The Reader (35 page)

“—bleed lakes dry in a matter of seconds—”

Slowly, Sefia raised her head. The rest of the room blurred, white and hot, until all she could see was Tanin, resting easily behind her desk, her lips meeting and parting, sending words into the air like sweet, toxic smoke. “They weren't supposed to fall in love, you know, but they always did like breaking the rules.” For a moment, grief flicked across Tanin's face like a cloud passing over the moon. “And then they broke their vows. They stole the Book. They betrayed everything we'd worked so hard for. Your mother passed away before we could get to her, but your father—”

Sefia stood. Her hand curled around the hilt of her knife. “You killed him,” she said.

“I would have given anything not to do what I did,” Tanin murmured. “But we needed the Book back.”

Like a bullet, like an explosion of gunpowder and grief and
guilt and rage, Sefia launched herself across the desk. Her knife flashed. Sheets of paper scattered around them like startled birds.

Sefia knocked both of them to the floor and brought her blade to Tanin's throat. “You tortured him. Just like you did Nin.” She dug the edge of her knife into the woman's creamy skin. “Where is she? Is she even alive?”

Tanin smiled, but her voice shivered with regret. “You
are
your mother's daughter, aren't you?”

A noise behind her caused Sefia to look back. Her knife eased off Tanin's neck as she caught sight of Rajar, his dark coat splaying out as he raised his arms, hands twisting and pulling at the air.

Magically, Archer's weapons were wrenched from his grasp. The sword and revolver sailed across the room.

With a flick of his wrist, Rajar hurled Archer into a chair and scooped the weapons out of the air before they hit the ground.

Horrified, Sefia turned back to Tanin just in time to see her open her eyes. Her pupils contracted to points of black in two pools of silver.

The Vision.

“No!” Sefia cried.

But it was too late. With a wave of her hand, the woman flung Sefia aside. The knife flew from her fingers as her back struck the desk. Pain rippled along her spine and she fell to the floor, groaning.

Brushing herself off, Tanin stood. She raised her hand again, lifting Sefia from the carpet as if on invisible strings, and sent her crashing into the chair beside Archer.

Sefia struggled, but her arms and legs were pinned.

At her feet, her pack was unbuckling as if opened by invisible hands. Out tumbled her belongings—pans and candles and the biscuits Cooky had given them—and then the book rose from its depths, shedding its leather wrapping as it floated toward Tanin's outstretched arms.

The woman gathered it to her chest like a lost child and sighed with deep satisfaction. “What is written always comes to pass,” she whispered.

B
efore they became parents, Lon and Mareah were runners. They were running when they stole the Book. When they escaped that complex of mirrors and marbled halls in an eruption of fire and rubble and charred scraps of paper. One was clutching the Book to his chest, under his crossed arms, as if trying to press it into his ribs, until his lungs filled with letters and his heart became a pulsing paragraph. The other was holding on to his elbow, so she could catch him if he stumbled, so she could keep him going, urging him forward, forward, forward.

When they crossed the threshold, breaking into the night and the fresh air, they were running.

Chased through the water and the woods by men and women and hounds, they were running.

They ran across kingdoms, mountains, shorelines. Even forced into hiding, they were quick. Restive. They breathed
fast. They were wild and furtive with the chase. And when they slept—if they slept—they did so fitfully, in turns, with the Book between them, always ready to go. To run again.

And then one day, when they thought perhaps they had run far enough, for long enough, because they could no longer hear the sounds of the hunters or feel the chase at their heels, they built the house on the hill overlooking the sea.

A
rcher strained against his invisible bonds, testing his feet and each of his fingers, but he couldn't move anything but his head and neck. He was trapped.

It had happened so fast.

“Are you okay?” Sefia asked. A few stray locks of hair had come loose from their ties, and her clothing was rumpled, but she seemed unhurt. The green feather glinted behind her ear.

He nodded. As he watched, Rajar set Harison's sword and revolver on the sideboard and hugged his arms miserably. Archer knew that look. Guilt. Self-loathing. He'd felt it too, time and time again.

Whatever he'd expected of Serakeen, it wasn't this. It wasn't kinship.

Pulling open a drawer, Tanin plucked out some blotting paper and dabbed it against her neck, but there was little blood. With a sniff, she crumpled the paper and tossed it aside. She
laid the book on the desktop and stroked the worn cover, her elegant inky fingers tracing the discolored leather. To Archer, she seemed sad . . . and angry.

