THE NEXT MORNING, THERE was nothing left to do but leave the safe house. Leave Voa, and Lazmet, and Akos.
Give up, in other words.
We rifled through the drawers of one of the abandoned apartments to find a change of clothes for everyone, then left the safe house. We had promised Yssa, who was waiting in the ship for the signal to retrieve us, that we would meet her if we managed to escape.
I fidgeted as we walked, the rough fabric of my ill-fitting trousers rubbing at my thighs. Someone’s old throw blanket had become a scarf to cover my face, and it, too, chafed. Zyt and Ettrek led the way, the knot atop Ettrek’s head bobbing with each footstep, then Yma and Teka, at a respectable distance, and Sifa and me, trailing behind. As we passed beneath boarded-up windows, I listened to Yma and Teka’s conversation.
“I left the house to its ruin,” Yma was saying. “It’s too far away for most thieves to bother breaking into it, anyway.”
“Once this is over, I’ll help you put it right,” Teka said.
“That place is full of Uzul, anyway,” Yma said, shaking her head. She had tucked her hair behind her ears, and under the collar of her jacket, so it didn’t show as much, but there was no disguising that flawless white.
The sound of Uzul’s name stung me, though not as much as it stung Yma, I was sure. I had not killed him, not in the way I could have, but pain had driven him to death, and I had provided that pain. Cyra Noavek, purveyor of pain, agent of agony.
We reached the building where the ship waited, tucked under its tarp on the roof with Yssa inside it. Zyt had sent her a signal the night before, just to tell her at least some of us were alive, so she had not fled the city yet. We trudged up the stairs, which still smelled of garbage, and I found myself beside Zyt again at the head of the group, my long legs giving me an advantage.
He cast a soft look at me. “I—”
“Oh, don’t.” I sighed. “I don’t do well with sympathy.”
“Can I offer you a bracing slap on the back?” Zyt said. “A gruff reassurance, maybe?”
“Do you have candy? I would take candy.”
He smiled, reached into his pocket, and took out a piece of bright plastic wrap about the size of a fingertip. I squinted at it, but peeled the wrapper with my fingernail and uncovered a small piece of hard fenzu honey, recognizable due to its bright yellow color.
“Why,” I said, “are you carrying candy around in your pocket?”
Zyt shrugged. He pushed the door to the rooftop open, letting Voa’s hazy light into the stairwell. The sky was covered with clouds, and the city had a yellowish cast, a storm brewing. The thick fabric that covered the ship was still tied down—loosely, so Yssa could have pulled the ship free easily if she needed to. I ducked under the edge of it, and almost choked on the hard candy.
Eijeh stood on the steps that extended from the ship’s hatch.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“I’m not staying,” he warned. He looked awkward, all his weight on one leg, one hand clasping the hem of his jacket.
“That doesn’t really answer her question,” Teka said from behind me.
“I’m here to warn you all,” Eijeh said.
“Why? Did you inform the Shotet police on us again?” Zyt said.
“No,” Eijeh said. “I—just wanted to escape. To be free of her.” He nodded to me. “And then, some of my visions . . . fell together. Overlapped.”
“Mine haven’t,” Sifa said, her brow furrowed.
“Isae Benesit imparted some of herself when she forced us—forced Ryzek, I mean—to see her memories, before he was killed,” Eijeh said. “So I have a better grasp on her than you do. I know her from the inside out.”
I felt Teka staring at me, quizzical, but I couldn’t look away. Eijeh’s pale green eyes were strange. Clearer than they had been in a long time.
“I know we’re out of time,” I said. “Isae Benesit promised not to pressure Ogra to deport the exiles until after my week was up.”
“Deportation is not what she has in mind now,” Eijeh said. “She is preparing another anticurrent blast, like the one that destroyed the sojourn ship.”
Sifa lifted a hand to cover her mouth, and for the first time, I knew—not from memory, or guesswork, but seeing, with my own eyes—that we were the same. The same strong nose. The same fierce brow. The family Kereseth, my family.
“Anticurrent,” I said, redirecting my focus. I was no little girl craving a mother. I had had one. I had killed her.
“That’s what the weapon is called,” Eijeh said. “The current is a creative energy, and the anticurrent is its opposite. Where the two collide, a . . . strong force results.”
I snorted. Strong force, indeed.
Yssa stepped out of the hatch, then, edging around Sifa. She ran toward Ettrek, hugging him, then Teka, and then me—quickly, and with wincing, but still, a hug.
“You lived,” she said, breathless.
“Speak for yourself,” I said. “I’m just an apparition.”
“If that was true, it would likely not hurt to touch you,” she said, without a trace of humor. I glanced at Teka, who shrugged.
“When is this blast supposed to hit us?” Teka asked Eijeh.
