“Fine,” I said, just as quiet. “It was Akos or you. I chose him. And I don’t regret it.”
It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was certainly true. If simple hatred was what she craved, I would make it easier for her. I was used to being hated, especially by the Thuvhesit.
Isae nodded.
“Isae . . . ,” Cisi began, but Isae was already walking away. She disappeared into the galley, closing the door behind her.
Cisi wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand.
“I can’t believe this. Vas is dead, and Ryzek is alive,” Teka said.
Vas was dead? I looked at Akos, but he was avoiding my eyes.
“Give me a reason not to kill Ryzek right now, Noavek,” Teka said, turning to me. “And if that reason is something about Kereseth, I will hit you.”
“If you kill him, you won’t have my cooperation in whatever plan the renegades concoct next,” I said dully, without looking at her. “If you help me keep him alive, I’ll help you conquer Shotet.”
“Yeah? And what kind of help would you be, exactly?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Teka,” I snapped, finally breaking my spell to glare at her. “Yesterday the renegades were just squatting in a safe house in Voa, clueless, and now, because of me, you’re standing over the unconscious body of Ryzek Noavek with Voa in utter chaos behind you. I think that suggests my capacity to help the renegade cause is considerable, don’t you?”
She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a few seconds, then said, “There’s a storage area below deck with a heavy door. I’ll toss him in there so he doesn’t wake up on us.” But she shook her head. “You know, wars have been started over less. You didn’t just make her angry, you enraged an entire nation.”
My throat tightened.
“You know there was nothing I could have done for Ori, even if I had killed Ryzek,” I said. “We were all trapped.”
“I know that.” Teka sighed. “But I’m pretty sure Isae Benesit doesn’t believe it.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Cisi said. “I’ll help her see it. Right now she just wants people to blame.”
She shed the jacket she wore, leaving her arms bare and covered with goose bumps, and draped it over Ori. Akos helped her tuck the edges under Ori’s shoulders and hips, so her wound was hidden. Cisi brushed Ori’s hair into place with her fingers.
They both left, then, Cisi to the galley and Akos to the hold, with heavy footsteps and trembling hands.
I turned to Teka.
“Let’s lock my brother up.”
Teka and I dragged Ryzek and Eijeh to separate storage rooms, one by one. I rooted out more sleeping elixir to drug Eijeh. I wasn’t sure what was wrong with him—he was still unconscious and unresponsive—but if he woke up as the same warped man who had murdered Ori Benesit, I didn’t want to deal with it yet.
Then I went to the nav deck, where Sifa Kereseth sat in the captain’s chair, her hands on the controls. Jyo was nearby, using his screen to contact Jorek, who had returned home after Ryzek fell, to get his mother. I sat in the empty chair beside Akos’s mother. We were high in the atmosphere, almost past the barrier of blue that separated us from space.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“Into orbit until we make a plan,” Sifa said. “We can’t go back to Shotet, obviously, and it’s not safe to go back to Thuvhe yet.”
“Do you know what’s wrong with Eijeh?” I said. “He’s still catatonic.”
“No,” Sifa said. “Not yet.”
She closed her eyes. I wondered if the future was something she could search, like the stars. Some people had mastery over their gifts, and some were simply servants to them—I had never stopped to wonder, before, which category the oracle of Hessa fell into.
“I think you knew we were going to fail,” I said softly. “You told Akos that your visions were layered over each other, that Ori would be in the cell at the same time Ryzek faced me in the arena. But you knew they weren’t, didn’t you?” I paused. “And you knew Akos would have to face Vas. You wanted him to have no choice other than to kill him, the man who murdered your husband.”
Sifa touched the autonav map so the colors reversed—black for the expanse of space, and white for the route we were taking through it—and sat back in her chair, her hands in her lap. I thought she was just waiting to answer me, at first, but when she didn’t say anything for a while, I realized she had no intention of doing so. I didn’t press her. My mother had been intractable, too, and I knew when to give up.
So it surprised me a little when she spoke.
“My husband needed to be avenged,” she said. “Someday Akos will see that.”
“No he won’t,” I said. “He’ll only see that his own mother maneuvered him into doing the thing he most hates.”
“Maybe,” she said.
The darkness of space wrapped around us like a shroud, and I felt calmer, consoled by the emptiness. This was a different kind of sojourn. Away from the past, instead of away from the place I was supposed to call home. Here, the lines between Shotet and Thuvhesit were harder to see, and I almost felt safe again.
“I should check on Akos,” I said.
Before I could get up, her hand had closed over my arm, and she had leaned close enough to me that I could see streaks of warm brown in her dark eyes. She flinched but didn’t pull away.