Jorek had promised to help with the last move. He was ahead of his father in line when Akos walked into the cafeteria, a big, dank room on one of the lowest decks of the ship. It was cramped and smoky, but the smell on the air was spiced and rich and made his mouth water.
At a nearby table, a group of Shotet younger than him had pushed their trays aside and were playing a game with machines small enough to fit in Akos’s palm. They were collections of gears and wires balanced on wheels, one with a big set of pincers fixed to its nose, another with a blade, a third with a thumb-size hammer. They had drawn a circle on the table with chalk, and inside it, the machines stalked each other, controlled by remotes. As they collided, bystanders shouted advice: “Go for the right wheel!” “Use the pincers, what else are they for?” They wore odd clothes in blue, green, and purple, bare arms wrapped in cords of different colors, hair shaved and braided and piled high. A sweep of feeling overtook him as he watched, an image of himself as a Shotet child, holding a remote, or just braced against the table, watching.
It had never been, would never be. But for just a tick, it seemed like it could have been possible.
He turned to the pile of trays near the food line and picked one up. He had a small vial buried in his fist, and he slipped ahead in line, edging closer to Suzao so he could dose the other man’s cup. Right on time, Jorek stumbled into the person ahead of him, dropping his tray with a clatter. Soup hit the woman ahead of him right between the shoulders, and she swore. In the commotion Akos dumped the elixir in Suzao’s cup without anyone noticing.
He passed Jorek while he was helping the soup-stained woman clean up. She was elbowing him away, cursing.
When Suzao sat down at his usual table and drank from his tainted cup, Akos stopped to take a breath.
Suzao had barged into his house along with the others. He’d stood there and watched as Vas murdered Akos’s father. His finger-prints were on the walls of Akos’s home, his footprints on the floors, Akos’s safest place marked up and down with violence. The memories, as crisp as ever, steeled Akos for what he needed to do.
He put his tray down across from Suzao, whose eyes ran up his arm like a skimming hand, counting the kill marks there.
“Remember me?” Akos said.
Suzao was smaller than him, now, but so broad through the shoulders it didn’t seem that way when he was sitting. His nose was spotted with freckles. He didn’t look much like Jorek, who took after his mother. Good thing, too.
“The pathetic child I dragged across the Divide?” Suzao said, biting down on the tines of his fork. “And then beat to a pulp before we even made it to the transport vessels? Yeah. I remember. Now get your tray off my table.”
Akos sat, folding his hands in front of him. A rush of adrenaline had given him pinhole vision, and Suzao was in the very center.
“How are you feeling? A little sleepy?” he said as he slammed the vial down in front of him.
The glass cracked, but the vial stayed in one piece, still wet from the sleeping potion he had poured in Suzao’s cup. Silence spread through the cafeteria, starting at their table.
Suzao stared at the vial. His face got blotchier with every second. His eyes were glassy with rage.
Akos leaned closer, smiling. “Your living quarters aren’t as secure as you’d probably like. What is this, the third time you’ve been drugged in the past month? Not very vigilant, are you?”
Suzao lunged. Grabbed him by the throat, lifted, and slammed him hard into the table, right on top of his tray of food. Soup burned Akos through his shirt. Suzao drew his knife and held the point over Akos’s head like he was going to shove it in Akos’s eye.
Akos saw spots.
“I should kill you,” Suzao snarled, flecks of spit dotting his lips.
“Go ahead,” he said, straining. “But maybe you should wait until you’re not about to fall over.”
Sure enough, Suzao looked a little unfocused. He let go of Akos’s throat.
“Fine,” he said. “Then I challenge you to the arena. Blades. To the death.”
The man didn’t disappoint.
Akos sat up, slowly, making a show of his trembling hands, his food-stained shirt. Cyra had told him to make sure Suzao underestimated him before they made it to the arena, if he could. He wiped the spit flecks from his cheek, and nodded.
“I accept,” Akos said, and drawn by some kind of magnetism, his eyes found Jorek. Who looked relieved.
CHAPTER 22: CYRA
THE RENEGADES DIDN’T PASS me a message in the cafeteria, or whisper one in my ear as I walked across the sojourn ship. They didn’t hack into my personal screens or cause a disruption and kidnap me. A few days after the scavenge, I was walking back to my quarters and I saw blond hair swinging ahead of me—Teka, holding a dirty rag in grease-streaked fingers. She glanced back at me, beckoning me with a curled finger, and I followed her.
She led me not to a secret room or passageway, but to the loading bay. It was dark there, and the silhouettes of transport vessels looked like huge creatures huddled in sleep. In a far corner, someone had left a light on, attached to the wing of one of the biggest transport vessels.
If rain and thunder were music to the Pithar, the churn of machinery was music to the Shotet. It was the sound of the sojourn ship, the sound of our movement side by side with the currentstream. So it made sense that in this part of the ship, where their conversation would be buried by the hum and thrum of machinery on the level below us, was a small, shabby gathering of renegades. They were all dressed in the jumpsuits that maintenance workers wore—maybe they were all actually maintenance workers, now that I thought about it—and they had covered their faces with the same black mask Teka had worn when she attacked me in the hallway.