Carve the Mark

  Otega stopped at a sparsely decorated door near the end. Above the name "Surukta" was a bundle of dried feathergrass pinned in place with a metal charm. There were a few pages of what looked like a technical manual, written in another language. Pithar, if I had to guess. They were contraband--the possession of documents in another language for any purpose other than government-approved translation was illegal. But down here, I was sure no one bothered to enforce things like that. There was freedom in being unimportant to Ryzek Noavek.

  "She lives here," Otega said, tapping the door with the knifepoint. "Though she isn't here now. I followed her here this morning."

  "Then I will wait for her," I said. "Thank you for your help, Otega."

  "It's my pleasure. We see each other too rarely, I think."

  "So come to see me, then."

  Otega shook her head. "The line dividing your world from mine is thick." She offered me the knife. "Be careful."

  I smiled at her as she walked away, and when she disappeared around the corner at the end of the corridor, I tried to open the renegade's door. It wasn't locked--I doubted she would be gone for long.

  Inside was one of the smallest living spaces I had ever stood in. A sink was wedged into one corner, and a bed on stilts stood in the other. Beneath the bed was an overturned crate covered in wires and switches and screws. A magnetic strip pasted to the wall held tools so small I doubted I could ever use them. And beside the bed was a picture.

  I leaned in close to see it. In it, a young girl with long blond hair had her arms wrapped around a woman with hair so silver it looked like a coin. Beside them was a young boy making a face, his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth. In the background were a few other people--mostly pale haired, like the rest--too blurry to make out.

  Surukta. Was that name familiar, or was I just fooling myself?

  The door opened behind me.

  She was small and slim, just as I remembered. Her baggy, one-piece uniform was unbuttoned to the waist, with a sleeveless shirt beneath it. She had bright blond hair tied back from her face, and she was wearing an eye patch.

  "What--"

  Her fingers spread out, taut, at her sides. There was something in her back pocket--some kind of tool. I watched her hand move toward it, slowly, trying to hide the movement from me.

  "Go ahead and draw your screwdriver or whatever it is," I said. "I'm happy to beat you a second time."

  Her eye patch was black, and ill-fitting, too large for her face. But her remaining eye was the same rich blue I remembered from the attack.

  "It's not a screwdriver; it's a wrench," she said. "What is Cyra Noavek doing in my humble living space?"

  I had never heard my name spoken with such venom before. Which was saying something.

  She had a look of practiced confusion on her face. It would have fooled me if I hadn't been so convinced that I had found her. Despite what Ryzek insisted, I was capable of detecting subtleties.

  "Your name?" I said.

  "You're the one who broke into my home, and you need me to give you a name?" She stepped in farther, and closed the door behind her.

  She was a head shorter than me, but her movements were strong and purposeful. I didn't doubt that she was a talented fighter, which was probably why the renegades had sent her after me that night. I wondered if they had wanted her to kill me. It didn't really matter anymore.

  "It'll be faster if you give me your name."

  "Teka Surukta, then."

  "Okay, Teka Surukta." I put her makeshift knife down on the edge of the sink. "I think that belongs to you. I came to return it."

  "I . . . don't know what you're talking about."

  "I didn't turn you in that night, so what makes you think I'm going to turn you in now?" I tried to slouch, like she was, but the position felt unnatural to me. My mother and father had taught me to stand up straight, knees together, hands folded when I wasn't using them. There was no such thing as casual conversation when you were a Noavek, so I had never learned the art of it.

  She didn't look confused anymore.

  "You know, you might have better luck carrying around some of your tools over there as weapons instead of the tape . . . thing," I said, gesturing to the delicate instruments magnetized to the wall. "They look sharp as needles."

  "They're too valuable," Teka replied. "What do you want from me?"

  "I suppose that depends on what sort of people you and your renegade cohort are." All around me was the sound of dripping water and creaking pipes. Everything smelled moldy and dank, like a tomb. "If the interrogations don't yield actual results within the next few days, my brother is going to frame someone and execute them. They will likely be innocent. He doesn't care."

  "I'm shocked that you do," Teka said. "I thought you were supposed to be some kind of sadist."

