Carve the Mark

  The soldier fell against him, spilling warm blood on his hands. Akos bore his weight, stunned, not by what he had done, but by the ease with which he had done it.

  "You have a choice," he said to the young soldier who was left. His voice was ragged and not quite his own. "Stay and die. Run and live."

  The young soldier with the squeaky laugh bolted down the hallway. He almost slipped as he turned the corner. Cisi was shaking, eyes shining from unshed tears. And Isae was pointing her knife at him.

  He lowered the soldier to the ground. Don't throw up, he told himself. Don't, don't throw up.

  "Steward of the family Noavek?" Isae said.

  "Not exactly," he said.

  "I still don't trust you," she said, but she put her knife down. "Let's go."

  They hustled to the roof and ran into the wild, frozen air. By the time they made it to the floater--a black one, close to the edge of the landing pad--his teeth were chattering. The door opened at Cisi's touch, and they climbed in.

  The floater's controls lit up when Cisi sat in the driver's seat, the night-vision screen expanding in front of her in green and the nav system glowing with a welcome. She reached under the control board and switched off the floater's outer lights, then typed in their home address and set the ship on autonav. High-speed.

  It lifted from the landing pad and jerked forward, throwing Akos against the control panel. He'd forgotten to buckle himself in.

  He twisted around to watch Shissa shrink behind them. Every building was lit up a different color: purple for the library, yellow for the hospital, green for the grocery. They hung--impossibly--like suspended raindrops. He watched them as the floater sped away, until the buildings were just a cluster of lights. When everything was near dark, he turned back to Cisi.

  "You . . ." She gulped. Whatever it was she wanted to say, she couldn't say it, currentgift be damned. He reached for her, setting a clean finger--the others were red and sticky--on her arm.

  The words came spilling out. "You killed him."

  He cycled through a few different responses in his mind, ranging from And he wasn't the first to I'm sorry. None of them seemed right. He didn't want her to hate him, but he didn't want her to think he had come away from Shotet innocent. He didn't want to talk about it, but he didn't want to lie.

  "He saved us both," Isae said sharply as she switched on the news scroll. A little holoscreen popped up above the autonav map, and Akos read the headlines as they spun in a circle.

  Shotet invasion begins in Shissa, two hours after sunset.

  Shotet invaders witnessed at Shissa hospital, eight Thuvhesit deaths reported.

  "I sent Orieve away right after we left your room," Isae said. "She should have made it out all right. I can't send her a message now, it could be intercepted."

  He held his hands against his legs, wishing like hell that he could wash them.

  A news break appeared on the holoscreen when they descended into Hessa, a few hours before dawn.

  Shissa police reporting two Thuvhesit captives taken by Shotet. Footage from the invasion shows a woman dragged from Shissa hospital by Shotet soldiers. Preliminary identification efforts suggest the woman is either Isae or Orieve Benesit.

  Something big and fierce shredded his insides.

  Orieve Benesit. Ori. Gone.

  He tried not to look at Isae, to give her a tick to react on her own, but there wasn't much to watch. Cisi's hand snaked out to touch Isae's, but Isae just flicked a switch to turn the news feed off, and stared out the window.

  "Well," Isae said at last. "I'll just have to go get her, then."

  CHAPTER 28: AKOS

  WHEN THEY GOT TO Hessa, the floater moved in a wide arc around the mountain and drifted toward the feathergrass. It sank to the ground in front of his family's house, crushing stems and tufts under it. The blood had dried on Akos's hands.

  Isae got out of the floater first, and Cisi followed. When Akos jumped out, the doors closed behind him. The feathergrass was flattened in a circle around it.

  Cisi led the way to the house, which was good, because Akos didn't have the strength. All the windows were dark reminders of the last time he'd been there. When Cisi opened the door, and the smell of spices and chopped saltfruit wafted over him, he half expected his dad's body to be on the floor in the living room, soaked through.

  Akos paused. Breathed. Kept walking.

