Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark #1)(102)

I laughed and fell against him, not strong enough to stand anymore.





CHAPTER 30: AKOS


FOR A TICK THERE was only her weight, her warmth, and relief.

And then everything came back: the crush of people in the transport vessel, their silence as they stared, Isae and Cisi strapped in near the nav deck. Cisi gave Akos a smile as he caught Cyra around the waist and picked her up. Cyra was tall, and far from dainty, but he could still carry her. For a while, anyway.

“Where are your medical supplies?” Akos asked Teka and Jyo, who were coming toward them.

“Jyo has medical training; he can take care of her,” Teka said.

But Akos didn’t like how Jyo was looking at her, like she was something valuable he could buy or trade. These renegades hadn’t rescued her out of the goodness of their hearts; they wanted something in return, and he wasn’t about to just hand her over.

Cyra’s fingers curled around the armor strap on his rib cage, and he shivered a little.

“She doesn’t go anywhere without me,” he said.

Teka’s eyebrow lifted above the eye patch. Before she could snap at him—which he got the sense she was about to—Cisi unbuckled herself and made her way over.

“I can do it. I have the training,” she said. “And Akos will help me.”

Teka eyed her for a beat, then gestured to the galley. “By all means, Miss Kereseth.”

Akos carried Cyra into the galley. She wasn’t completely out of it—her eyes were still open—but she didn’t seem there, either, and he didn’t like it.

“Come on, Noavek, get it together,” he said to her as he turned sideways to get her in the door. It wasn’t quite steady on the vessel; he stumbled. “My Cyra would have made at least two snide remarks by now.”

“Hmm.” She smiled a little. “Your Cyra.”

The galley was narrow and dirty, used plates and cups piled around the sink, jostling each other whenever the ship turned, lit by strips of white light that kept fluttering like they were about to go out; everything made of the same dull metal, dotted with bolts. He waited as Cisi scrubbed the little table between the two countertops, and dried it with a clean rag. His arms ached by the time he put Cyra down.

“Akos, I can’t read Shotet characters.”

“Um . . . neither can I, really.” The supply cabinet was organized, all the individually packaged items in neat rows. Alphabetical. He knew a few of them by sight, but not enough.

“You’d think after all that time in Shotet you’d have learned something,” Cyra said from her place on the table, slurring the words a little. Her arm flopped to the side, and she pointed. “Silverskin is there. Antiseptic on the left. Make me a painkiller.”

“Hey, I learned a few things,” he said to her, squeezing her hand before he got to work. “The most challenging lesson was how to deal with you.”

He had a vial of painkiller in his bag, so he went out to the main deck again and hunted for it under the jump seats, glaring at Jyo when he didn’t move his legs right away. He found his roll of leather—made of treated Armored One skin, so it was still hard, not exactly a “roll”—where he kept his spare vials, and found the purplish one that would help Cyra’s pain. When he went back to the galley, Cisi was wearing gloves and ripping packages open.

“How steady are your hands, Akos?” Cisi asked.

“Steady enough. Why?”

“I know how to do the procedures, of course, but I can’t really touch her, because of the pain, remember? At least, not as steadily as she needs me to; this is delicate work,” she said. “So I’m just going to tell you what to do.”

Dark streaks still traveled up and down Cyra’s arms and around her head, though they were different from the last time Akos had seen them, dancing on top of her in jagged lines.

Cyra croaked from the table, “Akos, is this . . . ?”

“My sister?” Akos said. “Yeah, it is. Cyra, meet Cisi.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Cyra said, searching Cisi’s face. For resemblance, if Akos knew anything. She wouldn’t find it—he and Cisi had never looked much alike.

“You too,” Cisi said, smiling at Cyra. If she was scared of the woman beneath her—the woman she had heard so many rumors about, all her life—she didn’t show it.

Akos carried the painkiller to Cyra and touched the vial to her lips. It was hard to look at her. The stitching cloth that covered the left side of her throat and head was deep red and crusted over. She was bruise-stained and worn through.

“Remind me,” Cyra said as the painkiller kicked in, “to yell at you for coming back.”

“Whatever you say,” Akos said.

But he was relieved, because there was his Cyra, jagged as a serrated blade, strong as Deadened ice.

“She fell asleep. Well, that’s good,” Cisi said. “Step back, please.”

He gave her some room. She was dextrous, to be sure; she pinched the stitching cloth with all the delicacy of someone threading a needle, careful not to brush Cyra’s skin, and pulled it back. It came away from the wound easily, wet as it was with blood and pus. She dropped it, one soaked strip at a time, on a tray near Cyra’s head.

“So you’ve been training to be a doctor,” Akos said as he watched her.