The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(34)

“No, I—”

She laughed. “I’m Zenka. Don’t get so twitchy about it, I’m not about to scold a person for caring more about the plants than they do about me. That would be downright hypocritical. Slow down, you’ll beat the poor things half to death at the rate you’re going.”

Akos looked at his hand. He’d picked up the pace of stirring faster than he meant to.

He slowed his hand. Clearly he was out of practice.

“You ever get hushflowers here?” he said.

“Not much good they do me,” she said. “Don’t know how to handle them, and they’re not to be trifled with.”

He laughed. “Yeah. I know. My town had a fence around them to keep people from hurting themselves.”

“Your town,” she said. “Where’s that, then?”

He realized, too late, that he might not want to run his mouth about being Thuvhesit in unfamiliar company. But it had been so long since he’d met a person who didn’t already know who he was.

“Hessa,” he answered, since he couldn’t see a way around it. “Not my town anymore, I guess.”

“If it ever was,” she said. “Your name’s Akos, after all. That’s a Shotet name.”

“I’ve heard,” he said.

“So you know about iceflowers, then,” she said.

“My dad was a farmer. My mom taught me a few things, too,” he said. “I don’t know anything about what grows on Ogra, though.”

“Ogran plants are ferocious. They live on other plants, or meat, or current, or all three,” she said. “So if you aren’t careful, they’ll bite your arm clean off, or shrivel you from the inside out. Harvesting here is more like hunting, with the added benefit of nearly poisoning yourself every time you take a step into the forest.” She was smiling a little. “But they can be useful, if you can get them. They need to be cooked, usually. Takes away some of their potency.”

“What do you make with them?”

“Been working on a medicine that will suppress the current, for those whose currentgifts are too strong for them here,” she said. “A lot of Shotet find it unlivable. I could use the help, if you’re interested in chopping and peeling and grating.”

He smiled a little. “Maybe. Not sure what else I’ll have to be doing while I’m here.”

“You don’t intend to stay long.”

She meant that he didn’t intend to stay on Ogra long, but Akos heard it, first, as bigger than that. How long would he live, before he met his fate? A day, a season, ten seasons? He felt like a deep-sea creature on a hook, being drawn toward the surface. He couldn’t help but go where the line pulled him, and death waited above the water. But there was nothing he could do about it.

“My intentions,” he said, “don’t really matter anymore.”

The mess hall was too quiet when Akos got to it, his fingertips stained green from some Ogran stem he had cracked open for Zenka. Too quiet, and too busy, everyone rushing around but not really going anywhere. He was scanning the room for Cyra when Jorek came up to him, his skinny arms bared by his shirt—which, judging by the frayed edges near his shoulders, he had cut the sleeves off of himself. Maybe with his teeth.

“There you are,” Jorek said. “Where’d you go? Everyone’s losing their minds.”

Right away, Akos felt so tired he might collapse right there on the mess hall floor, on top of a discarded bread crust. “What’s going on?”

“The Ogran satellite brought down a bundle of news a few minutes ago. They’re beaming it to the screens here as soon as they can. But apparently it’s a doozy,” Jorek said. “They wouldn’t say much, but they hunted down Cyra, and I don’t think it’s just because Isae Benesit thinks she’s our sovereign.”

Akos spotted Cyra across the room, from the shine of silverskin on her head, which was bent toward Aza, one of the exile leaders. She was scowling, which he knew didn’t mean she was mad, even though that’s how it looked. When she was mad, she was a statue. When she was laughing, she was scared out of her mind. And when she was scowling . . . well, he didn’t quite know.

He was making his way over to her when the screens—there were four in the room, suspended from the middle in a cluster, like a chandelier—lit up and started playing footage. At first it was just the standard news feed, and then it switched over to a shot of a man’s face. He was fair-skinned, with a deeply lined face and a stern brow. He was thin, and narrow through the shoulder, but he didn’t look fragile—the opposite, really. He looked like he was using every bit of himself for muscle and energy, with nothing to spare. Most peculiar, though, was the dusting of freckles across his nose, too youthful to belong to such a stern and aged face.

Everyone in the mess hall went still.

“I am Lazmet Noavek,” he said, “and I am the rightful sovereign of Shotet.”





CHAPTER 14: CYRA


MY FATHER’S FACE IS a spark.

And all my memories are kindling.

A thousand moments of his eyes skimming right over me as he scanned a room. And his taut, wiry arm with its rows and rows of kill marks. And the vein that pulsed in the center of his forehead when someone displeased him. Those were the images I had of him, sealed away in my mind, but the worst ones were not those.