Isae got out of the floater first, and Cisi followed. When Akos jumped out, the doors closed behind him. The feathergrass was flattened in a circle around it.
Cisi led the way to the house, which was good, because Akos didn’t have the strength. All the windows were dark reminders of the last time he’d been there. When Cisi opened the door, and the smell of spices and chopped saltfruit wafted over him, he half expected his dad’s body to be on the floor in the living room, soaked through.
Akos paused. Breathed. Kept walking.
He skimmed the wood paneling with his knuckles on the way to the kitchen. Past the wall where all the family pictures used to hang. Blank now. The living room wasn’t at all the same—it was more a study, with two desks and bookcases and not a squashy cushion in sight. But the kitchen, with its scraped-up table and rough-hewn bench, was the same.
Cisi shook the chandelier over the kitchen table to light the burnstones. Their light was still tinted red.
“Where’s Mom?” he said as an image of her popped into his mind: she was standing on a creaky stool, dusting the chandelier with hushflower.
“Oracle meeting,” Cisi said. “They meet all the time now. It’ll take her a few days.”
“Days” would be too late. He would be long gone by then.
The desire to wash his hands became a need. He went to the sink. A lump of homemade soap sat near the faucet, with little purity petals pressed inside it to pretty it up. He worked it into a lather, then rinsed his hands once, twice, three times. Dragged his fingernails along the lines in his palm. Scrubbed beneath them. By the time he was done his palms were bright pink and Cisi was setting out mugs for tea.
He hesitated with his hand over the knife drawer. He wanted to mark the loss of the Shotet soldier on his arm. There was a vial of feathergrass extract beside the other vials he carried to stain the wound. But had he really just let something so Shotet become an instinct? Clean hands, clean blade, new mark?
He closed his eyes like darkness was all he needed to clear his head. Somewhere out there, the nameless soldier he had killed had some family, some friends, who were counting on his loss to be recorded. Akos knew—though it disturbed him to know—that he wasn’t about to pretend the death hadn’t happened.
So he took out a carving knife and shoved it into the furnace flames, turning the blade to sterilize it. Crouched there by the heat, he carved a straight line into his arm with the hot blade, next to the other marks. Then he poured feathergrass extract on the tines of a fork and dragged it in a straight line down the cut. It was clumsy, but it would have to do.
Then he sat right there on the floor, holding his head. Riding out the pain. Blood ran down his arm and pooled in the crook of his elbow.
“The invaders might come to Hessa,” Isae said. “Looking for me. We should leave as soon as possible and find Ori.”
“‘We’?” he said. “I’m not taking the chancellor of Thuvhe to Ryzek Noavek, not with my fate as it is. That would really make me a traitor.”
She eyed his marked arm. “If you aren’t already.”
“Oh, shut up,” he snapped. She raised her eyebrows, but he went on. “You think you know exactly how I’ll meet my fate? You think you know what it means, better than I do?”
“You claim to be loyal to Thuvhe, but you tell its chancellor to ‘shut up’?” There was a note of humor in her voice.
“No, I told the woman in my kitchen asking for one hell of a favor to shut up,” he said. “I would never disrespect my chancellor that way. Your Highness.”
She leaned toward him. “Then take the woman in your kitchen to Shotet.” Leaned back. “I’m not an idiot; I know I’ll need your help to get me there.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Again. Not an idiot,” she said. “You help me get my sister out, and I’ll help you get your brother out. No guarantees, of course.”
Akos almost swore. Why was it, he wondered, that everyone seemed to know exactly what to offer him to make him agree to things? Not that he was convinced she could help him, but he had been teetering on the edge of agreeing anyway.
“Akos,” Isae said, and the use of his name, without malice, startled him a little. “If someone told you that you couldn’t go save your brother, that your life was too important to risk for theirs, would you listen?”
Her face was washed out and dotted with sweat, her cheek red from where the soldier had hit her. She didn’t look much like a chancellor. The scars on her face said something different about her, too—that she, like Cyra, knew what she was risking when she risked her life.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll help you.”
There was a loud crack as Cisi brought her mug down hard on the table, splashing hot tea over her hand. She grimaced, wiping her hand on her shirt and thrusting it out for him to take. Isae looked confused, but Akos understood—Cisi had something to say, and much as he was afraid to hear it, he couldn’t very well say no.
He clasped her hand.
“I hope you both realize that I’m coming with you,” she said hotly.
“No,” he said. “You can’t be in that kind of danger, absolutely not.”
“You don’t want me to be in danger?” Her voice was rougher than it ever had been before; she was rigid as a crossbeam. “How do you think I feel about you going back there? This family has been through enough uncertainty, enough loss.” She was scowling. Isae looked like she had just been smacked, and no wonder—she had probably never seen Cisi like this, free to say whatever she wanted, free to cry and yell and make everyone uncomfortable. “If we all get killed in Shotet, we’ll get killed together, but—”