Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark #1)(93)

Her face was washed out and dotted with sweat, her cheek red from where the soldier had hit her. She didn’t look much like a chancellor. The scars on her face said something different about her, too—that she, like Cyra, knew what she was risking when she risked her life.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll help you.”

There was a loud crack as Cisi brought her mug down hard on the table, splashing hot tea over her hand. She grimaced, wiping her hand on her shirt and thrusting it out for him to take. Isae looked confused, but Akos understood—Cisi had something to say, and much as he was afraid to hear it, he couldn’t very well say no.

He clasped her hand.

“I hope you both realize that I’m coming with you,” she said hotly.

“No,” he said. “You can’t be in that kind of danger, absolutely not.”

“You don’t want me to be in danger?” Her voice was rougher than it ever had been before; she was rigid as a crossbeam. “How do you think I feel about you going back there? This family has been through enough uncertainty, enough loss.” She was scowling. Isae looked like she had just been smacked, and no wonder—she had probably never seen Cisi like this, free to say whatever she wanted, free to cry and yell and make everyone uncomfortable. “If we all get killed in Shotet, we’ll get killed together, but—”

“Don’t talk about death that way, like it’s nothing!”

“I don’t think you get it.” A tremor went through her arm, her hand, her voice. Her eyes found his, and he focused on the spot on her iris, the place where the pupil broke open. “After you were taken, and Mom came back, she was . . . insensible. So I dragged Dad’s body out to the field to burn. I cleaned up the living room.”

He couldn’t imagine, couldn’t imagine the horror of scrubbing your own father’s blood out of the floor. Better to set the whole house on fire, better to leave and never come back.

“Don’t you dare tell me I don’t know what death is,” she said. “I know.”

Alarmed, he lifted a hand to her cheek, pressed her face into his shoulder. Her curly hair itched his chin.

“Fine” was all he said. It was agreement enough.

They agreed to sleep for a few hours before they left, and Akos went upstairs alone. Without thinking, he skipped the sixth step, some part of him remembering that it groaned louder than the others. The hallway upstairs was a little crooked; it listed to the right just after the bathroom, the curve wrong somehow. The room he’d shared with Eijeh was at the end. He opened the door with his fingertips.

The sheets on Eijeh’s bed were curled like they were around a still-sleeping body, and there was a pair of dirty socks in the corner, stained brown at the heels from his shoes. On Akos’s side of the room, the sheets were taut around the mattress, a pillow wedged between bed and wall. Akos had never been able to last long with a pillow.

Through the big round window he saw feathergrass rippling in the dark, and stars.

He held his pillow in his lap when he sat. The pair of shoes lined up with the bed frame were so much smaller than the pair he was wearing that he smiled. Smiled, and then cried, shoving his face in the pillow to stifle himself. It wasn’t happening. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t about to leave home when he’d only just found it again.

The tears subsided eventually, and he fell asleep with his shoes still on.

A while later, when he woke, he stood under the spray in the hall bathroom for just a little longer than usual, hoping it would relax him. No use.

When he got out, though, there was a stack of clothes just outside the door. His dad’s old clothes. The shirt was too loose through the shoulders and waist, but tight across the chest—he and Aoseh were completely different shapes. The pants were long enough, but just barely, tucked into the top of Akos’s boots.

When he took his towel back to the bathroom to hang it—that was what his mom would return to, a wet towel and rumpled sheets and no children—Isae was there, already dressed in some of his mom’s clothes, the black pants bunching around her waist under the belt. She prodded one of her scars in the mirror, and met his eyes.

“If you try to say something meaningful and profound about scars, I’ll punch you in the head,” she said.

He shrugged, and turned his left arm so the kill marks faced her. “I guarantee you yours aren’t as ugly as mine.”

“At least you chose yours.”

Well, she had a point.

“How did you come to be marked by a Shotet blade?” he said.

He’d heard some of the soldiers trading scar stories before. Not kill-mark stories, but other scars, a white line on a kneecap from a childhood accident, a swipe from a kitchen knife during an invasion of Hessa, a drunken accident involving a head and a door frame. They’d all been in stitches over each other’s stories. That wasn’t going to happen now, he was sure.

“The scavenge isn’t always as peaceful as they might have you believe,” Isae said. “During the last one, my ship had to land on Othyr for repairs, and while we were there, one of the crew got really sick. While we were parked at the hospital, we were attacked by Shotet soldiers who were raiding the medicine stores. One of them cut my face and left me for dead.”

“I’m sorry,” he said automatically. For some reason, he wanted to tell her about where Othyrian medical aid went—to Ryzek’s supporters only—and how few people knew about it. But it really wasn’t a good time to explain Shotet to her, especially not if she would think he was excusing the soldier for stealing medicine and scarring her face.