The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(41)

“I’m not moping,” he said, frowning.

Zenka laughed. “Then maybe you mope so often you’ve forgotten what not moping is like. But you’re especially downtrodden today.”

He opened his mouth to explain, and she held up a hand.

“I’m not asking,” she said. “Just observing.”

He touched a hand flat to the cover of the empty journal. He wanted to fill it—or really, he wanted to want to. Wanted to remember having goals in life, the way he had before he was kidnapped. Or even after—he’d wanted to save Eijeh, to get home, to help Cyra. But the space that had been filled with fire, the space that knew desire and drive and perseverance, was empty now, the flame gone out.

When Akos wasn’t toiling away in Zenka’s shop, he was with Jorek. At meals, mostly, because it seemed like Jorek was always at meals—not eating, necessarily, but holding court. Sometimes he was there for hours at a time, telling stories and prompting other people to tell them, drumming with spoons, shouting teasing insults at whoever had just come in. After a couple days, though, Akos realized that wedged between the jokes and the drumming and the stories were other conversations, about Ogra, or Voa, or the Assembly. This was how Jorek gleaned information—by making himself available for people to talk to.

It was easy to be with him, though, because he didn’t ask for anything, even Akos’s attention. He seemed to know that his constant chatter was soothing, even if Akos didn’t give anything back. He kept waiting for Jorek to run out of patience for his “moping,” as Zenka called it, but it hadn’t happened yet.

“Well, Kereseth, you gave me a great idea,” Jorek said, sliding his tray into place next to Akos.

“Not sure how that’s possible,” Akos said. “I haven’t had a great idea in seasons.”

“Normally I’d argue with you, but you’re the one who wanted to hoist Cyra Noavek out of a packed amphitheater with nothing but a rope and some hope—” He paused, so that the full effect of the rhyme could be felt—Akos groaned—and then continued, “So I believe that you’re not an idea man. But you did spark one!”

“Do tell.”

“You said we should look for a wall of soldiers to figure out where Lazmet is,” Jorek said. “So I sent a message to my mother, who observed a larger-than-usual concentration of soldiers around Noavek manor. And she figured maybe we should get someone we know in there, just in case we need that intel.” He raised his eyebrows once, twice, three times. “Guess who’s going to Voa?”

Akos felt the weight in his stomach get, if possible, even heavier.

“You’re leaving?” he said.

“Yeah.” Jorek’s expression softened a little. “With my name, I was maybe the only exile who had an ‘in’ with Vakrez Noavek.”

“Sure.” Akos nodded. “And you’ll be with your mom in Voa, too.”

“There is that.” Jorek elbowed him. “I’ll be back, though. This war thing can’t last forever, can it?”

Akos didn’t point out that the reason wars didn’t last forever was because too many people ended up dead.

“It’s a good idea,” Akos said. “When do you go?”

Jorek shrugged. “A week or so. Gotta wait for an Ogran transport. Do you know they export dead bugs to Othyr? This place is weird.”

Zenka had told Akos that Ogra’s primary export was extracts of various poisons and excretions to Othyr. Some were for medicinal purposes, but most were for various Othyrian vanities—skin cream, cosmetics, spa treatments. Zenka rolled her eyes at it.

“The oracle’s coming,” Jorek said in a low voice. “It’s too late for you to bolt, sorry.”

Akos sighed.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Sifa said matter-of-factly, as she plunked herself down in the seat across from his.

His first instinct was to deny it, but that never worked with his mom. Once she decided she knew something, there was no point in arguing with her about it, even if she was wrong. Being an oracle doesn’t mean you know everything, he sometimes wanted to tell her. But that was something a child said.

“That’s because you’re spending all your time with Eijeh doling out prophetic wisdom to the exiles,” he said. “And I’ve heard about all I can take from him. And prophecy. And wisdom in general.”

Jorek snorted into his food.

“The exiles may have given us a little apartment to use as a makeshift temple, but they are too awed to consult us as often as I expected, so we are far from busy. As for Eijeh, well . . . I convinced him to begin again with me, as if we had just met,” she said, stirring the grainy mush in her bowl. If it was possible to stir a spoon thoughtfully, she was doing it. “You might try doing the same.”

“I’m no good at games of pretend,” Akos snapped.

“Nor am I,” she said. “Though I guess I have the added benefit of having seen possible futures in which he and I really hadn’t met. Where he was taken from me sooner, or had his memory entirely erased instead of just altered.”

There wasn’t much of her that wasn’t oracle, he’d realized. Her currentgift had taken her over, and it was now the whole of her, inescapably. It was hard not to blame her for it, even though he had no idea what it was like to have a gift so intrusive, so constant, that it changed the way you saw every part of your existence. His was the opposite. Sometimes he forgot his currentgift was even there.