Encrypted (10 page)

“
How come none of your
people know about this shindig going on in the middle of the
ocean?” Tikaya asked.

“
I don’t know.”

A great swirling gust of wind tugged at her
dress and whipped loose strands of hair into her mouth. She looked
up at the stack. The smoke was not affected, meaning the
disturbance was localized.

“
Nurian magic!” Rias
wrapped his arm around her.

A flash of yellow burned Tikaya’s eyes, and
vertigo washed over her. A final burst of wind railed at her, her
stomach dropped, then silence engulfed her.

She blinked and tried to wipe away the
yellow dots swimming before her eyes. Bile churned in her throat,
and she forced a swallow. The world came back into focus.

She was belowdecks, not in the ironclad but
in a wooden vessel. She stood in a storage space full of Nurians
pointing short bows at her, arrows nocked and drawn back. Crates,
barrels, and a number of confusing machines, or perhaps
practitioners’ contraptions, fenced the large hold. Rias still had
his arm around her, and he held the sword out before them, but it
did not matter with so many weapons pointed their way. A smug woman
in black robes smiled in triumph.

“
There, that’s easier,”
she said in Nurian.

She lifted a finger toward the bowmen and
opened her mouth.

Tikaya scrabbled for something to say,
something to sway the woman from giving the kill order.

“
Don’t tell them,” Rias
blurted in Turgonian.

Barely, just barely, Tikaya managed to keep
the bewildered expression off her face. The practitioner halted,
finger still lifted, and frowned at Rias.

“
I won’t,” Tikaya
whispered back, also in Turgonian.

“
They’ll torture us if
they know what we know,” he stage whispered.

Did the Nurian understand? None of the
expressions on the bowmen’s faces had changed, but an assessing
mien narrowed the woman’s eyes. Yes, she understood, and Rias must
be counting on that, trying to pique her interest long enough to
have a chance to do something.

Tikaya lifted one placating hand and stepped
toward the woman. “I understand you have orders to kill me,” she
said in Nurian as she slipped her other hand into her pocket, “but
I’m sure I can be of more use to you alive.” She caught the other
woman eyeing Rias and added, “As can he. We’ve just escaped our
cells on the Turgonian ship; we’ve no allegiance to them—they
kidnapped us against our will.”

The practitioner seemed to be only
half-listening. She stepped closer, peering up at Rias, whose head
brushed the ceiling of the hold.

“
You look familiar,” she
said in heavily accented Turgonian. “Who—”

Tikaya hurled a handful of sand, and the
woman gasped, swiping at her eyes. Rias lunged past Tikaya, pushing
her to the deck. His body coiled, then he sprang, whipping the
sword through the practitioner’s neck with a grunt.

He landed and charged, taking advantage of
the startled silence gripping the hold.

For a stunned moment, Tikaya lay on her
belly, staring at the decapitated head, the still-twitching body,
and the blood. So much blood.

The Nurians recovered, and bows twanged. An
arrow grazed Tikaya’s arm and pinned her sleeve to the deck.

“
Move,” Rias barked. “Find
cover.” He was already attacking a third man.

Yes, cover, of course.

Tikaya tore her sleeve free and rolled
toward the closest set of legs. An arrow thudded into the deck an
inch from her ear. She kicked as hard as she could, and her heel
smashed the inside of a man’s knee. He yelped and collapsed on
her.

Her first instinct was to shove him away,
but another arrow slammed into the deck near her head. She tried to
stay under him, to use him as a human shield. He drew back to punch
her. An arrow lodged in his shoulder.

“
Not me, idiot!” he
screamed.

He thrashed, still on top of Tikaya as he
clawed at the shaft. A wayward elbow nearly tore her spectacles
from her face. His frustrated cries of pain reverberated in her
ears. His face, eyes squeezed shut, mouth contorted with agony,
loomed inches from her own. Fearful of more bows aimed at her, she
wrapped her fingers into his shirt and kept him from pulling
away.

