Encrypted (43 page)

Tikaya slumped against his chest. She should
have been elated to have her vision back, but a lump of guilt
lodged in her throat. “You got shot trying to help me. I’m
sorry.”

Rias took her face in his hands. “I’d risk a
lot more than a trifling arm to help you.”

Comforted by his words, she tilted her head
back.

He seemed on the verge of kissing her, but
he cleared his throat and glanced around. “Are you...alone?”

“
Yes, though Sicarius was
here a few minutes ago.” She realized he had probably been
wondering about Parkonis, but his eyes widened at the mention of
the assassin.

“
He was? Rust, he’s not
supposed to be on this side of the cave-in. He must have found a
way through.” He scrubbed his face. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and be
able to avoid him.”

“
I haven’t seen Parkonis
since before the explosions,” Tikaya said. “Do you know if he...
Did any of the raiders make it?”

“
I didn’t see him amongst
the dead.” Rias took a deep breath. “Tikaya, I’ll help you find
him, but I need you to know... When he appeared and absconded with
you I... My first thought was to hurl myself into that chasm. But
there’s a stigma against suicide in my culture, and regardless it’s
always seemed like giving up, which isn’t something I’ve ever
strived to master. I fully intend to fight for you.”

“
Rias—”

“
I know he represents your
dream, the life you always wanted, and I know its selfish of me to
want you when it could alienate you from your family, but... How is
it he’s been alive a year and never found a way to let you know? I
would have toppled an empire to get back to you.”

“
Rias—”

“
I can’t walk away and let
him have you, Tikaya. Not if there’s a chance...”

“
Rias.”

He opened his mouth again, but she flattened
her palm over his lips. His shoulders slumped, and wariness hooded
his eyes.

“
I appreciate hearing
those things very much.” She grinned at the idea of him toppling an
empire—for most people, that was just an expression, but she
wouldn’t put it beyond his means. “But there’s no need for you to
go on.” She lowered her hand, brushing his lips with her thumb.
“You have me.”

He gaped at her in stunned silence.

“
You have me for a lot of
reasons,” she said quietly, “but especially because you’re willing
to give up everything to be here at my side, plotting against your
people to destroy those weapons. The definition of a good man is
someone who makes the moral choice when temptation invites him to
do otherwise. The definition of a hero is someone who makes that
moral choice even when temptation, threat of reprisal, and the
mores of his culture invite him to do otherwise.” She considered
her words and issued a self-deprecating smirk. “That was preachy,
wasn’t it?”

“
Oh, no, I liked it.
Especially the part where you’re calling me a hero.” He grinned,
eyes sparkling, and her heart danced.

“
I’m sure I’m not the
first, Fleet Admiral Starcrest.”

“
In Turgonia, you’re a
hero if you sink more ships than anyone else.” He tucked a stray
lock of hair behind her ear and laid his forehead against hers. “I
like your definition better.”

“
Good. I hope you like
this too: I don’t want you worrying about being selfish because you
want to have a life with me. I want one with you too. Some people
are worth changing your dreams for.” She kissed him, wishing there
was time for more. “I want to be with you. Always. Even if it means
we’re both exiles on your forsaken prison island.”

Rias’s grip tightened. “Cursed ancestors,
don’t say that.”

“
It’s the truth, though
I’m going to be terribly disappointed if the preeminent military
strategist of the era can’t outsmart a teenage assassin in order to
avoid that fate.”

Whatever Rias’s retort was going to be, it
was lost when the door hissed open.

Before Tikaya could do more than think of
hiding, Sicarius strode in. His gaze swiveled upward to lock on
them. The pulsing blue light painted his face in eerie shadows.
Blood stained his short blond hair, spattered the side of his face,
and painted his hands. As those dark hard eyes raked her, she had
an unsettling hunch none of it was his. Two pistols were jammed
into his belt, and he carried a dagger. A drop of blood fell from
the blade and splashed on the landing.

