“THE MOST IMMINENT OF our problems is Vakrez,” Yma said.
Akos lay on the floor by the fireplace, his guts grumbling. He had gotten faint earlier while walking back from the bathroom and, rather than getting up when Yma came in, had just flopped onto his back. She shoved another satchel of food into his hand, and he took it, not half as eager as he’d been the last time she came. He’d discovered that half a meal was almost worse than no meal at all.
Still, he ate it, this time pacing himself so he could savor every bite.
“You have no control over your currentgift?”
“No,” Akos said. “I never really thought about it as something that could be controlled.”
“It’s possible,” Yma said. “I was with Ryzek when he ordered your currentgift starved away. He wasn’t sure that it would work, but it’s always worth a try, if you want to disable someone’s gift.”
“It worked,” Akos said. “That was the first time I felt Cyra’s currentgift.”
The thought brought a sharp, hot sensation to his throat. He swallowed it down.
“Well,” Yma said. “That it was possible to turn yours off then suggests that you may be able to have more mastery over your gift now.”
“Oh?” He rolled his head to the side. “And how’s that?”
“I told you that my family was low status. Well, what the Noaveks seem to understand that others in the galaxy do not is that low-status people have just as much value. We have long histories, recorded lineages, recipes . . . and secrets.” She rearranged her skirt as she crossed her legs the other way. The fire crackled.
“We have passed along some exercises that help a person learn to control their currentgift,” she said. “For some, those exercises obviously don’t work, but I can teach them to you, if you promise to practice. That way you can turn off your currentgift to let Vakrez read your heart, and turn it back on to resist Lazmet’s control, when the time comes.”
“What exactly does Lazmet want?” Akos said. “What did he tell you to do to me?”
“He calls me the Heart Bender,” she said. “What I do is too abstract for words. But I can shift a person’s loyalties, over time. I take the raw feeling that’s there—your love for your family, or your friends, or your lover—and change it so it leads you to a different destination, so to speak.”
“That,” Akos said, closing his eyes, “is horrifying.”
“He wants me to bend your heart toward him,” she said. “Get up. You’re wasting my time, and there isn’t much of it to spare.”
“Can’t,” Akos said. “Head hurts.”
“I don’t care if your head hurts!”
“You try half starving for days!” he snapped.
“I have,” she bit out. “Not everyone grew up wealthy, Mr. Kereseth. Some of us are familiar with the weakness and aches that come from hunger. Now get. Up.”
Akos couldn’t say much to that. He sat up, darkness washing over his vision, and turned toward her.
“Better,” she said. “We have to talk about your game of pretend. The next time you stand before him, he will expect to see some kind of shift. You must behave as if that’s the case.”
“How do I do that?”
“Pretend your resolve is weakening,” she said. “It shouldn’t be too difficult. Let him get something out of you. Some kind of information he wants, that doesn’t compromise your mission. Tell me your mission.”
“Why?” Akos furrowed his brow. “You know my goddamn mission.”
“You should be telling yourself your mission every single moment of every day, so you don’t cost us everything! Tell me your mission!”
“Kill him,” Akos said. “My mission is to kill him.”
“Is your mission to be loyal to your family, your friends, your nation?”
Akos glared at her. “No. It isn’t.”
“Good! Now, the exercise.”
She directed Akos to a chair and told him to close his eyes. “Come up with an image for your currentgift,” she said. “Yours separates you from the current, so you could think of it as a wall, or a plate of armor, something like that.”
Akos had never much thought about the power that lived in his skin, mostly because it seemed less like the presence of power than the absence of it. But he tried to think of it as armor, the way she said. He remembered the first time he had dropped armor over his head—the weaker, synthetic kind, when he was first sent to train at the soldier camp. The weight had surprised him, but it had been comforting, in a way.
“Think of the details in what it looks like. What is it made of? Is your armor made of different plates stitched together, or is it one solid piece? What color is it?”
He felt stupid, picturing imaginary armor, picking colors like he was decorating a house instead of trying to pull off an assassination plot. But he did what she said, calling the armor dark blue because that was the color of his earned Shotet armor, and plated for the same reason. He thought of his real armor’s scrapes and dings, the signs that he’d put it to good use. And Cyra’s nimble fingers as she pulled the straps taut for the first time.
“What does it feel like? Is it smooth, or rough? Is it hard, or flexible? Is it cold, or warm?”
