“I can get him out,” Jorek said. “Get him home, where they can fix whatever’s addled his brain.”
He thought of the almost-escape again, of Eijeh’s broken voice asking him, “Why did this happen?” His sunken cheeks, his sallow skin. He was disappearing, day by day, season by season. Soon there wouldn’t be much left to rescue.
“Okay.” It came out like a whisper, not how he meant it.
“Okay?” Jorek sounded a little breathless. “You mean you’ll do it?”
Akos forced out the word. “Yes.”
For Eijeh, the answer was always yes.
They didn’t grip hands, like two Thuvhesits might have, to settle a deal. Here, just saying the words in the language the Shotet held sacred was enough.
That there was a guard stationed at the end of Cyra’s hallway didn’t make much sense to Akos. No one got the better of Cyra in a fight. Even the guard seemed to agree—he didn’t so much as check Akos for weapons when he walked past.
Cyra was hunched in front of the stove, a pot at her feet and water pooled on the floor. There were curved dents in her palms—fingernail marks, from too-tight fists—and dark currentstreaks everywhere Akos could see. He ran to her, slipping a little on the wet floor.
Akos took up her wrists, and the streaks disappeared, like a river flowing backward to its source. He felt nothing, as always. He often heard people talking about the hum of the current, the places and times it waned, but that was just a memory for him. Not even a clear one.
Her skin felt hot in his hands. Her eyes lifted to his. Akos had figured out early that she didn’t look “upset” the way other people did—she either looked angry or she didn’t. But now that he knew her better, he could see the sadness showing through the cracks in the armor.
“Thinking about Lety?” he said, shifting his grip a little so he held her hands instead, first two fingers fitting into the cleft of her thumb.
“I just dropped it.” She nodded to the pot. “That’s all.”
That’s never “all,” he thought, but he didn’t press. On an impulse he ran a hand over her hair, smoothing it down. It was thick, and curled, sometimes tempting him to twist it around his fingers for no particular reason.
The light touch brought a stab of guilt along with it. He wasn’t supposed to do things like that—wasn’t supposed to march toward his own fate instead of being dragged. Back in Thuvhe, all who met eyes with him now would see a traitor. He couldn’t let them be right.
Sometimes, though, he felt Cyra’s pain like it was his own, and he couldn’t help but dull it for the both of them.
Cyra turned her hand in his, so her fingertips rested on his palm. Her touch was soft, curious. Then she pressed him back. Away.
“You’re early,” she said, and she grabbed a cloth to dry the floor. The water was starting to seep through the soles of Akos’s shoes. She was shadowy again, and flinching from the pain of it, but if she didn’t want his help, he wasn’t going to force it on her.
“Yeah,” he said. “I ran into Jorek Kuzar.”
“What did he want?” She stepped on the cloth to soak up more water.
“Cyra?”
She tossed the wet cloth into the sink. “Yes?”
“How would I go about killing Suzao Kuzar?”
Cyra puckered her lips, the way she always did when she was thinking something over. It was unsettling, for him to ask that question like it was normal. For her to react like it was.
He was very, very far from home.
“It would have to be in the arena to be legal, as you know,” she said. “And you would want it to be legal, or you would end up dead. Arena challenges are banned from when the ship leaves the atmosphere until after the scavenge, which means you have to wait until after. Another part of our religious legacy.” She quirked her eyebrows. “But you don’t have the status to challenge Suzao even then, so you have to provoke him to challenge you, instead.”
It was almost like she’d thought about it before, only he knew she hadn’t. It was times like this that he understood why everybody was scared of her. Or why they ought to be, even without her currentgift.
“Could I beat him once we were in the arena?”
“He’s a good fighter, but not excellent,” she said. “You could probably master him with skill alone, but your true advantage is that he still thinks of you as the child you once were.”
Akos nodded. “So. I should let him think I’m still that way.”
“Yes.”
She put the now-empty pot under the faucet to fill it again. Akos was wary of Cyra’s cooking; she almost always burned food when she tried, filling the little room with smoke.
“Make sure this is really what you want to do,” she said. “I don’t want to see you become like me.”
She didn’t say it like she wanted him to comfort her, or debate her. She said it with absolute conviction, like her belief in her own monstrousness was a religion, and maybe it was the closest thing to religion she had.
“You think I go sour that easy?” Akos said, trying out the low-class Shotet diction he’d heard in the soldiers’ camp. It didn’t sound half bad.
She pulled her hair back and tied it with the string she wore around her bare wrist. Her eyes found his again. “I think everyone goes ‘sour that easy.’”
Akos almost laughed at how awkward it sounded when she said it.