"What an idiot," he said.
"Not really," I said. "But it's nice of you to say."
We drank tea and ate warm bread for dinner. It was not the best meal I had ever had, but it wasn't the worst. The other smugglers kept to themselves, except for Zyt, who sat beside Ettrek and told stories from their childhood for hours. They had us all laughing before long at Ettrek's sad attempts to prank his older brother, and Zyt's savage retaliations.
Then everyone found somewhere to sleep--not an easy task, in a room this small--and one by one, we drifted off. I had never been good at sleeping, particularly in places with which I was unfamiliar, so I soon found myself slipping out the back door to sit on the back step, facing the alley.
"Saw you get up." Teka sat next to me on the step. "You're not much for sleeping, are you?"
"Waste of time," I declared.
Teka nodded. "It took me a long time to sleep again after . . ." She waved a hand over her eye patch. "Kind of a horrible memory."
"Kind of," I said with a short laugh. "I'm not sure what's worse." I paused, thinking of her mother's public execution. "I didn't mean--sorry."
"You don't have to be so careful around me," Teka said, looking at me from the corner of her eye. "When I didn't like you, it was because I made too many assumptions. After I let them go . . . well, I'm here on your crazy mission, aren't I?"
I grinned.
"Yeah," I said. "You are."
"I am, so when I bring something up, I don't want you to take it too personally," she said, guarded. "Akos."
"Yeah?" I frowned. "What about him?"
"Honestly?" She sighed. "I'm a little worried that when push comes to shove, you'll prioritize saving him over killing Lazmet, now that you know he's here, and alive. I've been worried about it since I told you about him."
I sat for a moment, listening to the night air. It was loud in this part of the city, despite the curfew and the aura of depression that had settled over all of Voa. People argued and laughed and played music in their apartments at all hours, or so it seemed. Even in the alley I saw the glow of lanterns still lit, defiant against the night.
"You're worried I'll do what I did last time, when I didn't kill Ryzek," I said.
"Yes," Teka said, unflinching. "I am."
"It's different this time," I said. "There's . . . more, this time."
"More?"
"More that I care about," I said. "Before, all I had, the only good thing I had, was him. And now, that's not true anymore."
She smiled, and I bumped her with my shoulder.
Then I heard something behind me. A squeak. The pressure of a foot against an old floorboard. Turning, I saw a dark shape in the living room, the silhouette of a man--a soldier, judging by the bulk of him--holding out a currentblade. Beneath it, the space where Eijeh had been, a bump under a blanket, was empty.
Eijeh was gone. And someone else was here.
I turned, and stood, and ran, and roared, all at once. As the shape bent, blade upraised, I stepped on someone's leg and shoved, hard, at the intruder. My hands met armor with a crack. I gritted my teeth against the pain of impact, and bent at the waist to dodge the swinging blade.
Someone had told the Shotet police to come here.
I drove my elbow low, under the bottom edge of the armored vest, and hit the man in the groin. He groaned, and I made a grab for his weapon. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Teka's hair swinging as she leapt at the person behind the first. The smugglers, as well as Ettrek, Sifa, and Yssa, were now awake, and scrambling.
The pain of my currentgift disappeared in my adrenaline, but I didn't forget it. As I wrenched the blade from the man's hand, I gave in to the desire to share my pain with him, and currentshadows crept around his wrist, merging with the ones that wrapped around his currentblade. I watched the two combine, and bury themselves in his flesh, now a richer and darker black.
He screamed.
I kept going. I lunged at the next woman in uniform I saw, grabbing her face instead of her throat, pressing currentshadows toward her until she choked on my pain, until it filled her open, gasping mouth. I brought her head down to meet my knee, raised high enough for the two to collide, with as tall as I was.
I was not afraid of their numbers. I wasn't afraid of anyone, not anymore. It was what made me a Noavek--not that I was so powerful I couldn't be threatened, but that I had already survived enough horrors, enough pain, to be accustomed to the inevitability of both. But I was powerful--that much I knew.
