Carve the Mark

  We were inside, and it was deadly quiet.

  "You made Vas feel pain," I said, breathless. I touched his face, ran a fingertip down his nose, over his upper lip.

  He wasn't as bruised as he had been the last time I saw him, cowering on the floor at my touch.

  "I did," he replied.

  "Eijeh was in the amphitheater, he was right there. You could have grabbed him. Why didn't you--"

  His mouth--still under my fingers--twitched into a smile. "Because I came for you, you idiot."

  I laughed and fell against him, not strong enough to stand anymore.

  CHAPTER 30: AKOS

  FOR A TICK THERE was only her weight, her warmth, and relief.

  And then everything came back: the crush of people in the transport vessel, their silence as they stared, Isae and Cisi strapped in near the nav deck. Cisi gave Akos a smile as he caught Cyra around the waist and picked her up. Cyra was tall, and far from dainty, but he could still carry her. For a while, anyway.

  "Where are your medical supplies?" Akos asked Teka and Jyo, who were coming toward them.

  "Jyo has medical training; he can take care of her," Teka said.

  But Akos didn't like how Jyo was looking at her, like she was something valuable he could buy or trade. These renegades hadn't rescued her out of the goodness of their hearts; they wanted something in return, and he wasn't about to just hand her over.

  Cyra's fingers curled around the armor strap on his rib cage, and he shivered a little.

  "She doesn't go anywhere without me," he said.

  Teka's eyebrow lifted above the eye patch. Before she could snap at him--which he got the sense she was about to--Cisi unbuckled herself and made her way over.

  "I can do it. I have the training," she said. "And Akos will help me."

  Teka eyed her for a beat, then gestured to the galley. "By all means, Miss Kereseth."

  Akos carried Cyra into the galley. She wasn't completely out of it--her eyes were still open--but she didn't seem there, either, and he didn't like it.

  "Come on, Noavek, get it together," he said to her as he turned sideways to get her in the door. It wasn't quite steady on the vessel; he stumbled. "My Cyra would have made at least two snide remarks by now."

  "Hmm." She smiled a little. "Your Cyra."

  The galley was narrow and dirty, used plates and cups piled around the sink, jostling each other whenever the ship turned, lit by strips of white light that kept fluttering like they were about to go out; everything made of the same dull metal, dotted with bolts. He waited as Cisi scrubbed the little table between the two countertops, and dried it with a clean rag. His arms ached by the time he put Cyra down.

  "Akos, I can't read Shotet characters."

  "Um . . . neither can I, really." The supply cabinet was organized, all the individually packaged items in neat rows. Alphabetical. He knew a few of them by sight, but not enough.

  "You'd think after all that time in Shotet you'd have learned something," Cyra said from her place on the table, slurring the words a little. Her arm flopped to the side, and she pointed. "Silverskin is there. Antiseptic on the left. Make me a painkiller."

  "Hey, I learned a few things," he said to her, squeezing her hand before he got to work. "The most challenging lesson was how to deal with you."

  He had a vial of painkiller in his bag, so he went out to the main deck again and hunted for it under the jump seats, glaring at Jyo when he didn't move his legs right away. He found his roll of leather--made of treated Armored One skin, so it was still hard, not exactly a "roll"--where he kept his spare vials, and found the purplish one that would help Cyra's pain. When he went back to the galley, Cisi was wearing gloves and ripping packages open.

  "How steady are your hands, Akos?" Cisi asked.

  "Steady enough. Why?"

  "I know how to do the procedures, of course, but I can't really touch her, because of the pain, remember? At least, not as steadily as she needs me to; this is delicate work," she said. "So I'm just going to tell you what to do."

  Dark streaks still traveled up and down Cyra's arms and around her head, though they were different from the last time Akos had seen them, dancing on top of her in jagged lines.

  Cyra croaked from the table, "Akos, is this . . . ?"

  "My sister?" Akos said. "Yeah, it is. Cyra, meet Cisi."

  "It's a pleasure to meet you," Cyra said, searching Cisi's face. For resemblance, if Akos knew anything. She wouldn't find it--he and Cisi had never looked much alike.

