Word and Breath (27 page)

Connor stared at her for a long moment. Then pressed his lips together and looked away.

Feeling that same pang of guilt, Riana reluctantly admitted, “I do feel bad about keeping it from you. I’m sorry if I… if I betrayed your trust in me.”

Connor features relaxed as he turned back to face her, and his voice was soft and gravelly as he spoke. “Riana, I want more than anything for you and Jannie to be safe, but there’s a larger picture here I have to keep in mind. What I’m doing here, what the Front is doing, is important. It’s more important than any personal agenda I might have. There’s something much deeper at stake here, and I just can’t let it go.”

For some reason, his words frightened Riana. She mumbled, “Yeah, well, I don’t know anything about that. It’s hard to think empty words are more important than my sister.”

There was a long moment of silence that swallowed her up in its uncertainty. Then he replied, “They aren’t empty words. There are no empty words.”

She shook her head, too tired to even try to figure it out.

“And what I’m doing isn’t more important than Jannie,” he continued, his voice sounding more natural. “It’s just bigger. I do have some things I need to show you that will help you understand my purpose. But it will take some time and explanation, and we haven’t had the leisure for that yet.”

“Okay.” When Jannie was safe and she felt better, she would probably be happy to know. Right now, it was just too intangible.

Then Connor added, “And I have figured something else out. I saw it this morning.” He arched his eyebrows quizzically. “I think I figured out what your grandfather was trying to teach you.”

Riana’s mouth dropped opened.

That
wasn’t intangible at all.

Connor felt a familiar thrill of excitement—of discovery—as he flipped through the pages of the old, leather-bound book for the right section to show Riana.

It was an incongruous, almost inappropriate feeling. Circumstances were becoming increasingly dangerous, and Riana seemed to be slipping out of his grasp. But the compulsion was ingrained in Connor’s character—this joy in research, in finding pieces of information and putting them together into a complete picture.

The book he had opened in his office was a historical chronicle from more than three centuries earlier. They’d made paper better back then—the fibers were tougher than the flimsy stuff produced in this century—but he still had to be careful as he turned each thick page.

This book was a treasure. One few people appreciated anymore.

“Here it is,” he said, finding the page he’d come across in his research the day before. While Riana and Mikel had been breaking into the Regional Archives, Connor had been scouring all of the books he could lay his hands on that might offer a clue to the anomalies in the version of the Old Language Marshall Cole had taught his granddaughter.

Merely by accident he’d glanced over the page that was so important—since on the surface the chapter had nothing to do with language formation or alternate dialects.

“Look,” he said, pointing to an inset paragraph as he laid the book open on his desk. “Notice anything about this? It’s a quotation from a first century text about the early continental invasions.”

Riana leaned closer, fiddling with one of her braids as she peered at the quotation in question. She’d spent the night at Connor’s house—in the guest room—and this morning things had been natural and friendly between them again.

Connor still wasn’t happy about her decision to rashly break into the Archives with Mikel, and he knew she wasn’t pleased by his insistence on carefully calculating all their moves to avoid unintentional repercussions.

But neither of them was inclined to hold a grudge, and both knew minor disagreements had to be ignored in order to focus on what was so much more important.

“It looks like the Old Language,” Riana said, frowning up at him. “But it’s not quite right. I can barely read it. My grandfather didn’t teach me this.”

“I think he did.” Connor felt that flare of exhilaration again as at least one answer was finally unfolding. He pointed to the third word in the paragraph. “Look at this word here. What do you notice?”

Riana looked again, more carefully this time. “Oh! That’s the weird version of ‘water’ that was in the sentence about the bunnies.” She straightened up, a matching glow of excitement illuminating her eyes. “Oh! I see. You think he snuck in the different words one by one in sentences of standard Old Language, so I would unknowingly learn this different version.”

She’d always been clever—and she’d immediately seen what he’d concluded the morning before. “Exactly. See, on the second line here is the word for ‘run’ we noticed too. I’ve never run across this version of the Old Language before—none of the books I’ve ever seen are written in it. But he must have been trying to teach it to you. And I wonder…”

Riana followed his thoughts, despite the fact he’d trailed off. “That’s why everyone is after me? I suppose someone must know my grandfather knew this version of the language, and they must suspect he taught it to me. Maybe there’s some book or document that’s been uncovered they need to have translated.” She rubbed her scalp with her fingers with excess nervous energy. “But why wouldn’t the Union have just asked me to translate it?”

