THAT NIGHT I DIDN’T take a painkiller. I couldn’t rely on Akos to make it anymore, after all, and I didn’t really trust myself to make it alone yet.
When I returned to my room I found the dagger I had given Akos on my pillow. Left there as a warning, by Ryzek, I assumed. I locked Akos’s room from the outside.
It was hard to say whether he wasn’t speaking to me, or I wasn’t speaking to him. In any case, we didn’t exchange words. The Sojourn Festival carried on all around us, and I was called to stand at my brother’s side, dark-streaked and silent, at some of the festivities. Akos was always at my back, his occasional touch compulsory, his gaze distant. Every time his skin grazed mine to bring relief, I twitched away at first, all trust gone.
Most of the time I spent at the arena, presiding over challenges at Ryzek’s side. Arena challenges—one-on-one, public fights—were a long-standing Shotet tradition, originally intended as a sport to hone our combat skills in the days when we had been weak and abused by almost everyone in the galaxy. Now, during the week of the Sojourn Festival, it was legal to challenge almost anyone you had a grievance with to fight, either until one person surrendered, or until death.
However, a person couldn’t challenge someone whose social status—arbitrarily decided by Ryzek, or someone he appointed—exceeded their own. As a result, people often chose to provoke their true enemies by targeting the people around them, friends and loved ones, until the other extended the challenge. As the festival advanced, the fights became bloodier and more deadly.
So I dreamt of death, and death filled my days.
The day after I turned sixteen, the day before we boarded the sojourn ship, and five days after Ryzek began trading memories with Eijeh, Akos Kereseth received the armor he had earned long ago, at the soldier camp.
I had just finished running sprints in the gym, so I was pacing back and forth in my bedroom, catching my breath, sweat dripping down the back of my neck. Vas knocked on the doorframe, a polished armor vest dangling from one of his hands.
“Where’s Kereseth?” Vas said.
I took him down the hallway, and unlocked Akos’s door. Akos was sitting on his bed, and judging by his unfocused gaze, he was drugged by hushflower, which he now consumed petal by petal, raw. He stashed them in his pockets.
Vas tossed the armor at Akos, who caught it with both hands. He handled it like it might shatter, turning it over and running his fingers over each dark-blue panel.
“It is as much as you earned, I’m told, under Vakrez’s teaching last season,” Vas said.
“How is my brother?” Akos said, throaty.
“He no longer needs a lock to stay in his room,” Vas said. “He stays of his own free will.”
“That’s not true. It can’t be.”
“Vas,” I said. “Go.”
I knew rising tension when I felt it. And I didn’t really want to watch whatever happened when it broke.
Vas tilted his head as he regarded me, then bowed slightly, and left.
Akos held the armor up to the light. It was built for him—with adjustable straps to accommodate his inevitable growth, flexibility through the rib cage, extra padding over his stomach, which he always forgot to protect when we trained. There was a sheath built into the right shoulder so he could draw over his head with his left hand. It was a high honor, to wear this kind of armor, especially at such a young age.
“I’m going to lock you in again now,” I said.
“Is there any way to undo what Ryzek does?” Akos asked, like he hadn’t heard me. He looked like he had lost the strength to stand. I thought of refusing to answer him.
“Short of asking Ryzek nicely to trade the memories back and hoping he’s in a giving mood, no.”
Akos stood and dropped the armor over his head. When he tried to tighten the first strap over his rib cage, he winced, shaking out his hand. The straps were made of the same material as the rest of it, and they were hard to maneuver. I pinched the strap between my fingers, tugging him toward me. My own fingers were already callused.
I pulled at the strap, working it back and forth until it was pulled tight around his side.
“I didn’t mean to involve you,” Akos said quietly.
“Oh, don’t patronize me,” I said tersely. “Manipulating me was a crucial part of your plan. And it’s exactly what I expected.”
I finished with the straps, and stepped back. Oh, I thought. He was tall—so tall—and strong and armored, the dark blue skin of the creature he had hunted still rich with color. He looked like a Shotet soldier, like someone I could have wanted, if we had found a way to trust each other.
“Fine,” Akos said, again in that quiet voice. “I meant to involve you. But I didn’t expect to feel bad about it.”
I felt choked. I didn’t know why. I ignored it.
“And now you want me to help you feel less bad, is that it?” I said. Before he could answer, I walked out, bringing the door closed behind me.
