Encrypted (11 page)

Startled, she dropped the sword. The hilt
banged onto her sandaled foot.

Rias winced and lifted an apologetic hand.
“Sorry, I, er, two years, you know.”

“
It’s fine.” Cheeks
warming, she threw the sword back in the trunk, relieved she had
not cut off any toes. “I’ll just, uhm, find those orders
now.”

Tikaya yanked open a desk drawer and
rummaged through letters and supply receipts. Out of the corner of
her eye, she caught Rias shaking his head, fingers splayed across
his face, before he turned back to the window. A grin tugged at her
lips.

A moment later, he found
his fearless-soldier-in-charge tone and reported: “All four Nurian
ships are even with the
Emperor’s
Fist
now, two on each side. Bocrest is
doing damage, but...if we’re going to help, it’ll have to be
soon.”

Tikaya tried another drawer. She wanted
those orders, and she wanted them to say something significant to
justify detouring here. Rias helped her search, checking cupboards
under the bunk, but she sensed restless energy emanating from him.
He wanted to assist his people, though she could not imagine how he
planned to take over the ship.

Under a pile of log books in the bottom
drawer, she found a parchment displaying lines of gibberish. “Got
it. Encrypted though.” She tapped the nonsensical Nurian letters.
“Given enough time, I can work it out, but it’d be helpful to have
the key. The captain ought to have it, right?”

“
Yes.” Rias joined her at
the desk and opened and closed all the drawers.

“
I already looked in
there.”

He paused at the lower one, yanked it clear,
dumped the contents on the deck, and ripped out the bottom. His
vandalism revealed a secret compartment from which he plucked
another sheet of parchment.

“
Guess my looking skills
need improvement,” Tikaya murmured.

“
I get suspicious when
inside dimensions don’t match outside ones.”

“
Ah.” She laid both sheets
on the desk and quickly memorized the key.

The clanging of a bell echoed through the
ship. More footsteps pounded, this time on their deck instead of
above.

“
Alarm,” Rias said. “They
know we escaped. Take that with us. We’re out of time.”

“
Wait, I’ve got
it.”

“
Already? How could
you...”

She skipped the
introduction and translated the meat of the orders: “‘Search and
destroy the
Emperor’s Fist
before it reaches the Northern Frontier. If any
artifacts with strange symbols are found, sink them in the ocean.
Use extreme caution in handling them. Do not bring them home and do
not try to destroy them.’”

“
Honored ancestors,” Rias
murmured. “What have my people uncovered?”

“’
In addition,’” Tikaya
finished grimly, “‘the Kyattese linguist allied with the Turgonians
must be killed at all costs.’” Allied? She was no cursed Turgonian
ally.

The windows exploded.

Rias tore Tikaya off her feet before she
knew what was happening. Wood cracked louder than thunder. Rias
came down on top of her, protecting her with his body. Glass and
splinters rained about them, tinkling as they hit the deck.

“
What was that?” Tikaya
asked when her heart left throat. Wind whistled into the
cabin.

Rias pulled her up. He nodded to a
cannonball lodged in the bulkhead perpendicular to the broken
window. “Friendly fire.”

She gulped and plucked a shard of glass out
of the side of his neck. “Glad your reflexes are faster than mine.
Thank you.”

“
Welcome.” He shook more
glass from his jacket, then headed for the door. “Still got my
back?”

“
Of course.” Tikaya
grabbed her bow.

They had reached the captain’s cabin without
trouble, but, with the alarm clanging, search parties clogged their
deck. Fortunately, Rias seemed to know the layout of the Nurian
vessel as well as the Turgonian ironclad. They hid in cabins and
shadowy nooks to avoid men before slipping down a ladder to the
deck below.

“
How’re we taking over the
ship from down here?” Tikaya whispered, neck bent to keep from
clunking her head on the ceiling.

Rias’s shoulders brushed the walls as they
crept single-file down a dim passageway. “This is a Nurian striker.
Not a big vessel. I think I can handle the tiller by myself. It
should be located...there.”

