“ Sixteen modern, and I can read a few dozen dead languages.”
“ Few dozen?” Five halted and gaped at her. “You must be a genius.”
The proclamation startled her, and she lurched to a stop beside him, conscious of the guards’ gazes on her back. “No, no, trust me I’m not. It’s just something I’ve a knack for.”
He lifted a single skeptical eyebrow.
Tikaya shook her head. “A world-exploring uncle gave me a copy of the Tekdar Tablet when I was a child, and I fell in love with solving language puzzles. My parents encouraged it, so I had a head start when I started formally studying in school. That’s all.”
Five was still standing, gazing at her, and when she met his eyes, she found that admiration there again. It was disarming. Maybe he meant it to be. What had the captain told Five to convince her of?
“ Hm.” He resumed walking. “My family gave me swords and toy soldiers when I was a boy.” Bemusement laced his tone.
“ You would have preferred something else?”
“ Oh, yes. I kept asking for drawing pads and building materials. I wanted to design a treehouse with a drawbridge to my room and a steam-powered potato launcher for defense.”
“ Sounds like every boy’s dream.” Despite her determination to remain chary with him, the change of topic set her at ease. She could not reveal something she shouldn’t if he was talking about himself.
“ Alas, this was not a paternally approved childhood activity, so I had to find my own building materials.” Five scratched his jaw. “I took it upon myself to chop down some of the apple trees in my family’s orchard, trees that my great grandfather had grafted from cuttings painstakingly acquired when he was a marine sailing around the world. I, being about eight at the time, was unaware of this bit of history.”
“ Oh, dear,” she murmured.
“ Yes. There was a lot of yelling that summer.”
She chuckled.
“ What is engraved on your name plaque?” Five asked as they started on their second lap of the deck.
For a moment, the context of the question eluded her, until she remembered her earlier comment. “You don’t know my name?”
He spread his arms apologetically. “Nobody’s told me much.”
The salty breeze gusted, and water sprayed the deck ahead of them. A lieutenant bellowed at the men aloft.
“ Your name for mine,” Tikaya offered with a smile. “I can’t keep calling you Five forever.”
He glanced at the guards trailing them. Maybe, as part of his punishment, he was forbidden from using his old name.
He lowered his voice. “My friends and family, back when I had them…” He grimaced. “They called me Rias.”
“ Rias?”
Tikaya had a feeling that was a nickname or a truncation. Regardless, it gave her no hints as to his identity. Since she had decrypted all the communications her people had intercepted, she knew most, if not all, of the Turgonian officers with enough rank to command a vessel, and she could not think of any name with those syllables.
“ My name is Tikaya,” she said. “And, now that we’re on a first-name basis, maybe you can tell me what you’re supposed to convince me of, Rias.”
Their route had taken them to the archery lane. Rias paused by the rack of staves, and the guards tensed, their fingers finding the triggers of their pistols.
“ No weapons,” the lead man said.
“ Captain,” Rias called. “May we shoot?”
In the center of the exercise area, Bocrest knelt on a young officer’s back, with the man’s arm twisted in a lock. The captain scowled over at them.
“ May you shoot? What is this, the Officers’ Club? Perhaps I can get you some brandywine and lobster too?”
“ Captain, are you inviting me to dinner?” Rias rested his hand on his chest. “I’m touched.”
Red flushed Bocrest’s face, and Tikaya wondered at the wisdom of teasing the man. If the captain had a sense of humor, she had not detected it. But he waved a disgusted hand at the guards.
“ Let them shoot.”
“ Sir?” The lead guard’s mouth gaped open.
“ You heard me,” Bocrest barked.
“ Yes, sir.”
Tikaya eyed Rias. “It seems your word means something to the captain.”
“ He knows it’s all I have left.”
Bleakness stripped away his humor, reminding her that pain lurked beneath the facade he was showing her today. He caught her watching and reaffixed his smile.
“ Tikaya,” he said slowly, trying her name out, then nodding to himself as if he approved. “To answer your question, despite his threats — ” Rias scowled, “-the captain has doubts about your intentions. He believes I should convince you to help him wholeheartedly with his mission.”
She selected the bow she had used the day before. “Why, when he’s keeping you chained in the brig, does he think you’d be inclined to speak on his behalf?”
“ He believes that my indoctrinated loyalty to the empire will overrule whatever revulsion I feel for him and those who took everything from me.”
“ They must do a lot of indoctrinating in Turgonian schools.”
Rias sighed. “Oh, they do.”
“ And do you think I should help? You recognized something about those symbols when I showed you the rubbing. What was it?”
He did not answer, though she did not think him recalcitrant. His gaze grew far away, his face grim, as if some painful memories had swallowed him and he had forgotten her.
Maybe archery would loosen his mind and unlock his thoughts for sharing. She shot a few times, leaving arrows quivering around the red dot in the target. A stiffer breeze scraped across the deck today.
Rias stirred and selected his own arrows.
“ Want to make a wager?” Tikaya asked, thinking she might be able to get him to talk more freely about the symbols if he owed her from a lost bet.
His grimness faded and he slanted her a knowing gaze. “I suspect that would be unwise.”
“ Captain Bocrest did it.”
“ Then I’m certain it’s unwise.”
Tikaya grinned. “Maybe I just got a lucky shot.”
“ I doubt it.”
“ Why?” All the marines had been stunned when she hit the target.
He shrugged. “The Kyattese are bow hunters.”
“ Well…” She smiled and twirled an arrow in the air. “If you’re afraid…”
Rias splayed a hand across his chest. “When you were learning our language, did you not also learn that we are a fearless people? I simply don’t want to take advantage of you. I studied ballistics in school, and I can’t imagine such a martial course being taught at your Polytechnic.”
“ And did you also study arrogance in school?” Tikaya nocked her arrow, aimed, and plunked it into the bull’s-eye.
“ Of course.” He winked. “I’m Turgonian.”
She snorted. Arrogance probably was part of their curriculum.
“ I even wrote a paper on the ballistics of archery for merit points,” he said.
“ Less talking, more shooting.”
Eyebrows arched, Rias nocked the first arrow, but he paused as a pair of marines strolled past, one munching the remains of an apple. The man lifted his arm to throw the core overboard, but Rias stopped him.
“ I’ll take that.”
