“Don’t talk about death that way, like it’s nothing!”
“I don’t think you get it.” A tremor went through her arm, her hand, her voice. Her eyes found his, and he focused on the spot on her iris, the place where the pupil broke open. “After you were taken, and Mom came back, she was . . . insensible. So I dragged Dad’s body out to the field to burn. I cleaned up the living room.”
He couldn’t imagine, couldn’t imagine the horror of scrubbing your own father’s blood out of the floor. Better to set the whole house on fire, better to leave and never come back.
“Don’t you dare tell me I don’t know what death is,” she said. “I know.”
Alarmed, he lifted a hand to her cheek, pressed her face into his shoulder. Her curly hair itched his chin.
“Fine” was all he said. It was agreement enough.
They agreed to sleep for a few hours before they left, and Akos went upstairs alone. Without thinking, he skipped the sixth step, some part of him remembering that it groaned louder than the others. The hallway upstairs was a little crooked; it listed to the right just after the bathroom, the curve wrong somehow. The room he’d shared with Eijeh was at the end. He opened the door with his fingertips.
The sheets on Eijeh’s bed were curled like they were around a still-sleeping body, and there was a pair of dirty socks in the corner, stained brown at the heels from his shoes. On Akos’s side of the room, the sheets were taut around the mattress, a pillow wedged between bed and wall. Akos had never been able to last long with a pillow.
Through the big round window he saw feathergrass rippling in the dark, and stars.
He held his pillow in his lap when he sat. The pair of shoes lined up with the bed frame were so much smaller than the pair he was wearing that he smiled. Smiled, and then cried, shoving his face in the pillow to stifle himself. It wasn’t happening. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t about to leave home when he’d only just found it again.
The tears subsided eventually, and he fell asleep with his shoes still on.
A while later, when he woke, he stood under the spray in the hall bathroom for just a little longer than usual, hoping it would relax him. No use.
When he got out, though, there was a stack of clothes just outside the door. His dad’s old clothes. The shirt was too loose through the shoulders and waist, but tight across the chest—he and Aoseh were completely different shapes. The pants were long enough, but just barely, tucked into the top of Akos’s boots.
When he took his towel back to the bathroom to hang it—that was what his mom would return to, a wet towel and rumpled sheets and no children—Isae was there, already dressed in some of his mom’s clothes, the black pants bunching around her waist under the belt. She prodded one of her scars in the mirror, and met his eyes.
“If you try to say something meaningful and profound about scars, I’ll punch you in the head,” she said.
He shrugged, and turned his left arm so the kill marks faced her. “I guarantee you yours aren’t as ugly as mine.”
“At least you chose yours.”
Well, she had a point.
“How did you come to be marked by a Shotet blade?” he said.
He’d heard some of the soldiers trading scar stories before. Not kill-mark stories, but other scars, a white line on a kneecap from a childhood accident, a swipe from a kitchen knife during an invasion of Hessa, a drunken accident involving a head and a door frame. They’d all been in stitches over each other’s stories. That wasn’t going to happen now, he was sure.
“The scavenge isn’t always as peaceful as they might have you believe,” Isae said. “During the last one, my ship had to land on Othyr for repairs, and while we were there, one of the crew got really sick. While we were parked at the hospital, we were attacked by Shotet soldiers who were raiding the medicine stores. One of them cut my face and left me for dead.”
“I’m sorry,” he said automatically. For some reason, he wanted to tell her about where Othyrian medical aid went—to Ryzek’s supporters only—and how few people knew about it. But it really wasn’t a good time to explain Shotet to her, especially not if she would think he was excusing the soldier for stealing medicine and scarring her face.
“I’m not sorry.” Isae seized the soap bar next to the sink like she wanted to break it in half, and started washing her hands. “Hard to forget who your enemies are when you have scars like mine.” She cleared her throat. “Hope you don’t mind, I borrowed some of your mother’s clothes.”
“I’m wearing a dead man’s underwear,” he said. “Why would I mind?”
She smiled a little, which Akos felt was progress enough.
None of them wanted to wait any longer than they had to, Akos in particular. He knew the more time he spent there, the harder it would be to leave. Better, he thought, to reopen the wound fast, get it over with, so he could bandage it up again.
They packed supplies, food, clothes, and iceflowers, and piled into the spare floater. It had just enough fuel in it to get them across the feathergrass, and that was all they needed. At Cisi’s touch it lifted off the ground, and Akos set the autonav for a spot in what looked like the middle of nowhere. They would go to Jorek’s house first. It was the only relatively safe place he knew outside of Voa.
As they flew, he watched the feathergrass below them, showing the wind’s pattern as it tilted and turned.