"I'm fine," I say. I tap the button to raise the top half of the bed. When I'm partially upright, pain burns all the way through to my back, but I don't want to lie down again. "Tell me."
"Yes, I made the alliance," she says. "Before you say anything--we needed that weapon, Cee. The pressure to retaliate is intense."
"Pressure from where?" I say. "Ast?"
She frowns at me.
"Everywhere," she says. "From my own head, for one. From Shissa, Osoc, Hessa. From the Assembly Leader. Everywhere. They killed innocent people. What am I supposed to do?"
"Show mercy," I say, and it's enough to set her off.
"Mercy?" she demands. "Mercy? Where was Shotet mercy when they destroyed a hospital? Where was it when that woman held me down and sliced into my face? Where was it for my mother, my father--for Ori?"
"I--"
"Othyr gave us an anticurrent blast, and I'm going to use it as soon as I can," she says. "At which point I hope you'll tell me your brain was addled by painkillers, because there's no way a right-minded person would call for mercy right now."
She storms out, with a straight spine. The posture a couple seasons at the Assembly taught her, so she would fit in.
They killed innocent people, she said, almost in the same breath she talked about doing the same. And that's the problem--because to her, no Shotet is innocent. And that is the big difference between us.
I look up at the clouds projected on my ceiling. They're thicker now, closer together.
I'm stuck here, and out of options. Out of time.
I dream of the oracle Vara, showing me the sculptures in the Hall of Prophecy on Ogra. Each one is a member of my family, made of glass. Even Cyra is among them.
And I wake to Ast's face, looming over mine.
"I'm not here to hurt you," he says, when the beetle chirps--signaling to him, I'm sure, that I've moved. "Isae will be along soon. I just wanted to have a chat with you first."
He drags the stool over to my bedside, and sits, the beetle perching on his shoulder.
"You may have noticed that I didn't tell Isae that you tried to contact our enemies. That you tried to contact Cyra Noavek."
My face is hot. My throat burns. I want to speak. To yell. To wrap my hands around his throat.
"I didn't think it was wise to arouse her suspicions--you betray her, and in the same night, you're attacked?" he says. "But you should know that if I do decide to tell her, I'm sure she will have more sympathy for me than she will for you. Attacking the woman she loves because she turned traitor to her country . . . it's forgivable. What you did is not."
"You--" I grit my teeth. The word comes out as a growl, forced as hard as I can past the strictures of my throat and mouth.
"So don't step out of line, Cisi," he says. "What's done is done. The attack's been ordered, and I think now we can begin to get along."
I want to scream at the unfairness of it, my silence forced by the current, which supposedly gives all life. If it's such a good thing, why does it strangle me? Why does it torture Cyra? Why does it push away my brother, and empower dictators, and boggle my mother's mind?
I hear the sharp, clipped tone of Isae's voice just outside the door. I know, then, what I need to do.
If my gift can't be overcome, then maybe it needs to be put to use instead.
I push aside my anger, my grief, my worry. I push aside my pain, too, as much as I can. I remember sinking to the bottom of the pool in the temple basement when I learned to swim. The way the water burned my eyes at first. How it lifted my hair away from my head, made it feel soft. How it caressed, and pulsed with its own rhythm. How I could hear my own heartbeat.
Isae told me Ast's father went by "Wrench." He maintained their little ship. So maybe it's not comfortable things that soften Ast, but hard things: the warm metal handle of a tool his dad just put down. The vibration of the ship's engine in the wall. The prick of a grate under his bare feet.
Ast blinks, slowly.
"Hey," he says. "Stop."
"No," I say. He's comfortable enough now that I can talk, at least. "You've been chastising me for the use of my currentgift since you arrived. You watch it strangle me and you don't do anything to make sure I'm heard. Well, now I'll watch it strangle you."
"You're controlling her," Ast says. "I can't let you."
The rough sleeve of a maintenance worker's coveralls, faintly frayed. Engine oil rubbed between two fingers, smooth and faintly sticky. A screw catching in place and tightening, turn after turn.
"You try to get your way, and I try to get mine," I say, "but neither of us controls her."
