The Speaker Read online

  Trackers.

  They must have been on the other side of the mountain when she’d scanned her surroundings, but now they were closing in.

  Below her, Archer thrashed, knocking over his pack. The canteen clattered against the scabbard of his sword.

  For a second the trackers paused. They turned toward her. In the Illuminated world, their eyes glowed, flicking back and forth in their sockets as they scoured the darkness.

  Then they began to advance.

  Honed by years on the run, Sefia’s instincts kicked in. Swiftly, she wrapped the Book and leapt down among the boulders.

  Archer flailed, his outstretched hands raking across the ground. He was so loud. Sefia threw her arms around him, trapping his arms and legs with her own. Beneath them, the fallen pine needles crackled like fire.

  His eyes flew open, large and golden. Panic flooded his features. She could feel his heart thundering inside him as his mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, gasping for air. Then the struggle, like a rabbit caught in a snare. Her grip broke.

  “Archer,” she whispered.

  He shoved her back against the rocks. Pain shot through her.

  “Archer.” She was pleading now, desperate. “It’s okay. It’s me. It’s Sefia. Archer.”

  He froze, his breath coming too fast, too loud.

  This time he allowed her to wrap him up in her arms, his pulse quick and insistent against her skin. This close, she could feel his breath gliding across her cheek. She bit her lip. Five days since the kiss. Five days and she could still feel the curve of his mouth on hers, still ached to feel it again.

  Archer looked up as the sound of footsteps reached them. Sefia knew those noises, had made them herself when hunting with Nin. Stalking paces, interspersed with long listening silences. A hundred feet away? Fifty? Pointing toward the woods, she mouthed, Trackers.

  He nodded, blinking rapidly. Silent as snow, he drew a piece of quartz from his pocket and began running his thumb along each of its facets in a ritual Sefia had taught him over a month ago, to ward off his panic, to remind him he was safe.

  But they weren’t safe.

  Through a gap in the boulders, she watched the shadows shift among the trees. The trackers were all around them now, with starlight on their rifles and shadows in their eyes, searching the ground for footprints.

  They’ll find us. Anyone with a rudimentary grasp of tracking would recognize the little encampment. Sefia had to force them to move on. And soon.

  Summoning her Sight again, she flicked her fingers. In the Illuminated world, the threads of light tightened and sprang back like bowstrings, sending ripples through the bands of gold. Ten yards away, on the slope leading toward Cascarra, a dead branch cracked.

  The trackers ducked. Their rifles went up. They were so quiet . . . and so fast.

  She did it again, farther away this time.

  With a wave, their leader beckoned them toward the river valley, and they began creeping toward the sound of the breaking branches, toward the city, away from Sefia and Archer.

  As her pulse slowed, she became aware of Archer’s body entangled with her own. He’d stopped rubbing the crystal and was now still as a stone, watching her with his sunken, sleepdeprived eyes. “Did I hurt you?” he whispered.

  Even after five days, the timbre of his voice still surprised her, with its layers of fire and darkness, like tiger’s eye.

  “No.” She got to her knees, trying not to wince at the pain between her shoulder blades. They had to keep moving, before the trackers realized they weren’t in Cascarra. She grabbed her blanket.

  “When I woke up and didn’t know where I was . . . when I couldn’t move, I thought . . . I’m sorry, I . . .” He sat up, and for a moment she thought he’d continue. But then he closed his mouth and touched the scar around his neck, the burn the impressors gave all their boys, to mark them as candidates. For years the Guard had been searching for the boy they believed would lead them to victory in the bloodiest war Kelanna had ever seen. A killer. A captain. A commander.

  Being one of their candidates had taken everything from Archer—his name, his voice, his memory—leaving him a husk of a person.

  All of that had come back in their encounter with the Guard. But Archer still hadn’t told her his real name, and at times like these she felt like she knew him even less than before.

  Just like my parents, she thought bitterly.

  “They almost caught us,” Archer said, pocketing the piece of quartz.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know they were so close.”

  “But you could.” His gaze fell to the Book. “You could know where they were at all times. We’d always be one step ahead of them.”

  Sefia stiffened. He was right, of course—the Book contained past, present, future. Every one of the Guard’s movements was in there somewhere, buried deep in the layers of history. With it, she and Archer could easily evade the Guard. If they were clever enough, maybe they’d even slip their enemy’s grasp for good. And maybe then they’d be free.

  But she was afraid. Afraid of what she’d find if she opened it. Afraid of what it would tell her about her family . . . and the horrific things they might have done.

  But to keep Archer out of the Guard’s hands? Archer, who’d fought for her, who’d gone hungry and sleepless for her? Archer, who, since the return of his memories, somehow seemed even more broken than before?

  She met his gaze, steady and solemn. “Okay.”

  Finding a patch of moonlight, Sefia lifted the Book into her lap and unwrapped its leather casing. Leaning down until her lips almost brushed the on the cover, she murmured, “Show me what the Guard is doing right now.”

  With a deep breath, she unhooked the clasps. The pages rippled beneath her fingers and came to rest like two plains furrowed with ink.

  She could feel Archer with her—waiting.

