Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark #1)(26)
I leaned my forehead against a wall as I braided my hair, eyes shut, fingers feeling for every strand. I didn’t brush my thick dark hair anymore, at least not the way I had as a child, so meticulous, hoping each stroke of the bristles would coax it into perfect curls. Pain had stripped me of such indulgences.
When I finished, I took a small currentblade—turned off, so the dark tendrils of current wouldn’t wrap around the sharpened metal—into the apothecary chamber down the hall where Akos had moved his bed, stood over him, and pressed the blade to his throat.
His eyes opened, then widened. He thrashed, but when I pushed harder into his skin, he went still. I smirked at him.
“Are you insane?” he said, his voice husky from sleep.
“Come now, you must have heard the rumors!” I said cheerfully. “More importantly, though: Are you insane? Here you are, sleeping heavily without even bothering to bar your door, a hallway away from one of your enemies? That is either insanity or stupidity. Pick one.”
He brought his knee up sharply, aiming at my side. I bent my arm to block the strike with my elbow, pointing the blade instead at his stomach.
“You lost before you woke,” I said. “First lesson: The best way to win a fight is to avoid having one. If your enemy is a heavy sleeper, cut his throat before he wakes. If he’s softhearted, appeal to his compassion. If he’s thirsty, poison his drink. Get it?”
“So, throw honor out the window.”
“Honor,” I said with a snort. “Honor has no place in survival.”
The phrase, quoted from an Ogran book I had once read—translated into Shotet, of course; who could read Ogran?—appeared to scatter the sleep from his eyes in a way that even my attack had not been able to manage.
“Now get up,” I said. I straightened, sheathed the knife at the small of my back, and left the room so he could change.
By the time we finished breakfast, the sun had risen and I could hear the servants in the walls, carrying clean sheets and towels to the bedrooms, through the passages that ran parallel to every east-west corridor. The house had been built to exclude the ones who ran it, just like Voa itself, with Noavek manor at the center, surrounded by the wealthy and powerful, and the rest around the edge, fighting to get in.
The gym, down the hall from my bedroom, was bright and spacious, a wall of windows on one side, a wall of mirrors on the other. A gilded chandelier dangled from the ceiling, its delicate beauty contrasting with the black synthetic floor and the stacks of pads and practice weapons along the far wall. It was the only room in the house my mother had allowed to be modernized while she lived; she had otherwise insisted on preserving the house’s “historical integrity,” down to the pipes that sometimes smelled like rot, and the tarnished doorknobs.
I liked to practice—not because it made me a stronger fighter, though that was a welcome side benefit—but because I liked how it felt. The heat building, the pounding heart, the productive ache of tired muscles. The pain I chose, instead of the pain that had chosen me. I once tried to spar against the training soldiers, like Ryzek had as he was learning, but the current’s ink, coursing through every part of my body, caused them too much pain, so after that I was left to my own devices.
For the past year I had been reading Shotet texts about our long-forgotten form of combat, the school of the mind, elmetahak. Like so many things in our culture, it was scavenged, taking some of Ogran ferocity and Othyrian logic and our own resourcefulness and melding them until they were inextricable. When Akos and I went to the training room, I crouched over the book I had left near the wall the day before, Principles of Elmetahak: Underlying Philosophy and Practical Exercises. I was on the chapter “Opponent-Centered Strategy.”
“So in the army, you trained in zivatahak,” I said, to begin.
When he gave me a blank look, I continued.
“Altetahak—school of the arm. Zivatahak—school of the heart. Elmetahak—school of the mind,” I said. “The ones who trained you didn’t tell you in what school you were trained?”
“They didn’t care about teaching me the names for things,” Akos replied. “As I already told you.”
“Well, you trained in zivatahak, I can tell by the way you move.”
This seemed to surprise him. “The way I move,” he repeated. “How do I move?”
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a Thuvhesit hardly knows himself,” I said.
“Knowing how you fight isn’t knowing yourself,” he retorted. “Fighting isn’t important if the people you live with aren’t violent.”
“Oh? And what mythical people are those? Or are they imaginary?” I shook my head. “All people are violent. Some resist the impulse, and some don’t. Better to acknowledge it, to use it as a point of access to the rest of your being, than to lie to yourself about it.”
“I’m not lying to mysel—” He paused, and sighed. “Whatever. Point of access, you were saying?”
“You, for example.” I could tell he didn’t agree with me, but at least he was willing to listen. Progress. “You’re quick, and not particularly strong. You’re reactive, anticipating attacks from anyone, everyone. That means zivatahak, school of the heart—speed.” I tapped my chest. “Speed requires endurance. Heart endurance. We took that one from the warrior-ascetics of Zold. The school of the arm, altetahak, means ‘strength.’ Adapted from the style of fringe mercenaries. The last, elmetahak, means ‘strategy.’ Most Shotet don’t know it anymore. It’s a patchwork of styles, of places.”