could concentrate on helping someone else.

  Something broke inside her and she let out a choked little sob. And she wasn’t sure if she’d reached out for him or if he’d pulled her into his arms.

  But she was hugging Connor, his arms tight and surprisingly strong around her, his warmth and strength both comforting and supportive.

  Memory overwhelmed her as she breathed in the smell of him, her face pressed up against the texture of his coat. She’d always loved how he smelled—half clean and half musty, like the old books her grandfather had owned.

  “I’m so sorry,” she told him, holding him as tight as she could. “I’m so sorry about Jenson.”

  He didn’t answer, but his arms tightened around her until it was almost uncomfortable.

  After a minute, she finally found the will to pull her face away and peer up into his face. His hair was messier than ever now and his glasses were sliding down his nose. “I missed you,” she said.

  “I missed you too.”

  There seemed to be something significant in the way he said the words, but she couldn’t really follow what it was.

  Then she shook it off, remembering why she was here. “So do you know who the head honcho is? I’m supposed to meet with him.”

  Connor raised his eyebrows in a look she remembered very well. “I know you are.”

  “I guess you heard I was here.” He hadn’t released her so Riana glanced over his shoulder at the door. It was still closed. “Is he always late? Is he a decent guy? Do you think I’m safe in trusting him?”

  “I think so. Riana, I probably should explain...”

  The distraction from her reunion with Connor had put everything out of her mind. But at the thought of her meeting it all started to come back to her. “Where is he anyway? Is he on one of those power-trips where he likes to keep people waiting? And why does he call himself the Librarian? Who is this guy anyway?”

  Connor pushed his fingers through his hair, mussing it even more. He straightened his glasses and cleared his throat. “That’s the thing, Riana.” He slanted her a nervous look. “He’s me.”

  Ten

  “What?”

  Connor was a little troubled by Riana’s baffled, disbelieving expression.

  He’d assumed she would understand that he was the Librarian as soon as he entered the office. But, underlying her shock and confusion, she’d been so clearly happy to see him that he’d been too pleased and gratified to worry about her misunderstanding his presence there.

  But then he’d told her outright, and she still couldn’t comprehend it. Her huge eyes searched his face, unable to understand what he had told her. Obviously, it was beyond her ability to process that he could be the hidden leader of the Front.

  Not very flattering, actually. Now that he thought about it.

  “I’m the Librarian,” he explained. “Me. I’m the one you came to meet.”

  “But...” Her forehead wrinkled as she frowned up at him. “No. That can’t be right.”

  Connor still had his arms draped loosely around her waist, and he couldn’t help but love how her body felt pressed against his. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to hug her. He’d let go too much of the tight rein he had on his feelings—not just for her but for everything. He’d taken comfort in her for a minute, but he was having too much trouble now pulling himself back to the tasks at hand.

  One of which was convincing her that he was who he said.

  He dropped his arms back to his sides and did his best to clear his mind. If only he wasn’t so tired. It was getting so difficult for him to concentrate. “It is right. As absurd as it must sound, I’m the Librarian.”

  His voice sounded just slightly bitter—instead of the wry self-deprecation he was going for. She picked up on it immediately, scanning his face with an expression that was still perplexed, although now also a little bit anxious.

  “But you only disappeared three years ago. I thought...”

  “Most of the rumors going around about me are exaggerated or fabricated. I wasn’t a mercenary soldier, and I wasn’t responsibility for the downfall of the Union’s Project Eight. And I only came on the scene a little less than four years ago.”

  “Oh.” Riana jerked her gaze away from his and stared fixedly at a spot on the floor as she tried to sort out this new enigma. “But...”

  Connor let out a long breath. Obviously, she had never conceived of him as anything like an authority, a strategist, or a hero.

  It was only to be expected though. He wasn’t any sort of white-knight figure. And she’d only known him as an absent-minded Reader who was always mostly tongue-tied around her.

