Encrypted

  “Tortured,” he said. “Same as the one in the fort.”

  “Nurian?” Tikaya asked.

  Bocrest was too busy cursing under his breath to answer.

  The ledge, similar to the one below, offered another ideal view of the tundra—and the fort. A second cliff to the rear shadowed a tent and a fire pit. The source of the black metal Tikaya had spotted rested near the edge: a flat circle mounted on tripod legs. A shaft tilted upward from the disk and appeared the right size for cradling the rocket. The launching apparatus was not large, but it would have taken more than one man to carry it up there. Or a telekinetics practitioner.

  Tikaya walked over to look at the body. “Uh.”

  “Uh?” Rias asked.

  “I recognize this one too.”

  “Can’t be a practitioner,” Rias said. “He looks Turgonian.”

  “He is Turgonian. That’s Lancecrest.”

  “The fort commander?” Bocrest asked. “He’s too young.”

  “No, the Lancecrest I told you about. And actually I think he did study the mental sciences at the Polytechnic. Along with archaeology.” She filled Rias in with the information she had given Bocrest the night before.

  “Huh,” Rias said. “That he’s here is not wholly mystifying—Colonel Lancecrest could have taken command, found out about the tunnels, seen an opportunity for the family to improve its fortunes, and told his little brother to prepare for a relic hunt. But why would the younger Lancecrest have launched a rocket at his older brother’s fort? And why is he now up here tortured and dead? This is...unexpected.”

  Bocrest spat. “If something expected happens at any point in this mission, I’ll shit myself in shock.”

  Tikaya shook her head at the lurid speech. “Is he truly married?” she asked Rias.

  “Last I heard.” Rias knelt to examine the body more closely. “The empire has failed to keep me apprised of the latest gossip surrounding its officers.”

  “It’s hard to imagine that tongue wooing a woman.” Tikaya headed for the launch pad.

  Bocrest dropped his arms. “Was that an insult? Did she just insult me?”

  “I believe she did,” Rias said.

  “I never know with her. She gives insults in the same tone as a scientist analyzing an experiment.”

  Tikaya dug out her journal. “You do remind me of the lab rats they keep in the science wing of the Polytechnic.”

  “That was definitely an insult,” Rias said.

  “I know,” Bocrest said. “It’s hard to be offended, though. She’s so civilized when she delivers them. Tidy job on Lancecrest. Whoever ran the torture session was experienced.”

  Tikaya scratched her head at the abrupt topic shift. Only Turgonians could go from casual chit chat to analyzing dead people in the same breath.

  “Body’s stiff but this doesn’t look like it happened long ago,” Rias said. “Yesterday maybe.”

  “There’s a mess in the tent,” Bocrest said. “Like someone searched it, same as the colonel’s office in the fort.”

  Rias leaned over the ledge. “Koffert, come up. We need your tracking skills.”

  Bocrest frowned at this presumptive order giving. Tikaya wondered when Rias had found the opportunity to learn people’s names and skill sets.

  Long before the tracker reached the top, the launch device swallowed her attention. Runes ran down the tripod legs, giving her plenty to study. She sat in the snow with her journal, gloves off. Not knowing how much time Bocrest would give her, she risked the cold to make copying the symbols easier. The men’s conversations faded from her awareness as she worked. She brushed her fingers along a complex grouping of seventeen symbols, and a faint hum teased the edge of her mind. It startled her, and she dropped her journal. Surely the sensation did not come from the launch pad. The artifacts had not yet made her suspect the mental sciences were involved in their creation. Yet something here teased her sixth sense, reminding her of the communications pendant on the Nurian ship. The residual tingle of a practitioner-made device.

  “Tikaya?” Rias touched her shoulder. “The tracker is done. Are you ready to leave?”

  She blinked and stood, surprised by the stiffness in her limbs. How long had she sat? Rias removed his gloves and held her hand in his warm ones, and she noticed white tipping her fingers.

  “Frost nip.” He rubbed her hands and raised an eyebrow. “Keep your gloves on. You’d have a hard time taking notes if you lost your fingers.”

