Sword and Verse (26 page)

He crossed his arms. “He had his chance—”

“When?” I said, taking a step toward him. “When you killed his father and thrust him into the midst of a council full of conspirators? He's tried to make things better. Why can't you believe that? You trusted his cousin.”

“Patic proved himself trustworthy,” said Jonis with a frown.

“And so has Mati!” I cried. “The only reason I'm still alive is because he risked his crown to save me. Doesn't
that
tell you something about him?”

Jonis's frown deepened. I wasn't positive, but I thought he might be softening. “Tyasha saw what he could be,” I pressed on. “She told him once that he wasn't like other Qilarites, that he was different. Braver.”

“Tyasha was a good judge of character,” said Jonis reluctantly.

“Yes.” I took four steps more, until I was standing right in front of him. “You said the people here put their faith in the Resistance. Well, so am I. So is Mati. If . . . you help him, I'll teach you to write. All of you. Whoever wants to learn. It'll help you spy on them and it's . . .” I thought of what Anet had said earlier. “It's fighting back as much as picking up a sword is.”

Jonis didn't look surprised; Anet must have already told him. But he smiled. “Now you're giving me something to consider,” he said.

Though Lanea would not risk her husband's wrath by visiting the mortals again, she continued to help them in small, secret ways. She caused silphium to grow in abundance in the valley below, so that when Gyotia turned his attention to a mortal woman, she could use the herb to protect her womb from his seed. No mortal woman could bear the pain of birthing Gyotia's child. Gyotia thought nothing of this, seeing the plant as a lowly weed. The mortal women praised Lanea, but quietly, for she was a goddess of shadows and secret gifts.

“JONIS WANTS YOU.”

The words, accompanied by a jostling of my shoulder, tore me out of uneasy dreams. The stone around my neck dug into my breastbone; I slept on my stomach now, to spare my still-tender back, and no matter how I positioned the stone upon going to bed, I always seemed to wake up with it under me again.

I rolled onto my side and squinted at the man standing over me with a torch. It was Adin, one of the men who'd witnessed my drenching by Soraya Gamo. He'd enjoyed telling the tale to anyone who would listen, but his face now was serious.

I heaved myself up off the pile of blankets and followed Adin down the corridor, rebraiding my hair as I went, my mind still on
the fading, urgent images of my dreams. I'd been in the Library again, looking for something—why did my dreams always take me back there?

Because Mati was there, of course. What must he have thought when Kirol returned to the palace without me? Did he think I'd truly left him this time? Would his trust in me extend this far?

It wasn't difficult to guess where the sense of urgency in my dreams had come from. Jonis still hadn't told me
how
the Resistance would help Mati, even though I had been conducting writing lessons for three days now. So many people had shown up for the first lesson that we'd had to take over part of the training room, and by day two, the crowd had swelled so much that Tomis and Cauti had to halt sword-training entirely during the lesson. They looked just as doubtful about the whole business as many of the others, but they joined the class. As I kept reminding them, it was just as brave for an Arnath in Qilara to pick up a quill as it was to pick up a sword.

Jonis had insisted on practicality in these lessons, so I'd begun with the lower order symbols they would most likely see when spying on Scholar documents. It felt wrong to disregard the tenset sequence, but then, so much about teaching the language of the gods to others felt wrong. I reminded myself that I was helping Mati as much as I was helping the Resistance. I often reminded my students of this as well; they didn't think much of my sample sentences like
The king is kind and generous
and
We must help the king fight his enemies,
but if they wanted to learn to write, they had to copy my examples.

And when I hadn't been teaching, I'd been talking to anyone who would listen about Mati's cause. It was easy to tell, now, who the newcomers were—they were the ones who didn't leave the instant I walked into a room.

I'd assumed that Jonis wanted to yell at me about my teaching methods, but as Adin led me down corridors and across empty rooms, taking me deeper underground, my trepidation grew. Flickering light spilled out of a door ahead, and as we drew closer I heard a man's voice speaking. Adin motioned me through and I stepped inside.