Before Akos and me were the dusty streets of Voa, behind a tall metal fence. A large, shrill crowd waited for us beyond it. Ryzek stepped out of the house with his long, pale arm raised to greet them, and they let out a dissonant cry.
The Sojourn Festival was almost over. Today all the able-bodied and of-age Shotet would board the sojourn ship, and soon after that, we would leave this planet behind.
Vas followed Ryzek out the door, and then, dressed in a clean white shirt and looking more present than I had ever seen him: Eijeh. His shoulders were back, his steps wider, as if for a taller man, his mouth curled at one corner. Eijeh’s eyes passed over his brother and scanned the street beyond Noavek manor.
“Eijeh,” Akos said, his voice breaking.
Eijeh’s face betrayed some recognition, as if he had spotted his brother from a great distance. I turned toward Akos.
“Later,” I said harshly, grabbing the front of his armor. I couldn’t have him breaking down with all these people watching us. “Not here, not now. Okay?”
As I pulled away, released him, I watched his throat work to swallow. He had a freckle under his jaw, near his ear; I had never seen it before.
His eyes still on Eijeh, Akos nodded.
Ryzek descended the steps, and we all followed him. The sojourn ship shaded us, casting Voa in shadow. Decades of the sojourn had produced the city that surrounded us, a patchwork of old stone structures reinforced with clay and new technology scavenged from other cultures and lands: low buildings with glass spires built on top of them, reflecting images of other planets; dusty, dirt-packed streets with sleek reflective ships gliding above them; street carts selling current-channeling talismans next to carts selling screen implants that could be wedged beneath a person’s skin.
That morning, between surges of pain, I had traced and shaded my dark eyes with blue powder, and braided my thick hair. I wore the armor I had earned at the edge of the Divide when I was younger, and the guard around my left forearm.
I looked back at Akos. He was armored, too, of course, with new black boots and a long-sleeved gray shirt that pulled too tight around his forearms. He looked afraid. He had told me that morning, as we walked to the entrance of the manor, that he had never been off-planet before. And then there was Eijeh, changed, walking right in front of us. There was plenty to fear.
As we passed through the gate, I nodded to him, and he released my arm. It was time for my eleventh Procession, and I wanted to make it to the transport vessel on my own strength.
The walk passed in a haze. Shouting, applauding, Ryzek’s fingers finding outstretched hands and squeezing. His laugh, my breaths, Akos’s trembling hands. Dust in the air, and smoke from cooked food.
I finally made it inside the transport vessel, where Eijeh and Vas were already waiting. Eijeh was adjusting his own straps with the ease of someone who had done it a dozen times before. I pulled Akos toward a seat in the back, wanting to keep him separate from his brother. A great roar sounded from the crowd as Ryzek waved from the doorway.
Just after the hatch closed, Eijeh fell into the straps holding him in his seat, his eyes wide but also blank, like he was staring at something none of the rest of us could see. Ryzek, who had been fastening his own restraints, undid them and sat forward, his face inches from Eijeh’s.
“What is it?” Ryzek said.
“A vision of trouble,” Eijeh said. “An act of defiance. Public.”
“Preventable?” It was almost as if they had had this exact conversation before. Maybe they had.
“Yes, but in this case, you should let it come,” Eijeh said, now focusing on Ryzek. “You can use it to your advantage. I have a plan.”
Ryzek narrowed his eyes. “Tell me.”
“I would, but we have an audience.” Eijeh jerked his head toward the back of the vessel, where Akos sat across from me.
“Yes, your brother is an inconvenience, isn’t he?” Ryzek clicked his tongue.
Eijeh didn’t disagree. He leaned back in his seat, and closed his eyes as we launched.
The loading dock of the sojourn ship was one of my favorite places, vast and open, a maze of metal. Before us was a fleet of transport vessels ready to take us to a planet’s surface—polished to perfection now, but soon to return streaked with dirt and smoke and rain and stardust, badges of where they had been.
They were not round and squat like passenger floaters, or jagged and hulking like the sojourn ship. Instead, they were smooth and sleek, like birds caught mid-dive, with their wings folded back. Each one was multicolored, formed from different metals, and big enough to hold at least six passengers, though some were larger.
Mechanics in dark blue jumpsuits swarmed our vessel when it landed. Ryzek got off first, jumping down before the steps had even descended from the hatch.
Akos had come to his feet, his hands squeezed into fists so tight I could see tendons standing out from knuckle bone.
“Are you still in there?” Akos asked Eijeh, quiet.
