Of Sea and Stone (Secrets of Itlantis) (8 page)

Tob sighed. “True. But consider that decision carefully,” he said to me, grinning in a way that told me he was teasing now. “If you continue to be so tight-lipped about your accent, people are going to think you’re a spy for the Dron.”

“The Dron?” I shook my head in confusion.

Tob looked as if I’d just asked him what a fish was. “What clamshell have you been living in?” he demanded.

“Tob,” Mella said.

He ignored her. “The Dron. Our enemies. Blood, tears, endless promises of dismemberment? You know, those people?”

“Remote colony dweller, remember? I’ve been reclusive.”

“The Thousand Year War?” Tob tried, as if that would jog my memory.

I shook my head.

“The Itlanteans and the Dron have been enemies for centuries,” he said. “Enough blood has been spilled between Itlantis’s cities and theirs to fill an ocean.”

“Why are they at war?” A shiver trickled through my stomach at the thought of all those armies and men fighting below the surface of the ocean, unbeknownst to the rest of the world.

Tob shrugged. “Does anybody even remember? I don’t. I don’t think those bigheads in Primus do, either.”

“Tob sees little value in discussing politics,” Mella said to me.

“I’m capable of a discussion,” Tob protested. “I just have no desire for one. Besides, that’s what you’re here for.” To me, he whispered, “She wants to be a scholar just like the master.”

Mella elbowed him. He yelped and shot me a grin.

“Tell me more about the war,” I said. Information was always useful.

“The war is a complicated topic,” Mella said. “There are rumors of peace treaties lately, but I think that’s just Celestrus’s scholars wishing to be able to get past the Dron patrols to see the surface.”

“The surface?” My heart thudded, and sweat broke out across my palms.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know what
that
is,” Tob said.

“I once heard that people lived up there.”

“Ha,” Tob said. “You’ve been listening to followers of that cult, New Dawn. They’re all crazy. No one lives above the surface since it was burned in the Cataclysm.”

“Cataclysm?”

“Yes,” Mella said. “The great disaster that burned the world.”

“You really don’t know anything, do you?”

“Tob,” Mella said.

Amazement flickered through me. I’d never heard such a myth. My people had no such stories. Was it true? Why else would such a vast civilization be hidden away beneath the sea?

Mella continued speaking, eager at last to talk it seemed now that we’d begun a topic more interesting to her. “Right now only military excursions dare to venture that far.”

A memory of men yanking me away from Kit flashed through my mind, and a shudder shook me. The room faded away, and all I felt or knew was the cold bite of the wind as I remembered being dragged across the rocks and thrown to the ground. I gasped in a breath and then I was back in the servants’ hall, with people talking and eating around me.

Mella and Tob bickered cheerfully in front of me. They hadn’t noticed my moment of panic.

“Listen to you,” Tob said, smiling at her. “Talking about the future. It’s downright hopeful.”

Mella nudged him with her shoulder. “One day I will pay off my crimes, and then I will sit in the forum and vote with the rest of the citizens again.”

Under the table, my legs trembled.

“And I shall become a shock cook,” Tob said, grinning. “And make such tantalizing dishes that you shall beg me to marry you.”

Mella rolled her eyes and glanced at me. She paused. “Aemi, are you all right? You’re pale.”

My throat tightened, and I swallowed to moisten it. Before I could speak, a brass bell over the door jangled, and the other servants stood and began picking up their bowls.

“What is your station here?” Tob asked as we picked up our utensils.

“Maid,” I said. “I’m assisting the doumeu.”

“Ah,” he said. “Old Crabby. Don’t let her get to you. She has a special hatred for whoever is unlucky enough to be her assistant maid, but it isn’t personal.”

My stomach twisted with apprehension.
Special hatred
certainly didn’t sound promising.

“Just keep your head down and do as she says,” Mella advised in a low voice. “Most of Crakea’s maids have a tendency to be reassigned. She sees them as a challenge to her position. Don’t cause trouble with her or give her any reason to think you’re a threat to her. In time, she should lessen her bullying.”

I hoped she was right.

~ ~ ~

When I reached the main level again, Crakea was waiting.

“Perhaps if you walked on your hands and knees, you could have managed to come slower,” she snapped. “Do you not realize we have a schedule to keep?”

