The Reader (36 page)

S
efia's stomach turned. “I never meant—”

But it didn't matter what she'd meant. Every time she had touched the symbol or read from the book or recited her vow, she'd been leading him, slowly, inexorably—all the while promising that she was his friend, that she would protect him—to the very people he should have been running from all along.

He didn't look at her. His breath was ragged in his chest.

“We've been searching for the Book for decades, and you've not only brought it here to us, you've brought along a candidate as well.” Tanin traced the
on the cover of the book with her fingertips, just as Sefia had done hundreds of times herself. “There are no coincidences.”

Was everything—her parents, the Guard, her search for answers, and what the impressors had done to Archer—
destined to turn out this way from the beginning? Were they all just stories whose endings had already been written, the dates of their deaths pinned to the page with periods?

Tanin fingered the edge of her vest, above her heart. “I think you're extraordinary, Sefia, even more extraordinary than your parents, if you discovered your power all on your own.”

A flash of pride and curiosity flared in Sefia's chest, quickly extinguished by hurt and confusion. “I did. They didn't tell me.”

They didn't tell me
anything
.

“I'm sorry.” Tanin's voice softened. “I wish things had been different.”

Sefia's eyes blurred with tears. She shook her head, blinking.

“I know you don't want to believe it,” Tanin continued, “but I loved them. Your mother was like an older sister to me . . . family. If things had been different, you and I could have—”

“You
loved
them? You killed my father,” Sefia interrupted.

Tanin pressed her lips together, as if to seal in her sadness, her regret. “Yes.”

“Have you killed Nin too?”

“The Locksmith?” Tanin asked. “No, Sefia, we took her into custody.”

Sefia tried to lunge forward, but the magic held her back. “Nin's alive?”

“Would you like to see her?”

“Yes!” The word burst out of her before she could stop it.

Rajar smoothed down his mustache. “Are you sure?”

“If she won't believe her parents betrayed us, maybe she'll believe the Locksmith,” Tanin replied.

Sighing, he folded his coat around himself and swept out of the room through a back door, almost hidden behind a tapestry. Archer's eyes were closed. His face was wet with tears.

“Archer?”

In the silence, Tanin flicked open the clasps of the book, then closed them. Opened and closed them again. The wrinkle had appeared between her brows again, and she stared hard at the symbol in the center of the cover, as if she could bore through it with the sheer intensity of her gaze.

After a moment, she leaned in and whispered, as if to the book itself: “Show me where the last piece of the Resurrection Amulet is hidden.”

She opened the book. The pages fluttered. Her eyes were hungry, gobbling up the words, and then . . . She looked up, blinking. It was like she'd forgotten where she was.

Sefia's breath quickened. Tanin was searching the book. Was that all it took to find what you were looking for?

Tanin licked her fingertips and leafed through the book. Then she looked up again, and her gaze narrowed on Sefia. “What did you—? Did Lon do this?”

“Do what? What are you looking for?”

Tanin ignored her. She flipped halfheartedly through the pages before closing the book and slumping into the chair.

Sefia didn't take her eyes from the cracked spine. She could search the book. All the questions about her parents would be answered if she could just—

The back door swung open, and someone was prodded into the room. Someone in a bear-skin cloak. Someone like a mountain of dirt. Someone with hands like miracles.

“Aunt Nin!” Sefia wanted to fling her arms around the woman, but she was still pinned to the chair. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It's my fault.” The words poured out of her like water over the lip of a dam. “I should never have let them take you. I should have stopped them.”

It took Nin a few agonizing seconds to look up, but when she did, her muddy eyes couldn't seem to focus. There was something vague and uncertain about the slouch of her shoulders, the uneasy plucking of her fingers. “That you?” she mumbled.

“Yes, it's me, Sefia!”

A smile broke through the hardened lines of Nin's face. “Girl,” she murmured. She was thinner than Sefia remembered, her movements more tentative, but in that moment she almost seemed like her old self.

Except she still wouldn't meet Sefia's eyes.

Sefia glared at Tanin. “What did you do to her?”

“She had vital information.”

She darted a glance at Nin. She
knew
there was only one way the assassin could have known she had the book. She just hadn't wanted to believe it. “Oh,” she said.

Nin's mouth moved. Her jaws worked. But no sound came out. Rajar took up his post by the sideboard and crossed his arms.

“Go on,” Tanin urged. “Tell her about her parents.”

