Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark #1)(126)

My throat tightened.

“You know there was nothing I could have done for Ori, even if I had killed Ryzek,” I said. “We were all trapped.”

“I know that.” Teka sighed. “But I’m pretty sure Isae Benesit doesn’t believe it.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Cisi said. “I’ll help her see it. Right now she just wants people to blame.”

She shed the jacket she wore, leaving her arms bare and covered with goose bumps, and draped it over Ori. Akos helped her tuck the edges under Ori’s shoulders and hips, so her wound was hidden. Cisi brushed Ori’s hair into place with her fingers.

They both left, then, Cisi to the galley and Akos to the hold, with heavy footsteps and trembling hands.

I turned to Teka.

“Let’s lock my brother up.”

Teka and I dragged Ryzek and Eijeh to separate storage rooms, one by one. I rooted out more sleeping elixir to drug Eijeh. I wasn’t sure what was wrong with him—he was still unconscious and unresponsive—but if he woke up as the same warped man who had murdered Ori Benesit, I didn’t want to deal with it yet.

Then I went to the nav deck, where Sifa Kereseth sat in the captain’s chair, her hands on the controls. Jyo was nearby, using his screen to contact Jorek, who had returned home after Ryzek fell, to get his mother. I sat in the empty chair beside Akos’s mother. We were high in the atmosphere, almost past the barrier of blue that separated us from space.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“Into orbit until we make a plan,” Sifa said. “We can’t go back to Shotet, obviously, and it’s not safe to go back to Thuvhe yet.”

“Do you know what’s wrong with Eijeh?” I said. “He’s still catatonic.”

“No,” Sifa said. “Not yet.”

She closed her eyes. I wondered if the future was something she could search, like the stars. Some people had mastery over their gifts, and some were simply servants to them—I had never stopped to wonder, before, which category the oracle of Hessa fell into.

“I think you knew we were going to fail,” I said softly. “You told Akos that your visions were layered over each other, that Ori would be in the cell at the same time Ryzek faced me in the arena. But you knew they weren’t, didn’t you?” I paused. “And you knew Akos would have to face Vas. You wanted him to have no choice other than to kill him, the man who murdered your husband.”

Sifa touched the autonav map so the colors reversed—black for the expanse of space, and white for the route we were taking through it—and sat back in her chair, her hands in her lap. I thought she was just waiting to answer me, at first, but when she didn’t say anything for a while, I realized she had no intention of doing so. I didn’t press her. My mother had been intractable, too, and I knew when to give up.

So it surprised me a little when she spoke.

“My husband needed to be avenged,” she said. “Someday Akos will see that.”

“No he won’t,” I said. “He’ll only see that his own mother maneuvered him into doing the thing he most hates.”

“Maybe,” she said.

The darkness of space wrapped around us like a shroud, and I felt calmer, consoled by the emptiness. This was a different kind of sojourn. Away from the past, instead of away from the place I was supposed to call home. Here, the lines between Shotet and Thuvhesit were harder to see, and I almost felt safe again.

“I should check on Akos,” I said.

Before I could get up, her hand had closed over my arm, and she had leaned close enough to me that I could see streaks of warm brown in her dark eyes. She flinched but didn’t pull away.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sure that choosing mercy for my son over revenge against your brother was not easy for you.”

I shrugged, uncomfortable. “I couldn’t very well free myself from my own nightmares by bringing Akos’s to life,” I said. “Besides, I can handle a few nightmares.”





CHAPTER 40: AKOS


AFTER THE SHOTET TOOK Akos and Eijeh from their home and dragged them across the Divide; after Akos broke free from his wrist cuffs, stole Kalmev Radix’s knife, and stabbed him with it; after they beat Akos so badly he could hardly walk, they took the Kereseth brothers to Voa to present them to Ryzek Noavek. Down the cliff face and through the dusty, winding streets, sure they were both about to die, or worse. Everything had been too loud, too crowded, too little like home.

As they walked down the short tunnel that led to the front gate of Noavek manor, Eijeh had whispered, “I’m so scared.”

Their dad’s death and their kidnapping had cracked him open like an egg. He was even oozing, his eyes always full of tears. The opposite had happened to Akos.

No one cracked Akos.

“I promised Dad I’d get you out of here,” he’d said to Eijeh. “So that’s what I’m going to do, understand? You’ll make it out. That’s a promise to you, this time.”

He’d put his arm over his older brother’s shoulders, pulled him tight to his side. They walked in together.

Now they were out, but they hadn’t walked out together. Akos had had to drag him.

The hold was small and dank, but it had a sink, and that was pretty much all Akos cared about. He stripped to the waist, his shirt too stained to salvage, made the water as hot as he could stand, and worked the greasy soap into lather in his hands. Then he stuck his head under the faucet. Salty water ran into his mouth. As he scrubbed his arms and hands, scraping at the dried blood under his fingernails, he let himself go.