  “Sorry, that was dumb. I needed to use the pencil, and, uhm.” She blushed. Of all people, he could probably understand an absent-minded streak, but she still avoided his eyes.

  “What I don’t understand is how someone else found this ledge,” Bocrest said, apparently resuming a conversation she had missed. The tracker stood before him, a sergeant with a lined face and beaky nose. “How many math geniuses are roaming around up here?” Bocrest added.

  “Perhaps our mystery man saw the rocket being launched,” Rias said.

  Despite his suggestion that she keep her gloves on, Rias had not released Tikaya’s hands. Calluses hardened his palms, but his touch was gentle as he rubbed her skin. She made no move to pull away.

  “Wouldn’t he have died from the gas, too, then?” she asked. “And how do you know our torture-loving person is a man? The Nurians have female warriors.”

  “Walks like a man, pisses like a man,” the tracker said.

  “Uhm. All right.” Tikaya knew nothing about tracking, but supposed squatting and standing would indeed leave different yellow-snow signatures. “But what about the gas?”

  Rias gazed east. “The pass is that way and at a higher elevation. The rocket released its load in the air above the fort, so perhaps that means the gas—or whatever it is exactly—was heavier than air and wouldn’t have affected someone above the detonation point. This camp, after all, is well within the twenty mile radius.”

  “Perhaps?” Bocrest asked. “You’re just guessing?”

  “Yes,” Rias said.

  “Good steel used for the torture,” the tracker said.

  Rias and the captain nodded, though it took Tikaya a minute to follow. Right. The good steel and the possible entrance through the pass implied a Turgonian. And hadn’t the men in the dungeon suggested the same thing? That the torture was done by the book? The Turgonian book?

  “So, you’ve got an ally up here?” Tikaya asked. “Maybe he’ll show himself, and we can share your applejack with him.”

  She smiled. The others did not. Rias and Bocrest appeared more grim than anything.

  “Ally,” Rias murmured, then found Bocrest’s gaze. “Did the emperor say anything about sending help?”

  “He made it clear he wanted the mission accomplished.”

  Tikaya wondered if Rias derived more from that answer than she did.

  “You find anything useful on that rocket, Komitopis?” Bocrest asked.

  “I’m getting some fantastic data. If we find more samples in this scientific vein, I believe the shared contexts will allow me to—”

  Bocrest hissed in frustration and jerked his hand up, much as he had to halt Rias’s explanation of the altitude calculations. “When I ask you a question, I want a yes or no response.”

  “Then, yes,” Tikaya said.

  Rias chuckled and squeezed her hands.

  “Although if you’d listen to all I had to say, you’d learn that there’s some science about the device.”

  “Science?” Bocrest’s expression blanked.

  “Magic,” Rias said.

  “Oh,” Bocrest said. “How?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Tikaya said. “Give me a moment.”

  She started to bend down again, but Rias stepped in front of the launch pad. He picked up her gloves and handed them to her. Not until she stuffed her numb fingers back into the fur-lined interiors did he move aside.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Rias saluted her with a wink. Bocrest heaved a sigh.

>   She touched the launch pad again, checking several spots. It was weak, but she did sense something, especially close to the ground. On a whim, she tried to lift one of the legs. She expected the black metal to weigh too much, but she raised it with relative ease, revealing a leather-bound book flattened into the snow. Her heart sped up in anticipation. Rias grabbed the leg, so she could retrieve her find.

  A pen was stuck in the spine, and it felt warm beneath her fingers. That was it: the practitioner-imbued item, probably crafted to never run out of ink or some simple thing. As far as she could tell, the book—no, journal—was mundane. She flipped it open, but had scarcely read the first couple words when someone tore it from her grip.

  “Our people will vet this and decide if it’s suitable for a foreigner to read,” Bocrest said.

  “Bocrest...” Rias started, but Tikaya lifted her chin and spoke.

  “Then I hope you brought someone who reads Kyattese, because the writing isn’t in your tongue.”

