Carve the Mark

  Akos's eyes swept over the row of women beside him. Isae, startled, and maybe a little bit grateful to Cyra for arguing on Ori's behalf, her fingers loose around her mug. Cisi, wrapping a lock of hair around her finger, like she wasn't even listening. And then Cyra, the low lights reflecting off the sheen on the side of her head, her voice rough.

  Teka spoke up. "Ryzek will be in a huge crowd of people, many of whom are his most ardent supporters and fiercest soldiers. What kind of 'move' do you suggest we make?"

  Cyra replied, "You said it yourself, didn't you? Kill him."

  "Oh, right!" Teka smacked the table, obviously annoyed. "Why didn't I think of killing him? How simple!"

  Cyra rolled her eyes. "This time you won't have to sneak into his house while he's asleep. This time, I'll challenge him to the arena."

  Everybody got quiet again. For different reasons, Akos was sure. Cyra was a good fighter, everybody knew that, but no one knew how good Ryzek was--they hadn't seen him in action. And then there was the matter of getting to a place where Cyra could actually challenge him. And getting him to do it instead of just arresting her.

  "Cyra," Akos said.

  "He declared nemhalzak--he erased your status, your citizenship," Teka said, talking over him. "He has no reason to honor your challenge."

  "Of course he does." Isae was frowning. "He could have gotten rid of her quietly when he learned she was a renegade, but he didn't. He wanted her disgrace, and her death, to be public. That means he's afraid of her, afraid she has power over Shotet. If she challenges him in front of everyone, he won't be able to back down. He'll look like a coward."

  "Cyra," Akos said again, quiet this time.

  "Akos," Cyra answered, with just a touch of the gentleness he had seen in the stairwell. "He is no match for me."

  The first time Akos ever saw Cyra fight--really fight--was in the training room in Noavek manor. She had gotten frustrated with him--she wasn't a patient teacher, after all--and she had let loose more than usual, knocking him flat. Only fifteen seasons old at the time, but she had moved like an adult. And she only got better from there. In all his time training with her, he had never bested her. Not once.

  "I know," he said. "But just in case, let's distract him."

  "Distract him," Cyra repeated.

  "You'll go into the amphitheater. You'll challenge him," Akos said. "And I'll go to the prison. Badha and I, I mean. We'll rescue Orieve Benesit--we'll take away his triumph. And you'll take away his life."

  It sounded almost poetic, which was why he'd put it that way. But it was hard to think of poetry when Cyra's fingers crept to her covered arm, like she was imagining the mark Ryzek would make there. Not that she would hesitate. But Cyra knew what those marks cost; she knew as well as anybody.

  "It's settled, then," Isae said, her voice cutting through the quiet. "Ryzek dies. Orieve lives. Justice is done."

  Justice, revenge. It was too late to figure out the difference.

  CHAPTER 33: CYRA

  AS SOON AS I offered myself to fight my brother in the arena, I tasted the dusty amphitheater air in my mouth. I could still smell it: the crowded bodies, sweating; the chemical odor of the disinfected prison beneath; the tang from the force field that hummed above. I had tried to push it away as I spoke to the renegades, playacting at self-assuredness, but it was there, lingering.

  The blood splatter. The screaming.

  Akos's mother watched my armored arm, covered now by a blanket from one of the renegades. She was probably wondering how many scars there were beneath it.

  What a match for her son I was. Him, aching with each life he had taken. Me, forgetting the number of marks on my arm.

  When most of the burnstones in the stove had turned chalky, I slipped away, past the shadow of Sifa's floater, up the stairwell to the broken place where I had washed the blood from my skin. Below, I could hear Jorek and Jyo singing in harmony--sometimes not well--and the others breaking into a chorus of laughter. In the dimly lit bathroom, I approached the mirror, first finding just a dark silhouette in the glass, and then . . .

  This is not a crisis, I told myself. You are alive.

  I probed the silverskin on my head and throat. It tingled where it had begun to grow into my nerves. My hair was piled on one side of my head, the silverskin flat against the other side, the skin around it red and swollen as it adjusted to the new material. A woman on one side and a machine on the other.