“I am sorry,” I said, grinding my teeth. I’d run the entire way, and surely she could tell. She was looking for things to dislike, whether they made any sense or not. I remembered Mella’s warning.

“Come,” Crakea said. “We must attend the master’s daughter.”

My heart sank. I had a bad history with master’s daughters. I hurried after Crakea as sweat prickled across my back and the palms of my hands. Would she terrorize me? Berate me? Throw things at me?

We reached the quarters with the waterfall and the beautiful glass walls that let in the light of the sea. A girl with glossy black hair sprawled on the bed, her back to us. She looked roughly my age.

“Mistress Lyssia,” Crakea said. “Did you enjoy your dancing lessons?”

“Oh, about as much as anybody could enjoy torture,” the mistress said without turning around.

“Your father is hosting dinner with the visiting diplomats from Volcanus and Magmus, as well as the governor and his son,” Crakea said. “Your father said you could have the option of dining alone, since you were in a foul mood.”

“Foul mood?” Lyssia laughed. “I suppose that is an accurate description, since I’m forced to go to those horrible classes he chose.”

“Would you like to join them, or have your dinner brought here?” Crakea asked, ignoring her comments about the master.

“Us?” Lyssia turned. Her eyes were large, like she was in a state of perpetual surprise, her face was thin and angular, and she had a tiny birthmark on one cheekbone.

“Who are you?” she asked, giving me a crooked smile.

“She is nothing,” Crakea said, swatting a hand at me as if I were a fly. “Your father got her to replace Glis. She will be helping me.”

“I liked Glis,” Lyssia said mournfully.

“Glis was slow and ignorant.”

Lyssia ignored the doumeu. “You’re probably about my age,” she mused. “What’s your name?”

“Aemi,” I said. My voice sounded rusty, and I cleared my throat.

“Aemi. That’s a beautiful name. I like it.”

Crakea frowned. I didn’t think she liked seeing me get positive attention from the mistress. “Dinner here or in the dining room, Mistress Lyssia?”

Lyssia shrugged one slender shoulder. “Here, I suppose. That way I don’t have to eat with Cal.” To me, she explained in a conspiratorial tone, “He’s the son of the governor, and he keeps visiting and inviting me to walk the gardens—apparently his favorite place—with him. I’d rather not. My father has another visitor from Primus named Dahn, and he’s quite handsome. I wish he’d ask me to walk the gardens. Have you seen him?”

“You shouldn’t speak so to the Indentureds, as though they are your equals,” Crakea said. “It breeds bad habits.”

Lyssia froze. She turned her head and looked Crakea in the eye. “You shouldn’t tell me what to do, doumeu. It breeds bad habits.”

Crakea’s eyes tightened, but she said nothing. She shot me a furious look as if this were somehow my fault.

“Now bring me my supper,” Lyssia said. “Aemi, you stay.”

“She can’t stay long,” Crakea said angrily. “She has other duties to attend to.”

Crakea left, shutting the door behind her. Lyssia looked me over again.

“Don’t mind her,” she said. “She hates everything.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Lyssia smiled. “If you need anything, let me know. We aren’t all monsters in this house.” She paused, gazing at me steadily as if looking for something. “Do you think I’m pretty?”

I hesitated. I could already feel my cheek stinging from the slap that would follow an honest answer. “Yes.”

She flopped down again. “That was a test to see how honest you’d be, and you lost. But I still like you. Listen, I’m not pretty. But I’m rich, and that is just as well when it comes to matchmaking, so believe me, I don’t care.” She rolled over on the bed and opened one of the drawers of the bureau beside it. As I watched, she removed a bundle of tools and unrolled it on the bed. She began to sort them. Some were long and slender, like very thick needles, and others were blunt and short.

“What is that?” I asked, before I could help myself.

“It’s a lock picking kit. I like to pick locks. Do you like to do anything in particular?”

“I used to like spear throwing.”

“Where you any good at it?”

“I won a contest,” I said. That seemed a lifetime ago.

She looked up from the tools. “I’m good at lock picking. I’m not so good at understanding men.”

Lyssia seemed to want a comment from me. Was this another test? I didn’t say anything.