  Bocrest flipped through a few pages and his lip curled into a snarl. “Kyattese?” His eyes narrowed. “Why would there be a notebook up here in your language?”

  “He spoke Kyattese.” Tikaya nodded at Lancecrest’s body.

  “Is it possible that journal is what our ‘ally’ was searching for?” Rias asked.

  Bocrest jerked his head down, eyes scouring the pages as if he could translate them through will. With a disgusted grunt, he thrust the book at Tikaya.

  “You tell us,” he said.

  She skimmed the opening pages and practically bounced at the massive number of the language samples within. Notes, mostly speculation, surrounded drawings of symbols she had not yet seen. No firm translations yet. “I’ll need time to read over everything, but it’s definitely Lancecrest’s journal, and it looks like he’s been in your tunnels a while. There are hundreds of pages here and dates go back almost a year.”

  She turned to a dog-eared page, and her hand froze. Launch instructions for the rocket. It appeared Lancecrest had discovered how to operate the weapon through trial and error rather than true understanding of the language. Nonetheless, the instructions were there. And suddenly she knew: this book was exactly what their mysterious stranger was searching for, here in the tent and perhaps in the colonel’s office as well. It could explain the torture sessions too. He had been trying to locate these very instructions, but the Nurian had not known and Lancecrest must have held out to the end.

  “Find something?” Rias asked.

  She flinched, knowing she had been silent too long to brush it off. “Just an interesting take on what the prime groupings imply.” She hated lying to Rias, but she was not going to hand Bocrest directions for launching the rockets. She could only assume there were more of the devices in the tunnels.

  “Find something useful?” Bocrest asked.

  Since shadow covered the ledge already, Tikaya received little warning when the ice condor approached for the second time. Movement teased the corner of her eye, and Rias yelled, “Get down!” just as she was turning to check.

  The condor swooped toward her head, talons outstretched. She flung her arms out.

  Rias smashed into her, taking her to the ground. Her shoulder flared with pain, but the talons meant for her eyes grazed her forearm. They cut through her parka and stung flesh.

  Bocrest and the tracker fired, but the condor banked before the balls hit. It swooped out of sight over the cliff above the tent.

  “Are you injured?” Rias asked, eyes locked on her as he shifted to let her up.

  Tikaya pushed up her parka sleeve. “Just a couple scratches.”

  Rias removed a glove and brushed his finger across one of the wounds, which had started to well blood. A green pasty substance mingled with the crimson drops.

  “What is it?” Dread hollowed her stomach.

  “Poison.” Rias jumped to his feet. “We have to get to the sawbones.”

  Tikaya stared at her arm. She knew nothing about poison. “Is this a lethal dose? How much time do I have?”

  He started to respond, but the condor swooped toward them again.

  “Someone shoot that slagging bird!” Bocrest shouted to the men below. He and the tracker were still reloading.

  Rias had dropped his rifle to shield Tikaya. The bird landed on the launch pad as he grabbed the weapon. Unconcerned, the condor cocked its head, black eye studying Tikaya.

  “Yes, you got me.” Bitterness choked her words.

  “Sh.” Rias aimed the rifle, but hesitated. A calculating flash crossed his face, and he raised his voice. “Don’t worry, Tikaya. You’re not going to die. We’ve got the antidote in camp, and you’ve got plenty of time.”

  Bocrest, the first to finish reloading, lifted his rifle. The bird flapped away. Several shots fired, but it weaved and banked with preternatural speed, and disappeared unscathed.

  Rias lowered his weapon. He had not fired.

  “I’d like to be reassured by your words,” Tikaya murmured, “but I suspect that was for the benefit of the bird.”

  “Will whoever is controlling it understand our speech through its ears?” Rias asked.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe.” She might have stopped to consider what he hoped to accomplish with his words, but other thoughts stampeded to the front of her mind. “How much time do I really have?”

  “Plenty,” Rias said.

  She had come to know him too well; she could tell he was lying.