Akos wrinkled his nose at Yma, but didn’t open his eyes. Smooth, hard, warm as the kutyah fur he had once worn to protect himself from the cold. The thought of that old coat, with his name written on the tag so he wouldn’t mix it up with Cisi’s, made him feel achy.
“Hold the most vivid imagining of your currentgift that you can. I’m going to put a hand on you in three . . . two . . . one.”
Her cool fingers pressed to his wrist. He tried to think of his Shotet armor again, but it was hard, with his memories all jumbled, Cisi trying to stuff her long arms into a child’s coat, Cyra holding his shoulder steady as she yanked at the armor straps.
“You’re not focused,” Yma said. “We don’t have time to work on this, so you’ll have to practice on your own. Try different images, and try a modicum of self-discipline.”
“I’m disciplined,” he snapped, opening his eyes.
“It’s easy to be disciplined when you’re well fed and healthy,” she retorted. “Now you need to learn it when your brain is barely functioning. Try it again.”
He did, this time imagining his coat of kutyah fur, in Thuvhe, which was another kind of armor against the cold. He felt its tickle against the back of his neck where the coat ended and his hat began. He tried this image twice more before Yma checked the delicate watch she wore around her wrist, and announced that she had to go.
“Practice,” she told him. “Vakrez will come to you later, and you need to be able to pretend.”
“I need to master this by later today?” he demanded.
“Why do you have this expectation that life will make concessions for you?” She scowled. “We are not promised ease, comfort, or fairness. Only pain and death.”
With that, she left.
Her speeches are almost as encouraging as yours, he said, to the Cyra in his mind.
He tried to practice what Yma had taught him. He did. It was just that he couldn’t get his mind to focus on one thing for more than a couple minutes at a time. So it wasn’t long before he wavered.
He walked the periphery of the room, pausing to peer out the slats in the window coverings, which were the same dark wood as the floor. They were elegant bars for a prisoner, he thought.
He hadn’t done much thinking about his dad, not since his death. Every time thoughts of him did come up, they were an intrusion, and he shifted his focus back to the greater mission of rescuing Eijeh as he had promised. But in this place, hungry and confused, he couldn’t do much to keep them out. The way Aoseh had gestured—big and unwieldy, knocking things off the table or smacking Eijeh in the head by mistake. Or how he had smelled like burnt leaves and oil from the machinery in the iceflower fields. The one time he had shouted at Akos for a bad score on a test, then broke down into tears when he realized he had made his youngest son cry.
Aoseh had been big and messy with his emotions, and Akos had always known his dad loved him. He had wondered more than once, though, why he and Aoseh didn’t seem to be anything alike. Akos held everything close, even things that didn’t need to be secret. That instinct toward restraint, he realized, made him more like the Noaveks.
And Cyra—bursting at the seams with energy, opinions, even anger—was more like his dad.
Maybe that was why it had been so hard not to love her.
Vakrez came in, and Akos wasn’t sure how long the commander had been there before he cleared his throat. Akos stood blinking at him for a few ticks, then sat heavily on the edge of the bed. He had meant to brainstorm a better image for his currentgift. He hadn’t done it. Now Vakrez would find out that Akos was getting his strength back, and he would be suspicious.
Shit, Akos thought. Yma had suggested armor, a wall—a protective barrier between Akos and the world. None of those things had felt right, when she said them, but what else was there?
“Are you all right, Kereseth?” Vakrez asked him.
“How’s your husband? Malan,” Akos said. He had to buy some time.
“He’s . . . fine,” Vakrez said, narrowing his eyes. “Why?”
“Always liked him,” Akos said with a shrug. Could ice be a protective barrier? He knew ice well enough. But it was something to be wary of, at home, not something that protected you.
“He’s nicer than I am,” Vakrez said with a grunt. “Everybody likes him.”
“Does he know you’re here?” What about a metal casing, like an escape pod or a floater? No, he didn’t really know those as well.
“He is, and he told me to be kinder to you.” Vakrez smirked. “Said it might help you open up more. Very strategic.”
“I didn’t think you needed me to open up,” Akos said darkly. “You pretty much just get to dig around in my heart no matter what I say about it, don’t you?”
“I suppose. But if you are not intentionally obfuscating your emotions, it is easier to interpret them.” Vakrez beckoned to him. “Stick out your arm, let’s get this over with.”
Akos rolled up his sleeve, exposing the blue marks he had stained into his skin with Shotet ritual. The second one had a line through the top of it, and noted the loss of the Armored One he had killed in pursuit of higher status.
