I cringed at my half-empty glass. “Disgusting.”
“So, I’m curious,” Akos said. “How many languages do you actually speak?”
“Really, it’s just Shotet, Thuvhesit, Othyrian, and Trellan,” I said. “But I know a little Zoldan, some Pithar, and I was working on Ogran before you arrived and distracted me.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“What?” I said. “I don’t have any friends. It gives me a lot of free time.”
“You think you’re so difficult to like.”
“I know what I am.”
“Oh? And what’s that?”
“A knife,” I said. “A hot poker. A rusty nail.”
“You are more than any of those things.” He touched my elbow to turn me toward him. I knew I was giving him a strange look, but I couldn’t seem to stop. It was just the way my face wanted to be.
“I mean,” he said, removing his hand, “it’s not like you’re going around . . . boiling the flesh of your enemies.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “If I was going to eat the flesh of my enemies, I would roast it, not boil it. Who wants to eat boiled flesh? Disgusting.”
He laughed, and everything felt a little better.
“Silly me. I clearly wasn’t thinking,” he said. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but I think you’re being summoned by the sovereign.”
Sure enough, when I looked at Ryzek, his eyes were on me. He jerked his chin up.
“You didn’t bring any poison, did you?” I said without looking away from my brother. “I could try to slip it in his drink.”
“Wouldn’t give it to you if I did,” Akos said. When I gave him an incredulous look, he explained, “He’s still the only one who can restore Eijeh. After he does that, I’ll poison him with a song on my lips.”
“No one does ‘single-minded’ quite like you, Kereseth,” I said. “Your task while I’m gone is to compose your poisoning song so I can hear it when I get back.”
“Easy,” he said. “‘Here I go a-poisoning . . .’”
Smirking, I swallowed the last of my vile Pithar engine grease, handed the glass to Akos, and crossed the room.
“Ah, there she is! Vek, this is my sister, Cyra.” Ryzek was wearing his warmest smile, his arm outstretched toward me like he intended to fold me into his side. He didn’t, of course, because it would have hurt him—the currentshadows were there to remind him, staining my cheek and the side of my nose. I nodded to Vek, who stared blank-eyed back without greeting.
“Your brother was just explaining the Shotet rationale behind some of the kidnapping reports associated with Shotet ‘scavengers’ over the past decade,” he said. “He said you could vouch for the policy.”
Oh he did, did he?
My anger, then, was like dry kindling, quickly ignited. I couldn’t find a path through it; I just stared at Ryzek for a few moments. He smiled back at me, still with that kind look in his eyes. Beside him, Yma was also smiling.
“Because of your familiarity with your servant,” Ryzek said lightly. “Of course.”
Ah, yes. My familiarity with Akos—Ryzek’s new tool of control.
“Right,” I said. “Well, we don’t consider it kidnapping, obviously. The Shotet call it ‘Reclaiming’ because everyone brought back to the fold speaks the revelatory tongue, the Shotet language, perfectly. No accent, no gaps in vocabulary. You cannot speak the Shotet language that way, so innately, without having Shotet blood. Without belonging to us, in a more significant way. And I have seen that . . . demonstrated.”
“In what way?” Vek asked. As he lifted his glass to his lips, I spotted his rings, one for each finger. Each one smooth and otherwise undecorated. I wondered why he even wore them.
“My servant has shown himself to be a natural Shotet,” I said. “A good fighter, with a good eye for what makes our people distinct. His ability to adapt to our culture is . . . shocking.”
“Surely a sign of what I was telling you, sir,” Yma chimed in. “That there is evidence of a cultural, historical memory in Shotet blood that ensures that all so-called ‘kidnapped’ people—people with the gift of Shotet language—who make it to our land find true belonging there.”
She was so good at pretending to be devoted.
“Well,” Vek said. “That is an interesting theory.”
“We must also account for the past crimes of one of the . . . shall we say, more influential planets in the galaxy . . . against our people. Invasion of our territory, kidnapping of our children, violence toward—sometimes even the murder of—our citizens.” Ryzek’s brow furrowed as if the mere thought pained him. “Certainly this is not the fault of Pitha, to which we have always been kindly disposed. But reparations are certainly in order. From Thuvhe, particularly.”
“Yet I have heard rumors that the Shotet are responsible for the death of one of Thuvhe’s oracles, and the kidnapping of another,” Vek replied, tapping his rings together as he spoke.
“Unfounded,” Ryzek replied. “As to the reason the oldest Thuvhesit oracle took her own life, we can’t know it. We don’t know the reasons for anything the oracles do, do we?”
He was appealing to Vek’s Pithar practicality. The oracles held no importance here; they were just madmen shouting over the waves.