Decrypted

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Let’s check this one first.” Rias opened the bag and dumped rope and hooks for creating rappelling harnesses, as well as a number of bolts and a drill.

  “Who outfitted you with climbing gear?” Tikaya asked, amused by how easily he seemed to be navigating these foreign waters and acquiring what he needed.

  “Someone in town who takes visiting botanists into the rainforest on the west side of the island.”

  “Turgonian?”

  “A native but a mongrel half-breed, according to him.” Rias finished drilling bolts, attached the rope to them, and tossed the end over the edge. He’d created seats for himself and Tikaya. He helped fasten hers around her waist and between her legs, an awkward proposition given that she wore a dress, then hooked her to the rope. “Use that hand to brake. The other’s your guide.”

  “Got it. How many people are working on your ship today while you’re off sight-seeing?”

  “Eight. But we’re not constructing anything yet, simply forming the pieces that will become the hull and bulkheads in the steel mill. Ready?”

  “After you.”

  In a few bounds, Rias found his way down the cliff to a ledge. It protruded from one side of a cave opening a couple of feet above the water. He must have timed this exploration to match up with a low tide.

  Tikaya removed her sandals and eased over the edge. With her hands gripping the ropes like vises, she inched down the cliff.

  “Loosen your braking hand if you want to go faster,” Rias called up.

  “No, no, it’s fine. I like this pace.”

  Several seagulls glided past, one squawking at her. Yes, she wagered she put on quite a show as she inched her way down the cliff. Several minutes later, she reached the ledge.

  “Sorry,” Tikaya said, because Rias was waiting outside the cave, no doubt watching to see if he needed to assist her. “Given my propensity for tripping on land, I view scaling and descending cliffs as something that should be done slowly and carefully.”

  “There’s no hurry.” Rias unfastened her from the rope. “We’re on a leisurely date, remember?”

  “Ah, yes.” Tikaya crinkled her nose as the scent of sea lion droppings drifted out of the cave before them. “For some reason, I’d forgotten.”

  Daylight slanted into the cave, gleaming against damp black walls. Inside, the crinkles and buckles exhibited in the field above had largely been eroded by the ocean’s constant influence. A channel of seawater flowed in and out with the tides, filling a large pool. No wider than three feet, the ledge they stood upon followed the waterway on one side, eventually disappearing into the shadows. The black walls made even the lighted area near the cave mouth feel dark and ominous. Nonsense, Tikaya told herself. Ten-year-old children played in these caves, especially the ones close to Obsidian Beach. She had nothing to fear beyond stubbing a toe on a rock and falling into the water.

  “What are we looking for?” she asked.

  “It’s unlikely that we’ll find anything, but I estimate that these three caves—” he waved to include theirs as well as others to the north, “—would be depositories of any flotsam that might have come ashore from the southern end of that basin.”

  “You think there’s a shipwreck out there? One those Turgonian explorers came looking for three hundred years ago?” Tikaya thought of Rias’s story of lost colonizing ships.

  “Something happened out there. Something that’s kept generations of mapmakers from being allowed to accurately report their depth findings.”

  “Maybe the basin was filled in somehow. Why are you assuming there’s a wreck? Did you find something in that journal?” Tikaya had wanted to ask earlier, but had dared not with Ell riding nearby. “Some clue about all this?” She recalled that Rias had suggested their “date” before he’d had a chance to see the book. What did he think would lie in the depths of these caves? And how far back did this one go? A long ways, she supposed, since it had originally carried lava flows. In theory, it could extend miles, all the way to the volcano itself. These particular caves were tens of thousands of years old, though, and time had likely brought down ceilings and blocked passages.

  “From what I understood of the journal,” Rias said, “it was the story of an affair between one of your married ancestors and a Turgonian sailor on a treasure-hunting expedition.”

  “An affair?” Tikaya tripped over a rocky protrusion and caught herself on the wall. “I didn’t get that far. The author was describing his voyage and arrival here in the first few pages.”

