The cool metal of Vakrez's blade pressed to Akos's back as he walked. He led the small group down a stone hallway, past the memorial of oracles past, where a long line of names were etched into a flat slab of stone. His mother wouldn't write her own until she foresaw her own death, which was the curse all oracles had to bear.
At the end of the hallway was a lantern that glowed faint pink, the result of faded hushflower powder. He turned right there, guiding them away from the Hall of Prophecy. He thought it was safe, leading them through the dormitories of the oblates who lived at the temple, but he had miscalculated--at the end of the row of doors was a young woman with her hair piled high on her head, yawning as she tugged her sweater back over her shoulder.
Their eyes met. Akos shook his head, but he was too late--Lazmet had already seen her.
"Don't let her run," he said, sounding bored.
The yellow-haired soldier streaked past Akos with her blade outstretched, black strings of current wrapped around her clenched fist. She thrust with one arm and caught the girl with the other. A sick gurgling sound came out of her mouth, a scream aborted before it could even take shape.
Akos shuddered.
Tell me your mission, he repeated to himself as he tasted bile.
To kill Lazmet Noavek.
"Stay here," Lazmet said to the soldier in a quiet voice. "Make sure she doesn't make noise. And that no one else interferes."
Swallowing hard, Akos kept going, past the girl, wheezing now with what was left of her life, and the soldier, wiping her bloody blade on the seat of her pants.
It was a clear night, so the moon, still rising to its full height, glowed through the narrow windows they passed. There were still scars in the stone walls from the Shotet siege that happened before Akos was born. He remembered running his fingers over them when he was a kid, stretching high over his head to touch the violence he hadn't yet seen.
That violence lived in his blood, not because he was a Shotet, but because he was a Noavek. The great-grandfather who had been a mediocre blacksmith and a vicious killer. The grandmother who had murdered her own siblings. The father who put a vise around the city of Voa. The brother who twisted and warped Eijeh.
It would end here. Now.
Akos reached the door he was looking for, had been looking for since they first landed. It didn't lead to a backup generator. There was no backup generator for the temple, a fact that had caused trouble during more than one snowstorm, forcing them to host a small pack of oblates in their house until the wind died down.
No, this door led to the courtyard where the hushflowers grew. A small field of deadly poison, right there in the temple.
Akos opened it, gesturing Lazmet inside.
"After you," he said.
Akos stepped in front of the soldier before he could follow Lazmet into the courtyard, bringing the door swinging behind him. The move had surprised the man; he didn't even object as Akos slammed the door between them, and turned the bolt so he couldn't get in.
"If your intention was to trick me into poisoning myself, your timing is off," Lazmet said.
Akos turned. The hushflowers--the ones he had been counting on to make this easier, their poison blooms capable of felling Lazmet even if he, Akos, couldn't--weren't there. Their stalks were empty. The flowers had already been harvested.
The knife was still cool against Akos's back. If Vakrez hadn't given it to him, he would be as good as dead right now.
Lazmet spread his hands, gesturing to all the dying leaves that surrounded him. He stood in the middle of the narrow path of stone that ran through the courtyard, to keep the caretakers away from the death-giving blossoms. Hushflower leaves died off in the peak of the Awakening, when the weather was warmest, though the roots stayed viable for a lifetime, if cared for properly. So all the greenery around Akos's father was limp and smelled like rot and dirt, ready to lie fallow until the next Blooming. There was no poison left to kill Lazmet with.
"That's inconvenient," Akos said. "But I do have a backup plan."
He lifted his shirt, and drew Vakrez's currentblade.
"Vakrez. Now, that's a surprise. I didn't think his heart had gone that soft in my absence," Lazmet said.
His voice had lost the unctuous quality it usually had when he spoke to Akos, like he was resorting to singsong with a stubborn kid. This was not the Lazmet who found him amusing. It was the one who forced people to cut out their own eyes.
"I will have to punish him as soon as I am finished with you." He was folding the cuffs of his sleeves over, one turn after another, so they stayed up by his elbows.
