The Reader (34 page)

The cold was sinking into their bones. It hurt to breathe. Reed put his arm around Aly's shoulders and
rubbed her arm. She was trembling. The others were clustered together at the rails, pointing into the black emptiness beyond the ship.

The water was as black as the sky. It wasn't natural. As soon as any light touched the water, it sank beneath the surface and disappeared, gobbled up by the darkness. Even the sound of the waves lapping at the hull was wrong—like the clacking of teeth.

The backs of Reed's eyes burned. His breath caught in his throat. That deep cold set something howling inside the core of him, wailing and screaming to get away.

The others must have sensed it too, because soon Aly began to cry.

Horse, too, was whimpering like a little kid.

Red lights appeared in the deep, but they sucked in more light than they gave, illuminating nothing. Thousands and thousands of them, multiplied over and over as far as the eye could see in the dim world behind the sun.

The chief mate swiveled, but he could not see the red lights. He could only feel the cold, the disturbing disquiet that carved into your gut and heart and lungs.

Then the sound advanced from the darkness.

It rolled over them like mist over mountaintops, filling the spaces between them, howling—or was it moaning. Whispering and chittering and mad laughter. Voices or the tolling of bells or glaciers cleaving in two or cliffs crumbling to dust. The last rattling gasp of
the dying. It was the most terrible sound in a world of terrible sounds, the kind of sound that haunts you in the late hours of the night when the darkness shutters you in and the cold creeps into you through the cracks. When you are suddenly gripped by the unwavering certainty that you are already dead—and gone forever.

They had reached the red waters at the edge of the world—the place of the fleshless.

S
efia put her hands on the emblem in the center of the door and glanced at Archer. The cold iron bit into her palms. Two curves for her parents, a curve for Nin. The straight line for herself. The circle for what she had to do.

Archer nodded. They had come here for answers. They had come here to finish it.

Ignoring the guards watching from the shadows, she took a breath, swallowed her doubts, and began to turn. Inside the door, great metal cogs wheeled and clanked as the symbol rotated until it was facing the right way, until it was correct.

The pins in the lock clicked, and the door swung heavily, silently, inward.

Sefia squinted. After the darkness of the corridors, the room beyond was blindingly bright. Candles filled the wall sconces
and the cups of the hanging chandelier. Flames tipped the tops of slim white tapers, illuminating rough walls muffled by tapestries and old portraits in which the painted eyes of their subjects glinted like chips of glass.

Opposite them, near the center of the room, was a writing desk. The varnished surface was piled high with sheaves of paper, bottles of ink, and dip pens Sefia had never even dreamed of, and she was seized by the sudden desire to open all the silver-handled drawers and riffle through their contents, seeking smoother parchment, smaller books, and penknives that would fit in the curve of her palm.

But behind the desk, with her hands crossed neatly in front of her, was a woman with silver-black hair, eyes like slush, and skin the color and smoothness of a sun-bleached shell.

She was a little lighter in complexion, a little broader in the jaw and shoulders, but from a distance, Sefia might have mistaken her for her mother.

The woman rose expectantly, as if she'd been awaiting their arrival. “Welcome.” Her voice was as intricate and exact as metalwork. “I'm glad you made it.”

As Sefia and Archer entered, their footsteps making soft depressions in a thick carpet of red and gold, a man in a dirty aubergine overcoat closed the door behind them. He was tall and lean, with a stubbled jaw and a thick mustache that framed his mouth. A purplish-red scar coiled along the left side of his face, making the corner of his eye droop.

At the sight of him, Sefia's hand strayed to the hilt of her knife. Beside her, Archer curled and uncurled his fingers, lightly touching his worn wooden scabbard.

The man tried to smile, but there was a mournful twist to his mouth, the glistening of his clear-water eyes. “Don't be afraid,” he said. “I don't want to hurt you.” As if to prove his point, he held up his hands and retreated until he reached the sideboard on the right wall, where he leaned back, his eyes never leaving Sefia's. He didn't even seem to notice Archer was there.

