“I won’t explain.” She looked as shocked by the anger in his voice as he was. “I stayed alive, and now this is what I am. Nothing I say to you is going to change what you’ve already assumed.”
He was fourteen and irritable again. Coming home was like walking backward.
“I haven’t assumed anything.” She looked down. “It’s just that I wanted to warn you. The chancellor wants to know for sure you aren’t . . . well. A traitor, I suppose.”
His hands trembled. “Know ‘for sure’? What does that mean?”
She was about to answer when the door to the hospital room opened. A Thuvhesit soldier came in first, dressed in his indoor uniform, dark red slacks with a dark gray jacket. He stood off to the side, and Ori’s twin walked in after him.
He knew it wasn’t Ori right away, though her eyes were the same and the rest of her was covered in fabric: a hooded gown, sleeves tight at the wrist, buttoned from waist to throat, long enough to brush the toes of her shoes. The shoes themselves were polished, also black, and snapped on the tile with each step. She stood at the foot of the bed, facing him, hands folded. Clean fingernails. A perfect black line on each of her eyelids to mark the path of her lashes. A veil covered the rest of her face, from nose to jaw.
Isae Benesit. Chancellor of Thuvhe.
Akos’s Hessa manners hadn’t taught him to handle something this grand. Somehow he managed to say, “Chancellor.”
“I see you had no trouble distinguishing me from my sister,” she said. She had an odd accent, like one from the outer rim of the galaxy, not a fancy one from the planets closest to Assembly Headquarters, as he’d expected.
“It’s the shoes,” he said, his nerves driving him toward honesty. “A Hessa girl would never wear those.”
Ori, following her in, laughed. Seeing them side by side, it was even more obvious how different they were. Ori was slouching, leaning, her face mobile. Isae was carved from rock.
The chancellor said, “Can I ask why you compromised a layer of protection by revealing your face to him earlier, Ori?”
“He’s basically my brother,” Ori said, firm. “I’m not going to hide my face from him.”
“Why does it matter?” Akos said. “You’re twins, right? So I know what you both look like.”
In response, Isae clawed at the corner of her veil with her clean fingernails. When the covering fell away, Akos stared. Baldly.
Isae’s face was crossed with two scars, one that went through her eyebrow and forehead, and the other that went from jaw to nose. Scars just like Kalmev had, like Akos himself had; they came from sharpened currentblades—a rarity, since the current’s flow was weapon enough. Shotet blades, probably.
That explained why she and Ori both covered their faces. Being twins kept everybody confused about who was chancellor. But with their faces bare . . . well.
“Let’s not dwell on pleasantries,” Isae said, even sharper than before, if that was possible. “I believe your sister was about to tell you what I can do with my currentgift.”
“I was,” Cisi replied. “Isae—Her Highness, I mean—can summon your memories with a touch. It helps her to verify the testimony of people she feels unable to trust, for whatever reason.”
There were a lot of memories Akos didn’t want summoned. Cyra’s face, with veins of shadow cradling her cheeks, drifted into his mind. He pawed at the back of his head, eyes skipping away from Cisi’s.
“It won’t work,” he said. “Currentgifts don’t work on me.”
“Really,” Isae said.
“Yeah. Go ahead, try me.”
Isae came closer, shoes snapping. She stopped at his left side, right across from Cisi. Up close he could see how the scars puckered at the edges. Only a few seasons old, if he had to guess. Their color was dark still.
She touched his cuffed arm, right where metal met wrist.
“You’re right,” she said. “I see—and feel—nothing.”
“Guess you’re just going to have to take me at my word,” he said, a little terse.
“We’ll see” was Isae’s answer, as she went back to the foot of the bed.
“Did Ryzek Noavek, or anyone associated with him, ever ask you for information about me?” she said. “We know that you possessed information, since you saw Ori the day the fates were revealed.”
“You did?” Cisi said breathlessly.
“Yes.” His voice wavered a little. “Yes, he asked me.”
“And what did you tell him?”
He pulled his knees up to his chest like a kid scared of a storm, and looked out the window. Shissa was bright at the end of the day, every room glowing with lines of light in all different shades, however you liked it. The building next to theirs was purple.
“I knew not to say anything.” He wavered more than before. The memory was inching toward him bit by bit. Cyra’s face, the glass floor, Eijeh’s hand on him. “I know how to bear pain, I’m not weak, I . . .” Even he knew he sounded crazy, babbling this way. Had he said anything, in the middle of all that pain? “He has . . . access to Eijeh’s memories of Ori, so it would only have taken him making the connection between Ori and her fate for him to know what you look like, aliases, origins . . . so I tried not to say anything. He wants to know which one of you is which, which one is older. He knows . . . an oracle told him going after one of you was better than going after the other, so anything that distinguishes you from each other is a danger to you. But—he asked again and again, and—I don’t think I said anything, but I can’t remember—”