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.”
His lips curled wryly. “Me either. But I reckon if you care for someone and you can’t have their love, you can either be a spiteful bastard about it or you can try your damnedest to make sure they’re going to find some happiness in the world.”
Tikaya yawned, a great face-tilting-up kind of yawn that made her crack the back of her head on a cabinet door. That, and her bleary eyes, forced her to concede that she needed sleep. She, fearing the marines would move on too quickly, had spent several hours learning as much as she could from the lab, scrawling notes at top speed. Agarik had been nice enough to bring her food and her notebook so she could avoid the camp for a while longer, but he claimed not to have seen the journal. She thought that odd since she had tucked it into the same place in her rucksack as the notebook, but she had been in a rush to grab a bow at the time, so perhaps it slid to the bottom.
Tikaya picked her way past snoozing bodies toward her gear. Aside from Agarik and a man perched at the top of the stairs, the rest of the marines slept. She did not see the assassin.
She spotted Rias on the edge of the camp, sprawled on his parka amongst a pile of disassembled machine innards. She grinned. Just like a child fallen asleep on the floor amongst his toys. But, as she stepped closer, she noticed his eyes moved beneath his lids, and some dream turned his lips to a grimace. Agarik’s words about Krychek Island came to mind. She sat on the rucksack next to him and stroked his hair.
Rias’s eyes opened and, for a moment, confusion creased his brow.
“ Where were you?” Tikaya murmured.
He rubbed his face. “Nowhere pleasant.”
“ Should I feel bad about waking you, or is this an improvement?”
Though he did not lift his head, his eyes roved, taking in the bleak black ceilings, black walls, and snoring marines. He smiled though. “Nobody was fondling my head in the dream.”
Careful to avoid his bruised eye, Tikaya brushed a lock of hair back from his forehead. “I translated the symbols on the cubes.” She recited the lines from memory, and he made the same conclusion as she had.
“ Cleaning devices? That’s amazing.”
“ More disturbing, I’d say, since humans are something to be incinerated along with the trash.”
“ Actually, I was talking about you. You just got your first real clue about the language in Wolfhump, what, three days ago? And now you’re reading it.” Rias gripped her hand and gazed up at her, dark eyes full of pride. “When you get home, you’ll be the main story in the next volume of Archaeology Monthly.”
The lump in her throat made her laugh more of a hiccup. Rias’s words reminded her, not for the first time, how different he was from Parkonis, who had always envied her language gift. His congratulations had been grudging when she had been selected by the president to work on decryptions during the war. She had not even wanted the dubious honor, made even more dubious by the predicament it had landed her in, but he had envied her the recognition. Maybe there was good reason to love someone who had so many accolades of his own that he could never feel jealous of a bright philologist. Of course, she reminded herself, Rias had nothing now except a trip back to a savage island of deranged criminals. And still he was proud of her.
“ Something wrong?” he asked gently.
“ No.” She wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’ve-”
His eyes widened. “Tikaya. You don’t need to-”
She pressed a finger to his lips. “Let me finish, please?” When he did not nod, she left her finger there. “Before I met you, before Parkonis died, before the war, I knew what I wanted from life. I dreamed of sharing a little house near the beach with someone, close enough to town to walk to the market and the Polytechnic. I’d teach in the mornings and work in the labs in the afternoon, studying relics and data our field people brought in. And I’d have two children, a boy and a girl, of course. Blond hair, blue eyes, freckles.” She smiled wryly, acknowledging the unlikeliness that life would ever turn out exactly as she dreamed. “When Parkonis came along, I knew he was the one who could give me that dream.” Her smile faded, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Then the war came, and Parkonis died, and my dream died too. It’s hard for me to admit it, because it’s so selfish, but I think I’ve spent the last year mourning the loss of my dream as much as I’ve been mourning his death.”