  He skimmed the wood paneling with his knuckles on the way to the kitchen. Past the wall where all the family pictures used to hang. Blank now. The living room wasn't at all the same--it was more a study, with two desks and bookcases and not a squashy cushion in sight. But the kitchen, with its scraped-up table and rough-hewn bench, was the same.

  Cisi shook the chandelier over the kitchen table to light the burnstones. Their light was still tinted red.

  "Where's Mom?" he said as an image of her popped into his mind: she was standing on a creaky stool, dusting the chandelier with hushflower.

  "Oracle meeting," Cisi said. "They meet all the time now. It'll take her a few days."

  "Days" would be too late. He would be long gone by then.

  The desire to wash his hands became a need. He went to the sink. A lump of homemade soap sat near the faucet, with little purity petals pressed inside it to pretty it up. He worked it into a lather, then rinsed his hands once, twice, three times. Dragged his fingernails along the lines in his palm. Scrubbed beneath them. By the time he was done his palms were bright pink and Cisi was setting out mugs for tea.

  He hesitated with his hand over the knife drawer. He wanted to mark the loss of the Shotet soldier on his arm. There was a vial of feathergrass extract beside the other vials he carried to stain the wound. But had he really just let something so Shotet become an instinct? Clean hands, clean blade, new mark?

  He closed his eyes like darkness was all he needed to clear his head. Somewhere out there, the nameless soldier he had killed had some family, some friends, who were counting on his loss to be recorded. Akos knew--though it disturbed him to know--that he wasn't about to pretend the death hadn't happened.

  So he took out a carving knife and shoved it into the furnace flames, turning the blade to sterilize it. Crouched there by the heat, he carved a straight line into his arm with the hot blade, next to the other marks. Then he poured feathergrass extract on the tines of a fork and dragged it in a straight line down the cut. It was clumsy, but it would have to do.

  Then he sat right there on the floor, holding his head. Riding out the pain. Blood ran down his arm and pooled in the crook of his elbow.

  "The invaders might come to Hessa," Isae said. "Looking for me. We should leave as soon as possible and find Ori."

  "'We'?" he said. "I'm not taking the chancellor of Thuvhe to Ryzek Noavek, not with my fate as it is. That would really make me a traitor."

  She eyed his marked arm. "If you aren't already."

  "Oh, shut up," he snapped. She raised her eyebrows, but he went on. "You think you know exactly how I'll meet my fate? You think you know what it means, better than I do?"

  "You claim to be loyal to Thuvhe, but you tell its chancellor to 'shut up'?" There was a note of humor in her voice.

  "No, I told the woman in my kitchen asking for one hell of a favor to shut up," he said. "I would never disrespect my chancellor that way. Your Highness."

  She leaned toward him. "Then take the woman in your kitchen to Shotet." Leaned back. "I'm not an idiot; I know I'll need your help to get me there."

  "You don't trust me."

  "Again. Not an idiot," she said. "You help me get my sister out, and I'll help you get your brother out. No guarantees, of course."

  Akos almost swore. Why was it, he wondered, that everyone seemed to know exactly what to offer him to make him agree to things? Not that he was convinced she could help him, but he had been teetering on the edge of agreeing anyway.

  "Akos," Isae said, and the use of his name, without malice, startled him a little. "If someone told you
that you couldn't go save your brother, that your life was too important to risk for theirs, would you listen?"

  Her face was washed out and dotted with sweat, her cheek red from where the soldier had hit her. She didn't look much like a chancellor. The scars on her face said something different about her, too--that she, like Cyra, knew what she was risking when she risked her life.

  "All right," he said. "I'll help you."

  There was a loud crack as Cisi brought her mug down hard on the table, splashing hot tea over her hand. She grimaced, wiping her hand on her shirt and thrusting it out for him to take. Isae looked confused, but Akos understood--Cisi had something to say, and much as he was afraid to hear it, he couldn't very well say no.

  He clasped her hand.

  "I hope you both realize that I'm coming with you," she said hotly.

  "No," he said. "You can't be in that kind of danger, absolutely not."

