Both soldiers laughed. The second one was younger, his voice cracking.
“Nice accent,” the older one said. “Where did you learn our language, from brim planet scum?”
Isae lunged, and Akos couldn’t see much, but he heard her moan when she got hit. That was when he stood, best knife in hand, armor fastened tight.
“Stop,” he said, walking around the corner again.
“What do you want?” the older soldier said.
Akos moved into the light. “I want you to leave her to me. Now.”
When neither of the soldiers budged, he said, “I am a steward of the family Noavek—” It was technically true, and technically a lie. No one had ever given him a title, after all. “I was sent here by Ryzek Noavek to collect her. That will be much more challenging if I let you kill her.”
Everybody went still, even Akos. They would have a clear shot at the emergency stairs, and all they had to do was get past these two . . . obstacles. The older Shotet ran his tongue over his lips again. “And what if I kill you and complete your mission for you? How well will I be rewarded by the sovereign of Shotet?”
“Don’t.” The younger soldier was wide-eyed. “I recognize him, he—”
The older Shotet swiped with his blade, but he was big and slow, obviously low-ranking. Akos jumped back, hunching to get his gut out of harm’s way. When he swung his own knife, he struck only armor, sending sparks flying. But his other hand, his right hand, was already drawing another knife from the side of his boot. That one found flesh.
The soldier fell against him, spilling warm blood on his hands. Akos bore his weight, stunned, not by what he had done, but by the ease with which he had done it.
“You have a choice,” he said to the young soldier who was left. His voice was ragged and not quite his own. “Stay and die. Run and live.”
The young soldier with the squeaky laugh bolted down the hallway. He almost slipped as he turned the corner. Cisi was shaking, eyes shining from unshed tears. And Isae was pointing her knife at him.
He lowered the soldier to the ground. Don’t throw up, he told himself. Don’t, don’t throw up.
“Steward of the family Noavek?” Isae said.
“Not exactly,” he said.
“I still don’t trust you,” she said, but she put her knife down. “Let’s go.”
They hustled to the roof and ran into the wild, frozen air. By the time they made it to the floater—a black one, close to the edge of the landing pad—his teeth were chattering. The door opened at Cisi’s touch, and they climbed in.
The floater’s controls lit up when Cisi sat in the driver’s seat, the night-vision screen expanding in front of her in green and the nav system glowing with a welcome. She reached under the control board and switched off the floater’s outer lights, then typed in their home address and set the ship on autonav. High-speed.
It lifted from the landing pad and jerked forward, throwing Akos against the control panel. He’d forgotten to buckle himself in.
He twisted around to watch Shissa shrink behind them. Every building was lit up a different color: purple for the library, yellow for the hospital, green for the grocery. They hung—impossibly—like suspended raindrops. He watched them as the floater sped away, until the buildings were just a cluster of lights. When everything was near dark, he turned back to Cisi.
“You . . .” She gulped. Whatever it was she wanted to say, she couldn’t say it, currentgift be damned. He reached for her, setting a clean finger—the others were red and sticky—on her arm.
The words came spilling out. “You killed him.”
He cycled through a few different responses in his mind, ranging from And he wasn’t the first to I’m sorry. None of them seemed right. He didn’t want her to hate him, but he didn’t want her to think he had come away from Shotet innocent. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he didn’t want to lie.
“He saved us both,” Isae said sharply as she switched on the news scroll. A little holoscreen popped up above the autonav map, and Akos read the headlines as they spun in a circle.
Shotet invasion begins in Shissa, two hours after sunset.
Shotet invaders witnessed at Shissa hospital, eight Thuvhesit deaths reported.
“I sent Orieve away right after we left your room,” Isae said. “She should have made it out all right. I can’t send her a message now, it could be intercepted.”
He held his hands against his legs, wishing like hell that he could wash them.
A news break appeared on the holoscreen when they descended into Hessa, a few hours before dawn.
Shissa police reporting two Thuvhesit captives taken by Shotet. Footage from the invasion shows a woman dragged from Shissa hospital by Shotet soldiers. Preliminary identification efforts suggest the woman is either Isae or Orieve Benesit.
Something big and fierce shredded his insides.
Orieve Benesit. Ori. Gone.
He tried not to look at Isae, to give her a tick to react on her own, but there wasn’t much to watch. Cisi’s hand snaked out to touch Isae’s, but Isae just flicked a switch to turn the news feed off, and stared out the window.
“Well,” Isae said at last. “I’ll just have to go get her, then.”
CHAPTER 28: AKOS
WHEN THEY GOT TO Hessa, the floater moved in a wide arc around the mountain and drifted toward the feathergrass. It sank to the ground in front of his family’s house, crushing stems and tufts under it. The blood had dried on Akos’s hands.