Carve the Mark

  "Missed you, Orieve Benesit," he said. "Or whatever your name is."

  Ori laughed. She was crying now. "Then what took you so long?"

  The next time he woke, he didn't feel quite so numb, and though he ached, certain enough, the sharp agony that had carried him from Voa to Shissa was gone. Cyra's lingering gift had been sent away by iceflowers, no doubt.

  Just thinking Cyra's name made his insides twist with fear. Where was she now? Had the people who had brought him here rescued her, too, or had they just left her with Ryzek to die?

  He tasted bile, and opened his eyes.

  A woman stood at the foot of his bed. Dark curly hair framed her face. Her eyes were wide. There was a little spot at the bottom of one where her pupil bled into her iris--a defect she'd had since birth. His sister, Cisi.

  "Hello," she said. Her voice was all softness and light. He'd held the memory of it tight in his mind, like it was the last seed left for planting.

  It was too easy to cry right now, all laid out and warm as he was. "Cisi," he croaked, blinking the tears away.

  "How do you feel?"

  That, he thought, is a question. He knew she was just asking after his pain, though, so he said, "Fine. I've been worse."

  She moved fluidly in sturdy Hessa boots, stopping by the side of the bed and tapping something near his head. The bed moved, tilting up at his waist so he could sit up.

  He winced. His ribs were hurt. He was so numb he'd almost forgotten.

  She had been so careful before then, so controlled, that it startled him when she threw herself across him, hands clutching at his shoulder, his side. At first he didn't--couldn't--move. But then he brought his arms around her, and held her tight. They'd never hugged much as kids--except for their dad, they weren't an affectionate family, as a rule--but her embrace was brief. She was here, alive. And they were together again.

  "I can't believe . . ." She sighed. And she started to mutter a prayer. He hadn't heard a Thuvhesit prayer in a long time. The ones for gratitude were briefest, but he couldn't bring himself to say it with her. There were too many worries crowding his head.

  "Neither can I," he said, once she had finished. She pulled away, still holding one of his hands and smiling down at him. No, frowning now, staring at their joined hands. Touching her cheek, where a tear had fallen.

  "I'm crying," she said. "What--I haven't been able to cry since . . . since my currentgift."

  "Your currentgift keeps you from crying?"

  "You didn't notice it?" She sniffed, wiping her cheeks. "I make people feel . . . at ease. But I also can't seem to do or say anything that makes them uneasy, like . . ."

  "Crying," he supplied. That she had a gift with ease didn't surprise him. But the way she described it, it was more like a hand around her throat, squeezing. He couldn't see the gift in that.

  "Well, mine stops yours. Stops everybody's," he said.

  "Handy."

  "Sometimes."

  "Did you go on the sojourn?" she said suddenly, holding tight to his hand. He wondered if she was just going to start firing questions at him, now that she could. She added, "Sorry, I just . . . I wondered, when I saw the reports. Because you can't swim. I was worried."

  He couldn't help it. He laughed.

  "I was surrounded by Shotet, in close proximity with Ryzek Noavek, and you were worried because I can't swim?" He laughed again.

  "I can worry about two things at once. Several things, in fact," she said, with a bite. Not a hard one, though.

  "Cee," he said. "Why am I cuffed to this bed?"

  "You were wearing Shotet armor when you were dropped off. The chancellor's instructions are for you to be treated with caution."

  For some reason, her cheeks went pink.

  "Ori didn't vouch for me?"

  "She did, and I did," Cisi said. She didn't explain why she would be in a position to vouch for him with the chancellor of Thuvhe, and he didn't ask. Not yet, anyway. "But the chancellor is . . . difficult to win over."

  She didn't sound critical, but then, Cisi never had. She could sympathize with damn near everybody. Compassion made it hard to maneuver, but she seemed to him to have managed all right in the seasons they had been apart. She looked almost the same, but thinner, with a sharper jaw and cheekbones. Those were from their mom, of course, but the rest of her--too-broad smile, dark brow, delicate nose--was their dad.

  Last time she had seen him, he had been a child, soft in the face, shorter than all the other kids. Always quiet, always poised to blush. And now, taller than most men, hard-featured and muscled and marked with kills. Did he even look like the same person to her?