  "You don't want me to be in danger?" Her voice was rougher than it ever had been before; she was rigid as a crossbeam. "How do you think I feel about you going back there? This family has been through enough uncertainty, enough loss." She was scowling. Isae looked like she had just been smacked, and no wonder--she had probably never seen Cisi like this, free to say whatever she wanted, free to cry and yell and make everyone uncomfortable. "If we all get killed in Shotet, we'll get killed together, but--"

  "Don't talk about death that way, like it's nothing!"

  "I don't think you get it." A tremor went through her arm, her hand, her voice. Her eyes found his, and he focused on the spot on her iris, the place where the pupil broke open. "After you were taken, and Mom came back, she was . . . insensible. So I dragged Dad's body out to the field to burn. I cleaned up the living room."

  He couldn't imagine, couldn't imagine the horror of scrubbing your own father's blood out of the floor. Better to set the whole house on fire, better to leave and never come back.

  "Don't you dare tell me I don't know what death is," she said. "I know."

  Alarmed, he lifted a hand to her cheek, pressed her face into his shoulder. Her curly hair itched his chin.

  "Fine" was all he said. It was agreement enough.

  They agreed to sleep for a few hours before they left, and Akos went upstairs alone. Without thinking, he skipped the sixth step, some part of him remembering that it groaned louder than the others. The hallway upstairs was a little crooked; it listed to the right just after the bathroom, the curve wrong somehow. The room he'd shared with Eijeh was at the end. He opened the door with his fingertips.

  The sheets on Eijeh's bed were curled like they were around a still-sleeping body, and there was a pair of dirty socks in the corner, stained brown at the heels from his shoes. On Akos's side of the room, the sheets were taut around the mattress, a pillow wedged between bed and wall. Akos had never been able to last long with a pillow.

  Through the big round window he saw feathergrass rippling in the dark, and stars.

  He held his pillow in his lap when he sat. The pair of shoes lined up with the bed frame were so much smaller than the pair he was wearing that he smiled. Smiled, and then cried, shoving his face in the pillow to stifle himself. It wasn't happening. He wasn't here. He wasn't about to leave home when he'd only just found it again.

  The tears subsided eventually, and he fell asleep with his shoes still on.

  A while later, when he woke, he stood under the spray in the hall bathroom for just a little longer than usual, hoping it would relax him. No use.

  When he got out, though, there was a stack of clothes just outside the door. His dad's old clothes. The shirt was too loose through the shoulders and waist, but tight across the chest--he and Aoseh were completely different shapes. The pants were long enough, but just barely, tucked into the top of Akos's boots.

  When he took his towel back to the bathroom to hang it--that was what his mom would return to, a wet towel and rumpled sheets and no children--Isae was there, already dressed in some of his mom's clothes, the black pants bunching around her waist under the belt. She prodded one of her scars in the mirror, and met his eyes.

  "If you try to say something meaningful and profound about scars, I'll punch you in the head," she said.

  He shrugged, and turned his left arm so the kill marks faced her. "I guarantee you yours aren't as ugly as mine."

  "At least you chose yours."

  Well, she had a point.

  "How did you come to be marked by a Shotet blade?" he said.

  He'd heard some of the soldiers trading scar stories before. Not kill-mark stories, but other scars, a white line on a kneecap from a childhood accident, a swipe from a kitchen knife during an invasion of Hessa, a drunken accident involving a head and a door frame. They'd all been in stitches over each other's stories. That wasn't going to happen now, he was sure.

  "The scavenge isn't always as peaceful as they might have you believe," Isae said. "During the last one, my ship had to land on Othyr for repairs, and while we were there, one of the crew got really sick. While we were parked at the hospital, we were attacked by Shotet soldiers who were raiding the medicine stores. One of them cut my face and left me for dead."

  "I'm sorry," he said automatically. For some reason, he wanted to tell her about where Othyrian medical aid went--to Ryzek's supporters only--and how few people knew about it. But it really wasn't a good time to explain Shotet to her, especially not if she would think he was excusing the soldier for stealing medicine and scarring her face.

  "I'm not sorry." Isae seized the soap bar next to the sink like she wanted to break it in half, and started washing her hands. "Hard to forget who your enemies are when you have scars like mine." She cleared her throat. "Hope you don't mind, I borrowed some of your mother's clothes."