  CHAPTER 14

  Tikaya woke to the sound of pained wheezing. Her own. Air. She couldn’t get enough air.

  She opened her eyes to a green canvas tent ceiling supported by slender steel bars. Confusion muddled her mind. The last thing she remembered was Rias and another marine carrying her down the mountain on a litter. Now she lay on a cot, blankets pulled to her chin. Somewhere behind her head, a lantern provided illumination that failed to reach the shadowy corners.

  They must have reached the base camp, but if the sawbones had applied some antidote, she could not feel it. Her breath rattled in her ears, and she could not pull in enough air to satisfy her lungs. She tried to wriggle her toes. If they moved she could not tell.

  Still alive, she thought, but still poisoned. And alone. Rows of empty cots stretched into the darkness. Where was Rias? Why hadn’t he stayed with her? And what about the sawbones?

  “Akahe, please don’t let me die alone,” she mouthed.

  She blinked away tears, but it was hard to keep the wheezing breaths from turning into sobs. With no one to witness her torment, why bother being stoic? And why hadn’t she written a letter to her parents? Rias might be slated for a return to exile, but Agarik would have found a way to post it. But now her family would forever wonder what happened.

  The tent flap swayed, and icy air gusted inside.

  She could not lift her head to peer into the shadows at the entrance. “Is someone there?” she tried to ask. It came out weak and garbled.

  She saw no one, but soft footfalls trod across floor mats. A man coalesced before her—a familiar man. The Nurian practitioner from the ship. She tried to move, to roll away, but her body did not respond. When she had begged the Divine One to keep her from dying alone, this was not the company she had meant.

  “The Turgonian lied,” he murmured in his native tongue, his gaze flicking over her supine form. “I see no evidence that an antidote has been applied. They probably don’t even know Irkla Root when they see it.” He withdrew a knife and met her eyes for the first time. “I’m sorry, Ms. Komitopis.”

  She groped for something to say that would save her, but only a wheezy gurgle came out when she tried to speak.

  “I regret the need for this task,” the Nurian continued. “After the help the Kyattese—you—gave my people during the war, it’s unfair to kill you, but I cannot let the Turgonian military get their hands on that kind of weaponry. Nor am I going to let those archaeologists sell it to the highest bidder. I can’t let your talents be used against my pe
ople, but I’ll show mercy and end your suffering now.”

  He leaned forward and lifted the blade. Tikaya tried to thrash, to fight him off, but her limbs were already dead.

  A shadow moved behind the Nurian, and a dagger appeared at his throat. His weapon was wrenched from his hand.

  “You move, you die,” Rias growled in his accented Nurian.

  The assassin’s eyes widened. He reached for his throat, but Rias’s blade bit into flesh, drawing blood.

  “Most of your people who work with poisons carry the antidote in case they infect themselves,” Rias said. “You’ve five seconds to produce it, or you’ll suffer the same fate as your bodyguard.”

  Rias’s head was right next to the Nurian’s, and rage burned in his eyes. Tikaya wanted to yell, to warn him that a practitioner did not need a weapon to kill. Only a strangled wheeze came out.

  Surprisingly amenable, the Nurian reached into his parka and withdrew a handful of fingernail-sized clay vials. “The gray one.”

  “Sample it,” Rias said.

  The Nurian blanched.

  Rias shoved him to his knees and smashed his face into the mats. The two men dropped below Tikaya’s line of sight.

  “You’re justifying killing the one person who saved your asses in the war over paranoia,” Rias snarled.

  “You saw your fort. Your people would destroy the world with weapons like that. I can’t—”

  “Quiet.” Rias slammed the man into the ground again. “Which vial is the correct antidote?”

  “The clear one,” the Nurian rasped, his airway restricted.

  Did Rias have a hand around his throat? She struggled to turn her head, but could only move it an inch.

  Rias sat back, kneeling on the man’s chest, and pulled the cork out with his teeth. He forced a drop down the Nurian’s throat. The man made no attempt to elude it, and Rias seemed satisfied.

  As he started to reach for Tikaya, the hairs on her neck stood.