Decrypted

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Ooph,” Parkonis said, staggering forward and catching himself on the pastry table.

  “Afternoon, dear,” Mother said without commenting on the clumsy entrance. She stood over the sink, washing plates, but she turned off the water and wiped her hands on a rooster apron, complete with a fringe of feathers. One of Tikaya’s nieces had decorated it, thus ensuring it would be in use for ages, however questionable the fashion statement. “Are you hungry?” Mother asked. “I’ve saved you a plate.”

  “Thank you,” Tikaya murmured, though food was the last thing on her mind.

  Parkonis had righted himself and turned to face her. He’d cut his unruly red-blond curls and shaved the beard since last she’d seen him. She didn’t see any scars, bruises, or missing limbs that would suggest he’d been treated poorly of late. Her first instinct was to snap at him for coming here while she was gone—had he waited until she left that morning to approach the family?—and spreading lies, but she’d probably give him less ammunition if she acted like the bigger person. That should be doable. Even barefoot, she had three inches on him.

  “Good afternoon, Parkonis.” Tikaya clasped her hands behind her back. “I’m pleased to see you’re well. I’ve been worried about you. After that chaos there at the end, I wasn’t sure if... I was afraid that you wouldn’t make it out.” Her words were true, though she had to bite her tongue to keep from pointing out that he never would have been in danger if he hadn’t gone off with relic raiders in the first place.

  “I barely escaped,” Parkonis said. “They dumped me, Gali, and the rest of the survivors in the brig of their warship, taking us south to the Turgonian mainland, to be dealt with—that’s what they called it—for our crimes against the empire. As if they’re not the savages. Those bloodthirsty mongrels deserve to receive that which they’ve given over the years.” He started to curl his lip, but seemed to remember something, for his eyes widened and he glanced behind Tikaya. “Is he here?”

  She took that to mean he wouldn’t call Rias a savage to his face. “No.” She supposed she shouldn’t be pleased that the story meant Gali wouldn’t likely be by to pester her soon. For all she knew, the Turgonians would “deal with” their prisoner using a firing squad, and she couldn’t wish that fate on anyone. “How did you escape?”

  “That stone-faced teenaged assassin sailed down the coast with us and was in charge of prisoners. He was taking people off the ship, moving them to the train station for a ride to the capital for I shudder to think what punishment, but he got careless. He forgot he’d unlocked my cell, and when he herded off the others, I slipped out. It was night and most of the crew was off on shore leave by then, and I got away. I’ve been thanking Akahe every day for that bit of luck.”

  “You can thank Rias for that luck,” Tikaya blurted before she could question the wisdom of it. Bringing up his name might be a mistake—defending him at every turn would only give credence to people’s notions that he controlled her somehow, but she couldn’t let Parkonis remain unaware of his assistance, not the way she feared her president was. Why should Rias be blamed for every death in the war and receive none of the credit for the lives he’d saved?

  “Pardon?” Parkonis glanced at Mother, as if to catch her eye and give her a knowing nod, but she had her back to them. She’d been washing the same pot for five minutes, but she acted like she wasn’t listening.

  “At the end of the ruckus, Rias told the assassin to relay the message that if the emperor didn’t leave me and my family alone, he’d make trouble. He also asked the boy to ensure you were able to make it home.”

  Parkonis opened his mouth as if he wanted to protest outright, but he glanced at Mother’s back and seemed to decide on another tactic. “Well. If that’s what you saw, that’s what you saw, but is it possible that he made a point of having this conversation in front of you? Thus to win your favor?”

  “He’d already won it by then. He didn’t need to play tricks.”

  Parkonis winced, and she regretted her hasty rebuttal. He’d see it as an admission that she’d rejected him in favor of Rias, and that had to hurt. She might wish that he’d disappear on another year-long field expedition, this time a legal one perhaps, but she didn’t want to hurt him.

  “Listen, Par.” Tikaya stepped forward and hesitantly laid a hand on his arm; she feared he might jerk away, but he didn’t. “I apologize if... It wasn’t my intent then or now to hurt you. When I met Rias, I thought you were dead. As far as I knew, you’d been dead a year. And you let me believe that—let us all believe that.” She didn’t want to rub in his failings, but she didn’t want him to believe he had a right to play the victim here either, not entirely anyway.

