Encrypted (33 page)

“
If there’s a chance of
fixing things, yes.” Agarik blew out a long breath. “I got the
story about the assassin, if you want to hear it. I think it might
influence your feelings for Rias.”

Though curious about the story, she
hesitated to ask for it. Now that she knew Rias was safe, she
needed to put aside her ‘feelings’ for him, figure out how to
thwart the weapons-acquisition mission, find a way home, and warn
her family they were in danger. She could not bring herself to send
Agarik away, though. “Is that actually what he calls himself?”

“
What?”

“
Rias. I thought it might
be something he made up because he didn’t want to tell me his real
name.”

“
He told me to use it. He
goes by Federias and said his friends have always shortened it.
Apparently, he’s never liked his first name. Got teased about it as
a boy and told it was girly.” Agarik grinned, probably delighted to
have been trusted with this secret information.

“
Does ‘the story’ explain
his exile?” she asked. “Why he was stripped of everything and
declared dead?”

“
Yes.”

She nodded for him to continue.

“
He says he
did
recommend the Kyatt
Islands as the place for a strategic outpost, on account of its
location right in the center of the sea between Turgonia and Nuria,
but he wasn’t planning on bloodshed. I don’t know if you remember,
but a couple of imperial ironclads showed up in your harbor a few
years ago. He went in with a diplomat to talk to your
president.”

Despite her resolution to put aside feelings
for him, a flutter went through her stomach. To think that Rias had
been so close years before. She had been working at the Polytechnic
then, and she remembered the hubbub around those ships arriving. If
she had looked out the window at the right time, might she have
seen Rias striding along the docks, straight and proud in a dress
uniform, flanked by dozens of men who respected him?

“
They offered your people
entry into the empire as an imperial territory and protection from
the Nurians in exchange. Your president said no. They negotiated,
tried to get the right to build a naval base on one of your
islands. Your president was adamant that your people would remain
neutral, and he denied it all. The emperor was not pleased. He
ordered Kyatt be conquered, and you know what happened after
that.”

“
Yes.” All too
well.

“
Rias was busy managing
the entire Northern Eerathu Theater, and the skirmishes with your
people were just a tack on his busy map, but he says he was
impressed with your president’s backbone and how hard your people
fought, especially considering the odds were all against them. The
emperor was more annoyed than impressed. Particularly so after you
started decoding messages and sending them to the
Nurians.”

“
I’ll bet,” Tikaya
murmured.

“
The emperor sent this
Sicarius out to Rias’s flagship with orders—and don’t irk that
fellow, by the way; he’s apparently been groomed from birth to be
the throne’s assassin. All Rias was supposed to do was take his
vessel into port and let Sicarius kill your president and his
advisors.”

Tikaya stood statue still. She did not
remember any personal attack on the president.

“
Rias was angry that the
emperor even
had
an assassin. We’ve always been an honorable warrior people,
and sneak attacks are considered cowardly.”

“
What’d he do?”

“
He refused to take the
assassin to your island and, when he learned Sicarius was trying to
make other arrangements to get there, Rias tried to incapacitate
him.”

That explained his earlier comment about
attacking Sicarius.

“
It didn’t work,” Agarik
said. “Fortunately, Sicarius was loyal enough to the emperor not to
take it into his own hands to kill a fleet admiral. Rias had time
to send warning to your president and describe the assassin so your
people could watch for him—that’s a part of the story you could
verify when you get home, I imagine.”

A spark of hope kindled. If the president
knew Rias had tried to help him, maybe it would make a difference
someday if...

Tikaya shook her head. Was she truly still
thinking of bringing him home?

“
Sicarius took word back
to the capital,” Agarik continued, “and the emperor about shi—, er,
he was livid at Rias’s disobedience. He stripped him of his name,
his rank, his ancestral lands, everything, and ordered him taken to
Krychek Island. The story passed around is that Rias was
assassinated by Nurians.”

