Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark #1)(35)

The Storyteller directed us to a pile of cushions, where we settled, a little awkwardly, our hands gripped between us. I let go of Akos to wipe my palm on my dress, and as the currentshadows flushed back into my body, the Storyteller smiled again.

“There they are,” he said. “I almost didn’t recognize you without them, Little Noavek.”

He set a metal pot on the table before us—really two footstools bolted together, one metal and one wood—and a pair of mismatched, glazed mugs. I poured the tea for us. It was pale purple, almost pink, and accounted for the sweet smell in the air.

The Storyteller sat across from us. The white paint on the wall above his head was flaking, revealing yellow paint beneath it, from another time. Yet even here was the ever-present news screen, fixed crookedly on the wall next to the stove. This place was full to bursting with scavenged objects, the dark metal teapot clearly Tepessar, the stove grate made of Pithar flooring, and the Storyteller’s clothing itself silky as any of Othyr’s wealthy. In the corner there was a chair, its origin unfamiliar to me, that the Storyteller was in the middle of repairing.

“Your companion—Akos, was it?—smells of hushflower,” the Storyteller said, for the first time furrowing his brow.

“He is Thuvhesit,” I said. “He means no disrespect.”

“Disrespect?” Akos said.

“Yes, I do not permit people who have recently ingested hushflower, or any other current-altering substance, into my home,” the Storyteller said. “Though they are welcome to return once it has passed through their system. I am not in the habit of rejecting visitors outright, after all.”

“The Storyteller is a Shotet religious leader,” I said to Akos. “We call them clerics.”

“He is a Thuvhesit, truly?” The Storyteller frowned, and closed his eyes. “Surely you are mistaken, sir. You speak our sacred language like a native.”

“I think I know my own home,” Akos replied testily. “My own identity.”

“I meant no offense,” the Storyteller said. “But your name is Akos, which is a Shotet name, so you can see why I am confused. Thuvhesit parents would not give their child a name with such a hard sound in it without purpose. What are your siblings’ names, for example?”

“Eijeh,” Akos said breathily. Obviously he hadn’t thought about this before. “And Cisi.”

His hand tightened around mine. I didn’t think he was aware of it.

“Well, no matter,” the Storyteller said. “Obviously you have come here with a purpose, and you don’t have much time before the storm for it to be accomplished, so we will move on. Little Noavek, to what do I owe this visit?”

“I thought you could tell Akos the story you told me as a child,” I said. “I’m not good at telling stories, myself.”

“Yes, I can see that being the case.” The Storyteller picked up his own mug from the floor by his feet, which were bare. The air had been crisp outside, but in here it was warm, almost stifling. “As to the story, it doesn’t really have a beginning. We didn’t realize our language was revelatory, carried in the blood, because we were always together, moving as one through the galaxy as wanderers. We had no home, no permanence. We followed the current around the galaxy, wherever it saw fit to lead us. This, we believed, was our obligation, our mission.”

The Storyteller sipped his tea, set it down, and wiggled his fingers in the air. When I had first seen him do it, I had giggled, thinking he was acting strange. But now I knew what to expect: faint, hazy shapes appeared in front of him. They were smoky, not lit up like the hologram of the galaxy we had seen earlier, but the image was the same: planets arranged around a sun, a line of white current wrapping around them.

Akos’s gray eyes—the same color as most of the smoke—widened.

“Then one of the oracles had a vision, that our ruling family would lead us to a permanent home. And they did—to an uninhabited, cold planet we called ‘Urek,’ because it means ‘empty.’”

“Urek,” Akos said. “That’s the Shotet name for our planet?”

“Well, you didn’t expect us to call the whole thing ‘Thuvhe’ the way your people do, did you?” I snorted. “Thuvhe” was the official, Assembly-recognized name for our planet, which contained Thuvhesit and Shotet people both. But that didn’t mean we had to call it that.

The Storyteller’s illusion changed, focusing on a single orb of dense smoke.

“The current was stronger there than anywhere we had ever been. But we didn’t want to forget our history, our impermanence, our reclaiming of broken objects, so we began to go on the sojourn. Every season, all of us who were able would return to the ship that had carried us around the galaxy for so long, and follow the current again.”

If I had not been holding Akos’s hand, I would have been able to feel the current humming in my body. I didn’t always think about it, because along with that hum came pain, but it was what I had in common with every person across the galaxy. Well, every person but the one beside me.

I wondered if he ever missed it, if he remembered what it felt like.

The Storyteller’s voice became low, and dark, as he continued, “But during one of the sojourns, those who had settled north of Voa to harvest the iceflowers, who called themselves the Thuvhesit, ventured too far south. They came into our city, and saw that we had left many of our children here, to await their parents’ return from the sojourn. And they took our children from their beds, from their kitchen tables, from their streets. They stole our young ones, and brought them north as captives and servants.”