  “Tikaya, it’s not about that.” Parkonis avoided her eyes as he said the words. “If you don’t want me after the choices I’ve made, I understand, but to pick him as the alternative... I don’t want to see you get hurt. I certainly don’t want to see you bring shame to your family by being the one to... Could you live with yourself if a year from now, our islands have been conquered, our people enslaved, and Turgonians are building fortresses on our beaches?”

  “That’s not going to happen. Didn’t you hear what I said? He specifically told the emperor that he’d make trouble if Turgonians harassed us.” All right, Rias had told the emperor’s seventeen-year-old henchman that, and he’d only tried to finagle protection for her family, not her entire island chain, but she truly believed Rias would stand up for her people if she asked it. And if they treated him as a valuable ally who’d defected from his people, not some spy.

  Parkonis was shaking his head. The sadness—or maybe that was pity—in his blue eyes seemed genuine, but that only made Tikaya want to smack him. Why couldn’t any of them trust her to judge a person correctly?

  “Don’t be blinded by your feelings, Tikaya,” Parkonis whispered. “I believe this was set up from the beginning, and he saw your gulli– desire to find the good in the people and picked you as a likely target. Even if you’re right and he was exiled, maybe he saw you—and our islands—as a way to earn back his emperor’s favor.”

  Tikaya thought of Milvet, the earnest Turgonian she’d met that morning, and his words of how Rias could raise an army to march on the capital if he wished his lands back. “You’re wrong, Parkonis. He wouldn’t need to do that. He has resources. If he wanted to go back, he could.” Tikaya didn’t know how true that was, but it disturbed her nonetheless to know he might have options—that he could leave at any time if he decided she wasn’t worth all the trouble.

  “Tikaya...” Parkonis sighed and shook his head again, as if he were dealing with a particularly slow and stubborn child. “Just do me one favor, will you? Tell him, or, no, just ask him... What would he do if you decided to come back to me. See what his reaction is.”

  Tikaya remembered Rias’s reaction when Parkonis had first shown up alive. He’d been disappointed—stung—until he’d decided he’d fight for her. She smiled at the memory of him arguing his virtues in an attempt to win her back when she’d never intended to leave him in the first place.

  Parkonis frowned at her. “Just see what kind of pressure he puts on you to ensure you don’t leave him. Even if you don’t intend to—” the corners of his mouth twitched downward, “—it wouldn’t hurt to test him, right?”

  Except that it’d show Rias that she didn’t trust him completely. He’d see Parkonis’s test for what it was. Out loud, she said, “I’ll think about it. But not right now. I have work to do.” Like figuring out who she could find to Make Rias’s power source. “May I see you to the door?”

  Whether Parkonis found comfort in her promise or not, she couldn’t tell. He sent one last long look at Mother before letting Tikaya guide him out of the house. Unlike the other glances, that one seemed to hold only sadness, as if he were regretting that she wouldn’t be a part of his life any more. His fault, Tikaya told herself. He needn’t have disappeared for a year without sending word to anyone. But what then? What
if, when she’d been kidnapped, she’d known Parkonis was alive and waiting for her back home? She couldn’t have considered Rias as anything more than an ally then, or if she had... she would have been the dishonorable one. Maybe she should thank Parkonis for his shortcomings, for giving her a way out.

  • • •

  After lunch, Tikaya bicycled north along the coast, heading for her grandfather’s cabin and workshop on the far end of the plantation. She dreaded the idea of talking to him when he’d so vehemently displayed his displeasure over Rias’s presence, but not quite as much as the idea of going to Iweue, Parkonis’s mother.

  The winding coastal road took Tikaya along a sandy shore, one that was popular amongst clammers. A low tide left much of the beach bare, and several people were busy with shovels and buckets. Most were relatives, but a bronze-skinned figure out amongst the freckled natives made Tikaya pause. The neighbor. Mee Nar. The man who’d taken his wife and left dinner a mere fifteen minutes before that fire was started on the front lawn. Her father had searched around the house after the flames had been extinguished, but hadn’t found any evidence as to who might have started it.

