Encrypted (the emperor's edge) Read online

  One of her nephews bumped into her leg and fell on his bottom. She picked him up before he could decide if the tumble was a big enough calamity to cry over. She swiped bagasse off his dusty trousers and directed him back into the game with a playful swat on the backside. A lump sprang into her throat at the idea of leaving them indefinitely. But for fate, she might have had little ones of her own by now.

  “ Children, time to wash up for dinner!” That was Ky’s wife, calling from the path, somewhere between the house and the processing plant.

  The youngsters trundled out, voicing mutters of “aw” and “do we have to?”

  “ You’re looking particularly glum and thoughtful,” Ky said when he and Tikaya were alone. “Did Mother and Father already talk to you?”

  Tikaya had seen neither of her parents since early morning, so she arched her eyebrows and joined him at the press. Like their father, Ky shared her uncommon height. For him, though, it had always been an advantage, making him a boyhood star at swimming and running. For her… Well, at least she could reach the high book shelves in the library without a ladder.

  “ I heard them talking,” Ky explained. “You’re getting the wasting-the-talent-Akahe-gave-you lecture again soon. I know Father appreciates an extra hand during the harvest, but he’s worried you’ve been here moping too long. And Mother…wants you living in town again where you can find a ‘nice young man to make babies with.’”

  Tikaya winced at the familiar words. Ky patted her on the shoulder.

  “ Sorry,” he said. “Are you all right? You look preoccupied. If you were puzzling over some ancient runes, I’d know why, but I can’t imagine the mysteries of the cane fields are putting those thoughtful creases between your eyebrows.”

  “ I ran into a Turgonian marine,” Tikaya said to hush her brother’s garrulousness. She usually found it endearing, but tonight his chatter grated.

  Her words did the job. He gaped for a long moment before saying, “Where? When? You haven’t been to town for-”

  “ Here. Just now. In the north field.”

  Still staring at her, Ky shoved the lever that turned off the press, and the clank-thunks faded.

  “ He was looking for the cryptanalyst from the war,” Tikaya went on, voice sounding loud in the new silence. She lowered it. “I think I persuaded him I wasn’t that person, but I’d be surprised if their research doesn’t lead them back to me again. Tomorrow morning-”

  A clank sounded near the entrance, and a metallic canister rolled across the cement floor. Smoke billowed, and acrid fumes stung Tikaya’s eyes. Oh, Akahe, she did not have until tomorrow morning.

  “ What is-” Ky started.

  She grabbed his arm and yanked him deeper into the distillery even as another canister clinked through the doorway. Smoke hazed the entrance, but she glimpsed men slipping inside. They did not know the layout of the distillery; that ought to be an advantage.

  She led her brother past the press and around two massive molasses vats.

  Ky gripped her shoulder and whispered, “Turgonians?”

  “ I assume so.” Tikaya tugged to keep him moving. The earthen back doors had grass growing on them; she hoped the soldiers had not recognized them as an entrance and posted guards.

  They eased past copper pipes and the towering stills, and she crooked her toes to keep her sandals from slapping against the hard floor. Smoke curled into her nostrils and tickled her throat. She dared not cough.

  She thought of her bow, still propped by the front door. Blighted banyan sprites, why had she even bothered carrying the thing around the last year?

  In the back, rows of rum barrels lined the walls, and the double doors came into sight. She froze. They already stood open. Beyond them, in the fading light, grass swayed under a soft breeze.

  “ I didn’t leave the doors open,” Ky whispered.

  If men waited outside, Tikaya could not see them, but that meant little. Perhaps they were crouched beside the doors, ready to pounce. Maybe they were already in the house, threatening her family. Or worse. If anything happened to her kin, it was her fault. She swallowed. She had to make sure the soldiers focused on her.

  “ I’ll run,” she whispered. “They should only want me.”

  Even as she put a hand down to push herself to her feet, Ky grabbed her arm. “No.”

  A shadow moved behind him. She opened her mouth to yell a warning, but she was too late. The butt of a rifle thudded against his head, and he slumped to the floor.