  I braced myself against the sink, and sobbed. My ribs ached, but there was no stopping the tears now. They came, heedless of pain, and I stopped resisting them.

  Ryzek had mutilated me. My own brother.

  "Cyra," Akos said, and it was the only time I had ever wished he wasn't there. He touched my shoulders, lightly, sending the shadows away. He had cold hands. A light touch.

  "I'm fine," I said, running my fingers over my silver throat.

  "You don't have to be fine right now."

  The silverskin reflected the muted light that had crept into this half-destroyed place.

  In a small, quiet voice, I asked the question that was buried deep inside me. "Am I ugly now?"

  "What do you think?" he asked, and not like it was a rhetorical question. More like he knew I didn't want him to placate me, so he was asking me to think about it. I lifted my eyes to the mirror again.

  My head did look strange with only half my hair, but some people in Shotet wore their hair this way, shaved on one side and long on the other. And the silverskin looked like a piece from the armor that my mother had collected in her seasons of sojourning. Like the armor on my wrist, I would always wear it, and it would make me feel strong.

  I found my own eyes in the glass.

  "No," I said. "I'm not."

  I didn't quite mean it yet, but I thought maybe, over time, I might start to.

  "I agree," he said. "In case that wasn't clear from all the kissing we've been doing."

  I smiled, and turned, perching on the edge of the sink. There was worry tugging at the corners of Akos's eyes, though he was smiling. He had looked that way since the discussion with the renegades about our plan.

  "What's going on, Akos?" I said. "Are you really that concerned that I can't beat Ryzek?"

  "No, it's not that." Akos looked as uneasy as I felt. "It's just . . . you're really going to kill him?"

  That wasn't quite what I expected him to ask.

  "Yes. I'm going to kill him," I said. The words tasted rusty, like blood. "I thought that was clear."

  He nodded. He looked over his shoulder at the renegades, gathered on the first floor still. I followed his gaze to his mother, who was having a close conversation with Teka, a mug of tea clutched in both hands. Cisi wasn't far away from them, staring blankly at the furnace. She hadn't spoken or stirred since the planning session. Many of the others were next to the transport vessel, tucking themselves under blankets, using the bags they had carried here as pillows. We would be up with the sun.

  "I need to ask you for something," he said, returning his focus to me again. He took my face in his hands, gently. "It's not fair to ask this of you. But I want to ask you to spare Ryzek's life."

  I paused, certain for a moment that he was joking. I even laughed. But it didn't look like he was joking.

  "Why would you ask me that?"

  "You know why," Akos said, letting his hands fall.

  "Eijeh," I said.

  Always Eijeh.

  He said, "If you kill Ryzek tomorrow, you'll be sealing Eijeh forever with Ryzek's worst memories. His condition will be permanent."

  I had told him, once, that the only restoration possible for Eijeh rested in Ryzek. If my brother could trade memories at will, surely he could return all of Eijeh's memories to their rightful place, and take back his own. I could imagine a way to make him do that. Or two.

  And for Akos, Eijeh had been a faint glow in the distance for as long as he could likely remember, a tiny flicker of hope. I knew it was impossible for him to let go of that. Bu
t I couldn't risk everything for it, either.

  "No," I said, my voice steady. "First of all, we don't know how all the memory trading has affected either of their currentgifts. We don't even know if he can set Eijeh right anymore."

  "If there's even a chance," Akos said, "a chance to restore my brother, I have to--"

  "No!" I pushed him back. "Look at what he did to me. Look at me!"

  "Cyra--"

  "This--!" I pointed to the side of my head. "All my marks--! Seasons of torture and trails of bodies and you want me to spare him? Are you insane?"

  "You don't understand," he said urgently. He touched his forehead to mine and said, "I'm the reason Eijeh is the way he is. If I hadn't tried to escape Voa . . . if I had just surrendered to my fate earlier . . ."

  I ached.

  Somehow it had never occurred to me that Akos held himself responsible for Ryzek unloading his memories on Eijeh. It had been clear to me that Ryzek would have found a reason to do that to Eijeh at one point or another. But all Akos knew was that Ryzek had inflicted that particular harm on Eijeh as a result of his failed escape.

