Encrypted (2 page)

For the first time, a hint of uncertainty
lurked in the marine’s dark eyes. She held her breath, willing him
to believe her.

He eyed her up and down, and she shifted her
weight, abruptly aware how the dampness of her dress pronounced her
curves. There were more things to fear from a strange man than
being shot. She tried to ease backward, but dense cane blocked
her.

The marine reached for his belt, and she
crouched, brandishing the machete in both hands.

“
If you touch me, I’ll cut
off your...” Tikaya knew the Turgonian word for penis, but some
cursed ancestor with a sense of humor momentarily sucked it from
her mind. “Man part,” she finished feebly.

The marine’s eyebrows lifted. His hand had
unclasped not his belt buckle but an ammo pouch, and he pulled out
a scrap of paper. “You’re not my type, and if that’s what you
people call a fighting stance, it’s amazing you can even defeat the
sugar cane.”

She should have felt nothing but relief, but
embarrassment flushed her cheeks. The marine approached, the paper
extended. Though he did not act as threatening as he might, her
muscles tensed. The Turgonians had slain hundreds of her people,
including the one who mattered most.

Tikaya wanted to tell him to take his note
and leave, but curiosity kept her silent. What could he possibly
have come all this way to show her?

He stopped a pace away from her, holding out
the paper. Reluctant to close the final distance, she did not move
for a long moment. He waited. Mosquitoes whined, reminding her that
darkness approached. Tikaya lowered the machete and accepted the
note. Even with her suntanned skin, his fingers were dark next to
hers.

Though he did not try to touch her, she
sidled away to study the paper. It was not a note at all but a page
of symbols. Someone had painstakingly copied complex symmetrical
markings interlinked in small groupings. Her teeth caught her lip.
She had seen many languages, but she had never seen this one, if it
even was a language. It could be anything.

“
Where did you get this?”
she asked, gaze stuck to the paper. After a moment, she realized
she had asked in her own tongue instead of his and switched,
repeating the question.

“
My commanding
officer.”

“
No, I mean...”

“
My commanding officer,”
he said again.

Tikaya snorted. “Is it a language or...” She
stopped herself from saying substitution cipher. If she hoped to
plead ignorance of this cryptomancer, she had best not say anything
related to cryptography.

“
You tell me.”

“
I’ve never seen anything
like it, and I’ve seen—” She caught herself again, this time short
of admitting she had studied dozens of languages, living and dead.
“We see a number of languages here on the island.”

Tikaya tried to watch him,
to gauge his reaction, but the symbols kept drawing her eyes back,
demanding her attention. What if it
was
a previously undiscovered
language? Something from ruins the Turgonians had dug up on their
continent? They were not a people known for archaeology, nor
sharing secrets. If she were to translate a new language and bring
awareness of it to the global scientific community, it would assure
her a place in the history books. A tempting thought,
that.

“
Does it mean anything to
you?” the marine asked.

“
No, I don’t even know if
this is logographic or syllabic or alpha...” Great Grandmother’s
eyeteeth, she was saying too much again.

Indeed, the soldier watched her through
narrowed eyes. Time to end this conversation and get out of these
fields before darkness fell and he changed his mind about her being
his type.

Tikaya held the paper out for him. “I don’t
recognize it. I can’t help you. You should try at the
Polytechnic.”

He stared at her, face unreadable. Cicadas
began droning, and a bead of sweat slithered down her spine. Then
he took the paper, returned it to his pouch, and walked away.

* * * * *

A pair of whale-oil lamps burned on either
side of double doors marking the front of a large grassy mound. The
earthen-walled structure held her family’s distillery and
processing equipment, and the clank-thunk of machinery echoed from
within. Tikaya paused to prop her bow against the door frame as she
entered the chamber. Cool, dry air offered a reprieve from the
muggy evening heat, and her steaming body welcomed it after the run
from the fields.

She almost tripped over a passel of
laughing, sandy-haired toddlers throwing wads of bagasse at each
other. Running into her nephews and nieces usually made her smile,
but now she froze, mid-step, thinking of the marine. His presence
represented a threat not only to her, but to her whole family, a
family big enough that they joked how it was impossible to be
lonely any place on the plantation. That was why she had returned
this past year. The flat she shared with Parkonis near the
Polytechnic had been too empty after his death, but now she feared
she had endangered them all.

“
Tikaya,” her brother,
Kytaer, called. He stood before a press, feeding sugar cane into
the rollers. The long stalks cracked and flattened, and juice
flowed into a collection bin below. “Glad you stopped by so I could
warn you.”

She tore her gaze from the tussling
children. Warn her? Had the Turgonian already been here?

“
Professor Meilika is in
the house,” Ky said. “She’s joining us for dinner. She and Mother
have been conspiring all afternoon. About you. How to get you back
deciphering runes on broken tablets and potsherds and all
that.”

Tikaya exhaled slowly. Nothing new. Good.
That meant the marine had not been by. She still had time to warn
everyone and figure out what to do. No, she knew what she had to
do. She had to pack. She could not stay here. If any of her family
came to harm because of the role she accepted during the war, the
guilt would torment her forever.

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.