Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark #1)(54)

“Then you killed our mother,” he said quietly. “And now, this is all that we can be.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised, shouldn’t have marveled at the way words could hit me like a hard punch to the stomach. But hope had made me a fool.

I spent all night awake, dreading what he would do about the attack.

The answer came the next morning, when his calm, self-assured voice came from the news screen on the far wall. I rolled out of bed and crossed the room so I could turn on the video. My brother filled the screen, pale and skeletal. His armor caught the light, casting an eerie glow across his face.

“Yesterday, we experienced a . . . disruption—” His lip curled, like he thought it was amusing. It made sense—Ryzek knew not to show fear, to minimize the renegades’ actions as much as possible. “Childish though it was, the perpetrators of this stunt compromised the security of the ship by stalling its flight, which means they must be found and rooted out.” His tone had turned sinister. “People of any age will be selected at random from the ship’s database and brought in for questioning, beginning today. There will be a shipwide curfew, from the twentieth hour to the sixth hour, imposed on all of the ship’s occupants except those essential to its functioning, until such time as we have eradicated this problem. The sojourn will also be delayed until we have ensured the ship’s safety.”

“Questioning,” Akos said from behind me. “Is that code for ‘interrogation involving torture’?”

I nodded.

“If you know anything about the identities of the individuals involved in this prank, it is in your best interest to come forward,” Ryzek said. “Those who are discovered to have withheld information or lie during questioning will also be punished, for the good of the Shotet people. Rest assured, the safety of the sojourn ship, and all the people in it, is my highest concern.”

Akos snorted.

“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear,” Ryzek said. “Let us continue to prepare to show the other planets in this galaxy our might and our unity.”

His head remained on the screen for a few moments longer, and then the news feed returned, this time in Othyrian, which I knew passably well. There was a water shortage on Tepes, in the western continent. The Shotet subtitles were accurate. For once.

“Showing our might and our unity,” I said, quoting Ryzek, more to myself than to Akos. “Is that what the sojourn is for now?”

“What else is it for?”

The Assembly was debating further requirements for the oracles on each planet, to be voted on in forty days. Shotet subtitles: “Assembly attempts to assert tyrannical control over oracles through another predatory measure, to be enacted at the end of the forty day cycle.” Accurate, but biased.

Some notorious band of space pirates had just been sentenced to fifteen seasons in prison. Shotet subtitles: “Band of Zoldan traditionalists sentenced to fifteen seasons in prison for speaking out against unnecessarily restrictive Assembly regulations.” Not so accurate.

“The sojourn is supposed to be an acknowledgment of our reliance on the current and the one who masters it,” I said quietly. “A religious rite, and a way of honoring those who came before us.”

“The Shotet you describe is not the one that I’ve seen,” Akos said.

I glanced back at him. “Maybe you see what you want to see.”

“Maybe we both do,” Akos said. “You look worried. Do you think Ryzek will stop leaving you alone?”

“If things get bad enough.”

“And if you refuse to help him again? What’s the worst he can do?”

I sighed. “I don’t think you understand. My mother was beloved. A deity among mortals. When she died, all of Shotet mourned. It was like the world had come apart.” I closed my eyes, briefly, letting an image of her face pass through my mind. “If they find out what I did to her, they will tear me limb from limb. Ryzek knows that, and he’ll use it if he gets too desperate.”

Akos frowned. Not for the first time, I wondered how he would feel if I died. Not because I thought he hated me, but because I knew that his fate echoed in his head whenever he looked at me. I might be the Noavek he would one day die for, given how much time we spent together. And I could not believe that I was worth that, worth his life.

“Well,” he said. “Let’s hope he doesn’t, then.”

He was angled toward me. There were only a few inches separating us. We were often close together, when sparring, when training, when making our breakfasts, and he had to touch me to keep my pain at bay. So it should not have felt strange that his hip was so close to my stomach, that I could see ropy muscle standing out from his arm.

But it did.

“How is your friend Suzao?” I said as I stepped back.

“I gave some sleeping potion to Jorek to slip into the medicine he takes in the morning,” Akos said.

“Jorek’s going to drug his own father?” I said. “Interesting.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see if Suzao actually collapses into his lunch. Might make him angry enough to challenge me to the arena.”

“I’d do it a few more times before you reveal yourself,” I said. “He needs to be afraid, as well as angry.”

“Hard to think of a man like that being afraid.”