He pointed at a door marking the end of the
corridor. He jogged past a ladder well and charged inside, cutlass
leading.

As Tikaya passed the ladder, movement
stirred the shadows. A woman dropped from above, legs swinging out
to wrap around Tikaya.

“
Rias!” she
called.

Steel rang out in the tiller room. He was
busy.

The Nurian tried to pull Tikaya into the
ladder well with powerful legs. For a woman, she had surprising
bulk and muscle. Tikaya spread her stance and braced herself
against the wall. She tried to maneuver her bow to prod the woman
loose from the rungs, but it proved too unwieldy for the tight
passage.

The Nurian woman released the ladder and
threw her arms around Tikaya. The momentum slammed Tikaya back into
the wall. A second form dropped into view in the ladder well—a
black-robed man.

“
Who’s got
my
back?” Tikaya cried
as the woman plucked a dagger from between her teeth.

She released the bow and tried to knock the
blade away. Sharp steel bit into her arm.

The practitioner hanging on the ladder
narrowed his eyes in concentration. The female fighter clung to
Tikaya with one hand and raised the dagger again with the
other.

Tikaya bit the arm wrapped around her
shoulders. The woman hissed and her grip softened. Tikaya pushed
off the wall and tried to shove her foe into the ladder well. The
move jostled the practitioner. He cursed, his concentration
disturbed, but the woman stuck to Tikaya like a tick. She raised
her knife again.

A hand caught the Nurian’s wrist, and Rias
yanked her away. Tikaya stumbled and went down. Arrows spilled from
her quiver.

The practitioner leapt on top of her, a
dagger held aloft. Tikaya grabbed an arrow and rammed it into his
gut. Luckily, it was the pointy end.

Eyes bulging, the practitioner reeled back.
He dropped the dagger and clutched the arrow in his belly.

Before Tikaya could decide if she was safe,
Rias loomed behind the practitioner. He wound up and swept the
cutlass through flesh, muscle, and bone. The Nurian’s head fell
onto Tikaya.

“
Errkt!” She shoved it off
and scrambled away. Panting, she pressed a hand against the wall
for support.

“
I’ve
got your back.” Rias raked her with his gaze. “Are you
injured?”

“
Not...severely,” she said
numbly, staring at the decapitated practitioner.
“How—
why
do you
do that?” It came out more accusatory than she meant. Or maybe not.
He had just saved her life—again—and she did not want to sound
ungrateful, but, damn, it was chilling when the man on her side was
more fearsome than those trying to murder her.

Rias turned her away from
the decapitated practitioner and nodded toward the tiller room.
“I’ve seen too many wizards I thought dead heal themselves and
later come back after my men. As to how...” He ducked low to enter.
“If you’re ever in the imperial capital’s war library, look
up
Applications of the Kinetic Chain
Principle in Close Combat
. I wrote it for
Lord General Micacrest during my final year of studies, and parts
are now used by the military training academies. Not scintillating
reading, I’ll admit, but it covers everything from breaking boards
with a punch to—”

“
Beheading people?” She
trailed him inside, also ducking for the hatch.

“
That’s not listed in the
table of contents, but, essentially, yes.”

A pair of glowing orbs in sconces by the
door illuminated the interior, though even without them Tikaya
would have noticed the matching ragged holes adorning the exterior
walls of the wedge-shaped compartment. A cannonball had gone
straight through, leaving uneven gaps more than two feet in
diameter. Wind shrieked, and water splattered the deck, pooling and
running with the rocking of the ship.

“
That doesn’t look good,”
she muttered, before noticing a dead warrior on the deck, short
sword still clutched in his grip.

“
Actually...” Rias shut
the door and peered out both gaps. He lingered on one side and
kicked out a few broken boards to enlarge it. “It’s fortuitous
since there aren’t portholes in here. There’s the other Nurian
vessel on this flank, and I see the
Fist’s
smokestacks beyond
it.”

