The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(6)

“Teka,” I said. “Would you get Akos upstairs, please?”

“Are you—” Teka started, and stopped. “Okay.”

Isae and Cisi, Teka and Akos, they left me there, alone, with my brother’s body. He had died next to a mop and a bottle of disinfectant. How convenient, I thought, and stifled a laugh. Or tried to. But it wouldn’t stay stifled. In moments my knees were weak with laughter, and I fumbled through my hair for the side of my head that was now silverskin, to remind myself how he had sliced and diced me for the entertainment of a crowd, how he had planted pieces of himself inside me, as if I was just a barren field to sow with pain. My entire body carried the scars Ryzek Noavek had given me.

And now, at last, I was free of him.

When I calmed, I set about cleaning up Isae Benesit’s mess.

Ryzek’s body didn’t frighten me, and neither did blood. I dragged him by his legs into the hallway, sweat tickling the back of my neck as I heaved and pulled. He was heavy, in death, as I was sure he had been in life, skeletal though he was. When Akos’s oracle mother, Sifa, appeared to help me, I didn’t say anything to her, just watched as she worked a sheet beneath him so we could wrap him in it. She produced a needle and thread from the storage room, and helped me stitch the makeshift burial sack closed.

Shotet funerals, when they took place on land, involved fire, like most cultures in our varied solar system. But it was a special honor to die in space, on the sojourn. We covered the bodies, all but the head, so the loved ones of whoever was lost could see and accept the person’s death. When Sifa pulled the sheet back, away from Ryzek’s face, I knew she had at least studied our customs.

“I see so many possibilities for how things will unfold,” Sifa said finally, dragging her arm across her forehead to catch some of the sweat. “I didn’t think this one was likely, or I might have warned you.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” I said, lifting a shoulder. “You only intervene when it suits your purposes. My comfort and ease don’t matter to you.”

“Cyra . . .”

“I don’t care,” I said. “I hated him. Just . . . don’t pretend that you care about me.”

“I am not pretending,” she replied.

I had thought, surely, that I might see some of Akos in her. And in her mannerisms, yes, perhaps he was there. Mobile eyebrows and quick, decisive hands. But her face, her light brown skin, her modest stature, they were not his.

I didn’t know how to evaluate her honesty, so I didn’t bother.

“Help me carry him to the trash chute,” I said.

I took the heavy side of his body, his head and shoulders, and she took his feet. It was lucky that the trash chute was only a few feet away, another unexpected convenience. We took it in stages, a few steps at a time. Ryzek’s head lolled around, his eyes open but sightless, but there was nothing I could do about it. I set him down next to the chute, and pressed the button to open the first set of doors, at waist height. It was fortunate that he was so narrow, or his shoulders wouldn’t have fit. Together Sifa and I folded him into the short channel, bending his legs so the inner doors would be able to close. Once they had, I pressed the button again, to open the outer doors and slide the tray in the chute forward to launch his body into space.

“I know the prayer, if you want me to say it,” Sifa said.

I shook my head.

“They said that prayer at my mother’s funeral,” I said. “No.”

“Then let us just acknowledge that he has suffered his fate,” Sifa said. “To fall to the family Benesit. He no longer needs to fear it.”

It was kind enough.

“I’m going to clean myself up,” I said. The blood on my palms was beginning to dry, making them itch.

“Before you do,” Sifa said, “I will warn you of this. Ryzek was not the only person the chancellor blamed for her sister’s death. In fact, she likely began with him because she was saving the more important piece of retribution for later. And she won’t stop there, either. I have seen enough of her to know her nature, and it is not forgiving.”

I blinked at her for a moment before it made sense to me. She was talking about Eijeh, still locked away in the other storage room. And not just Eijeh, but the rest of us—complicit, Isae believed, in Orieve’s death.

“There is an escape pod,” Sifa said. “We can put her in it, and someone from the Assembly will fetch her.”

“Tell Akos to drug her,” I said. “I don’t feel up to a fight right now.”





CHAPTER 4: AKOS


AKOS WADED THROUGH THE cutlery that was all over the galley floor. The water was already heating, and the vial of sedative was ready to dump into the tea, he just had to get some dried herbs into the strainer. The ship bumped along, and he stepped on a fork, flattening the tines with his heel.

He cursed his stupid head, which couldn’t stop telling him that there was still hope for Eijeh. There are so many people across the galaxy, with so many gifts. Somebody will know how to put him right. Truth was, Akos was tired of hanging on to hope. He’d been clawing at it since he first got to Shotet, and now he was ready to let go and just let fate take him where it wanted him to go. To death, and Noaveks, and Shotet.

All he’d promised his dad was that he would get Eijeh home. Maybe here—floating in space—was the best he could do. Maybe that would just have to be enough.