Eijeh sighed, and dragged one fingernail under another. I watched him carefully. Ryzek was obsessed with clean fingernails, and would sooner have broken one off than allow dirt beneath it. Was this gesture, Eijeh scraping fingernails clean, something that belonged to him, too, or was it Ryzek’s, a sign of Eijeh’s transformation? How much of my brother now pulsed inside of Eijeh Kereseth?
He answered, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.” Akos pressed a hand to his brother’s chest and pushed him back against the metal wall of the vessel—not violently, but urgently, leaning in close. “Do you remember me? Cisi? Dad?”
“I remember . . .” Eijeh blinked slowly, like he was just waking. “I remember your secrets.” He scowled at Akos. “The time you stole with our mother after the rest of us went to sleep. How you followed me around all the time because you couldn’t manage on your own. Is that what you mean?”
Tears shone in Akos’s eyes.
“That isn’t all of it,” Akos said. “That isn’t all I am to you. You have to know that. You—”
“Enough.” Vas walked to the back of the ship. “Your brother is coming with me, Kereseth.”
Akos’s hands twitched at his sides, itching to strangle. He was Vas’s height now, so their eyes met on the same plane, but he had half the other man’s bulk. Vas was a war machine, a man of muscle. I couldn’t even imagine the two fighting; all I could see was Akos on the ground, limp.
Akos lunged, and so did I. His hand was just reaching for Vas’s throat when I got to them, one hand on each chest, pressing them apart. It was surprise, not strength, that made this effective; they both moved backward, and I wedged myself between them.
“Come with me,” I said to Akos. “Now.”
Vas laughed. “Better listen to her, Kereseth. Those aren’t little heart tattoos she hides under that arm guard.”
Then he took Eijeh’s arm, and together they left the ship. I waited until I could no longer hear their footsteps before backing off.
“He’s one of the best soldiers in Shotet,” I said to Akos. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“You have no idea,” Akos snapped. “Have you ever even cared about someone enough to hate the person who took them from you, Cyra?”
An image of my mother came to mind, a vein in her forehead bulging, like it always did when she was angry. She was scolding Otega for taking me to dangerous parts of the city during our lessons, or for cutting my hair to my chin, I couldn’t remember which. I had loved her even in those moments, because I knew she was paying attention, unlike my father, who didn’t even look me in the eye.
I said, “Lashing out at Vas because of what happened to Eijeh will only get you injured and me aggravated. So take some hushflower and get ahold of yourself before I shove you out the loading bay doors.”
For a moment it looked like he might refuse, but then, shaking, he slid a hand into his pocket and took out one of the raw hushflower petals he kept there. He pressed it into his cheek.
“Good,” I said. “Time to go.”
I stuck out my elbow, and he put his hand around it. Together we walked through the empty hallways of the sojourn ship, which were polished metal, loud with echoes of distant feet and voices.
My quarters on the warship looked nothing like my wing of Noavek manor—the latter had dark, polished floors and clean white walls, impersonal, but the former was packed with objects from other worlds. Exotic plants suspended in resin and hanging from the ceiling like a chandelier. Mechanical, glowing insects buzzing in circles around them. Lengths of fabric that changed color depending on the time of day. A stain-spattered stove and a metal coldbox, so I didn’t have to go to the cafeteria.
Along the far wall, past the little table where I ate my meals, were hundreds of old discs that held holograms of dancing, fighting, sports in other places. I loved to mimic the staggering, collapsing techniques of Ogra dancers or the stiff, structured ritual dances of Tepes. It helped me focus through the pain. There were history lessons among the discs, too, and films from other planets: old news broadcasts; long, dry documentaries about science and language; recordings of concerts. I had watched them all.
My bed was in the corner, under a porthole and a net of tiny burnstone lanterns, the blankets still rumpled from the last time I had slept in it. I didn’t allow anyone into my quarters on the sojourn ship, not even to clean.
Dangling from a hole in the ceiling, between the preserved plants, was a length of rope; it led to the room above, which I used for training, among other things.
I cleared my throat. “You’ll be staying through here,” I said, crossing the crowded space. I waved my hand over the sensor next to a closed door; it slid open to reveal another room, also with a single porthole to the outside. “It used to be an obscenely large closet. These were my mother’s private quarters, before she died.” I was babbling. I didn’t know how to talk to him anymore, now that he had drugged me and taken advantage of my kindness, now that he had lost the thing he had been fighting for and I hadn’t done anything to stop it. Which was my pattern: stand by while Ryzek wreaks havoc.
