Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark #1)(111)

He’d never expected anyone from Thuvhe to claim him. More the opposite, actually.

She let her hand fall, and carried her mug back to her seat next to Cisi. Jyo was playing Cisi a song, with that sleepy look in his eyes that was becoming familiar to Akos. Too bad for Jyo; anyone with a pair of eyes could see Cisi only wanted Isae. And he was pretty sure it went both ways.

Akos carried the painkiller to Cyra. She and his mother had moved on to another topic. His mom was mopping up the juice from some saltfruit with a chunk of bread made from ground-up seeds, harvested in the fields outside Voa. It wasn’t so different from what they’d eaten in Hessa—one of the few things Shotet and Thuvhe had in common.

“My mother took us there once,” Cyra was saying. “That’s where I learned to swim, in a special suit that protected against the cold. It might have come in handy on the last sojourn.”

“Yes, you went to Pitha, didn’t you?” Sifa said. “You were there, weren’t you, Akos?”

“Yes,” he said. “Spent most of my time there on an island of trash.”

“You’ve seen the galaxy,” she said with an odd smile. She slid her hand under his left sleeve, touching each kill mark. Her smile faded as she counted them.

“Who were they?” she asked softly.

“Two of the men who attacked our house,” he said in a low voice. “And the Armored One who gave me its skin.”

Her eyes flicked to Cyra’s. “Do they know him, here?”

“As I understand it, he is the subject of quite a few rumors, most of them untrue,” Cyra said. “They know he can touch me, that he can brew strong poisons, and that he is a Thuvhesit captive who somehow managed to earn armor.”

Sifa had that look in her eyes, the one she got when she saw prophecies coming to life. It scared him.

“I have always known what you would become, remember?” Sifa said quietly. “Someone who would always be stared at. You are what you need to be. Regardless, I love the person you were, the one you are, the one you will become. Understand?”

He was caught up in her stare, in her voice. Like he was standing in the temple with dried iceflowers burning around him, staring at her through the smoke. Like he was sitting on the floor of the Storyteller’s home, watching him weave the past out of vapor. It was easy to fall into this fervor, but Akos had spent too long suffering under the weight of his own fate to let that happen.

“Give me a straight answer, just this once,” he said to her. “Do I save Eijeh or not?”

“I have seen futures where you do, and futures where you don’t,” she said. And, smiling, she added, “But you always, always try.”

The renegades sat at attention, their plates stacked at one end of the big wooden table, and their mugs mostly empty. Teka was wrapped up in a blanket Sovy had embroidered for her, Akos heard her say, and Jyo had put away his instrument. Even Jorek hid his fidgeting fingers under the table while the oracle described her visions. Akos had been watching people get respectful around his mom since he was young, but it felt different here. Like another reason not to belong, as if he needed more.

“Three visions,” Sifa began. “In the first, we depart this place before daybreak, so no one sees us through that hole in the roof.”

“But . . . you made that hole,” Teka interrupted. It figured she would reach the limits of her reverence so quickly, Akos thought. Teka didn’t seem to like nonsense. “If you knew we would have to leave because of it, you could have avoided making it in the first place.”

“So glad you’re keeping up,” Sifa said, serene.

Akos swallowed a laugh. A few seats down, Cisi seemed to be doing the same.

“In the second vision, Ryzek Noavek stands before an immense crowd while the sun is high.” She pointed straight up. A noon sun, in Voa, which was closer to the planet’s equator. “In an amphitheater. There are sights and amplifiers everywhere. Very public—a ceremony, maybe.”

“They’re honoring a platoon of soldiers tomorrow,” Jorek said. “Could be that—otherwise there are no upcoming ceremonies until the next Sojourn Festival.”

“Possibly,” Sifa said. “In the third vision, I see Orieve Benesit struggling against Vas Kuzar’s grip. She is in a cell. Large, made of glass. There are no windows. The smell is . . .” She sniffed, like it was still in the air. “Musty. Underground, I think.”

“Struggling,” Isae repeated. “Is she hurt? Is she—okay?”

“There is quite a bit of life in her,” Sifa said. “Or appears to be.”

“The cell made of glass—that’s a cell beneath the amphitheater,” Cyra said dully. “That’s where I was held, before—” She stopped herself, fingers fluttering over her neck. “The second and third visions happen in the same place. Do they happen at the same time?”

“It is my sense,” Sifa said, “that they are layered over each other. But my sense of placement in time is not always accurate.”

Her hands fell to her lap, slipped into her pocket. Akos watched her take something out, a small object. It shone, catching his eye—it was a button from a jacket. It was tinted yellow at the edges where the finish had worn away from frequent buttoning. He could almost see his dad’s fingers fumbling with it as he groaned about having to go to one of his sister’s military dinners in Shissa, representing Hessa’s iceflower flats. Like this jacket is going to fool anyone, he had said to their mother once, as they both got ready in the hall bathroom. They’ll take one look at the ice scrapes on my boots and know I’m an iceflower farm kid. Their mom had only laughed.