The marine shrugged and tossed it to him. Tikaya had an inkling of Rias’s intent and did not question him as he readied the bow again. He nocked the arrow and held it against the stave with one hand. With the other, he lobbed the apple core so it arced toward the target. In one swift motion, he drew the bow and fired. The arrow pierced the apple and hammered it to the target right next to Tikaya’s bull’s-eye.
“ Hah.” Rias lowered the bow. “After my cocky speech, I feared I’d embarrass myself.”
“ I hope you got a good grade for that paper,” Tikaya said, staring at the impaled apple.
“ Me too.” He grinned at her raised eyebrows. “It was twenty years ago. I don’t remember.”
“ What was it on?”
“ Oh, the usual. Explaining the equations for general ballistic trajectory, horizontal launch, launch velocity, and the like. The fun part was the modeling I did on the different types of bows used throughout imperial history. I analyzed them to show how the design and materials used would define their accuracy, trajectories, distance capabilities, and…” He must have noticed her gaping because he stopped, a sheepish expression on his face. “I’m boring
you, aren’t I?”
“ No!” Tikaya blurted. “I just wasn’t expecting you to be so…” Dear ancestors, he sounded just like her when she started talking about languages, and it struck her as hilarious that he could not remember the grade but recalled all the details of the topic. “Uhm, garrulous,” she finished.
A blush colored his olive skin. “Sorry. I haven’t talked to a woman in two years.” He nocked an arrow. “Shall we shoot a few more?”
“ Sure, tell me more about your paper.”
Rias’s fingers fumbled, and the arrow clattered to the deck. “Really?”
“ Really.” She hid a smile, tickled by his surprise. “The only ballistics experiments I ever partook in involved a wager on who could use a spoon to launch a macadamia nut across the lunch room and into Professor Lehanae’s wig.”
“ Hm, I recall taking part in a similar experiment. Must be a universal education requirement.”
They shot while he explained his paper, and Tikaya relaxed for the first time in days. She almost laughed at her earlier guess that he might have been a captain in the war. With that passion for mathematics and those childhood fancies, he had to be an engineer. Probably the chief engineer on one of the big warships. He would have been accustomed to going toe-to-toe with captains to keep his steamer in pristine operating order.
Only after the exercise period ended, and she was again confined in her cabin, did she realize she still did not know what his history was with those symbols and why they stirred dark memories.
The first earsplitting boom yanked Tikaya from sleep. The second made her scramble out of her bunk so quickly she slammed into the foldout desk. Groaning, she rubbed her hip, took another step, and cracked her toe on the stool.
“ No one should wake up this way,” she muttered.
More booms drowned her words, this time a whole round that lasted half a minute. The ship trembled with concussions that vibrated her body like a bell. Cannons, she realized, as she groped about to find her spectacles and sandals. She had heard them from afar, but never standing in a cabin under the gun deck. Shouts sounded through the aftermath of the round, though the bulkhead muffled the words. She peered out her tiny porthole. Clouds obscured the stars, and night’s darkness smothered the ocean.
Was someone attacking them? Who would be audacious enough to waylay a Turgonian warship? Especially during peacetime? Maybe it was a training exercise. She would not put it past Captain Bocrest to schedule drills in the middle of the night.
A massive jolt rocked the ship, throwing her into the bulkhead. That was no cannon firing. Psi blast. She had a cousin who studied telekinetics and could knock the fronds off a palm tree. Anyone who could damage an ironclad warship was no one she wanted to meet. Still, if this was an attack, maybe she could use the confusion to steal a longboat. She would need to get Rias out of the brig to help. Since he had planned an escape once, he would know where to find the logs and navigation tools they would need.
Shouts rang out and boots pounded, but all the activity seemed to be on the deck above. Tikaya opened the door. Her hopes of escape sank when she spotted her guard standing outside.
The baby-face private noticed her immediately. “Stay inside, ma’am.”
“ What’s going on?”
“ I’m not sure yet, but don’t worry. It’s my duty to protect you.”
Yes, but she did not want him to protect her. She wanted him to go away. Still, his earnest eyes said he took his duty seriously, and she managed a “thank you.” Though they had rarely spoken, she had placed him in Corporal Agarik’s tiny category of People Who Treated Her Like a Human Being.
“ Can we go see what’s happening?” she asked, though she suspected she knew the answer.
“ No, ma’am. Please close the hatch and wait inside.” A cabin door slammed open, and a sub-lieutenant struggling to buckle his belt scrambled out, a drunken lurch to his step. He stumbled off, presumably to join the others, and her guard watched wistfully. He did look back at her and add, “I’ll let you know what the commotion is about when I find out.”
Tikaya shut the door and paced her tiny cabin. Her guard wanted to join the action. Maybe she could nudge him that direction. He was young after all. Maybe-
A scream of agony erupted nearby. Tikaya froze. Though muffled, it sounded like it had come from her deck.
She pressed her ear to the door.
Somewhere down the corridor, a pistol fired, and steel rang. Shrill voices cried out, and her eyes widened. They spoke Nurian, not Turgonian.
“ We should go to the brig!”
“ I read that marine’s thoughts; the woman is up here.”
Her insides knotted. They were looking for her.
The Nurians must have found out about whatever the Turgonians had unearthed. Did they want her help too? To beat the imperials to the loot?
A shot cracked right outside her door.
Tikaya could help them find her or she could hide. Though her people had only superficially sided with the Nurians during the war, sharing the messages Tikaya decrypted, it ought to be enough to ensure they would treat her better than the Turgonians.
She eased the door open. The air shimmered as a wave of heat rolled in from the corridor. The invisible force slammed into the private’s chest.
She stumbled back and wrapped her arm over her eyes-not quickly enough to miss the agony contorting the guard’s face. He screamed and dropped to the deck, writhing. His sword and pistol clattered down beside him. The stench of charred flesh seared the air. In a heartbeat, the marine lay still, skin laid bare to muscle and bone, and bulging eyes frozen open.
Tikaya stared, stunned into immobility. She had never seen death, not like this. She had spent the war in an office, not on battlefields or warships.
“ She down there?” someone asked in Nurian.
Tikaya tore her gaze from the downed man and leaned out the door.
Two Nurians crept in her direction. They were shorter than she and darker of skin, like the Turgonians, but they had slanted eyes and wore their long black hair in topknots. One bore twin scimitars in his hands and looked lean and sinewy beneath colorful clothing decorated with bone and beads. The other, wrapped in a flowing black robe, carried nothing. A practitioner and his bodyguard.
The bodyguard pointed a scimitar her direction. “There!”
“ Greetings,” Tikaya called in their tongue. “My name is Tikaya. Any chance you’re here to take me somewhere more pleasant than a Turgonian warship?”
But they were not in the conversation mood. As soon as they spotted her, the practitioner stopped. A glazed trance slackened his face-the sign of someone concentrating on his science. The bodyguard watched her, but also glanced up and down the hall, ensuring no one approached to interrupt his comrade.
Despite the heat lingering in the wardroom, a shiver ran down Tikaya’s spine. She ducked into her cabin just