Akos had paused next to the door to look at the armor that decorated the wall. It was nothing like Shotet armor, bulky or unnecessarily decorated, but some of it was beautiful, made of gleaming orange metal or draped with durable black fabric. He made his way into the next room slowly.
It looked a lot like the one he had left behind in Noavek manor: all the supplies and equipment necessary to brew poisons and potions were along one wall, arranged the way he liked it. In the week before his betrayal, I had sent a picture of his setup ahead of us to be copied exactly. There was a bed with dark gray sheets—most Shotet fabric was blue, so the sheets had been hard to find. The burnstones in the lanterns above the bed had been dusted with jealousy powder, so they burned yellow. There were books on elmetahak and Shotet culture on the low bookcase next to the bed. I pressed a button next to the door, and a huge, holographic map of our location sprawled over the ceiling—right now it displayed Voa, since we were still hovering above it, but it would show our path through the galaxy as we traveled.
“I know quarters are close here,” I said. “But space on the ship is limited. I tried to make it livable for us both.”
“You made this place?” he said, turning toward me. I couldn’t read his expression. I nodded.
“Unfortunately, we’ll have to share a bathroom.” Still babbling. “But it’s not for long.”
“Cyra,” he interrupted. “Nothing is blue. Not even the clothes. And the iceflowers are labeled in Thuvhesit.”
“Your people think blue is cursed. And you can’t read Shotet,” I said quietly. My currentshadows started to move faster, sprawling under my skin and pooling beneath my cheeks. My head pounded so hard I had to blink away tears. “The books on elmetahak are in Shotet, unfortunately, but there’s a translation device next to them. Just place it over the page, and—”
“But after what I did to you . . .” he began.
“I sent the instructions before that,” I replied.
Akos sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry, about . . . everything. I just wanted to get him out. It was all I could think about.”
His brow was a straight, low line above his eyes that made it too easy to see his sadness as anger. He had cut his chin shaving.
There was a rumble in his whisper: “He was the last thing I had left.”
“I know,” I replied, but I didn’t know, not really. I had watched Ryzek do things that made my stomach turn. But it was different for me than it was for Akos. I at least knew that I was capable of similar horrors. He had no way of understanding what Eijeh had become.
“How do you keep doing this?” he said. “Keep going, when everything is so horrible?”
Horrible. Was that what life was? I had never put a word to it. Pain had a way of breaking time down. I thought about the next minute, the next hour. There wasn’t enough space in my mind to put all those pieces together, to find words to summarize the whole of it. But the “keep going” part, I knew the words for.
“Find another reason to go on,” I said. “It doesn’t have to be a good one, or a noble one. It just has to be a reason.”
I knew mine: There was a hunger inside me, and there always had been. That hunger was stronger than pain, stronger than horror. It gnawed even after everything else inside me had given up. It was not hope; it did not soar; it slithered, clawed, and dragged, and it would not let me stop.
And when I finally named it, I found it was something very simple: the desire to live.
That night was the last night of the Sojourn Festival, when the last few transport vessels landed in the loading bay and we all feasted on the sojourn ship together. The people we brought with us were supposed to be energetic by now, their confidence and determination bolstered by the celebratory events of the past week, and it seemed to me that they were. The crowd that carried Akos and me on their tide toward the loading bay was buoyant and loud. I was careful to keep my bare skin away from them; I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by causing people pain.
I walked to the platform where Ryzek stood braced against the railing, Eijeh at his right. Where was Vas?
I wore my Shotet armor, polished to perfection, over a long, sleeveless black dress. The fabric brushed the toes of my boots as I moved.
Ryzek’s kill marks were on full display; he kept his arm flexed to show them at their best. Someday he would begin a second row, like my father. When I arrived, he flashed a smile at me, which made me shudder.
I took my place on his left at the railing. I was supposed to display my currentgift at times like these, to remind all the people around us that despite Ryzek’s charm, we were not to be trifled with. I tried to accept the pain, absorb it like I did the cold wind when I had forgotten to wear the right coat, but I found it difficult to focus. In front of me, the waiting crowd wavered and swam. I wasn’t supposed to wince; I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. . . .
I let out a relieved exhale when the last two transport vessels drifted through the open loading bay hatch. Everyone applauded when the ships’ doors opened, and the last group of Shotet spilled in. Ryzek held up both of his hands to quiet the crowd. It was time for his welcoming speech.