“
Why the story?” Tikaya
wondered. “Why tell everyone he was dead?”

“
He’s a hero to our people
and well-liked. He had scads of loyal men who would have made
rescue attempts if they knew he was alive.”

“
Then why not actually
kill him?” Could the emperor have known he would need Rias
again?

“
My guess,” Agarik said,
“is the emperor wanted his best military strategist somewhere he
could get to him again if needed. Though that’s quite a
gamble.”

Tikaya raised her eyebrows.

“
Krychek Island isn’t a
place you put someone for safe keeping,” Agarik said, tone bleak.
“I remember newspaper stories over the years about some of the men
who got sent: cannibals, serial murderers who defiled their
victims, molesters who tortured children. Crazy people who aren’t
right in the head.” Agarik ran a thumb along the muzzle of his
rifle. “I reckon Krychek Island is like a Harvest Moon
War.”

Tikaya had heard the Turgonian expression a
couple times, but had not stopped to think about the meaning. “As
in the war goes so late in the season that even if you win, there’s
no one at home to bring in the crops, so your family starves over
the winter?”

“
That’s the gist of it.
When Rias first came on board, he didn’t talk to anyone. He was
just the unpredictable monster locked away in that dark cell, and
it seemed to suit him. You’d catch him in the light, and you’d see
this crazy haunted look in his eyes. The captain was scared of him,
and all those guards following him around in the beginning weren’t
for show. That’s why I was so startled when he spoke out on your
behalf. He hadn’t said a word to anyone up until then. But I guess
having a woman present made him want to be more civilized. To pull
himself together, you know?”

Tikaya closed her eyes. Rias had never
spoken of his time on the island. What demons might it have left
cavorting in his head?

“
I would hate to see him
like that again,” Agarik said, eyes sad. “Are you irrevocably mad
at him? It’s hard to tell with you. Today you worked together as if
nothing stood between you, and you saved us again. You’re a good
team.”

Though there was nothing accusing in
Agarik’s words, they made her gut twist with guilt. Everyone
thought she was mad at Rias, him too most likely.

“
I’m annoyed that he
blindsided me,” Tikaya said, “but mostly I’m frustrated with the
cosmos. I can forgive him for being born on the other side and for
being an officer—
the
officer—in the enemy army, but I can’t see having a life with
Fleet Admiral Starcrest. It would be a huge betrayal to those I
love—I loved.”

“
It wouldn’t be any sort
of betrayal to turn your back while they return him to Krychek?”
Agarik said.

“
He wouldn’t let them do
that.”

“
He won’t have a choice.
That assassin outfought him before, and...I’m not sure he’ll care
enough to worry about escaping if he doesn’t have anything to live
for.”

Tikaya stared at the floor. His words shamed
her. She had been thinking only of herself and how Rias might fit
into her life.

“
I better get back to my
rounds,” Agarik mumbled.

“
You’re a good man,
Agarik. I never expected you to play matchmaker for us.”

His lips curled wryly. “Me either. But I
reckon if you care for someone and you can’t have their love, you
can either be a spiteful bastard about it or you can try your
damnedest to make sure they’re going to find some happiness in the
world.”

* * * * *

Tikaya yawned, a great face-tilting-up kind
of yawn that made her crack the back of her head on a cabinet door.
That, and her bleary eyes, forced her to concede that she needed
sleep. She, fearing the marines would move on too quickly, had
spent several hours learning as much as she could from the lab,
scrawling notes at top speed. Agarik had been nice enough to bring
her food and her notebook so she could avoid the camp for a while
longer, but he claimed not to have seen the journal. She thought
that odd since she had tucked it into the same place in her
rucksack as the notebook, but she had been in a rush to grab a bow
at the time, so perhaps it slid to the bottom.

Tikaya picked her way past snoozing bodies
toward her gear. Aside from Agarik and a man perched at the top of
the stairs, the rest of the marines slept. She did not see the
assassin.