"No, you're--" He leans back, and closes his eyes. "It's different."
"You're right, my methods are far more effective," I say softly. "You think I use my gift recklessly. You have no idea how much I hold back."
I hit him with it again: the shudder of the seat beneath him as his ship passes through an atmosphere. The crinkle of the wrapper that comes around a prepackaged protein cake at a fuel station. I wrap the textures around him, metal and plastic and vapor and grease, until he may as well be living back in that ship.
He sags against the wall and just stares at me.
"You will not get in my way anymore," I say. "I will guide us away from catastrophe, and you will allow me to."
The door opens, admitting Isae, dressed in her training clothes. Her face shines with sweat. She smiles at Ast and me, likely thinking we're making peace. As if peace is what I could have with someone who attacks me, and threatens me, and takes advantage of my inability to speak.
"What's wrong?" she says, her face falling as she takes in the scene, me tense and upright, hands clenched into fists. Ast sagging, shoulders curled in, eyelids half-closed.
"Tell her," I say to him. "Tell her what you did to me."
He stares, his eyes empty.
"Tell. Her," I say slowly.
"I attacked you," he says to me. Then, to Isae, "It was me, I attacked her."
"You--what?" Isae says. "Why?"
"She was interfering," he says.
I can't sustain this level of energy for much longer. I pull back on my currentgift with a gasp. When Ast returns to himself, his face crumples into rage. Isae looks stricken.
"I'm sorry, I . . ." I pretend to choke on the words. I let myself falter, and grab my stomach with one arm, wincing. Let her see me as weak, out of control.
"I didn't mean to," I say. "But I needed--I needed you to believe me."
"She's lying to you!" Ast snaps. "Can't you see that? She's using her currentgift to manipulate you, to control you! She's been doing it this whole time!"
"Look--look at his arm," I say. "There's a bite mark, from where I fought back."
Isae's jaw tightens. She marches over to him and grabs his arm, pulling him to his feet. He goes where she directs him, maybe knowing that he can't fight a chancellor, or that I've finally beat him. She pushes up his sleeve, and there it is--a perfect impression of my teeth, an uneven half circle.
She drops his arm with a soft moan.
"I--she was trying to contact the Shotet!" he says. "She tried to send a message to--"
"Shut up," Isae says. She blinks rapidly. "I trusted you. You lied to me. You--I want you arrested. I want you gone."
I am slipping away. Too tired to stay. But before I go, I look at Ast, and though I know he can't see it, I smile.
CHAPTER 49: AKOS
AKOS WAS STARING INTO the fire when the door opened the next morning.
He had expected, when Cyra fled without his help, to break down completely. Instead, he felt like all the excess of his life--the agonizing over blood and citizenship and family and fate--had been pared away, like meat cooked away from the bone. And now everything that had been muddled was clear.
He was not Thuvhesit or Shotet, Kereseth or Noavek, third child or second. He was a weapon against Lazmet Noavek.
The gnaw of hunger no longer bothered him, except that it left his mind and body
fatigued, and less useful to him. Yma didn't come to bring him more food, so he knew she had likely helped Cyra escape, and he was grateful for that, in a distant way that applied to some other life. In this life, he wanted nothing but to accomplish his goal.
"Akos?"
The voice belonged to Vakrez. Akos rose from his place by the fire, suppressing a shiver at the cold air he found away from it. Vakrez was frowning at him.
"Are you all right?" he said more kindly than usual.
"I'm fine," Akos said, as he stuck out his arm for Vakrez to take.
"That's not why I'm here. There wouldn't be much point, with Yma gone," Vakrez said. "Lazmet summoned me to discuss strategy, and he asked me to collect you on my way."
Akos looked for his shoes, and found them tucked under the foot of the bed. He stuffed his feet in, and raised his eyebrows at the commander when he didn't move away from the doorway.
"What?" he said.
"You seem . . ." Vakrez frowned. "Never mind."
They walked side by side to whatever room Lazmet was using for the meeting. His office, it seemed, because they climbed up a staircase with wood-paneled walls, instead of going down to the Weapons Hall. Akos had to stop at the top to catch his breath, and Vakrez waited for him without complaint.
