Carve the Mark

She picked up his wrist. His fingers rested on her skin, dimming the shadows that flowed through her. It was easier, without them, to see that she was beautiful, her hair in long, loose curls, shining in the shifting light, her eyes so dark they looked black. Her aquiline nose, with its fine bones, and the splotch next to her windpipe, a birthmark, its shape somehow elegant.

  She placed the tip of the knife against his arm, beside his second mark, with the hash through it.

  "Ready?" she said. "One, two . . ."

  On "two," she dug in, merciless, with the tip of the blade. Then she found the little bottle in the drawer, with its brush. He watched her touch the dark liquid to his fresh wound with all the finesse of a painter at an easel. Sharp pain went down his arm. A rush of energy followed it--adrenaline--pushing out the aching, throbbing mess of the rest of him.

  She whispered the name across his skin: "Suzao Kuzar."

  And he felt it, felt the loss and the weight and the permanence, just as he was supposed to. He allowed himself to find relief in the Shotet ritual.

  "I'm sorry," he said, not sure what he was apologizing for--being mean to her earlier, or everything that had happened since the challenge, or something else. He'd woken the day after the challenge to her sweeping up broken glass in the bathroom, and later, to her screwing the towel rack back into the wall. He didn't remember ripping it off. Beyond that, he was startled to learn that she knew how to use tools, like a commoner. But that was Cyra, stuffed full of random knowledge.

  "I'm not so jaded I don't remember," she said, eyes shifting away from his. "That feeling, like everything is broken. Breaking."

  She placed a hand in his, and lifted the other to touch his neck, lightly. He twitched at first, then relaxed. He still had a mark there where Suzao had choked him in the cafeteria.

  Then she was moving her fingers back toward his ear, along the scar Ryzek had cut into his neck, and he was leaning into her touch. He was warm, too warm. They never touched like this. He never thought he wanted them to.

  "You make no sense to me," she said.

  Her palm was on his face, then, her fingers curled behind his ear. Long, thin fingers with tendons and veins always standing at attention. Knuckles so dry the skin was peeling in places.

  "All that has happened to you would make another person hard and hopeless," she said. "So how . . . how are you even possible?"

  He closed his eyes. Aching.

  "Still, Akos, this is a war." She brought her forehead to his. Her fingers were firm, fitted to his bones. "A war between you and the people who destroyed your life. Don't be ashamed of fighting it."

  And then a different kind of ache. A pang of longing, deep in his gut.

  He wanted her.

  Wanted to run his fingers along her strict cheekbone. Wanted to taste the elegant birthmark on her throat, and to feel her breaths against his mouth, and to wind her hair around his fingers until they were trapped.

  He turned his head, and pressed his lips to her cheek, hard enough that it wasn't quite a kiss. They shared a breath. Then he pulled back, stood up, turned away. Wiped his mouth. Wondered what the hell was wrong with him.

  She stood right behind him, so he could feel her body's warmth at his back. She touched the space between his shoulders. Was it her currentgift that made his skin prickle at the contact, even through his shirt?

  "There's something I have to do," she said. "I'll be back soon."

  Just like that, she was gone.

  CHAPTER 24: CYRA

  I WALKED THE MAINTENANCE tunnels, my face pulsing. The memory of his lips against my cheek played over and over in my mind. I tried to stomp it down like a stray ember. I couldn't kindle it and still do what needed to be done.

  The path to Teka's narrow closet of a room was complicated, and led me deep into the belly of the ship.

  She answered my light knock in seconds. She wore loose clothing, and her feet were bare. She had tied a length of cloth over her missing eye instead of covering it with an eyepatch. Over her shoulder I saw her lofted bed with the makeshift desk under it, now clear of all screws and tools and wires, ready for her to move back to Voa.

  "What the hell?" she said, and she dragged me into the room. Her eye was wide with alarm. "You can't just come here without warning--are you crazy?"

  "Tomorrow," I said. "Whatever you're going to do to my brother, you should do it tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow," she repeated. "As in, the day after today."

  "Last time I checked, that was the official definition of 'tomorrow,' yes," I said.