  "You too," Cisi said, smiling at Cyra. If she was scared of the woman beneath her--the woman she had heard so many rumors about, all her life--she didn't show it.

  Akos carried the painkiller to Cyra and touched the vial to her lips. It was hard to look at her. The stitching cloth that covered the left side of her throat and head was deep red and crusted over. She was bruise-stained and worn through.

  "Remind me," Cyra said as the painkiller kicked in, "to yell at you for coming back."

  "Whatever you say," Akos said.

  But he was relieved, because there was his Cyra, jagged as a serrated blade, strong as Deadened ice.

  "She fell asleep. Well, that's good," Cisi said. "Step back, please."

  He gave her some room. She was dextrous, to be sure; she pinched the stitching cloth with all the delicacy of someone threading a needle, careful not to brush Cyra's skin, and pulled it back. It came away from the wound easily, wet as it was with blood and pus. She dropped it, one soaked strip at a time, on a tray near Cyra's head.

  "So you've been training to be a doctor," Akos said as he watched her.

  "It seemed like a good fit for my gift," Cisi said. Ease was her gift--always had been, even before her currentgift came around--but it wasn't her only one, he could see that. She had steady hands and an even temper and a sharp mind. More than just a sweet person with a good disposition, as if anyone was just that.

  When the whole wound was clear of the useless stitching cloth, she poured antiseptic all over it, dabbing at the edges to get rid of dried blood.

  "I think it's time to apply the silverskin," Cisi said, straightening. "It acts like a living creature; you just have to place it properly and it adheres permanently to the flesh. You'll be fine as long as you can keep your hands steady. Okay? I'll cut the strips now."

  Silverskin was another innovation from Othyr, a sterile, synthetic substance that, as Cisi said, almost seemed to be alive. It was used to replace skin that had been damaged beyond repair, mostly burns. It got its name because of its color and texture--it was smooth and had a silver sheen to it. Once put in place, it was permanent.

  Cisi cut the strips with care, one for the section of skin just above Cyra's ear, one for behind it, and one for her throat. After a beat or two of thought, she went back to make the edges of silverskin curved. Like wind through snow, like iceflower petals.

  Akos put on gloves, so the silverskin wouldn't stick to his hands instead of her, and Cisi handed the first strip to him. It was heavy, and cold to the touch, not as slippery as he'd imagined it to be. She helped him position his hands over Cyra's head.

  "Lower it straight down," she said, and he did. He didn't have to press it in place; the silverskin rippled like water and buried itself in Cyra's scalp the moment it found flesh.

  With Cisi's clear voice coaching him, Akos placed the rest of the silverskin. Each piece grew together right away, no seams to speak of between the different strips.

  He acted as Cisi's hands for the rest of Cyra's wounds, too, the gashes on her arm and side covered with stitching cloth, the bruises treated with a healing salve. It didn't take long. Mostly they would heal on their own, and the real trick for her would be forgetting how she got them. There was no stitching cloth for the mind's wounds, real though they were.

  "That's it," Cisi said, stripping the gloves from her small hands. "Now you just wait for her to wake up. She'll need to rest, but she should be fine now that she's not losing any more blood."
>
  "Thank you," Akos said.

  "Never thought I would be trying to heal Cyra Noavek," Cisi said. "On a transport vessel full of Shotet, no less." She glanced at him. "I can see why you like her, you know."

  "I feel like . . ." Akos sighed, and sat down at the table next to Cyra's head. "Like I just walked right into my fate without meaning to."

  "Well," Cisi said, "if you are destined to serve the Noavek family, I think you could do worse than the woman who was willing to endure all this just to get you home."

  "So you don't think I'm a traitor?"

  "That sort of depends on what she stands for, doesn't it?" Cisi said. She touched his shoulder. "I'm going to find Isae, okay?"

  "Sure."

  "What's that look for?"

  He was suppressing a smile. "Nothing."

  Akos's memories of the interrogation were hazy, and the edges of them, creeping into his mind, were bad enough on their own, without any of the details to make them more real. Still, he let the memory of Cyra in.

