Carve the Mark

  "Okay, this is just ridiculous," Akos said. He put a hand behind my knees and swung me into his arms, not quite as gently as I would have liked. But I was too tired to object. The toes of my shoes skimmed the walls as he carried me up the stairs.

  We found an apartment on the second floor that seemed relatively intact. It was dusty, and the half of the living room that remained overlooked the hollowed-out area where the ship was parked, so we could see what the renegades were doing, rolling out sleeping pallets, sorting through supplies, building a fire in the small furnace they had probably dragged from one of the apartments.

  The bathroom, next to the living room, was comfortable and expansive, with a bathtub in the center of the room and a sink at the side. The floor was made of blue glass tiles. Akos tested the faucets, which sputtered at first, but still worked, as Teka had promised.

  I was torn, for a moment, between cleaning myself up and talking to Isae Benesit.

  "I can wait," Isae said, when she noticed my indecision. "I would be too distracted to have a meaningful conversation with you while you're covered in blood anyway."

  "Yes, I'm hardly fit for a chancellor's company," I said, a little edge in my voice. As if it was my fault that I was covered in blood. As if I needed the reminder.

  "I spent most of my life in a little cruiser vessel that smelled like feet," she replied. "I'm hardly fit for my own company, by the usual definitions."

  She picked up one of the large cushions in the living room and smacked it with the flat of her hand, sending a cloud of dust into the air. After brushing it off, she set it down and sat on top of it, somehow managing to look elegant while she found her balance. Cisi took a seat beside her, though with less ceremony, giving me a warm smile. I was puzzled by her gift, how it slowed my turbulent thoughts and made my worst memories feel further away. I sensed that being around her could become addictive, if you had enough discomfort.

  Akos was still in the bathroom. He had plugged the bathtub drain and turned on the faucets. Now he was undoing the straps of his armor with quick, nimble fingers.

  "Don't tell me you don't need my help," he said to me. "I won't believe you."

  I stepped out of sight of the living room and tried to lift my shirt over my head. I only made it up to my stomach before I had to stop for breath. Akos set his armor down and took the hem of my shirt from me. I laughed, softly, as he guided it over my head and down my arms and said, "This is awkward."

  "Yes it is," he said. He kept his eyes on my face. He was blushing.

  I had not allowed myself to imagine a situation like this, his fingers brushing my arms, the memory of his mouth on mine so close I could still feel it.

  "I think I can handle the pants on my own," I said.

  I didn't mind showing skin. I was far from frail, with thick thighs and a small chest, and it didn't concern me. This body had carried me through a hard life. It looked exactly the way it was supposed to. Still, when his eyes dropped--just for a moment--I stifled a nervous giggle.

  He helped me into the bathtub, where I sat, letting my underwear get soaked. He searched the cabinet under the sink, scattering a straight razor, an empty bottle with a worn label, and a comb with broken teeth before he found a lump of soap, and offered it to me.

  He was quiet, setting his hand on me to suppress the currentshadows while I scrubbed streaks of red from my body. The worst part was probing the edges of the silverskin to wash away a few days' worth of gore, so I did it first, biting down hard on my lip to keep from crying out. Then his thumb was pressing, working a knot from my shoulder, from my neck. Goose bumps spread up and down my arms.

  His fingers fluttered over my shoulders, finding places to soothe. His eyes, when they found mine, were soft and almost shy, and I wanted to kiss him until he blushed again.

  Later.

  With a glance at the living room, to make sure Cisi and Isae couldn't see me, I loosened the armor around my left arm, and peeled it from my skin.

  "I have a few more to carve," I said softly to Akos.

  "Those losses can wait," Akos said. "You've bled enough for this."

  He took the soap from me, and turned it in his hand to capture its lather. Then he ran his fingers up and down my scarred arm, gentle. It was, in some ways, even better than being kissed by him. He had no fragile illusions about my goodness, destined to shatter when he found out the truth. But he accepted me anyway. Cared about me anyway.

  "Okay," I said. "I'm done, I think."