  She sat on the rickety stool by her desk, and set her elbows on her knees. I saw a flash of skin as her shirt fell forward--she wasn't wearing a chest binder. It was strange to see her comfortable and in her own space. We didn't know each other well enough to see each other this way.

  "Why?" she said.

  "Everything is disorganized the day we land," I said. "The security system in the house will be vulnerable, everyone will be exhausted, it's the perfect time to slip in."

  Teka frowned. "Do you have a plan?"

  "Back gate, back door, hidden tunnels--those are all easy enough to get through, because I know the codes," I said. "It's only when we get to his personal rooms that the sensors require my blood. If you can get to the back gate at midnight, I can help with the rest."

  "And you're sure you're ready for this?"

  A picture of Zosita was taped to the wall above Teka's head, right over her pillow. Another picture was beside it, a boy who looked like her brother. My throat felt tight. In one way or another, my family was responsible for every loss she had suffered.

  "What kind of a stupid question is that?" I said, scowling at her. "Of course I'm ready. But are you ready for your part of our agreement?"

  "Kereseth? Yeah," she said. "You get us in, we'll get him out."

  "I want it done simultaneously--I don't want to risk him getting hurt because of what I'm doing," I said. "He's hushflower-resistant, so it will require quite a bit to knock him out. And he's a skilled fighter, so don't underestimate him."

  Teka nodded, slowly. And stared, chewing the inside of her cheek.

  "What happened? You look all . . . frantic, or something," she said. "You guys have a fight?"

  I didn't answer.

  "I don't get it," she said. "You're obviously in love with him, why do you want him gone?"

  I considered not answering that, either. The feeling of his rough chin scratching my cheek, and his mouth, warm against my skin, haunted me still. He had kissed me. Without prompting, without cunning. I should have been happy, hopeful. But it wasn't that easy, was it?

  I had dozens of reasons to give her. Akos was in danger, now that Ryzek had realized he could use him as leverage over me. Eijeh was lost, and maybe Akos would be able to accept that once he was home, with his mother and sister. Akos and I would never be equals, as long as he was Ryzek's prisoner here, so I had to make sure he was freed. But the one closest to my heart was the reason that came tumbling out.

  "Being here, it's . . . breaking him," I said. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, uncomfortable. "I can't watch anymore. I won't."

  "Yeah." Her voice was soft. "Win or lose--you get us in, we'll get him out. Okay?"

  "Okay," I said. "Thank you."

  I had always hated going back home.

  Many of the Shotet went to the observation deck to cheer as our white planet came back into view. The energy on the ship was frantic and joyful as everyone packed their belongings and prepared to reunite with the young and old who had to stay behind. But I was mournful.

  And nervous.

  I didn't pack very much. Some clothes, some weapons. I threw out the perishable food, and stripped my bed of its sheets and blankets. Akos helped in silence, his arm still wrapped in a bandage. His bag of possessions was already on the table. I had watched him pack some clothes and some of the books I had given him, his favorite pages folded over. Though I had already read all those books, I wanted to ope
n them again just to search out the parts he most treasured; I wanted to read them as if immersed in his mind.

  "You're acting weird," he said once we were finished, and all there was left to do was wait.

  "I don't like going home," I said. It was true, at least.

  Akos looked around, and shrugged. "Seems like this is your home. There's more of you in here than anywhere in Voa."

  He was right, of course. I was happy that he knew what "more of me" really was--that he might know as much about me, from observation, as I knew about him.

  And I did know him. I could pick him out in a crowd from his gait alone. I knew the shade of the veins that showed on the backs of his hands. And his favorite knife for chopping iceflowers. And the way his breath always smelled spiced, like hushflower and sendes leaf mixed together.

  "Maybe next time I'll do more to my room," he said.

  You won't be back next time, I thought.

  "Yeah." I forced a smile. "You should."

  My mother had told me, once, that I had a gift for pretending. My father had not liked to see pain, so I had hidden mine from him as a child--my face passive, even as my fingernails bit my palm. And every time she took me to a specialist or a doctor about my currentgift, the lies about where we had gone came to me as easily as the truth. Pretending, in the Noavek family, was survival.

