The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(101)

When Lazmet Noavek’s ship landed just past the feathergrass north of Hessa, it sent up a cloud of pink feathers.

At least they aren’t going past the house, Akos thought. His family’s home was far from where they landed, though along the same strip of feathergrass. They would approach Hessa hill from behind, where there were no houses, and steps carved from rock would lead them to the temple’s back gate.

The Shotet groaned and shivered when the hatch of the ship opened. Even Lazmet seemed to brace himself. But Akos drank in the frozen air like it was the finest thing he’d ever tasted. The soldiers had laughed at him when he first came on board, stuffed into half a dozen sweaters and jackets, incapable of lowering his arms. But none of them were laughing now.

Akos pulled the strip he had torn from his blanket over his face, so only his eyes showed. He spotted the handle of a currentblade on a careless soldier’s hip, and wondered if he could grab it, stab Lazmet right now before anyone attacked Hessa. But the soldier turned away, the opportunity disappearing.

Lazmet beckoned, and Akos went to the front of the pack that had come together, the soldiers drawing closer in the cold. Vakrez and Lazmet, at least, had put on more than one layer.

Akos went to the front of the group, and looked up at Hessa hill. He had told Lazmet to fly in from as far north as he could stand to go, to glide low next to the feathergrass and land, going in on foot. Sure enough, he didn’t hear the sirens that would have sounded all throughout the town if somebody had seen Shotet soldiers. It was strange, how he hoped that he would succeed, and hoped that he would fail, all at once.

There were two paths to the bottom of the hill, one that went into a dip in the land and would protect them from rough wind, and another that wouldn’t. Akos chose the latter. He hoped half of the soldiers froze to death on their way in, or at least got such cold fingers they couldn’t handle their currentblades right.

Akos pointed his nose across the bare plains and started walking.

It wasn’t a long enough walk for any of the Shotet soldiers to freeze to death, unfortunately. But by the time they got to the bottom of the hill, the people behind him had come up with their own strategies for staying warm, some better than others. They were chewing on their fingertips—not the best idea—or wrapping their hands and faces in handkerchiefs and cloths. They were huddled in groups, rotating so one person took the brunt of the wind at a time. Akos’s eyelashes were frosted, and the skin around his eyes was numb, but he felt all right otherwise. The trick to walking in the cold was to just let the chill happen, trusting that your body would take care of itself. When the will to live failed, the body still fought.

The wind died down. They were shielded now by huge crags made by avalanches, and natural promontories, since this was the jagged side of Hessa hill. Still, finding the steps wasn’t easy—you had to know where they were, and Akos’s memory, dulled though it was by everything he’d done, held strong. He went around one of the bigger rock formations and there they were, faint indentations only as long as the ball of his foot.

“I thought you said there were steps,” Vakrez said to him.

“I thought you said the Shotet were adaptable,” Akos retorted, his voice muffled by fabric, and he started up the slope.

Lazmet insisted that Akos lead the way, which ruled out shoving him over the edge. Akos started the quick hop that made the steps easier to climb, only he couldn’t do it. He had been deprived of food for too long to do so much as a single bounce. He slumped against the side of the hill—more of a mountain to the Shotet, he realized—to keep him balanced as he went.

“You starve him for weeks and now you want him to lead us up a mountain?” Vakrez said to Lazmet.

“Get up there and help him, then, if you’re so concerned,” Lazmet said.

Vakrez stepped past Lazmet and, avoiding Akos’s eyes, put an arm across Akos’s back. Akos was startled by how strong Vakrez was, the older man lifting him almost to his toes as they walked together on the narrow stairs. The wind wailed so loud Akos couldn’t have heard him if he had whispered right in his ear, so the two men climbed in silence, Vakrez pausing every time he noticed Akos’s breaths getting labored.

After a while, the steps got bigger and flatter, cutting a winding path into the mountainside. They were made for oracles, not athletes, after all.

The sun was setting, and the snow sparkled in the light, glinting as it blew across the stone. It was a simple enough sight, and one Akos had seen thousands of times, growing up. But he’d never loved it as much as he did then, at the helm of a group of invading soldiers, on the verge of murder.

It was over too soon. They made it to the top, where a few sparse trees covered their approach, bent and curled from the constant wind. Akos had to stop at the top step, and Lazmet waved the others toward the door as Vakrez held him upright.

He was just standing on his own again when Vakrez pivoted, his broad frame shielding Akos from Lazmet’s view.

“Whoa,” Vakrez said, “get your legs under you, boy.”

And he hiked up some of Akos’s layers, shoving a blade under the waistband of Akos’s pants and covering the handle with a sweater.

“Just in case,” Vakrez said so quietly it was almost lost to the wind.

Akos didn’t intend to use a blade, but he appreciated the gesture regardless.

The smell of Hessan incense nearly made Akos fall apart. It was herbal—almost like the medicine his mom had force-fed him for his chronic cough when he was a kid, but not quite—and spicy, stinging his nose once it wasn’t numb from the cold anymore. It smelled like a dozen Bloomings, and handfuls of after-school visits spent waiting for Sifa to be done meeting with someone in the Hall of Prophecy, and afternoons of snickering at the youngest oblates, who stared at Eijeh and blushed right after he grew from a child to a teenager. It smelled like home.