Connor had already considered that question. “We’ve already guessed that there’s more than one force at work here. It seems pretty clear that the Zealots want you dead so whatever this document is will never be translated. It would fit—they’re anti-reading, anti-history, anti-Old Language. They’d be against something like this that represents all of those things. But I’m starting to wonder about the group that kidnapped Jannie. I’m wondering if it’s even an official Union project.”

“Huh. But there were records—those financials that Donn discovered—”

“Very well buried financials.” Even as Connor spoke, answers lined themselves up more clearly in his mind. “I think the Union is funding the project, but I don’t know if the central offices are aware of the kidnapping. People in the Newtown Office of Public Security are responsible for Jannie’s kidnapping—if Mikel sensed the undercurrents correctly. And they’re using Union resources to accomplish it. But what if they’re trying to keep it secret—not just from us, but from other Union officials? We’ve always been confused by their sending Mikel after you as well as kidnapping your sister. It seems like the official Union approach was to send a Breather to find out what you know—and the kidnapping and the attempt to kill you were both peripheral to official Union agenda.”

Riana propped herself up on the edge of the desk and stared out the window as she thought. “That makes sense. But it still doesn’t answer why the Union didn’t just approach me, tell me my grandfather might have taught me something, and would I please see if I can translate their precious document.”

Connor waited, wondering if she’d come to the same conclusion he had the day before.

She did. Her lips parted slightly as her eyes flew back to his. “They were starting to suspect I was disloyal. So they couldn’t trust me with the knowledge of the document’s existence.”

“That would be my guess. It’s partly our fault, I guess. Jenson—” He broke off, feeling an almost unbearable stab of pain at the thought of his cousin, at the remembered knowledge that he was dead. “And with your family background, with who your grandfather was, they might have suspected he taught you some of his rebellious, mystical tendencies, in addition to the language.”

Riana gave a little huff, almost bitter in its irony. “Little do they know. Until last week, there was nothing treasonous about my life at all. My poor grandpa. He’d be so disappointed me.”

Feeling a pull of connection—strong, sympathetic, loving, and not merely romantic—Connor put a hand on hers, which was resting on the surface of the desk. “No, he wouldn’t. He’d find you just as remarkable as I do.”

Her eyes darted up in surprise, and he realized he’d conveyed more than he should have in his tone.

He cleared his throat and pulled back his hand.

Evidently, whatever she’d noticed wasn’t strong enough to make a lasting impression. She said hoarsely, “I really want Jannie back, Connor.”

“We’re going to find her,” he said, pitching his voice to be strong and supportive, hoping it would encourage her. “You told Mikel to meet us at Tava’s at noon?”

She nodded, clearly having pulled herself together. “Yeah. He had a lot to do, I guess, after maybe blowing his identity at the Archives. Poor guy.”

Connor ignored the faint pang of jealousy. For the last two days, he’d been talking himself out of any romantic hopes concerning Riana. He’d gotten to the point where it was just a dull pain at the back of his heart—one he could function with if he kept convincing himself it didn’t exist.

“I’ve sent out messages to the others. We’ll all meet there and figure out how to get your sister back.”

Riana smiled at him—broad, genuine, breathtaking. Then she glanced back down at the book on the desk between them. “Where did you find this book, anyway? I didn’t think books like this were around anymore.”

“I own it,” he said, shifting in his chair rather awkwardly.

“You just happened to own the right book? Where did you get it?”

“I inherited it,” he admitted. To keep her from asking any more questions, he slanting her a teasing look. “You think your family is troublesome—wait until you hear more about mine.”

***

Mikel was fifteen minutes late for the arranged meeting at Tava’s apartment.

Riana started getting antsy two minutes after noon. Five minutes later, she was genuinely worried. She wondered where he was. If he was all right. It wasn’t like him to be late, so she couldn’t help but imagine all kinds of horrible things that might have happened to him.