  I used that gift as I went through the motions of landing and returning home: going to the loading bay after we reentered the atmosphere, piling into a transport floater, making the public walk back to Noavek manor in Ryzek's wake. That evening I ate dinner with my brother and Yma Zetsyvis, pretending not to see her hand on his knee, fingers tapping, or the frantic look in her eyes whenever he didn't laugh at one of her jokes.

  Later, she seemed to relax, and they left all pretense behind them, curled together on one side of the table, elbows bumping as they cut their food. I had killed her family and now she was my brother's lover. I would have been disgusted by it had I not understood, so well, what it was like to want to live. To need it, no matter the cost.

  I still understood it. But now I needed something else more: for Akos to be safe.

  Afterward, I pretended to be patient as Akos taught me how to predict how strong a poison would be without tasting it. I tried to seal every moment in my memory. I needed to know how to brew these concoctions on my own, because soon he would be gone. If the renegades and I were caught in our attempt tonight, I would probably lose my life. If we succeeded, Akos would be home, and Shotet would be in chaos, without its leader. Either way, it was unlikely that I would see him again.

  "No, no," Akos said. "Don't hack at it--slice. Slice!"

  "I am slicing," I said. "Maybe if your knives weren't so dull--"

  "Dull? I could cut your fingertip off with this knife!"

  I spun the knife in my hand and caught it by the handle. "Oh? Could you?"

  He laughed, and put his arm across my shoulders. I felt my heartbeat in my throat. "Don't pretend you're not capable of delicacy; I've seen it myself."

  I scowled, and tried to focus on "slicing." My hands were trembling a little. "See me dancing in the training room and you think you know everything about me."

  "I know enough. Look, slices! Told you so."

  He lifted his arm, but kept his hand against my back, right under my shoulder blade. I carried the feeling with me for the rest of the night, as we finished the elixir and got ready for bed and he shut the door between us.

  I closed my eyes as I locked him in, went down the hallway to my bathroom, and poured my sleeping potion into the sink.

  I changed into the same clothes I wore for training, loose and flexible, and shoes that would be silent on the floorboards. I braided my hair tightly so it wouldn't get in my way, then pinned it under so no one could grab and pull it in a fight. I strapped the knife to the small of my back, sideways, so I could grab the handle easily. I likely wouldn't use it; I preferred my bare hands in a crisis.

  Then I slipped behind the wall panel in my room and crept through the passages toward the back door. I knew the way by heart, but I felt for the notches at every corner anyway, to make sure I was in the right place. I paused by the circle carved into the wall near the kitchens, the sign of the secret exit.

  I was really doing it. Helping a group of renegades murder my brother.

  Ryzek had lived his life in a daze of cruelty, obeying the instructions of our long-dead father like the man was standing over him, and relishing none of it. Men like Ryzek Noavek were not born; they were made. But time could not move backward. Just as he had been made, he had to be unmade.

  I pushed through the hidden door and walked straight through the feathergrass stalks to the gate. I saw pale faces in the grass--Lety's, Uzul's, my mother's--beckoning me toward them. They whispered my name, and it sounded like the shuffle of the grass in the wind. Shivering, I typed my mother's birthday into the box by the gate, and the door sprang open.

  Waiting a few feet away, in the dark, were Teka, Tos, and Jorek, faces covered. I jerked my head to the side, and they filed past me, into the feathergrass. I closed the gate behind them, then overtook Teka to show them the back door.

  It seemed to me, as I led them down the passageways to my brother's wing, that such a monumental thing shouldn't take place in complete silence. But maybe the reverent quiet was an acknowledgment of what we were doing. I touched the corners, feeling for the deep grooves that suggested upcoming staircases. I traveled by memory, sidestepping protruding nails and cracked floorboards.

  At the place where the passageways split, the left leading to my part of the house, and the right leading to Ryzek's, I turned to Tos.

  "Go left, third door," I said. I handed him the key to Akos's room. "This will unlock the door. You may have to be a little forceful with him before you drug him."