“Please, sit down,” said the woman behind the desk. She gestured to the two leather armchairs across from her.

Sefia and Archer remained standing.

“Which one of you is Serakeen?” Sefia asked, her gaze flicking from the woman to the man and back again, not recognizing either of them from her Vision.

“My name is Tanin, and this is my associate Rajar.” As she spoke, the woman crossed to a gleaming silver tea set on the left wall, her passage between the desk and side table creating a curling wake of cold air that rippled the waves of her hair and the embroidered silk of her blouse. “The man you know as Serakeen—the bloodthirsty warlord, the Scourge of the East—is a fabrication, a useful myth we've concocted. But I'm afraid he doesn't exist.”

“What do you mean ‘he doesn't exist'? Who's been attacking ships in the Ephygian Bay?” Sefia demanded. “Who's been pillaging cities in Liccaro? Who's been looking for boys with scars around their necks?”

“I have,” Rajar whispered. He pressed down the ends of his mustache with his thumb and forefinger, but he wouldn't meet her gaze.

“Don't tell me Serakeen isn't real. Going by a different name
doesn't make you any less responsible for what you've done.”

“I didn't want to.” He seemed to be pleading with her. “You have to believe I didn't want to.”

“But you did.”

Rajar looked helplessly at Tanin, who said nothing as she tipped the teapot over the bone-white china. To Sefia it seemed as if everything the woman did altered the very air around her, and even that small movement, twisting the threads of steam that coiled from the fragrant cups of tea, might weeks later form hurricanes over some distant southern ocean.

“Rajar acts in the interest of the greater good. There are far more reprehensible reasons to take a life,” she said at last. “Base survival, for instance. Surely you've learned this lesson, in all your many travels.”

Sefia swayed, remembering the clearing, the orange light through the cabin windows, and Palo Kanta with the crooked lips, his life dribbling through her murderous hands.

“Now,” Tanin continued, “sit down.”

As the last two words struck her, Sefia's knees buckled. Her pack slipped from her shoulders, and she sank into the chair behind her. Archer sat too, down and up again in an instant, visibly shaken.

That voice was powerful. Not magical, but irresistible and dangerous.

“Do you take cream or sugar with your tea?” the woman continued as if nothing unusual had occurred.

Sefia twisted the straps of the pack at her feet. “Who
are
you?” she asked.

Tanin dropped lumps of sugar in two of the cups and turned
around. “I'm the Director of an organization known to a select few as the Guard.”

The Guard.
Sefia mouthed the words. They fit her the way a key fits a lock, sinking into place, opening all sorts of doors deep inside her.

“And Serakeen works for you?” Sefia eyed the man by the sideboard. He crossed and uncrossed his arms. His leather coat creaked.

“
Rajar
is one of us,” Tanin said crisply. “He does what he must.”

“For the greater good.”

“Yes.”

As Tanin handed her a cup and saucer, she felt the woman's cool, ink-stained fingers brush hers. Sefia shivered. The spoon rattled against the porcelain. “Which is?”

“Peace.” Tanin offered the second cup to Archer, but he didn't take it.

Sefia laughed. It was absurd. Exterminators extolling the virtues of mercy. Butchers preaching restraint. Archer glanced down at her, surprised.

Unruffled, Tanin settled in behind the desk and blew across the surface of her tea. “War can lead to peace, if the right people are the victors,” she said.

“And you're the right people?”

“We have to be.”

“That's delusional.”

“Only to the uninformed.”

“So inform me.” Sefia put her cup on the table beside her chair and crossed her arms.

“You may not know us, but you know the results of our work. We ended the blood feud in Deliene. We broke Oxscini's hold on Roku. We united Everica.”

“In war against Oxscini.”

“Yes, Oxscini's always been a problem for us. But not for much longer.”

“How?”

“One cannot withstand the many.” Tanin smiled.