She sighed in the silence that followed. “First, he flatters me, and then he ignores me. I cannot tell what he thinks.”

“Who?” I dared to ask, because I could tell she wanted me to.

“Dahn. My father’s visitor.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and stopped. Should I say something else? Offer sympathy? “I should probably get back before I get in trouble.” Surely Crakea had plotted my execution by now. I turned to leave.

“Aemi,” Lyssia said quietly from behind me on the bed, and her tone was different from the languid one she’d been using moments before. She sounded earnest now. “I’d like us to be friends. I don’t have many—many friends.”

I stopped at the door. My hand hovered over the knob, and then I turned around.

She blinked and looked out the window at the sea. “Can we be friends? Even though you’re Indentured?”

I cleared my throat. “All right.”

Her eyes brightened. “You can always be as honest as you’d like with me,” she said, looking me straight in the eye. “I can take it. I’d rather know where you stood than have you mouthing nothings at me because you’re afraid I’m going to have you punished.”

I nodded, although I knew there was no way I’d ever take her up on such an offer.

“And Aemi?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t mention the lock picking, please.”

CRAKEA WAS FURIOUS that I’d attracted the friendly interest of the master’s daughter. She punished me by making me wash the floor and dust the furniture in the master’s outer study in addition to my other duties. The study was dark and warm, almost like a cave, with a gleaming metal door and walls of cool green stone. Carved wooden furniture furnished the space, and every shelf and table was stacked high with books, bottles, and boxes. I ran the dusting rag over everything as carefully as if I were handling seagull eggs, pausing every other second to examine a new and fascinating object.

One thing in particular drew my eye. On Merelus’s desk, a sphere-shaped object glittered as if it held an inner fire. I drew close under the guise of dusting, holding my breath as I gazed at the beautiful thing. It was as if someone had bottled up a star from the sky, the way the white light inside danced and shivered. I stretched out one finger to see if it was hot.

As I touched the glass, it ignited with light. Images rose in the air before me—scenes of Celestrus. Words. I fell back in terror.

The images stayed there, hovering. After a moment, I pushed myself up and crept forward again. Experimentally, I flipped my fingers. The images moved past one by one. I spun through them, my heart thumping.

What sort of magic was this?

Words danced across the air next. Diagrams. My heart pounded harder as I realized the treasure trove that lay before me.

Information.

Information I could use to make my escape.

~ ~ ~

I found every excuse possible to enrage Crakea so she would assign me the master’s study to clean. The floors shone, the desk sparkled, and my knowledge of the device that held dazzling images of light grew. Three buttons at the base appeared to control it. Pressing the center button activated a flash of brilliant light, and then images flashed across the glass. Images of cities, underwater visages, fish, and other creatures. Words sometimes accompanied these images, and I could read them, although some of the letters were strange and distorted, and it was laborious going. Still, I was fascinated. After a few hours, I figured out how to access other text, stored sets of data, diaries, and histories.

It had much to say about Celestrus. The city was the second oldest after Primus, the capital, and it housed massive libraries filled with information that no other device or city contained. Some legends told of another city that had once held the libraries, but now Celestrus contained them, and ships came from all over Itlantis to study these ancient texts.

I longed to see these libraries—perhaps they could give me some kind of information regarding the surface, even a mention of Perilous and its location. But according to the device, no Indentured was allowed access to them. The wristlocks would sound an alarm.

The device also contained information about the military, and the images of the Itlantean warships filled me with hope. According to everything I’d heard so far, only the military ventured to the surface. I scanned their shapes and various parts, looking for places that might hold one slender slave girl. The smaller ships were slender and gray, shaped like arrowheads, and they carried only two men and room to house them. The device called them mantas. The larger ones, sleek and thick and bristling with armaments, were able to carry hundreds of men. The device called them hammerships, and they were shaped like the sharks with the strange hammer-like head.

It must have been a hammership that we’d journeyed to Celestrus on, and then one of the smaller ships in which Myo had taken us the rest of the way. I tried to remember the layout, the construction. My recollections were filled with pain, but I pushed through them anyway, seeking details. Curved walls. Metal floors with slits in them to absorb water. Lights that glowed on the ceilings like stars. I matched my memories to the records that flashed before me now, and my understanding grew.