But just as Ryzek opened his mouth, a young woman stepped forward from the group that had just left the transport vessel. She had a long blond braid and wore, not the bright colors of the more common Shotet in the crowd below, but subtle blue-gray finery to match her eyes. It was a popular color among Shotet’s wealthy.
She was Lety Zetsyvis, Uzul’s daughter. She held a currentblade high in the air, and the dark tendrils wrapped around her hand like strings, binding the blade to her body.
“The first child of the family Noavek,” she shouted, “will fall to the family Benesit!”
It was my brother’s fate, spoken plainly.
“That is your fate, Ryzek Noavek!” Lety shouted. “To fail us, and to fall!”
Vas, who had pushed through the crowd, now seized her wrist with the certainty of a well-trained warrior. He bent over her, pressing her hand back so she was forced to her knees. Her currentblade clattered to the floor.
“Lety Zetsyvis,” Ryzek said, lilting. It was so quiet in the room that he didn’t even need to raise his voice. He was smiling as she struggled against Vas’s grip, her fingers turning white under the pressure.
“That fate . . . is a lie told by the people who want to destroy us,” he began. Beside him, Eijeh bobbed his head a little, like Ryzek’s voice was a song he knew by heart. Maybe that was why Ryzek didn’t look surprised to see Lety on her knees below us—because Eijeh had seen it coming. Thanks to his oracle, Ryzek already knew what to say, what to do.
“They are people who fear us for our strength and seek to undermine us: the Assembly. Thuvhe,” Ryzek continued. “Who taught you to believe such lies, Lety? I wonder why it is that you espouse the same views as the people who came to your house to murder your father?”
So that was how Ryzek was twisting things. Now, instead of Lety declaring my brother’s fate, a crusader for the truth, she was spouting the same lies that our Thuvhesit enemies supposedly told. She was a traitor, possibly even one who had allowed assassins to penetrate her family’s home so they could kill her father. Ridiculous, really, but sometimes people just believed what they were told. It was easier to survive that way.
“My father was not murdered,” Lety said in a low voice. “He took his own life, because you tortured him, you tortured him with that thing you call a sister, and the pain was driving him mad.”
Ryzek smiled at her as if she was the mad one, spewing nonsense. He cast his gaze all around him at the people who waited with bated breath to hear his response.
“This,” he said, gesturing to Lety. “This is the poison our enemies wish to use to destroy us—from within, not without. They tell lies to turn us against each other, to turn us against our own families and friends. That is why we must protect ourselves against not only their potential threats to our lives, but also their words. We are a people who has been weak before. We must not become so again.”
I felt it, the shiver that went through the crowd at his words. We had just spent a week remembering how far our ancestors had come, battered across the galaxy, our children taken from us, our beliefs about scavenging and renewal universally derided. We had learned to fight back, season by season. Even though I knew that Ryzek’s true intentions were not to protect Shotet, but rather himself and the Noavek dynasty, I was still almost taken in by the emotion in his voice, and the power he offered us like an outstretched hand.
“And there is no more effective blow than to strike against me, the leader of our great people.” He shook his head. “This poison cannot be allowed to spread through our society. It must be drained, drop by drop, until it poses no more harm.”
Lety’s eyes were full of hate.
“Because you are the daughter of one of our most beloved families, and because you are clearly in pain after the loss of your father, I will give you a chance to fight for your life in the arena instead of simply losing it. And since you assign some of this supposed blame to my sister, it is she who will face you there,” Ryzek said. “I hope you see this as the mercy it is.”
I was too stunned to protest—and too aware of what the consequences would be: Ryzek’s wrath. Looking like a coward in front of all these people. Losing my reputation as someone to fear, which was my only leverage. And then, of course, the truth about my mother, which always loomed over Ryzek and me.
I remembered the way people chanted my mother’s name as we walked the streets of Voa during my first Procession. Her people had loved her, the way she held strength and mercy in tension. If they knew that I was responsible for her passing, they would destroy me.
Veins of dark stained my skin as I stared down at Lety. She gritted her teeth, and stared back. I could tell she would take my life with pleasure.
As Vas jerked Lety to her feet, people in the crowd shouted at her: “Traitor!” “Liar!” I felt nothing, not even fear. Not even Akos’s hand, catching my arm to soothe me.
“You okay?” Akos asked me.
I shook my head.