  Akos stood, holding my hands, and lifted me as I came to my feet. Water ran down my legs and back. As I fastened the armor around my forearm again, he found a towel in one of the cabinets, then pieced together clothes for me--the pants from Isae, underwear from Cisi, one of his own shirts and a pair of his socks, my still-intact boots. I looked at the pile of clothes with some dismay. It was one thing for him to see me in my underwear, but to help me take it off . . .

  Well. If that was going to happen, I wanted it to be under different circumstances.

  "Cisi," Akos said. He was also staring at the pile of clothes. "Maybe you should help with this part."

  "Thank you," I said to him.

  He smiled. "It's getting really hard to keep my eyes on your face."

  I made a face at him as he left.

  Cisi came in, and peace came with her. She helped me undo the chest binder. It was, as far as I knew, a uniquely Shotet design, made not to enhance my shape but to hold my chest steady beneath rigid armor. The replacement she handed me was more like a shirt, made for warmth and comfort, the fabric soft. The Thuvhesit version. It was too big for me, but it would have to do.

  "That gift of yours," I said as she helped me fasten it. "Does it make it difficult to trust people?"

  "What do you mean?" She held up the towel so I could change underwear with some privacy.

  "I mean . . ." After pulling on the underwear, I stepped into the first leg of the pants. "You don't really ever know if it's you they want to be around, or your gift."

  "The gift comes from me," Cisi said. "It's an expression of my personality. So I guess I don't see a difference."

  It was, essentially, what Dr. Fadlan had said to my mother in his office, that my gift unfolded from the deeper parts of me, and it would only change as I changed. Watching the shadows wrap around my wrist like a bracelet, I wondered if their shift meant that I had awoken a different woman from that interrogation. Maybe even a better one, a stronger one.

  I asked, "So you think causing people pain is a part of my personality?"

  She frowned as she helped me guide my head and arms into the clean shirt. The short sleeves were far too baggy for me, so I rolled them up, leaving my arms bare.

  "You want to keep people away," Cisi said finally. "I'm not sure why pain is the way your gift accomplishes that. I don't know you." Her frown deepened. "It's strange. Usually I can't speak this freely with anyone, let alone someone I just met."

  She and I traded a smile.

  In the living room, where Isae still sat with her legs folded to one side, her ankles crossed, there was a small stack of cushions already ready for me. I sank into it, relieved, and pulled my wet hair over one shoulder. Though the table between us was broken--it had once been made of glass, so glass pebbles covered the wood floor around us--and the cushions were dirty and low to the ground, Isae looked at me like she was holding court, and I was a subject. Now that was a skill.

  "How's your Thuvhesit?" Isae said.

  "Very good," I said, switching languages. Akos jerked to attention at the sound of his native tongue coming from my mouth. He had heard me speak it before, but it seemed to startle him anyway.

  "So," I said to her. "You came here for your sister."

  "Yes," Isae said. "Have you seen her?"

  "No," I said. "I don't know where she's being kept. But eventually, he'll have to move her. That's what you should plan for."

  Akos set a hand on my shoulder again, this time standing behind me. I hadn't even no
ticed the currentshadows beginning their movement again, I was so distracted by all the other pain.

  "Will he hurt her?" Cisi said softly, taking a seat at Isae's side.

  "My brother doesn't inflict pain for no reason," I said.

  Isae snorted.

  "I'm serious," I said. "He is a peculiar kind of monster. He fears pain, and has never enjoyed watching it. It reminds him that he can feel it, I think. You can take comfort in that--he's not likely to hurt her senselessly, without cause."

  Cisi wrapped her hand around Isae's and held tightly, without looking at her. Their clasped hands rested on the floor between them, fingers interlaced so I could tell Cisi's skin from Isae's only by its darker shade.

  "My guess is that whatever he intends to do with her--which we can reasonably assume is execution--it will be public, and it will be intended to lure you to him," I said. "He wants to kill you, even more than her, and he wants it to be on his terms. Trust me, you don't want to fight him on his terms."

