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WHEN TAKARA ENTERED THE ROOM A few hours later, Imara was ready for her. She pressed herself up against the wall but wore an expression of boredom. She’d been practicing it and hoped it covered at least some of the pain in her face.
“I’m going to show you a video of the Egyptian Council,” Takara said. “And then you’re going to tell me who is lying.”
“I need water first,” Imara said. She had decided this was the best way to start off negotiations. She’d try to get something small first, and then something a little bigger. And then a little bigger and then bigger until she could somehow convince Takara to let her go.
“You’ll get water when I decide you need it.”
This response didn’t faze Imara. She didn’t expect an agreement right away. While straightening her back, she took care to keep the pain from seeping onto her face. “The guard drank some of my water,” she said. “He wanted to show me it wasn’t poisonous. But that means I didn’t drink as much water as you planned. In order for me to have enough strength to answer your questions, I need water.”
Takara stared at her without blinking for almost thirty seconds. She held her body rigid, making it impossible to read. Imara wished for her hila. Even seeing one tiny wisp of emotion might be helpful. But it was useless to dream about. As usual, she had to rely completely on body language. Takara’s was cold and distant.
Suddenly, the dark-haired woman shot her hand out and slammed a fist into Imara’s side. A crack sounded through the air, and another burning pain rushed through her. She screamed out and fell to the ground, gripping her side.
Another rib broken.
Takara looked down on her with exactly the same expression she wore a moment ago. Tears streamed down Imara’s cheeks as she gasped, trying to gulp in air.
After almost a minute, Takara tilted her head to the side. “You’re smart, I’ll give you that. I like people who are smart; but don’t think you can trick me. Be straight with me, and I might give you what you want.”
More tears slid down Imara’s cheeks, each one mixed with a drop of sweat. The sweat came from her fever, which had only started in the last hour. Or maybe more. She couldn’t keep track of the time with all this pain. The fever gave her chills, which was dehydrating her faster. She needed water, and she needed it soon. Curling into a ball, she said, “I want you to leave Cairo.”
Takara’s eyebrow twitched up for a split second before it fell back to its usual spot. “Why?” she asked.
Maybe the pain had lowered her inhibitions, but soon Imara found the truth spilling from her mouth. “You’re ruining the city.”
“Why do you care about Cairo?” Takara asked. She folded her arms in front of herself. Her body language remained cold, but a trace of something else lay beneath it. Curiosity maybe. “I thought you were from Kenya,” Takara said. “I didn’t even recognize you at first; one of the other taggers did. She said you were the truth seer girl from the catacombs, and I had to check the news feeds to be sure.” She shook her head as if trying to dispel a nagging thought. “Carlotta said you wanted to save Kenya. She said you cared about that more than anything else. That’s why she planned to take control of Kenya as soon as she had control of Egypt. Egypt first, Kenya second.”
The words had barely started to sink in before a fresh burning sensation in her side caused Imara to gag. She took in a shallow breath, and then let it out slowly. “You’re going to Kenya next?” she asked. The words tasted foul in her mouth.
Takara laughed, letting the sound fill the room before she spoke. “I am more efficient than Carlotta. I already have people in Kenya, and they’re doing a fantastic job.”
Imara swallowed, and the familiar sandpaper feeling trailed down her throat. How had she missed this connection? All of Safiya’s problems started soon after the catacombs. This had been Professor Santini’s plan all along? She blinked. When she opened her eyes, she couldn’t tell how long they’d been closed.
“Answer my question,” Takara said, lifting a toe to Imara’s side.
She blinked back trying to muddle through the thoughts in her head. What question? She hadn’t even noticed Takara talking. These blank spots in time were happening more and more. She shook her head again. “I don’t know what you said. My brain is being weird, and I keep blacking out. Unless I get water or some kind of food, I don’t think I can help you.”
The words came out of her much differently than when she asked for water the first time. That time she had used the soothing voice Professor Santini taught her. It usually calmed people, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on Takara. This new tone of voice came out direct and clear with no nonsense.