"Tell me, Akos," Lazmet said. "How do you believe this will go for you? You are starved, exhausted, and picking a fight with a man who can control every movement of your body. There is no chance you will emerge from this place alive."
"Well," Akos said, "get on with killing me, then."
He felt the squeeze around his head that meant Lazmet's currentgift was trying to worm its way in, searching out weak points. But Akos was the Armored One, and there was no getting past his currentgift.
He started toward Lazmet, crushing leaves under his boots as he went. He knew better than to delay any longer. Before the full weight of the situation could hit Lazmet, Akos swung.
His arm collided with Lazmet's armored wrist. Akos gasped from the pain of the collision, but didn't relent. He was back in the arena, only there was no jeering crowd this time, no Suzao Kuzar thirsting for his blood. Just the grit of Lazmet's teeth in the dark, and Cyra's lessons echoing in his head, telling him to think. To abandon thoughts of honor. To survive.
He felt the pressure of Lazmet's currentgift again, bearing down harder on both sides of his skull.
They broke apart. Lazmet wore armor on both wrists, chest, back. He would have to aim low, or high.
Akos bent, rushing at his father like he meant to tackle him, and stabbing low, at his legs. He felt a line of heat across the back of his neck as his own knife carved into Lazmet's thigh. Lazmet had cut him.
He ignored the blood coursing down his back, soaking his shirt, and the pulse of pain. Lazmet was groaning, clutching his leg with one hand.
"How?" the man growled.
Akos didn't answer. He felt unsteady, the weeks of limited food catching up with him. Not everything could be buried under adrenaline. He followed, stumbling toward Lazmet again, using the unpredictability of his movement to his advantage, the way Cyra had when, suffering from severe blood loss, she had to fight Eijeh in the arena. As his world tilted, so did he, and he thrust up, at Lazmet's throat.
Lazmet grabbed his arm and yanked it hard to the side. Pain sparked in Akos's shoulder and spread through his entire body. He screamed, and the knife fell out of his hands and into the rotten leaves. He fell down, too, lying at Lazmet's feet.
Tears rolled down the sides of his face. All this planning, all this lying--the betrayal of his friends, his family, his country--Cyra--and it had come to this.
"You aren't the first son to try to kill me, you know," Lazmet said. He lifted his foot, and pressed it to the joint of Akos's injured shoulder. Even just the touch of the man's boot made Akos scream again, but he stepped down, harder, slowly putting all his weight into it. Akos's vision went black, and he fought to stay present, to stay conscious, to think.
He wished he had thought to ask Cyra how she did it, kept thinking in the midst of pain, because to him it felt impossible--all that was left of him were the white-hot sparks of agony.
Lazmet leaned closer, not moving his foot.
"Ryzek surprised me, too, while we sojourned together. Our holiest of rites, the scavenge, and he dared to attack me, imprison me--" Lazmet paused, his jaw working. "But I didn't die then--Ryzek was too weak!--and I'm not going to die now, am I?"
He twisted his toe like he was squashing a particularly stubborn bug. Akos screamed again, tears running into his hair, wrapping around his ears. He heard a distant wail, the Hessa siren going off, summoning the army to
arms. It was too late, too late for him, too late for the oblate in the hallway and the temple of Hessa.
This moment had all the heft of fate in it, the weight of inevitability, set in motion from the moment Vara the oracle told him his kyerta, his life-altering truth. The revelation of his parentage hadn't released him from the future, it had guided him to it, pulling him to his father's side like a fish hooked through the lip. Suffer the fate, his mother's voice said to him, for all else is delusion.
He understood, now, how Cyra had felt when she demanded that he choose her, even though he hadn't known, at the time, that he really could. I don't want to be something you "suffer," she had told him. There was something powerful in that quality of hers, her refusal to accept what she didn't choose, the force of her want.
I don't want, she had said, and he felt it now.
He didn't want this to be the end, the fate he suffered.
And in the muddle of all that pain, Akos thought.