He strode to one of the block and tackles
stretched from either side of the long metal tiller. They allowed
manual access, though control ropes disappeared through the ceiling
to connect to the wheel on the upper deck.

Rias grabbed one of the ropes and readied
his cutlass. “They’ll know right away they’ve lost wheel control,
and half the crew will probably charge down here.”

“
I see, and how will we
stop them from killing us?”

“
Let me know when you
figure it out.” At odds with the seriousness of the situation, a
mischievous glint warmed his eyes. “It’s going to take all my
strength to man the tiller.”

He sliced through the control ropes even as
she blurted, “You’re crazy!”

Rias unhooked the end of the rope on the
starboard block and tackle, glanced at measurements on the wall
above the tiller, and sank into a low stance to pull. Inch by inch
the great lever shifted, and the ship leaned, cutting across the
waves in a new direction.

Tikaya hunted for something to block the
door that she would surely be defending in a moment. Alas, there
was no convenient beam for barring it shut—probably so people could
not do what they were attempting.

She pushed a trunk full of spare rope to the
door. Forcing queasiness aside in favor of practicality, she
muscled the dead Nurian’s body on top of it to add weight.

“
Where exactly are you
steering us?” she panted.

Rias was a statue, leaning back, arms
extended, fingers wrapped around the rope, tendons taut with the
strain, but he grinned at her nonetheless. “The closest Nurian
ship.”

“
Oh, dear.”

A fist hammered at the door.

“
The Turgonians cut the
ropes,” Tikaya yelled in Nurian. “We’re taking care of it. They ran
to the hold!”

A long pause answered her, and, for a
moment, she thought they might believe her. Then synchronized thuds
struck the door.

“
A nice try,” Rias said,
and she wondered how much Nurian he understood.

The chest skidded with each strike. She
shoved it back in between blows.

“
Get a ram,” someone
yelled.

“
Better ready that bow,”
Rias said.

“
If we’re successful in
crashing this ship, how are we getting out of here?” Tikaya
asked.

Rias nodded toward the cannonball holes.
“Hope you can swim.”

She groaned.

For a moment, the thumps at the door
stopped. Tikaya abandoned the chest and looked out the hole. They
had halved the distance between themselves and the other Nurian
ship, where a fire burned on the deck. People were scurrying to put
it out.

“
Are they tacking?” Rias
asked. “Do I need to make adjustments?”

“
Not yet. You’re dead on,
and they’re busy. Not sure they’ve figured things out
yet.”

“
Let’s hope.”

The hairs rose on the back of Tikaya’s neck.
Before she could shout a warning, a wave of power surged at the
door. The trunk and body were flung into the room.

While nocking an arrow, Tikaya tried to shut
the door with her shoulder. Warped hinges kept it from closing
fully, and someone thrust it wide.

She jumped around and fired the bow, point
blank, into the lead man’s chest. Shocked eyes launched an
accusation at her. She forced aside guilt and kicked him into
others trying to surge forward. While they struggled to get around
their dying comrade, she targeted a practitioner in the corridor
behind them. Her arrow sailed over the heads of men shorter than
she, but bounced harmlessly off an invisible shield. The
practitioner never flinched.

The Nurians cleared the fallen man away, and
their renewed push demanded Tikaya’s attention. The corridor and
door were too narrow for more than one to attack at once, but the
seconds it took to nock and aim arrows let them push her back.

“
Rias! I
can’t—”

Then he was there at her side, the slashing
cutlass a wall of steel guarding the doorway. He had tied the rope
to the other block and tackle. The lever wavered with the rocking
of the ship, but hopefully they were close enough now that their
course was inevitable.

“
Get in there, you fools!”
the practitioner shouted. “We’re on a crash course!”

An arrow clipped the doorjamb and whizzed
past Tikaya’s head. Every time she found the opportunity, she shot
around Rias, peppering their attackers. Her supply of arrows
dwindled.

“
This is madness,” she
yelled over the clamor.

“
Yes!” Rias grinned at
her, as if he loved every second.