  Tikaya turned to run and crashed into a broad chest. Hands clasped her arms. She twisted, trying to free herself, but the steel grip held her fast.

  She screamed. A hand clapped across her mouth. She tried to bite it, but the grip smothered her with its power.

  A damp rag pressed over her nose. Terror roiled in her belly. She sucked in a deep breath, thinking they meant to suffocate her, but a sweet insidious odor flooded her nostrils.

  Fuzziness encroached on her mind, and her thoughts scattered. Blackness tunneled her vision, and a moment later, the world faded away.

  CHAPTER 2

  The ground was vibrating. No, Tikaya realized as awareness returned, not the ground, the floor. Cold, textured metal chilled her bare calves and seeped through the back of her dress. A rocking rise and fall accompanied the vibrations.

  She opened her eyes to a dim, fuzzy cell. Her spectacles were missing. Unimaginative gray steel surrounded her. The monotone color marked the bulkheads and even the sturdy gate dividing her from a corridor. No portholes allowed a view of the outside, but the swells of the sea and the reverberations of a nearby engine told the story: she was locked in the bowels of a Turgonian warship.

  And her brother-had the marines brought him too? She remembered the sickening thud of that rifle butt striking his head. She prayed they had left him alive, where her family could tend him, but a selfish part of her wished he was in the brig with her. The idea of being alone on a ship full of hostile marines…

  She shuddered.

  Tikaya rolled onto her belly. No pain lanced through her body, but stiff muscles suggested she had lain on the deck for hours.

  Across the corridor, a second gate marked another cell, though darkness-and her poor vision-shrouded the interior. She stood and pressed her face between the bars. A blurry lantern burned at the base of a ship’s ladder leading up. No guards stood within sight.

  She probed the small lock set in her gate. She could not even get a fingernail into the fine hole. Alas, picking locks was not a typical course in the Kyattese school system.

  “ Wonderful day.” Tikaya realized she had probably been on the floor throughout the night and amended the last word: “week.”

  Chains clanked in the cell across the way, and Tikaya jumped.

  “ Hello?” she asked in her tongue.

  Maybe her brother was there, or others of her people had been taken. Maybe she was not alone against the Turgonians after all. The clanks stilled, leaving only the rumbling of the engine.

  “ Hello?” she asked again, this time in Turgonian and this time with less hope.

  Silence.

  Tikaya peered into the cell. Was that a human form slumped in the back corner? She tried other languages from the islands and coastal nations on the Eerathu Sea. Nothing elicited a response.

  A hatch thudded open, catching her trying yet another greeting. Boots rang on the ladder, and a pair of marines strode toward her.

  “ Don’t poke the grimbal, girl.” The tall man in the lead jerked a nose sharper than Herdoctan potsherds at the opposite cell.

  “ Grimbal?” Tikaya frowned.

  “ Giant shaggy predators up on our northern frontier. They’re probably the most irritable beasts in the empire, and they’ll sink their teeth into you if you get anywhere near their territory.”

  Tikaya stopped herself from saying she had heard of the creature and the expression-if she hoped to deny she was their cryptomancer, she ought not appear too worldly. It was curiosity ab
out the other prisoner that had prompted her query. Her shoulders, and her hope of denying anything, slumped when the second marine drew close enough for her to identify without her spectacles: the man from the cane fields. No doubt he had arranged her capture when she failed to convince him she was no one of consequence.

  She squinted to read the name sewn on his jacket: Agarik. He stood, hands clasped behind his back, watching the other marine, his superior, she assumed, though she did not know what ranks the pins on their collars denoted.

  “ How’re the accommodations, Five?” The speaker-his jacket read Ottotark-rapped a baton against the mystery prisoner’s gate. “A lot better than what you’re used to of late, eh?”

  There was no response, not even a tinkle of chains rattling. Despite the silence, Ottotark chuckled at his own wit. He turned his attention to Tikaya and when his gaze lingered on her breasts, she forced herself not to step back.

