“The Daggermen rescued us,” she continued. “Though we didn’t know who they were at the time. One was my husband.” Beside her, Bron shifted from one foot to another, and she caught a glimpse of his hand, fingers spread out as if he resisted the urge to curl them into a fist.
Ceybold. He’d been a welcome sight to a traumatized Disaris and her sister Luda. His familiar face and kind assurances they were safe seemed nothing short of a miracle. A slow poison of deception and false charm had fooled Disaris for months afterward, long enough to make Luda a hostage and trap Disaris into obedience to the Hierarch and his ilk who’d done nothing but prolong a bloody war, terrorize villages, and turn the despairing into murdering savages. She would hate Ceybold beyond death and dance on his grave if he had one.
She didn’t offer any of this to Golius. Volunteering information she wasn’t asked for was a fool’s endeavor. Though she was a code-breaker, she had yet to prove it to this group. She was, in every respect, a prisoner of war, an enemy of the kingdom. Anything and everything she said in front of these men could, and most likely would be used against her. So she waited, trying not to twitch under the weight of the general’s regard.
His fingers continued to spin the quill, and he exhaled a long sigh before fanning out the stack of pages in front of him. Each contained lines of script. He slid a full inkwell and the quill toward her, along with several blank pages of parchment. “Come closer,” he ordered. “Translate these.”
The dais creaked under her feet as she gingerly stepped up to the table, wiping her damp palms down her skirt. She studied the first few pages he offered. The script varied, with some displaying lines or columns of letters while others were filled with pictograms and runes. She recognized those letters she’d been taught to read, but their combinations made nonsensical words, and the pictograms were a mystery as to what language they represented or the message they relayed. Unfamiliar alphabets graced more pages, neat and painstakingly written or scribbled so poorly they bordered on illegibility.
She suppressed a smile. It didn’t matter. She was a Reader. There wasn’t any language or penmanship she couldn’t decipher. She’d spent years translating the oldest and most esoteric of all. This would be nothing by comparison.
A quick glance over her shoulder at Bron, who nodded silent encouragement, calmed her nerves, and she took up the first of the pages to read more closely. The trick to reading was in the way she stared at the words, aided by the flow of magic that made her eyes throb and her ears hum. The words never changed if she looked straight on, but if she did so askance, they reshaped themselves, transforming into letters and sentenceswith which she was familiar. The ones she translated for the Daggermen were far harder and more complex than these.
The first sample was laughably easy – a recipe for ale brewed in large bowls and flavored with a mixture of herbs. Disaris took up the quill and quickly wrote out the translation on one of the blank sheets of parchment before handing both to Golius.
He read her work, eyebrows lifting. He then passed it to one of the men standing near him. The man’s surprised expression mirrored Golius’s as he read her script.
Sheet after sheet, she translated with ease, grateful not to feel the skull-splitting pain that always came with reading the passages sent to her by the Hierarch. Golius reviewed each one before passing it to one of the men flanking him. There were twenty-two samples in all, including a letter to a daughter, instructions on how to properly clean rust from a blade, a bill of sale for tenminotsof wheat, and an order of execution for a captured Daggerman.
Every gaze in the tent sharpened as she translated that one. They looked for a reaction from her, some hint of her sympathies for the zealots who’d occupied Baelok. They’d see nothing. One less crazed fanatic in the world was welcome news to her.
Only the last of the samples made her fingers clench on the quill. The parchment displayed a single line of script, written in a mix of familiar and unfamiliar letters and in a hand she’d recognize anywhere—three words that slowly rearranged themselves the longer she stared at them and became the impetus of a memory.
“The moon rises.”
Tears filled her eyes, making the words swim on the page. She blinked to clear her vision and quickly wrote—not a translation, but a reply.
“And a star waits.”
Bron’s expression remained stoic as he read the page, then returned it to Golius with a nod. With the last page translated, Disaris bowed and backed off the stage to resume her place next to Bron. In this frightening moment, when she felt adrift, he’d tossed her an anchor of memory—one sweet and mostly forgotten until now.
The general shuffled the pages, pausing at turns to read a few. The silence in the tent grew heavy, and Disaris did her best to ignore the droplet of perspiration sliding down her temple toward her jaw. It had been a long time since she’d had to prove her talent to one who held her life or death in their hands, and Golius was as terrifying in his own way as the Hierarch.
He set the pages aside and turned his attention to Bron. “It seems your magery was accurate this time, jin Hazarin. She’s definitely far more than a mere hedge-mother.” Disaris stiffened when his gaze settled on her. “What do the Hierarch and his Daggermen want from you? Trapped in Baelok, you aren’t much help to Keforin in deciphering missives captured from Daesin spies, so the Daggermen are using you for purposes that have nothing to do with the war.”
He wasn’t wrong. The Daes-Keforin war was merely a convenient event for the Daggermen to exploit in order to achieve their own ends. “I translate a precious book for them, lord. The grimoire of an ancient high priest who served a goddess named Kocyte.”
Golius leaned forward, his eyes gleaming like polished blades in the lantern light. “And what makes this grimoire so special to the Daggermen?”
She shrugged. “Kocyte is exiled, trapped within a prison, but can be freed by a ritual within the book. I’m translating the instructions. The Daggermen believe if they free her, she will remake this world into their idea of paradise and reward themfor their help and loyalty. They kill for Keforin because they’re handsomely paid to do so. It funds their endeavors.”
Everything she told him was true, or a version of the truth. Any mage within the ranks behind him with the power of discernment wouldn’t find any mendacity in her reply. Omission was a slippery thing even magic couldn’t always detect.
He peppered her with more questions. How did the Daggermen discover she was an itzuli? Where was the grimoire she was translating? Where were the rest of the Daggermen? And why would she be so amenable to giving the enemy so much information?
The atmosphere in the tent changed again, charged with a different kind of tension. She knew better than to believe her willingness to share intelligence earned her any trust or admiration from this tribunal. It was, in fact, the opposite. A traitor to one was a traitor to any, no matter the reasons. Still, she truly believed her honesty, flexible though it was, would allow her to walk out of Golius’s tent and live to escape.
She strove to show a calm she didn’t feel. “The Daggermen test possible candidates in much the same manner that you tested me here.” That was true, though the Daggermen had been far more cunning about it. “The Hierarch possesses the grimoire. Pages are copied, and those copies are given to me to translate.” Again true. The leader of the Daggermen would never let such a precious tome out of his sight, even if he didn’t truly realize the key to the goddess’s freedom was also the means of her destruction. “I don’t know their exact location, only that the Hierarch and the rest of the Daggermen hide in Kefian territory.” Mostly true.
Golius scowled. “Sanctuary from our armies.”
She nodded. “Their numbers are spread across both kingdoms. Wipe out one nest of vipers, and there are a dozen more to replace them. Baelok is just one of many.”
Under his raptor regard, she froze and squirmed inside by turns. “If I’m to believe all you’ve told me, then you have no loyalty to the Daggermen,” he said.
“None,” she replied. “They live by the codes of blood and madness. There is no depth to which they won’t sink to secure obedience in their followers and free the goddess they worship. They will eat their own if necessary and kill any who stand in the way of their goal. The village of Septos is proof of that, as is Baelok itself. The Daggermen killed far more of their followers than the Daesin army did in its siege.”
The words poured out of her in a rush, leaving her breathless. How long had such vitriol slumbered inside her, waiting to escape in a diatribe before her captors? Disaris glanced at Bron, who met her eye this time, something dark flitting through his crimson gaze.