After a moment, she sat down and crossed her hands. “Let's get this over with, then. Examine him.”

Archer's eyes widened as Rajar crossed the room. The man circled the armchair, pulling again at the corners of his mustache. He hunkered down, placing a hand on Archer's knee.

“I'm sorry,” he said. His breath smelled faintly of smoke and cloves and liquor. Standing, he flicked open a pocketknife.

Archer struggled against his invisible restraints. His hunting knife was sheathed in the shoulder strap of his pack, so close but so impossibly far.

“Leave him alone!” Sefia cried.

Rajar shook his head. “We have to know.” Then, taking hold of Archer's sleeve, he cut away the fabric, exposing the fifteen burns on his arm, and stared down at the scars with lopsided blue eyes. His pupils shrank to pinpoints.

Archer cringed, but no blows came.

After a moment, Rajar folded the knife away and slipped it back in his pocket. “He's a skilled enough killer, though he didn't complete the final test at the Cage.”

“You've no right to do that,” Sefia snapped.

Rajar ignored her. He circled Archer again. “Who are you, boy?” he whispered. “Are you the one we've been searching for?”

Archer felt as if the man were scooping him up and shaking him, so all the things he'd blocked out for so long, all the things he'd tried to forget, would come tumbling out.

“Well? What do you think?” Tanin toyed with a silver penknife, twirling it impatiently between her fingers. “Fit for the Academy?”

“He was going to be a lighthouse keeper.” Rajar rubbed his cheek. “He was going to protect people.”

Archer felt faint.

The memories rose out of him like floes of ice.

A lighthouse poised on a rocky promontory.

The notes of a mandolin drifting like soap bubbles from an illuminated window.

A girl with curls the color of sunlight through yellow leaves.

He was remembering. After all this time.

Archer's head spun. It felt like he was breaking open on the inside, all the mental blocks he'd put up to protect himself rupturing one after another, flooding him with blood and bile.

All of a sudden, the ceiling felt too low, the walls too close. He was back in the crate again. The sour stench of his own urine. Claw marks. He felt the prick of splinters under his fingernails. Darkness. There would be no light until the crate was opened, and then there would be fear and pain. Ugly laughter and killing and then food, once someone was dead.

Every time he was unleashed there was fear and pain.

The boy Hatchet executed in front of him just to get him to pick up a weapon.

Training with Hatchet's other boys—the splitting of skin over knuckles, the heft of a sword—until he was the only one left.

Then the fights.

He shut his eyes, but he saw them all, felt every blow, heard
every last gasp, saw every dead boy empty-eyed on the ground. Every one.

He slumped against his invisible restraints, panting. The piece of quartz was resting solidly at the bottom of his pocket, but he couldn't reach it. His hands wouldn't move.

“Archer?” Sefia's voice was muffled, as if coming to him through water.

He didn't look at her. He couldn't.

“He's not cut out for killing, Tanin,” Rajar said. “He doesn't deserve to be here.”

Tanin smirked. “See yourself in him, do you?”

“Yes.” The whiplike scar along the side of Rajar's face twisted as the word left his lips.

In that instant, Archer pitied him as much as he hated and feared him.

“Destiny has a cruel sense of humor,” Tanin said, “but she will not be denied.”

Archer swallowed, felt the scar tissue tighten around his neck.

“You can use the Vision too,” Sefia said.

“We call it the Sight.” With one last glance at Archer, Rajar sighed and returned to the sideboard, where he wrapped his coat around himself, though the room was not cold.

Sefia's voice was sharp with surprise. “That's why you burned him. You had to have a mark to use the Vision on.”

“We have to make sure the candidates complete all our tests.”

“But he didn't. He escaped from Hatchet, didn't he? He didn't kill those boys at the Cage. He's not the one you want.”

Archer's memories churned over and over inside him. After the lives he'd lived, and the lives he'd taken, who was he, really?

A son?

A lighthouse keeper?

An animal? A killer?

The boy with the scar, the one the Guard had been searching for?

“But he's with
you
,” Tanin pointed out. “A reader. The daughter of two of the most powerful people I've ever met. You, Sefia, are what makes him special. Of course we want him.”