  “The journal gets rather torrid once he meets Uouri.” Rias took a couple of tries at pronouncing the name, then gave up and stopped to light the lanterns. They’d gone around a bend, and the entrance was no longer in view. “The young woman apparently found him dashing and handsome in comparison to her stodgy farmer husband. Also, according to the author’s lurid descriptions, she was unexpectedly skilled at copulation methods.”

  “Must have been one of my cousin Aeli’s forebears.” Tikaya’s mind wandered into curious musings at what Rias, an ecumenical man in his own right, considered lurid and torrid. “I’ll need to get the journal back from you then. For further research.”

  “Research, eh?”

  “Er, yes. About my ancestor. It sounds like she may have been historically significant by family reckoning.”

  “Well, then, the research section starts about halfway through. It’s quite descriptive. I hadn’t realized how flowery Middle Turgonian could be.”

  Glad the shadows hid her blush, Tikaya asked, “What happened to them in the end? And does any of it tie in with our missing year?”

  “The last entry describes the pair’s plans to escape the island together. His treasure-hunting ship had finished searching for signs of the lost colony and was ready to depart for its next port. She was going to meet him at the docks where they planned to sail away together on his vessel.”

  “That’s it?” The ledge on their side of the channel dipped away, and Tikaya hiked up her dress to follow Rias into thigh-deep water. Currents tugged at her legs as the tides fluctuated. Barnacles scraped at the bottoms of her feet—maybe she shouldn’t have left her sandals up above. “If the journal and the man’s sword ended up in my attic, that doesn’t bode well for the relationship. Perhaps her husband grew wise to the affair and decided to stop it.”

  “Murder?” Rias asked.

  “Violence isn’t my people’s hallmark, but I imagine a man who’d learned his wife was sleeping with some foreign sailor could be moved to extreme acts.” Despite her words, Tikaya had a hard time believing any of her ancestors would have shot a man full of arrows, then snatched his belongings like trophies for the attic. Perhaps the bereft Uouri had taken the letters, sword, and journal herself and hidden them away as keepsakes. “Even if there had been a murder, why would any of that matter now? Why hide the record of the entire year? I can see where my family might be embarrassed if news of the affair leaked out, but in a minor manner, I should think. How upset can you be over something that happened ten generations ago?”

  Rias didn’t answer right away. He had to duck his head and maneuver around bumps in the ever-lowering ceiling. Their tunnel was angling slightly downward. That was surprising—Tikaya had assumed that, if anything, it would slant upward. She eyed the walls, wondering how much deeper they’d be able to go. So far, Rias’s lantern hadn’t illuminated anything more intriguing than graffiti that hadn’t yet been washed away by the tides. She caught a mention of a professor at the Polytechnic and what embarrassing things someone hoped would befall him. Tikaya had taken classes from the man years ago and found herself nodding in agreement at some of the suggestions.

  The water kept rising as they descended, and it lapped at her thighs now. The barnacles had been replaced by algae that squished beneath her bare feet. Rias took her to such lovely places.

  “From what I could tell,” Rias said, finally answering her questions, “our lovelorn sailor was so focused on his affair that he
wasn’t documenting the ship’s expedition thoroughly, but perhaps you can find something when you read through. I struggled to read the language.”

  “I did notice,” Tikaya said, “from my original flip-through of the entire journal, that there were more than three months’ worth of entries from the time he reached the island until he stopped writing. Why would your people have been here so long? In two weeks, you could sail around all the islands in our chain and have time left for hunting, fishing, and lounging on the beach.”

  “That suggests they either found something to cause them to spend more time here, or they believed they’d find something and didn’t want to stop looking too soon.”

  “Yes. Uhm, Rias?” The ceiling had continued to drop while the water level rose, and the current tugged at Tikaya’s waist. They’d entered a wider area, the channel turning into a pool. “How far back are you planning to go? Though I’m certain you’re aware of this, I feel compelled to point out that this cave will be underwater when the tide comes in. I shouldn’t like to hold my breath to swim all the way back to the entrance.” In water that would be inky black. The thought stirred uneasiness, and she had to remind herself that tides didn’t come in that swiftly.