I kept going, grabbing the next man I could get my hands on. They had made a mistake in invading us through that narrow hallway, because it created a funnel through which only one of them could charge at a time. So I took them on one at a time, until there were no more. Behind me was silence. I assumed the others had left.
I turned to make for the back door. I didn't know how many of the police I had killed and how many I had simply disabled, but either way, I needed to flee. When I turned back toward the living room, though, I saw Zyt, Sifa, Ettrek, Yssa, and Teka waiting for me, each of them looking a little surprised.
"Go!" I shouted.
And we all ran.
"Well, your crew don't waste any time fleeing, do they, Zyt?" Teka huffed, leaning against the wall.
We had decided, mid-stride, to make our way for the half-destroyed building where the renegades had made their camp, when I was last on Voa. It was the only other safe place we knew. Teka had taken the lead, navigating winding streets apparently from memory. The edges of the city were fraying like the cuffs of a shirt, more damaged and broken than closer to the center. There was graffiti scrawled on the side of every building: simple characters written in black, in some places, and in others, sprawling murals of characters as tall as a man, filled in with colors as bright as the currentstream. The graffiti covered up the cracks in the buildings, the boards where windows had been, the dirt that dusted each wall with brown. But I was most transfixed by a simple statement, written neatly beneath one windowsill: Noaveks Own Us.
"What do you expect?" Zyt replied. "They're smugglers, they're not particularly ambitious."
"We don't need them anyway," Ettrek said. "Zyt is the one with the contacts."
"Yes, the contacts for the smuggling of . . . fruit, apparently?" Zyt raised an eyebrow at me.
"Yes," I said, offering no further explanation.
"Now might be a good time to explain what you need a bunch of fruit for," Zyt said.
"It might be a good time," I countered. "But how can we be sure?"
I took a vial of painkiller from the pack at my side and tipped it into my throat. It was one of Akos's "subpar" batches--and he wasn't wrong to call them that, they weren't nearly as effective as most of his painkillers--but it was better than nothing.
The plants growing between the cracks in the broken floor had spread much farther in the time we had been away from this place. Vines were beginning to creep up the walls, and everywhere I looked, there were splashes of color from wildflowers. The kind that turn to mush, I thought, and it was an Akos thought, not one of my own.
Suddenly I needed to be alone. I slipped away, into the stairwell where I had first showed Akos that I could control my currentgift. My back against one of the stone walls, I slid to the ground and let the tears come.
Later, Teka found a bottle of fermented fruit juice in the cabinets of someone who had lived in this place before it was destroyed, and we all took a glass together to steady ourselves before we tried for more sleep.
Sifa offered a toast, translating to Shotet from Thuvhesit: "To what we have done, what we are doing, and what we will do."
And I drank.
CHAPTER 46: AKOS
HIS OTHER MEMORIES OF grief involved time slipping away. Oil beading on water. The sudden lack of presence in his own life, the self-protective drifting.
He wished he had that now.
Now, he felt every tick and every hour. Vakrez had come by that morning to a dead-eyed stare, cl
osed his fingers over the pulse in Akos's wrist, and left. Vakrez's hands were cold and clammy and then gone.
A few days passed before he was summoned to Lazmet's side again. This time he was brought to the Weapons Hall, the place where he had first learned his fate. Of course, it wasn't really his fate, but he had carried it around for seasons anyway. Don't trust your heart, that fate had told him, and he'd hated it for that reason.
Now, he thought it maybe had a point.
Lazmet was staring at the wall of weapons, tapping his chin. It was like he was picking out a cheese, Akos thought, and he wondered if he was about to experience some kind of new horror, in which his own father systematically broke his bones or carved out pieces of his flesh. It seemed like the kind of thing Lazmet might do. Out of curiosity.
It wasn't until she moved out of the shadows that he saw Yma was there. There was a warning in her stare, when she gave it to him. And then her mask was back on, that enigmatic smile, the elegant posture. Knowing what he now knew about her, he recognized that she would never be comfortable this way, in a gown, in a manor, playing games with royalty.
"Thank you for your report, Yma," Lazmet said. "You can go."