Ten people sat around a huge firepit. Half of the faces were familiar. Jonis, closest to the door. Beside him, his mother, Dara, her light eyes serious. Across the firepit, Tomis and Cauti. And beside them, still talking between bites of the bread and cheese he held in either hand, Ris ko Karmik.

“—so when I got to the mountain camp . . .” He trailed off as he saw me. “What's she doing here?”

Jonis folded his arms. “She brought a message.”

“She double-crossed us, and you let her walk right in?”

“You might notice,” replied Jonis flatly, “that she hasn't been able to walk right out.”

Ris pointed at me with the hand clutching the cheese, his eyes deadly. “It's because of her that Patic Kone is dead.”

I gasped. “He's dead?”

“Yes,” said Jonis. “Ris and Patic had been hiding at the harbor. They found something important and decided to make contact again. A shipmaster's slave alerted the guards as they left the docks, and Patic took an arrow in the back.”

“Another Arnath turned them in?” I asked, looking at Jonis to avoid Ris's murderous gaze.

Ris answered anyway. “The guards can execute anyone they think is helping us on the spot now. Between that and the reward out for the Gamo girl, it makes for a nice cooperative herd of slaves.”

I felt sick. If Mati had been unable to stop such a decree, that meant he was losing support faster than ever.

Jonis pointed to the empty place next to him. “Sit down, Raisa. Go on, Ris.”

I sat. Ris took an insolent bite of bread. “Not while that's here,” he said, spraying crumbs into the firepit.

“Go on, Ris,” said Jonis in exactly the same tone he'd used before. “Tell them what you found on the ship.”

Ris swallowed his bread, then turned pointedly away from me and addressed the others. “We'd been hopping between different cargo holds, but Patic thought we ought to stow away on a ship bound for Galasi. Soldiers came every day, if not the city guards, those others in blue—”

“Gamo's men,” supplied Jonis.

Ris nodded. “One night they searched every ship. It was Patic's idea to go over the side and duck underwater till they passed. I thought we were done for, but it worked.” I felt a pang at the way he spoke of Patic—like a friend. Did Mati know about Patic's death? If I walked into the market again, would I see Patic's head on a pike?

I shuddered. Jonis looked at me curiously. I forced myself to pay attention to what Ris was saying. “—sneaked into the scribe's
cabin to make sure of the route. We found out it was going, wouldn't you know, to the Nath Tarin.”

A tremor went around the circle. I sat up straighter as Ris continued.

“I saw a fancy paper with a wax seal, and I showed it to Patic. He took one look at it and turned as pale as me. I couldn't read it fast like him, but when he showed me the symbols I understood. That's when we lit out of there and tried to find you.” He paused. “You know what happened next.”

“What was the paper?” asked Jonis's mother softly.

Ris chewed for a long time before answering. “Orders sending slave raiders to the Nath Tarin, signed by the king himself.”

The room was suddenly cold, despite the fire. I couldn't move.

Ris shook his head. “Saw it with my own eyes. Dated ten days ago. Raiders set to go out at the Shining.”

I had trouble getting enough air to speak, and by that time others had started talking. My voice was a tiny pebble to their stones. “That's impossible,” I whispered, then forced more air into my lungs and said it again. “That's impossible.”

I'd spoken too loudly, and my words echoed as the others shut up in surprise. The flames blurred as I leaped up and ran into the dark corridor. I ignored the shouts behind me as I stumbled down steps and turned a corner. I made for another torch in the distance, not caring where I was going, just trying to get away from where I'd been.

More darkness beckoned beyond the torch. I went forward without thinking—thinking was dangerous, and painful. At the edge of the light I descended a shallow staircase and turned
another corner. Five steps along, I stopped, throwing up my hands against the blank wall that cut off the corridor.

I fell into a heap, hugging myself as I realized I was shaking.

Ten days ago. Mati had signed that order ten days ago, while I was in the palace, my back in ribbons from a Qilarite whip. Was the ink even dry when he had come to me, full of indignation at my secrets? When I had burned with guilt for lying to him? When we had pledged to be honest with each other?

Neither the boy I had loved nor the man I'd fallen in love with again would ever do such a thing. Not willingly.

My head snapped up with such force that it struck stone.
Not willingly.
How did Ris know that those orders were really signed by Mati? And even if they were . . .