He found himself returning to that place. To the fields just beyond the feathergrass, where the wildflowers were fragile and mushy, and the Armored Ones roamed, avoiding anything that transmitted too much current. The one he had killed had been relieved to find him. He had been a respite from the current.
Akos had felt a kind of kinship with it then, and he found that kinship again now. Imagining himself monstrous, with too many legs and a hard, plated side. His eyes, dark and glittering, hidden under an overhang of rigid exoskeleton.
Then, with a shock of violence, he imagined that exoskeleton riven in two. And he felt it, the second the current rang through him again, buzzing in his bones. Vakrez nodded to himself, his eyes closed, and Akos focused on keeping the wound open, so to speak.
“Yma told me she would use her gift to encourage you to dwell on your devotion to your father—Kereseth, that is, not Noavek,” Vakrez said. “I see she’s been successful.”
Akos blinked at him. Had Yma done something to him when she was there, to make him think of Aoseh? Or was it just a coincidence, that he had? Either way, it was lucky.
“You don’t seem well,” Vakrez said.
“That’s what happens when your biological father imprisons you in his house and starves you for days,” Akos snapped.
“I suppose you’re right.” Vakrez pursed his lips.
“Why do you do what he says?”
“Everyone does what he says,” Vakrez said.
“No, some people stop being cowards and leave,” Akos said. “But you’re just . . . staying. Hurting people.”
Vakrez cleared his throat. “I’ll tell him about your progress.”
“Will that be before or after you prostrate yourself before him and kiss his feet?” Akos said.
To his surprise, Vakrez didn’t say anything. Just turned and left.
Lazmet was seated at a table by the fire when Akos was escorted to his quarters again. The room looked like the one Akos had unlocked when he first came to this place: dark wood panels, reflecting shifting fenzu light, soft fabrics in dark colors, books stacked on almost every surface. A comfortable place.
Lazmet was eating. Roasted deadbird, spiced with charred feathergrass, with fried fenzu shells on the side. Akos’s gut rumbled. It wouldn’t be so difficult to snatch some of the food off the table and shove it in his mouth, would it? It would be worth it, to taste something that wasn’t pickled or dried or bland. It had been so long. . . .
“That’s a bit childish, don’t you think?” he managed to say, after swallowing a mouthful of saliva. “Taunting me with food when you’re starving me?”
Akos knew this man wasn’t really his dad. Not in the way Aoseh Kereseth had been, teaching him how to button up his coat, or how to fly a floater, or how to stitch up a boot when the sole came loose. Aoseh had called him “Smallest Child” before he knew that Akos would end up being the biggest, and he had died knowing he couldn’t keep Akos from being kidnapped, but trying—fighting—anyway.
And Lazmet just looked at him like he wanted to take him apart and put him back together again. Like he was something you dissected in a science class to see how it worked.
“I wanted to see how you would react to the presence of food,” Lazmet said, shrugging. “Whether you were animal or man.”
“You’ve brought Yma Zetsyvis in with the specific purpose of altering what I am, whatever I am,” Akos said. “What does it matter what the ‘before’ is, when you’re controlling the ‘after’?”
“I’m a curious man.”
“You’re a sadist.”
“A sadist delights in suffering,” Lazmet said, lifting a finger. His feet were bare, his toes buried in the soft rug. “I do not delight. I am a student. I find satisfaction in learning, not pain for the sake of pain.”
He covered his plate with the napkin that lay across his lap, and stepped away from the table. It was easier for Akos to deny himself the impulse to lunge at the plate when he couldn’t see it anymore.
Yma had told Akos to pretend his resolve was weakening. That was the goal of this meeting—to prove to Lazmet that his methods were working, but not to be too obvious about it, so Lazmet became suspicious.
Yma had helped him find his way again. He had been aimless since Ryzek died—and since his hope for Eijeh’s restoration died, too. He had not had a side, a mission, a plan. But Yma had helped him find his way back to the same pinhole focus that he had directed at his brother since his arrival in Shotet. He would kill Lazmet. Nothing else mattered.
He had betrayed Thuvhe. He had abandoned Cyra. He had lost his name, his fate, his identity. He had nothing to return to, when this was over. So he had to make it count.
“So you are a Thuvhesit, I hear,” Lazmet said. “I always thought the revelatory tongue was a legend. Or at the very least, an exaggeration.”
“No,” Akos said. “I find words in it that I didn’t even know existed.”
