Ori moved impulsively toward him, gripping his ankle hard. Squeezing his bones. The pressure helped him hold his head together.
“If you did tell him something useful, such as where Ori grew up, or who raised her . . . would he come for us himself?” Isae asked, apparently unmoved.
“No.” He tried to steady himself. “No, I think he’s afraid of you.”
Ryzek never came himself, did he? Not even for his oracle, not even to kidnap Akos. He didn’t want to set foot in Thuvhe.
Isae’s eyes had seemed familiar to him, when he watched the footage of the twins in Osoc. But the look in them now wasn’t something Ori could have mustered. It was downright murderous.
“He ought to be,” Isae said. “This conversation isn’t over. I want to know everything you know about Ryzek Noavek. I will be back.”
She fastened her veil, and after a tick, Ori did the same. Before she left, though, Ori set her hand on the door and said, “Akos. It’s all right. It’ll be all right.”
He wasn’t all that convinced.
CHAPTER 27: AKOS
A DREAM:
His knees met the floor in the underground prison. Cyra’s currentgift crept over him like sharpworms around the roots of iceflowers. And then, her harsh exhale, and the shadows burst into dark clouds around them. He had never seen them do that before, separate from her skin. Something had changed.
She fell sideways, after that, into a pool of blood. Her hands clutched at her stomach, the way his father’s had when Vas killed him in front of his children. Her fingers, bent and red, held her insides in.
The blood turned to hushflower petals, and he woke up.
He was tired of the cuff. Or more specifically, of his arm at this particular angle, and the metal-on-skin feeling, and this game where he pretended he was trapped when he wasn’t. He twisted his hand around to touch the wrist cuff’s lock. The current held cuffs like these shut, so if he pressed his skin into the cracks, he could open them. He’d first discovered the talent on the way to Shotet, right before he killed Kalmev Radix. In order to kill Kalmev Radix.
The cuff clicked as it came undone. He yanked the needle out of his other arm, and got up. His body ached, but he was steady enough, so he walked to the window, watching the Thuvhesit floater lights zipping past. Lurid pink and vibrant red and gray green, they wrapped around the squat ships like belts, not bright enough to light the way, just enough to show they were there.
He stood there for a long time, as night got deeper and deeper and traffic died down and Shissa itself went to sleep. Then a dark shape passed over the purple glow of the building across from the hospital. Another one drifted above the iceflower fields far below. A third rushed past the hospital itself, making the glass shudder under his hands. He recognized the patched-together metals. The Shotet ships were filling Shissa like a cup.
An alarm screeched in the corner of the room, and just a tick later, the door opened. Isae Benesit—shoes shining—tossed a canvas bag on the floor at his feet.
“Good to know our handcuffs don’t work on you,” she said. “Come on. You’re going to get me out of here.”
He didn’t budge. The bag bulged in weird places from stiff armor—his, he assumed. It probably held his weapons and poisons, too; if whoever had dumped him in Shissa like a sack of trash had bothered to outfit him with one thing, they had probably thrown in the whole lot.
“You know, I’d really like to be the kind of person people just listen to,” Isae said, her formal manner falling away in her frustration. “You think I should carry around a big stick, or something?”
He bent over the canvas bag and pulled his armor over his head. With one hand, he pulled the tough straps tight over his ribs, and with the other, he sorted through the bag for his knife. It was the one Cyra had given him on the street during the festival. He’d given it back to her once, in apology, but she had left it on the table on the sojourn ship before they left, and he had taken it with him.
“My sister?” he said.
“Right here.” Cisi spoke from the hallway. “You’re so tall, Akos.”
Isae grabbed his arm. He let her move him around like a puppet. For someone who asked him to get her out, she sure was acting like she was getting him out.
When they were in the hallway, all the lights went off at once, leaving just some strips of emergency light on the left edge of the tile. Isae’s hand was tight as she steered him down the hallway and around the corner. From deep in the building, he heard screams.
He reached back for Cisi’s hand, and they all started to run, skidding around a corner toward the emergency exit. But at the end of the hallway were two dark figures dressed in Shotet armor.
His steps faltered. He wrenched his arm from Isae’s grasp, and stepped back into the shadows.
“Akos!” Cisi sounded horrified.
Around the corner, Isae drew the weapon at her hip. Currentblade, not sharp, but set to a deadly density. The soldiers were moving toward her, slow, like you moved when you didn’t want to startle an animal.
“Where do you think you are going?” one of them said. In Shotet, of course—he likely couldn’t speak any other languages.
He was shorter than Isae, and sturdy—to put it kindly. His tongue flicked out to wet his lips, which were swollen from the cold. Shotet soldiers had never been this far north before, as far as Akos could remember. They probably weren’t ready for the temperature drop.
“I am leaving this hospital,” Isae said in clumsy Shotet.