It would be easy, here in this place, surrounded by people who hated him, with Soraya's poisonous words echoing in my mind, to believe that Mati would betray the Arnathim, would betray
me
. But I knew him better than that. How many times did Mati have to prove himself to me?

This changes nothing
, I told myself. I had to trust that Mati was struggling along, doing what he could, just like I was.

I'd wavered, though. How could I have wavered? What was wrong with me, that I still didn't trust Mati, after all he'd done for me?

My guilty heart pounded as I realized I had to get back, to convince Jonis that the situation wasn't what it appeared. I leaped up, trying to remember which way I had come. I sped down a corridor, then felt my way along another, cursing when I reached a dead end. I stepped backward and almost collided with someone
coming around the corner with a torch.

I squinted, but all I could make out was a silhouette.

“You have come far,” said a woman's soft voice. She bent closer, and the figure resolved into a familiar heart-shaped face framed by dark hair. I must have met her in one of the halls upstairs, but I couldn't recall her name.

“I didn't pay attention to where I was going,” I jabbered in relief. “I was upset. Did Jonis send you?”

She smiled. “These tunnels are deep, and old. So much to see.” She lifted the torch and gestured behind me. It wasn't a wall, as I'd assumed, but a door, like those to the tombs above. Only it bore no inscription or marking of any kind.

“I don't see anything,” I said.

She touched the door lightly. “You're not looking yet.”

I stared at her. That was when I noticed her dress—not lacy like Deshti's, but still of finer fabric than I had seen since I'd arrived, its green so pale that it appeared white in the dim light.

“Who are—” I started to ask, but she looked over her shoulder, as if someone had called her from the corridor. When she turned back, I saw a flash of fear in her eyes before she leaned forward.

“Take this,” she said, handing me the torch. “See for yourself.” She gestured toward the door and backed up a few steps.

Curiously I pushed at the door; despite its weight it swung open easily. I turned back to ask if this was a shortcut to the upper levels, but the woman had already disappeared back up the corridor.

I shrugged and poked my head through the door, holding the
torch aloft. Its light glinted over bones. At first I took them to be littering the floor, but once I had gotten over the initial shock, I saw that the bones were spaced evenly. Someone had laid out the bodies in this room carefully, respectfully.

This was how the people of the Nath Tarin laid out their dead, in the caves under the mountains.

Of course—Arnath slaves had built the entire tomb. Those who had labored in these tunnels had probably come from the islands, and had laid out these bodies, long ago. Some were turning to dust. The air in the room was heavy and stale, as though no one had breathed it for hundreds of years.

I began to withdraw the torch, to close the door and leave the dead to their realms, when the firelight flickered across the far wall and I saw a familiar shape scratched onto it. But it couldn't be what I thought it was, I told myself. I should leave now—I had to get back and explain to Jonis that Mati must have been forced to sign that order.

Nevertheless I stepped across the room, carefully avoiding bones. On the far side of the room, next to a low door, I held the torch close to the scratching on the wall. My heart thundered in my ears at the sight: three wavy lines, joined by a straight one. The first symbol from my heart-verse, the symbol I had seen nowhere else since coming to Qilara, save on the stone I wore around my neck.

Sa
. Light of wisdom.

Belic, the mortal chieftain, stood often before the tablet given to him by the gods, pondering this gift for which he had sent his own brother into exile. But never did he speak of his regrets to anyone, not even when he was an old man with a great city full of temples and slaves to tend them.

I MOVED THE
torch along the wall, looking for more markings, but found none. So I ducked through the open doorway to explore the tiny room beyond.

Symbols covered the wall to my left, the top of which was barely a foot above my head. Some were scratched faintly, while others had been carved with a sharp instrument; they seemed to be the work of several different hands. I touched the grooved symbols in wonder. Surely I was looking at a record left by the very Arnathim who had labored on this tomb.

