“You know,” he said, “the condition of sourness—or monstrousness, as you might call it—doesn’t have to be permanent.”
She looked like she was chewing on the idea. Had it ever even occurred to her before?
“Let me cook, okay?” He took the pot from her. The water sloshed, spilling on his shoes. “I guarantee I won’t set anything on fire.”
“That happened one time,” she said. “I’m not a walking, talking hazard.”
Like so much of what she said about herself, it was both a joke and not a joke.
“I know you’re not,” he said seriously. Then he added, “That’s why you’re going to chop the saltfruit for me.”
She looked thoughtful still—a weird expression for a face that frowned so easily—as she took the saltfruit from the coldbox in the corner and settled herself at the counter to cut it up.
CHAPTER 16: CYRA
MY QUARTERS WERE FAR away from everything except the engine rooms, by design, so it was a long walk from Ryzek’s office. He had called me in to give me my sojourn itinerary: I would join him and some of the other elites of Shotet in a pre-scavenge social gathering, to help him politick with the leaders of Pitha. I agreed to the plan because it required only my ability to pretend, not my currentgift.
As the cynical Examiner had predicted when Akos and I visited the room of planets, Ryzek had set our sojourn destination as Pitha, the water planet, known for its innovative technologies in weather resistance. If the rumors about Pitha’s secret store of advanced weaponry were true, Eijeh Kereseth had surely confirmed them, now that he was warped by Ryzek’s memories. And if Eijeh helped Ryzek find some of the Assembly’s most powerful weapons, it would be simple for my brother to wage war against Thuvhe, to conquer our planet, as he had always intended.
I was still only halfway to my rooms when all the lights went out. Everything was dark. The distant hum from the ship’s power control center was gone.
I heard a tapping sound, in a pattern. One, three, one. One, three, one.
I turned, my back to the wall.
One, three, one.
The currentshadows raced up my arms and over my shoulders. As the strips of emergency light at my feet began to glow, I saw a body hurtling toward me, and I bent, driving my elbow at whatever flesh it could find. I swore as my elbow hit armor, and turned on light feet, the dances I had practiced for enjoyment shifting into instinct. I drew my currentblade, then slammed into my attacker, pressing her to the wall with my blade to her throat. Her own knife clattered to the floor between her feet.
She wore a mask with one eye stitched closed. It covered her face from forehead to chin. A hood, made of a heavy material, shrouded her head. She was a head shorter than I was, and her armor was earned, made from the skin of an Armored One.
She was whimpering at my touch.
“Who are you?” I said.
The backup announcer on the ship crackled to life as soon as I finished the question. It was old, a relic from our early sojourns, and it made voices sound tinny and warped.
“The first child of the family Noavek will fall to the family Benesit,” it said. “The truth can be suppressed, but it can never be erased.”
I waited for the voice to continue, but the crackling went dead, the announcer switching off. The ship began to hum again. The woman whose throat was captive to my arm and my blade moaned softly.
“I should arrest you,” I whispered. “Arrest you, and bring you in for questioning.” I tilted my head. “Do you know how my brother interrogates people? He uses me. He uses this.” I pushed more of the shadows toward her, so they collected around my forearm. She screamed.
For a moment, she sounded just like Lety Zetsyvis.
I released her, pulling away from the wall.
The lights on the floor had come to life, making us both glow from beneath. I could see a single bright eye in her head, fixed on me. The overhead lights clicked on, and she sprinted down the hallway, disappearing around a corner.
I had let her go.
I put my hands in fists to keep them from trembling. I couldn’t believe what I had just done. If Ryzek ever found out . . .
I picked up her knife—if it could be called that; it was a jagged metal rod, sharpened by hand, with tape wrapped around the bottom to make a handle—and I started to walk. I wasn’t sure what direction I was going, just that I needed to keep moving. I had no injuries, no evidence that the attack had ever occurred. Hopefully it had been too dark for the security footage to show that I had just let a renegade go free.
What have you done?
I ran through the ship’s hallways, my footsteps echoing for just a few seconds before I dove into a crowd, into chaos. Everything was loud and hurried, like my heart. I stuffed my hands into my sleeves so I wouldn’t touch anyone by accident. I wasn’t going to my quarters. I needed to see Ryzek before anyone else did—I needed to make sure he believed I had not been a part of this. It was one thing to refuse to torture people, but it was another to participate in a revolt. I put the renegade’s knife in my pocket, out of sight.
The soldiers stepped back for me when I reached Ryzek’s rooms on the far side of the ship, the one closest to the currentstream. They directed me to his office, and when I reached the door I wasn’t sure that he would let me in, but he shouted the command right away.
Ryzek stood barefoot in his office, facing the wall. He was alone, a mug of diluted hushflower extract—I recognized it on sight, these days—clutched in one hand. He wasn’t wearing his armor, and when he looked at me, there was chaos in his eyes.