  "I'm wearing a dead man's underwear," he said. "Why would I mind?"

  She smiled a little, which Akos felt was progress enough.

  None of them wanted to wait any longer than they had to, Akos in particular. He knew the more time he spent there, the harder it would be to leave. Better, he thought, to reopen the wound fast, get it over with, so he could bandage it up again.

  They packed supplies, food, clothes, and iceflowers, and piled into the spare floater. It had just enough fuel in it to get them across the feathergrass, and that was all they needed. At Cisi's touch it lifted off the ground, and Akos set the autonav for a spot in what looked like the middle of nowhere. They would go to Jorek's house first. It was the only relatively safe place he knew outside of Voa.

  As they flew, he watched the feathergrass below them, showing the wind's pattern as it tilted and turned.

  "What do the Shotet say about the feathergrass?" Isae said suddenly. "I mean, we say early Thuvhesit settlers planted it to keep the Shotet at bay, but obviously they have a different perspective, right?"

  "The Shotet say they planted it," Akos said. "To keep out Thuvhesit outsiders. But it's native to Ogra."

  "I can still hear them from up here," Cisi said. "The voices in the grasses."

  "Whose voices?" The sharpness left Isae's voice when she spoke to Cisi.

  "My father's, mostly," Cisi said.

  "I hear my mother," Isae said. "Wonder if we only hear the dead."

  "How long has it been since she died?"

  "Couple seasons. Same time I got cut." Isae had lapsed into some other, more casual diction. Even her posture had changed, spine bent.

  They kept talking, and Akos stayed quiet, his thoughts drifting back to Cyra.

  If she had died, he was sure he would have felt it now, like something stabbing him right through the sternum. It wasn't possible to lose a friend like her without knowing, was it? Though the current didn't flow through him, her life force surely did. She had kept him alive for too long. Maybe if he held on tight enough now, he could do the same for her, from far away.

  In late afternoon, when the sun was swollen with what was left of the day, they started to run out of fuel. The floater shuddered. Under them the feat
hergrass was thinning, and between it there was low, gray-brown grass that moved like hair in the wind.

  Cisi guided the ship to a place near some wildflowers. It got frosty here, closer to the equator, but warm swells of air came from the sea and filled the valley of Voa. Other kinds of plants could grow, not just iceflowers.

  They climbed out, and started walking. Along the horizon was the purple swell of the currentstream, a little cluster of buildings, and the glint of Shotet ships. Jorek had told him how to get to his family's house, but the last time Akos had been out here was right after he had killed Kalmev Radix, and Vas and the others had just beaten the snot out of him, so he didn't remember it too well. The land was so flat there weren't many places for a small village to hide--lucky.

  He heard shifting in the grass ahead of them, and between stalks, he saw something dark and massive. He grabbed Isae's hand, on his left, and Cisi's, on his right, holding them both still.

  Up ahead the creature was gliding. The clicking of its pincers came from all directions. It was big--as wide as he was tall, easily--and its body was covered with dark blue plates. It had more legs than he could count, and he could see its head only because of the teeth glistening in its wide, curved mouth. They were as long as his fingers.

  An Armored One.

  His face was izits from its hard-plated side. It exhaled--like sighing--and its eyes, beady and black, almost hidden under a plate, closed. Beside him, Cisi shuddered with fear.

  "The current drives Armored Ones into mad rages," he whispered right against the creature, which had gone to sleep, much as it defied logic. He took a slow step back. "That's why they attack people, because we're such good channels for the current."

  His hands squeaked against theirs, his palms were so sweaty.

  "But," Isae said, sounding strained, "you don't channel the current, so."

  "So they hardly know I'm there," he replied. "Come on."

  He led them away from the sleepy animal, checking over his shoulder to make sure it wasn't following. It stayed put.

  "I guess we know how you earned your armor," Isae said.

  "That's where the armor comes from?" Cisi said. "I thought all that stuff about slaying beasts was just stupid Thuvhesit rumor."