“ARE YOU STILL SLEEPING?” Jorek said. His face was right next to Akos’s somehow, even though Akos’s bed—or really, his hole in the wall—was high off the ground. Jorek had to be standing on the edge of another bunk.
Akos wasn’t still sleeping, and he hadn’t been since the general clamor of everybody getting up and going to the mess hall woke him up. He just hadn’t gotten up yet. Getting up meant splashing water on his face and neck, combing his hair flat, changing his clothes, eating, all things he just . . . didn’t care to do just then.
“And if I am?” he said, rubbing his face with his palm. “Am I neglecting some duty I don’t know about?”
“No,” Jorek said, frowning. “I guess not. But Cyra was arguing with exiles all morning, and I thought you’d be with her, since you two are basically welded to each other.”
Akos felt guilty at that. Pretty much the only duty he did still have was to keep Cyra away from pain, and he wasn’t doing such a good job at that lately, even though her currentgift was worse here.
“Well, I can’t get up if you’re blocking my way, can I?” he said.
Jorek flashed a smile and hopped down from his perch on one of the lower bunks. Akos put his legs over the side of the bed and dropped heavily on both feet. “They still don’t want to go after Lazmet?” he said.
“We still think Thuvhe is a far greater threat than Lazmet, and we should focus our energies there,” Jorek said. “Plus, we don’t even know how to get to him. Or where he is. Or how to get through the wall of soldiers he’s undoubtedly surrounded himself with.”
“Well, we could probably find him by looking for the wall of soldiers,” Akos said. “Don’t see that every day.”
Jorek winced, looking at him. “You’re looking a little rough, there, Kereseth.”
Akos grunted, and stuck his feet in his shoes. Wash face, comb hair, eat breakfast, he told himself. He went to one of the sinks that stood right in the middle of everything and stuck his head under the faucet.
He braced himself on the edge of the sink and sighed into his reflection. He did look bad. Paler than usual, dark circles, faded bruises from the fight with Vas at the corner of his eye and jaw. His freckles standing out like little pockmarks all over his nose. He dragged his fingers through his hair a couple of times just to make it flat, then touched the bruise on his jaw.
Vas’s fist was swinging, split knuckles coming at him—
His stomach sucked in hard, like he was about to puke.
“You okay?” Jorek asked him.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Gonna go make Cyra some painkiller.”
“All right,” Jorek said, but his brow was furrowed with concern.
He tapped the doorframe to Zenka’s shop. She was bent over a table, digging what looked like a mix between a spoon and a knife into the pulpy flesh of an Ogran fruit. At each new dig, the fruit flickered with light, like a faltering lantern.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Zenka said to it. “You had a good long life.”
“You can’t blame it for trying to survive,” he said to her.
She didn’t startle, just glanced up at him and arched an eyebrow. “It’s already lost that fight. This is a liek—when it’s still on the vine, it heats at a touch. Burns most of those who try to harvest it right through their gloves. So if it’s here now, that means its harvest was well-earned.”
“And we all accept the fates we earn?” he said.
“What kind of a question is that? You sound like some kind of Ogran mystic.” She rolled her eyes, which told him how she felt about Ogran mystics.
“Or like my mom,” he said. “The oracle. Maybe I’m turning into her.”
“Ah, we all become our parents, eventually,” Zenka said, stabbing the fruit again. “What do you want, Thuvhe?”
“I want a space to brew a painkiller,” he said. “And . . . access to ingredients.”
“Do you also want the moon in a jar?”
“Does Ogra have a moon?”
“Yes, and it’s almost small enough to put in a jar, to be honest.” She put the fruit down, and the tool she was using to scoop its flesh.
“I’m willing to work for the privilege of using your space,” he added. “In case that wasn’t clear.”
“All right,” she said. “But if you prove yourself to be lazy or useless, I reserve the right to revoke that privilege at any time.”
“Agreed,” he said.
She set him the task of grinding the tooth of a particularly ferocious flower into a powder. “In its powder form,” she said, “it can help with circulation.” Akos had a hard time focusing on the task in front of him, but his hands were capable enough, from seasons of practice.
Later that day she cupped some seeds in her hands to show him how they glowed, and what color. Hunching over her in the little shop, peeking between her fingers, made him feel like a kid again, and he ached so badly he had to pause for breath.
The only real marker of time on Ogra was the waning of the bioluminescence that supplied Ogra’s only natural light, or the storms that battered the walls in the evening. He didn’t know how long he spent crushing teeth before Zenka told him he could start on the painkiller. Then she stood at his shoulder, watching, as he measured out ingredients. He had brought some of his own hushflower, but the supply was getting low. Zenka dug some out of her storeroom and shook the jar at him.
“I thought you said you didn’t have hushflower,” he said.
“No, I said I didn’t know how to use it,” she said. “Besides, you don’t go around admitting to strangers that you have a dangerous poison on hand.”
“Fair enough,” he said, and he got to work.