FROM THE MOMENT UREK entered our view, a globe of swirling white, I felt like a countdown began. We had three days. Three days to finish planning an assassination and carry it out. Three days to end this war before it destroyed Thuvhe and Shotet both.
I had never seen the skies above Voa so empty. In the distance there was a government patrol vessel, painted with the seal of the family Noavek. It was one of the newer ones, all diagonal lines, like it was perpetually diving. It gleamed in the hazy light of day.
It was the only ship in sight.
“Don’t worry,” Teka said, likely noticing that the rest of us had gone silent. “We’re cloaked. We look like a patrol ship to them.”
At that very moment, a red light flashed on the nav panel. Yssa looked back at Teka with eyebrows raised. It was a call, probably from the patrol vessel.
“Patch them through,” Teka said, unbuckling herself and moving to stand at Yssa’s shoulder.
“This is patrol ship XA774. Please identify yourself.”
“Patrol ship XA993. What are you doing afloat, XA774?” Teka said, without faltering for even a moment. “I don’t see you listed on the updated schedule.”
She was pantomiming for Yssa, pointing out the spot where Ettrek’s people had told us to land, urging her to move fast.
“At what time was your schedule issued, 993?”
“1440,” Teka replied.
“You’re out of date. This one was issued at 1500 hours.”
“Ah,” Teka said. “Our mistake. We’ll make our way back to our docking station.”
She slapped a hand over the switch to turn off our communicator. “Go!”
Yssa pressed hard on the accelerator with the heel of her hand, and we zoomed toward the landing spot. Teka was nearly knocked off her feet by the sudden movement, so she clung to the back of Yssa’s chair as we lost altitude. Yssa lowered the ship to the patch of empty rooftop on the outer rim of Voa that Ettrek’s contacts had indicated.
“Is there really a patrol ship XA993?” I asked.
Teka grinned. “No. They only go up to 950.”
Right after we touched down, before Yssa could even turn off the engine, a group of people rushed toward the ship, carrying a huge stretch of fabric between them. I watched through the nav window as they threw the fabric over the ship, drawing it taut with long cords. As the hatch opened behind me, they completely covered the nav window.
Ettrek deboarded first, greeting a man with black hair long enough to brush his shoulders with a clasped hand. When I moved closer, I realized they had to be brothers, maybe even twins.
“Wow, you weren’t kidding,” the brother said. “Cyra fucking Noavek is with you.”
“How did you know my middle name?” I said.
He smiled, and offered me a hand. “My name is Zyt. Short for something so long I don’t even remember it myself. I’m Ettrek’s older brother.”
“You probably don’t want to shake my hand,” I said. “You’re welcome to shake Teka’s twice, though.”
“Don’t volunteer me for extra handshakes,” Teka said. “Hi. Teka Surukta.”
“Here are some oracles,” I said, gesturing behind me to Eijeh and Sifa. Zyt raised his eyebrows.
We did the rest of the introductions under the cover of the cloth they had thrown on top of our ship, which looked sturdy and likely served as good camouflage. Then Zyt led us to the rooftop access door, and down several flights of stairs. The stairwell had no windows, and smelled like garbage, but I was glad it gave us shelter.
I moved away from my brother—and I wasn’t even sure which of them I meant—to skip ahead a few steps.
“What’s it like out there?” I asked Zyt, falling into step beside him.
“Well, at first there was a lot of looting,” Zyt said. A lock of hair fell against his cheek. “Good for business. But then Lazmet took power, and that pretty much scared sense into everyone. He imposed a curfew, started rounding people up and arresting them, stuff like that. Bad for business.”
“What business are you in, exactly?” I said.
“Smuggling,” Zyt said. His eyelids fell heavy over his eyes, narrowing them somewhat, and he had a mouth given to smiles. He gave me one then. “Mostly medicine, but we smuggle whatever’s lucrative—supplies, weapons, whatever.”
“Ever smuggle fruit?” I said.
“Fruit?” Zyt raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah, I need to get my hands on some altos arva. It’s Trellan,” I said. “And since imports from Trella are illegal . . .”
“Smuggling is the only option. I see.” Zyt tapped his chin with a finger. There was a bruise under his nail. “I’ll find out.”
If we had altos arva, we could use it to get into Noavek manor undetected, pretending that Lazmet’s customary shipment of it had arrived early. The guards likely wouldn’t dare to risk Lazmet not getting what he wanted. They would let us right in.
“Hey,” Zyt said, “you should probably cover up your head. That silverskin’s . . . conspicuous.”
“Right.”
I had been prepared to obscure my face once we arrived in Voa, so I wore a long black coat with a hood. It was made of a light, tough material called marshite, imported, like most waterproof fabrics, from Pitha. I put the hood up, and Zyt opened the door at the bottom of the stairs to the bright light of day.
The wind made the folds of my coat snap and billow as I walked. The streets of Voa were emptier than I had ever seen them before, full of scurrying men and women folded inward, eyes down. It had never been easier to disappear among them.
