TEKA AND I RETURNED to the small apartment to which Aza had assigned us. It was a single room, with a stove half as wide as the one I had used on the sojourn ship—I thought of its permanent splatters with a sharp pang that made me hesitate with my jacket buttons—and a bathroom we couldn’t both stand in at the same time. Still, there was a little desk where I read late at night, when Teka turned away from the light. She kept tools and wires and computer parts in a box in the corner, and built little things in her spare time, little remote control vehicles with wheels, or a hanging ornament that sparked when the wind blew.
She stripped off her jacket as soon as we were through the door, and tossed it on the bed, its sleeves inside out. I was more careful with mine, undoing each metal button with both hands. The luminous thread was stitched around each buttonhole, keeping it from tearing—a finely made thing, it was, and one I hoped I would get to keep.
Teka was over at my desk, touching her fingers to the page I had left open with a notebook beside it.
“‘The family Kereseth is one of the oldest of the fated families—arguably the first, though they have never expressed much interest in debating that point. Their fates rarely, if ever, guide them toward leadership positions, but rather to sacrifice or, more mysterious still, seemingly unremarkable destinies.’” Teka frowned. “Are you translating this from Ogran yourself?”
I shrugged. “I like languages.”
“Do you speak Ogran?”
“I’m trying to learn it,” I said. “Some scholars say it’s more poetic than most languages—has more rhyming or near-rhyming sounds. I prefer Shotet for poetry, personally, because I don’t enjoy rhymes, but . . .”
She was staring at me.
“. . . I do enjoy the challenge of it. What?”
“You’re odd,” she said.
“You just built a little machine that makes chirping sounds,” I said. “And when I asked you what it was for, you said ‘chirping sounds.’ And I’m the one who’s odd?”
Teka smiled a little. “Fair.”
Her gaze returned to the book. I knew she was about to ask me why I was translating the section about the Kereseth family, and maybe she knew that I knew, too, because she never actually asked the question.
“It’s not what you think. I’m not looking into them because of him,” I said. “It’s . . .”
I hadn’t told anyone what Vara said to me. My Kereseth blood seemed like a secret that ought to be kept. After all, it was the Noavek name that made me useful to the exiles now. Without it, they might dispose of me.
But I had committed worse crimes in front of Teka than having the wrong name, and she was still here. In the past, the idea of trusting another person would have terrified me. But I didn’t feel that fear now.
“The oracle told me something,” I said.
And I told Teka the story.
“Okay, so you’re telling me it doesn’t bother you at all that Akos ended up being attracted to someone who shares genes with a person he believed to be his sister. And mother.” Teka was flopped on the floor, cracking the shells of some kind of Ogran nut—roasted to get rid of its poisonous qualities, of course—with her fingernails.
“I’ll say it one more time,” I said. “He and I. Are not. Related. At all! In any way!”
I was leaned up against the side of the bed, my arms draped over my bent knees.
“Whatever,” Teka said. “Well, at least you aren’t actually planning to commit patricide, then. Since Lazmet isn’t actually your father.”
“You’re really fixating on the blood-relationship thing,” I said. “Just because we aren’t technically related doesn’t mean he’s not my father. And I say that as someone who would really like for him not to be my father.”
“Fine, fine.” She sighed. “We should probably start planning this whole assassination thing, if you have less than a week before you’re talking to Isae.”
“We?” I raised my eyebrows. “I’m the one who volunteered for this stupid mission, not you.”
“You’re obviously going to need my help. For one thing, can you even fly yourself back to Thuvhe?”
“I can fly a ship.”
“Through Ogra’s atmosphere? I don’t think so.”
“Okay,” I said, “so I need a pilot. And a ship.”
“And you need to find out where Lazmet is. And get in, unseen. And figure out how you’re going to kill him. And then how you’re going to get out afterward.” She sat up, and popped the flesh of the nut, stripped of its shell, into her mouth. Tucking it into her cheek, she said, “Face it, you need help. And you’re not going to get many volunteers yourself. You may have observed, the exiles aren’t exactly wild about you.”
“Oh really,” I said flatly. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Well, they’re stupid that way,” Teka said, flapping her hand at me. “I’ll get you the people you need. They like me.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
She threw the broken shell at me, hitting me in the cheek. I felt better than I had in a long time.
Later that night, after hours of talking ourselves in circles about the assassination plan, Teka fell asleep fully clothed in her bed. I cleaned up the shells—which now covered the floor—and sat at the book of fated families to resume my translation.
The sight of the word Kereseth, written in Ogran, sparked heat behind my eyes. I picked up my pen, pausing every few seconds to wipe tears from my eyes or snot from my nose.
I had pretended, with Teka, that I was translating this section of the book to learn more about my own family, that it had nothing to do with Akos.
But the unfortunate truth was that I was still in love with him.