  She had looked like a corpse, with the currentshadows making her face look pitted and rotted away. And she had been screaming so loud, every izit of her resisting; she didn't want to hurt him. If he hadn't told Ryzek what he knew about Isae and Ori, maybe she had, just to keep from killing Akos. Not like he would have blamed her.

  She woke up on the galley table with a twitch and a moan. Then reached for him, touching his jaw with her fingertips.

  "Am I sealed in your memory now?" she said, sluggish. "As someone who hurt you?" The words caught in her throat like she was gagging on them. "The sounds you made, I can't forget--"

  She was crying. Half-drunk, too, from the painkiller, but still, crying.

  He didn't remember the sounds he'd made when she touched him--when Vas forced her to touch him, that was, torturing them both. But he knew she had felt everything he had felt. That was how her gift worked, sending pain both ways.

  "No, no," Akos said. "What he did, he did to both of us."

  Her hand came to rest against his sternum, like she was going to push him away, and then she didn't. She brushed her fingers over his collarbone, and even through his shirt he felt how warm she was.

  "But now you know what I've done," she said, staring at her hand, at his chest, anywhere but his face. "Before, you had only seen me do it to other people, but now you know the kind of pain I have caused people, so many people, just because I was too much of a coward to stand up to him." She scowled, and lifted her hand. "Getting you out was the one good thing I've ever done, and now it's not even worth anything, because here you are again, you . . . you idiot!"

  She clutched at her side, wincing. She was crying again.

  Akos touched her face. When he first met her, he thought she was this fearsome thing, this monster he needed to escape. But she had unfurled bit by bit, showing him her wicked humor by waking him with a knife to his throat, talking about herself with unflinching honesty, for better or for worse, and loving--so deeply--every little bit of this galaxy, even the parts she was supposed to hate.

  She was not a rusty nail, as she had once told him, or a hot poker, or a blade in Ryzek's hand. She was a hushflower, all power and possibility. Capable of doing good and harm in equal measure.

  "It is not the only good thing you've ever done," Akos said, in plain Thuvhesit. It felt like the right language for this moment, the language of his home, which Cyra understood but didn't really speak when he was around, like she was afraid it would hurt his feelings.

  "It's worth everything to me, what you did," he said, still in Thuvhesit. "It changes everything."

  He touched his forehead to hers, so they shared the same air.

  "I like how you sound in your own language," she said softly.

  "Can I kiss you?" he said. "Or will it hurt?"

  Her eyes went wide. Then she said breathlessly, "And if it hurts?" And smiled a little. "Life is full of hurt anyway."

  Akos's breaths shuddered as he pressed his mouth to hers. He wasn't sure what it would be like, kissing her this way, not because she surprised him and he didn't think to pull away, but because he just wanted to. She tasted malty and spiced from the painkiller she had swallowed, and she was a little hesitant, like she was afraid to hurt him. But kissing her was touching match to kindling. He burned for her.

  The ship jerked, making all the bowls and cups clatter against each other. They were landing.

  CHAPTER 31: CYRA

  I FINALLY LET MYSELF think it: he was beautiful. His gray eyes reminded me of the stormy waters of Pitha. When he reached for my cheek, there was a crease along his arm where one wiry muscle met another. His deft, sensitive fingers moved over my cheekbone. His fingernails were stained with yellow powder--from jealousy flowers, I was sure. I was breathless to think of him touching me just because he wanted to.

  I sat up, slowly, bringing a hand to the silverskin behind my ear. Soon it would adhere to the nerves in what was left of my scalp, and I would be able to feel it like it was my own skin, though it would never grow hair again. I wondered how I looked now, with a little more than half a head of hair. It didn't really matter.

  He wanted to touch me.

  "What?" he said. "You're giving me a weird look."

  "Nothing," I said. "You just . . . look nice."

  It was a silly thing to say. He was dusty, sweaty, and smeared with my blood. His hair and clothes were mussed. Nice wasn't exactly the word for it, but the other ones I thought of were too much, too soon.

  Still, he smiled as if he understood. "You do, too."

  "I look filthy," I said. "But thank you for lying about it."

  I braced myself on the edge of the table, and pushed to standing. At first I teetered, unsure of my footing.

  "Need me to carry you again?" he said.

