“ Your… boyhood hero?” Tikaya caught herself gaping and closed her mouth. “How old are you, Agarik?”
“ Twenty-three.”
He was younger than she had thought, but that still meant Rias had to have been someone of note for at least ten or fifteen years. Not just an officer, someone distinguished enough to have been known and discussed all over the empire. The night before she had resolved to ask Rias his name. She was tired of being in the dark. She had to know.
“ To answer your original question,” Agarik said, “last I saw him, he was heading off to a meeting with Bocrest. The captain’s finally given up trying to keep him at prisoner status. He told the men to treat Rias like an officer for the duration of the mission.”
Tikaya found herself gaping again. “Er, how long was I asleep?”
“ While the captain was up on the mountain, the marines setting up camp down here had some time to chat. Things came out.” The mischievous glint in his eyes suggested the source of those ‘things.’ “Not that many men were surprised. Most of us had pieced together who he is and started deferring to him anyway. Ottotark about shi- had an accident, though.”
She flexed her fingers and eyed her nails. “And he’s who, again?”
She hoped Agarik would let it slip, but he shook his head. “He should be the one to tell you.”
“ Of that I have no doubt, but he hasn’t.” He almost had, the night in Wolfhump, probably because he had not been sure they would live to dawn.
“ Have you asked him?”
“ Yes.”
“ Oh.”
Agarik scratched at his scab, caught himself, and scratched around it instead. A breeze buffeted the side of the tent. She would get the answer from Rias as soon as she saw him. No more waiting. In the meantime, there was little point to dwelling on it. She should rest, or study Lancecrest’s journal. The notes would help her along on her translations. She would love to be the one who-
Love! Her memory triggered. She had told Rias she loved him before falling asleep. She bit her lip. Had he responded? She could not remember. Had he felt awkward? Alarmed? Dare she hope-pleased?
Tikaya swung her legs off the cot. “I need to talk to him.”
Agarik lifted a hand. “You can’t go anywhere. You were almost dead a few hours ago. You need to rest.”
“ I did rest. I’m done now.” She stood and promptly fell back onto the cot, betrayed by straw legs.
“ Really,” Agarik said dryly.
“ I just need to get my muscles moving.” She stuck her legs out. Maybe a few ankle rotations and toe wiggles would improve the blood flow.
“ Rias will be back by morning, I’m sure. You should rest.”
“ I need to talk to him now. It’s, uhm…” Tomorrow they would be surrounded by squads of men again. She needed to talk to him tonight. Alone. And she was not about to explain that to Agarik. “I need to see if he has the journal I recovered,” she said instead. “I want to study it further before we go into the tunnels.”
“ It’s the middle of the night, Tikaya.”
“ Night is eighteen hours long here. It’s always the middle of the night.”
“ You’ve a point there.” Agarik stood, head brushing the rafter of the tent. “I’ll get the journal for you if you stay here and rest, all right?”
She smiled at him but did not answer. Whatever got her nanny out of the tent so she could leave.
Agarik unfastened the flap and slipped out. An icy draft reminded her to dress fully before venturing outside. Fortunately, someone had piled her gear at the end of her cot where a portable stove burned. She checked for the journal in case Rias had tucked it in there, but he probably placed it elsewhere to make sure the Nurian would not find it.
Outside, stars and a half moon brightened a wedge of sky framed by steep canyon walls. They must have arrived at the canyon where the tunnels began.
A bonfire blazing in the center of camp snapped and launched sparks into the air. Five tents, large enough to hold cots for all, stood back from it. The sleds lay between her tent and the next, and the dogs had burrowed into the snow and slept with their noses tucked under their thick, fluffy tails. A surprising number of men were still awake and chatting fireside. Or perhaps they were awake again. Rias must have kept the camp quiet and had the men feign sleep to draw in the Nurian. A ceramic jug passed from hand to hand, and laughter gave the atmosphere a jovial feel, though some of the chortles sounded strained. No doubt rumors abounded concerning the tunnels, and, after the deaths they had seen, the men must suspect not all of them would make it out again.
Tikaya stood, breath fogging the air before her eyes, wondering where to find Rias. She considered the other tents. Three stood dark, but light seeped from beneath the flaps of hers and one other-might that be a command tent?
She padded to the entrance and debated whether to peek inside or wait for him to come out. If Bocrest led the meeting, he would not appreciate her interruption. She lifted her hand but let it hang as she considered how one knocked on a tent.
The flap peeled back, and one of the sergeants almost crashed into her.
“ What’re you doing?” He lowered his brows and glared at her. “Spying?”
“ Huh? I mean, no, I-” She looked at her still raised hand as if that would explain her intent.
“ Who is it?” Captain Bocrest asked from within.
“ The woman,” the sergeant said over his shoulder. “Standing outside, spying.”
“ I’m not spying!”
“ I got to piss.” The sergeant shoved past her. “Out of my way, girl.”
“ It’s Tikaya,” she informed his back.
He threw a rude gesture over his shoulder. No one called to invite her into the tent, but she walked in anyway. Six marines, Bocrest and his senior ranking men including a scowling Ottotark and the sawbones whose brother she had killed. No Rias. She swallowed.
“ Sorry, for interrupting,” she said, “but I’m looking for…that journal. I thought it’d be useful to finish translating it before we head in.”
The glowers facing her seemed more suspicious than her presence called for after what she had been through with these men.
“ For our benefit?” Ottotark growled. “Or so you can deliver it to the archaeologists inside?”
“ I don’t know what you’re talking… Oh.” She recalled the Nurian’s speech before he had tried to kill her. Those moments when she had been so close to death were fuzzy, but she did remember archaeologists being mentioned. Rias must have relayed the information. “I don’t know who’s in there. There are a lot of archaeologists in the world.” Though she had to admit that at least half of the renowned ones came from the Kyatt Islands and most of the other half had studied there at one point or another. “Chances are I don’t know any of them, if that’s what you’re worried about-the folks I know aren’t the types to go hunting for ancient weapons caches. And, anyway, I wouldn’t betray Rias.”
“ You, the cryptomancer who slagged us all in the war, wouldn’t betray ‘ Rias?’” one of the sergeants asked.
“ Quiet, Karsus,” Bocrest said. “He hasn’t told her.”
“ No? Oh, yes, that relationship’s going to work.”
The ire in the room evaporated and was replaced by sniggers. Tikaya set her jaw. She preferred the hostility. This was one more reason for her to talk to Rias tonight. She was damned if she was going to be the only one in camp who did not know.
Bocrest reached into the rucksack beside his cot and pulled out the leather journal. He tossed it to her. “Go. Figure out what’s in there that’s worth torturing people over.”
Naturally, she bumped into the returning sergeant on her way out. He growled at her, and she skittered away with an apology. She stopped a few paces beyond, bent over, hands on her knees, fatigue making her limbs heavy.
What further cane fields would she have to harvest for these Turgonians to prove she was sold on working with them? Then again, was she? She cared what happened to Rias and Agarik, but she would not cry over the rest