This was Arnath writing; it had to be. Every symbol had a sound, and the symbols were placed together to mimic the sounds of the words as one spoke them. I closed my eyes, picturing my heart-verse, remembering the lines I had worked out already, and when I looked at the wall again, some symbols seemed to leap out at me. I whispered the sounds for the ones I knew, skipping the ones I didn't, and sense began to emerge from the bits
I understood. As a record, it was haphazard, seeming to contain whatever each carver had felt like recording—births and deaths and arrivals in Qilara, descriptions of raids on the islands, and, near the bottom, a summary of the building of the secret tunnel. And through it all, the sense that these people had no intention of giving up their writing, no matter what their Qilarite masters did.

And yet, they had—or their descendants had. Years of oppression and the extermination of the Learned Ones had stolen this ability from them, until the only Arnathim in the city who could write were Qilarite tools like me.

I traced a line about halfway up the wall. It seemed to be a listing of names, some I could make out:
Vas
.
Lyga
.
Iltara.
I'd become so used to the Qilarite way of referring to the islands as a collective, the Nath Tarin, that I'd almost forgotten that each tiny island had its own name.
Iltara.
That had been my home.

With a gasp I realized that every single symbol from my heart-verse appeared on the wall before me, repeating often. I sank to the floor, writing in the dust with my finger, memory stirring with certainty now that I had models to copy. At least I knew now that I was writing the symbols correctly, even if I still didn't understand what they all meant.

When I had finished, I sat back on my heels. “
Sa noano heli gri, yotieven qilan godesha
,” I whispered, pointing to the first line.

The rhythms of that line had sounded familiar when Anet had said it, but now, in this dark, close space, surrounded by the writing of my people, it seemed to whisper all around me.
Light of wisdom, bold, brave, bright, bless us all and what we write.

Some of the symbols in the next line were the same, though
in a different order, and I remembered sounds for a few of the others too. “Something
kareve qilrai esha qil go
something
qilan
something
kar
. . .” With a feeling like an explosion in my chest, I heard children's voices in my mind, years ago, reciting a prayer to the goddess Sotia:

Light of wisdom, bold, brave, bright, bless us all and what we write.

Hand of wisdom, lead us true, lend your might to all we do.

There were still two more lines, lines I couldn't remember how to write, but maybe I could remember enough sounds to work them out. Hope rose and spread through my chest and throat, and I labored over the symbols, whispering their names, searching the writing on the walls for clues. When they appeared under a connecting arch with another symbol I knew, I could work out the words from context, and then extrapolate the new sounds to my heart-verse.

And then—it seemed like seconds later, but it must have been hours that I worked—I read aloud, in a shaky voice:

Light of wisdom, bold, brave, bright, bless us all and what we write.

Hand of wisdom, lead us true, lend your might to all we do.

Heart of wisdom, guide each deed, forgive our folly, see our need.

When light and hand and heart be one, then may wisdom's work be done.

I let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. I'd done it. After twelve years, I could finally read my heart-verse. Tears of triumph stung my hungry eyes, which couldn't stop running over the symbols as I chanted the sounds under my breath.

The children's voices of my memory seemed to grow stronger, chanting along with me, and all at once, in the middle of a line, I stopped.

It wasn't a message at all. It wasn't anything—just a child's prayer, a writing exercise like the ones I'd been preparing for Jera. I counted the symbols, and sure enough, twenty individual symbols appeared in the verse. I would have bet they represented the first two tensets of the Arnath writing, the ones my father would have started teaching me if the raiders hadn't set my house on fire and my life on a different course.

I sagged against the wall, my chest hollow. All the risks I'd taken to protect my heart-verse, all the people I'd betrayed to keep it safe. And it was
nothing
.

This was all writing was, in the end: markings in the dust. It didn't
do
anything, couldn't change anything. They kept it secret, made it seem powerful—and that had made me want it more. But it was nothing.

Angrily I lifted a hand, but stopped it a few inches above the stone floor. Even now, I had worked too hard on this verse to wipe it out—that would be too much like burning it in a firepit.

I rubbed my eyes and blinked away dust and tears. I looked up at the markings on the other side of the tiny chamber, expecting more of the same haphazard writings, but this wall was quite different. The writing was neat and beautiful, as if the carver had approached the wall as a giant scroll. It was punctuated by pictures—ocean waves, ships, men, and some circular objects I couldn't identify. It had to be the work of a master, like my father—a Learned One.