  "I'm not going to hurt anyone," he said, in case she wasn't sure.

  "I know." It was easy to see Cisi as this soft, gentle thing, but there was a kind of steel in her eyes, and lines around her mouth, early wrinkles from a life of heartache. She was grown.

  "You're different," he said.

  "You're one to talk," she said. "Listen, I wanted to ask you . . ." She gnawed on a fingernail as she found the words. "I wanted to ask you about Eijeh."

  Eijeh's hand had been heavy on his shoulder as he steered his brother into the prison, though Akos whispered his name and begged him for help. Food. Mercy.

  He could still feel Eijeh's hand there.

  "Is he alive?" she said weakly.

  "That depends on your definition of 'alive,'" he said. Sharp, the way Cyra would have said it.

  "I saw a hacked Shotet feed last year where he was at Ryzek's side." She paused like she was giving him room to say something, only he didn't know what to say. "And you were at Cyra's," she added, again with that pause.

  His throat was as dry as dust. "Have you seen that feed lately?"

  "No. Hard to access. Why?"

  He needed to know if Cyra was okay. He needed it like dry earth needed water, scrabbling for whatever drops it could find. But if he was in Thuvhe, there was no Shotet feed playing on the screens in every home, no way to check if she was dead or alive, until he went back.

  Which was a given. He would go back. He would help Cyra. He would drag Eijeh home if he had to poison him first. He wasn't finished, not yet.

  "That's why Isae--I mean, the chancellor--has you cuffed to the bed," Cisi said. "If you could just explain why you were with her--"

  "I won't explain." She looked as shocked by the anger in his voice as he was. "I stayed alive, and now this is what I am. Nothing I say to you is going to change what you've already assumed."

  He was fourteen and irritable again. Coming home was like walking backward.

  "I haven't assumed anything." She looked down. "It's just that I wanted to warn you. The chancellor wants to know for sure you aren't . . . well. A traitor, I suppose."

  His hands trembled. "Know 'for sure'? What does that mean?"

  She was about to answer when the door to the hospital room opened. A Thuvhesit soldier came in first, dressed in his indoor uniform, dark red slacks with a dark gray jacket. He stood off to the side, and Ori's twin walked in after him.

  He knew it wasn't Ori right away, though her eyes were the same and the rest of her was covered in fabric: a hooded gown, sleeves tight at the wrist, buttoned from waist to throat, long enough to brush the toes of her shoes. The shoes themselves were polished, also black, and snapped on the tile with each step. She stood at the foot of the bed, facing him, hands folded. Clean fingernails. A perfect black line on each of her eyelids to mark the path of her lashes. A veil covered the rest of her face, from nose to jaw.

  Isae Benesit. Chancellor of Thuvhe.

  Akos's Hessa manners hadn't taught him to handle something this grand. Somehow he managed to say, "Chancellor."

  "I see you had no trouble distinguishing me from my sister," she said. She had an odd accent, like one from the outer rim of the galaxy, not a fancy one from the planets closest to Assembly Headquarters, as he'd expected.

  "It's the shoes," he said, his nerves driving him toward honesty. "A Hessa
girl would never wear those."

  Ori, following her in, laughed. Seeing them side by side, it was even more obvious how different they were. Ori was slouching, leaning, her face mobile. Isae was carved from rock.

  The chancellor said, "Can I ask why you compromised a layer of protection by revealing your face to him earlier, Ori?"

  "He's basically my brother," Ori said, firm. "I'm not going to hide my face from him."

  "Why does it matter?" Akos said. "You're twins, right? So I know what you both look like."

  In response, Isae clawed at the corner of her veil with her clean fingernails. When the covering fell away, Akos stared. Baldly.

  Isae's face was crossed with two scars, one that went through her eyebrow and forehead, and the other that went from jaw to nose. Scars just like Kalmev had, like Akos himself had; they came from sharpened currentblades--a rarity, since the current's flow was weapon enough. Shotet blades, probably.

  That explained why she and Ori both covered their faces. Being twins kept everybody confused about who was chancellor. But with their faces bare . . . well.