Rias towered over the Nurians, head brushing
the ceiling beams as he lunged about the space. He slashed
bowstrings and pounded through the startled archers, who—after
catching their own comrades in the crossfire—were dropping their
bows in favor of short swords and cutlasses. Howls of pain and rage
bounced from the wooden walls.

The Nurians stopped shooting at Tikaya and
focused their attacks on Rias, obviously finding him the greater
threat. She spotted a bow within reach and grabbed it. The wounded
man writhed, still trying to pull out the arrow, and she rolled
away from him. She pried a quiver off a fallen archer and ducked
behind a chest-high wooden contraption bolted to the deck.

Her hands shook, and it took three tries to
nock the first arrow. She willed her fingers to still. She could do
this. Human beings or not, they were trying to kill her.

Her first arrow went a foot wide of its
mark, thunking into the frame by the hold’s only exit. She wiped
hands wet with blood and sweat on her dress and sucked in a deep
breath.

A man with a raised hatchet drew up behind
Rias as he squared off with two cutlass wielders.

Tikaya’s nerves disappeared and she let an
arrow fly. It struck the attacker between the shoulder blades, and
he pitched forward, crashing to the deck at Rias’s heels. The man
lay still. She had found his heart.

She swallowed, mortified by the results of
her reflexive act. Rias slashed his cutlass through the throat of
the last man standing before him, glanced behind at the dead
Nurian, and saluted her with the sword.

The rest of their attackers were down as
well. Dead. A tremor coursed through Tikaya’s body. She could not
rip her gaze from the one she killed.

Muffled shouts echoed from deeper in the
ship. Reinforcements who had heard the skirmish. Her mind processed
what it meant, that more would soon burst in, that she would have
to fight, but the tremor returned to her hands, and she shied away
from the idea of shooting anyone else.

She was not a killer. If her family knew
what she had done...

Rias stepped before her, blocking the view
of the body and breaking her thoughts. He gripped her shoulder with
a bloodstained hand. She swallowed and met his eyes.

“
More work to do before
we’re safe,” he said, voice calm and steady, commanding her
attention. “You can react later. Right now, I need you to watch my
back so we can live through this. Concentrate on that, nothing
else, understood?”

Before she could nod, four men burst into
the hold, swords leading. A flash of silver streaked toward Rias’s
head. He jerked back, and it split the air between them to land
with a thunk in the wood wall. A throwing knife.

Rias leaped away from Tikaya and charged the
Nurians.

“
Curse me.” She tore an
arrow from her quiver. He had almost been killed because he was
trying to keep her from falling apart. She nocked the arrow, forced
her hands to still. React later. Yes. She could do that.

Rias led the Nurians about the hold, dodging
behind crates and apparatuses, slashing to keep the men at bay, and
evading their attempts to surround him. With agility surprising in
someone so large, he kept them in each other’s way and remained on
the outskirts so he only had to face one at a time. More, he kept
them from paying attention to her.

Good.

Tikaya lifted the drawn bow and selected the
man farthest from Rias. She was not going to be the idiot who shot
someone on her own side. The arrow took the Nurian in his chest,
and he lurched backward, hands clutching the shaft. Horror and pain
wrenched his face. Her own heart twisted in sympathy, but she
smashed down the emotion. React later.

Her next arrow felled a second man even as
Rias sliced the throat of the third. The fourth skidded to a stop,
realizing he fought alone.

He backpedaled for the exit, and Tikaya had
him targeted, but she hesitated. Even if he meant to run straight
to his captain, how could she shoot someone fleeing?

Rias lunged after him, and the man jumped
back. His heel caught on a downed comrade, and he pitched to the
deck, cracking his head on a crate.

Rias dropped beside the man, gripping his
throat, and Tikaya winced and looked away.

“
Live or die?” Rias asked
in accented Nurian.

Surprised, Tikaya looked back.

“
Live?” the Nurian
croaked, eyes darting with fear, as if he did not expect to be that
lucky.

Rias glanced toward the door, then laid his
sword on the ground while he tore pieces from the man’s colorful
clothing. With quick efficiency, he gagged the Nurian and started
on ankle and wrist bonds.

“
Who would answer with
die?” Tikaya asked.