“I’d always wondered,” Lazmet said. “If you don’t have a word for a thing, can you still know what it is? Is it something that lives in you that goes unarticulated, or does it disappear from your awareness entirely?” He picked up his glass, which contained something purple and dark, and sipped from it. “You may be one of the only people who can possibly know, but you don’t seem to have the capacity to answer.”
“You think I’m stupid,” Akos said.
“I think you’ve programmed yourself to survive, and you have little energy for anything else,” Lazmet said. “If you had not had to fight to live, perhaps you could have become a more interesting person, but here we are.”
The only reason I care about being “interesting” to you, Akos thought, is because I’m pretty sure you’ll kill me if I’m not.
“There’s a word in Ogran. Kyerta,” Akos said. “It’s . . . a life-changing truth. It’s what brought me here. The knowledge that you and I were related.”
“Related,” Lazmet said. “Because I had sex with a woman, and she handed you off to an oracle? Everyone in the damn galaxy has parents, boy. It’s hardly a unique achievement.”
“Then why did you care what color my eyes were?” Akos said. “Why did you have me brought here to speak to me again?”
Lazmet didn’t answer.
“Why did you bother,” Akos said, stepping toward him, “to turn Ryzek into a murderer?”
“The word ‘murderer’ is reserved for people we don’t like,” Lazmet said. “Anyone else, and they’re a warrior, a soldier, a freedom fighter. I trained my son to fight for his people.”
“Why?” Akos said, tilting his head. “What do you care for his people, for your people?”
“We are better than them,” Lazmet said, slamming his glass down on the table beside his chair. He stood. “We learned the reaches of this galaxy when they hadn’t even come up with names for themselves. We know what is valuable, what is fascinating, what is important, and they throw it away. We are stronger, more resilient, more resourceful—and they have somehow managed to keep us low since they became aware of us. We will not remain low. They do not deserve to be above us.”
“You think of the Shotet as you,” Akos said. “I see.”
“You have your ideals, I am sure—you have that shine in your eyes.” Lazmet sneered a little. “And I have something else.”
“And that’s . . . what?” Akos said. “Cruelty? Curiosity?”
“I want,” Lazmet said. “I want, and I will take whatever I can get my hands on. Even if it’s you.”
Lazmet came toward him. He hadn’t noticed before that he was taller than his father. Not by a lot, because Lazmet towered over most people, but by enough that it was noticeable.
Akos imagined himself as the Armored One, and eviscerated himself, for the tenth time that day. He had been practicing since Vakrez left the day before. He had barely slept, in order to practice. He had learned to suppress his currentgift quickly, and to bring it back just as quickly. It required all of his energy, but he was improving.
He felt the pressure of Lazmet’s currentgift against his mind, and gave in to it. It was strange, the sensation like someone wiggling a wire into his head and touching it, lightly, to the part of his brain that controlled his movements. His fingers twitched, then tapped together, without him telling them to. Lazmet’s mouth twitched as he registered the movement, and Akos felt the imaginary wire retract.
“Vakrez has given fascinating reports on the state of your insides, Akos,” Lazmet said. “I have never seen him puzzle quite so much over someone. He says you are making progress in the right direction.”
“Eat shit,” Akos said.
Lazmet smiled a little.
“You should sit,” he said. “I’m sure you’re tired.”
Lazmet crossed into the sitting room. It was a simple room, with a soft rug by a fireplace, and bookshelves packed with books in all languages. Lazmet sat in the armchair next to the fire, and buried his toes in the plush of the carpet. Akos followed, hesitant, and stood by the fire. He was tired, but he wanted to take his little rebellions where he could get them. Instead of sitting, he braced himself on the mantel, and stared into the flames. Someone had dusted them with some kind of powder that turned them blue, just at the edges.
“You grew up with an oracle,” Lazmet said. “Do you know that I spent much of my adult life trying to find an oracle?”
“Did you try looking in a temple?” Akos said.
Lazmet laughed a little. “You realize, of course, that it’s not simply a matter of going where they are. Capturing someone who knows you are coming is nearly impossible. Which is why I confess I am confused as to why your mother left you and your brother to be stolen away. She must have known you would be taken.”
“I’m sure she did,” Akos said bitterly. “She must also have believed it was necessary.”
“That is cruel,” Lazmet said. “You must be angry.”
Akos wasn’t sure how to answer. He wasn’t Cyra, digging in her claws wherever she could, though he definitely understood the impulse.