  "Let's not dwell on pleasantries," Isae said, even sharper than before, if that was possible. "I believe your sister was about to tell you what I can do with my currentgift."

  "I was," Cisi replied. "Isae--Her Highness, I mean--can summon your memories with a touch. It helps her to verify the testimony of people she feels unable to trust, for whatever reason."

  There were a lot of memories Akos didn't want summoned. Cyra's face, with veins of shadow cradling her cheeks, drifted into his mind. He pawed at the back of his head, eyes skipping away from Cisi's.

  "It won't work," he said. "Currentgifts don't work on me."

  "Really," Isae said.

  "Yeah. Go ahead, try me."

  Isae came closer, shoes snapping. She stopped at his left side, right across from Cisi. Up close he could see how the scars puckered at the edges. Only a few seasons old, if he had to guess. Their color was dark still.

  She touched his cuffed arm, right where metal met wrist.

  "You're right," she said. "I see--and feel--nothing."

  "Guess you're just going to have to take me at my word," he said, a little terse.

  "We'll see" was Isae's answer, as she went back to the foot of the bed.

  "Did Ryzek Noavek, or anyone associated with him, ever ask you for information about me?" she said. "We know that you possessed information, since you saw Ori the day the fates were revealed."

  "You did?" Cisi said breathlessly.

  "Yes." His voice wavered a little. "Yes, he asked me."

  "And what did you tell him?"

  He pulled his knees up to his chest like a kid scared of a storm, and looked out the window. Shissa was bright at the end of the day, every room glowing with lines of light in all different shades, however you liked it. The building next to theirs was purple.

  "I knew not to say anything." He wavered more than before. The memory was inching toward him bit by bit. Cyra's face, the glass floor, Eijeh's hand on him. "I know how to bear pain, I'm not weak, I . . ." Even he knew he sounded crazy, babbling this way. Had he said anything, in the middle of all that pain? "He has . . . access to Eijeh's memories of Ori, so it would only have taken him making the connection between Ori and her fate for him to know what you look like, aliases, origins . . . so I tried not to say anything. He wants to know which one of you is which, which one is older. He knows . . . an oracle told him going after one of you was better than going after the other, so anything that distinguishes you from each other is a danger to you. But--he asked again and again, and--I don't think I said anything, but I can't remember--"

  Ori moved impulsively toward him, gripping his ankle hard. Squeezing his bones. The pressure helped him hold his head together.

  "If you did tell him something useful, such as where Ori grew up, or who raised her . . . would he come for us himself?" Isae asked, apparently unmoved.

  "No." He tried to steady himself. "No, I think he's afraid of you."

  Ryzek never came himself, did he? Not even for his oracle, not even to kidnap Akos. He didn't want to set foot in Thuvhe.

  Isae's eyes had seemed familiar to him, when he watched the footage of the twins in Osoc. But the look in them now wasn't something Ori could have mustered. It was downright murderous.

  "He ought to be," Isae said. "This conversation isn't over. I want to know everything you know about Ryzek Noavek. I will be back."

  She fastened her veil, and after a tick, Ori did the same. Before she left, though, Ori set her hand on the door and said, "Akos. It's all right. It'll be all right."

  He wasn't all that convinced.

  CHAPTER 27: AKOS

  A DREAM:

  His knees met the floor in the underground prison. Cyra's currentgift crept over him like sharpworms around the roots of iceflowers. And then, her harsh exhale, and the shadows burst into dark clouds around them. He had never seen them do that before, separate from her skin. Something had changed.

  She fell sideways, after that, into a pool of blood. Her hands clutched at her stomach, the way his father's had when Vas killed him in front of his children. Her fingers, bent and red, held her insides in.

  The blood turned to hushflower petals, and he woke up.

  He was tired of the cuff. Or more specifically, of his arm at this particular angle, and the metal-on-skin feeling, and this game where he pretended he was trapped when he wasn't. He twisted his hand around to touch the wrist cuff's lock. The current held cuffs like these shut, so if he pressed his skin into the cracks, he could open them. He'd first discovered the talent on the way to Shotet, right before he killed Kalmev Radix. In order to kill Kalmev Radix.

