“The kill marks are for people,” I said.
“The Armored One may as well have been a person,” he said in a low voice. “I was looking into its eyes. It knew what I was. I fed it poison, and it fell asleep at my touch. I grieved for it more than I grieved the loss of a man who robbed my sister of two brothers and a father.”
He had a sister. I had almost forgotten, though I had heard her fate from Ryzek: The first child of the family Kereseth will succumb to the blade. It was almost as grim a fate as my brother’s. Or Akos’s.
“You should put a hash through your second mark,” I said. “Diagonal, through the top. That’s what people do for losses that aren’t kills. Miscarried babies, spouses taken by sickness. Runaways who never return. Any . . . significant grief.”
He just looked at me, curious, and still with that ferocity.
“So my father . . .”
“Your father is recorded on Vas’s arm,” I said. “A loss can’t be marked twice.”
“It’s a kill that’s marked.” His brow furrowed. “A murder.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “‘Kill mark’ is a misnomer. They are always records of loss. Not triumph.”
Without meaning to, I brought my right hand across my body to grip my forearm guard, hooking my fingers in its straps. “Regardless of what some foolish Shotet will tell you.”
The hushflower petals on the board in front of me were curled tightly into themselves. I dragged the knife down the center of the first petal, fumbling a little with the gloves on—gloves weren’t necessary for him, but we weren’t all hushflower-resistant.
The petal didn’t flatten.
“You have to hit the vein right in the center,” he said. “Look for the darker red streak.”
“It all just looks red to me. Are you sure you’re not seeing things?”
“Try again.”
That was how he responded every time I lost my patience—he just quietly said, “Try again.” It made me want to punch him.
Every evening for the past few weeks, we had stood at this apothecary counter, and he taught me about iceflowers. It was warm and quiet in Akos’s room, the only sound the bubbling of water set to boil and the chop chop chop of his knife. His bed was always made, the dingy sheets pulled taut across the mattress, and he often slept without a pillow, tossing it instead in the corner, where it gathered dust.
Each iceflower had to be cut with the right technique: the hushflowers needed to be coaxed into lying flat, the jealousy flowers had to be sliced in just such a way that they didn’t burst into clouds of powder, and the hard, indigestible vein of the harva leaf had to be first loosened and then tugged by its base—Not too hard. But harder than that, Akos had said as I glared.
I was handy with the knife, but had no patience for subtlety with it, and my nose was nearly useless as a tool. In our combat training, the situation was reversed. Akos grew frustrated if we dwelled too long on theory or philosophy, which I considered to be the fundamentals. He was quick, and effective when he managed to make contact, but careless, with little aptitude for reading his opponent. But it was easier for me to deal with the pain of my gift when I was teaching him, or when he was teaching me.
I touched the point of a knife to another one of the hushflower petals, and dragged it in a straight line. This time, the petal unfurled at my touch, flattening on the board. I grinned. Our shoulders brushed, and I twitched away—touch was not something I was used to. I doubted I would ever be used to it again.
“Good,” Akos said, and he swept a pile of dried harva leaves into the water. “Now do that about a hundred more times and it will start to feel easy.”
“Only one hundred? Here I thought this was going to be time-consuming,” I said with a sideways glance at him. Instead of rolling his eyes at me, or snapping, he smiled a little.
“I’ll trade you a hundred hushflower slices for a hundred of the push-ups you’re making me do,” he said.
I pointed the hushflower-stained knife at him. “One day you’ll thank me.”
“Me, thank a Noavek? Never.”
It was supposed to be a joke, but it was also a reminder. I was a Noavek, and he was a Kereseth. I was nobility, and he was a captive. Whatever ease we found together was built on ignoring the facts. Both our smiles faded, and we returned to our respective tasks in silence.
A while later, when I had done four petals—only ninety-six left!—I heard footsteps in the hallway. Quick, purposeful ones, not the movements of a wandering guard doing the rounds. I set my knife down and took off the gloves.
“What is it?” Akos asked.
“Someone’s coming. Don’t let on what we’re really doing in here,” I said.
He didn’t have time to ask why. The door to the apothecary chamber opened, and Vas came in, a young man at his heels. I recognized him as Jorek Kuzar, son of Suzao Kuzar, Vas’s second cousin. He was short and slim, with warm brown skin and a patch of hair on his chin. I hardly knew him—Jorek had chosen not to follow in his father’s path as a soldier and translator, and was regarded as both a disappointment and a danger to my brother as a result. Anyone who did not enthusiastically enter Ryzek’s service was suspect.
Jorek bobbed his head to me. I, flush with currentshadows at the sight of Vas, could hardly nod in return. Vas clasped his hands behind his back and looked with amusement at the little room, at Akos’s green-stained fingers and the bubbling pot on the burner.