  "That was humiliating and will never happen again."

  "Humiliating? Some people might use another word," he said. "Like . . . gallant."

  "Tell you what," I said. "Someday I'll carry you around like a baby in front of people whose respect you're trying to earn, and you can let me know how much you like it."

  He grinned. "Deal."

  "I'll consent to let you help me walk," I said. "And don't think I didn't notice the chancellor of Thuvhe standing in the next room." I shook my head. "I'd love to know the principle of elmetahak that sanctions bringing your chancellor to the country of her enemies."

  "I think it falls under 'hulyetahak,'" he said with a sigh. "School of the stupid."

  I held tight to his arm and walked--shuffled, really--into the main deck. The transport vessel was small, with a wide observation window at one end. Through it I saw Voa from above, surrounded on three sides by sheer cliffs and on one by the ocean, forests spread over the distant hills as far as I could see. Trains, powered largely by wind coming off the water, wrapped around the city's circumference and traveled into its center like spokes in a wheel. I had never ridden in one.

  "How has Ryzek not found us?" I asked.

  "Hologram cloak," Teka said from the captain's chair. "Makes us look like just another Shotet army transport. I designed it myself."

  The ship dipped down, sinking through a hole in the rotten roof of some building on the fringes of Voa. Ryzek didn't know this part of the city--no one bothered to, really. It was clear that this building in particular had once been an apartment complex, hollowed out by some kind of destructive event, maybe a near demolition, abandoned halfway through. As the ship sank, I saw into half a dozen lives: a bed with mismatched pillowcases in a ripped-apart bedroom; half a kitchen counter dangling from a precipice; red cushions coated in dust and bits of rubble from a destroyed living room.

  We touched down, and some of the others used a rope rigged to a pulley near the ceiling to cover the hole there with a huge piece of fabric. Light still came through it--making the ship almost glow, from the warmth of its patchwork metals--but it was harder, now, to see into the apartments that had been. The space we were in was half packed d
irt, half dust-streaked tile. Growing in the cracks of the broken floor were fragile Shotet flowers in gray, blue, and purple.

  And at the bottom of the steps that had unfolded from the ship's hold, with the angular eyes I remembered from the footage Akos and I had watched together, was Isae Benesit. She was scarred in a way I hadn't imagined, scarred by a Shotet blade.

  "Hello," I said to her. "I've heard a lot about you."

  She said, "Likewise."

  I was certain of that. She had heard of how I brought pain and death to all that I touched. And maybe she had heard of my supposed madness, too, that I was too insane to speak, like a diseased animal.

  Making sure that Akos's hand was still on my arm, I stretched out a hand for her to take, curious to see if she would. She did. Her hand looked delicate, but it felt callused, and I wondered how it had gotten that way.

  "I think we should trade stories," I said, careful. If the renegades didn't already know who she was, it was better not to tell them, for her safety. "Somewhere private."

  Teka approached us. I almost laughed at the bright eye patch she wore; though I didn't know her well, it seemed just like her to call attention to the missing eye instead of disguising it.

  "Cyra," she said to me. "Good to see you're feeling better."

  I stepped away from Akos's steadying hand, so the currentshadows spread over my body again. They were so different now, winding around my fingers like tendrils of hair instead of coursing through them like veins. My shirt was stained with blood and sliced open where they had applied the stitching cloth, and I was bruised in more places than I could count. Still, I tried to pretend I had some dignity.

  "Thank you for coming to get me," I said to Teka. "I assume, based on our past interactions, that there's something you'd like in return."

  "We can get to that later," Teka said, lip curling. "I think it's safe to say our interests align, though. If you want to clean up, there's running water in this building. Hot water. Pick an apartment, any apartment."

  "Luxury of luxuries," I said. I looked to Isae. "Maybe you should come with us. We have a lot to catch up on."

  I did the best I could to pretend I was all right until we reached one of the stairwells, out of sight. Then I stopped to lean into one of the walls, breathless. My skin pulsed around the silverskin. Akos's touch was taking away the pain of my currentgift, but there was nothing he could do to save me from the rest, the carving of my flesh, the battles I had fought for my own life.