As if on command, Nin began to speak: “What do you want to know, girl? Did they steal it? Did I help them? Yes and yes.”

Her speech was different too. The words seemed to slide off her tongue, like she couldn't control them.

“Who are these people?” Sefia asked.

“The Guard is good. The Guard protects us all.”

“Did my parents betray them?”

“Yes. They weren't who you thought they were, girl.”

No, they weren't.
A sob lodged in Sefia's throat. She couldn't look at Nin anymore. Her parents hadn't been heroes. They'd been traitors. Liars. Even to their own daughter.

“We had to get the Book back,” Tanin said gently. “We couldn't let something so powerful loose in the world.”

“Loose?” Sefia echoed. As if the book were some caged beast.

“People are weak. They can't be trusted. Can you imagine what Kelanna would be like if everyone could do what you and I can do? Men would be turned into dogs and never turned back. Castles would disintegrate with the wave of a hand. Thieves and murderers, slave traders and warlords, the worst kinds of people would rule Kelanna because
they
would use the word for evil. It would be chaos.”

In his chair, Archer raised his head, and his eyes were glassy with tears.

Tanin leaned across the desk, her voice hushed and urgent. “When we unite the kingdoms under one rule, we'll make sure that never happens. We'll make sure no one is ever again corrupted by the power of the Book.”

“That's what you think happened? My parents were corrupted?” Sefia felt like her skin had been sewn on backward. “Aunt Nin?”

But Nin still wouldn't look at her.

Archer strained against his invisible bonds. The veins along his arms and neck swelled. But he couldn't move.

“You could join us, you know.” Tanin flipped the penknife in her fingers once more and set it on the desktop. “We could teach you to control your gifts. You could
help
people. Protect them. The way your parents were supposed to.”

Her parents. Sefia's images of them were already fading, their features cracking and flaking away like old paint, revealing nothing but darkness beneath. They'd betrayed Tanin. They'd betrayed her too, keeping this from her.

“Sefia . . .” The word was so small she wasn't even sure she'd heard it.

Archer was staring at her, sweat glistening on his forehead, his lips parted, though no other sound came out. But he'd spoken. His voice was hoarse and deep, and the sound of it sang in her blood.

“Join you?” Sefia spat. “Don't make me laugh.”

Tanin shook her head. “Sefia, I don't think you understand what I'm offering you—”

“No,” she said. “We'll never join you.”

For the first time, a smile graced Rajar's mournful face.

Beside him, Nin blinked. Her eyes seemed to clear. She rocked back and forth on her heels, flexing her fingers.

“Not after what you've done to the people I love.”

As Sefia spoke, Tanin's expression went from amusement to doubt, and then to confusion, hurt, and finally anger. She drew herself up to her full height. “The people you
love
? Your parents lied to you. Your
Aunt Nin
gave you up.” Her voice was cold and crackled like ice, but there was an undercurrent of pain in it, running deep beneath the surface, causing her anger to rupture and break.

Sefia glanced at Nin. Her face was going red. She bit her lips. She ground her teeth. And then the words erupted out of her: “I told them, girl. I couldn't stop myself. Your name. That thing you carried. I told them everything. I'm sor—”

But Tanin's voice cut through Nin's, her words digging into Sefia again and again. “
I
would have welcomed you with open arms.
I
would have given you everything your parents never did.”

“Sefia, listen to me,” Nin continued. “The Guard is powerful. More powerful than you know. They control Everica, Liccaro. Got someone in Deliene too. They're going to—”

“Power. Knowledge. Purpose. Time and time again,
I
let you live, Sefia. You were supposed to choose me.”

“Run, Sefia.” Nin's voice rang out like a broken bell. “Run!”

Tanin raised her fingers, and Sefia flung herself against her restraints. She knew that look. The narrowing of her pupils. The hurt and vengeance in her eyes.

Without even touching her, Tanin gave Nin's neck a sudden, violent twist.

There was a
snap
.

A scream rose in Sefia's throat. Nin buckled, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to all her supports and she were bursting apart, falling, fading, and then . . . gone, her hands as limp as leather gloves.

She was dead.

N
in!” The word exploded from her and burst into a brilliant cloud of light.

Sefia raised her arms. The golden ropes of Tanin's restraints sloughed off her and dissipated into nothingness.

She stood, her Vision swirling and sparking around her like gusts of snow.

Archer was free too. She could feel him reaching for his weapons as Rajar's hands swept back the folds of his coat, exposing his guns.

