THOSE WHO SOLD THEIR goods on carts along the main thoroughfare of Galo were packing up for the day. I stopped to watch the woman who sold sculptures of blown glass—small enough to sit on a palm—wrap them in fabric and set them in a box, lovingly. The storms would come soon, but I would not see another storm on Ogra.
I moved along, toward the ship park where Teka had left her transport vessel for safekeeping and repair. I passed a man waving smoked meat in my face, and sema selling seedlings that snapped and bit at whatever came near them. I would miss the bustle of this place, so like the streets of Voa, but without the feeling of dread I got there.
I had passed the last of the carts—piled with baskets of roasted nuts of all varieties, including some from other planets—when I saw a man crouched in the middle of the street, clutching at his own head. His shirt pulled taut across his shoulders, showing the bones of his spine. I didn’t recognize him as Eijeh until I had already drawn closer. I recoiled at the recognition, bringing my hand back from his shoulder before I touched it.
“Hey,” I said, instead. “Kereseth. What is it?”
He twitched at his name, but didn’t answer, so I took hold of his shoulder, and jostled it a little.
“Eijeh,” I said.
The name was still difficult for me to say, the only vowel-consonant pattern in Thuvhesit that I still struggled with. Though part of me knew Eijeh Kereseth was indeed my brother, I was equally certain that we could never be siblings to each other, because I couldn’t even say his name.
He lifted his head, his eyes swimming with tears. That, at least, was a familiar sight. Eijeh had always been prone to tears, unlike his brother.
“What is it?” I asked him. “Are you ill?”
“No,” he forced out. “No, we got lost. In the future. I knew I would—I knew it was the worst outcome, but I had to see, I had to know—”
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll take you to your mother. I’m sure she can help.”
I couldn’t touch him—not on Ogra, where my currentgift was stronger—but I grabbed a fistful of his shirt, using it to yank him up. He lurched to his feet, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
“You know,” I said, “my mother used to tell me that those who go looking for pain—”
“Find it every time, I know,” he said.
I frowned.
That was something only Ryzek would know.
Surely it had been in one of the memories Ryzek gave Eijeh.
As he wiped his eyes, I saw that his fingernails were bitten down to the beds, and his cuticles were chewed beyond repair. Also a habit of my brother’s. Could he have learned a habit from memories?
I pinched his sleeve, and tugged him toward the temporary lodging I knew the Ograns had given him and Sifa. It was nicer than the one I shared with Teka, because it housed oracles, and it was right in the middle of town. I knew it by the flag—stitched with a red flower—that hung in the window, over the street.
There was a narrow, creaky door between two shops that led up to the place. It had been painted so many times that in the places where the paint peeled, it showed different colors—orange, red, green. The top layer was dark blue. I pushed through it and pulled Eijeh up the narrow steps to the apartment above.
I would have knocked, but the door was already open a crack. Sifa sat inside the living room—decorated with hanging fabrics, some thick and comfortable, others thin and gauzy. Her legs were crossed, her feet bare, her eyes closed. The very picture of a mystic.
My mother.
I hadn’t spoken to her since the morning after I met with Vara. I had avoided her, in fact, pretending that knowing my origins had no impact whatsoever on who I was now. My mother was still Ylira Noavek, my father still Lazmet Noavek, my brother still Ryzek Noavek. Acknowledging the truth of my origins meant admitting they had power over me. And I could not admit that.
I wouldn’t.
I rapped on the door, pushing it open. Sifa turned.
“What happened?” she said, coming to her feet. She was looking at Eijeh’s tear-streaked face.
“I didn’t—I didn’t do what you told me,” he said, wiping his eyes again. “I didn’t ground myself. It was—”
Before they could get lost in their oracle oddities, as they always seemed to when they were together, I interrupted him.
“Are you Ryzek?” I said to Eijeh.
Eijeh and Sifa both stared at me, blank.
“When you first woke, you said ‘we.’ ‘We’ got lost in the future,” I said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Oh?” I stepped toward him. “So that wasn’t my delusional, egocentric brother referring to himself in the royal ‘we’?”
Eijeh started to shake his head.
“It’s not my brother who’s biting your nails, picking at your food, spinning your blade, remembering our mother?” I said.
I knew my voice was loud, maybe loud enough to hear through the walls, but I didn’t care. I had seen my brother’s body. I had shoved it into space. I had scrubbed his blood from the floor. I had buried my anger, my grief, my pity.
My currentshadows were now flowing down my arms, winding around my fingers, and slipping between the seams of my shirt.
“Ryzek?” I said.
“Not exactly,” he replied.
“What, then?”
“We are a we,” he said. “Some of us is Eijeh, and some of us is Ryzek.”
“You’ve been . . .” I struggled to find the way to phrase it. “. . . partly Ryzek this entire time, and you said nothing?”
“After getting murdered?” he retorted. “Keep your currentgift away from me.” The shadows were beneath my skin and on top of it, both, stretching toward him, itching to be shared. “And you wonder why people don’t like you?”
“I have never once wondered that,” I said. “And you—” I turned to Sifa. “You don’t look surprised, as usual. You’ve known this whole time that a spy might be among us—”
“He has no interest in spying,” Sifa said. “He just wants to be left alone.”
“Not a cycle ago, he murdered Orieve Benesit to keep Ryzek in power,” I said in a low voice. “And now you tell me he wants to be left alone?”
“As long as Ryzek’s body existed, we were trapped where we were,” Eijeh—Ryzek—whatever—replied, leaning close. “Without it we are free. Or we would be, if not for these damn visions.”
“Those damn visions.” I laughed. “You—Ryzek—tortured Eijeh by trading memories with him in order to get those visions, if I recall correctly. And now you hate them?” I laughed again. “That seems fitting.”
“The visions are a curse,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “They keep throwing us into other people’s lives, other people’s pain—”
My mind felt like an overstuffed toy, all the contents bursting the seams. It had never occurred to me that Ryzek—in whatever form he now found himself—might not want the power he held. But when I thought of the Ryzek I had known, the one who covered my ears in dark hallways, and carried me on his back through Shotet crowds on the way to the sojourn ship, it didn’t seem so strange.
But that wasn’t right. Neither Ryzek Noavek nor Eijeh Kereseth deserved to be free from the consequences of what they had done.
“Well, now it’s not just the visions throwing you into other people’s pain,” I said. “Because you’re coming with me to Urek.”
“No, we’re not.”
I leaned in close, so close we were sharing breath, and lifted both hands, holding them over Eijeh’s face. My currentshadows were so dense now that I had no trouble displaying my power in all its horror, the dark tendrils weaving over my skin and under it, staining me and enfolding me. Pain shrieked through every izit of me, but having a goal had always helped me to think through pain.
“Come with me,” I said in a harsh whisper. “Or I will kill you, right now, with my bare hands. You may have some of Ryzek’s learned skill, but you are still in the body of Eijeh Kereseth, and he is no match for me in a footrace or a fight or even a goddamn contest of wills.”
“Threats,” he gritted out. “I would say they are beneath you, but they never have been, have they?”
“I prefer to think of them as promises,” I said, smiling, all teeth.
“Why do you even want us to go?”
“I am doing something that requires expertise in the habits of Lazmet Noavek,” I said, “and your mind is a treasure trove.”
He opened his mouth to object, and Sifa spoke over him.
“He will go,” she said. “And so will I. Our time here is done.”
I wanted to argue, but my logical side couldn’t quite manage it. It wouldn’t hurt to have not one, but two oracles on board to help with our assassination plan. Even if one contained my evil brother and the other was the biological mother who abandoned me.
It was ridiculous.
But so was much of the galaxy.