The new tone seemed to work much better for Takara. She nodded, then tapped her ring and sent a message. She stared at the door expectantly, but when nobody came, she clicked her tongue. “These people are so stupid,” she said. “I’m the only one who seems to have any intelligence whatsoever. Once I get what I want, I’m never working with other people again.”
“What do you want?” Imara asked, surprised the thought had never occurred to her. She always saw Takara as purely evil, killing anyone who got in her way. Power seemed like the most obvious goal. She wanted Egypt, Kenya, and maybe even the whole world. But if Takara could imagine a time when she didn’t have to work with people, then maybe power wasn’t her ultimate goal.
Takara grinned like it was her birthday, except the present she’d receive was mass destruction. “I want to murder Marco Santini with my bare hands,” she said. “Preferably, I would tear him limb from limb, but even with all my strength training, I don’t think my arms will be strong enough. But I do have some effective torture techniques I’ve been perfecting. I’ll torture him for exactly one week, and then I will rip his body apart while he’s still alive.”
A shiver danced up Imara’s spine. Every trace of warmth in the air froze in an instant. “Why? What did Marco do to you?”
Just then, the door opened. Takara rolled her eyes, but by the time she faced the tagger coming into the room, the reaction had vanished. The tagger handed her a cup of water and Takara took it with a short nod. When the tagger left the room and the door shut behind him, Takara pushed the cup to Imara’s lips.
She gulped it gratefully even though it was warm. With each swallow, she expected the cup to be stolen from her lips. Instead, she was able to drink it down to the last drop. After Imara drank it all, Takara threw the cup at a wall with a grimace.
Imara shifted her mind to Marco Santini. She knew he was Carlotta Santini’s brother, and he had built dams inside the catacombs but used shoddy workmanship. That workmanship led to deaths. Her eyes narrowed. “Did you know someone who drowned when the catacombs flooded?”
“Someone?” Takara said with a sneer. “It wasn’t just anybody; it was the love of my life!”
“Keiko’s father?” Imara asked.
She knew instantly that was the wrong thing to say. She remembered that Keiko’s father was still alive, but also, Takara ground her teeth and slammed a fist against the wall. “Do not speak to me about Montu! That man is the stupidest being to ever exist. He could never come anywhere near the perfection of my Riku. Montu has only ever found fault with me. He deserves the life he has now. I gave him everything, and all he ever does is tell me I’m wrong to want revenge.”
Takara’s entire demeanor had changed in this exchange. She clenched her fists and huffed through her nose. Her cold indifference had burned to a seething passion. The most interesting thing was how completely she had changed the subject. Apparently she would happily go off on a tangent as long as she felt enough passion for the topic. That could be a helpful thing to exploit when needed.
Takara sneered again but with a weight in her eyes. Her shoulders quaked, and her chin trembled—all signs of grief, whether because of Montu or Riku, it wasn’t clear. For a moment, Imara had to remind herself how this woman had murdered freely over the last few months. She may have been beyond forgiveness at this point, but it was interesting that she wasn’t beyond sympathy.
Takara let out one last huff and slumped to the ground next to Imara. She tapped her ring and scrolled through the screen until she found a video. She skipped to the middle of the video and said, “Which one of these people is lying?”
The video showed the inside of the council chambers. The sixteen council members sat behind a semi-circular table. Takara had the sound muted, which made it difficult to detect any lies. One of the men stared straight forward and didn’t blink the entire time he spoke. Imara lifted her hand to point him out, when the woman next to him covered her mouth and changed the position of her head. Another obvious tell. Several more seconds into the video, seven other council members exhibited obvious signs of lying. When the video ended, she couldn’t help any more than when it had started.
“Lying about what?” she asked.
Takara lifted her hand as if to slap her. Imara merely lifted her chin and said, “Every council member is lying in that video. If you want a more specific answer than that, you have to tell me what this is about.”
Takara reacted by balling her hand into a fist with a pointed stare at Imara’s rib cage. But she seemed to think for a moment and reconsider. “Are any of the council members working with Sef?” Takara asked.
