Carve the Mark

  "The first child of the family Noavek will fall to the family Benesit," it said. "The truth can be suppressed, but it can never be erased."

  I waited for the voice to continue, but the crackling went dead, the announcer switching off. The ship began to hum again. The woman whose throat was captive to my arm and my blade moaned softly.

  "I should arrest you," I whispered. "Arrest you, and bring you in for questioning." I tilted my head. "Do you know how my brother interrogates people? He uses me. He uses this." I pushed more of the shadows toward her, so they collected around my forearm. She screamed.

  For a moment, she sounded just like Lety Zetsyvis.

  I released her, pulling away from the wall.

  The lights on the floor had come to life, making us both glow from beneath. I could see a single bright eye in her head, fixed on me. The overhead lights clicked on, and she sprinted down the hallway, disappearing around a corner.

  I had let her go.

  I put my hands in fists to keep them from trembling. I couldn't believe what I had just done. If Ryzek ever found out . . .

  I picked up her knife--if it could be called that; it was a jagged metal rod, sharpened by hand, with tape wrapped around the bottom to make a handle--and I started to walk. I wasn't sure what direction I was going, just that I needed to keep moving. I had no injuries, no evidence that the attack had ever occurred. Hopefully it had been too dark for the security footage to show that I had just let a renegade go free.

  What have you done?

  I ran through the ship's hallways, my footsteps echoing for just a few seconds before I dove into a crowd, into chaos. Everything was loud and hurried, like my heart. I stuffed my hands into my sleeves so I wouldn't touch anyone by accident. I wasn't going to my quarters. I needed to see Ryzek before anyone else did--I needed to make sure he believed I had not been a part of this. It was one thing to refuse to torture people, but it was another to participate in a revolt. I put the renegade's knife in my pocket, out of sight.

  The soldiers stepped back for me when I reached Ryzek's rooms on the far side of the ship, the one closest to the currentstream. They directed me to his office, and when I reached the door I wasn't sure that he would let me in, but he shouted the command right away.

  Ryzek stood barefoot in his office, facing the wall. He was alone, a mug of diluted hushflower extract--I recognized it on sight, these days--clutched in one hand. He wasn't wearing his armor, and when he looked at me, there was chaos in his eyes.

  "What do you want?" he demanded.

  "I . . ." I paused. I didn't know what I wanted, except to cover myself. "I just came to find out if you were all right."

  "Of course I'm all right," he said. "Vas killed the two renegades who tried to enter this part of the ship before they could even scream." He tugged one of the curtains back from the porthole--larger than most, it was almost as tall as he was--and stared out at the currentstream, which had turned dark green. Almost blue, almost time for the invasion, the scavenging, the tradition of our ancestors. "You think the childish actions of a few renegades can harm me?"

  I stepped toward him, careful, like he was a wild animal. "Ryzek, it's all right to be a little rattled when people are attacking you."

  "I am not rattled!" He shouted every word, slamming his mug down on a nearby table. The hushflower blend spilled everywhere, staining his white cuff red.

  As I stared at him, I was struck by the memory of his quick, sure hands, fastening the buckles across my lap before my first sojourn, and how he had smiled as he teased me about being nervous. It wasn't his fault that he had turned out this way, so terrified and so creative with his cruelty. Our father had conditioned him to become this person. The greatest gift Lazmet Noavek had ever given me, even greater than life itself, had been leaving me alone.

  I had come at Ryzek with threats, with anger, with disdain, with fear. I had never tried kindness. While my father had relied on well-aimed threats and intimidating silence as his weapons, my mother had always wielded kindness with the deftness of a blade. After all this time, I was still more Lazmet than Ylira, but that could change.

  "I'm your sister. You don't have to be this way with me," I said, as gently as I could.

  Ryzek was staring at the stain on his cuff. He didn't respond, which I decided was a good sign.

  "Do you remember how we used to play with those little figurines in my room?" I said. "How you taught me to hold a knife? I kept making that tight fist and cutting off circulation to my fingertips, and you taught me how to fix it."

