“Desert,” he said. “I can’t even imagine walking on hot sand.”
“Maybe someday you will,” she said.
His smile fell away. She was right, probably. How many sojourns would he go on before he died for her family? Two, three? Twenty? How many worlds would he walk on?
“That’s not what I . . .” she started. She paused. “Life is long, Akos.”
“But the fates are certain,” he said, echoing his mother. Few fates seemed more certain than his, either. Death. Service. The family Noavek. It was clear enough.
Cyra stopped. They were near the public training room, where the air smelled like old shoes and sweat. She wrapped her hand around his wrist and held tight.
“If I helped you get out right now,” she said, “would you go?”
His heart pounded hard. “What are you talking about?”
“The loading bay is chaos,” Cyra said, leaning closer. Her eyes were very dark, he realized. Almost black. And lively, too, like the pain that racked her body also gave her energy to spare. “The doors open every few minutes to let a new ship in. You think they’d be able to stop you if you stole a floater right now? You could be home in days.”
Home in days. Akos took in the memory of the place like it was a familiar smell. Cisi, soothing with her smile alone. His mom, teasing them with prophetic riddles. Their little warm kitchen with the red burnstone lamp. The sea of feathergrass that grew right up against the house, the tufts brushing the windows. The creaky staircase that went up to the room he shared with . . .
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not without Eijeh.”
“That’s what I thought,” Cyra said sadly as she let go of him. She gnawed on her lip, trouble in her eyes. They went all the way to her quarters without talking, and when she got there, she went right into the bathroom to change into dry clothes. Akos parked himself in front of the news feed, out of habit.
Usually Thuvhe was only mentioned in the stream of words at the bottom of the feed, and even then, Cyra told him, the news was only about iceflower output. Iceflowers were the only thing the other planets really cared about, when it came to their cold planet, since they were used in so many medicines. But today the live footage showed a giant snowdrift.
He knew the place. Osoc, the northernmost city of Thuvhe, frozen and white. The buildings there floated in the sky like clouds made of glass, held up by some technology from Othyr he didn’t understand. They were shaped like raindrops, like wilting petals, coming to points at either end. They had gone there to see his cousins one year, wrapped up in their warmest clothes, and stayed in their apartment building, which hung in the sky like ripe fruit that would never fall. Iceflowers still grew that far north, but they were far, far below, just colored smudges from that distance.
Akos sat on the edge of Cyra’s bed, wetting the sheets with his damp clothes. It was hard for him to breathe. Osoc, Osoc, Osoc was the chant in his mind. White flakes on the wind. Frost patterns on the windows. Iceflower stems brittle enough to break at a touch.
“What is it?” Cyra was braiding her hair away from her face. Her hands fell when she saw the screen.
She read the subtitle aloud: “Fated Chancellor of Thuvhe Steps Forward.”
Akos tapped the screen to turn up the volume. In Othyrian, the voice muttered, “. . . she promises a strong stand against Ryzek Noavek on behalf of the oracles of Thuvhe, lost two seasons ago, allegedly in a Shotet invasion on Thuvhesit soil.”
“Your chancellor isn’t elected?” Cyra asked. “Isn’t that why they use the word ‘chancellor’ instead of ‘sovereign,’ because the position is elected rather than inherited?”
“Thuvhesit chancellors are fated. Elected by the current, they say. We say,” he said. If she noticed his slip from “we” to “they,” she didn’t mention it. “Some generations there is no chancellor, and we just have regional representatives—those are elected.”
“Ah.” Cyra turned toward the screen, watching beside him.
There was a crowd on the landing platform, bundled though it was covered. A ship was perched at the edge, and the hatch was opening. As a dark-clothed woman stepped down, the crowd burst into cheers. The sights swooped in close, showing her face, wrapped in a scarf that covered her nose and mouth. But her eyes were dark, with a hint of lighter gray around the pupil—the sights were very close, buzzing like flies across her face—and gently sloped, and he knew her.
He knew her.
“Ori,” he said, breathless.
Right behind her was another woman, just as tall, just as slim, and just as covered. When the sights shifted to her, Akos saw that the women were the same, practically down to the eyelash. Not just sisters, but twins.
Ori had a sister.
Ori had a double.
Akos searched their faces for a hint of difference, and found none.
“You know them?” Cyra said softly.
For a tick all he could do was nod. Then he wondered if he ought to have. Ori had only gone by “Orieve Rednalis”—not a name that was supposed to belong to a fate-favored child—because her real identity was dangerous. Which meant it would be better to keep it to himself.
But, he thought as he looked up at Cyra, and he didn’t finish the thought, he just let the words tumble out:
“She was a friend of our family when I was a child. When she was a child. She went by an alias. I didn’t know she had a . . . sister.”