“It’s not far,” he said. “Are all your people keeping step?”
I looked over my shoulder. Everyone had their hoods up, so it was difficult to tell who was a smuggler and who wasn’t. I counted a bright streak of hair—Teka—and the bump of a knot atop a head—Ettrek—the bridge of a freckled nose—Yssa—and a loping gait—Sifa—and turned back.
“Looks like it,” I said.
Zyt led us down two streets before approaching a small, ramshackle apartment building. A light above us flickered as he turned the key in the lock. The apartment beyond—on the ground level—was cramped and messy. There were tables and cabinets and chairs leaned up against the walls in the hallway.
I stood aside as the others filed in, counting Teka, Ettrek, and Yssa before I realized I had forgotten to check for Eijeh. Just as I felt the beginnings of panic, I saw him jogging toward the door.
“What kept you?” I snapped.
“Untied shoe,” he said.
“You know that you can just walk with an untied shoe for a street or two, right? It’s not actually life-threatening.”
Eijeh just rolled his eyes, and closed the door behind him.
The apartment wasn’t much. One room served as living room, dining room, and bedroom, the floor spread with slim mattresses, one of which had a hole with stuffing coming out of it. There was a bathroom, but the shower was just a pipe protruding from the ceiling, and there was no sink. Still, Zyt was heating water for tea when I went into the kitchen.
“We’ll rest here tonight,” Zyt said when I poked my head in.
“Need help?” I said.
“Not unless you’re skilled in the dangerous art of chopping hushflower.”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Oh really? Full of surprises, you are. Come chop it, then.”
It was crowded, with two people in the kitchen, but I took a place at the cutting board, and he stood at the stove. He handed me the fresh hushflower—contained in a jar—and the gloves I would need to prepare them without poisoning myself, and pointed me toward the knife drawer.
I set the hushflower on the cutting board, upside down, and pressed the flat of my knife to the place where the petals joined to split them apart. Then I sliced the dark red streak down the center of one of the petals, and it lay flat, as if by magic.
“Nice,” Zyt said. “How did you learn?”
I paused. I was tempted to call Akos a friend, but it seemed too simple for what he had been to me, too small a word.
“Ah. Forget I asked,” Zyt said, and he reached for a jar of something else, high up on the slanted shelves.
“Is this your place?” I asked. “Or someone else’s?”
“It was my mother’s, before she died. Chills and spills took her. That was before we had figured out how to smuggle medicine.” Zyt bent his head over the pot of water he had set on the only burner, and tapped the jar he held to dust the water with powdered fenzu shell.
I kept chopping the hushflower. It was my family’s fault that his mother had not had access to medicine—Lazmet had begun the practice of hoarding donated medicine from Othyr, and Ryzek had only continued it. I had gotten the expensive inoculation when I was a child.
“I was in love with him, the one who taught me how to prepare hushflower,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I was telling him this, except that he had shared some pain with me, and I wanted to do the same. The exchange of suffering didn’t have to be even—but it was a kind of currency, his sorrow for mine. A way toward trust. “He left me. No explanation.”
Zyt made an exaggerated disgusted noise in the back of his throat, and I smiled.
“What an idiot,” he said.
“Not really,” I said. “But it’s nice of you to say.”
We drank tea and ate warm bread for dinner. It was not the best meal I had ever had, but it wasn’t the worst. The other smugglers kept to themselves, except for Zyt, who sat beside Ettrek and told stories from their childhood for hours. They had us all laughing before long at Ettrek’s sad attempts to prank his older brother, and Zyt’s savage retaliations.
Then everyone found somewhere to sleep—not an easy task, in a room this small—and one by one, we drifted off. I had never been good at sleeping, particularly in places with which I was unfamiliar, so I soon found myself slipping out the back door to sit on the back step, facing the alley.
“Saw you get up.” Teka sat next to me on the step. “You’re not much for sleeping, are you?”
“Waste of time,” I declared.
Teka nodded. “It took me a long time to sleep again after . . .” She waved a hand over her eye patch. “Kind of a horrible memory.”
“Kind of,” I said with a short laugh. “I’m not sure what’s worse.” I paused, thinking of her mother’s public execution. “I didn’t mean—sorry.”
“You don’t have to be so careful around me,” Teka said, looking at me from the corner of her eye. “When I didn’t like you, it was because I made too many assumptions. After I let them go . . . well, I’m here on your crazy mission, aren’t I?”
I grinned.
“Yeah,” I said. “You are.”
“I am, so when I bring something up, I don’t want you to take it too personally,” she said, guarded. “Akos.”
“Yeah?” I frowned. “What about him?”
“Honestly?” She sighed. “I’m a little worried that when push comes to shove, you’ll prioritize saving him over killing Lazmet, now that you know he’s here, and alive. I’ve been worried about it since I told you about him.”
I sat for a moment, listening to the night air. It was loud in this part of the city, despite the curfew and the aura of depression that had settled over all of Voa. People argued and laughed and played music in their apartments at all hours, or so it seemed. Even in the alley I saw the glow of lanterns still lit, defiant against the night.