  “ Where is my brother?” she asked. “Is he…”

  “ We left him in the distillery,” Agarik said. “He’s alive.”

  “ Thank you,” she murmured, hoping she could trust his word.

  “ So, the source of so many of our troubles. A woman.” Ottotark shook his head. “Seems strange you’d be involved in military matters.”

  Tikaya bit back a response about how it was hard to remain uninvolved when invaders were trying to take over one’s whole island chain.

  “ I reckon you just sat in an office on a beach,” Ottotark continued, “and someone brought our messages to you. Is that how it worked?” The lamplight glinting off Ottotark’s dark eyes did nothing to warm them, and a challenge hardened his voice. He resented her. Every Turgonian she encountered probably would.

  She lifted her chin. “What are you going to do with me?”

  “ For the trouble you caused us? We’re going to kill you, of course.”

  Tikaya swallowed, or tried to. Her throat constricted, and her mouth was too dry.

  “ Sergeant…” Agarik frowned at the other man.

  Ottotark bent over, hands on his knees, and laughed. The raucous noise echoed from the metal bulkheads. “I jest-we’re not killing you. Not now anyway. We need you to translate something for us first.”

  Tikaya barely kept from snorting. After what the Turgonians had done to her people-to her — she would not even help them tie their shoes.

  Ottotark fished a keychain out of his pocket. “Time for you to visit the captain.”

  While Ottotark unlocked the door, Agarik slipped Tikaya’s spectacles through the gate. She blinked in surprise and met his gaze as she accepted them. Nothing so friendly as a wink or a smile suggested she had a secret ally, but he seemed someone who treated people, even prisoners, with respect.

  She had barely hooked the spectacles over her ears when Ottotark grabbed her upper arm and jerked her into the corridor so she fell against him. The amusement on his face, however crude, was gone now. He grabbed her breast, even as his other arm snaked around her waist to keep her jammed against him.

  Tikaya shoved a hand against his chest and tried to thrust a knee into his groin, but his strong embrace left no space to maneuver.

  His lips curled into a snarl. “We may need you, but you deserve a lot of pain for the deaths you caused.”

  Ottotark’s fingers gouged her breast, and she gritted her teeth at the pain, determined not to gasp or cry out, though fear surged through her body. She craned her neck toward Agarik, hoping he might step in. Though his clenched jaw made tendons bulge on his neck, he made no move against his superior.

  “ What’s the matter with your sergeant, Corporal Agarik?” a deep voice spoke from the other cell. Though quiet, it cut through Ottotark’s angry lust, and he jumped, relaxing his grip. “Doesn’t he know the Kyattese are sorcerers as well as scholars? In another second, she’ll probably cast a spell to shrivel his testicles into wrinkled, rotten walnuts.”

  Ottotark frowned into the cell. “Nobody wants to hear you speak, Five.” Still, he released Tikaya, shoving her toward the corporal.

  Agarik was gaping at the dim cell, but he recovered enough to take her arm. Under his firm, professional grip, the heartbeats hammering in her ears slowed.

  Tikaya watched over her shoulder as the guards led her away, but the unseen man did not speak again. The trek took her up to the main deck, where they marched past two long rows of cannons. The sharp tang of gun oil competed with the briny scent of the ocean roaring past beneath them. She peered through an open cannon port, hoping to glimpse her islands. If they had not sailed too far, maybe she could escape to a lifeboat-if the Turgonians had lifeboats. With that warmongering culture, one never knew. They had idiotic notions about glory in dying a warrior’s death, so they might condemn their men to go down with the vessel.

  Dozens of marines occupied the deck, some sparring in a makeshift arena in the middle and some cleaning rifles, pistols, and cutlasses at tables folded down from the wall space between the massive guns. The men slanted her looks ranging from openmouthed bewilderment to sneering hostility, by which she assumed some knew who she was and some were not in the need-to-know camp. The empire did not employ women in their armed forces, which likely meant she was the only one on board. Not a comforting thought. More than one man arranged to bump or jostle her as paths crossed. Unlike at home, everyone she passed was as tall or taller than she, and their wayward elbows and shoulders battered her with the force of falling coconuts.