He pulled his knee high, up against his chest, and kicked hard at the wound in Lazmet's leg. Lazmet grunted, taken by surprise, and let up just a little on Akos's shoulder. With a yell, Akos pushed against the ground with his free leg so his back scraped against the ground, half on the leaves and half on the stone path, and he stretched his uninjured arm up, his hand searching through the stems for Vakrez's knife.
Lazmet had stepped back, grabbing his leg with one hand. Akos felt the metal of the knife handle, and grabbed. He felt his pulse in his throat, his head, his shoulder. And, trembling and throbbing and sagging under his own weight, he pushed himself to his feet.
It wasn't fate that had brought him here. He had chosen this. He had wanted it.
And now he wanted Lazmet dead.
The Hessa siren wailed. He and Lazmet collided, armor against flesh. They went down, falling with a thump to the frozen ground and the waxy leaves. Akos felt another burst of pain in his shoulder, and dry heaved, his stomach too empty to throw anything up. Their arms were crossed between them, both of Lazmet's hands around his wrist, trying to push the knife away.
Honor, Akos thought, has no place in survival.
He bent his head and bit Lazmet's arm. He clenched his teeth as hard as he could, tasting blood, tearing flesh. Lazmet screamed, low. Akos pushed the knife against the pressure that held him away, and jerked his head, ripping skin and muscle from Lazmet's arm.
The knife went right into Lazmet's neck.
Everything stopped.
Aoseh Kereseth had broken things with his currentgift. Floater seats. Couch cushions. Tables. Mugs. Plates. One time he broke one of Akos's toys by mistake, and sat his smallest child in his lap to show him how he could fix it, like magic, with the same gift that had broken it. The toy had never looked right again, but Aoseh had done his best.
He had chased their mother around the kitchen with flour-dusted hands to put fingerprints on her clothes. He was the only one who could make Sifa laugh, a full belly laugh. The one who had kept her present, and grounded--at least, as much as that was possible, for an oracle.
Aoseh Kereseth had been loud, and messy, and affectionate. He had been Akos's father.
And this man--this armored, cold, cruel man lying an arm's length away--wasn't.
Akos lay beside Lazmet as he died, holding the arm his father had wounded to his chest, and finally wanting again.
It was a small thing--just a slight craving for survival--but it was better than nothing.
CHAPTER 52: CYRA
I RAN MY FINGERS over the silverskin on my head. It had begun to generate electrical impulses similar to those of real nerves, so I could feel a light tapping where my touch was. It was soothing, like standing under the warm rain of Pitha.
"Quit it, Plate Head," Teka said. "You're drawing attention."
We stood in the square just outside the amphitheater. Under the reign of my brother, this place would have been packed with vendors, some from other planets--forbidden from instructing us in the use of their languages, of course--and some Shotet. The air would smell like smoke and charred meat and the burnt herbs from the tents of Essander, where everyone seemed particularly attuned to scents. I would tuck my hands into my sleeves to keep from touching anyone, fearing the crush of the crowd. My brother had been a tyrant as much as Lazmet was, but part of him had craved adoration, and it had inspired him to make concessions, on occasion. Lazmet had no such craving.
In light of that, the square was not packed with people shouting numbers at each other. Soldiers didn't stroll between the stalls, hoping to catch someone speaking a word of another language so they could extort money or threaten punishment. There were a few tables set up with goods--food, mostly, marked up to high prices--and all of them were Shotet. I doubted many outsiders wanted to be in a country involved in war, profitable though it might have been.
"It's less of a plate and more of a bowl," I said to Teka, holding my hands in a curved shape, like that of my skull.
"What?"
"The silverskin," I said, showing her my hands again. "If it's any kind of serveware, it's a bowl, not a plate."
"I didn't mean 'plate' as in 'dinner plate,'" Teka said, scowling. "I meant it as in a metal plate, like on the side of a ship--you know what? This is ridiculous. You're ridiculous."
I grinned.
I thought we would suffer for the lack of a crowd to disguise us, but there were few soldiers that I could see. Guards by the usual entrances and exits, but they were easily dealt with. And not in my typical fashion, though that had been my initial suggestion.