I jumped up, sidestepping my heart-verse on the floor, and stood on tiptoe, holding up the torch so I could see the writing at the top of the wall. The regularity with which my heart-verse symbols appeared seemed to taunt me with the reminder that they were the most common, the ones that would be taught first.

Using the symbols I knew, I picked out
Gyotia
in the first line, and
Lila
and
Aqil
not far from it. I guessed that the names of the other gods appeared there too, though I didn't know how to read them yet. I followed the lines of script down to the pictures of ocean waves and ships. It had to be the story of the banishment of Iano and his people, of Sotia's imprisonment for daring to think she could use the language of the gods as she liked. The same story my parents had told me in the firelight of our cottage, about how our ancestors had brought Sotia's gift with them to the islands, had protected it despite the incursions of the sons of Belic.

Then my eyes roved down the wall to the two circles. Up close, I could see tiny symbols spiraling around their surfaces. My heart leaped as I recognized the tablet, just as I'd seen in its case in the Library. But why were there two?

The second circle was blank at the center, like the one in the Library, but the first was not. I leaned closer and saw the tiny symbol etched carefully in the center of the others:
Sa
.

Again. Light of wisdom.

I turned to the writing underneath the circles. Two symbols grouped together stood out to me:
Sa
and a symbol that looked like a square with pinched corners. Those symbols repeated again
and again in the next few lines, with others in between. My stomach fluttered. I knew now that I could work this out, and my chest burned—suddenly it seemed very important that I do so.

Sa
I knew. But what about that second symbol? It meant an open scroll in the higher order Qilarite script, but what else could it represent? I thought of all the words used to describe such scrolls:
kresmin
, for a royal decree (with the royal determinative above it, in Qilarite writing) . . .
joklim
for a secret message (when combined with the symbol
spy
) . . .
tia
when one wanted to disparage the quality of another's writing . . .

Tia
. As in
tialik
, that horrible word that Qilarites applied to the Arnathim, meaning
a thing to be burned like unwanted scrolls.

As in the name of the goddess Sotia.

I looked at the symbols again, a thrill of understanding flooding my chest. The first stood for
Sa
, I knew, but I felt sure now that it also stood for the sound
So
. Meaning the cluster I saw again and again was the name of the goddess Sotia.

I touched the first carving of the tablet, where the symbol
Sa
stood out at the center. That symbol didn't exist in Qilarite writing; that place on the tablet in the Library of the Gods was empty, gouged out, taken in revenge, the stories said, by Sotia before the gods had bound her for eternity.

So how had these ancient carvers known to put it there?

Because, of course, Sotia had given the tablet to Iano before the gods took it back and sent Iano's people—my people—into exile. Before the center piece had been removed. At least, that was what the story said.

I groped for the stone around my neck and examined the
lines upon it. I saw now that the symbol had been carved so deeply and carefully that it might have been done by the gods themselves, that only such carving would have withstood the currents of the ocean where it had lain for—how long?—before Mati had found it.

In that moment, I knew, with utmost certainty, where the stone belonged. It was ridiculous, impossible, and yet I didn't doubt it. This was the missing piece of the tablet.

I stumbled back through the room of bones and pushed open the door. After passing a torch in its sconce, I chose a direction at random, aiming only for higher ground.

I clattered up a staircase and around a corner, and heard a shout in the distance.

“Jonis! I found her!”

Footsteps pounded down the hall toward me, then Tomis gripped my arm.

Jonis met us halfway up the hall, followed by another man bearing a torch. I thought I saw relief pass over Jonis's face before he glared at me.

“Thought you'd run off,” Jonis said.

“No, I was in the lower tunnels. The woman you sent after me showed me something amazing. Did you know that there's a room—”

Jonis held up his hand. “What are you talking about? We've been searching for you for hours.” He jerked his head at the other two men. “Bring her up.”

His manner deflated me. I recalled all at once how, and why, I had run out in the first place. “Jonis, I know what it looks like,
but Mati didn't send those raiders. I know it!”

Jonis waved me off. “Don't waste your breath. Whether or not the king can be trusted is irrelevant.
We
are going to take the palace, and you're going to help us.”