  Past the galley, aft deck, the loitering marines thinned. Tikaya’s guards stopped her in front of a whitewashed door. A bronze sword-shaped name plaque read: Captain Bocrest.

  Sergeant Ottotark thumped his baton against the wood planks, eliciting a barked, “Enter.”

  Inside, a bare-chested man performed pushups on a polar bear rug stretched before a desk. Though his short hair ran the same color as the plethora of steel comprising the ship, the defined muscles of his broad torso promised him hale. Arms like pistons in a steam engine, he pumped through another fifty pushups, while Tikaya stood and waited. The space was large, as one would expect of the captain’s cabin, but spartan with nothing so frivolous as curtains for the portholes or cloth for the dining table.

  The captain finished his pushups, jumped to his feet, and faced Tikaya. Her eyes were level with his nose, but he probably weighed sixty pounds more than she.

  “ Dismissed,” he told the guards without looking away from her.

  Evidently, he was not worried about her walnut-ifying his balls. He was probably not worried about much. The collection of dented and scratched daggers, swords, pistols, crossbows, and rifles on the wall beside his desk did not appear decorative.

  “ Sit.” The captain jerked his thumb toward an uncomfortable-looking wood stool and strode around the desk to his own chair.

  Tikaya wanted to cross her arms and stare defiantly, but suspected he would force her into complying. And, like Sergeant Pissed and Horny, he might like it. She perched on the edge of the seat.

  “ Tikaya Komitopis.” He gripped the sides of his desk, his eyes intent. “Daughter of Loilon and Mela. Three siblings. You grew up on your parents’ plantation and showed a gift for languages at a young age. You studied them at your university where you went on to teach for four years until the Western Sea Conflict, which involved your island. Your people chose to fight against-”

  “ Against becoming slaves to Turgonia, like everyone else you’ve conquered in the last seven hundred years.”

  “- Turgonia,” he continued as if he had not heard her. “You were recruited by your government to break our ciphers, which, despite having no background in cryptography, you did. Repeatedly. And then your people handed our decrypted messages to our enemies.” His eyes narrowed, his knuckles whitened where he clenched the desk. Powerful arm and chest muscles twitched beneath his bare bronze skin. “You cost us our victory. Your dishonorable tactics forced us into a stalemate with those cursed Nurians, and we ended up losing tens of thousands of men for terms n
o better than we started with. Is there anything pertinent that I don’t know about you?”

  “ I like coconut shrimp and my favorite color is blue.” Antagonizing him was probably stupid, but she would rather burn her favorite books than ingratiate herself with these people.

  His eyes narrowed further. “We were researching you in order to identify and kill you for your crimes against the empire, but there’s been…an incident. We need something translated and our languages experts are taking too much time.”

  That probably meant they were stupefied and stumped. How desperate did the empire have to be to ask a foreigner for help?

  “ Time?” Tikaya asked.

  “ There isn’t much of it.” He unlocked a drawer and withdrew the paper she had already seen along with two rubbings.

  He laid them on the desk, and she started to lean forward, despite her intent to remain aloof. She caught herself and forced herself to sit back. Yes, the symbols interested her, but what could she do without the reference texts in the Polytechnic? Even at home, she would likely be stymied if nothing like the Tekdar Tablet existed: a bilingual source that said the same thing in two languages, one already known.

  “ Why is time a factor?” she asked.

  “ You don’t need to know.”

  “ Where did the symbols come from?”

  “ You don’t need to know.”

  She tamped down irritation. “Is it ciphertext? Or a language?” She lifted her hand. “And, yes, I do need to know that.”

  “ We believe it’s a language. An ancient language. We need you to decipher it and compile a dictionary. Our team can handle the rest.”

  She snorted, both at the idea of being able to simply look at these rubbings and produce a dictionary and because she would not hand anything to their ‘team’ even if she could. “You mean your people can take my work, hide it from the rest of the world, and keep whatever knowledge it affords you to yourselves.”