“Come look at this.”
I admit I was a little annoyed. I’d been making good progress, and then Kudshayn had to go and interrupt me for the silly catalogue. “Why?”
Without looking up, he said, “Because it doesn’t make sense.”
“Cora probably made a mistake,” I said ungraciously. Even though Kudshayn’s attention was entirely on the catalogue, my imagination filled in him giving me a reproachful look anyway, because that was cattish of me and I knew it. Feeling guilty, I got up and came to peer over his shoulder.
Kudshayn ran his claw-tip down the list, one page after another. I hadn’t realized the Carters had gotten through the whole cache already; they’ve worked remarkably fast. Of course the tablets we sent them are much easier to assess for the most part—but nevertheless, it’s excellent work and proof that they deserve more chances to work on new material.
At first I didn’t see what Kudshayn meant, because my mind was still on the epic and looking for something pertaining to our work. “None of these are related,” I said.
He said, “Precisely.”
And that’s when I figured it out.
Kudshayn is right: the cache makes no sense. Most of the tablets are southern Anthiopean, but not all of them; some come from as far away as Dajin and the Broken Sea. And they’re all over the place in terms of period, everything from early texts to things circa the Downfall. Not only aren’t they related to our epic, but they aren’t related to each other, either.
I said the first thing that came into my head. “This looks like the inventory from some antiquities dealer’s warehouse.”
Kudshayn’s wings flicked in surprise, knocking me back. He didn’t even apologize, just twisted on his stool to meet my gaze.
It was like the world blinked. One moment I was staring at Kudshayn; the next I was in the doorway to the library, shouting Cora’s name loud enough to be heard in Yelang.
She came running, wild-eyed and out of breath. “What is it?”
By then I had the catalogue in my hands, and stabbed one finger at the footnote she’d added about tablet 37. “This one. You’re sure it’s from your uncle’s collection?”
“Yes,” she said defensively. “I made my own catalogue of his antiquities, years ago; I can show you. Though I didn’t know how to make a catalogue properly at the time. That isn’t the only tablet I recognized, either. It isn’t my fault that they got included with the others by accident; he told me to package up everything that had been shipped here from Akhia, and they were in there, even though they shouldn’t have been.”
My hands clenched so tight on the folder that I crimped it, and Cora reached out as if to rescue it from my abuse. “No,” I said. “They shouldn’t have been. I am an idiot!”
Cora was kind enough not to agree with me. She just said, “Why?”
I started pacing, resisting the urge to throw the catalogue across the room. “Because there was one thing that never made sense, and I didn’t think of the obvious answer. Even though it was right there in front of me the whole time.”
Kudshayn’s voice was a quiet growl. “How could they know.”
“Exactly,” I spat.
Cora stamped her foot, and her voice went high and shrill. “Tell me what’s going on!”
I made myself stop pacing and face her. “Cora. Your uncle doesn’t like Draconeans. Why would he invite one to come work on these tablets? Why would he hire me, the granddaughter of the woman who brought Kudshayn’s people back into contact with humanity?”
She thought it through for a long time, while I bit down on the urge to answer my own questions. They were rhetorical, but I knew from prior experience that she would want to answer them anyway. At last she said, “To hurt you. And Kudshayn. And the Draconeans.”
“But how could he be so certain this would do that? There’s been no time for anyone to read the epic. These tablets aren’t the kind of thing you can skim and get the gist; the language is much too archaic for that. Nobody could possibly translate them in the time between Gleinleigh finding the cache in Akhia and me arriving here.”
“Unless,” Kudshayn said, “he’s had them a good deal longer than that.”
“And that’s why Alan didn’t find anything in the Qajr,” I said, slapping the table. “Because there’s nothing to find, and never was. Gleinleigh staged the whole discovery, to make it look like it was new. He probably chose the Qajr because he could get the permit cheaply. But these tablets could be from anywhere. In fact—”
I leapt to the shelf where I’ve been keeping all my periodicals, the newspapers and journals that ordinarily pile up for me at home. “No, it isn’t here. I read something about a temple in Seghaye that was found looted, with an empty tablet chest—damn Gleinleigh and all his kind! They smash their way in and rip things out of their context, so we’ll never know their true provenience.” Was the epic in that temple, or did it come from somewhere else? We’ll never know. We can read what the words say, but all the associated context that might tell us more about their meaning is lost.
Cora was twining a lock of hair around her finger and scowling in thought. “But I don’t understand why having the tablets for longer means he would hire you.”
“Because of who we are,” Kudshayn said softly. “Because if he wants to use these for some purpose, then it benefits him to attach famous names to it. I am the most well-known scholar of my people, and Audrey is the granddaughter of Lady Trent. Whatever we publish will gain more attention than if it came from some less prominent person.”
“Or from Aaron Mornett,” I said with venom.
And then the world blinked again. Cora was suddenly helping me into a chair, and I had the sour taste of bile in my mouth. Because I’d finally arrived at the logical conclusion of my own reasoning, and I knew:
Kudshayn and I are not the first people to read these tablets.
Aaron Mornett read them first.
All the work we’ve done here, everything we have sweated over so hard . . . Mornett did it before us. There’s no need for Gleinleigh and Mrs. Kefford to interfere at the printer’s, to engage in ridiculous skulduggery with sabotage and murder. They already know what we’ll find. But for that to be true, they would need someone capable of translating the epic, someone versed enough in the language to work with these archaic forms, and that list is quite short. The list of people who would do it for unscrupulous purposes is even shorter.
Translating the epic was supposed to be my revenge against Aaron Mornett. Instead it’s his final triumph over me.
My one bitter consolation is that he can never claim the credit for his work. Not if we’re right about what they intend. The whole world will know Kudshayn and me as the original translators.
I hope that knowledge pains him a thousandth as much as I hurt right now.
Kudshayn understood, of course. He explained it to Cora while I stared blindly at the floor. At least, I think he did; I know that he talked, and after a while Cora gave me an awkward hug, which coming from her is so wildly unusual that Kudshayn must have said something to make her decide it was necessary.
“So don’t go along with it,” she said, while I scrubbed my face dry. “If this will be so damaging, then just stop.”