She clutched the cube to her chest and stalked toward the lab stations, intending to find some nook where she could be alone to study the language.
“ Tikaya…” Rias said.
“ Stuff an apple core up it, Admiral Starcrest.”
She caught the boy assassin watching, and almost snapped at him too, but the dark impassive gaze stole the heat from her ire and left her chilled. She stalked by without comment.
Several marines sniggered behind her back. Cheeks flushed, Tikaya slipped into the aisles, glad for the concealment.
CHAPTER 16
Few runes adorned the cube, and it did not take Tikaya long to translate them. Automatic cleaning machine. She could have laughed if not for the unsettling realization that the people who created this place had considered human beings something to be incinerated to keep the labs tidy.
With that mystery solved, she itched to work on the next. Weariness plagued her body, and probably would for days in the aftermath of the poisoning, but her mind churned, so she could not think of sleep yet. There was so much to study.
She wished she had Lancecrest’s journal, but she would have to return to her gear to grab it, and she did not want to face Rias or the snickering marines. Instead, she explored the back half of the lab. Most of the finds were innocuous-alchemical liquids and powders, equipment and containers-but others were as disturbing as the bones that had scattered when the beast fell. The human organs sealed in jars and slides with blood samples made her wonder if the race who had created this place had come for the distinct purpose of experimenting on people. But, if so, to what end?
She probably should have been horrified by her discoveries, but the labels on the identifiable substances helped her resolve new nouns, and that kept her too busy for squeamishness. A few days wandering this place and she would have an impressive dictionary. If the marines gave her time.
Agarik rounded the corner and approached, his rifle crooked in his arms. He quirked an eyebrow at the rows of open cabinets in her wake.
“ Exploring?”
“ Yes, this place is perfect. If I had a few weeks here, I bet I could decipher the whole language. Or the science aspects, at least. Of course, this entire language seems to revolve around science and mathematics. I keep wondering who these people were, what happened to them. Where could such an advanced civilization-”
He was frowning, so she stopped.
“ Problem?” Tikaya asked.
“ No. Yes. I don’t know. We’ve lost so many men out here. Your enthusiasm for such a deadly place is… Well, I can’t share it.”
“ But don’t you see? Everything here is labeled. If I can learn how to read it all, this place won’t be deadly. We’re bumbling into things. Those cubes, they’re the maids. Not some malicious security system, a cleaning device to take care of messes in the labs.”
“ And the poison rockets,” Agarik said. “Are they also not malicious if only you know the words? And the gas that twisted our minds in Wolfhump? Was that not malicious?”
The sobering words squelched her enthusiasm. He was right. It was very likely this place had been created, at least in part, to build weapons. Weapons far deadlier, and ghastlier, than anything humanity currently knew.
Agarik sighed at the expression on her face. “Forgive me, I don’t mean to judge. Besides you’re not the only one fascinated with the place.”
“ Oh, what’s Rias doing?” Tikaya asked, certain of her guess.
“ 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.”