“I think you might be lying to yourself about what I am.”
He was right. Sometimes it was too easy to forget that he was a prisoner in my house, and that when I was with him, I was serving as a kind of warden.
But if I let him escape right now, to try to get his brother home, as he wanted, I would be resigning myself to a lifetime of agony again. Even as I thought it, I couldn’t bear it. It was too many seasons, too many Uzul Zetsyvises, too many veiled threats from Ryzek and half-drunk evenings at his side.
I started down the aisle again. “Time to visit the Storyteller.”
While my father had been busy shaping Ryzek into a monster, my education had been in Otega’s hands. Every so often she had dressed me head to toe in heavy fabric, to disguise the shadows that burned me, and taken me to parts of the city my parents would never have allowed me to go.
This place was one of them. It was deep in one of the poorer areas of Voa, where half the buildings were caving in and the others looked like they were about to. There were markets here, too, but they were more temporary, just rows of things arranged on blankets, so they could be gathered and carried away at a moment’s notice.
Akos drew me in by my elbow as we walked past one of them, a purple blanket with white bottles on it. They had glue from peeled-off labels still on them, attracting purple fuzz.
“Is that medicine?” he asked me. “Those look like they’re from Othyr.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“For what ailment?” he asked.
“Q900X,” I replied. “Known more colloquially as ‘chills and spills.’ You know, because it affects balance.”
He frowned at me. We paused there in the alley, the festival sounds far off. “That disease is preventable. You don’t inoculate against it?”
“You understand that we are a poor country, right?” I frowned back at him. “We have no real exports, and hardly enough natural resources to sustain ourselves independently. Some other planets send aid—Othyr, among them—but that aid falls into the wrong hands, and is distributed based on status rather than need.”
“I never . . .” He paused. “I’ve never thought about it before.”
“Why would you?” I said. “It’s not high on Thuvhe’s list of concerns.”
“I grew up wealthy in a poor place, too,” he said. “That’s something we have in common.”
He seemed surprised that we would have anything in common at all.
“There’s nothing you can do for these people?” he said, gesturing to the buildings around us. “You’re Ryzek’s sister, can’t you—”
“He doesn’t listen to me,” I said, defensive.
“You’ve tried?”
“You say that like it’s easy.” My face felt warm. “Just have a meeting with my brother and tell him to rearrange his whole system and he’ll do it.”
“I didn’t say it was easy—”
“High-status Shotet are my brother’s insulation against an uprising,” I said, even more heated now. “And in exchange for their loyalty, he gives them medicine, food, and the trappings of wealth that the others don’t get. Without them as his insulation, he will die. And with my Noavek blood, I die with him. So no . . . no, I have not embarked on some grand mission to save the sick and the poor of Shotet!”
I sounded angry, but inside I was shriveling from the shame of it. I had almost thrown up the first time Otega brought me here, from the smell of a starved body in one of the alleys. She had covered my eyes as we walked past it, so I couldn’t get a close look. That was me: Ryzek’s Scourge, combat virtuoso, driven to vomit by the sight of death alone.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” he said, his hand gentle on my arm. “Let’s go. Let’s go visit this . . . storyteller.”
I nodded, and we kept walking.
Buried deep in the maze of narrow alleys was a low doorway painted with intricate blue patterns. I knocked, and it creaked open, just enough to emit a tendril of white smoke that smelled like burnt sugar.
This place felt like an exhale; it felt sacred. In a sense, maybe it was. This was where Otega had first taken me to learn our history, many seasons ago, on the first day of the Sojourn Festival.
A tall, pale man opened the door, his hair shaved so close his scalp shone. He lifted his hands and smiled.
“Ah, Little Noavek,” he said. “I didn’t think I would see you again. And who have you brought me?”
“This is Akos,” I said. “Akos, this is the Storyteller. At least, that’s what he prefers to be called.”
“Hello,” Akos said. I could tell he was nervous by the way his posture changed, the soldier in him disappearing. The Storyteller’s smile spread, and he beckoned us in.
We stepped down into the Storyteller’s living room. Akos hunched to fit under the curved ceiling, which arched to a globe of bright fenzu at its apex. There was a rusted stove with an exhaust pipe stretching to the room’s only window, to let out smoke. I knew the floors were made of hard-packed dirt because I had peeked under the bland, woven rugs as a child to see what was beneath them. The hard fibers had made my legs itch.
The Storyteller directed us to a pile of cushions, where we settled, a little awkwardly, our hands gripped between us. I let go of Akos to wipe my palm on my dress, and as the currentshadows flushed back into my body, the Storyteller smiled again.