“ He’s taking apart one of the boxes.”
“ Figures.”
“ Uhm, about him…” Agarik watched her, and she had a hunch he had brought up Rias to gauge her reaction.
“ Did he send you over to talk to me?”
Agarik’s head shake did not surprise her. Tikaya had a hard time imagining Rias sending a minion-or admirer-off to solve problems for him. No, he would likely suffer in silence.
“ No, ma’am. He, ah…” Agarik set the butt of his rifle on the floor and polished a smudge on the barrel. “He forbade me from bothering you.”
“ Oh? And you’re going to disobey your boyhood hero?”
“ If there’s a chance of fixing things, yes.” Agarik blew out a long breath. “I got the story about the assassin, if you want to hear it. I think it might influence your feelings for Rias.”
Though curious about the story, she hesitated to ask for it. Now that she knew Rias was safe, she needed to put aside her ‘feelings’ for him, figure out how to thwart the weapons-acquisition mission, find a way home, and warn her family they were in danger. She could not bring herself to send Agarik away, though. “Is that actually what he calls himself?”
“ What?”
“ Rias. I thought it might be something he made up because he didn’t want to tell me his real name.”
“ He told me to use it. He goes by Federias and said his friends have always shortened it. Apparently, he’s never liked his first name. Got teased about it as a boy and told it was girly.” Agarik grinned, probably delighted to have been trusted with this secret information.
“ Does ‘the story’ explain his exile?” she asked. “Why he was stripped of everything and declared dead?”
“ Yes.”
She nodded for him to continue.
“ He says he did recommend the Kyatt Islands as the place for a strategic outpost, on account of its location right in the center of the sea between Turgonia and Nuria, but he wasn’t planning on bloodshed. I don’t know if you remember, but a couple of imperial ironclads showed up in your harbor a few years ago. He went in with a diplomat to talk to your president.”
Despite her resolution to put aside feelings for him, a flutter went through her stomach. To think that Rias had been so close years before. She had been working at the Polytechnic then, and she remembered the hubbub around those ships arriving. If she had looked out the window at the right time, might she have seen Rias striding along the docks, straight and proud in a dress uniform, flanked by dozens of men who respected him?
“ They offered your people entry into the empire as an imperial territory and protection from the Nurians in exchange. Your president said no. They negotiated, tried to get the right to build a naval base on one of your islands. Your president was adamant that your people would remain neutral, and he denied it all. The emperor was not pleased. He ordered Kyatt be conquered, and you know what happened after that.”
“ Yes.” All too well.
“ Rias was busy managing the entire Northern Eerathu Theater, and the skirmishes with your people were just a tack on his busy map, but he says he was impressed with your president’s backbone and how hard your people fought, especially considering the odds were all against them. The emperor was more annoyed than impressed. Particularly so after you started decoding messages and sending them to the Nurians.”
“ I’ll bet,” Tikaya murmured.
“ The emperor sent this Sicarius out to Rias’s flagship with orders-and don’t irk that fellow, by the way; he’s apparently been groomed from birth to be the throne’s assassin. All Rias was supposed to do was take his vessel into port and let Sicarius kill your president and his advisors.”
Tikaya stood statue still. She did not remember any personal attack on the president.
“ Rias was angry that the emperor even had an assassin. We’ve always been an honorable warrior people, and sneak attacks are considered cowardly.”
“ What’d he do?”
“ He refused to take the assassin to your island and, when he learned Sicarius was trying to make other arrangements to get there, Rias tried to incapacitate him.”
That explained his earlier comment about attacking Sicarius.
“ It didn’t work,” Agarik said. “Fortunately, Sicarius was loyal enough to the emperor not to take it into his own hands to kill a fleet admiral. Rias had time to send warning to your president and describe the assassin so your people could watch for him-that’s a part of the story you could verify when you get home, I imagine.”
A spark of hope kindled. If the president knew Rias had tried to help him, maybe it would make a difference someday if…
Tikaya shook her head. Was she truly still thinking of bringing him home?
“ Sicarius took word back to the capital,” Agarik continued, “and the emperor about shi-, er, he was livid at Rias’s disobedience. He stripped him of his name, his rank, his ancestral lands, everything, and ordered him taken to Krychek Island. The story passed around is that Rias was assassinated by Nurians.”
“ Why the story?” Tikaya wondered. “Why tell everyone he was dead?”
“ He’s a hero to our people and well-liked. He had scads of loyal men who would have made rescue attempts if they knew he was alive.”
“ Then why not actually kill him?” Could the emperor have known he would need Rias again?
“ My guess,” Agarik said, “is the emperor wanted his best military strategist somewhere he could get to him again if needed. Though that’s quite a gamble.”
Tikaya raised her eyebrows.
“ Krychek Island isn’t a place you put someone for safe keeping,” Agarik said, tone bleak. “I remember newspaper stories over the years about some of the men who got sent: cannibals, serial murderers who defiled their victims, molesters who tortured children. Crazy people who aren’t right in the head.” Agarik ran a thumb along the muzzle of his rifle. “I reckon Krychek Island is like a Harvest Moon War.”
Tikaya had heard the Turgonian expression a couple times, but had not stopped to think about the meaning. “As in the war goes so late in the season that even if you win, there’s no one at home to bring in the crops, so your family starves over the winter?”
“ That’s the gist of it. When Rias first came on board, he didn’t talk to anyone. He was just the unpredictable monster locked away in that dark cell, and it seemed to suit him. You’d catch him in the light, and you’d see this crazy haunted look in his eyes. The captain was scared of him, and all those guards following him around in the beginning weren’t for show. That’s why I was so startled when he spoke out on your behalf. He hadn’t said a word to anyone up until then. But I guess having a woman present made him want to be more civilized. To pull himself together, you know?”
Tikaya closed her eyes. Rias had never spoken of his time on the island. What demons might it have left cavorting in his head?
“ I would hate to see him like that again,” Agarik said, eyes sad. “Are you irrevocably mad at him? It’s hard to tell with you. Today you worked together as if nothing stood between you, and you saved us again. You’re a good team.”
Though there was nothing accusing in Agarik’s words, they made her gut twist with guilt. Everyone thought she was mad at Rias, him too most likely.
“ I’m annoyed that he blindsided me,” Tikaya said, “but mostly I’m frustrated with the cosmos. I can forgive him for being born on the other side and for being an officer- the officer-in the enemy army, but I can’t see having a life with Fleet Admiral Starcrest. It would be a huge betrayal to those I love-I loved.”
“ It wouldn’t be any sort of betrayal to turn your back while they return him to Krychek?” Agarik said.
“ He wouldn’t let them do that.”
“ He won’t have a choice. That assassin outfought him before, and…I’m not sure he’ll care enough to worry about escaping if he doesn’t have anything to live for.”
Tikaya stared at the floor. His words shamed her. She had been thinking only of herself and how Rias might fit into her life.
“ I better get back to my rounds,” Agarik mumbled.
“ You’re a good man, Agarik. I never expected you to play matchmaker for us.”