  Tikaya leaned the bicycle against a tree at the head of a path leading through tall grasses and out to the beach. Maybe it was time to ask the Nurian a few questions.

  The ocean breeze tugged at the man’s red and orange silks. Unlike Rias, Mee Nar apparently hadn’t felt the need to clothe himself in native garb. Given that he’d attacked Rias, Tikaya felt uneasy approaching him. There were several other men, women, and children on the beach though. Surely he wouldn’t do anything to her. Besides, with nothing more than a shovel for a weapon, he appeared innocuous enough. Damp sand clung to his bare calves and feet, and clumps flew as he thrust the blade into the wet earth. He dug a deep hole, then bent to pluck out two clams and drop them in his bucket.

  The wind and the roar of the sea should have disguised Tikaya’s approach, but when she was still twenty meters away, Mee Nar turned in her direction. Chance? Or was he a practitioner? One who could manipulate fire, perhaps?

  Tikaya smiled and gave him a neighborly wave. He offered an open palm to the side, a Nurian civilian-to-civilian salute that was supposed to signify one bore no weapons nor was bringing the mental sciences to bear. In Kyatt, the Science was practiced for research and life enhancement. In Nuria, martial applications were common.

  Tikaya picked her way around sandy pools and limp seaweed to stop a few feet away. “Hello, Mee Nar, wasn’t it?” she asked in Nurian.

  “Indeed, Ms. Komitopis.” He responded in accented Kyattese, then dipped a knee and ducked his head in a bow. He kept his eyes upon her as he did so.

  Tikaya knew that was how Nurians bowed—always maintaining eye contact—but she couldn’t help but wonder if he wanted to watch her every move out of more than habit.

  “How is the clamming going?” she asked. She wanted to ask, “Did you light my family’s lawn on fire?” but thought that might be a tad forward.

  “Quite well. Your islands are bountiful. My wife tells me it never snows, and I have seen how each season remains pleasantly warm, and the only change is that it sometimes rains more often. But even when it rains, it seems to finish by mid-morning, leaving the people to enjoy the sun in the afternoon.”

  “Yes.” Tikaya had no interest in discussing the weather, but perhaps she could use it to lead into other topics. “I missed it very much when I was kidnapped and taken to the frozen wasteland that is the empire’s Northern Frontier.”

  Mee Nar’s face grew closed at the mention of the empire. “I imagine so. Many parts of Turgonia are as inhospitable as the people.”

  “You’ve been?”

  “I was a prisoner of war interned in a camp outside of Port Malevek for six months.”

  “Ah, so you fought the Turgonians in the Western Sea Conflict.” And had every reason to hate Rias...

  “That is not what we called it, but yes. I served in the navy for twenty years.” He scarcely looked older than she, but Nurians, Tikaya recalled, could enlist as young as fourteen. “I decided to retire after my time in the camp,” he added.

  “That bad, eh?”

  “I was not important enough to be interrogated, but it was still... austere. The time made me think and realize I’d spent too much of my life at sea and too little time seeking love and a family. Back in ’63, I was injured nearby and spent two months here recuperating. I found the women most accommodating.” He smiled at some memory. “Beautiful, of course, but also not so obsessed with a man’s status and place in society as my own people. Once my chief accepted my retirement, I came here and soon found my wife.”

  “What did you do in the navy?” Tikaya wanted to know if he’d studied the mental sciences.

  “I was a simple sailor.”

  “Mundane work?” She’d heard the Nurians could use the Science to fill their sails with wind.

  “I never studied the mental sciences if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Ah, I was just curious.”

  “Of course you were.” Mee Nar’s expression remained bland, but something in his eyes made her believe he knew exactly what she was angling for, or at least that her questions masked more than casual curiosity.

  “As a retired naval sailor,” Tikaya asked, “will you feel obligated to report back to your people that one of their old enemies is living on the island.”

  Mee Nar’s eyebrows shot up. “Living on? I thought... ah, I was led to believe he was visiting temporarily.”