  "We could use your help," Akos said.

  "My help is already yours," I replied.

  I set my hand on top of his, and squeezed. Like a reassurance.

  "The trick will be persuading the renegades," Akos said. "They don't care about rescuing a Benesit child."

  "Let me handle them," I said. "I have an idea."

  "How many of the stories I've heard about you are true?" Isae said. "I see how you cover your arm. I see what you can do with your gift. So I know that some of what I've been told must be true. How can I trust you, if that's the case?"

  I got the feeling, looking at her, that she wanted the world around her to be simple, including the people in it. Maybe she had to feel that way, carrying the fate of a nation-planet on her shoulders. But I had learned that the world did not become something just because you needed it to.

  "You want to see people as extremes. Bad or good, trustworthy or not," I said. "I understand. It's easier that way. But that isn't how people work."

  She looked at me for a long time. Long enough for even Cisi to fidget where she sat.

  "Besides, whether you trust me or not makes no difference to me," I said, at last. "I am going to rip my brother to pieces either way."

  At the bottom of the stairs, when we were all still cloaked in the darkness of the stairwell, I pinched Akos's sleeve to hold him back. It wasn't so dark that I couldn't see his look of confusion. I waited until Isae and Cisi were out of hearing distance before I stepped back, releasing him, letting the currentshadows build between us like smoke.

  "Something wrong?" he said.

  "No," I said. "Just . . . give me a moment."

  I closed my eyes. Ever since I had woken up after the interrogation with shadow on top of my skin instead of beneath it, I had been thinking of Dr. Fadlan's office, of how my gift came to be. It seemed, like most things in my life, tied to Ryzek. Ryzek feared pain, so the current had given me a gift he would fear, maybe the only gift that could truly protect me from him.

  The current had not given me a curse. And I had become strong under its teaching. But there was no denying another thing Dr. Fadlan had said--that on some level, I felt like I, and everyone else, deserved pain. One thing I knew, deep in my bones, was that Akos Kereseth did not deserve it. Holding on to that thought, I reached for him, and touched my hand to his chest, feeling fabric.

  I opened my eyes. The shadows were still traveling over my body, since I wasn't touching his skin, but my entire left arm, from shoulder to the fingertips that touched him, was bare. Even if he had been able to feel my currentgift, I still would not have been hurting him.

  Akos's eyes, usually so wary, were wide with wonder.

  "When I kill people with a touch, it's because I decide to give them all the pain and keep none of it for myself. It's because I get so tired of bearing it that all I want to do is set it down for a while," I said. "But during the interrogation, it occurred to me that maybe I was strong enough to bear it all myself. That maybe no one else but me could. And I never would have thought of that without you."

  I blinked tears from my eyes.

  "You saw me as someone better than I was," I said. "You told me that I could choose to be different than I had been, that my condition was not permanent. And I began to believe you. Taking in all the pain nearly killed me, but when I woke up again, the gift was different. It doesn't hurt as much. Sometimes I can control it."

  I took my hand away.

  "I don't know what you want to call it, what we are to each other now," I said. "But I wanted you to know that your friendship has . . . quite literally altered me."

  For a few long seconds, he just stared at me. There were new things to discover in his face still, even after so long spent in close company. Faint shadows under his cheekbones. The scar that ran through his eyebrow.

  "You don't know what to call it?" he said, when he finally spoke again.

  His armor hit the ground with a clatter, and he reached for me. Wrapped an arm around my waist. Pulled me against him. Whispered against my mouth: "Sivbarat. Zethetet."

  One Shotet word, one Thuvhesit. Sivbarat referred to a person's dearest friend, someone so close that to lose them would be like losing a limb. And the Thuvhesit word, I had never heard before.

  We didn't quite know how to fit together, lips too wet, teeth where they didn't belong. But that was all right; we tried again, and this time it was like the spark that came from friction, a jolt of energy through my body.

  He clutched at my sides, pulled my shirt into his fists. His hands were deft from handling carving knives and powders, and he smelled like it, too, like herbs and potions and vapor.