  “Kelvin,” he called out, in a brief order that made Riana start.

  Kelvin poked his head into the office.

  “Can you please verify for Ms. Cole that I am the leader here?”

  Snorting in amusement, Kelvin said to Riana, “Doesn’t look like much, does he? But he does all right. And we like to indulge his delusions of grandeur by occasionally listening to his instructions.”

  The words were teasing and sardonic, but—for some reason—they were the things that finally must have convinced her.

  Riana gasped and stared up at Connor, something like awe in her eyes.

  Connor found that expression even more uncomfortable than he had her disbelief. “Like I said,” he muttered, “The rumors have gotten way out of hand.”

  “But...but...”
She sank to the couch, as if her knees couldn’t hold her up any more. “How did it happen?”

  Relieved the truth had finally registered with her, he sat down beside her and explained, “Not by any intention of mine. You know how it was several years ago—there was a lot of anti-government sentiment around and a lot of different groups aimed at reformation or revolution. I got involved with one of them. And pretty soon I started taking on more and more responsibility. That was when the Librarian rumors got started. Then I realized I was putting all my friends and family in danger, so I went underground. Without a public identity, I had more freedom than most. And eventually the anti-government groups were able to unify under one purpose. Somehow I kept getting pushed to the forefront and...” He shrugged, mildly embarrassed even by this understated version of his process of leadership in the Front.

  “I had no idea,” she breathed, still looking at him as if she didn’t know him.

  He missed the warm companionship of her gaze earlier, when she’d still been thinking of him as just a friend. In an attempt to get that back, he put a friendly hand on her knee. “You weren’t supposed to have an idea. That’s why I dropped off the radar without any sort of explanation to you. But the man you used to know is more me than any of the myths about the Librarian you might have heard.”

  She stared down at his hand on her knee. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Darting her eyes back up him, she seemed to recognize the truth of what he said. She nodded and relaxed a little, much to Connor’s relief.

  He was just about to let down his guard some when she suddenly stiffened her shoulders again. “So you’ve been around all this time? You knew about what happened to Jannie? And everything? And you didn’t let me know that you were—”

  “I’m sorry about that.” He winced, realizing how much his reticence might have hurt her. “I’ve been helping you all I could from the sidelines. I guess I’m so used to hiding my identity that I just didn’t...” There really wasn’t a good explanation. At least, no explanation he could give her. “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged it off, obviously too distracted by all her other worries to brood too much about any possible slight he’d given her. “So you’re going to help me get Jannie back?” She reached out to grab his arm in her urgency. “Connor, where could they have taken her?”

  He covered her hand on his sleeve with his. “I don’t know, Riana. But I’m going to do everything I can to get her back for you.”

  Crumpling a little, Riana sank back onto the couch. “How did all this happen? How did I get into this mess?”

  He leaned back too, so they were shoulder to shoulder. They used to sit that way in the break room, back when they’d both been Readers, as they talked about history or politics or mutual friends. “I don’t know. It certainly is a mess. I’ve assumed all along that it must be something connected to your grandfather. And then what Tava told me about yesterday confirmed it.”

  “So you heard about that, did you?” For the first time, Riana looked a little self-conscious. She stared forward, instead of at him, and fiddled absently with one of her braids. “Mikel said he was supposed to find out any information about my connection with the Front or reading or my grandfather. Since I didn’t have anything to do with the Front until last week, it must be connected to my grandfather and how he taught me to read. Something about the Old Language, maybe? That’s what Mikel and I thought.”

  Connor hid his bristling at the way she spoke about the Breather. “Probably so. That’s more likely than reading in general, since too many other people can do that.”

  They were silent for a minute, and Connor studied the clean, graceful lines and fair skin of Riana’s face—wondering what she knew that was so valuable to so many parties.

  “Talk to me some about what you remember about your grandfather’s teaching you to read,” he said at last, keeping his tone mild and conversational.