“
Most of my people,” Rias
said. “To live when the rest of your team died would be an
unacceptable disgrace to many.”

With some vague sense that someone should be
standing guard, she stepped over the bodies to watch the exit.
Another hold stretched before her, lit by glowing orbs hanging from
the beamed ceiling. No one else waited to charge.

Rias finished the bonds, leaving the Nurian
wide-eyed on the deck, and snatched arrows from partially spent
quivers. When he had a fistful, he joined Tikaya.

“
I want to take control of
the ship,” he said.

“
Take control?” She gaped
at the audacity. Surely, the best they could manage would be to run
for the upper deck and leap over the side. But, no, who would find
them in the cold, dark waters? Even if the Turgonians spotted them,
and that was unlikely, they had their own troubles.

“
We’ll have another fight
when they realize what’s going on.” He held out the arrows, enough
to stuff her quiver, and watched her face. “You’ve got my
back?”

She guessed at what he was really asking:
can you, a philologist from an island full of peace-loving
academics, keep from collapsing in a weepy heap when I need your
help?

Tikaya grabbed the arrows and jammed them
into the quiver, angry with herself for that weak moment that made
him question her. “I’ve had it so far, haven’t I?”

“
Yes.” Rias gripped her
forearm. “You’ve been magnificent.”

She snorted. Right. He didn’t know how lucky
he was her trembling fingers hadn’t loosed an arrow that turned him
into a eunuch. “Will you still think that if I insist on taking a
side trip?”

“
What?”

“
I want to search the
captain’s cabin for orders and find out why these people are trying
to kill me.” And maybe she could finally get answers about what
this secret Turgonian mission was all about.

“
We may not have time,”
Rias said.

Tikaya lifted her chin. “We’ll make
time.”

His eyebrows flicked upward, but the
surprise lasted only a second. He nodded once and gave her a
Turgonian salute, a fist thumped over his heart. “Yes, ma’am.”

“
Jeela, is it done?” a
tinny voice asked from the center of the room.

As one they stared at the dead practitioner.
The voice emanated from within her black robe.

Rias pointed his cutlass. “Can you answer
that?”

“
Uhm.” Tikaya knelt by the
dead woman, trying not to look at the bloody stump where the head
should have been, and patted the blood-sodden robe. She found a
glowing opal pendant, the chain broken, just as the voice spoke
again.

“
Is the Kyattese girl
dead? Jeela, do you need help?”

Though her education in the mental sciences
was not ecumenical, she could sense the soft hum of a
practitioner-made device. She held it up to her mouth, then waved
at Rias and mouthed, “Make some noise.”

She partially covered the device with her
hand, hoping to disguise the fact that her voice would not match
the practitioner’s, and spoke in Nurian: “Yes, mission complete.
She’s dead.” Then, fearing further conversation would only hurt her
chances at pulling off the ruse, she dropped the device on the
deck, so it clanked against the wood.

“
I doubt that fooled
anyone,” she apologized to Rias as they exited.

The grim cast to his eyes suggested he
agreed, but all he said was, “We’d best hurry.”

CHAPTER 6

The Nurian captain’s cabin offered a
distinct contrast to Bocrest’s quarters. Behind a desk painted with
flowers and vines, lace curtains decorated a bank of windows.
Velvet furniture and lush rugs covering the deck might have invited
one to lounge, but the cannons booming in the distance suppressed
the cozy parlor ambiance.

Tikaya and Rias slid inside, shutting the
door behind them. For the moment, the Nurians were busy
attacking—and defending against—Bocrest’s warship, but sooner or
later someone would figure out “Jeela” had failed her mission.

“
Check those trunks.” Rias
jogged around the desk to the windows. “Let me know if you can tell
if the captain is a wizard or not. If he is, he’ll likely have
wards protecting his orders.”

Tikaya threw open the
trunks and lifted a sword and a lacy brassiere. “I believe
she’s
a
warrior.”

“
Should be safe to search
then.” Rias tore his gaze from the windows and cocked an eyebrow at
the lingerie. “Unless you want to model that for me
first?”