The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(70)

“The originality of your insults is truly stunning,” I said. “Without Lazmet to lead them, his faction of soldiers will be easily subdued—by us. The exiles will seize control of Shotet, and we can negotiate a peace instead of killing each other.”

She closed her eyes. She had gone to great lengths to look older than she was, I noticed, just as I had. She wore a jacket cut in the traditional Hessan style, black and buttoned diagonally across her chest, finishing at the side of her throat. Her hair was pulled back tight, throwing the angles of her face into sharp relief. The scars, too, gave her a maturity that most people at our age didn’t have. They said she had survived something, endured something she never should have had to. But despite all those things, she was young. She was young, and wanted all this to stop.

Even if she never understood what she had done to me, to my people, at least we both had that: we wanted this to stop.

“I have to take action,” she said, opening her eyes. “My advisers, my people, my allies demand it.”

“Then just give me time,” I said. “A few weeks.”

She shook her head.

“The Shissa hospital fell from the sky,” she said. “People who needed help, people who—” She choked, and stopped.

“I didn’t do that,” I said, firm. “We didn’t do that.”

I realized, too late, that maybe now wasn’t the time to insist on my own innocence. Maybe I could have gone further with some sympathy.

But she destroyed the sojourn ship. She attacked us. She deserves wrath.

But maybe I would do better with mercy.

“One week,” she said. “That gives you three days after you’ve made the journey from Ogra to Thuvhe.”

“One week,” I repeated. “To get from Ogra to Urek, plan an assassination, and carry it out. Are you mad?”

“No,” she replied simply. “That’s my offer, Miss Noavek. I suggest you take it.”

And if I had been softer, kinder, perhaps her offer would have been more generous. But I was who I was.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll send you a message when it’s done.”

And I walked right out of frame.





CHAPTER 39: CISI


OTHYRIANS HAVE SOFT HANDS. That’s the first thing I notice.

Soft hands, and soft bodies. The woman who greets us at the elegant apartments where we’ll be staying for this short visit carries more weight around her hips and thighs than most Thuvhesit women. Something about it appeals to me. I wonder what it would feel like, to touch a body with so much give.

Judging by the look she gives me, she’s wondering something similar about me. I don’t look like a Hessa girl, really—most people from Hessa work the iceflower farms or do some other kind of hard labor, so they’re muscled and lean. I’m built more like the people in Shissa, where I went to school, narrow with a store of flesh around the waist. For the colder months, people sometimes joked.

Most of those people are dead now.

The Othyrian tells us, in an unctuous voice, where we’ll go for dinner and what our “attire” should be like. I very nearly exchange a Look with Ast at that, and then I remember he can’t see it—and likely wouldn’t want to share a moment like that with me anyway.

Still, I do put on my formal gown for dinner. The one formal thing I own. It’s in the Hessan style, which means it looks almost like a military uniform on top, buttoning across my heart from shoulder to ribs. It’s tailored tight to my body, down to my waist, and then flows in a softer skirt to the floor. The color is crimson. Hushflower red, for luck.

In the hallway, Ast fusses with the buttons on his cuffs. They’re small and made of glass, slippery. I don’t think much about it when I take his wrist in mine and do them up for him. I’m surprised he lets me, though.

“She told me I’m being too rough on you,” he says to me, his voice hard. The beetle he uses to guide him flies a fast circle around my head and shoulders, close enough to skim my clothes with its little legs, clicking all the while.

“Did she,” I say, flat, grabbing his other wrist.

“The thing is—” He seizes my hand, suddenly, and holds me fast. Too hard. Leaning close so I can smell something sharp on his breath. “I don’t think I am, Cisi. I think you’re too clever, too motivated, and too—sweet.”

I finish up with his buttons, and walk away without responding. There’s not much to say, really.

Isae waits near the doors where the Othyrian woman said she’d meet us. Isae turns, and the sight of her hits me hard, like I’ve run right into it. Her eyelids are traced with perfect black lines, her lips stained a faint pink. Her hair is pulled back tight, and shines like polished glass. She is dressed in the Osoc style, a body-skimming under layer—dark blue—with loose fabric draped over it, giving hints of her hip’s curves when it presses here or there.

“Wow,” I say to her.

She rolls her eyes a little, doing a quick slashing gesture with one of her fingers to point out the scars that cross her face. I notice them, of course, every time I look at her, but to me, they don’t detract from her beauty. They are just distinct, like a birthmark or a dusting of freckles. I lean in to touch my lips to the one above her eyebrow.

“Still wow,” I say.