promised him hale. Arms like pistons in a steam engine, he pumped through another fifty pushups, while Tikaya stood and waited. The space was large, as one would expect of the captain’s cabin, but spartan with nothing so frivolous as curtains for the portholes or cloth for the dining table.
The captain finished his pushups, jumped to his feet, and faced Tikaya. Her eyes were level with his nose, but he probably weighed sixty pounds more than she.
“ Dismissed,” he told the guards without looking away from her.
Evidently, he was not worried about her walnut-ifying his balls. He was probably not worried about much. The collection of dented and scratched daggers, swords, pistols, crossbows, and rifles on the wall beside his desk did not appear decorative.
“ Sit.” The captain jerked his thumb toward an uncomfortable-looking wood stool and strode around the desk to his own chair.
Tikaya wanted to cross her arms and stare defiantly, but suspected he would force her into complying. And, like Sergeant Pissed and Horny, he might like it. She perched on the edge of the seat.
“ Tikaya Komitopis.” He gripped the sides of his desk, his eyes intent. “Daughter of Loilon and Mela. Three siblings. You grew up on your parents’ plantation and showed a gift for languages at a young age. You studied them at your university where you went on to teach for four years until the Western Sea Conflict, which involved your island. Your people chose to fight against-”
“ Against becoming slaves to Turgonia, like everyone else you’ve conquered in the last seven hundred years.”
“- Turgonia,” he continued as if he had not heard her. “You were recruited by your government to break our ciphers, which, despite having no background in cryptography, you did. Repeatedly. And then your people handed our decrypted messages to our enemies.” His eyes narrowed, his knuckles whitened where he clenched the desk. Powerful arm and chest muscles twitched beneath his bare bronze skin. “You cost us our victory. Your dishonorable tactics forced us into a stalemate with those cursed Nurians, and we ended up losing tens of thousands of men for terms no better than we started with. Is there anything pertinent that I don’t know about you?”
“ I like coconut shrimp and my favorite color is blue.” Antagonizing him was probably stupid, but she would rather burn her favorite books than ingratiate herself with these people.
His eyes narrowed further. “We were researching you in order to identify and kill you for your crimes against the empire, but there’s been…an incident. We need something translated and our languages experts are taking too much time.”
That probably meant they were stupefied and stumped. How desperate did the empire have to be to ask a foreigner for help?
“ Time?” Tikaya asked.
“ There isn’t much of it.” He unlocked a drawer and withdrew the paper she had already seen along with two rubbings.
He laid them on the desk, and she started to lean forward, despite her intent to remain aloof. She caught herself and forced herself to sit back. Yes, the symbols interested her, but what could she do without the reference texts in the Polytechnic? Even at home, she would likely be stymied if nothing like the Tekdar Tablet existed: a bilingual source that said the same thing in two languages, one already known.
“ Why is time a factor?” she asked.
“ You don’t need to know.”
“ Where did the symbols come from?”
“ You don’t need to know.”
She tamped down irritation. “Is it ciphertext? Or a language?” She lifted her hand. “And, yes, I do need to know that.”
“ We believe it’s a language. An ancient language. We need you to decipher it and compile a dictionary. Our team can handle the rest.”
She snorted, both at the idea of being able to simply look at these rubbings and produce a dictionary and because she would not hand anything to their ‘team’ even if she could. “You mean your people can take my work, hide it from the rest of the world, and keep whatever knowledge it affords you to yourselves.”
“ That’s none of your concern,” he bit out, fingers still rigid where they gripped the table.
“ If you’re not going to tell me anything, then I’ll have to guess. I figure you’ve found some ancient ruins guarding some fabled treasure and you’ve gotten your people in trouble trying to extricate the goods without knowing who or what you’re dealing with. You need to know what the writing says so you can get at whatever it is you’re after, hoard it from the rest of the world, and no doubt shoot the foreign translator who helped you. You people are-”
The captain leapt around the desk so quickly she did not have time to brace herself. He grabbed her by the neck and thrust her against the wall. Swords and pistols clattered to the deck. Her feet dangled above them, and she grabbed his bare forearms, scrabbling to loosen his grip.
She gasped, tried to suck in air. His fingers dug deeper into her windpipe. Though a rational part of her mind said they needed her and would not seriously damage her, pain and terror pumped uncertainty through her heart.
“ Everyone on this ship wants you dead,” the captain growled, breath hot against her cheek, chest heaving with rage, “and I’d like nothing more than to snap your neck right now.”
Tikaya barely heard him. She clawed at his wrists and wheezed for air.
Idiot, she cursed herself. Why had she goaded him? She knew what they were, what atrocities they had committed during the war. Blackness encroached on her vision.
“ But my orders say to get that language translated, and you will do exactly that. We know where your family lives. If you don’t help, your parents and your siblings will be sacrificed. Your help or their lives. You choose.”
The captain dropped her abruptly, and she collapsed before she could get her feet under her. She bit her lip, and blood tainted her mouth. He hauled her to her feet, his hand digging bruises into her arm. He took the papers, smashed them into her palm, and shoved her so hard she crashed into the door, cracking her shoulder against the unyielding metal. Tears stung her eyes, and she dashed them away. She would never let these people see her cry.
He pushed her aside to open the door. “Get out of my office.”
Tikaya, rigid back to him, walked out. Corporal Agarik and Sergeant Ottotark waited outside. Agarik spotted the blood running down her chin and gave her a sympathetic frown. Perhaps it was her imagination, but it seemed that guilt lurked in his eyes.
“ Pampered librarian,” the captain muttered before his door slammed shut.
Unsurprisingly, the sergeant eyed Tikaya with lasciviousness and went out of his way to rub against her on the way back. She clenched her jaw, determined not to react. When they locked her into her cell, she willed them to go away. Alone, she would not have to maintain the stalwart facade.
Before they left, the corporal pressed a kerchief into her hand. After the hatch clanged shut, she staunched the blood trickling from her lip.
She threw the notes on the floor and paced circles around the confining cell. That bastard wanted the impossible. And he was going to kill everyone she loved if he didn’t get it. How was she supposed to translate a dead language with nothing more than a couple rubbings of runes?
Tikaya slammed her hands against the hard metal wall. Her short, fast breaths rasped in her ears. She forced herself to take deeper ones. Panicking would not help. She needed to escape and get her family to safety. Yes, that was the best plan.
She eyed the cell across the way. An ally would make escape easier.
“ Five?” she said. “Thanks for the help earlier.”
She waited several moments, but no answer came. Maybe he had been taken from his cell. Maybe he was sleeping. Or-she grimaced at the idea-maybe he would not talk to her because he hated her as much as everyone else on the ship. Just because he had not wanted to see a woman manhandled did not make him a devotee. Though it did suggest he was decent, maybe worth the effort of bringing around.
“ I now know why I’m here,” Tikaya said. “Sort of. I’ll tell you about it if you tell me why you’re here. And why you have a number instead of a name.”
She stepped close to the gate, propping her elbows on the cold metal bars, and peered into his cell. Her eyes