“
Sicarius, good,” Rias
said.

Good? The assassin looked like he was about
to kill both of them. Tikaya stifled the incredulous expression
that wanted to waltz across her face.

“
Do you have the door
symbols from the journal?” Rias asked.

“
You assured Captain
Bocrest you were placing the blasting sticks to provide a
distraction, but the tunnels came down in such a way that he
believed the weapons cavern had been buried and you with it.”
Sicarius spoke in such an emotionless monotone it was almost
possible to miss the accusation in those words. “I informed the
captain that it was unlikely you would miscalculate so badly. The
marines are searching the tunnels for you and her.” His cool eyes
flicked Tikaya’s way.

She groaned inwardly. The plan would have
worked if the emperor’s perceptive henchman wasn’t here. She
glanced at Rias, almost expecting him to dive behind the railing
and rip his pistol free for a shot, but he did not.

“
Demolitions are dangerous
and sometimes unpredictable,” Rias said. “We can, of course, rejoin
the others now, though why not get through the locked door and
finish the mission while the relic raiders are too scattered to
guard their cache? Do you have the symbols?”

“
Yes,” Sicarius said, no
sign on his face of whether he believed Rias’s lies. “I already
tried them.”

“
How?” Tikaya
asked.

No doubt, he was agile enough to scale the
side of that butte, but not with those invisible beams waiting to
slice off limbs.

“
Bow and arrow,” Sicarius
said.

Rias lifted an eyebrow toward Tikaya. He
probably had not had as good a look at the entryway as she had. She
nodded thoughtfully. If Gali had used telekinesis to nudge the
symbols around, she supposed something thrown—or shot—against them
could do the same job.

“
You lined them up?”
Tikaya had assumed the numbers she copied were a different set than
the ones that had appeared the day Lancecrest got in.

“
As close as I could. Not
all the symbols matched those in the journal.”

“
Maybe you misread them,”
Rias said.

Those dark eyes turned a shade cooler. “I
did not.”

“
I’ve been told the
symbols change periodically,” Tikaya said. “It was probably
designed so people who knew the secret to the puzzle could always
get in, providing they had the math skills, whereas others would
have, well, the trouble Lancecrest’s team has had.”

“
You know the secret?”
Sicarius glided up the stairs, eyes locked on her.

Rias dropped to the step in front of her,
blocking the assassin’s advance. Sicarius halted.

“
I’m close,” Tikaya said.
Or not even remotely close. It was one of the two. “It would help
to see the symbols you have that worked before, even if they don’t
now.”

For a long moment, Sicarius stared past
Rias’s shoulder at her. Finally, he wiped the dagger, sheathed it
with the myriad others he carried, and handed her the torn scrap of
paper, neatly folded.

“
Thank you.” Half the
numbers were the same. She would have to check the sphere to
translate the others. “I have some ideas about how to get through
the web.” Maybe pretending to include Sicarius in their plans would
make him more likely to believe they shared the same goal. She put
a hand on Rias’s shoulder. “Can you make something that causes
smoke? A lot of smoke?”

“
With the right
ingredients, yes.” Rias snapped his fingers. “Sicarius, can you get
us some bat guano from the cavern?”

Tikaya almost choked. Bat guano?

Sicarius’s eyes narrowed. “There is no
potassium nitrate in these labs?”

Of course. Potassium nitrate—salt peter—was
harvested in bat guano-rich caves, and it was one of the core
ingredients in black powder. The kid was bright. They would have to
be very careful—and probably lucky—to trick him into helping.

“
I haven’t seen any,”
Tikaya said. Which was true. With her spectacles missing she had
not bothered examining the lab closely.

“
I’ll prepare the vats and
put together the rest of the ingredients to make some smoke bombs,”
Rias said. “And Tikaya will work on the entry code for us. We can
finish your mission before Bocrest even misses you.”

