Encrypted (18 page)

A hand touched her shoulder, and she jumped,
dropping her chalk.

“
Sorry.” Rias held a book
with his finger marking a page.

“
No, don’t apologize. My
fault for not paying attention.” Tikaya picked up the chalk and
accepted the book. She glanced at the cover. “
Torture and Interrogation Methods Technical
Manual
?”

Rias cleared his throat. “Yes, ah, just
stick to the chapter on chemical applications.”

“
Oh, I will. I don’t want
to chance upon any Turgonian brutality secrets.” Or pictures more
gruesome than the bodies on the floor.

He surveyed the chalkboards with bemusement
and scraped at dried blood on the corner of one. “You know, some
women wouldn’t be willing to work in a room full of corpses.”

She had already started writing and almost
missed the comment. “What?”

Rias chuckled. “Nothing. Continue your work.
I’ll stand guard.”

* * * * *

Tikaya straightened, wincing at the ache in
her lower back. She stretched her arms toward the ceiling and shook
out a cramp in her hand. Midnight had to be near, maybe past. Her
stomach growled. Fatigue numbed her brain, and her mouth battled
unsuccessfully against yawns. Even if the lighting had been better,
her notes and the symbols on the device would have blurred and swam
before her bleary eyes.

Rias stood guard by the door, checking the
hallway from time to time, but mostly staying silent and letting
her work.

A scream raced down the street below the
hill. What if she translated the writing too late? After the entire
team killed each other? She eyed the bodies in the corner. Rias had
dragged them out of the way, muttering something about funeral
pyres in the morning, but she worried about getting to morning. If
enough people attacked at once, she and Rias could end up like that
before dawn.

No, she decided, watching him standing with
his ear cocked. Despite the hour, he was alert, rifle across his
arms, hand on the stock, finger near the trigger. Not tense but
relaxed and ready. She imagined he could fight off superior odds
for a long time, but he would not want to do so. He’d be shooting
his own people, the very men they were supposed to help later
on.

Rias saw her watching him and lifted his
eyebrows.

Tikaya felt silly to have been caught gazing
at him. “I was wondering if you could get my mind off this for a
moment.”

Rias joined her. He set the rifle butt on
the floor and rested his forearms across the muzzle. He surveyed
her, and she felt a self-conscious twinge. No doubt she had strands
of hair sticking out in all directions and dark smudges assailing
her eyes. And her baggy Turgonian uniform and parka did not flatter
her form under any circumstances.

“
A question.” Rias’s gaze
rested on a chalkboard, though he did not seem to focus on
anything. “If someone from Kyatt were to decide to marry a
Turgonian, would they be allowed to live on your
island?”

Tikaya was not sure what she had expected
him to ask, but that was not it. “That wasn’t a marriage proposal,
was it?”

He coughed. “No, no, just hypothetical. If
it were a proposal...” He offered his half smile. “There’d be soft
music, excellent food, romantic ambiance...” He tilted his head
toward the corner. “Fewer corpses.”

“
Ah, I wasn’t sure how
they did it in the empire. Given your people’s reputation, I
thought bloodshed and mangled bodies might be standard at social
gatherings.”

“
Bloodshed
perhaps.”

Rias watched her, waiting for an answer to
his question, she realized.

“
The Kyatt Islands are
major trade ports and learning centers, and we have numerous
foreigners living there, either temporarily or permanently,” Tikaya
said. “I can think of numerous Turgonians who studied at the
Polytechnic over the years. And there have been cases of foreigners
marrying natives and staying on the islands.”

“
Turgonian
foreigners?”

“
Well, you would have been
more welcome
before
your people tried to take over the islands.” She smiled, but
no humor lightened his expression. “The president might ask you to
leave if he found out you were among those sinking our ships and
slinging cannon balls at our harbor, but if you said you didn’t
take part in the war, I’m sure you’d be allowed to
stay.”