“I don’t know. Is that what this video is about?”
“No.” She steepled her fingers and set them against her lips. “If I can’t figure out which council member is lying, I have a plan that involves Sef. I’m going to get his list and trade it to the council for the information I want.”
“That could work,” Imara said. “They’ve been trying to catch Sef for years, and the list has everything they need. But it’s on his ring in an un-shareable file.”
“I know.” Takara stared back her, running a thumb along the hem of her shirt as she thought. After a moment, she nodded to herself as if coming to a decision.
“The video is about Marco,” she said. “The council members each say where they think he’s been hiding for the past twenty years. I already know they’re all lying because none of them said Alaska, and everyone knows he’s in Alaska. One of the council members helped him hide twenty years ago, so I know one of them knows where he is. I just don’t know which one.”
“You’re trying to find him? Why don’t you just go—” The words froze in Imara’s throat before she finished the sentence. Maybe she shouldn’t give Takara any ideas.
It didn’t matter. Takara guessed exactly what she almost said. “Go to Alaska and look for him myself? I tried that. Alaska is too big with too many tiny towns. I didn’t even know he was still alive until six months ago. Carlotta lied to me. And then she convinced me that getting the location from the Egyptian Council would be the most efficient way to find him. Now that I’m so close, I actually agree.”
Imara closed her eyes. Her chin fell, and she started to nod off. Again. She clenched her jaw, trying to keep herself awake. A thought tickled at the back of her mind, persisting until it roared to the front. There were too many tiny towns in Alaska. And if Takara knew the right town, she could probably ask around and find Marco in a matter of hours.
It was strange then that Takara spent so much effort trying to get Imara to find a liar, when all she had to do was ask which town Marco lived near. Because Imara happened to know that. She knew someone who lived close enough that he used Marco’s name as an insult. The memory from the catacombs flashed through her mind causing a wave of panic to flip through her.
The question of whether or not she should protect Marco wasn’t really a question at all. Takara wanted to murder him and Imara didn’t want his blood on her hands. So, she’d have to play this game of searching for the liar and hope a more direct question never got asked.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “If you already knew they were lying, what did you expect me to see in the video?”
Takara went back to the video and this time, turned up the volume. “That’s the trick,” she said. “Most of them have no idea where Marco is. So, they’re lying, but they’re also lying about lying. Only one member of the Egyptian Council actually knows his location. That’s who I want you to identify.”
The video began again. With the volume turned up, it was even easier to identify lies. Even without her hila. She’d leaned on it for so long, and all that time she didn’t even need it. Her eyes flitted from one council member to the next. They all displayed obvious tells, nothing special in any of them.
But then, she saw it.
A tiny woman who looked about ninety years old. She seemed vaguely familiar and had short gray hair and buck teeth. As she spoke, the old woman added extraneous details to her story, making it seem more believable. In fact, her story sounded more believable than anyone else’s.
And then she scratched her nose.
Watching the rest of the video only confirmed Imara’s guess. That tiny woman was the one Takara wanted. That meant she needed to be protected.
When the video ended, Takara stared expectantly.
“I got eraserfalled. I can tell they’re all lying, but I can’t see what you want me to see.”
For a long time, Takara did nothing but stare back at her. Her cold and hardened expression had returned. Without warning, she pulled a knife from her pocket. Before Imara could cower at the sight, the cords around her ankles and wrists had been cut. She stared at her wrists and then looked up at the woman, too surprised to react.
The black-haired woman forced Imara onto her feet. The moment she stood, she collapsed again. After spending so long in a crouched position, her muscles were unable to support her body. Coupled with the pain in her ribs, she could do nothing but clutch her side and gasp.
Takara’s eye twitched at the sight. Rather than exhibit a shred of sympathy, she tapped her toe and rolled her eyes.
After a huff, she opened the door and snapped her fingers. Rajesh appeared in the doorway a moment later. “Carry her,” Takara said. Without further explanation, she left the room.