“
Bat guano,” Sicarius
said. “Very well.”

As soon as the door shut behind him, Tikaya
and Rias grabbed each other’s arms and started to talk at the same
time.

“
You first,” Rias
said.

“
First, I think it’ll be a
lot easier to find potassium nitrate in one of these labs than
making it from scratch, but I assume you’re just trying to keep him
busy.”

Rias nodded. “Yes.”

“
Second, can you look at
this and tell me what you think? These are the translated numbers
from the door pad.” She fished out the page with her solution for
the puzzle, wincing as she handed it to him. It had seemed a
logical guess during her in-cabinet mulling, but now that she had
to share the hypothesis with someone else, she feared it a foolish
one.

“
A Skiltar Square?” Rias
asked. “It looks like you solved it. In Turgonia, you can get books
full of them to entertain your precocious children.”

He smirked, and she wondered how many his
parents had foisted on him. Her amusement at the idea faded
quickly.

“
This can’t be right
then,” she said. “Too simple for these people. And surely they
wouldn’t have had similar puzzles to what we have.”

“
Why not? In your studies,
haven’t you found that the fundamental properties of numbers are
the same in every language, amongst every people? Mathematics
surely transcends humanity, existing whether we do or not, so it
doesn’t seem odd to me that another species would play the same
sorts of games with numbers. And why wouldn’t this entrance code be
simple? Do you think someone carrying a toxic weapon up a ramp
would have wanted to stand outside the door for three hours making
calculations? What if he dropped one of those poison-filled vials
and it broke at his feet? Big oops, eh?”

Tikaya laughed. She had not considered
that.

“
Besides,” Rias said,
giving her an appreciative smile. “Those squares aren’t
that
easy to solve. Why
don’t you translate the combination from the journal and see if
it’s a solution to one.” He thumped a fist on the railing. “We
still need a way to destroy the weapons. I was thinking we might
find a formula for a powerful alien version of naphtha or kerosene,
because even gas is flammable, right? At a high enough
temperature... Tikaya, where are you going?”

Halfway through his spiel, she had charged
to the cabinet where she left the cube. She raced back with the
contraption clutched in her arms, and Rias lurched back a step at
the sight of it.

“
It’s not active,” she
said. “I’m not sure why, but it gives us the chance to
experiment.”

Rias recovered, though he eyed the device
warily. “Experiment?”

“
The cubes already clean
things by incinerating them, right? All we need to do is add those
weapons to the list of items its programmed to burn, throw it in
that chamber, and close the door. You took one apart, right? Do you
think you could alter its parameters? Like a punchcard in a steam
loom?”

“
I... Tikaya, that thing
is so far beyond a steam loom I wouldn’t have any idea where to
start.”

“
Even if I can translate
the schematic?” She thrust the blueprint she had copied toward him.
“Give me a moment, and I might be able to find repair instructions
in the sphere’s library too.”

Though his eyes darted, devouring the
schematic, his wary frown did not fade. “All before Sicarius
returns or the marines stumble upon us or angry relic raiders burst
in?”

So, that’s what daunted looked like on him.
Huh.

“
We can do it.” Tikaya
slapped him on the backside.

He blinked. “What was that for?”

“
I’m encouraging
growth.”

CHAPTER 21

Gunfire cracked in the distance. Again. Bent
over a table with Rias, Tikaya did not lift her head. The cube, one
side removed, sat between them. Several parts she could not name
lined the table in the order Rias had removed them. A
three-dimensional display of the inside of one of the cubes hovered
in the air, courtesy of the sphere. The blue lab lighting continued
to flash, providing poor illumination for such detailed work.

A yell of rage—or pain—sounded in the
tunnels. Rias grumbled something under his breath about how he
ought to be out there, helping the men. He had set the situation up
so everyone would be running around in the tunnels, distracted
dealing with each other and the darkness, creating just this time
they needed, but it clearly did not sit well with him.