Sefia's gaze darted to Archer, then back to Tanin. “The Red War,” she whispered, finally, truly understanding. “You've seen it in the book, haven't you? That's how you know a boy like Archer is involved. That's why you want him to lead your army. That's why you need the book back. You want to make sure it all comes to pass.”

“What is written
always
comes to pass,” Tanin said. “We don't know everything, but we've seen enough to know the Red War
is
coming. A boy with a scar around his neck—a boy just like your friend here—
will
lead an army, and his foes will fall before him like wheat before a scythe. Lives will be lost, but at the end of the war, the kingdoms will finally cease their petty squabbling. With this war, we'll create
lasting
peace for all the citizens of Kelanna.”

For a second the idea glittered before Sefia like one of her Visions: the Five Islands working together in concert, all the warring kingdoms united, their turbulent histories smoothed over in a single decisive victory. The cost would be high. But the peace would be worth it.

Archer touched the scar at his neck. He'd wear the cost of their peace the rest of his life.

“For all the citizens of Kelanna,” Sefia repeated slowly. “What about Archer? You call what you did to him
peace
? What you did to
me
? My family? The woman you sent to take the book from us, you think she got any peace when she—”

“Don't speak of matters you don't understand,” Tanin snapped, her voice lashing out at Sefia like a whip. “We all make sacrifices for the greater good. Your parents knew that, once.”

Sefia's breath went out of her. It took her a moment to find her voice again, and when she did, her words were little more than a gasp. “You knew my parents?”

“Didn't they tell you?” A tiny wrinkle of surprise appeared between Tanin's brows as she set her cup aside. “They were members of the Guard.”

Sefia said nothing, but she felt the doubts cracking open inside her.

Her parents? They were
heroes
. They opposed people like Serakeen. They kept the book from him. They would
never
—

But how had they learned to read in the first place?

“Your father was my best friend,” Rajar added quietly, “a long time ago.”

Sefia's mouth went dry. Was this the connection between the symbol and Serakeen, the assassin and the book?

“My father?” she whispered.

“He was the Apprentice Librarian,” Tanin said, her voice hardening. “It was his
duty
to protect the Book. But he broke every vow he ever made. He and your mother murdered Director Edmon and stole the Book from us.”

Sefia shook her head, but she couldn't stop herself from wondering: What if she was wrong? What if her memories of
her parents—her mother full of grace, bronze and dark and smelling of earth; her father cradling her chin when he dropped her off at Nin's—were fabrications too? Some elaborate masquerade they had performed to keep their true identities a secret?

Had they been part of the Guard?

What had made them change their minds?

Why did they steal the book?

“So I became the Director,” Tanin continued, “tasked with recovering the Book and making up for a betrayal that set us back decades.”

“No, it can't be. They would have told me.”

“Oh, Sefia, you really don't know.” Tanin shook her head, turning each of the items on her desktop as if she were searching for the right words with her fingers. “Mar— Your mother was an Assassin. She had more secrets than anyone.”

“My mother wouldn't—”

“She certainly did. Your mother was
extraordinary
. She could choke the life out of someone from fifty feet away. She was so powerful she could have consumed entire cities.”

Sefia shook her head and stared at the floor. Beneath her feet, the designs in the carpet overlapped and intersected in an impossible lattice of connections and unfathomably complicated knots, but she couldn't follow them any more than she could follow what Tanin was telling her.

It wasn't true. It couldn't be true.

But she couldn't help but remember the scars on her mother's hands. Her facility with a knife.

Tanin was still speaking, but only a few phrases reached Sefia through the haze of her confusion until, “Your father was no hack either—”

At the words, those two innocuous words, Sefia's anger came into focus like a beam of light through a lens.
My father.
She narrowed her eyes. Something sparked inside of her.

“—with a snap of his fingers—”

Her skin burned. She was volcanic, blistering, riotous. An avalanche of blackrock ready to ignite. She'd been thrown off by Tanin's nice manners, by Rajar's morose contrition, by the truth about her parents. But she remembered what she was doing here now. She remembered why she had come.