Akos turned to Eijeh, who hadn’t moved from where he was when Isae tackled him. When Akos shook his older brother’s shoulder, he still didn’t move, so Akos touched his fingers to Eijeh’s throat to make sure he was still alive. And he was. Strong pulse. Strong breaths.
“Akos!” Cyra shouted from the arena floor. She was still next to Ryzek’s body, knife in hand.
“Leave it!” he shouted back. Why not just leave his body to carrion birds and Noavek loyalists?
“No!” Cyra said, her eyes wide, urgent. “I can’t!”
She held up the knife. He hadn’t looked close before; all he had seen was Ryzek’s body, limp, and Cyra standing over it with blade drawn. But when she gestured toward the weapon, he saw that the blade was clean. She hadn’t stabbed Ryzek. She hadn’t stabbed him, so why had he collapsed?
Akos remembered Suzao’s face hitting his soup in the cafeteria, and the guard outside the amphitheater door, going limp, and it was obvious: Cyra had drugged Ryzek.
Even though he knew Cyra was more than Ryzek’s Scourge, or even Ryzek’s Executioner—even though he had seen the better parts of her, getting stronger in the worst environment possible, like the hushflower that bloomed in the Deadening time—somehow, he’d never considered this possibility:
Cyra had spared Ryzek. For him.
CHAPTER 39: CYRA
THE HATCH DOOR OF the renegade ship closed behind us. I checked Ryzek’s pulse before untying the rope from his chest. It was weak, but steady, just as it was supposed to be. Given the timing of his fall, and the strength of Akos’s sleep blends, it would be a while before he woke. I hadn’t stabbed him, though I had taken great pains to make it look as if I had, in case anyone was watching closely on the sights.
Yma Zetsyvis had disappeared in a pale blue flourish in the chaotic aftermath of the challenge. I wished I had gotten the chance to thank her, but then, she hadn’t poisoned Ryzek for me; she had believed it would kill him, as I had led her to believe it would. She probably would have hated my gratitude. And when she found out that I had lied to her, she would hate me more than before.
Isae and Cisi crouched on either side of Ori’s body. Akos stood behind his sister. When she snaked her hand back to reach for him, he was already stretching toward her; they clasped fingers, Akos’s gift freeing Cisi’s tears.
“May the current, which flows through and around each and all of us, living and passed, guide Orieve Benesit to a place of peace,” Cisi murmured, covering Isae’s bloody hands with her own. “May we who live hear its comfort clearly, and strive to match our actions to the path it sets for us.”
Isae’s hair was stringy and wet with spit, sticking to her lips. Cisi brushed it away from her face, tucking it behind her ears. I felt the warmth and the weight of Cisi’s currentgift, settling me into myself.
“May it be so,” Isae finally said, apparently closing the prayer. I had never heard Thuvhesit prayers before, though I knew they spoke to the current itself, rather than its alleged master, like the smaller Shotet sects. Shotet prayers were lists of certainties rather than requests, and I liked the honesty of Thuvhesit tentativeness, the implicit acknowledgment that they didn’t know if their prayers would be answered.
Isae stood, her hands limp at her sides. The ship lurched, sending us all off balance. I didn’t worry that we would be pursued across the skies of Voa; there was no one left to order it.
“You knew,” Isae said, looking up at Akos. “You knew he had been brainwashed by Ryzek, that he was dangerous—” She gestured to Eijeh, still lying unconscious on the metal floor. “From the very beginning.”
“I didn’t think he would ever—” Akos choked a little. “He loved her like a sister—”
“Don’t you dare say that to me.” Isae bent her fingers into fists, her knuckles turning white. “She was my sister. She does not belong to him, or to you, or to anyone else!”
I was too distracted by their conversation to stop Teka from kneeling next to Ryzek. She put her hand against his throat, then his chest, sliding it under his armor.
“Cyra,” Teka said in a low voice. “Why is he alive?”
Everyone—Isae, Cisi, Akos—turned to Teka, their tense moment broken. Isae looked from Ryzek’s body to me. I stiffened. There was something threatening about the way she was moving, speaking, like she was a coiled creature ready to strike.
“The last hope for Eijeh’s restoration lies in Ryzek,” I said, as calmly as I could. “I spared him for the time being. After he returns Eijeh’s memories I will happily cut out his heart myself.”
“Eijeh.” Isae laughed. And laughed again, madly, looking at the ceiling. “The drug you gave Ryzek put him to sleep . . . yet you chose not to share this with him when my sister’s life was threatened?”
She stepped toward me, crushing Ryzek’s fingers under her shoe.
“You chose the dim hope of a traitor’s restoration,” she said, low and quiet, “over the life of a chancellor’s sister.”
“If I had told Ryzek about the drug, we would have been trapped in that amphitheater with no leverage and no hope of escape, and he would have killed your sister anyway,” I said. “I chose the path that guaranteed our survival.”
“Bullshit.” Isae leaned close to my face. “You chose Akos. Don’t pretend it’s any different than it is.”