  "Ryzek was always going to do what he did to Eijeh, whether you tried to escape or not," I said. "Eijeh is not your responsibility. Everything that has happened to him is Ryzek's fault, not yours."

  "It's not just that," Akos said. "When we were taken from our house--it was because of me that they knew which kid to take, him or Cisi. Because I told him to run. It was me. So I promised my father, I promised--"

  "Again," I said, angrier this time, "Ryzek's responsibility! Not yours! Surely your father would understand that."

  "I can't give up on him," Akos said, his voice breaking. "I can't."

  "And I can't participate in this ridiculous quest you're on, not anymore," I snapped. "I can't watch you destroy yourself, destroy your life, to save someone who doesn't want to be saved. Someone who is gone, and will never come back!"

  "Gone?" Akos's eyes were wild. "What if I had told you that you were beyond hope, huh?"

  I knew the answer to that. I would never have fallen for him. I would never have turned to the renegades for help. My currentgift would never have changed.

  "Listen," I said. "I have to do this. I know you understand that, even if you can't admit it right now. I need . . . I need Ryzek to be gone. I don't know what else I can say."

  He shut his eyes for a moment, then turned away.

  All the others were asleep. Even Akos, lying a few feet away from me on the ground near the ships. I, however, was wide awake with only my racing thoughts as company. I propped myself up on my elbow, and looked out at the bumps of renegades under blankets, the dying light from the furnace. Jorek was curled in a tight ball, his blankets drawn over his head. Teka was in a beam of moonlight that turned her blond hair silver-white.

  I frowned. Just as a few memories began to surface, I saw Sifa Kereseth crossing the room. She slipped out the back door, and before I knew what I was doing--or why--I had shoved my feet into my boots and followed her.

  She was standing just outside, her clasped hands resting on the small of her back.

  "Hello," she said.

  We were in a rough part of Voa. All around us were low buildings with flaking paint, windows with bars twisted into decorative patterns to distract from their true purpose, doors hanging off their hinges. The streets were packed dirt instead of stone. Floating among the buildings, though, were dozens of wild fenzu, glowing with Shotet blue. The other colors had been bred out of existence decades ago.

  "Of all the many futures I have seen, this is one of the stranger ones," Sifa said. "And the one with the most potential for good and evil in equal measure."

  "You know," I said, "it might help if you would just tell me what to do."

  "I can't, because I honestly don't know. We are at a murky place," she said. "Full of confusing visions. Hundreds of murky futures spread out as far as I can see. So to speak. Only the fates are clear."

  "What's the difference?" I said. "Fates, futures . . ."

  "A fate is something that happens no matter what version of the future I see," she said. "Your brother would not have wasted his time in trying to evade his fate if he had known that to be true, undoubtedly. But we prefer to keep our work mysterious, at the risk of it being too rigorously controlled."

  I tried to picture it. Hundreds of twisting paths unfolding in front of me, the same destination at the end of each one. It made my own fate seem even stranger--no matter where I went, and no matter what I did, I would cross the Divide. So what? What did it matter?

  I didn't ask her. Even if I thought she would tell me--she wouldn't--I didn't want to know.

  "The oracles of the planets meet yearly to discuss our visions," Sifa said. "We mutually agree on what future is most crucial for each planet. For this planet, my job--my only job, aside from recording visions--is to ensure that Ryzek leads Shotet for as little time as possible."

  I said, "Even at the expense of your son?"

  I wasn't sure which son I was referring to: Akos or Eijeh. Maybe both.

  "I am a servant of fate," she said. "I do not have the luxury of partiality."

  The thought brought a chill to my bones. I understood doing things for "the greater good" in theory, but in practice, I didn't have any interest in it. I had always protected myself, and now I protected Akos, when I could. Beyond that, there weren't many I wasn't willing to cast out of my path. And maybe it meant I was evil, but it was true regardless.

  "It is not easy to be a mother and an oracle, or a wife and an oracle," she said, not sounding quite as steady now as she had before. "I have been . . . tempted many times. To protect my family at the expense of the greater good. But . . ." She shook her head. "I must stay the course. I must have faith."

  Or what? I wanted to ask. What was so bad about snatching up your loved ones and fleeing, refusing to shoulder a responsibility you never wanted?