Sifa had proposed a more peaceful path into the amphitheater. She and Yma would approach the guards at the entrance head-on, and convince them to let her tour the arena. Yma had worn the lavender dress for the occasion, so she would look wealthy, important, worth making allowances for. This would draw the guards' attention away from us, while also giving Yma and Sifa a chance to get in themselves.
Zyt and Ettrek had pledged to create some kind of large distraction near the side door, to draw away the guards there. Teka and I had to enter through that door while the guards dealt with whatever Ettrek and Zyt did. We were too easily recognized.
"There she goes," I said to Teka, nodding to the entrance with its grand archway. Yma's lavender skirt fluttered in the wind. She drew her shawl tighter around her shoulders, and began walking through the square.
I had passed through the amphitheater's arch on my way to challenge my brother. It had been simpler, then. A single enemy, a single path forward. Now, there were tyrants and chancellors and exiles and countless factions among the people who served each of them.
And there was Akos.
Whatever that meant.
"Sifa said he's not here," Teka said to me. Like a mind reader. "Lazmet took him wherever they went. I know that's not all that reassuring, but . . . better for him not to be hit by the blast, right?"
It was. It meant that I could think clearly. But I didn't want to admit to that. I shrugged.
"I asked her for you," Teka said. "I knew you'd be too proud to do it yourself."
"Time to go," I said, ignoring her.
We started through the square, keeping pace with Sifa, who was doing her part to look casual and familiar. She paused at one of the tables to look over a platter of pan-fried feathergrass; Teka and I kept to the next row, watching her through the haze of smoke rising up from the smithy advertising free currentblade repairs with purchase.
I watched Sifa and Yma approach the entrance guard from a distance. I was sure Yma's tongue could be just as quick and persuasive as she needed to get into that amphitheater. She had spent her life lying, after all.
When the guards were both engaged enough to turn away, I led the way to the side door at a brisk walk. It was set into the wall at an angle, creating a space for a guard to stand without being visible from the street. I drew my currentblade.
The soldier was young, and tall, so for a moment I saw Akos in his stead, putting on his Shotet armor for the first
time and appearing, to me, as the exact image of what I might have wanted, if I had been allowed to want normal things. But in the next moment, the soldier was shorter, thinner, and lighter-haired--not Akos.
Just before I could lash out at him, I heard screaming behind me. At the edge of the square, a cloud of smoke had risen up from one of the stalls. No--not a cloud of smoke, but one of insects, all taking flight at once. The screams came from the vendor, losing all of his product at once. He lunged at Zyt, who was laughing, and punched him hard in the jaw.
I sheathed my currentblade, and said, "Guard!"
The sandy-haired guard stepped out of his alcove to look at me.
"There's a fight," I said, jabbing my thumb over my shoulder.
"Not again." He groaned, and took off running.
Teka slipped in without ceremony, drawing the small screwdriver from its place in her pocket and addressing the lock on the door. I peered out at the square to make sure no one was watching us. There were only slumped vendors and furtive-looking Shotet making their purchases, and the growing brawl Zyt and Ettrek had fostered.
"Hello, darling," Teka said softly in the voice she used to speak to wires. "Would you open up for me? No, not your job? Ah."
I heard a click. The door opened, and Teka and I passed through the doorway. It locked automatically behind us, and some instinct in me told me that wasn't good for quick escapes, but there was nothing to be done about it now. We jogged down the dark hallway with its arched stone ceiling, toward the light at the end that would admit us to the bottom level of seats.
Sifa was already walking the arena floor, cooing like a bird at how large the place was, and how it never seemed as big when she was sitting in the audience, and whatever else she could think of to say. Her voice, with its slight rough character, echoed a dozen times over even before we made it to the end of the hallway. Yma was beside her, making little hums of assent.
Teka immediately started up the steps toward the control room, which was behind the second-level seats, but I stayed at the low wall that separated the first row from the arena floor, and closed my eyes. I could hear the chanting that had accompanied the edge of Ryzek's knife as it dug into me, the shouts of "Traitor!" that had met me when I challenged him again.
"Cyra?" Teka's voice pulled me free from the twists and turns of my memory.