“
So.” Rias laid the rifle
across his shoulders and draped his forearms over the ends,
reminiscent of a man in a pillory. “Refuge, if one was willing to
lie for the rest of one’s life.”

“
Or just dodge questions
about one’s name and one’s past. You’re good at that.”

She had not meant the statement to sound
accusatory, but he flinched.

“
Listen,” Tikaya said, “I
don’t mean to insult you, but whatever you did, or whoever you are
to those marines, you’re probably less important than you think to
the rest of the world. Chances are my people have never heard of
you.”

“
Oh?” Leave it to the
Turgonians: he looked faintly offended.

“
You could tell
me
your name—” Tikaya
wriggled her eyebrows suggestively, “—and then I could let you know
whether or not you’d be welcome on my island.”

She thought he might remind her that his
original question had been hypothetical and that he was not asking
about his own future, just some imaginary person’s. He did not. He
took a deep breath. “You’re right. I don’t know if we’re going to
survive the next couple weeks and, even if we do, I’m guessing
Bocrest has orders to make me disappear afterward, but either way
it’s not honorable of me to keep truths from you. I—”

Glass shattered.

Tikaya whirled, grabbing the heavy book as
if she could use it as a shield. A shadow moved at the window.
Something long and small slid between the boards and rolled onto
the floor. Flame spit and hissed on the end of a string. Not a
string, a fuse.

Rias yanked her off her feet. The furniture
blurred past as Rias leaped over it, arm clenched around her waist.
He landed in the dark hallway, and shadows swallowed them.

He sprinted but only made it three steps
before the explosion tore away the darkness. A great boom roared,
and a concussion pounded Tikaya’s back, ripping her away from
Rias.

The wall filled her vision. She tried to
bring her arms up to protect her head, but she crashed first.
Something popped in her shoulder and agony seared her body. The
book dropped from her hands. She landed on the floor, which sent a
second jolt of pain rocking through her. She gasped, trying to
stifle cries, not sure who might be nearby.

A door at the end of the hall opened, and
lights swam in the darkness. Tears blurred Tikaya’s vision. She
gritted her teeth and blinked them away. Half a dozen men raced
into the hall, lanterns swinging, swords and pistols waving.

The door at the opposite end flung open.
They were surrounded.

Tikaya staggered to her feet. Her shoulder
flamed with pain. She gasped and braced herself against the wall.
Next to her, a shot cracked with a flash of orange flaring from
Rias’s rifle.

“
There she is!” someone
shouted, voice ragged and rough, almost inhuman. “Give us the
woman!”

“
This way,” Rias
whispered.

She grabbed the book and ran into a room
after him. A return shot echoed through the hall behind them.

“
Don’t shoot us, you
idgeets!” came a cry from the opposite end.

Rias shut the door. A hint of starlight came
through the window, but darkness reigned inside.

“
They sound drunk,” Tikaya
said, words broken as she gritted her teeth through the
pain.

“
Where are you hurt?” Rias
snapped the lock, and furniture scraped as he shoved something in
front of the door.

An image of the dead men in the other office
invaded Tikaya’s mind. They had been trapped in a room, and this
was exactly what they had done. It had not worked.

“
Dislocated shoulder,” she
said.

“
Let me
see—feel—it.”

“
Don’t worry...about me.
I’ll—”

But he was already sliding her parka off.
She clenched her teeth, trying not to whimper.

Footsteps thundered down the hall, and light
slipped under the crack in the door.

“
Which room?” someone
barked.

Rias unbuttoned her uniform jacket and
probed her shoulder. “Bite down,” he whispered, putting something
wooden in her mouth. Knife handle, she guessed. It was smooth and
hard. He gripped her arm and shoulder, then jerked with one
powerful motion.

Agony erupted. Tikaya clenched her teeth on
the handle, panting to keep from crying out. Blackness encroached
on her vision, and her legs gave way. Rias caught her and held her
gently.

