EVERYTHING HURT, BUT I no longer cared.
Well, I did, because no one wanted to be in pain. It was a survival instinct. But insofar as my rational mind was capable of overcoming my physical state, I embraced the pain, I let it throw me into frantic motion. I was sweat-soaked and exhausted and ready for more. Anything to make it easier to be this burning, writhing thing I had become.
I didn’t want to take Cisi Kereseth to the quiet place Akos had claimed as his own in the wake of the attack, the old woman’s shop off an alley in Galo. There was too much of him there, in the bubbling pots and tap of the knife against the cutting board.
As Cisi, Yssa, and I exited the cafeteria, a young woman, with densely curled hair cut short, spat on the ground near my feet.
Oruzo, she called me.
The literal translation was “a mirror image,” but the real sense of the word was that one person had become another, or was so similar to them as to be indistinguishable. So, after the attack on Voa, many of the exiles had taken to calling me “Oruzo”—successor to Ryzek, to Lazmet, to the Noavek family. It was a way to blame me for all the lives lost in the failed evacuation, because of my foolishness. If I hadn’t sent that message to them, telling them to flee—
But time could not run backward.
I walked too fast for Yssa and Cisi to keep up, so that I wouldn’t have to speak to them. Cisi had gone to be with that woman, the one who had destroyed my home, and I would not forget.
Akos was hunched over a pot when I reached the shop, dipping a finger in whatever he was brewing—likely a painkiller, as his perceived duty to me was his only motivator these days. He sucked the fingertip, tasting what he had made, and swore, loudly, in Thuvhesit.
“Wrong again?” the old woman asked him. She was sitting on a stool, peeling whatever-it-was into a bowl at her feet.
“The only thing I’m good for and I can’t even get it right,” he snapped.
He looked up at me, and flushed bright red.
“Oh,” he said. “Hi.”
“I’m here to—” I paused. “Your sister is here.”
I stepped aside to reveal her. They stood at that distance from each other for a few long, quiet moments. He turned off the burner, and crossed the room, folding her into a hug. She squeezed him back.
“What are you doing here?” he asked her softly.
“I’m here to open peace talks with the exiles,” she said.
I snorted. Not only was her mission ridiculous—how could we have peace talks with a nation that had destroyed the sojourn ship?—but she had also lied to me about it.
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” she added over her shoulder to me. “I thought you were going to hit me, so I reached for the most convenient excuse to be here.”
“Cyra would never hit you,” Akos said.
The way he said it, without hesitation or doubt, made my chest ache. He was the only one who had ever thought so well of me.
“If you are all going to stand around chatting, do it somewhere else,” the old woman said, getting to her feet. “My shop is too small and my fuse too short for such nonsense.”
“I’m sorry for the waste of your ingredients, Zenka,” Akos said to her.
“I learn a great deal from your failed attempts, as well as your successful ones,” Zenka said to him, not unkindly. “Now go.”
Her lined face turned to me, and she gave me a look of appraisal.
“Miss Noavek,” she said as I retreated into the alley, by way of greeting.
I nodded back, and slipped away.
There was no room to walk side by side in the alley, so we filed down it one by one, with Yssa in the lead and Akos bringing up the rear. Over Yssa’s shoulder, I saw Sifa and Eijeh waiting for us in the hard-packed street beyond the alley. Sifa pretended to be interested in the little glowing fish at the stall nearest to her, kept in tall cylinders full of water, but I wasn’t fooled. She was waiting for us.
Eijeh looked nervously over his shoulder. His hair was curling behind his ears now, grown out enough to show its natural texture. There was a slim ribbon sewed into the shoulders of his shirt, and it glowed a faint blue. Most people here adopted some elements of Ogran dress, so they would be visible in the dark. Not me, though.
I knew I had no place here, at this impromptu Kereseth reunion—which was probably orchestrated by the oracles, if Sifa and Eijeh’s presence meant what I thought it did. I moved to leave, meaning to disappear into the constant night, but Akos knew me too well. I felt the shock of his hand, pressing against the small of my back. It was brief, but it sent a shiver through me.
Do that again, I thought.
Never do that again, I also thought.
“Sorry,” he said, in low Shotet. “But—would you stay?”
Behind him, Cisi and Sifa embraced, Sifa’s hand running over Cisi’s curls with a tenderness I remembered from my own mother.
Akos’s gray eyes—set now in a face more sallow than it had any right to be—begged me to stay. I had distracted myself from him in the week since the attack, refusing most of the comfort he offered, unless it was in the form of a painkiller. I couldn’t let myself stay close to him now, knowing that he was only here because of his own fatalism. He made me weak, though. He always had.
“Fine,” I said.
“I hoped you would come,” Sifa was saying to Cisi, whose eyes were on Eijeh. He held himself at a distance from the others, plucking at his cuticles. His posture and gestures were still like those of my late brother. It was . . . disconcerting.
“Eijeh thought it was likely,” she continued. “He’s only a beginner, but his intuition is strong. So we came to facilitate a particular path.”
“Ah, you’re admitting to it this time?” I said, my arms crossed to disguise the clench of my hands.
Akos’s fingertips touched one of my elbows, sending the pain away. I didn’t let myself look at him.
“Yes,” Sifa said. Her hair was in a pile of curls on top of her head, a hatpin stuck through the middle of it so it stayed in place. The little jewels at the end of the pin glowed pale pink. “Come. We’re wanted elsewhere.”
“Probably,” Eijeh qualified.
“Probably,” Sifa repeated.
“You’re not making me want to spend more time with oracles,” I said.
Akos’s lips twitched into a smile.
“And what a shame that is,” Eijeh replied drily. “Our loss, I’m sure.”
I stared at him. I had never heard Eijeh Kereseth make a joke before, particularly not at my expense.
There was no time to retort, because I turned and saw a menacing sight: the outline of an Ogran transport vessel. Its edges were lined with white tubes of light, but the persistent dark flattened them, making the whole thing look like the face of a beast, hanging in the air. Tucked-back wings became ears, a vent beneath the forward fuselage was a mouth, and the tail was a single horn.
An Ogran in a flight suit came toward us. His skin was dark brown, but his eyes were iridescent, like the scales of a fish. They caught all the light around them and tossed it back, silvery-bright. A manifestation of his currentgift, I was certain, though what it did was as yet a mystery.
Somewhere to my right, Yssa uttered what sounded like an Ogran curse word under her breath.