The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(59)
The sema leader introduced themselves as “Rokha,” and had close-cut hair the color of Urek sand, a dusting of freckles on their skin, and delicate, pursed lips. The woman—“Lusha,” she had called herself, as she gripped my arm in greeting—was taller, thicker, and several shades darker-skinned than I was. The pencil smeared above her lashes had a faint shimmer to it, lighting her eyes from above, and it suited her.
“You are Cyra Noavek,” Rokha said to me, as we all stood in a group before the meeting was called to order. Lusha was talking to Yssa and Aza behind me—I could tell because her hearty laugh kept filling my head with a mirth I couldn’t feel.
“Allegedly,” I said, because I couldn’t help myself.
Rokha laughed.
“You’re taller than I thought,” they said. “I suppose anyone looks short beside Ryzek Noavek.”
“Looked,” I corrected them. To me it was just a grammatical error, a courtesy to someone who didn’t speak Shotet as a native. But their face tightened in recognition of the insensitivity.
“My apologies,” they said. “You lost him so recently.”
“I wouldn’t say I lost anything,” I said.
Rokha raised an eyebrow. The freckles on their eyelids made me think of Akos, and a web of currentshadows spread over my eye socket, making me wince.
“I can’t tell if you are joking or not,” Rokha said.
“That should please you. Ograns love mystery, don’t they?” I replied sourly, and Rokha squinted at me, as if puzzled, as Lusha called the meeting to order.
“Let us speak plainly,” Lusha said, and Rokha snorted.
Lusha wrinkled her nose at them, like a child might at a sibling. She was the more traditional of the two Ogran leaders, I knew, so she had a tendency to pontificate and stand on ceremony. I suppressed a laugh as Rokha winked at me across the low table. We sat on stools around it. The heavy fabric that covered me from throat to ankle pooled around me, glinting with the luminous thread that held it together.
“Okay,” Aza said. “Then—plainly speaking—we are surprised that Ogra would even consider expelling us when we have coexisted comfortably for so long on this planet.”
“We would not consider it if the pressure were merely coming from Thuvhe,” Lusha said with a sigh. “But Thuvhe is backed by the Assembly, and they are seeking powerful alliances. Our intelligence reports the chancellor is on her way to Othyr at this very moment.”
I glanced at Teka. She looked as troubled as I felt, her mouth drawn down toward her chin. If Thuvhe made an alliance with Othyr, this war was effectively over. No one would stand against Othyr, not without a cause greater than “keeping Shotet from being obliterated.”
As far as I knew, Othyr had always been the wealthiest and most powerful planet in the galaxy. It had been, at one time, rich with natural resources, but as our race advanced, they turned to more intellectual pursuits than mining or farming. Now they developed technology and conducted research. Nearly every advance that had been made in the field of medicine, space travel, food technology, or personal conveniences had come out of Othyr. If a planet were to cut itself off from Othyr, it would lose access to the things we had all—Shotet included—come to rely on. A leader would be mad to risk it.
“Why is the Assembly backing Thuvhe instead of maintaining neutrality, as they have in the past? Suddenly this is no longer a ‘civil dispute,’ as they’ve been insisting for over ten seasons?” Teka said.
“They sense that we are vulnerable,” Aza replied. “They undoubtedly see this as a cleanup effort. Get rid of Shotet trash. Blast it into space.”
I relished the anger in Aza’s voice, so similar to my own.
“That may be a slight exaggeration,” Lusha chastened. “The Assembly would surely not engage in a conflict unless they thought—”
“Then tell me why—” Aza’s voice shook as she interrupted Lusha. “Tell me why an attack against innocents fleeing to the sojourn ship in Voa was not considered a war crime, when an attack against innocents in Shissa was. Is that not because Thuvhesit children are considered innocent, and Shotet children are not? Is it not because Thuvhesit people are considered productive, and the Shotet are characterized as brutal scavengers?”
“I thought you didn’t support Lazmet Noavek’s actions against Thuvhe,” Rokha said, voice hard. “You issued a statement condemning the attack immediately upon hearing about it, after all.”
“And I stand by that statement. Lazmet Noavek has recruited himself an army composed of supporters of his late son. His actions against Shissa had nothing to do with us, and we certainly would not have done something so cruel,” Aza said. “But that doesn’t mean that Thuvhe doesn’t deserve some kind of retribution for what they did to us.”
I didn’t have to be an expert in these kinds of meetings to know this one wasn’t going well. The preferred communication style for an Ogran was like a hammer hitting a nail, and it was the same for Shotet. In fact, our cultures had more in common than not—we valued resilience, we occupied planets that defied us, we revered the oracles. . . .
If I could make them see how connected we were, maybe they would agree to help us.
“Why do they hate us?” I said, head tilted. I pitched my voice high, so it would sound like I was genuinely confused.