“
You hear something?”
someone asked.

“
That room.”

“
No, that one!”

“
It’s whichever one’s
locked, you halfwits.”

“
Sorry,” Rias whispered,
cupping the back of her head. He leaned his forehead against hers,
and even in the darkness she sensed his distress over hurting
her.

“
Not your fault,” she
said.

Someone rattled the doorknob.

Tikaya found the strength to stand again.
Already the pain was fading to a manageable ache.

“
I’m ready,” she
whispered.

“
Strong lady.” Rias
squeezed her good arm before pressing a pistol into her hand. “Back
corner. Find something to crouch behind, but stay where you can aim
at the door. If they get past me, shoot them. Here, take this too.”
He loaded her up with the second pistol, a powder flask, and an
ammo pouch.

“
Shoot to
kill?”

He hesitated. “Do what you have to do to
stay alive.”

She nodded, then, realizing he would not see
it, added, “I understand.”

Someone pounded on their door. “They’re in
here!”

Tikaya set the book on a chair and slid
behind a cabinet where she could see the window and the entrance.
She gripped the pistol. At least the wall had been considerate
enough to mangle her left shoulder instead of her right. “Maybe
we’ll get lucky, the blasting stick will have destroyed the device,
and everyone will return to normal any second.”

“
Maybe.” Rias’s tone made
the possibility sound unlikely, and Tikaya wondered if he had seen
explosives used on the strange technology before.

More pounding—louder pounding—hammered the
wood, and something snapped. A crack of light appeared, but the
desk kept the door from opening wide. Rias waited in the wall’s
shadows.

She glanced toward the window, wondering if
they could escape that way. Lantern light danced past—men were out
there, too, perhaps counting rooms to figure out which office she
and Rias occupied.

The door opened wider, and the slash of
light broadened, illuminating the corner of the desk and a
coatrack.

A rifle barrel slid through the gap.

Tikaya tensed, expecting Rias to shoot
first. Despite the chill, sweat dampened her hands.

The rifle slid in farther, and Rias burst
into motion. He grabbed the barrel, yanked it into the room, and
slashed upward with his cutlass. The attacker yelped in surprise
and pain, releasing the weapon. Rias planted a foot, thrust the
other man back, and slammed the door shut.

“
One man disarmed, seven
to go.” He shoved the desk against the frame again.

Muffled voices came through the door—the
sound of people plotting. The next attack would not be so easy to
thwart.

“
There are men milling
around outside too,” Tikaya said.

“
You think I don’t know
that?” Rias snapped.

She stared at him, startled. He had never so
much as looked crossly at her. Then she remembered: “I guess the
protection from whatever the artifact is putting out was limited to
that room.”

After a silent beat, Rias said, “You’re
right. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. It’s like before; something’s
making it hard to keep my equanimity.”

“
Your breakdown is a lot
less disturbing than that of most of your countrymen.”

He grunted.

“
I feel it too,” Tikaya
said. “It’s nothing you can see, nothing you smell or feel. Maybe
I’ve been going about this the wrong way. Like a, well, like a
philologist. But maybe I don’t need to translate the writing on the
bottom in order to cut the device off. If we can guess what its
purpose is, maybe we can switch it to another purpose, something
less troublesome. It has all those options you can put in—doesn’t
that imply you ought to be able to get more than one thing
out?”

“
What could it be putting
out that would affect us mentally? It’s nothing we’ve seen or heard
or smelled.”

“
An odorless gas?” Tikaya
guessed.

“
Ah, being disseminated
through that pipe, perhaps?”

“
It’d have to be something
invisible but heavy enough to float down and blanket the town.
Something designed to irritate people, to outright anger them, even
make—”

A shot fired.

Tikaya jerked her head up in time to see
Rias slam the door shut again. The scent of black powder tainted
the air.

“
Only two in the hallway
now,” Rias said. “They’ve either lost interest or they’re going to
try another way in.”