  I felt a sharp pain as a currentshadow darted across my cheek and spread over my temple. I saw it in my periphery, and suppressed the urge to wince at the pain it brought, a sharp ache in my sinuses.

  "Presumably you all knew the potential consequences of your actions when you signed up for your cause, whatever it is," I said, ignoring her comment. "Whoever my brother selects to take the fall will not have made that calculated risk. They will die because you wanted to pull a prank on Ryzek Noavek."

  "A prank?" Teka said. "Is that what you call acknowledging the truth? Destabilizing your brother's regime? Showing that we can control the movement of the ship itself?"

  "For our purposes, yes," I said. Currentshadows traveled up my arm and curled around my shoulder, showing through my white shirt. Teka's eye followed them. I flinched, and continued, "If you care about the death of an innocent person, I suggest you come up with a real name to give me by the end of the day. If you don't care, I will just let Ryzek pick his target. It's entirely up to you--for me it's the same either way."

  She uncrossed her arms and turned, so both shoulders were against the door.

  "Well, shit," she said.

  A few minutes later I was following Teka Surukta down the maintenance tunnel, toward the loading bay. I jumped at every noise, every creak, which in this part of the ship meant I jumped more often than not. It was loud down here, though we were far from most of the ship's population.

  We were on a raised metal platform, wide enough for two slim people to pass each other with stomachs held in, hanging above all the machinery and water tanks and furnaces and current engines that kept the ship running and habitable. If I had gotten lost among the gears and pipes, I would never have found my way out.

  "You know," I said, "if your plan is to get me far away from most people so that you can kill me, you might find it's more difficult than you imagine."

  "I'd like to see what you're about first," Teka said. "You're not quite what I expected."

  "Who is?" I said grimly. "I suppose it would be a waste of time for me to ask you how you managed to disable the ship's lights."

  "No, that's easy." Teka stopped, and touched her palm to the wall. She closed her eye, and the light just above us, trapped in a metal cage to protect it, flickered. Once, then three times. The same rhythm I had heard tapped out when she attacked me.

  "Anything that runs on current, I can mess with," Teka said. "That's why I'm a technician. Sadly that 'light' trick only works on the sojourn ship--all the lights in Voa are fenzu or burnstone, and there's not much I can do to those."

  "You must like the sojourn ship best, then."

  "In a manner of speaking," she said. "But it's a little claustrophobic on this ship when you live in a room the size of a closet."

  We reached an open area, a grate above one of the oxygen converters, which were three times my height, and twice again as wide around. They processed the carbon dioxide we emitted, drawn in by the ship's vents, and converted it through a complex process I didn't understand. I had tried to read a book about it on the last sojourn, but the language was too technical for me. There were only so many things I could master.


  "Stay here," she said. "I'm going to get someone."

  "Stay here?" I said, but she was already gone.

  As I stood on the grate, beads of sweat collected at the small of my back. I could hear her footsteps, but because of the echoes, couldn't tell which direction they were going. Would she bring back a horde of renegades to finish the work she had begun during the attack? Or was she sincere in saying that she no longer wanted to kill me? I had walked into this situation with so little regard for my own safety, and I wasn't even sure why, except that I didn't want to watch the execution of an innocent when there were so many guilty hidden away.

  When I heard the scrape-scrape-scrape of feet on metal stairs, I turned to see a tall, lean older woman loping toward me. Her long hair shone like the side of a transport floater. I recognized her from the picture next to Teka's bed.

  "Hello, Miss Noavek," she said. "My name is Zosita Surukta."

  Zosita wore the same clothes as her daughter, the pant legs rolled up to expose her ankles. There were deep lines in her forehead from a lifetime of scowling. Something about her reminded me of my own mother, poised and elegant and dangerous. It wasn't easy to intimidate me, but Zosita did. My shadows traveled faster than usual, like breath, like blood.

  "Do I know you from somewhere?" I said. "Your name sounds familiar."

  Zosita cocked her head like a bird. "I'm not sure how I could manage to make the acquaintance of Cyra Noavek before now."

  I didn't quite believe her. There was something about her smile.

