The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(107)

I had had every reason to become closed off, wrapped up tight, pushing everything that resembled life and growth and power as far away from myself as possible. It would have been easier that way, to refuse to let anything in. But I had let Akos in, trusting him when I had forgotten how to trust, and I had let Teka in, too, and maybe one day, Sifa—

I would let anyone in who dared draw near. I was like the planet Ogra, which welcomed anyone and anything that could survive life close to it.

Not because I deserved pain, and not because I was too strong to feel it, but because I was resilient enough to accept it as an inevitability.

My currentshadows shot up, up, up.

They spread, building from the tendrils around my fingers to a column in the sky that wrapped my entire body in shadow-dark. I couldn’t see Teka or Sifa or Yma now, but I saw the great pillar of current that passed over and through me, toward that hatch that had opened in the Othyrian ship above.

I didn’t see the anticurrent weapon, whatever its container looked like, but I did see the blast. The light spreading out from one fixed point, just as the shadow stretched upward from me.

And where they collided: agony.

I screamed, helplessly, as I had not screamed since I was too young to remember. The pain was so intense it shattered my pride, my reason, my sense of self. I heard the screaming and felt the scraping feeling of my own voice in my throat and the inferno inside me and around me, and saw the shadow and the light and the space where they met with a sharp clap.

My knees buckled, and arms wrapped around my waist, thin, bony ones. A head pressed between my shoulder blades, and I heard Teka’s voice saying, “Hold on, hold on, hold on . . .”

I had killed her uncle, her cousin, and in some ways, her mother, and still she stood behind me, keeping me upright.

Hands wrapped around my arms, warm and soft, and the smell of sendes leaf floated over to me, the scent of Sifa’s shampoo.

The dark eyes of the one who had abandoned me, and now returned for me—

And last, the strict, pale fingers of Yma Zetsyvis on my wrist.

The current moved through all of us at once, my friend, my enemy, my mother, and me, all wrapped together in the darkness that was life itself.





CHAPTER 53: CISI


BREAKING NEWS, THE SCREEN says. Lazmet Noavek confirmed dead in Shotet assault on Hessa, major city of Thuvhe.

I look the nurse steadily in the eye. I want to tell her that I don’t care if my intestines are spilling out on the floor, she will get me a wheelchair, and she will clear me to fly with Isae Benesit to Thuvhe. But of course I can’t say that. Other people’s currentgifts falter when their bodies weaken, but not mine, apparently.

Instead, I search for what might persuade her. The usual Othyrian things—fine fabrics—don’t seem like the right choice. She’s too hard-nosed for that. She’s not someone who has let herself long for things. She would take comfort in something she can access—like a hot bath, or a comfortable chair. Water is easy for me, so I send it toward her, not the rolling waves that would work on Isae, but the still warmth of someone soaking. Buoyant and motionless.

I don’t bother with subtlety. I fill the room with it. My cheeks heat and my stomach aches from the stitches that still hold my guts in.

“I’m from Hessa,” I say, and it feels muffled, even though I can hear myself clearly. One of the oddities of my gift. “I need to go. Clear me.”

She’s nodding, blinking dully at me.

I haven’t spoken to Isae since Ast’s arrest. She came to assure me that it was done, that he was gone. Since he wasn’t a citizen of the Assembly, he was shipped off to his home moon to await trial, and they would deal with him in whatever manner they chose. But he wouldn’t be allowed to set foot on an Assembly planet again.

One day, that might mean fewer planets. There are rumors of secession over Othyr’s proposed oracle oversight law. It is too soon to know about the other nation-planets, but Thuvhe has thrown itself in with Othyr, so our path through that issue, at least, is clear.

We aren’t sure what happened in Shotet yet. News is slow to come out of there. What we do know is the anticurrent weapon didn’t work. Something ink-dark met it in the air, right in the middle of Voa, protecting the city from its blast. No one can explain it, but I’m taking it as a sign of better things to come.

The nurse wheels me to the hospital landing pad in a small, portable bed that can be secured to the wall of an Othyrian ship. Every jostle of the bed makes shooting pains go through my abdomen, but I am just happy to be going home, so I try not to let the pain show. The first child of the family Noavek will succumb to the blade. Well, maybe I had succumbed, but I hadn’t died. That was something.

As the nurse activates the wall magnet that will hold my bed steady during takeoff, Isae steps down from the nav deck, where she was speaking with the captain. She’s dressed in comfortable clothes: a sweater with sleeves long enough to cover her hands, tight black pants, and her old boots with their red laces. She looks uncharacteristically nervous.

She offers me a handheld screen with a keyboard. “Just in case you want to say something you can’t say aloud,” she says.

I hold it in my lap. I’m angry with her—for not listening to me instead of Ast, for not believing me—but this reminds me why I care about her. She thinks about what I need. She wants me to be able to speak my mind.