She’d come over with Connor a half-hour ago. He was now going over some notes—for the meeting and what would follow, she assumed. She knew he was in the habit of writing out his thoughts. He looked kind of cute as he sat at the dining room table, with messy hair and those adorable glasses, totally focused on his ideas.

Hopefully, he was coming up with a plan.

Riana had never felt drawn to leadership or responsibility. She had enough to do taking care of herself and her sister. Watching Connor over the last week—his obvious stress and the ways his different obligations tore him apart—she was even gladder she wasn’t any sort of leader.

Tava, Donn, and Posen had all made it to the meeting. They sat around the room, chatting quietly, but Riana didn’t feel like chatting. She kept watching the door and the clock, hoping Mikel was all right.

When she heard a tap on the door, she jumped up. The cautious part of her mind compelled her to peek out the peephole to make sure it was Mikel before she opened the door.

It was. She swung the door open. “Mikel! Where have you been?”

“Sorry.” His mouth quirked in amusement, but the half-smile was intimate and made her belly do a silly flop. “It took me longer than I thought. You weren’t worried, were you?”

She just scowled at him, knowing he’d already seen the answer.

After a general greeting, Connor didn’t waste any time in beginning. Putting his notes away, he cleared his throat and said to the room at large, “Our best guess for Jannie’s location is in the old headquarters of the Steeple project, which—thanks to Riana and Mikel—we know was in an old bunker of the main Office of Public Security. We need to move quickly. We don’t know whether they’ll be able to track down the details of the breakin at the Archives or not, but we can’t risk Jannie’s being moved.”

“I have some information on that,” Mikel put in, breaking into what had seemed to set itself up as a long speech.

All eyes went to Mikel, Riana felt ridiculously proud of him—cool, competent, utterly in control. Even out of his comfort zone, as he was here.

“I took a chance and contacted a…uh, colleague of mine,” he began. Riana noted he didn’t say “friend.” And she briefly wondered if he—like her—hadn’t really had any friends until recently.

“Not much is known in Union circles about yesterday,” Mikel continued. “They know I was involved in the shootout on the street, but they haven’t yet connected it with the Archives. I guess Ghent must have retrieved the security tape from the hallway—which is good for us, as well as the Zealots—and covered his tracks pretty well.”

Donn nodded soberly. He’d told them that no one on his level had any idea about what had gone on at the Archives the day before, and they’d been hoping that was true on all levels of the Union hierarchy.

“I assume they’ll do their normal review of the rest of the security tapes and might eventually identify us. But it will take them a few days to track down specifically what we were looking for. If, as seems more and more evident, the kidnapping was not an official Union program, that gives us even more time, since the Steeple location wouldn’t mean anything to most investigators.”

Mikel must have come on his own to the same conclusion Riana and Connor had about how the kidnapping fit into the Union’s agenda.

“True,” Connor said. “That’s good news. Thanks for checking into it.”

Riana could tell he was making an effort to be gracious, and she thought it was a very Connor-like thing to do.

“What’s the story on the shootout that’s circulating among Union leadership?”

“Conflict amongst fringe groups,” Mikel replied. “The Front is in the lead for the most likely culprit.”

Connor snorted. “Typical. Maybe this can work in our favor, though. We’ll still need to move quickly.” His eyes cut over to meet Riana’s. “For a lot of reasons.”

She wondered at that. Whether he were responding to her urgency and fear for Jannie’s safety. Or whether he was afraid she’d do something else stupid.

“One thing we need to look into right away is if we can get our hands on plans of the building layout so we can find a more exact location for the bunker.” Connor paused, but when no one offered any suggestions, he continued, “I’ll find someone to take care of that. The agenda for today is to form a plan to get into the building.”

There was a brief silence in the room. Riana herself had no idea how to get into the building. She’d only been in the building a few times in her life. She stared at the people gathered around her. Good people, all. And not of ordinary gifts and intelligence. Surely one of them would think of a way to get Jannie back.

She’d never been good at strategy. And she didn’t know enough about the logistics to form a plan, even if she were.

“I have an idea about that,” Mikel said at last, “If you’re interested in hearing it.”

His tone was polite, but his eyes offered a silent challenge as he held Connor’s gaze.

Connor stared back evenly, neither one of them backing down. He was in charge here, but Mikel had always been on the edge of defying his authority.