  He frowned. I wondered if he did remember--or was that one of the memories he had traded for one of Eijeh's? Still, maybe he had taken in some of Eijeh's gentleness when he traded away his pain.

  "We weren't always like this, you and I," I said.

  In his pause, I let myself hope--for a quiet shift in the way he regarded me, for the slow and steady change that our relationship could undergo, if he would just let go of his fear. His gaze found mine and it was almost there, I could see it, I could almost hear it. We could be as we once were.

  "Then you killed our mother," he said quietly. "And now, this is all that we can be."

  I shouldn't have been surprised, shouldn't have marveled at the way words could hit me like a hard punch to the stomach. But hope had made me a fool.

  I spent all night awake, dreading what he would do about the attack.

  The answer came the next morning, when his calm, self-assured voice came from the news screen on the far wall. I rolled out of bed and crossed the room so I could turn on the video. My brother filled the screen, pale and skeletal. His armor caught the light, casting an eerie glow across his face.

  "Yesterday, we experienced a . . . disruption--" His lip curled, like he thought it was amusing. It made sense--Ryzek knew not to show fear, to minimize the renegades' actions as much as possible. "Childish though it was, the perpetrators of this stunt compromised the security of the ship by stalling its flight, which means they must be found and rooted out." His tone had turned sinister. "People of any age will be selected at random from the ship's database and brought in for questioning, beginning today. There will be a shipwide curfew, from the twentieth hour to the sixth hour, imposed on all of the ship's occupants except those essential to its functioning, until such time as we have eradicated this problem. The sojourn will also be delayed until we have ensured the ship's safety."

  "Questioning," Akos said from behind me. "Is that code for 'interrogation involving torture'?"

  I nodded.

  "If you know anything about the identities of the individuals involved in this prank, it is in your best interest to come forward," Ryzek said. "Those who are discovered to have withheld information or lie during questioning will also be punished, for the good of the Shotet people. Rest assured, the safety of the sojourn ship, and all the people in it, is my highest concern."

  Akos snorted.

  "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear," Ryzek said. "Let us continue to prepare to show the other planets in this galaxy our might and our unity."

  His head remained on the screen for a few moments longer, and then the news feed returned, this time in Othyrian, which I knew passably well. There was a water shortage on Tepes, in the western continent. The Shotet subtitles were accurate. For once.

  "Showing our might and our unity," I said, quoting Ryzek, more to myself than to Akos. "Is that what the sojourn is for now?"

  "What else is it for?"

  The Assembly was debating further requirements for the oracles on each planet, to be voted on in forty days. Shotet subtitles: "Assembly attempts to assert tyrannical control over oracles through another predatory measure, to be enacted at the end of the forty day cycle." Accurate, but biased.

  Some notorious band of space pirates had just been sentenced to fifteen seasons in prison. Shotet subtitles: "Band of Zoldan traditionalists sentenced to fifteen seasons in prison for speaking out against unnecessarily restrictive Assembly
regulations." Not so accurate.

  "The sojourn is supposed to be an acknowledgment of our reliance on the current and the one who masters it," I said quietly. "A religious rite, and a way of honoring those who came before us."

  "The Shotet you describe is not the one that I've seen," Akos said.

  I glanced back at him. "Maybe you see what you want to see."

  "Maybe we both do," Akos said. "You look worried. Do you think Ryzek will stop leaving you alone?"

  "If things get bad enough."

  "And if you refuse to help him again? What's the worst he can do?"

  I sighed. "I don't think you understand. My mother was beloved. A deity among mortals. When she died, all of Shotet mourned. It was like the world had come apart." I closed my eyes, briefly, letting an image of her face pass through my mind. "If they find out what I did to her, they will tear me limb from limb. Ryzek knows that, and he'll use it if he gets too desperate."

  Akos frowned. Not for the first time, I wondered how he would feel if I died. Not because I thought he hated me, but because I knew that his fate echoed in his head whenever he looked at me. I might be the Noavek he would one day die for, given how much time we spent together. And I could not believe that I was worth that, worth his life.