Yma inclined her head, though Lazmet wasn't looking, still spellbound by the wall of weapons. She brushed Akos's arm on her way out, the brief touch giving some kind of comfort. And a reminder.
"Come here," Lazmet said to him. "I want to show you something."
Akos was supposed to be acting like he was slipping into Lazmet's control, piece by piece, so he climbed the steps to the dais. The room had an eerie green cast to it, light glowing through the row of jars on shelves up higher than Akos's head. White orbs floated in the jars, suspended in green liquid. Preservative.
They were eyes. Akos tried not to think about it.
"We're not a culture that keeps mementos. After all, that would suggest we trust in some kind of permanence, and the Shotet have always known that objects, places . . . they can be lost in an instant." Lazmet gestured to the wall of weapons. "Weapons, though, we allow ourselves to pass down. They're still useful, you see. So you can trace the history of our family here, on this wall."
He reached for a hatchet on the far left. The blade was rusty from disuse, the metal handle still cloudy with fingerprints.
"We're an old Shotet family, but not old money," Lazmet said, touching his finger to the hatchet blade. "My grandfather killed his way to prominence in our society. This hatchet was his handiwork. He was a weapons maker. Not particularly talented. What he lacked in artistry he made up for in brutality, when he served in the Shotet army."
He put the hatchet away, moving along to a staff. At each end of it were the mechanisms Akos recognized from currentblade handles. When Lazmet held it, dark tendrils of current wrapped around first one end of the staff, and then the other.
"My wife's design," Lazmet said, with a smile that almost seemed fond. "She was not a talented fighter, but she was theatrical. She knew how to be beautiful, and charming, and intimidating, all at the same time. It's a shame her life was claimed by someone so . . . unworthy of it."
Akos schooled his features to stay blank.
"I brought you here to eat," Lazmet said. "On your . . . restricted diet . . . I recognize I can't completely deny you food. So I thought we might have dinner."
There was a table on the dais, pushed up against the far wall. It didn't seem big enough for the kind of grand dinners that Lazmet probably had, but it was long, about the width of Akos's armspan, and had a seat at either end. Akos thought this was probably all a part of Lazmet's strategy, forcing him to eat in the greenish light under jars of eyeballs, in full view of all the weapons the Noavek family had used to bleed their way to the top of Shotet society. He was meant to be unsettled by this.
"I'm not really in a position to refuse dinner," Akos said.
"No, you certainly aren't," Lazmet said, smirking as he put the staff back in its place. Near the edge of the wall of weapons was a bell, built into the wall. He rang it, and gestured to the table for Akos to sit down. Akos did, his head swimming. The food Yma had given him was just enough that he felt his hunger all the time. He drank glass after glass of water just to give his body the impression that it was full of something.
The fenzu that usually swarmed in the globular chandelier were half-dead and needed to be replaced. Akos could see the husks of their bodies collected at the bottom of each glass globe, little prickly legs up in the air.
"Vakrez tells me you are too consumed with self-hatred for him to get a meaningful reading," Lazmet said. "Yma assures me that you are progressing. That a vulnerable heart is easier to bend."
Akos didn't answer. Sometimes he wondered if Yma was playing a game with him. Indulging his desire to kill his father while worming her way in to do her actual work. He had no way of knowing that she was on his side, not really, except her word.
A wall panel behind Lazmet pulled back, and three servants filed into the Weapons Hall, carrying plates covered with protective domes of gleaming metal. They set one plate in front of Lazmet, one in front of Akos, and a third in the center of the table, then backed away. Akos didn't see if they left or if they simply fell into the shadows.
"I am familiar with how guilty people think, though I myself find guilt to be a worthless emotion," Lazmet said. "Why feel bad for a thing you did with full conviction, after all?" He hadn't sat down yet. He snapped his fingers, and one of the servants came forward with a cup made of etched glass. She poured something into it, something dark purple and thick, and Lazmet drank.
