The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(40)

Often the work he did was more practical. He spent a couple of mornings in a row painting the outside of woven baskets with something that would keep their contents fresh, and those went to Ogran harvesters so they could eat lunch at midday. Akos still wasn’t sure how anyone knew what midday was, in this place, where the sun never shone.

Akos expected to feel the absence of the sun at one point or another, and from time to time he did note it, the same way he noted the temperature of the air. But he didn’t suffer for the lack of it any more than he suffered from the heat. It was just another thing that pricked at his mind, drawing out new questions.

Zenka was silent for the most part, unless she was telling him what to do. But one day, she asked him the question he’d been waiting for her to ask since he first met her:

“How did you come to be among the Shotet, if you grew up in Hessa?”

Akos nearly sliced through his own finger as he said—schooling his features so they stayed neutral—“I was an enemy of Ryzek Noavek. A captive.”

At that, Zenka laughed a little.

“That doesn’t say much, does it? We are all enemies of the family Noavek here. Kidnapped, imprisoned, mutilated, tortured. A colony of the bereaved.” Her teeth clicked like she was snarling. “It makes you more Shotet than not, to have made an enemy of a Noavek.”

“I try to understand,” he said, “why you all insist that being Shotet is something other than it is. I was born in Thuvhe; I’m Thuvhesit. How is it not that simple?” He paused. “And if you say something about the revelatory tongue, I will mangle these urestae.”

“It’s always more complicated than that, Shotet or not,” Zenka said, with a strange softness in her voice he hadn’t heard before. “You think being Thuvhesit is only about being born on one side of an imaginary line on the ground or another?”

“No, but—”

“We didn’t always have a planet,” she said. “The currentstream was home, more than a piece of rock. Or our ship. But as a people, we are maybe more closely tied than most to our identity, because we have always had to struggle against disappearing completely. We fight for you, for your belonging, because we fight for our existence. We will surrender the one only when we surrender the other.”

Akos stood still. He felt like he was standing inside her words, for a tick. Isae had said something similar not a few weeks ago, had touched his face and told him that he belonged to her, to Thuvhe. But her claim to him had been shaken by Ori’s death. The same could not be said of the Shotet. They had claimed him without knowing him, without needing him to even accept it. All they had needed were however many drops of Shotet blood he had in his veins.

He drew a sharp breath.

“Come,” she said. “Let me show you something.”

She led him out of the shop—which she left open, with everything boiling just as it was—and into the room next door. The door was on a swinging hinge, so it hit Akos in the butt after he walked in, startling him. The room beyond was Zenka’s living space, clearly, since it looked just like the shop, with all its clutter and jars of ingredients and bundles of herbs hanging from the low ceiling. There was a bed in one corner with the sheets rumpled, and a desk along the far wall with a book open on it.

Zenka picked the book up and held it out to him. It was so stuffed with pages it didn’t close right; it fell open in Akos’s palms. On the page in front of him was a sketch of a plant, roots to flower. Next to it, in her tight little script, were Shotet characters he couldn’t read. There hadn’t been time to learn more of them.

“What is it?” he said.

“This is my journal,” she said. “I keep track of all the plants I find—I’ve been doing it since I was young. Sometimes you can dry them and fix them to the pages, but most of the time I sketch. I did it for every sojourn we went on, so I have plants from every planet in there. That’s a softwillow—they grow sparsely on the peaks of Trella. They aren’t much good for medicines, but their tufts smell sweet, so they’re good for stuffing in your shoes.”

Akos smiled, and turned one of the thick, sturdy pages. On the next page was an Ogran plant he recognized—it produced a bulbous fruit that looked like a person with puffed cheeks, and its main roots grew straight down, deep, much bigger than the plant itself.

“That one’s a voma,” she said. “Its juice is the most powerful strengthening agent I’ve ever encountered—even better than harva or sendes from your country. You should keep one of these journals. The two planets you’ve been to are widely regarded as having the most interesting plant life in the system. You should keep track. Here.”

She took the book from him and set it down, then hunted in a pile of books next to the desk. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she crouched next to the bed and pulled out another box of books. She found a red one, about the size of his hand, from heel to fingertip, and offered it to him.

It was a simple thing, but he felt a thrill of fear as he took it from her and ran his fingers down the cover. For a long time he had not dared to own much of anything, because it might be taken away. And this—every page was a place he might go, a thing he might see. It should have been exciting, all the new possibilities, the complete freedom. But it was overwhelming.

“Blank,” she said. “Fill it. It’ll give you something to do other than mope.”