The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(81)

Her cool fingers pressed to his wrist. He tried to think of his Shotet armor again, but it was hard, with his memories all jumbled, Cisi trying to stuff her long arms into a child’s coat, Cyra holding his shoulder steady as she yanked at the armor straps.

“You’re not focused,” Yma said. “We don’t have time to work on this, so you’ll have to practice on your own. Try different images, and try a modicum of self-discipline.”

“I’m disciplined,” he snapped, opening his eyes.

“It’s easy to be disciplined when you’re well fed and healthy,” she retorted. “Now you need to learn it when your brain is barely functioning. Try it again.”

He did, this time imagining his coat of kutyah fur, in Thuvhe, which was another kind of armor against the cold. He felt its tickle against the back of his neck where the coat ended and his hat began. He tried this image twice more before Yma checked the delicate watch she wore around her wrist, and announced that she had to go.

“Practice,” she told him. “Vakrez will come to you later, and you need to be able to pretend.”

“I need to master this by later today?” he demanded.

“Why do you have this expectation that life will make concessions for you?” She scowled. “We are not promised ease, comfort, or fairness. Only pain and death.”

With that, she left.

Her speeches are almost as encouraging as yours, he said, to the Cyra in his mind.

He tried to practice what Yma had taught him. He did. It was just that he couldn’t get his mind to focus on one thing for more than a couple minutes at a time. So it wasn’t long before he wavered.

He walked the periphery of the room, pausing to peer out the slats in the window coverings, which were the same dark wood as the floor. They were elegant bars for a prisoner, he thought.

He hadn’t done much thinking about his dad, not since his death. Every time thoughts of him did come up, they were an intrusion, and he shifted his focus back to the greater mission of rescuing Eijeh as he had promised. But in this place, hungry and confused, he couldn’t do much to keep them out. The way Aoseh had gestured—big and unwieldy, knocking things off the table or smacking Eijeh in the head by mistake. Or how he had smelled like burnt leaves and oil from the machinery in the iceflower fields. The one time he had shouted at Akos for a bad score on a test, then broke down into tears when he realized he had made his youngest son cry.

Aoseh had been big and messy with his emotions, and Akos had always known his dad loved him. He had wondered more than once, though, why he and Aoseh didn’t seem to be anything alike. Akos held everything close, even things that didn’t need to be secret. That instinct toward restraint, he realized, made him more like the Noaveks.

And Cyra—bursting at the seams with energy, opinions, even anger—was more like his dad.

Maybe that was why it had been so hard not to love her.

Vakrez came in, and Akos wasn’t sure how long the commander had been there before he cleared his throat. Akos stood blinking at him for a few ticks, then sat heavily on the edge of the bed. He had meant to brainstorm a better image for his currentgift. He hadn’t done it. Now Vakrez would find out that Akos was getting his strength back, and he would be suspicious.

Shit, Akos thought. Yma had suggested armor, a wall—a protective barrier between Akos and the world. None of those things had felt right, when she said them, but what else was there?

“Are you all right, Kereseth?” Vakrez asked him.

“How’s your husband? Malan,” Akos said. He had to buy some time.

“He’s . . . fine,” Vakrez said, narrowing his eyes. “Why?”

“Always liked him,” Akos said with a shrug. Could ice be a protective barrier? He knew ice well enough. But it was something to be wary of, at home, not something that protected you.

“He’s nicer than I am,” Vakrez said with a grunt. “Everybody likes him.”

“Does he know you’re here?” What about a metal casing, like an escape pod or a floater? No, he didn’t really know those as well.

“He is, and he told me to be kinder to you.” Vakrez smirked. “Said it might help you open up more. Very strategic.”

“I didn’t think you needed me to open up,” Akos said darkly. “You pretty much just get to dig around in my heart no matter what I say about it, don’t you?”

“I suppose. But if you are not intentionally obfuscating your emotions, it is easier to interpret them.” Vakrez beckoned to him. “Stick out your arm, let’s get this over with.”

Akos rolled up his sleeve, exposing the blue marks he had stained into his skin with Shotet ritual. The second one had a line through the top of it, and noted the loss of the Armored One he had killed in pursuit of higher status.

He found himself returning to that place. To the fields just beyond the feathergrass, where the wildflowers were fragile and mushy, and the Armored Ones roamed, avoiding anything that transmitted too much current. The one he had killed had been relieved to find him. He had been a respite from the current.

Akos had felt a kind of kinship with it then, and he found that kinship again now. Imagining himself monstrous, with too many legs and a hard, plated side. His eyes, dark and glittering, hidden under an overhang of rigid exoskeleton.

Then, with a shock of violence, he imagined that exoskeleton riven in two. And he felt it, the second the current rang through him again, buzzing in his bones. Vakrez nodded to himself, his eyes closed, and Akos focused on keeping the wound open, so to speak.