"I know that you are thinking there may still be time to undo what you have done to your friend," Lazmet said. "It's a last effort to maintain the part of your identity that I most need you to let go of. You are someone who thinks in extremes, and you have placed me, my family, perhaps all of Shotet, in an untouchable, unreachable place inside you that you have labeled 'bad.'"
He reached across the table to the dome in the center, and lifted it. The plate was empty but for a jar, a smaller version of the ones lining the walls. It, too, held greenish preservative. And bobbing inside it were two white globes.
Akos tasted bile and roasted deadbird. He could have looked away. He already knew what was in the jar. He didn't need to keep looking--
One of the globes turned, showing a dark iris.
"I take one eye if I intend to let someone live," Lazmet said. "I take both if they are executed, as Jorek Kuzar was at midnight last night."
Akos swallowed reflexively, and forced himself to close his eyes. If he kept looking, he would vomit. And he would not give Lazmet the satisfaction of seeing him vomit.
"The truth," Lazmet said softly, "is that you cannot undo what you have done. It's too late. You will never be able to return to the people you once counted as friends. So you may as well let go, Akos."
There was horror somewhere at the edge of his mind, so close he could touch it without difficulty, if he dared. He breathed, and drew away from it. Not now, not yet.
What is your mission?
Akos opened his eyes, staring up at the man whose blood and bone and flesh had conspired to create him.
To kill Lazmet Noavek, came the answer, clearer now than ever before.
Lazmet sat down across from him, and uncovered his plate, offering the dome to the servant behind him. On his plate was a roll, a piece of cooked meat, and a whole fruit, its peel still on. Lazmet frowned at it.
"I didn't think this shipment would come for another week yet," he said, picking up the fruit. Akos recognized the peel from when he had broken into Lazmet's office.
A green glimmer caught his eye just over Lazmet's shoulder. The wall panel had slid back, silent, and a dark head was jutting out of the opening. The head lifted, showing a sliver of silverskin, and a pair of sharp, dark eyes.
Behind Lazmet, Cyra raised a currentblade about the length of her forearm, and made to stab him in the back. Akos didn't stir an izit.
Lazmet, how
ever, lifted a hand, as if signaling for another glass of whatever it was he was drinking. And Cyra's hand stopped, right in the middle of her downward swing.
"Cyra," Lazmet said. "How kind of you to remember my favorite fruit."
CHAPTER 47: CYRA
MY FATHER HAD NEVER used his currentgift on me. That would have required him to acknowledge my existence, which he had preferred not to do. So I had not realized how strange it would feel, to be the target of his unique power. I felt him wriggling around in my head, an uncomfortable pressure in the primary central cortex of my brain, which triggered movement. I assumed that was the area he manipulated, anyway. It could also have been my cerebellum.
Not the time for a debate over anatomy, I scolded myself.
Regardless of where he focused his currentgift, it was working. My fingers, hand, and arm were completely stiff, holding the blade halfway between where I had raised it and where I had intended to shove it. The rest of my body also seemed to be incapable of movement--not that it was numb, exactly, but it was like a pile of kindling that refused to take a spark. Everything felt the same, but I couldn't get it to move.
He seemed to want me to respond, though, because what small movement I was able to channel was in my mouth and jaw.
"No problem," I said, feeling oddly clearheaded though I knew that I was about to die. My last chance to kill him had been a moment ago, and now it was gone. Lazmet's control over my body was absolute as of the moment he became aware of my presence.
Except, I thought, if Akos touches him.
I tried to make eye contact with Akos, to somehow communicate what I wanted him to do, but I couldn't move.
The wriggling in my brain went deeper, and I felt utter revulsion. My fingers pulled apart around the knife handle, and the blade clattered to the floor. Lazmet stood, faced me, and picked it up, examining the handle.
"Not a finely made knife," Lazmet said.
"It would have done the job," I said.
"Any fool with a hammer can smash in a skull, little daughter," he said. I had forgotten how tall he was. Though I stood taller than most women, he still towered over me, as Ryzek had. And with his pale skin tinted green by the light through the jars of preservative, he looked like a rotting corpse. "I thought you more refined, based on upbringing alone."