I gave Eijeh a hard look. “Concrete answers only.”
Eijeh sighed, and said, “This evening.”
And that was when a small fleet of ships rose up from the area around Noavek manor like bubbles bobbing to the surface of a water glass. They hovered together for a moment, and if the sky had not been so empty, or if they had not borne the Noavek symbol on their wings, I might not have noticed them at all. But those were Lazmet Noavek’s ships, and they were headed straight west, toward the Divide. Toward Thuvhe.
“The anticurrent blast will happen this evening,” I said.
Everyone sat on the main deck of the transport vessel. Most were on the bench along one wall, where the straps for buckling ourselves in dangled from the wall, but Teka was on the steps leading up to the nav deck, and Yssa was in the captain’s chair, fiddling with the ship’s map. My racing currentshadows, and the pain that chased them back and forth across my body, didn’t allow me such stillness. I paced.
“Yes,” Eijeh said. “Visions don’t come with a watch, so the timing is not exact, but based on the color of the light, it will be evening.”
I squinted at him. “Is that the truth, or is that just something you’re telling me to manipulate me into doing what you want?”
“Are you really going to believe my answer to that question?”
“No.” I stopped for a moment, in front of him. “Why now? You’ve only ever cared about yourself, for your entire life. So what’s gotten into you? Brain parasite?”
“Is that really constructive?” Teka said. “We should be figuring out how to save as many lives as possible. Which means activating the emergency evacuation alert again.”
“Evacuation protocol is to flee toward the sojourn ship,” I said. “Where would people go, if we sounded that alarm?”
“I can code the alarm with a message. That way, people with screens in their homes will at least know what’s coming,” Teka said. “We can tell them to just get out of the city whatever way they can.”
“And the people who don’t have screens in their houses?” Ettrek said. “The people who barely have lights to turn on? What about them?”
“I didn’t say it was perfect.” She scowled at him. “And I don’t hear you suggesting anything useful.”
“If we do this,” Yma said to Teka, “we may not be able to flee ourselves. We may die here.”
A silence fell at that. I had accepted the likelihood of death when I decided to kill my father, but now that I had my life, I wanted to keep it again. Even without Akos, even without family, even with most of Shotet hating me, what I had told Teka before was right. I had more now. I had friends. Hope for my own future, and for myself.
But I also had love for my people, broken though some of them may have been. Their stubborn will to survive. The way they looked at discarded objects, not as garbage, but as possibilities. They crash-landed through hostile atmospheres. They coasted alongside the currentstream. They were explorers, innovators, warriors, wanderers. And I belonged to them.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
“How?” Yssa asked. “Where do you activate the alarm?”
“One of two places: Noavek manor, and the amphitheater. The amphitheater is easier to access,” I said. “We don’t all need to go. So who goes, and who stays?”
“I’m leaving this planet,” Eijeh said.
“Yeah, I got that impression based on your repeated insistence that you’re not staying,” I snapped.
“I will take you off-planet, Eijeh,” Yssa said to him. “You are an oracle and as such, your life is valuable.”
“My life’s not valuable?” Ettrek said.
Yssa gave him a look.
“You two should go,” I said to Zyt. “You only signed on to smuggle, not to risk your lives.”
“Yeah, none of us here would ever do that,” Ettrek said, rolling his eyes. “You remember most of us came here to kill Lazmet Noavek, right?”
I glanced at Teka and Sifa, in turn.
“You’re an oracle, too,” I said to Sifa.
“I’m not afraid,” Sifa said quietly.
I was. Part of me wanted to steal a floater and flee Voa as quickly as I could, get myself out of the way of the blast. But the better part—the part that made the decisions now, it seemed—knew that I had to stay, had to fight for my people, or at least allow them a chance to fight for themselves.
And maybe Sifa was as undaunted as she appeared. Maybe knowing the future forced you to be at peace with it. But I didn’t think so.
She was afraid, just as I was, just as any person would be. It was that, perhaps, that made me accept that she was here. It was the most mercy I could offer her at the moment.
“Cyra should lead the way to the amphitheater,” Yma said, and I looked at her in surprise. It was rare she gave me credit for anything. Ever. She added, “I believe you’re familiar with the subterranean prison.”
“Not as familiar as I am with your dazzling wit,” I bit back with a smile.
“You take the bait every time, don’t you?” Teka said to me.
I considered that for a moment. “Yes,” I said. “It’s part of my charm.”
Ettrek snorted. And we started to plan.
Some time later, we stood on the rooftop and watched Eijeh and Yssa board a smuggler ship, courtesy of Zyt’s connections to Voa’s criminal underground.
Eijeh didn’t bid me farewell. But he did glance back before disappearing inside the ship. His eyes met mine, and he nodded, just once.
And then my brother was gone.