  "Teka told you why I'm here?" I said.

  "Yes," Zosita said. "Though she doesn't yet know what I will do next, which is to turn myself in."

  "When I asked her for a name," I said, swallowing hard, "I didn't think it would be her mother's--"

  "We are all prepared to face the consequences of our actions," Zosita said. "I will take full responsibility for the attack, and it will be believable, since I am a Shotet exile. I used to teach Shotet children how to speak Othyrian."

  Some of the older Shotet still knew other languages, from before it was illegal to speak them. There was nothing my father or Ryzek could do about that--you couldn't force a person to unlearn something. I knew some of them taught classes, and that doing so could earn a person exile, but I had never thought I would meet one.

  She tilted her head, to the other side this time.

  "It was, of course, my voice that spoke over the intercom," Zosita added.

  "You . . ." I cleared my throat. "You know Ryzek's going to execute you. Publicly."

  "I am aware of that, Miss Noavek."

  "Okay." I winced as the currentshadows spread. "Are you prepared to endure an interrogation?"

  "I assumed he wouldn't need to interrogate me if I came of my own accord." She raised her eyebrows.

  "He's concerned about the exile colony. He'll want to get whatever information he can out of you before he . . ." The word execute stuck in my throat.

  "Kills me," Zosita said. "My, my, Miss Noavek. You can't even say the words? Are you so soft?"

  Her eyes shifted to the armor that covered my marked arm.

  "No," I snapped.

  "It's not an insult," Zosita said, a little more gently. "Soft hearts make the universe worth living in."

  Unexpectedly, I thought of Akos, whispering an apology in Thuvhesit, instinctively, when he brushed past me in the kitchen. I had played his gentle words over and over in my mind that night, like it was music I couldn't get out of my head. It came to me just as easily now.

  "I know what it's like to lose a mother," I said. "I don't wish it on anyone, even renegades I hardly know."

  Zosita let out a little laugh, shaking her head.

  "What?" I said, defensive.

  "I . . . celebrated your mother's passing," she said. I went cold. "As I celebrated your father's, and would have celebrated your brother's. Even yours, perhaps." She ran her fingers over the metal railing beside her. I imagined her daughter's fingerprints, pressed there earlier minutes ago, now wiped clean by her touch. "It is a strange thing to realize that your worst enemies can be loved by their families."

  You didn't know my mother, I wanted to snarl. As if it mattered, now or ever, what this woman thought of Ylira Noavek. But Zosita was already half faded in my mind, like her own shadow. Marching, in this moment, toward her own doom. And for what? For a well-aimed blow against my brother? Two renegades had fallen to Vas in that attack. Had it been worth their lives?

  "Is it really worth it?" I said, frowning. "Losing your life for this?"

  She was still smiling that strange smile.

  "After I fled Shotet, your brother summoned what remained of my family to his home," she said. "I had meant to send for my children when I reached a safe place, but he got to them first. He killed my eldest son, and he took my daughter's eye, for crimes they had no part in." She laughed again. "And you see, you aren't even shocked. You have seen him do worse, no doubt, and his father before him. Yes, it is worth it. And it was worth it to the two who died trying to take down your brother's steward. I don't imagine you can understand."

  For a long time we stood, with just the hum of the pipes and distant footsteps to break the silence. I was too confused, too tired, to hide the wincing and flinching as my currentgift did its work.

  "To answer your question, yes, I can endure an interrogation," Zosita said. "Can you tell lies?" She smirked again. "I suppose that's a silly question. Will you tell lies?"

  I hesitated.

  When had I become the sort of person who helped renegades? She had just told me that she would have celebrated my death. At least Ryzek wanted to keep me alive--what would the renegades do to me, if they managed to overthrow my brother?

  Somehow, I didn't care.

  "'I tell lies better than I tell truths,'" I said. It was a quote from some poetry I had read on the side of a building with Otega on one of our excursions. I am a Shotet. I am sharp as broken glass, and just as fragile. I tell lies better than I tell truths. I see all of the galaxy and never catch a glimpse of it.

  "Let us go tell some, then," Zosita said.

