An image of my mother came to mind, a vein in her forehead bulging, like it always did when she was angry. She was scolding Otega for taking me to dangerous parts of the city during our lessons, or for cutting my hair to my chin, I couldn’t remember which. I had loved her even in those moments, because I knew she was paying attention, unlike my father, who didn’t even look me in the eye.
I said, “Lashing out at Vas because of what happened to Eijeh will only get you injured and me aggravated. So take some hushflower and get ahold of yourself before I shove you out the loading bay doors.”
For a moment it looked like he might refuse, but then, shaking, he slid a hand into his pocket and took out one of the raw hushflower petals he kept there. He pressed it into his cheek.
“Good,” I said. “Time to go.”
I stuck out my elbow, and he put his hand around it. Together we walked through the empty hallways of the sojourn ship, which were polished metal, loud with echoes of distant feet and voices.
My quarters on the warship looked nothing like my wing of Noavek manor—the latter had dark, polished floors and clean white walls, impersonal, but the former was packed with objects from other worlds. Exotic plants suspended in resin and hanging from the ceiling like a chandelier. Mechanical, glowing insects buzzing in circles around them. Lengths of fabric that changed color depending on the time of day. A stain-spattered stove and a metal coldbox, so I didn’t have to go to the cafeteria.
Along the far wall, past the little table where I ate my meals, were hundreds of old discs that held holograms of dancing, fighting, sports in other places. I loved to mimic the staggering, collapsing techniques of Ogra dancers or the stiff, structured ritual dances of Tepes. It helped me focus through the pain. There were history lessons among the discs, too, and films from other planets: old news broadcasts; long, dry documentaries about science and language; recordings of concerts. I had watched them all.
My bed was in the corner, under a porthole and a net of tiny burnstone lanterns, the blankets still rumpled from the last time I had slept in it. I didn’t allow anyone into my quarters on the sojourn ship, not even to clean.
Dangling from a hole in the ceiling, between the preserved plants, was a length of rope; it led to the room above, which I used for training, among other things.
I cleared my throat. “You’ll be staying through here,” I said, crossing the crowded space. I waved my hand over the sensor next to a closed door; it slid open to reveal another room, also with a single porthole to the outside. “It used to be an obscenely large closet. These were my mother’s private quarters, before she died.” I was babbling. I didn’t know how to talk to him anymore, now that he had drugged me and taken advantage of my kindness, now that he had lost the thing he had been fighting for and I hadn’t done anything to stop it. Which was my pattern: stand by while Ryzek wreaks havoc.
Akos had paused next to the door to look at the armor that decorated the wall. It was nothing like Shotet armor, bulky or unnecessarily decorated, but some of it was beautiful, made of gleaming orange metal or draped with durable black fabric. He made his way into the next room slowly.
It looked a lot like the one he had left behind in Noavek manor: all the supplies and equipment necessary to brew poisons and potions were along one wall, arranged the way he liked it. In the week before his betrayal, I had sent a picture of his setup ahead of us to be copied exactly. There was a bed with dark gray sheets—most Shotet fabric was blue, so the sheets had been hard to find. The burnstones in the lanterns above the bed had been dusted with jealousy powder, so they burned yellow. There were books on elmetahak and Shotet culture on the low bookcase next to the bed. I pressed a button next to the door, and a huge, holographic map of our location sprawled over the ceiling—right now it displayed Voa, since we were still hovering above it, but it would show our path through the galaxy as we traveled.
“I know quarters are close here,” I said. “But space on the ship is limited. I tried to make it livable for us both.”
“You made this place?” he said, turning toward me. I couldn’t read his expression. I nodded.
“Unfortunately, we’ll have to share a bathroom.” Still babbling. “But it’s not for long.”
“Cyra,” he interrupted. “Nothing is blue. Not even the clothes. And the iceflowers are labeled in Thuvhesit.”
“Your people think blue is cursed. And you can’t read Shotet,” I said quietly. My currentshadows started to move faster, sprawling under my skin and pooling beneath my cheeks. My head pounded so hard I had to blink away tears. “The books on elmetahak are in Shotet, unfortunately, but there’s a translation device next to them. Just place it over the page, and—”
“But after what I did to you . . .” he began.
“I sent the instructions before that,” I replied.
Akos sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry, about . . . everything. I just wanted to get him out. It was all I could think about.”
His brow was a straight, low line above his eyes that made it too easy to see his sadness as anger. He had cut his chin shaving.
There was a rumble in his whisper: “He was the last thing I had left.”
“I know,” I replied, but I didn’t know, not really. I had watched Ryzek do things that made my stomach turn. But it was different for me than it was for Akos. I at least knew that I was capable of similar horrors. He had no way of understanding what Eijeh had become.