  The cuff clicked as it came undone. He yanked the needle out of his other arm, and got up. His body ached, but he was steady enough, so he walked to the window, watching the Thuvhesit floater lights zipping past. Lurid pink and vibrant red and gray green, they wrapped around the squat ships like belts, not bright enough to light the way, just enough to show they were there.

  He stood there for a long time, as night got deeper and deeper and traffic died down and Shissa itself went to sleep. Then a dark shape passed over the purple glow of the building across from the hospital. Another one drifted above the iceflower fields far below. A third rushed past the hospital itself, making the glass shudder under his hands. He recognized the patched-together metals. The Shotet ships were filling Shissa like a cup.

  An alarm screeched in the corner of the room, and just a tick later, the door opened. Isae Benesit--shoes shining--tossed a canvas bag on the floor at his feet.

  "Good to know our handcuffs don't work on you," she said. "Come on. You're going to get me out of here."

  He didn't budge. The bag bulged in weird places from stiff armor--his, he assumed. It probably held his weapons and poisons, too; if whoever had dumped him in Shissa like a sack of trash had bothered to outfit him with one thing, they had probably thrown in the whole lot.

  "You know, I'd really like to be the kind of person people just listen to," Isae said, her formal manner falling away in her frustration. "You think I should carry around a big stick, or something?"

  He bent over the canvas bag and pulled his armor over his head. With one hand, he pulled the tough straps tight over his ribs, and with the other, he sorted through the bag for his knife. It was the one Cyra had given him on the street during the festival. He'd given it back to her once, in apology, but she had left it on the table on the sojourn ship before they left, and he had taken it with him.

  "My sister?" he said.

  "Right here." Cisi spoke from the hallway. "You're so tall, Akos."

  Isae grabbed his arm. He let her move him around like a puppet. For someone who asked him to get her out, she sure was acting like she was getting him out.

  When they were in the hallway, all the lights went off at once, leaving just some strips of emergency light on the left edge of the tile. Isae's hand was tight as
she steered him down the hallway and around the corner. From deep in the building, he heard screams.

  He reached back for Cisi's hand, and they all started to run, skidding around a corner toward the emergency exit. But at the end of the hallway were two dark figures dressed in Shotet armor.

  His steps faltered. He wrenched his arm from Isae's grasp, and stepped back into the shadows.

  "Akos!" Cisi sounded horrified.

  Around the corner, Isae drew the weapon at her hip. Currentblade, not sharp, but set to a deadly density. The soldiers were moving toward her, slow, like you moved when you didn't want to startle an animal.

  "Where do you think you are going?" one of them said. In Shotet, of course--he likely couldn't speak any other languages.

  He was shorter than Isae, and sturdy--to put it kindly. His tongue flicked out to wet his lips, which were swollen from the cold. Shotet soldiers had never been this far north before, as far as Akos could remember. They probably weren't ready for the temperature drop.

  "I am leaving this hospital," Isae said in clumsy Shotet.

  Both soldiers laughed. The second one was younger, his voice cracking.

  "Nice accent," the older one said. "Where did you learn our language, from brim planet scum?"

  Isae lunged, and Akos couldn't see much, but he heard her moan when she got hit. That was when he stood, best knife in hand, armor fastened tight.

  "Stop," he said, walking around the corner again.

  "What do you want?" the older soldier said.

  Akos moved into the light. "I want you to leave her to me. Now."

  When neither of the soldiers budged, he said, "I am a steward of the family Noavek--" It was technically true, and technically a lie. No one had ever given him a title, after all. "I was sent here by Ryzek Noavek to collect her. That will be much more challenging if I let you kill her."

  Everybody went still, even Akos. They would have a clear shot at the emergency stairs, and all they had to do was get past these two . . . obstacles. The older Shotet ran his tongue over his lips again. "And what if I kill you and complete your mission for you? How well will I be rewarded by the sovereign of Shotet?"

  "Don't." The younger soldier was wide-eyed. "I recognize him, he--"

  The older Shotet swiped with his blade, but he was big and slow, obviously low-ranking. Akos jumped back, hunching to get his gut out of harm's way. When he swung his own knife, he struck only armor, sending sparks flying. But his other hand, his right hand, was already drawing another knife from the side of his boot. That one found flesh.