“You know, I’m not sure I understand your strategy here,” he said eventually. “And there is one, so don’t disrespect me by pretending there isn’t.”
Lazmet sighed. “You’re being boring again. But maybe you’re right—I do have something I want from you. And something I’m willing to trade.”
He crossed the room again, going to the table where he had covered up his meal. The smell still lingered in the air, juicy meat and rich sauce, with the feathergrass burned just to the point where its hallucinogenic qualities disappeared and only its spicy flavor remained.
Lazmet moved to the next seat at the table, and lifted a metal dome that had been covering the place setting there. Revealing another roasted deadbird. Another side of fried fenzu shells. And a diced saltfruit.
“This meal is yours,” Lazmet said. “If you will tell me how you got into this manor.”
“What?” Akos had fixated on the food. The rest of the room went dark around him. His stomach was beginning to ache.
“Someone must have helped you get into this house,” Lazmet said, patiently. “None of our outer locks were disabled or tampered with, and you could not possibly have scaled the wall without someone noticing. So tell me who it was that let you in, and you may eat this meal.”
Jorek. Long, skinny arms and patchy facial hair. He had taken the ring that Akos wore around his neck before they left his uncle’s home, for safekeeping. He had offered his arm to his mother to stabilize her on the cobblestone. Jorek is a good man, he reminded himself. He didn’t even want to let you into the manor. You manipulated him into doing it. He couldn’t possibly give Jorek’s name to Lazmet in exchange for a meal.
Tell me your mission.
No, he thought, to the Yma that lived in his head. Not this. I won’t do this.
Yma had told him to look for an opportunity to give Lazmet information. To show him something was changing. To keep him from getting bored. Well, this was it—served on a plate.
“I don’t believe you.” Akos closed his eyes. “I think you’ll take the food away the second I tell you what you want to know.”
“I won’t,” Lazmet said. He stepped away from the plate. “Here, I’ll even back away. Trust me in this simple thing, Akos. I do not delight in pain. I want to see what you will do, and it doesn’t serve me to withhold something from you once you’ve done as I asked. Surely you see the logic in that.”
Akos’s eyes pricked with tears. He was so hungry. He was so tired. He needed to do as Yma said.
Is your mission to be loyal to your family, your friends, your nation?
No.
That was not his mission.
“Kuzar,” he choked out. “Jorek Kuzar.”
Lazmet nodded. He walked away from the table and took his seat in the armchair, leaving Akos to his meal.
The feathergrass had turned sour in his stomach. It kept coming back up in burps, the flavor rising in the back of his throat. Reminding him.
Akos touched the hollow of his throat, where the ring of Ara’s family had once pressed. He wouldn’t see it again. That didn’t bother him so much—he never felt like he had earned it in the first place. Killing a man wasn’t something that should get you welcomed into a family, he knew. But the thought of how Ara would look at him, if he ever got out of here . . .
He pressed his hand over his mouth as another burp came up.
There came a tap at the wall panel next to the fireplace. It slid back to let Yma in. She looked more casual than usual, her white hair tied back, dressed in dark training clothes and soft shoes. Her eerie blue eyes fixed on him.
“Tell me,” he said, voice wavering.
“You did what was necessary,” she said.
“Tell me what happened,” he snapped.
She sighed. “Jorek has been arrested,” she said.
Akos tasted bile, and bolted toward the bathroom. He had just made it to the toilet when he started heaving, throwing up everything he had eaten in Lazmet’s sitting room. He waited out the stomach spasms with his forehead against the seat, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes.
Something cool pressed to the back of his neck. Yma drew him back and pressed the flusher. She took the wet cloth from his neck and used it to wipe his face, kneeling beside him. Her usually passive face looked weary now, the lines in her forehead and around her eyes more apparent than usual. It wasn’t a bad thing.
“The night my husband, Uzul, and I decided that I would turn him in to Ryzek, thus prematurely ending his life for the good of our cause, I sobbed so hard I pulled a muscle in my abdomen. It hurt to stand up straight for a week,” she said. “He had only months to live, you see, but those months . . .”
She closed her eyes.
“I wanted those months,” she said, a few ticks later.
She dabbed at the corner of Akos’s mouth.
“I loved him,” she added simply, and she tossed the cloth into the sink.
He expected her to get up, now that she had cleaned his face, but she didn’t. Yma sat down on the floor, right next to the toilet, her shoulder leaning into the seat. After a tick she put a hand on his shoulder, and the weight, and her silent presence, were comfort enough.