  CHAPTER 19: AKOS

  AKOS BENT OVER THE pot, resting on a burner in his little room on the sojourn ship, and breathed in some of the yellow fumes. Everything in front of him blurred, and his head dropped, heavy, toward the countertop. Just for a tick, before he caught himself.

  Strong enough, then, he thought. Good.

  He'd had to ask Cyra to get him some sendes leaf to strengthen the drug, so it would work faster. And it had worked--he had tested it the night before, dropping asleep so soon after swallowing it that the book he was reading slid right out of his hands.

  He turned off the flames to let the elixir cool, then jerked to attention at the sound of a knock. He checked the clock. In Thuvhe, he'd been more aware of the world's rhythms, dark in the Deadening time and bright in the Awakening, the way the day closed like a shutting eye. Here, without the sunset and sunrise to guide him, he was always checking. It was the seventeenth hour. Time for Jorek.

  The corridor guard was there when he opened the door, looking critical. Jorek was behind him.

  "Kereseth," the guard said. "This one says he's here to see you?"

  "Yes," Akos said.

  "Didn't think you could receive visitors," the guard said with a sneer. "Not your quarters, are they?"

  "My name is Jorek Kuzar," Jorek said, leaning hard into his surname. "So. Get out of his face."

  The guard looked over Jorek's mechanic uniform, eyebrows raised.

  "Go easy on him, Kuzar," Akos said. "He's got the world's most boring job: protecting Cyra Noavek."

  Akos went back to his narrow room, which was giving off a leafy, malty smell. Medicinal. Akos dipped a finger in the mixture to test its heat. Still warm, but now cool enough to put in a vial. He wiped the potion off on his pants, not wanting it to absorb through his skin. He searched the drawers for a clean vessel.

  Jorek was standing just insi
de the doorway. Staring. His hand hanging off the back of his neck, like always.

  "What?" Akos said. He got out a dropper and touched it to the potion.

  "Nothing, it's just . . . this isn't what I expected Cyra Noavek's room to look like," Jorek said.

  Akos grunted a little--it wasn't what he'd expected, either--as he squeezed the yellow elixir from the dropper into the vial.

  "You really don't sleep in the same bed," Jorek said.

  Cheeks hot, Akos scowled at him. "No. Why?"

  "Rumors." Jorek shrugged. "I mean, you do live together. Touch each other."

  "I help her with her pain," Akos said.

  "And you're fated to die for the Noaveks."

  "Thanks for the reminder; I'd almost forgotten," Akos snapped. "Did you want my help, or not?"

  "Yeah. Sorry." Jorek cleared his throat. "So, same plan for this one?"

  They had already done this once. Jorek had dosed Suzao with a sleeping potion so he would collapse in the middle of breakfast. Now Suzao was on edge, and searching for whoever had drugged him and embarrassed him in front of everybody. Akos figured it wouldn't take much to make Suzao angry enough to challenge him to fight to the death--Suzao wasn't exactly a reasonable man--but he didn't want to take chances, so he was having Jorek drug his dad again, just to be sure. Hopefully this would send Suzao on a rampage, and after the scavenge, Akos could confess to being behind all the drugging, and fight him in the arena.

  "Two days before the scavenge, slip it into his medicine," Akos said. "Leave the door to his quarters cracked so it looks like someone came in from outside, or else he might suspect you."

  "Right." Jorek took the vial from Akos, testing the cork with his thumb. "And after that . . ."

  "It's under control," Akos said. "After the scavenge, I'll tell him I'm the one who's been drugging him, he'll challenge me, and I'll . . . end it. The first day arena challenges are legal again. Okay?"

  "Okay." Jorek bit down hard on his lip. "Good."

  "Your mom okay?"

  "Um . . ." Jorek looked away, at Cyra's rumpled sheets and the burnstone lanterns strung together over the bed. "She'll make it, yeah."

  "Good," Akos said. "You'd better go."

  Jorek put the vial in his pocket. It seemed to Akos like he didn't really want to go--he dawdled by the end of the counter, skimming it with a fingertip that likely came away sticky. Neither Akos nor Cyra cared all that much for scrubbing.