She spotted Rias on the edge of the camp,
sprawled on his parka amongst a pile of disassembled machine
innards. She grinned. Just like a child fallen asleep on the floor
amongst his toys. But, as she stepped closer, she noticed his eyes
moved beneath his lids, and some dream turned his lips to a
grimace. Agarik’s words about Krychek Island came to mind. She sat
on the rucksack next to him and stroked his hair.

Rias’s eyes opened and, for a moment,
confusion creased his brow.

“
Where were you?” Tikaya
murmured.

He rubbed his face. “Nowhere pleasant.”

“
Should I feel bad about
waking you, or is this an improvement?”

Though he did not lift his head, his eyes
roved, taking in the bleak black ceilings, black walls, and snoring
marines. He smiled though. “Nobody was fondling my head in the
dream.”

Careful to avoid his bruised eye, Tikaya
brushed a lock of hair back from his forehead. “I translated the
symbols on the cubes.” She recited the lines from memory, and he
made the same conclusion as she had.

“
Cleaning devices? That’s
amazing.”

“
More disturbing, I’d say,
since humans are something to be incinerated along with the
trash.”

“
Actually, I was talking
about you. You just got your first real clue about the language in
Wolfhump, what, three days ago? And now you’re reading it.” Rias
gripped her hand and gazed up at her, dark eyes full of pride.
“When you get home, you’ll be the main story in the next volume of
Archaeology Monthly.”

The lump in her throat made her laugh more
of a hiccup. Rias’s words reminded her, not for the first time, how
different he was from Parkonis, who had always envied her language
gift. His congratulations had been grudging when she had been
selected by the president to work on decryptions during the war.
She had not even wanted the dubious honor, made even more dubious
by the predicament it had landed her in, but he had envied her the
recognition. Maybe there was good reason to love someone who had so
many accolades of his own that he could never feel jealous of a
bright philologist. Of course, she reminded herself, Rias had
nothing now except a trip back to a savage island of deranged
criminals. And still he was proud of her.

“
Something wrong?” he
asked gently.

“
No.” She wiped her eyes.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’ve—”

His eyes widened. “Tikaya. You don’t need
to—”

She pressed a finger to his lips. “Let me
finish, please?” When he did not nod, she left her finger there.
“Before I met you, before Parkonis died, before the war, I knew
what I wanted from life. I dreamed of sharing a little house near
the beach with someone, close enough to town to walk to the market
and the Polytechnic. I’d teach in the mornings and work in the labs
in the afternoon, studying relics and data our field people brought
in. And I’d have two children, a boy and a girl, of course. Blond
hair, blue eyes, freckles.” She smiled wryly, acknowledging the
unlikeliness that life would ever turn out exactly as she dreamed.
“When Parkonis came along, I knew he was the one who could give me
that dream.” Her smile faded, and her voice dropped to a whisper.
“Then the war came, and Parkonis died, and my dream died too. It’s
hard for me to admit it, because it’s so selfish, but I think I’ve
spent the last year mourning the loss of my dream as much as I’ve
been mourning his death.”

She felt silly holding her finger to Rias’s
lips. He was watching and listening. She turned her hand over and
brushed her knuckles along his jaw.

“
And then I met you. Of
course I knew you were a Turgonian as soon as I heard you speak,
and you admitted to being in the war, but I imagined you were just
some ship’s engineer following orders, some simple soldier who none
of my people could blame their troubles on, and I had all these
ideas about how you could come home with me, and...maybe my dream
could live again.” She shook her head. “It’s not your fault you
don’t fit into the fantasy I made up. It’s not as if there weren’t
clues to the contrary. I was just set on my theory, because I
thought I could work you into my life somehow that way. Like I
said, it’s selfish. And I’m sorry.”

Rias sat up abruptly, and her hand fell
away. “Tikaya—”