“Did you drug me?” She rubs her eyes with a fist, first the left one and then the right. “You gave me that tea.”
“I didn’t know there was anything in it.” I’m a good liar, and I don’t think twice. She wouldn’t accept the truth—that I wanted to get her away from the rest of my family just as much as Akos did. Mom said Isae was going to try to kill Eijeh the same way she did Ryzek, and I wasn’t willing to risk it. I don’t want to lose Eijeh again, no matter how warped he is now. “Mom warned them you might try to hurt Eijeh, too.”
Isae curses. “Oracles! It’s a wonder we even let them have citizenship, with all the loyalty your mother shows her own chancellor.”
I have nothing to say to that. She’s frustrating, but she’s my mother.
I continue, “They put you in the pod, and I told them I was going with you.”
The scars that cross her face stay stiff while her brow furrows. She rubs them, sometimes, when she thinks no one is looking. She says it helps the scar tissue to stretch out, so one day she’ll be able to move those parts of her face again. That’s what the doctor said, anyway. I once asked her why she just let the scars form instead of getting reconstructive surgery on Othyr. It’s not like she didn’t have the resources. She told me she didn’t want to get rid of them, that she liked them.
“Why?” she finally says after a long pause. “They’re your family. Eijeh’s your brother. Why would you come with me?”
Giving an honest answer isn’t as easy as people say. There are so many answers to her question, all of them true. She’s my chancellor, and I’m not going to oppose Thuvhe, like my brother is. I care about her, as a friend, as . . . whatever else we are to each other. I’m worried about the wild grief I saw in her right before she killed Ryzek Noavek, and she needs help to do what’s right from now on rather than what satisfies her thirst for revenge. The list goes on, and the answer I choose is as much about what I want her to hear as it is about the truth.
“You asked me if you could trust me,” I finally say. “Well, you can. I’m with you, no matter what. Okay?”
“I thought, after what you saw me do . . .” I think of the knife she used to kill Ryzek dropping to the floor, and push the memory away. “I thought you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near me.”
What she did to Ryzek didn’t disgust me, it worried me. I don’t care that he’s dead, but I do care that she was able to kill him. I don’t try to explain that to her, though.
“He killed Ori,” I say.
“So did your brother,” she whispers. “It was both of them, Cisi. There’s something wrong with Eijeh. I saw it in Ryzek’s head, right before—”
She chokes before she can finish her sentence.
“I know.” I grab her hand and hold on tight. “I know.”
She starts to cry. At first it’s dignified, but then the beast of grief takes over, and she claws at my arms to get away from it, sobbing. But I know, I know as well as anybody that there’s no escape. Grief is absolute.
“I got you,” I say, rubbing circles on her back. “I got you.”
She stops scratching after a while, stops sobbing. Just leans her face into my shoulder.
“What did you do?” she asks, voice muffled by my shirt. “After your dad died, after your brothers . . .”
“I . . . I just did things, for a long time. I ate, showered, worked, studied. But I wasn’t really there, or at least, I didn’t feel like I was. But . . . it was like when feeling comes back to a limb that’s gone numb. It comes back in little prickles, little pieces at a time.”
She lifts her head to look at me.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I was about to do. I’m sorry I asked you to come see . . . that,” she says. “I needed a witness, just in case it went wrong, and you were the only one I trusted.”
I sigh, and push her hair behind her ears. “I know.”
“Would you have stopped me, if you knew?”
I purse my lips. The real answer is that I don’t know, but that’s not the one I want to give her, not the one that will make her trust me. And she has to trust me, if I’m going to do any good in the war that’s coming.
“No,” I say. “I know you only do what you have to.”
It was true. But it didn’t mean I wasn’t worried about how simple it had been to her, and the distant look in her eyes as she led me to that storage room, and the perfect hesitation she had shown Ryzek as she waited for just the right moment to stab him.
“They’re not going to take our planet,” she says to me, in a dark whisper. “I won’t let them.”
“Good,” I say.
She takes my hand. We’ve held hands before, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still send a thrill through me when her skin slides over mine. She is still so capable. Smooth and strong. I want to kiss her, but this isn’t the time, not when there’s still Ryzek’s blood drying under her fingernails.
So I just let the touch of her hand be enough, and we stare out together at nothingness.
CHAPTER 6: AKOS
AKOS FUMBLED WITH THE chain around his neck. The ring of Jorek and Ara’s family was a now-familiar weight right in the hollow of his throat. When he wore armor it made an imprint in his skin, like a brand. As if the mark on his arm wasn’t enough to remind him of what he had done to Suzao Kuzar, Jorek’s father and Ara’s violent husband.
He wasn’t sure why he thought of killing Suzao in the arena now, standing outside his brother’s cell. It was time to decide if Eijeh ought to stay drugged—for how long? Until they got to Ogra? After that?—or if, now that Ryzek was dead, it was safe to risk Eijeh wandering around the ship clearheaded. Cyra and Teka had left the decision up to him and his mom.
His mom was right next to him, her head reaching just a few izits higher than his shoulder. Hair loose and messy around her shoulders, curled into knots. Sifa hadn’t been much of anywhere since Ryzek died, holing up in the belly of the ship to whisper the future to herself, barefoot, pacing. Cyra and Teka had been alarmed, but he told them that’s just how oracles were. Or at least, that was how his mother the oracle was. Sometimes sharp as a knife, sometimes half outside her own body, her own time.
“Eijeh’s not how you remember him,” he said to her. It was a useless warning. She knew it already, for one thing, and for another, she had probably seen him just the way he was now, and a hundred other ways besides.
Still, “I know” was all she said.
Akos tapped the door with his knuckles, then unlocked it with the key Teka had given him and walked in.
Eijeh sat cross-legged on the thin mattress they had thrown into the corner of the cell, an empty tray next to him with the dregs of soup left in a bowl on top of it. When he saw them he scrambled to his feet, hands held out like he might put them in fists and start pummeling. He was wan and red-eyed and shaky.
“What happened?” he said, eyes skirting Akos’s. “W—I felt something. What happened?”
“Ryzek was killed,” Akos replied. “You felt that?”
“Did you do it?” Eijeh asked with a sneer. “Wouldn’t be surprised. You killed Suzao. You killed Kalmev.”
“And Vas,” Akos said. “You’ve got Vas somewhere in that memory stew, don’t you?”
“He was a friend,” Eijeh said.
“He was the man who killed our father,” Akos spat.
Eijeh squinted, and said nothing.
“What about me?” Sifa said, voice flat. “Do you remember me, Eijeh?”
He looked at her like he had only just noticed she was there. “You’re Sifa.” He frowned. “You’re Mom. I don’t—there’s gaps.”
He stepped toward her and said, “Did I love you?”