  Tikaya studied the sand rimming her sandals for a moment. The man’s surprise seemed genuine. If he’d thought Rias was only going to be a short-term visitor, would he have thought there was a need to play tricks to scare him off?

  “We are not... temporary,” Tikaya said, so she could gauge Mee Nar’s reaction.

  “You will live here instead of in Turgonia?”

  Tikaya wondered if he was merely curious as a neighbor, or if he was collecting information to send back to his government. You shouldn’t have come down to talk to him if you were worried about that, she told herself. “You said it yourself. The climate isn’t as desirable there.”

  “Yes, but you would have power and rank there, would you not? He’s a hero to his people, I understand.”

  “His people think he’s dead.”

  Mee Nar frowned. “Then his arrival on their shore will be a pleasant surprise, surely?”

  Tikaya didn’t want to explain the rift between Rias and his emperor. It wasn’t her story to tell, and, in case Mee Nar was planning a letter back home, she shouldn’t give him any extra fodder for it. After all, she’d come down here to learn about him.

  “Either way, my work is here, and Rias is retired. I wanted to ask you if it’d be a problem if your children grew up with one of your people’s most infamous enemies for a neighbor.”

  “It would be difficult to explain to my parents if they ever came to visit,” Mee Nar said.

  “Considering that you attacked him at dinner, you don’t seem very concerned by the notion now.”

  “That was a reflex. You don’t serve twenty years in the military without having a few reactions drilled into you, such as attack Turgonians on sight to protect those you care about.” Mee Nar shrugged. “I didn’t even recognize him at first. It was just... when he walked in wearing that uniform.” Another shrug.

  “If you had recognized him, would that have changed anything? Or would you have simply raised your bow more quickly?”

  “It is true that dropping his head onto the Chief’s throne room floor might earn me a title, or accolades and honors for my family at least, but... my life is here now, and I no longer crave such hollow things. Also, Starcrest is... heesu ming. You know the term?”

  Tikaya knew it, but there wasn’t a Kyattese equivalent. Her people had a lot fewer words for enemies than the Nurians and the Turgonians. “Honorable foe?” she suggested.

  Mee Nar wiggled his fingers to imply that wa
sn’t quite it, but might be as close as they’d get. “Every Nurian sailor hated to see his flagship on the horizon, because it almost assuredly meant defeat and capture. Even when the odds were against him, it never seemed to play out the way those odds suggested. He was more slippery than soap, and we called him King Fox for his cunning. He’d do whatever it took to make sure his ships came out ahead in a confrontation. Yet, we knew if we were captured, we’d be treated fairly until such time that our government bartered for our release. It was also known that if he gave his word, he’d keep it. I cannot speak from personal experience, but there are stories of times when he went against his emperor’s wishes to keep his word to our officers.”

  If that were true, that might explain why the Turgonian emperor had been so quick to exile Rias for disobeying the order to facilitate the assassination of the Kyattese president. Maybe it had been the final blow that broke the sword.

  “He was respected on both sides,” Mee Nar finished. “To answer your earlier question, no, I wouldn’t care to have my children growing up next door to Fleet Admiral Starcrest, retired or not, but I also wouldn’t fear for their safety in his presence.”

  “That’s a relief,” Tikaya said, though she didn’t know if she could trust Mee Nar’s words. Was it possible he was only telling her this, so she wouldn’t suspect him of the fire? He seemed sincere, but she wasn’t the best judge of people, having always preferred books to social situations. It did strike her as sad that a foreigner might be more open to accepting Rias here than her own people. The Nurians had suffered just as much in the war as the Kyattese and had just as much reason to resent him. “Thank you for your time. Good luck with the clamming.” She nodded toward his bucket.

  Mee Nar bowed, eyes meeting hers again, and headed off with his shovel.

  Tikaya returned to the bicycle and her journey. As she covered the last couple of miles to Grandpa’s home, she mused upon the likelihood of more threats coming Rias’s way. She doubted anyone would attack him, and that was almost a shame, because he’d prefer that. Instead, they’d pester him like a mosquito buzzing about, not drawing blood, but staying out of reach.