His father greeted him with a tilted head when he walked into the office, with its soft rug and its tomes of history stacked high. The peel of the fruit that had clued Lazmet in to Cyra's infiltration of the manor sat curled on Lazmet's desk.
When Lazmet gestured for Akos to sit, he did this time, at the end of the sofa closest to the fire. He looked down at his fingers. Had his knuckles gotten thicker? Or had the rest of his hand simply begun to disappear, his body devouring the last reserves of strength and energy it had?
"Akos," Vakrez said, jostling his shoulder.
"Hmm?" Akos lifted his head.
"Pay attention," he said, eyebrows raised.
He had scolded Akos for inattention more than once. The last time, Akos remembered, had been at the soldiers' camp, after he had earned his armor, and maybe a small amount of respect from his commander. Vakrez had been lecturing about strategy. Something about how the soldier who was on his home ground always had the advantage, because he knew the terrain. Shotet soldiers therefore had to adapt quickly, as they would never be on their home ground. Even Voa, he said, isn't your home. Shotet have no home.
"Oh, don't scold him, Vakrez," Lazmet said, leaning back in his chair with a book in his lap. Akos couldn't see the spine. "He's not operating at full capacity right now."
"Why am I here?" Akos asked, blinking slowly at Lazmet.
"I was hoping you would tell me a few things about your hometown," Lazmet said. "I understand that you come from Hessa."
He was about to ask why Lazmet wanted to know about his hometown--his memories, after all, were the kind a kid would care about, like where the best sweets were, or which shop Eijeh liked to browse just so he could make eyes at the girl who worked behind the counter. But the answer, when he considered it a little bit more, was obvious.
"You're going to attack it," Akos said. The thought of Shotet swarming the steep streets of Hessa, charging into the sweet shop, maybe killing the girl who worked behind the counter, made him feel ill.
Lazmet didn't answer.
"It's not hard to figure out," Akos said. He felt far away from everything. "There are only three major cities in Thuvhe. You already hit Shissa. So it's either Osoc or Hessa next."
"You don't seem troubled," Lazmet said. "Do you expect me to believe that you feel nothing for the place where you spent the majority of your life?"
He wouldn't let himself think about the dim little spice shop that made him sneeze, or the woman who sold elaborate paper flowers in the warm months, when it didn't snow. Or the alley that was a straight shot up the hill, the best--and most dangerous--sledding path in all of Thuvhe. He wouldn't, or he would get swallowed up in it.
Lazmet wanted him to betray his home. Shotet have no home, Akos thought, remembering Vakrez's lecture on strategy.
But he did have a home. He had a home ground, a place no one knew as well as he did.
"It's not that I feel nothing," he said, steadying himself as much as he could. "It's that I have an offer for you."
"Oh?" Lazmet looked amused. Well, that was all right, Akos thought. Better he be amused and underestimate Akos, than be suspicious.
"You'll take me to Hessa with you, and after your attack is over, you will leave me there, at my house," Akos said. "After that, I won't come after you, and you won't come after me."
"And in return?"
"In return, I'll help you destroy the temple of Hessa."
Lazmet glanced at Vakrez. The commander looked like he was working the idea between his teeth. He sat on the other end of the sofa, somehow managing to make sinking into the cushions look graceful.
"The temple of Hessa," Lazmet said. "Why should that matter to me?"
"Judging by your Shissa attack, you want to be theatrical. Big, destructive gestures are demoralizing, as well as costing a lot of lives," Akos said. "But Hessa doesn't have grand, floating buildings you can knock out of the sky. It has the temple. It's stamped on our old currency, from before the Assembly was formed. There's nothing else to attack in Hessa except the temple."
The odd thing was, he knew that both men already knew this. Lazmet was old enough to remember the siege his mother had led against Hessa, the one that Hessa temple still bore the busted windows and scraped-up stones from. The one Akos's grandmother had gone into with nothing more than a meat cleaver, if the stories were true.
So Lazmet probably just wanted to see if Akos would persuade him, or bother to try. More "curiosity," more experimentation. It never stopped.