Sefia lifted her hand. The silver penknife rose from the desk.

Tanin opened her mouth to speak.

But Sefia was done listening. Her hand cut the air.

The blade slashed across Tanin's throat. The skin opened up, red and hot and wide. Her hands went to her neck. She looked surprised.

Rajar was at her side in an instant, murmuring something,
cradling her body as it slumped to the floor. Tanin's lips moved, but her extraordinary voice was gone. Blood leaked through her fingers.

The light went out of her eyes.

Archer tugged at Sefia's arm, and she looked up. He had their packs on his shoulder and the book in his hands. In the candlelight, the leather binding shone, polished with hundreds of years of handling.

The book of her parents.

The book of Palo Kanta.

Of Tanin.

Of everything.

Dimly, she heard Rajar calling for reinforcements. She stole one last look at the collapsed hillside of Nin's body.

Run.

Then the book was in her arms, and they were running—out the door and into the tunnel, where they barely slowed as Archer knocked the redheaded guard unconscious and shot the other in the leg.

Their footsteps echoed off the walls.

Their breaths were ragged in their chests.

The torchlight batted at the ceiling as Rajar's voice bellowed behind them.

They burst into the dark open space of the warehouse, where the starlight made dappled patterns on the floor.

And then they were out, in the arc of the harbor with the shadows of boats on the water. They dashed to the nearest skiff, where they dropped their things and tackled the ropes, untying lines, hoisting sails.

The sounds of pursuit reverberated in the warehouse. Shouts. Pounding feet.

Breathlessly, Sefia and Archer pushed their boat away from the dock. A breeze filled the sails.

Shots fired.

They ducked.

Bits of the hull splintered around them.

People flooded the docks, rifles in their hands. Some of them ran down the pier in search of another boat. Others knelt and raised their guns again.

There was a burst of orange flame.

And the report of rifles.

Sefia blinked. She could see the bullets heading for them, could see their trails like wakes of light. With a wave of her hand, she dropped them harmlessly into the water.

Archer stared at her.

On the docks, their pursuers had reached another boat, but they were out of range now. They were hurtling out to sea, the black water ripping them past the lighthouses and into the swift currents of the Callidian Strait.

Sefia clung to the rail, staring at but not seeing the cloud-swept sky, the moonlight skittering across the waves.

Nin.

Oh, Nin.

Sea spray splashed over the deck, drenching her left side. Sefia blinked salt water out of her eyelashes and looked around. They were alone, cold and wet as the wind nipped at their faces and the tips of their ears.

She collapsed against the gunwale, her head in her hands.

After a moment, Archer sat beside her. “Sefia?” he murmured.

She buried her face in her arms. Tanin was dead.

But so was Nin.

“I'm sorry.”

She looked up at him then. Out here on the water, the planes of his face were rimmed with blue light, as if he were a thundercloud brimming with lightning. “That's the second person I've killed . . .” Her voice dwindled into silence.

For a moment Archer didn't speak. Then his hand flitted to his neck. “I've killed twenty-four.”

She wanted to say something, but what words could express all they'd been through, all the terrible things they'd done, all the answers they'd found, and all the questions they had yet to ask?

Lifting her hand, she touched her brow once and held up two crossed fingers in the darkness.

She didn't need words for this.

Archer traced her hand with his own, trailing his fingertips along the soft blades of her fingers until they were laced with his.

“Yes,” he said.

He was with her.

They were together.

In all the ways that mattered.

Then he leaned in and pressed his lips to the corner of her forehead, just above her temple.

Sefia tensed, remembering the sensation of his arms around her, his bare skin, his heart drumming frantically in his chest.
Then she lifted her chin and pulled him down to her, and their mouths met for the first time.

The kiss wasn't hard or passionate or even sweet the way she'd imagined it might be. But it was tender and strong, as if the pressure of his lips could communicate all the things he felt for her, all the things he still didn't have the words in him to say.

It opened her up. Her emotions welled inside her and she could feel them washing against her insides: sadness and regret and anger and pain and confusion and relief and more she couldn't name. Tears splashed onto their twined fingers.

Gently, Archer wiped her hands, her cheek, collecting her tears.

“Where to now?” he asked.

Sefia looked at the book where it lay, gold clasps gleaming faintly, on the deck. The book could tell her. She could open it and riffle through the pages and find the answers she needed. It was all in there.

Instead she tightened her grip on his hand and looked to the horizon. “Anywhere but here,” she said.