EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (251 page)

She wished she had Lancecrest’s journal, but she would have to return to her gear to grab it, and she did not want to face Rias or the snickering marines. Instead, she explored the back half of the lab. Most of the finds were innocuous—alchemical liquids and powders, equipment and containers—but others were as disturbing as the bones that had scattered when the beast fell. The human organs sealed in jars and slides with blood samples made her wonder if the race who had created this place had come for the distinct purpose of experimenting on people. But, if so, to what end?

She probably should have been horrified by her discoveries, but the labels on the identifiable substances helped her resolve new nouns, and that kept her too busy for squeamishness. A few days wandering this place and she would have an impressive dictionary. If the marines gave her time.

Agarik rounded the corner and approached, his rifle crooked in his arms. He quirked an eyebrow at the rows of open cabinets in her wake.

“Exploring?”

“Yes, this place is perfect. If I had a few weeks here, I bet I could decipher the whole language. Or the science aspects, at least. Of course, this entire language seems to revolve around science and mathematics. I keep wondering who these people were, what happened to them. Where could such an advanced civilization—”

He was frowning, so she stopped.

“Problem?” Tikaya asked.

“No. Yes. I don’t know. We’ve lost so many men out here. Your enthusiasm for such a deadly place is... Well, I can’t share it.”

“But don’t you see? Everything here is labeled. If I can learn how to read it all, this place won’t be deadly. We’re bumbling into things. Those cubes, they’re the maids. Not some malicious security system, a cleaning device to take care of messes in the labs.”

“And the poison rockets,” Agarik said. “Are they also not malicious if only you know the words? And the gas that twisted our minds in Wolfhump? Was that not malicious?”

The sobering words squelched her enthusiasm. He was right. It was very likely this place had been created, at least in part, to build weapons. Weapons far deadlier, and ghastlier, than anything humanity currently knew.

Agarik sighed at the expression on her face. “Forgive me, I don’t mean to judge. Besides you’re not the only one fascinated with the place.”

“Oh, what’s Rias doing?” Tikaya asked, certain of her guess.

“He’s taking apart one of the boxes.”

“Figures.”

“Uhm, about him...” Agarik watched her, and she had a hunch he had brought up Rias to gauge her reaction.

“Did he send you over to talk to me?”

Agarik’s head shake did not surprise her. Tikaya had a hard time imagining Rias sending a minion—or admirer—off to solve problems for him. No, he would likely suffer in silence.

“No, ma’am. He, ah...” Agarik set the butt of his rifle on the floor and polished a smudge on the barrel. “He forbade me from bothering you.”

“Oh? And you’re going to disobey your boyhood hero?”

“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.