  I pressed into him, feeling the rough stairwell wall against my hands, and his quick, hot breaths against my neck. I had wondered, I had wondered what it was like to go through life without feeling pain, but this was not the absence of pain I had always craved, it was the opposite, it was pure sensation. Soft, warm, aching, heavy, everything, everything.

  I heard, echoing through the safe house, a kind of commotion. But before I let myself pull away so we could see what it was, I asked him quietly, "What does it mean, 'zethetet'?"

  He looked away, like he was embarrassed. I caught sight of that creeping blush around the collar of his shirt.

  "Beloved," he said softly. He kissed me again, then picked up his armor and led the way toward the renegades.

  I couldn't stop smiling.

  The commotion was that someone was landing a floater in our safe house, ripping right through the fabric that shielded us. The band of light around its middle was dark purple, and it was splattered with mud.

  I froze, terrified of the dark shape descending, but then I saw unfamiliar words on the underside of the rotund ship: Passenger Craft #6734.

  Written in Thuvhesit.

  CHAPTER 32: AKOS

  THE SHIP THAT HAD busted through the roof covering was a fat passenger floater, only big enough to hold a couple of people. Tattered bits of the fabric it had torn through floated down after it, catching the breeze. The now-visible sky was dark blue, starless, and the currentstream, rippling across it, was purple red.

  The renegades surrounded the floater, weapons drawn. The hatch on its side opened, and a woman descended, showing her palms. She was older, with streaks of gray in her hair, and the look in her eye was anything but surrender.

  "Mom?" Cisi said.

  Cisi ran at her, wrapping her in a hug. Their mom hugged her back, but scanned the renegades over Cisi's shoulder. Then her stare fixed on Akos.

  He felt shifty in his skin. He had thought maybe, if he ever got to see her again, she would make him feel like a kid. But it was just the opposite--he felt old. And huge. Holding his Shotet armor in front of him like it would protect him from her, then wishing, desperately, that he wasn't holding it, so she wouldn't know he'd earned it. He didn't want to shock her, or disappoint her, or be anything other than what she expected, only he didn't know what that was.

  "Who are you?"
Teka demanded. "How did you find us?"

  His mom let go of Cisi. "I am Sifa Kereseth. I'm sorry to alarm you; I mean no harm."

  "You didn't answer my question."

  "I knew where to find you because I'm the oracle of Thuvhe," his mom said, and all at once, like it was rehearsed, the renegades put down their currentblades. Even those Shotet who didn't worship the current wouldn't dare to threaten an oracle, their religious history was so strong. Awe of her, of what she could do and see, was practically in their bones, running right alongside the marrow.

  "Akos," his mom said, almost like it was a question. And in Thuvhesit, "Son?"

  He had thought about seeing her again dozens of times. What he would say, what he would do, how he would feel. And mostly, now, all he felt was angry. She hadn't come for him the day of the kidnapping. Hadn't even warned them about the horror that would come to their doorstep, or said a too-meaningful good-bye that morning when they went to school. Nothing.

  She reached for him, putting her rough hands on his shoulders. The worn shirt she wore, patched at the elbows, was one of their dad's shirts. She smelled like sendes leaf and saltfruit, like home. The last time he'd stood in front of her, he'd only come up to her shoulder; now he was a head taller.

  Her eyes sparkled.

  "I wish I could explain," she whispered.

  So did he. Wished, more than that, that she could let go of the mad faith that she had in the fates, the convictions she held higher even than her own children. But it wasn't that simple.

  "Have I lost you, then?" Her voice cracked a little over the question, and it was that easy for his anger to break.

  He bent, and pulled her into his arms, lifting her to her toes without really noticing.

  She felt like bones to him. Had she always been this thin, or had he only thought of her as strong because he was a kid and she was his mom? He felt like it would be too easy to crush her.

  She rocked from side to side, a little. She'd always done that, like the hug wasn't over until she had tested it for stability.

  "Hello," he said, because it was all he could think of.