We stood in the anteroom just outside the arena. It was dim but for the glow of our city through the porthole, reflecting sunlight for a few hours yet. The room was adorned with portraits of the Noavek family over the door: my grandmother, Lasma Noavek, who had murdered all her brothers and sisters to ensure that her own bloodline was fate-favored; my father, Lazmet Noavek, who had tormented the goodness from my brother because of his weak fate; and Ryzek Noavek, pale and young, the product of two vicious generations. My darker skin and sturdier build meant I took after my mother’s family, a branch of the Radix line, distant relation to the first man Akos had killed. All the portraits wore the same mild smiles, bound by their dark wooden frames and fine clothing.
Ryzek and every Shotet soldier who could fit in the hall waited outside. I could hear their chatter through the walls. Challenges weren’t permitted during the sojourn, but there was an arena in the ship anyway, for practice matches and the occasional performance. My brother had declared that the challenge would take place just after his welcome speech, but before the feast. Nothing like a good fight to the death to make Shotet soldiers hungry, after all.
“Was it true, what that woman said?” Akos said. “Did you do that to her father?”
“Yes,” I said, because I thought it was better not to lie. But it wasn’t better; it didn’t feel better that way.
“What is Ryzek holding over you?” Akos said. “To make you do things you can barely stand to admit to?”
The door opened, and I shuddered, thinking the time had come. But Ryzek closed the door behind him, standing beneath his own portrait. It didn’t look quite like him anymore, the face in it too round and spotted.
“What do you want?” I said to him. “Aside from the execution you commanded without even consulting me, that is.”
“What would I have gained by consulting you?” Ryzek said. “I would have had to hear your irritating protestations first, and then, when I reminded you of how foolish you were to trust this one”—here he nodded toward Akos—“how that foolishness nearly lost me my oracle, when I offered this arena challenge to you as a way to make it up to me, you would agree to do it.”
I closed my eyes, briefly.
“I came to tell you that you are to leave your knife behind,” Ryzek said.
“No knife?” Akos demanded. “She could get stabbed before she ever has a chance to lay a hand on that woman! Do you want her to die?”
No, I answered in my own head. He wanted me to kill. Just not with a knife.
“She knows what I want,” Ryzek said. “And she knows what will happen if I don’t get it. Best of luck, little sister.”
He swept out of the room. He was right: I knew, I always knew. He wanted everyone to see that the shadows that traveled under my skin were good for more than just pain, they also made me lethal. Not just Ryzek’s Scourge. Time for my promotion to Ryzek’s Executioner.
“Help me take my armor off,” I mumbled.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t question me,” I snapped. “Help me take my armor off.”
“You don’t want your armor?” Akos said. “Are you just going to let her kill you?”
I started on the first strap. My fingers were callused, but the straps were pulled so tight they still stung my fingertips. I forced them back and forth in small increments, my movements jerky and frantic. Akos covered my hand with his own.
“No,” I said. “I don’t need armor. I don’t need a knife.”
Twisting around my knuckles were the shadows, dense and dark as paint.
I had taken great pains to ensure that no one else discovered what had happened to my mother—what I had done to her. But it was better that Akos knew, before he suffered for knowing me, more than he already had. Better that he never look at me with sympathy again than that he believe a lie.
“How do you think my mother died?” I laughed. “I touched her, and I pushed all the light and all the pain into her, all because I was angry about having to go to some other doctor for some other ineffective treatment for my currentgift. All she wanted to do was help me, but I threw a tantrum, and it killed her.” I tugged my forearm guard down just enough to reveal a crooked scar carved just below my elbow, on the outside of my arm. My first kill mark. “My father carved the mark. He hated me for it, but he was also . . . proud.”
I choked on the word.
“You want to know what Ryzek is holding over me?” I laughed again, this time through tears. I tugged the last strap of my chest armor loose, yanked it over my head, and hurled it at the wall with both hands. When it collided with the metal, the sound was deafening in the small anteroom.
The armor dropped to the floor, unharmed. It hadn’t even lost its shape.
“My mother. My beloved, revered mother was taken from him, from Shotet,” I spat at him. Loud, my voice was loud. “I took her. I took her from myself.”
It would have been easier if he had looked at me with loathing or disgust. He didn’t. He reached for me, his hands carrying relief, and I walked out of the anteroom and into the arena. I didn’t want relief. I had earned this pain.
The crowd roared when I walked out. The black floor of the arena shone like glass; it had likely just been polished for the occasion. I saw my boots reflected in it, the buckles undone. Rising up all around me were rows of metal benches, packed with observers, their faces too dark to see clearly. Lety was already there, dressed in her Shotet armor, wearing heavy shoes with metal toes, shaking out her hands.
