Maybe I could change. Maybe I was changing, just by believing I could.
I thought of the one-eyed woman I had let go, the day of the attack. Her small frame, her distinct movements. If I wanted to, I could find her, I was sure of it.
“A small sacrifice for the good of your brother’s regime.” Yma bobbed her head. “We must all make sacrifices for our own good.”
I turned to her. “What kind of sacrifices have you made?”
She seized my wrist and squeezed it hard. Harder than I thought her capable of. Though I knew my currentgift must be burning into her, she didn’t let go, drawing me closer to her, so I could smell her breath.
“I have denied myself the pleasure of watching you bleed to death,” she whispered.
She released me and moved back toward the group, sashaying as she went. Her long pale hair hung to the middle of her back, perfectly straight. She was like a pillar of white from behind, even her dress such a light blue it almost matched.
I rubbed my wrist, my skin red from her grasp. I would bruise, I was sure of it.
The clatter of pans stopped when I walked into the kitchens. A smaller selection of our staff worked on the sojourn ship than in Noavek manor, but I recognized some of the faces. And the gifts, too—one of the scrubbers was making the pots float, suds dripping on the backs of his hands, and one of the choppers was doing the task with her eyes closed, the knife strokes clean and even.
Otega had her head in the coldbox. When silence fell, she straightened, and wiped her hands off on her apron.
“Ah, Cyra,” she said. “No one makes a room quiet like you.”
The other staff stared openly at her for her familiarity, but I only laughed a little. Even when I hadn’t seen her in a while—I had surpassed her capacity to teach me last season; now we saw each other only rarely, in passing—she fell back into our old rhythms without trouble.
“It’s a unique talent,” I replied. “Can I speak with you in private, please?”
“You phrase it like a question when it’s really an order,” Otega said, waggling her eyebrows. “Follow me. I trust you don’t mind chatting in the garbage closet.”
“Mind? I’ve always wanted to spend time in a garbage closet,” I said, wry, and followed her through the narrow galley to a door in the back.
The stink in the closet was so powerful it made my eyes water. From what I could tell, it came from rotten fruit skins and old meat rinds dusted with herbs. There was only enough space for two of us, standing close together. Beside us was the huge door that opened to a trash incinerator; it was hot, which only made the stench worse.
I breathed through my mouth, aware, suddenly, of how soft-palmed I looked to her, how spoiled. My fingernails always clean, my white shirt still bright. And Otega, covered in food splatter, with the look of a woman who was supposed to be stockier but hadn’t gotten enough food to become so.
“What can I do for you, Cyra?”
“How do you feel about doing me a favor?”
“Depends on the favor.”
“It would involve lying to my brother if he ever asks you about it.”
Otega crossed her arms. “What could you want that would involve lying to Ryzek?”
I sighed. I took the renegade’s knife from my pocket and held it out to her.
“During the renegade attack,” I said, “an attempt was made against my life in an isolated hallway. I overpowered her, but then I . . . let her go.”
“Why the hell did you do that?” she said. “As the current flows, girl, even your mother wasn’t that kind.”
“I don’t—it doesn’t matter.” I turned the knife in my hand. The tape that made up the handle was light and springy, bent according to its owner’s fingers. She had a much smaller hand than I did. “But I want to find her. She dropped this, and I knew you could use it to find her.”
Otega’s currentgift was one of the most mysterious I had encountered. Given an object, she could trace the person who owned it. My parents had asked her to find the owners of weapons that way. Once she had even located someone who tried to poison my father. Sometimes the trails were difficult to read, she said, like when two or three different owners called an object theirs, but she was adept at interpreting them. If anyone could find my renegade, it was her.
“And you don’t want your brother to know about it,” she said.
“You know what my brother would do to her,” I said. “And the execution would be the kindest part.”
Otega pursed her lips. I thought of her deft fingers in my hair, pulling it into braids under my mother’s supervision before my first Procession. The snap of my bloody sheets as she pulled them from my mattress, the day my cycles began and my mother was not alive to help me.
“You aren’t going to tell me why you want to find her, are you.”
“No,” I said.
“Does it involve seeking your own revenge?”
“See, answering that would be a form of telling you why I want to find her, which I just said I wouldn’t do.” I smiled. “Come on, Otega. You know I can take care of myself. I’m just not as harsh as my brother.”
“Fine, fine.” She took the knife from me. “I’ll need to spend a little time with it. Come back here right before curfew tomorrow, I’ll take you to its owner then.”
“Thank you.”
She guided a loose strand of hair behind my ear, and smiled a little, to disguise her wince at touching me.