"It's a temple, not a labyrinth," Lazmet said. "I don't really need your help to attack it, now that you've told me that's what I ought to do."
Akos felt the sharp stick of panic in his chest. But he knew Hessa temple better than most Thuvhesits did, and that had to be worth something. It had to.
"By all reports, it may as well be a labyrinth for as much sense as its layout makes. You'd be hard-pressed to find a map of it, either," Akos said. "But if you and your fighting force want to run around like a bunch of idiots, giving the oblates plenty of time to summon the whole army of Hessa--the best army in all of Thuvhe, I should add--then go right ahead."
"So the layout is nonsensical, there are no maps, and you just happen to know how to navigate it," Lazmet said with a sneer. "How convenient."
"None of this is convenient," Akos said, scowling. "You brought me here because you thought I had something useful to tell you about Hessa, and now I tell you I know something useful and you refuse to believe it?" Akos let out a short laugh. "I betrayed my country, I got my friend killed--I have nothing to go back to, nothing left in the world except for that house, where people will leave me alone. You made sure of that. So have your attack, have your war, have whatever you want, but leave me alone, and I'll give you whatever I've got."
Lazmet's eyes were fixed on his, searching, calculating. Akos imagined himself as the Armored One, tearing into his own abdomen to make a space for Lazmet to get in. He felt the wire wiggling in his head, and the involuntary twitch of his fingers that meant Lazmet was testing him. Suspicious, as always, but Akos had come to expect it.
Lazmet took in his twitching fingers. Akos felt the swoop of something like hope in his gut, and then--
"Vakrez, give me a read on him," Lazmet said.
Akos knew it would be more suspicious to object than not, so he stuck out his arm for Vakrez to take. It was getting easier and easier to imagine himself as the Armored One, the more he wanted to be away from everything and everyone. Armored Ones were solitary, separate from everything that channeled the current. Lonely, but impenetrable, just like he was. He knew most people who killed them had to find a way to stick a knife in them right under the arm or leg joint, where there was a space be
tween the thick plates that covered its body. They had to get in far enough to make the thing bleed to death. That was how Cyra had killed it, he was sure. It was her way--find the weakness, exploit it, be done with it. It was more honorable than the way he had done it, lulling the beast to sleep, giving it relief, like he was someone to be trusted, and then poisoning it.
But that was his way.
Except now, there was nothing he could do except let down his currentgift shield so that Vakrez could poke his way into Akos's heart. And what he would see there was pure intention, the desire to kill Lazmet unmistakable.
Vakrez touched him, his hand cool and rough as always, and closed his eyes for a few ticks. Akos waited for the blow to fall, waited for the end of him.
"So much clearer now," Vakrez said. He opened his eyes, and looked to Lazmet. "All he wants is to escape."
Akos tried not to stare. It was a lie.
Vakrez was lying for him.
He didn't dare look at the commander. He couldn't afford to give himself away now.
"Then, my boy," Lazmet said to him, "it seems we have a deal. You take me to Hessa. And I'll let you go home."
I'll take you to my home ground, Akos thought, and that's where you'll die.
CHAPTER 50: CYRA
THE NEXT MORNING, THERE was nothing left to do but leave the safe house. Leave Voa, and Lazmet, and Akos.
Give up, in other words.
We rifled through the drawers of one of the abandoned apartments to find a change of clothes for everyone, then left the safe house. We had promised Yssa, who was waiting in the ship for the signal to retrieve us, that we would meet her if we managed to escape.
I fidgeted as we walked, the rough fabric of my ill-fitting trousers rubbing at my thighs. Someone's old throw blanket had become a scarf to cover my face, and it, too, chafed. Zyt and Ettrek led the way, the knot atop Ettrek's head bobbing with each footstep, then Yma and Teka, at a respectable distance, and Sifa and me, trailing behind. As we passed beneath boarded-up windows, I listened to Yma and Teka's conversation.
"I left the house to its ruin," Yma was saying. "It's too far away for most thieves to bother breaking into it, anyway."
"Once this is over, I'll help you put it right," Teka said.