I assessed her right away, according to the teachings of elmetahak: she was a head shorter than I was, but muscular. Her blond hair was tied in a tight knot at the back of her head to keep it out of the way. She was a student of zivatahak, so she would be fast, nimble, in the seconds before she lost.
“Didn’t even bother to put on your armor?” Lety sneered at me. “This will be easy.”
Yes, it would.
She drew her currentblade, her hand wrapped in dark current—like my currentshadows in color, but not in form. For her, though they wrapped around her wrist, they never touched her skin. But my current was buried inside me. She paused, waiting for me to draw.
“Go on,” I said, and I beckoned to her.
The crowd roared again, and then I couldn’t hear them anymore. I was focused on Lety, the way she was inching toward me, trying to read strategy into my actions. But I was just standing there, my arms limp at my sides, letting my currentgift’s strength build along with my fear.
Finally she decided to make her first move. I saw it in her arms and legs before she budged, and stepped aside when she lunged, arching away from her like an Ogra dancer. The move startled her; she stumbled forward, catching herself on the arena wall.
My currentshadows were so dense now, so painful, that I could hardly see straight. Pain roared through me, and I welcomed it. I remembered Uzul Zetsyvis’s contorted face between my stained hands, and I saw him in his daughter, her brow furrowed with concentration.
She lunged again, this time driving her blade toward my ribs, and I batted her aside with my forearm, then reached over her to grab her wrist. I twisted, hard, and forced her head down. I kneed her in the face. Blood spilled over her lips, and she screamed. But not from the wound. From my touch.
The currentblade fell between us. Keeping my hand on one of her arms, I pushed her to her knees with the other, and moved to stand behind her. I found Ryzek in the crowd, sitting on the raised platform with his legs crossed, like he was watching a lecture or a speech instead of a murder.
I waited until his eyes found mine, and then I pushed. I pushed all the shadow, all the pain, into Lety Zetsyvis’s body, keeping none of it for myself. It was easy, so easy, and quick. I closed my eyes as she screamed and shuddered, and then she was gone.
For a moment, everything was dim. I released her limp body, then turned to walk into the anteroom again. The entire crowd was silent. As I passed through the doorway to the anteroom, I was, for once, clear of shadows. It was only temporary. They would return soon.
Just out of sight, Akos reached for me, pulling me against him. He pressed me to his chest in something like an embrace, and said something to me in the language of my enemies.
“It’s over,” he said, in whispered Thuvhesit. “It’s over now.”
Later that night, I barred the door to my quarters so no one could come in. Akos sterilized a knife over the burners in his room, and cooled it with water from the faucet. I rested my arm on the table, then undid the fasteners on my forearm guard, one by one, beginning at the wrist and ending at the elbow. The guard was stiff and hard, and despite its lining, made my skin moist with sweat by the end of the day.
Akos sat across from me, sterilized knife in hand, and watched me peel the edges of the wrist guard back to reveal the bare skin beneath. I didn’t ask him what he imagined. He had probably assumed, like most people, that the guard covered row after row of kill marks. That I had chosen to cover them because, somehow, fostering the mystery around them made me more menacing. I had never discouraged that rumor. The truth was so much worse.
There were marks up and down my arm, from elbow to wrist, row after row. Little dark lines, perfectly spaced, each one the same length. And through each one, a small diagonal hash mark, negating it under Shotet law.
Akos’s brow furrowed, and he took my arm in both hands, holding me with just his fingertips. He turned my arm over, running his fingers down one of the rows. When he reached the end, he touched his index finger to one of the hashes, turning his arm to compare it to his own. I shivered to see our skin side by side, mine tawny and his pale.
“These aren’t kills,” he said quietly.
“I only marked my mother’s passing,” I said, just as quietly. “Make no mistake, I am responsible for more deaths, but I stopped recording them after her. Until Zetsyvis, anyway.”
“And instead, you record . . . what?” He squeezed my arm. “What are all these marks for?”
“Death is a mercy compared to the agony I have caused. So I keep a record of pain, not kills. Each mark is someone I have hurt because Ryzek told me to.” I had counted the marks, at first, always sure of their number. I had not known, then, exactly how long Ryzek would put me to use as his interrogator. Over time, though, I had just stopped keeping track. Knowing the number only made it worse.
“How old were you, when he first asked you to do this?”