“You’re worried I’ll do what I did last time, when I didn’t kill Ryzek,” I said.
“Yes,” Teka said, unflinching. “I am.”
“It’s different this time,” I said. “There’s . . . more, this time.”
“More?”
“More that I care about,” I said. “Before, all I had, the only good thing I had, was him. And now, that’s not true anymore.”
She smiled, and I bumped her with my shoulder.
Then I heard something behind me. A squeak. The pressure of a foot against an old floorboard. Turning, I saw a dark shape in the living room, the silhouette of a man—a soldier, judging by the bulk of him—holding out a currentblade. Beneath it, the space where Eijeh had been, a bump under a blanket, was empty.
Eijeh was gone. And someone else was here.
I turned, and stood, and ran, and roared, all at once. As the shape bent, blade upraised, I stepped on someone’s leg and shoved, hard, at the intruder. My hands met armor with a crack. I gritted my teeth against the pain of impact, and bent at the waist to dodge the swinging blade.
Someone had told the Shotet police to come here.
I drove my elbow low, under the bottom edge of the armored vest, and hit the man in the groin. He groaned, and I made a grab for his weapon. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Teka’s hair swinging as she leapt at the person behind the first. The smugglers, as well as Ettrek, Sifa, and Yssa, were now awake, and scrambling.
The pain of my currentgift disappeared in my adrenaline, but I didn’t forget it. As I wrenched the blade from the man’s hand, I gave in to the desire to share my pain with him, and currentshadows crept around his wrist, merging with the ones that wrapped around his currentblade. I watched the two combine, and bury themselves in his flesh, now a richer and darker black.
He screamed.
I kept going. I lunged at the next woman in uniform I saw, grabbing her face instead of her throat, pressing currentshadows toward her until she choked on my pain, until it filled her open, gasping mouth. I brought her head down to meet my knee, raised high enough for the two to collide, with as tall as I was.
I was not afraid of their numbers. I wasn’t afraid of anyone, not anymore. It was what made me a Noavek—not that I was so powerful I couldn’t be threatened, but that I had already survived enough horrors, enough pain, to be accustomed to the inevitability of both. But I was powerful—that much I knew.
I kept going, grabbing the next man I could get my hands on. They had made a mistake in invading us through that narrow hallway, because it created a funnel through which only one of them could charge at a time. So I took them on one at a time, until there were no more. Behind me was silence. I assumed the others had left.
I turned to make for the back door. I didn’t know how many of the police I had killed and how many I had simply disabled, but either way, I needed to flee. When I turned back toward the living room, though, I saw Zyt, Sifa, Ettrek, Yssa, and Teka waiting for me, each of them looking a little surprised.
“Go!” I shouted.
And we all ran.
“Well, your crew don’t waste any time fleeing, do they, Zyt?” Teka huffed, leaning against the wall.
We had decided, mid-stride, to make our way for the half-destroyed building where the renegades had made their camp, when I was last on Voa. It was the only other safe place we knew. Teka had taken the lead, navigating winding streets apparently from memory. The edges of the city were fraying like the cuffs of a shirt, more damaged and broken than closer to the center. There was graffiti scrawled on the side of every building: simple characters written in black, in some places, and in others, sprawling murals of characters as tall as a man, filled in with colors as bright as the currentstream. The graffiti covered up the cracks in the buildings, the boards where windows had been, the dirt that dusted each wall with brown. But I was most transfixed by a simple statement, written neatly beneath one windowsill: Noaveks Own Us.
“What do you expect?” Zyt replied. “They’re smugglers, they’re not particularly ambitious.”
“We don’t need them anyway,” Ettrek said. “Zyt is the one with the contacts.”
“Yes, the contacts for the smuggling of . . . fruit, apparently?” Zyt raised an eyebrow at me.
“Yes,” I said, offering no further explanation.
“Now might be a good time to explain what you need a bunch of fruit for,” Zyt said.
“It might be a good time,” I countered. “But how can we be sure?”
I took a vial of painkiller from the pack at my side and tipped it into my throat. It was one of Akos’s “subpar” batches—and he wasn’t wrong to call them that, they weren’t nearly as effective as most of his painkillers—but it was better than nothing.
The plants growing between the cracks in the broken floor had spread much farther in the time we had been away from this place. Vines were beginning to creep up the walls, and everywhere I looked, there were splashes of color from wildflowers. The kind that turn to mush, I thought, and it was an Akos thought, not one of my own.
Suddenly I needed to be alone. I slipped away, into the stairwell where I had first showed Akos that I could control my currentgift. My back against one of the stone walls, I slid to the ground and let the tears come.
Later, Teka found a bottle of fermented fruit juice in the cabinets of someone who had lived in this place before it was destroyed, and we all took a glass together to steady ourselves before we tried for more sleep.
Sifa offered a toast, translating to Shotet from Thuvhesit: “To what we have done, what we are doing, and what we will do.”
And I drank.