  “The bedchamber was a ruin,” Sefia read in a whisper, as if the Guard might overhear her. With a shudder, she scanned their surroundings, but the trackers had long since disappeared. They were safe. For now.

  She turned back to the Book. “Open volumes and sheaves of paper littered the coverlet, spilling over into stacks of books and pools of parchment . . .” Her gaze skipped ahead. “Oh, no. No.”

  She’d been wrong.

  They’d never been safe. And no matter how far they ran, no matter how well they hid, they’d never be free.

  Misinterpretation

  The bedchamber was a ruin. Open volumes and sheaves of paper littered the coverlet, spilling over into stacks of books and pools of parchment—a destroyed landscape of questions that led nowhere and answers to riddles she hadn’t posed.

  At this late hour, Tanin should have been asleep. But she slept little these days.

  There was much to do.

  Her slender hands shifted across the bedspread, discarding dip-pens and dead-end pages.

  This Librarian wrote that the Book was everywhere at once.

  Useless.

  This one penned corpulent paragraphs describing the paradox of an infinite Book.

  Irrelevant.

  This Master claimed that fire would visit the Library three times.

  Tanin found nothing on the whereabouts of the Book right now.

  She’d had it—cracked leather, crisp pages—exactly as the burned page had foretold.

  But she’d lost it too. She’d lost everything—her strength, her voice, even her title.

  With shaking hands, she uncorked a new bottle of ink to continue her notes.

  Almost immediately, her pulse began to quicken. Her chest seized. Something was wrong. As she fumbled with the pockets of her nightgown, her breath came faster, shallower.

  She could have rung for help. In her weakened condition, complications were common. Sometimes victims of near-fatal a
ttacks simply didn’t make it.

  But this was no complication.

  This was an assassination.

  Tiny glass bottles of powder and tonic spilled from her trembling fingers as it became harder and harder to breathe, to think, to act. She picked up vial after vial, squinting at their labels as the letters blurred and pain clenched her body.

  But this was not the first attempt on her life since her encounter with Sefia, and it would not be the last.

  Finally, she found the bottle she needed and broke its neck over the open jar of ink. As the black powder hit the liquid, it hissed and smoked. The faint odor of burned orange peel suffused her senses.

  The tightness in Tanin’s chest eased. Her heartbeat slowed. The poisoned ink, which emitted a noxious vapor upon contact with the air, had been rendered inert.

  You fail again, Stonegold.

  Leaning back against her pillows, she took one long breath and, gathering up the remaining vials, she dropped them, tinkling, into her pocket.

  Tanin touched her neck, remembering the knife, the hot wet of her own life coursing out of her. If it hadn’t been for Rajar, her Apprentice Soldier, slowing the blood loss with Manipulation, she’d be dead.

  She might soon be, if she wasn’t careful.

  It was customary for the five Masters to select an interim from among their ranks if the Director was incapacitated. It was also customary for temporary replacements to assassinate their Directors, making their positions permanent, provided they thought they could get away with it without throwing the rest of the Guard into chaos.

  Obviously, the current interim, their Master Politician, Darion Stonegold, King of Everica, thought he could get away with it, at least if he made it look like an accident.

  When Edmon was murdered, Stonegold would have been the logical successor. He was a natural leader, and with the help of their Master Soldier, he had already completed Phase I of the Red War—the unification of Everica.

  But Erastis had backed Tanin, and where the Librarian went, the other Guardians followed. So she, the Apprentice Administrator, had been elected Director of the Guard over both Stonegold and her own Master.

  The Politician had been waiting decades for an opportunity to kill her, and now her position in the Guard was perilous enough for him to try, although not perilous enough for him to murder her outright. That meant she still had some support among the other Guardians, and she could rally them to her . . . if she retrieved the Book.

  But with these assassination attempts, she was running out of time.

  Drawing the covers aside, Tanin sat on the edge of the bed, nightgown swaying around her bare ankles. The Library was but a short walk down the hall.

  She made it three steps before she fell. Piles of books toppled. A display case came crashing to the floor beside her, showering her with glass. A single sheet of paper, creased and yellowed with age, fluttered to the ground.

  For a moment, she lay there, studying the hastily sketched plan, more dream than strategy, with annotations in varying hues of ink, added by different hands over the years.

  And at the top, the title, in letters bold as brass:

  THE RED WAR

  There was a knock.

  Tanin opened her mouth to speak, but the movement sent spasms of pain up her throat, like the burning of paper. Instead, she blinked, summoning the Sight, and waved her hand through the currents of gold. Across the room, the door opened.

  She picked up the old scrap of parchment, crimping the brittle paper with her fingers. She was not powerless, not by any stretch of the imagination. She’d been a frightened child when she was inducted into the Guard. If she could claw her way up from that, she could recover from anything.

  Erastis entered, his velvet robes swishing against the floor as he walked. He was nearly ninety now, his face a topography of wrinkles, his hair—what was left of it—almost completely white, but when he saw her lying on the floor amid the broken glass, he rushed to her side with surprising agility.

  Her face reddened as he helped her back to the bed, where she laid Lon’s original plan for the Red War on the nightstand.