  "I have a question you might be able to answer," I said. "Do you know the name Yma Zetsyvis?"

  Sifa tilted her head so her thick hair spilled over one shoulder. "I do."

  "Do you know what her name was before she married Uzul Zetsyvis?" I said. "Was her fate favored?"

  "No," Sifa said. She took a breath of the cool night air. "Their marriage was a kind of aberration, unlikely enough to register in the oracles' visions of Shotet. Uzul married far beneath himself, for love, apparently. A common woman, with a common name. Yma Surukta."

  Surukta. It was Teka's name, and Zosita's. Women of pale hair and bright eyes.

  "That's what I thought," I said. "I would stay and talk, but I have something I need to do."

  Sifa shook her head. "It's strange for me not to know what someone is deciding."

  "Embrace the uncertainty," I said.

  If Voa was a wheel, I was walking its circumference. The Zetsyvis family lived across the city, their house on a cliff overlooking Voa. I could see the light glittering inside their estate from far off, when the streets were still broken under my feet.

  The currentstream, winding around the sky above me, was deep purple, transitioning to red. It almost looked like blood. Fitting, given our plans for tomorrow.

  I felt comfortable in the poor, discarded district where the renegades had chosen their safe house. More often than not, the windows were dark, but sometimes I saw shadowed figures hunched over small lanterns. In one house I spotted a family of four crowded around playing cards scavenged from Zold. They were laughing. There had been a time when I would not have dared to walk these streets, as Ryzek's sister, but now I was disgraced, and no friend of the regime. I was as safe as I could be, here.

  I was less comfortable when I crossed into wealthier territory. Everyone in Voa professed loyalty to the Noavek regime--it wasn't optional--but Ryzek kept the oldest and most trusted families in Shotet in a ring around him. I could tell I was in that ring by the buildings alone: they were newer, or patched over and repaired and repainted. The street had turned to ston
e beneath my feet. There were lights along the way. I saw inside most of the windows, where people in clean, crisp clothes read their screens at the kitchen table, or watched the news feed.

  As soon as I could, I turned toward the cliffs, to one of the paths that would take me up the face. Long ago, the Shotet had carved steps into these cliff walls. They were steep and narrow and poorly maintained, so they weren't for the faint of heart. But I had never once been accused of having that kind of heart.

  Aching from both yesterday's injuries and my currentgift, I kept one hand on the wall to my left, pressing close. I hadn't realized when I left how sore and exhausted my body still was, how every step throbbed in my still-healing throat and scalp. I paused, and took out the packet of vials I had taken from Akos's belongings before I left.

  A line of vials in different colors confronted me. I knew most of them by sight--a sleeping potion, a painkiller, and at the far end, its cork sealed twice with melted wax, the pure red of hushflower extract. In this quantity, at this potency, it was enough to kill a man.

  I swallowed half a vial of the painkiller, then tucked the packet away in my small satchel.

  It took an hour of climbing to reach the top. I had to stop several times along the way to rest. The city was smaller every time, its lit windows just blinking lights up here. I could always find Noavek manor, glowing white near the city's center, and the amphitheater, even now protected by a web of light. Somewhere beneath that amphitheater was Orieve Benesit, waiting to die.

  When I reached the top, I backed away from the edge as quickly as I could. Just because I wasn't faint of heart didn't mean I enjoyed taunting death.

  I followed the road to the Zetsyvis house, into the forests where they bred fenzu for export. The path I walked was guarded by metal grates, to keep people from stealing the valuable insects. Draped over the trees were nets to prevent the fenzu from escaping, more a precaution than anything. Fenzu built their nests around the delicate branches nearest to the sky. The trees themselves were tall and thin, their trunks so dark they looked black, adorned with wiry, dark green clusters instead of the floppy leaves I had seen on other planets.

  Finally the Zetsyvis house came into view. There was a guard at the gate, but by the time I punched him in the jaw, it was already too late for him to defend himself. I used his limp hand to unlock the gate. I paused there, remembering how my hand hadn't unlocked Ryzek's room in Noavek manor. How my blood, my genes, hadn't unlocked it. And I still didn't know why.