  "Well," he said. "Let's hope he doesn't, then."

  He was angled toward me. There were only a few inches separating us. We were often close together, when sparring, when training, when making our breakfasts, and he had to touch me to keep my pain at bay. So it should not have felt strange that his hip was so close to my stomach, that I could see ropy muscle standing out from his arm.

  But it did.

  "How is your friend Suzao?" I said as I stepped back.

  "I gave some sleeping potion to Jorek to slip into the medicine he takes in the morning," Akos said.

  "Jorek's going to drug his own father?" I said. "Interesting."

  "Yeah, well, we'll see if Suzao actually collapses into his lunch. Might make him angry enough to challenge me to the arena."

  "I'd do it a few more times before you reveal yourself," I said. "He needs to be afraid, as well as angry."

  "Hard to think of a man like that being afraid."

  "Yeah, well, we're all afraid." I sighed. "The angry more than most, I think."

  The currentstream made the slow transition from green to blue, and still we didn't descend on Pitha, still Ryzek delayed the sojourn. We coasted along the edge of the galaxy, out of the Assembly's reach. Impatience was like a humid cloud that had settled over the ship; I breathed it in whenever I left my isolated quarters. And these days, I rarely left my quarters.

  Ryzek couldn't delay our descent forever--he couldn't forgo the sojourn altogether, or he would be the first sovereign to ignore our traditions in over one hundred seasons.

  I had promised him that I would keep up appearances, which was why I found myself at a gathering of his closest associates again, on the observation deck several days after the attack. The first thing I saw upon entering was the darkness of space through the windows, open to us like we were soaring into a huge creature's mouth. Then I saw Vas, clutching a mug of tea with bleeding knuckles. When he noticed the blood, he dabbed at it with a handkerchief and stuffed it back into his pocket.

  "I know you can't feel pain, Vas, but there is some value in taking care of your own body," I said to him.

  He raised his eyebrows at me, then set his mug down. The others were gathered on the opposite end of the room, holding glasses, standing in small groups. Most had collected around Ryzek like debris around a drain hole. Yma Zetsyvis--white hair almost glowing against the dark backdrop of space--was among them, her body stiff with obvious tension.

  Otherwise the room was empty, the black floors polished, the walls just curved windows. I half expected us all to float away.

  "You know so little about my gift, for all the time we've known each other," Vas said. "Do you know I have to set alarms to eat and drink? And check myself constantly for broken bones and bruises?"

  I had never thought about what else Vas had lost when he lost the ability to feel pain.

  "That's why I let the little wounds slide," Vas said. "It's exhausting, paying this much attention to your own body."

  "Hmm," I said. "I think I might know something about that."

  Not for the first time, I marveled at how opposite we were--and how similar that made us, both our lives revolving around pain, in one way or another, both spending an exorbitant amount of energy on the physical. It made me curious if we had anything else in common.

  "When did you develop it?" I said. "What was happening at the time?"

  "I was ten." He leaned against the wall and ran his hand over his head. His hair was shaved close to his scalp. Near his ear, there were a few cuts from the razor--he probably hadn't noticed them. "Before I was accepted into your brother's service, I attended a regular school. I was scrawny then, an easy target. Some of the bigger children were attacking me." He smiled. "Once I realized I couldn't feel pain, I beat one of them half to death. They didn't come after me again."

  He had been in danger, and his body had responded. His mind had responded. His story was the same as mine.

  "You think of me the way I think of Kereseth," Vas said. "You think I'm Ryzek's little pet, just like Akos is yours."

  "I think we all serve my brother," I said. "You. Me. Kereseth. We're all the same." I glanced at the crowd gathered around Ryzek. "Why is Yma here?"

  "You mean, after she was disgraced by both husband and child?" Vas said. "She's rumored to have gotten on hands and knees, begging for forgiveness for their transgressions. That may be a slight exaggeration, of course."

  I slipped past him, edging closer to the others. Yma's hand was on Ryzek's arm, sliding down to his elbow. I expected him to pull away; he nearly always did when people tried to touch him. But he permitted the caress, even leaned into it, maybe.

