AFTER THE SHOTET TOOK Akos and Eijeh from their home and dragged them across the Divide; after Akos broke free from his wrist cuffs, stole Kalmev Radix’s knife, and stabbed him with it; after they beat Akos so badly he could hardly walk, they took the Kereseth brothers to Voa to present them to Ryzek Noavek. Down the cliff face and through the dusty, winding streets, sure they were both about to die, or worse. Everything had been too loud, too crowded, too little like home.
As they walked down the short tunnel that led to the front gate of Noavek manor, Eijeh had whispered, “I’m so scared.”
Their dad’s death and their kidnapping had cracked him open like an egg. He was even oozing, his eyes always full of tears. The opposite had happened to Akos.
No one cracked Akos.
“I promised Dad I’d get you out of here,” he’d said to Eijeh. “So that’s what I’m going to do, understand? You’ll make it out. That’s a promise to you, this time.”
He’d put his arm over his older brother’s shoulders, pulled him tight to his side. They walked in together.
Now they were out, but they hadn’t walked out together. Akos had had to drag him.
The hold was small and dank, but it had a sink, and that was pretty much all Akos cared about. He stripped to the waist, his shirt too stained to salvage, made the water as hot as he could stand, and worked the greasy soap into lather in his hands. Then he stuck his head under the faucet. Salty water ran into his mouth. As he scrubbed his arms and hands, scraping at the dried blood under his fingernails, he let himself go.
Just sobbed into the stream of water, half horrified and half relieved. Let the splatter sound drown out the strange, heaving noises coming from his own mouth. Let aching muscles shudder in the heat.
He wasn’t really upright when Cyra came down the ladder. He was hanging on the edge of the basin by his armpits, his arms limp around his head. She said his name, and he forced himself to his feet, finding her eyes in the cracked mirror above the faucet. Water ran in rivers down his neck and back, soaking the top of his pants. He turned the water off.
She reached over her head to drag her hair to one side. Her eyes, dark as space, went soft as she looked him over. Currentshadows floated over her arms, draped themselves across her collarbone. Their movements were languid.
“Vas?” she said.
He nodded.
In that moment, he liked all the things she didn’t say more than the things she did. There was no “Good riddance,” or “You did what you had to do,” or even a simple “It will be all right.” Cyra didn’t have the patience for that kind of thing. She fell on the hardest, surest truth, again and again, like a woman determined to crush her own bones, knowing they would heal stronger.
“Come on” was all she said. “Let’s find you some clean clothes.”
She looked tired, but only in the way a person was tired when they’d had a long day at work. And that was another thing about her, too—because so much of her life had been hard, she was steadier than other people when hard things came. Maybe not in such a good way, sometimes.
He pulled the stopper out of the drain so the reddish water disappeared, izit by izit. He dried off on the towel next to the sink. When he turned toward her, the currentshadows went haywire, dancing up her arms and across her chest. She winced a little, but it was different now, not so all-consuming. This was a Cyra who had a little space between her and the pain.
He followed her up the ladder again, down the narrow hall to the storage closet. It was stuffed full of fabric—sheets, towels, and at the bottom, spare clothes. He pulled on an oversize shirt. It felt better to be wearing something clean.
By that time Cyra was on her way to the nav deck, empty now that the transport ship was set to orbit. Near the exit hatch, his mom and Teka were wrapping Ori’s body in white sheets. The galley door was still shut, his sister and Isae inside.
He stood at Cyra’s shoulder, at the observation window. She’d always been drawn to sights like these, big and empty. He couldn’t stand them, but he did like the winking of the stars, the glow of far-off planets, the dark red-purple of the currentstream.
“There is a Shotet poem I like,” she said in clear Thuvhesit. He’d heard her speak just a few Thuvhesit words in all the time they’d spent together. That she spoke it now meant something—they were on equal footing, in a way they couldn’t have been before. She had just about died to make them that way.
He frowned as he chewed on that. What a person did when they were in pain said a lot about them. And Cyra, always in pain, had almost given her life to free him from Shotet prison. He would never forget it.
“The translation is difficult,” she continued. “But roughly, one of the lines reads, ‘The heavy heart knows that justice is done.’”
“Your accent is very good,” he said.
“I like the way the words feel.” She touched her throat. “It reminds me of you.”
Akos took the hand that was on her neck and laced his fingers with hers. The shadows snuffed out. Her brown skin had turned dull, but her eyes were alert as ever. Maybe he could learn to like the big empty of space if he thought of it like her eyes, soft-dark with just a hint of warmth.
“Justice is done,” he repeated. “That’s one way of looking at it, I guess.”
“It’s my way,” she said. “Judging by your expression, I assume you’ve chosen the path of guilt and self-loathing instead.”
“I wanted to kill him,” he said. “I hate that I wanted to do something like that.”
He shuddered again, and stared at his hands. All cracked from hitting things, the same way Vas’s had been.
Cyra waited awhile before responding.
“It’s hard to know what’s right in this life,” she said. “We do what we can, but what we really need is mercy. Do you know who taught me that?” A grin. “You.”
He wasn’t sure how he’d taught her about mercy, but he knew the cost of it, for her. Mercy for Eijeh—and sparing Ryzek’s life, for the time being—meant she had to hold on to the worst of her pain for even longer. It meant trading triumph at last for Isae’s anger and the renegades’ disgust. But she seemed at ease with it, still. No one knew how to bear other people’s hate like Cyra Noavek. Sometimes she even encouraged it, but that didn’t bother him so much. He understood it. She really just thought people were better off staying away from her.
“What?” she said.
“I like you, you know,” he said.
“I know.”
“No, I mean I like you the way you are, I don’t need you to change.” He smiled. “I’ve never thought of you as a monster or a weapon or—what did you call yourself? A rusty—”
She caught the word nail in her mouth. Her fingertips were cool, careful as they ran over the scars and bruises he wore, like she was taking them back. She tasted like sendes leaf and hushflower, like saltfruit and like home.
He put his hands on her, sighing into her skin. They got bolder, fingers laced with fingers, knotted in hair, taking in fistfuls of shirt. Finding soft places nobody else had ever touched, like the bend in her waist, like the underside of his jaw. Their bodies pressed together, hip bone against stomach, knee against thigh . . .
“Hey!” Teka yelled from across the ship. “Not a private place, you two!”
Cyra rocked back on her heels, and glared at Teka.
He knew how she felt. He wanted more. He wanted everything.