Lindsay Buroker: Enigma

Rias managed a weary smile. He might have appeared fresh yet that morning, but fatigue had finally claimed him; when he opened his mouth to speak, it turned into a yawn wide enough to swallow a parrot.

“Nice tonsils,” Tikaya murmured.

“Thank you.” Rias rubbed his eyes. “They’ve long been a source of pride for me.” He pointed at the Nurian boy, who swayed in his hammock, his eyes closed. “Have you spoken to him?”

“No, he wasn’t down here when I nodded off.” Tikaya sat up and groped behind her, trying to find whatever was stabbing her in the back. The flute, of course. She supposed it was good that she’d fallen asleep on the priceless artifact, so it hadn’t been rolling around the bay all night. The captain might not have approved of that.

“I’m finally off-duty,” Rias said. “For four hours. Now might be the best time to question him.”

“Now might be a time for you to get some rest.”

“Later. Do you mind waking him? Seeing me looming over his hammock might… distress him.”

“You did save his life today,” Tikaya noted.

“A bonding experience, you’d think, but I clearly make him uneasy. I suspect…” Rias lowered his voice. “Although it wouldn’t seem likely in a youth, I’ve had the sense that he knows who I am.”

Tikaya climbed to her feet, using Rias for balance as the ship rocked and swayed. “Maybe there are dartboards all across Nuria with your likeness painted on them, so that even kitchen scrub-boys know you’re an enemy of the chiefdom.”

“A cheery thought.”

After their uninspired first conversation, Tikaya didn’t think Garchee would be excited to see her looming over his hammock either, but she picked her way across the rocking deck and tapped him on the leg. His eyelids flew up, reminding her of a rabbit startled from its meal by a predator.

Fortunately, he didn’t fling himself from the hammock in search of a rabbit hole. He merely gave her a wary, “Greetings.” He peered around her and spotted Rias. He swallowed and licked his lips, but then gave him a wary nod too.

Tikaya held up the flute, drawing his gaze back to her. “The captain has tasked me with learning to play this, and I was wondering if you knew anything about it.”

Garchee shook his head.

“I know some Nurian mythology,” Tikaya said, “but perhaps not enough.”

Garchee shrugged.

“Are you familiar with the tale of the Three Huntsmen? One of these scenes depicts three bowmen stalking a hyena, so I thought of the story.”

Garchee eyed the flute. “You won’t guess it.”

You won’t guess it? He couldn’t know, could he? “Care to give me a tip?”

“It’s not for foreigners to play.”

“Then how did the captain get a hold of this one?”

Garchee turned his face toward the wall.

“You brought the flute on board, didn’t you?” Tikaya asked. “Did you give it to the captain to pay for your passage, or did he take it when he found out about it?”

“I don’t…”

Rias came to stand beside Tikaya, entering the boy’s view.

“I traded it,” Garchee mumbled. “It was all I had left after…” He sighed. “It wasn’t a fair trade, but I wanted to… I have only myself to blame for all of this.”

Tikaya glanced at Rias, wondering if he understood all of the boys’ words. She knew he had some familiarity with Nurian, but the mumbles would have been hard for the youth’s own mother to decipher. “The this you speak of,” Tikaya said, “was you deciding to steal the flute from the Great Chief’s palace?”

Garchee’s head jerked up. “I didn’t steal anything.”

“Then how did you acquire it?”

Someone up on deck called to someone else, the words too muffled by the wind and intervening walls to understand. Garchee hurled himself from his hammock so quickly he almost crashed to the floor. He found his feet, saying, “That’ll be the watch change. I have to go.” He sprinted for the stairs, as if he feared they’d try to stop him.

“He’s less helpful every time I talk to him,” Tikaya said. “Was that really the watch change? I couldn’t make it out.”

“I don’t think so.” Rias held out his palm, silently asking to see the flute, and Tikaya handed it to him. He rolled it in his hand and held it up to the lantern. “I’ve never seen one of these before. I remember many sea battles where Nurian drummers sought to inspire their men, and the booms floated across the water, but I never heard flute music.”

“The Enigma Flutes are highly prized. I imagine most are kept in the royal family’s vaults.”

“But if they do what you say and make crowds of people amenable to suggestion, surely Nurian admirals would have brought them along in times of war to be used on our marines when we closed to boarding distance. To implant the suggestion that the Nurian captains were benevolent leaders who should be obeyed.”

“I…” It was a good point, Tikaya thought. “Perhaps it only works on people in a certain state of mind. The brains and bodies of men riled for battle would be different than those simply attending a speech.”

Rias returned the flute. “Or maybe it’s just a story.”

“There is some Science about this one,” Tikaya said.

“Either way, I doubt it’ll provide the solution the captain seeks.”

It took Tikaya a moment to realize what Rias meant. Admittedly, she’d been more interested in the puzzle rather than debating the reason for the captain’s urgency at having it solved, but, yes, if he anticipated pursuit, it made sense that her story had stirred within him the hope that the flute could be used to sedate the fury of those who followed.

“We’d best hope we make port before the pursuit he fears shows up then,” Tikaya said.

Rias said nothing.

Down in the bilge room, Tikaya sat on a rib running across the naked hull of the ship while Rias labored at a long lever, pumping out water that had collected in the bowels of the schooner overnight. Dawn might have come, but no outside light seeped into the dark room. A sole lantern burning by the hatch provided illumination, and Tikaya held the flute up to it as she twisted segments. Despite Rias’s implication that the instrument would prove ineffective against their pursuers, she, like a hungry dog gnawing a bone, couldn’t let the puzzle go unsolved. She’d been up most of the night and had finally come down to join Rias while she mulled.

“Want me to take a hand at that?” Tikaya nodded toward the pump. In part, she made the offer because she felt guilty sitting there while Rias labored, sweat dribbling from his brow, but also because she’d often found mindless repetitive work helpful for solving problems. On her family’s plantation, she’d spent countless hours firing arrows into targets while working on ancient language puzzles.

Rias, standing in calf deep water, his back hunched in order to work the lever in the tight quarters, glanced her way without pausing in his work. “You must be truly stumped to make that offer.”

“What? You don’t think I’m simply jealous that you’re having all the fun there?”

“No.”

Tikaya tapped the flute on her thigh. “I am stumped. I’m tempted to go wring that boy’s neck for information, but it’d be slightly more satisfying to solve the puzzle on my own.”

“Only slightly, eh?”

“At this point, neck-wringing is sounding quite appealing. I’ve dredged every Nurian mythology tale I’ve ever heard out of the depths of my mind. None of them go together in a way that makes sense here. Either I’m forgetting something or the knowledge wasn’t there to begin with. If that’s the case, I’m going to have cross words for my World Mythology professor when I get home. My parents paid good money for me to receive a complete education.”