  Rias lifted the lantern and pointed toward a wide ledge on one side of the pool. “Let’s climb out there for a moment.”

  By the time they reached the spot, the end of the passage showed up in the lantern light. Though she knew Rias wanted to find something interesting, Tikaya was glad they wouldn’t have reason to linger.

  They crawled out of the water and sat on the ledge—the low ceiling didn’t offer room for standing. Seaweed, dead crabs, and broken sand dollars littered the rocks. Rias considered the back wall and watched the pool with intensity. Tikaya was almost to the point of asking if he’d seen something moving around in there when he slipped off his shirt.

  “We’re disrobing?” Tikaya asked. “If you’re thinking we should practice the torrid, three-hundred-year-old copulation techniques described in that journal, this wouldn’t be my first choice of locations.”

  Distracted, Rias only said, “I’m going to check something. Back in a moment.” He removed a couple of matches from his oilskin pouch, laid them on the lanterns, then tightly tied the knots closed on the pouch and tucked the remaining matches into a pocket in his clam diggers.

  Before Tikaya could ask what he expected to find, he slipped into the water, head disappearing beneath the surface.

  She eyed the dark walls around her ledge. The idea of making some discovery down there intrigued her, but she doubted it would happen. The tides scoured the caves clean every day, and they must have been explored countless times over the years.

  Long seconds meandered past—minutes?—and Rias did not resurface. Tikaya crept to the edge and peered into the pool. The lantern light did nothing to illuminate the dark water, but surely she’d see ripples from his movement if he were down there. Where had he gone? Further into the lava tube via an underwater entrance? If he didn’t find some pocket of air inside, he’d be in trouble. As heroic a constitution as he had, even he couldn’t hold his breath for more than a minute or two.

  “Rias.” Tikaya gripped the lip of the ledge. “Drowning on a date would be a stupid way to die.”

  Leaving the lanterns, she slipped her legs into the water, intending to submerge and see if she could see where he’d gone. Before she’d gone more than a step, Rias popped up in front of her, short hair matted to his head. He wiped water out of his eyes but didn’t draw in a huge gasp of air. He must have found some pocket of air nearby.

  “Going somewhere?” he asked.

  “To look for you of course. I thought a giant squid might have eaten you.”

  “The waters are a touch shallow here for them.” The soft light from the lanterns failed to show any humor on his face. He considered her for a moment, his face grave. “I have a couple more matches. I think you’ll want to see this.”

  “You think?”

  “It’s not a sure bet. Not like romping puppies or wrestling kittens.”

  “Is it worse than that room in Wolfhump?” Tikaya asked, referring to the bodies she and Agarik had found, the frozen corpses mutilated from garish combat with crazed human beings.

  Rias brightened. “No. Not now, anyway.”

  “Not now?” Tikaya mouthed.

  Rias pointed toward the water under the back wall. “It’s about a twenty-second swim. There’s nowhere to get lost, as it continues on as a lava tube, but it curves downward and then back up, so it’s easy to scrape your hands. You can hold onto my leg if you want.”

  “I’ll be fine.” If it was as straightforward as he said, she could make it without a guide. Besides, she ought to save her wimp moments for truly frightening scenarios. Like climbing back up that cliff later.

  “Can you swim with your spectacles on? You’ll want them when we come up on the other side.”

  Tikaya wasn’t as certain about that, but she took them off and clenched the wire frame between her teeth. She’d hadn’t thought to bring another pair along and would hate to lose them down here.

  Rias took a deep breath, then dropped below the surface again. Despite her assurance, she didn’t want him to swim out of reach, so she followed after promptly.