  How could she stand to look at him, after he ordered the deaths of her daughter and husband, let alone touch him? I watched her laugh at something Ryzek had said. Her eyebrows drew in like she was in pain. Or desperate, I thought. The expressions were often the same.

  "Cyra!" Yma said, drawing everyone's attention to me. I tried to make myself look her in the eye, but it was difficult, given what I had done to Lety. I dreamt of Yma when I dreamt of her daughter, sometimes, imagined her hunched over Lety's corpse, screaming at the top of her lungs. "It's been a while. What have you been up to?"

  I met Ryzek's eyes, just for a moment.

  "Cyra has been on a special assignment from me," Ryzek said easily. "To stay close to Kereseth."

  He was taunting me.

  "Is the younger Kereseth so valuable?" Yma asked me. She wore that peculiar smile.

  "That remains to be seen," I said. "But he is Thuvhesit-born, after all. He knows things about our enemies that we do not."

  "Ah," Yma said lightly. "I just thought you might have made yourself useful during these interrogations, Cyra, in the way you have made yourself useful before."

  I felt like I might be sick.

  "Unfortunately, the interrogations require a clever tongue and a mind skilled at the detection of subtleties," Ryzek said. "Two things my sister has always lacked."

  Stung, I couldn't think of a response. Maybe he was right about my tongue not being clever.

  So I just let the currentshadows sprawl, and when the conversation had turned to another topic, I walked to the edge of the room to look out at the dark that enfolded us.

  We were on the edge of the galaxy, so the only planets--or pieces of planets--left to see were not populous enough to participate in the Assembly. We called them "peripheral planets," or just "the brim," more casually. My mother had urged the Shotet to regard them as our brothers and sisters in the same struggle for legitimacy. My father had privately scoffed at that idea, saying that Shotet was greater than any brim spawn.

  I saw one of those planets from this vantage point, just a spot of
light ahead, too big to be one of our stars. A bright thread of the currentstream stretched toward it and wrapped around it like a belt.

  "P1104," Yma Zetsyvis said to me, sipping from her mug. "That's the planet you're looking at."

  "Have you been there?" I was tense, standing beside her, but I tried to keep my voice light. Behind us the others erupted into laughter at something cousin Vakrez had said.

  "Of course not," Yma said. "The last two sovereigns of Shotet have not permitted travel to brim planets. They--rightfully--want to put distance between us and them in the eyes of the Assembly. We can't be associated with such rough company if we want to be taken seriously."

  Spoken like a Noavek loyalist. Or more accurately, a Noavek apologist. She knew the script well.

  "Right," I said. "So . . . I take it the interrogations haven't yielded any results."

  "Some low-level renegades, yes, but none of the key players. And unfortunately, we are running out of time."

  We? I thought. She so confidently included herself as one of my brother's close associates. Maybe she really had begged him for forgiveness. Maybe she had found another way to ingratiate herself to him.

  I shuddered at the thought.

  "I know. The currentstream is almost blue. Changing by the day," I said.

  "Indeed. So your brother needs to find someone. Make it public. Show strength before the sojourn. Strategy is, of course, important for unstable times like these."

  "And what's the strategy if he doesn't find someone in time?"

  Yma turned her strange smile on me. "I would think you already know the strategy. Hasn't your brother been filling you in, despite your special assignment?"

  I got the sense we both knew that my "special assignment" was a lie.

  "Of course," I said dryly. "But you know, with a mind as dull as mine, I forget things like this all the time. I probably forgot to turn off my stove this morning."

  "I sense it will not be difficult for your brother to find a suspect in time for the scavenge," Yma said. "All they have to do is look the part of a renegade, right?"

  "He's going to frame someone?" I said.

  I felt cold at the thought of an innocent person dying because Ryzek needed a scapegoat, and I wasn't sure why. Months ago--even weeks ago--this would not have troubled me as much. But something Akos had said was working its way through me: that the thing I was did not have to be permanent.