I didn’t understand the tone of his voice, with all its softness. I had just shown him proof of my own monstrousness, and still his eyes fixed on mine with sympathy instead of judgment. He couldn’t possibly understand what I was telling him, to look at me like that. Or he thought I was lying, or exaggerating.
“Old enough to know it was wrong,” I snapped.
“Cyra.” Soft again. “How old?”
I sat back in my chair. “Ten,” I admitted. “And it was my father, not Ryzek, who first asked.”
His head bobbed. He touched the point of the knife to the table and spun the handle in quick circles, marking the wood.
Finally, he said, “When I was ten, I didn’t know my fate yet. So I wanted to be a Hessa soldier, like the ones that patrolled my father’s iceflower fields. He was a farmer.” Akos balanced his chin on a hand as he looked me over. “But one day criminals went into the fields while he was working, to steal some of the harvest, and Dad tried to stop them before the soldiers got there. He came home with this huge gash across his cheek. Mom just started screaming at him.” He laughed a little. “Doesn’t make much sense, does it, yelling at someone for getting hurt?”
“Well, she was afraid for him,” I said.
“Yeah. I was scared, too, I guess, because that night I decided I never wanted to be a soldier, if my job would be to get cut up like that.”
I couldn’t help but laugh a little.
“I know,” he said, his lip curling at the corner. “Little did I know how I would be spending my days now.”
He tapped the table, and I noticed, for the first time, how jagged his nails were, and all the cuts along his cuticles. I would have to break him of the habit of chewing on his own hands.
“My point is,” he continued, “that when I was ten I was so scared of even seeing pain that I could hardly stand it. Meanwhile, when you were ten, you were being told to cause it, over and over again, by someone much more powerful than you were. Someone who was supposed to be taking care of you.”
For a moment I ached at the thought. But only for a moment.
“Don’t try to absolve me of guilt.” I meant to sound sharp, like I was scolding him, but instead I sounded like I was pleading with him. I cleared my throat. “Okay? It doesn’t make it better.”
“Okay,” he said.
“You were taught this ritual?” I asked him.
He nodded.
“Carve the mark,” I said, my throat tight.
I extended my arm, pointing to a square of bare skin on the back of my wrist, beneath the knobby bone. He touched the knifepoint there, adjusted it so it was at the same interval as the other marks, then dug in. Not too deep, but enough that the feathergrass extract could settle.
Tears came to my eyes, unwelcome, and blood bubbled up from the wound. It dripped down the side of my arm as I fumbled in one of the kitchen drawers for the right bottle. He took out the cork, and I dipped the little brush I kept with it. I spoke Lety Zetsyvis’s name as I painted the line he had carved with dark fluid.
It burned. Every time, I thought I would be used to how much it burned, and every time, I was wrong. It was supposed to burn, supposed to remind you that it was no trifling thing, to take a life, to carve a loss.
“You don’t say the other words?” Akos said. He was referring to the prayer, the end of the ritual. I shook my head.
“I don’t either,” he said.
As the burning subsided, Akos wrapped the bandage around my arm, once, twice, three times, and secured it with a piece of tape. Neither of us bothered to clean up the blood on the table. It would probably dry there, and I would have to scrape it off with a knife later, but I didn’t care.
I climbed the rope to the room above us, past the plants preserved in resin and the mechanical beetles perched among them, recharging for the moment. Akos followed me.
The sojourn ship was shuddering, its engines preparing to launch into the atmosphere. The ceiling of the room above us was covered with screens that showed whatever was above us—in this case, the Shotet sky. Pipes and vents crowded the space from all sides—it was only big enough for one person to move around in, really, but along the back wall were emergency jump seats, folded into the wall. I pulled them out, and Akos and I sat.
I helped him fasten the straps across his chest and legs that would keep him steady during launch, and handed him a paper bag in case the ship’s movement made him sick. Then I strapped myself in. All through the ship, the rest of the Shotet would be doing the same thing, gathering in the hallways to pull jump seats from the walls and buckling each other in.
Together we waited for the ship to launch, listening to the countdown on the intercom. When the voice reached “ten,” Akos reached for my hand, and I squeezed, hard, until the voice said “one.”
The Shotet clouds rushed past us, and the force bore down on us, crushing us into our seats. Akos groaned, but I just watched as the clouds moved away and the blue atmosphere faded into the blackness of space. All around us was the starry sky.
“See?” I said, lacing my fingers with his. “It’s beautiful.”