  “I’ve been over and over it.” She closed her eyes. He could see faint blue veins beneath the skin of her eyelids and dark shadows under her eyes.

  She must be so, so tired. As tired as he was.

  “Don’t try to figure it out. Just talk to me about it. How old were you?”

  “Around four, I guess.” She smiled—bittersweet—at the memory. “He taught me the Old Language at the same time, so I learned to read two languages at once. He didn’t have any kids’ books, so he’d use books from his personal collection. They were so heavy. I can remember their weight in my lap. I’d sit on a big chair beside him with the book almost covering me up, and my feet would stick out the other side.”

  He could see both nostalgia and a poignant tenderness in her face. She’d loved her grandfather. And she still missed him—even after all these years. “What were the books about?”

  “Oh, all kinds of boring stuff. A lot of it I couldn’t even understand. I think some of it was history. And some were collected stories—but not children’s stories. I remember one story about a married couple who were fighting.” She chuckled. “It seems crazy that he had me read them, now that I think about it. They were so clearly adult books. But there I was, running my finger under each line as I sounded out the words.”

  “He had a large personal collection of books?”

  “Oh, yes. A whole shelf of them.” Riana glanced up at him with a gasp. “But it couldn’t be the books themselves that the Union is after. They took what was left after he died. And most of his library was taken in the raid. You know...”

  The raid on the Eastern bank. The one that had killed her parents. Connor knew all about it.

  “So you just read out of his books?” he asked, picturing a tiny girl with long brown braids and a delicate, resolute mouth.

  “Yeah. Mostly.’ Her lips parted as she stared at some image in her mind. “Although sometimes he would write for me, and I’d read out of his notebooks.”

  “Notebooks?”

  “Yeah. He had those old-fashioned, wire-bound things. He would write out sentences in them and make me read them back to him—teaching me all the different language rules.”

  Something tensed in Connor’s chest as he had the glimmer of a new idea. “The Old Language?” he asked casually, not wanted to distract Riana from this train of memory.

  “Yeah. It was always the Old Language he wrote in his notebooks.” She smiled wistfully. “He would write the funniest sentences. On purpose, to get me to laugh. I was always so excited about reading them so I could get the jokes. He had a running story about two rabbits, who were trying to outdo each other in everything.” She giggled, her laughter breaking into a stifled sob. “Oh, Reed, I miss him,” she whispered, hiding her face against his shoulder for just a moment.

  Connor didn’t move. He didn’t dare to put his arm around her, although his instincts were calling on him to. This was hardly the time to make a move on her—even one she would read as friendly comfort.

  “I know you do,” he murmured.

  She recovered quickly and peered up at him, as if she were checking his expression. “I’m really not one of those women who cry all the time,” she told him. “Although you wouldn’t believe it from knowing me over the last couple of days.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” he said with what he hoped was a bolstering smile. “I’ve known you for a long time. Remember?”

  She smiled back, something warm flaring up in her gaze that almost took his breath away. “I remember.”

  Connor cleared his throat and shifted, moving away from her slightly. “What happened to those notebooks?”

  “Nothing. He always tore the pages out and burned them after he finished writing on them.” This seemed to strike a chord in her, and she made the connection he had just a moment earlier. “Do you think something is important about that? About his writing out those sentences in the Old Language?”

  “Maybe. Was there any difference in the language in the books and in the notebooks?”

  Frowni
ng thoughtfully, she said, “I don’t really remember. I never even thought about it. I just thought it was the Old Language. But maybe...”

  They were both silent as they reflected.

  “Do you think it was some sort of code?” Riana asked at last.

  “Maybe.” Connor knew all about codes—there was no one better at them than him. But he couldn’t really see how her grandfather would find any use in teaching one to Riana without her knowledge. “Or a different version of the Old Language. An older one. Or...” He trailed off, sorting out the possibilities.

  “How can we figure it out?”