Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark #1)(61)

“A prank?” Teka said. “Is that what you call acknowledging the truth? Destabilizing your brother’s regime? Showing that we can control the movement of the ship itself?”

“For our purposes, yes,” I said. Currentshadows traveled up my arm and curled around my shoulder, showing through my white shirt. Teka’s eye followed them. I flinched, and continued, “If you care about the death of an innocent person, I suggest you come up with a real name to give me by the end of the day. If you don’t care, I will just let Ryzek pick his target. It’s entirely up to you—for me it’s the same either way.”

She uncrossed her arms and turned, so both shoulders were against the door.

“Well, shit,” she said.

A few minutes later I was following Teka Surukta down the maintenance tunnel, toward the loading bay. I jumped at every noise, every creak, which in this part of the ship meant I jumped more often than not. It was loud down here, though we were far from most of the ship’s population.

We were on a raised metal platform, wide enough for two slim people to pass each other with stomachs held in, hanging above all the machinery and water tanks and furnaces and current engines that kept the ship running and habitable. If I had gotten lost among the gears and pipes, I would never have found my way out.

“You know,” I said, “if your plan is to get me far away from most people so that you can kill me, you might find it’s more difficult than you imagine.”

“I’d like to see what you’re about first,” Teka said. “You’re not quite what I expected.”

“Who is?” I said grimly. “I suppose it would be a waste of time for me to ask you how you managed to disable the ship’s lights.”

“No, that’s easy.” Teka stopped, and touched her palm to the wall. She closed her eye, and the light just above us, trapped in a metal cage to protect it, flickered. Once, then three times. The same rhythm I had heard tapped out when she attacked me.

“Anything that runs on current, I can mess with,” Teka said. “That’s why I’m a technician. Sadly that ‘light’ trick only works on the sojourn ship—all the lights in Voa are fenzu or burnstone, and there’s not much I can do to those.”

“You must like the sojourn ship best, then.”

“In a manner of speaking,” she said. “But it’s a little claustrophobic on this ship when you live in a room the size of a closet.”

We reached an open area, a grate above one of the oxygen converters, which were three times my height, and twice again as wide around. They processed the carbon dioxide we emitted, drawn in by the ship’s vents, and converted it through a complex process I didn’t understand. I had tried to read a book about it on the last sojourn, but the language was too technical for me. There were only so many things I could master.

“Stay here,” she said. “I’m going to get someone.”

“Stay here?” I said, but she was already gone.

As I stood on the grate, beads of sweat collected at the small of my back. I could hear her footsteps, but because of the echoes, couldn’t tell which direction they were going. Would she bring back a horde of renegades to finish the work she had begun during the attack? Or was she sincere in saying that she no longer wanted to kill me? I had walked into this situation with so little regard for my own safety, and I wasn’t even sure why, except that I didn’t want to watch the execution of an innocent when there were so many guilty hidden away.

When I heard the scrape-scrape-scrape of feet on metal stairs, I turned to see a tall, lean older woman loping toward me. Her long hair shone like the side of a transport floater. I recognized her from the picture next to Teka’s bed.

“Hello, Miss Noavek,” she said. “My name is Zosita Surukta.”

Zosita wore the same clothes as her daughter, the pant legs rolled up to expose her ankles. There were deep lines in her forehead from a lifetime of scowling. Something about her reminded me of my own mother, poised and elegant and dangerous. It wasn’t easy to intimidate me, but Zosita did. My shadows traveled faster than usual, like breath, like blood.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” I said. “Your name sounds familiar.”

Zosita cocked her head like a bird. “I’m not sure how I could manage to make the acquaintance of Cyra Noavek before now.”

I didn’t quite believe her. There was something about her smile.

“Teka told you why I’m here?” I said.

“Yes,” Zosita said. “Though she doesn’t yet know what I will do next, which is to turn myself in.”

“When I asked her for a name,” I said, swallowing hard, “I didn’t think it would be her mother’s—”

“We are all prepared to face the consequences of our actions,” Zosita said. “I will take full responsibility for the attack, and it will be believable, since I am a Shotet exile. I used to teach Shotet children how to speak Othyrian.”

Some of the older Shotet still knew other languages, from before it was illegal to speak them. There was nothing my father or Ryzek could do about that—you couldn’t force a person to unlearn something. I knew some of them taught classes, and that doing so could earn a person exile, but I had never thought I would meet one.

She tilted her head, to the other side this time.