  “I thought I heard a crash,” Erastis said, tucking her in. “I know you’re itching to leave the room, but you should use this time to regain your strength.”

  Fumbling for the wooden tray beside her, Tanin smoothed a scrap of parchment and dipped a pen. Time is short, she wrote.

  Through his spectacles, Erastis squinted at the page. “Another attempt on your life?”

  She nodded at the bottle of ink, which he lifted to his nose.

  “Poison? You’d think he’d know better than to use a former Administrator’s instruments against her. Our Politician must be getting desperate.” The Librarian settled into an armchair. “I’ll find out who planted the bottle and have them dealt with. Darion must know I won’t tolerate assassination attempts in the Main Branch.”

  Tanin swallowed. Once, Erastis might have stopped Stonegold altogether. But the Master Librarian was old, and his influence was not what it had been.

  Aside from the servants, for the past week he’d been her only companion, bringing her manuscripts, helping her search for signs of the Book in the Library’s vast collection.

  The absence of the other Guardians troubled her. Many were out on assignment, but she’d at least expected Administrator Dotan, her old Master, to have come.

  Had he turned on her? Or was he simply preoccupied with Phase II of the war? Her gaze flicked to her bedside table.

  LICCARO—Rajar (Apprentice Soldier)

  ✓ Rajar becomes Serakeen.

  ✓ Serakeen blockades Liccaro & gains power/influence over corrupt regency government.

  Serakeen uses influence to empower political allies to seize control of kingdom!

  Dipping her pen again, Tanin wrote, Sefia?

  Erastis folded his hands. “Our trackers are as relentless as you. Have patience. They’ll find both children soon.”

  Tanin scratched out Sefia’s name. Last time, they’d been fortunate enough to stumble onto the girl’s scribblings. THIS IS A BOOK scratched into tree trunks and left in the mud like footprints. They could not count on fortune to strike again.

  “She’s like her parents, isn’t she?” the Master Librarian asked. “Truly Lon and Mareah’s daughter.”

  Once, Tanin had been closer to Lon and Mareah than anyone, except perhaps Rajar. The four of them had been inseparable—Librarian, Assassin, Soldier, Administrator. Years ago, they had conspired to unite all Five Islands under the Guard’s control, using war—the Red War—to conquer the kingdoms they could not sway by other means. And to do that, they needed the boy from the legends.

  The impressors had even been Lon’s idea. “We need a boy with a scar around his throat?” he’d said. “Let’s go find him.”

  “How?” Mareah had asked. “We don’t have the personnel.”

  He’d leaned forward eagerly as he outlined his plan. “We set up an organization that gets us boys with the scars we want. Mar, you can teach them how to spot and train candidates. If we offer sufficient compensation, we’ll be sure to have the boy on our side when the rest of the plan falls into place.”

  Rajar had been the most skeptical. “You can’t make destiny, Lon. You’re good, but no one’s that good.”

  Lon had lifted his chin, his dark eyes gleaming like two drops of obsidian. “Not alone. But together we can do anything.”

  The nib of Tanin’s pen punctured the page.

  “Still so angry.” Erastis sighed.

  Aren’t you?

  With one finger, he touched the sheet of paper on her bedside table, tracing the phases of the Red War, each of the kingdoms they planned to conquer in turn:

  PHASE I Conquer Everica

  PHASE II Ally with Liccaro

  PHASE III Ally with De
liene

  PHASE IV Conquer Oxscini & Roku

  They’d control the Five Islands. They’d eliminate the outlaws. Kelanna would be theirs. Well . . . not all of theirs. Not anymore.

  “Why be angry with the dead?” Erastis murmured.

  Because they lied. They told me they loved me. But if they loved me, they would have trusted me. They would have believed in me. And they never would have left.

  The Master Librarian shook his head. His hand fell to his side.

  Tanin’s pen skittered across the paper again: Have you found any more signs of the Book?

  Leaning forward, Erastis examined the words. “I’m afraid n—”

  She interrupted him with a flourish of her pen. Ink spattered the coverlet. Would you tell me if you had?

  The Master Librarian regarded her sadly.

  She swallowed, feeling her guilt burning in her throat. Lon and Mareah may have stolen it. Sefia may have fought for it. But Tanin was the one who’d lost it. And everyone in the Guard knew it.

  “My dear.” Erastis patted the back of her hand. “I love you like I loved them. More, because you stayed. Do not doubt what friends you have.”

  Friends, she thought with distaste. Against Darion Stonegold, she needed allies.

  She believed she could count Erastis and his new Apprentice among them, but what about Rajar? Dotan and his Apprentice Administrator? The First Assassin?

  She needed their loyalty and their support, not their love.

  Most of all, she needed the Book.

  And for that, she had to find Sefia.

  CHAPTER 2

  Runners

  Sefia stared at the pages, stunned. She’d been so sure she’d killed Tanin—the look of surprise, the rush of blood—so sure she’d avenged her family.

  She’d been wrong. She’d been wrong about a lot of things.

  “The impressors were your father’s idea?” Archer asked. His gaze was hard and broken, like a shard of glass. Inadvertently, her gaze fell to the scar at his throat, the ridges and puckered edges.