  "I'm not worried," Tos said. I wasn't, either--Tos was big as a boulder, no matter how skilled Akos had become at defending himself. I watched as Tos clasped hands with Teka and Jorek, in turn, and disappeared down the left passage.

  When we drew closer to Ryzek's part of the house, I moved more slowly, remembering what Ryzek had said to Akos about the advanced security near his rooms. Teka touched my shoulder, and slipped past me. She crouched, and pressed her palms flat to the floor. Her eyes closed, she took deep breaths through her nose.

  Then she stood, nodding.

  "Nothing in this hallway," she said softly.

  We walked that way for a little while, stopping at each corner or turn so that Teka could use her currentgift to sense the security system. Ryzek would never have anticipated that a girl who lived slathered in grease and crowded by wires could bring about his undoing.

  Then the passageway came to an abrupt halt. Boarded up. Of course--Ryzek had probably ordered the little hallways closed after Akos nearly escaped.

  My stomach lurched, but I didn't panic. I slid the wall panel back, and stepped into the empty sitting room beyond it. We were only a few rooms away from Ryzek's bedroom and office. Between us and him, there were at least three guards and the lock that only my Noavek blood could open. We wouldn't be able to get past the guards without causing a disruption that would draw the others to us.

  I tapped Teka's shoulder and leaned in to whisper in her ear, "How long do you need?"

  She held up two fingers.

  I nodded, and drew my knife. I held it near my leg, my muscles twitching in anticipation of sharp movement. We walked out of the sitting room, and the first guard was there, pacing the hallway. I walked in his footsteps for a few seconds, matching my gait to his. Then I clapped my left hand over his mouth and stabbed with my right, sliding the blade under his armor and driving it between his ribs.

  He screamed into my hand, which was only good enough to muffle, not to silence. I let him fall, and sprinted toward Ryzek's quarters. The others followed me, no longer bothering to be quiet. I heard shouts up ahead. Jorek ran past me and barreled into another guard, knocking him off his feet
with sheer force alone.

  I took the next one, seizing him by the throat, currentshadows pooled in my palm, and hurling him into the wall to my left. Then I stumbled to a stop in front of Ryzek's door, sweat curling around the back of my ear. The blood sensor was a slot in the wall, just wide enough and high enough to accommodate a hand.

  I guided my hand toward it, Teka breathing heavily over my shoulder. All around us was shouting and running, but no one had reached us yet. I felt a pinch as the sensor drew my blood, and I waited for Ryzek's door to spring open.

  It didn't.

  I withdrew my hand and tried again with my left.

  The door still didn't open.

  "You can't open it?" I said to her. "With your gift?"

  "If I could, we wouldn't have needed you!" she cried. "I can turn it on and off, not unlock it--"

  "It's not working. Let's go!"

  I grabbed Teka's arm, too frantic to care about the pain my touch caused, and dragged her down the hallway. She screamed, "Run!" and Jorek bashed the guard he was fighting with the handle of his currentblade. He sliced another guard's armor, then chased us into the sitting room. We ran through the passages again.

  "They're in the walls!" I heard. Lights burned through the cracks in every secret door and panel. The whole house was awake. My lungs burned from the effort of sprinting. I heard scraping behind us as one of the panels opened.

  "Teka! Go find Tos and Akos!" I said. "Turn left, then right, go down the stairs, turn right again. The code for the back door is 0503. Say it back to me."

  "Left, right, down, right--0503," Teka repeated. "Cyra--"

  "Go!" I screamed, shoving her back. "I get you in, you get him out, remember? Well, you can't get him out if you're dead! So go!"

  Slowly, Teka nodded.

  I planted myself in the middle of the passage. I heard, rather than saw, Teka and Jorek run away. Guards stormed into the narrow passage, and I let the pain build inside me until I could hardly see. My body was so flush with shadows that I was darkness manifest, I was a sliver of night, utterly empty.

  I screamed, and threw myself at the first guard. The burst of pain hit him as my hand did, and he yelled, collapsing at my touch. Tears streamed down my face as I ran toward the next one.

  And the next one.

  And the next one.

  All I needed to do was buy the renegades some time. But it was too late for me.