  They’d left the lanterns on the ledge, and the light didn’t extend far. Tikaya had to grope her way through the darkness. With one hand running along the bottom and the other stretched ahead, she found the opening Rias had mentioned and kicked her way into it. In the cold blackness she kept her fingers outstretched and fluttered her feet for forward momentum. The tide surged about her, one moment helping her progress and the next hindering it, but her fingers soon bumped into bare skin instead of rock. She identified Rias’s leg and pulled herself upright beside him, her feet finding the bottom.

  He hadn’t yet lit a match, so utter darkness greeted Tikaya. The air was cooler than outside and musty as well. Old. It smelled old. She thought of poisonous gases that could accumulate in sealed tunnels and hoped Rias didn’t plan on staying long. A shiver ran through her. It was from the coldness of the water and the air, she told herself, though perhaps her senses were warning her that she wouldn’t like what she was about to see.

  Rias hugged her with one arm, then moved away. “I’m going to strike a match.”

  Tikaya wiped water out of her eyes and hooked her spectacles over her ears. “Ready.”

  A couple of soft scrapes sounded, the noise oddly loud. Little of the roar of the sea penetrated the walls around them.

  “Too wet,” Rias muttered. “Let me see if—”

  Light flared. At first Tikaya noticed the flame and the match held between Rias’s fingers. Then her eyes focused on what lay behind them. Bones. Skulls. Partial and complete skeletons. She swallowed. Human skeletons covered with the dust of the ages. So many bones were wedged in crevasses or laid on ledges that she would have believed someone had brought them in bags and dumped them. Could so many have come in on the tide? How would they have—

  Rias grunted and dropped the match. Blackness engulfed them again.

  Tikaya took a deep breath, not certain whether she preferred the view now or before. Either way, the image would be imprinted on her mind. Suddenly her cousin’s proffered surfing lesson was sounding like a pleasant way to spend the day.

  “Kittens are less disturbing,” Tikaya said, trying to sound nonchalant, “but you’ve certainly lit my curiosity here.”

  Rias wrapped an arm around her. “This would have made my former wife scream.”

  “A not inappropriate response to a cave full of bones.” One Tikaya might have made if he hadn’t prepared her for the notion of something bad. “I was busy debating whether they’d been placed here or if the tide—some storm perhaps?—could have brought them in.”

  “The sea, I believe, though there must have been a lot of corpses if so many found their way into this cave.”

  “That’s why you were thinking shipw
reck,” Tikaya said. “Your colony ships? Did some storm get them before they could reach land?” And did the incident pre- or post-date the arrival of her own people?

  Rias shifted away from her. Soft clunks sounded. Was he... sifting through the bones? Why?

  “Last match,” Rias said and struck it. In his free hand, he held a skull with a hole in the side. He shook it, and something rattled inside. “Arrowhead. A stone one.”

  Tikaya skimmed the scene again, looking for any other clues she could take out with her, but the light winked out before she could do more than gawk at all the bones. “I can’t believe nobody has ever found this.”

  “Perhaps people haven’t been encouraged to look.”

  With more and more evidence stacking up to support Rias’s hunch that all wasn’t as it seemed on the Kyatt Islands, Tikaya couldn’t bring herself to disagree. Someone knew what had happened out there all those years ago, and was going to great lengths to make sure she and Rias didn’t find out what it was.

  PART II

  CHAPTER 13

  It had been a long time since so much work filled Tikaya’s desk, and it doubtlessly accounted for the fact that she couldn’t find a pen. Any of them. Pages of notes battled for space with the old Turgonian journal, family lineage trees, and teetering stacks of Kyattese archaeology and history books. After more than two weeks of reading and note-taking, Tikaya was finally compiling a summary of her findings. The damaged skull Rias had pulled out of that cave presided over it all, empty eye sockets staring at her as she worked.

  The obsidian arrowhead sat on a shelf above it. Based on the style, she’d placed it as Kyattese and estimated it at seven hundred years in age, but it differed from sketches of other arrowheads from the time period. It was sharper, finer, and smaller than the giant lizard- and boar-hunting projectiles of the era.