The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(82)

“Yma told me she would use her gift to encourage you to dwell on your devotion to your father—Kereseth, that is, not Noavek,” Vakrez said. “I see she’s been successful.”

Akos blinked at him. Had Yma done something to him when she was there, to make him think of Aoseh? Or was it just a coincidence, that he had? Either way, it was lucky.

“You don’t seem well,” Vakrez said.

“That’s what happens when your biological father imprisons you in his house and starves you for days,” Akos snapped.

“I suppose you’re right.” Vakrez pursed his lips.

“Why do you do what he says?”

“Everyone does what he says,” Vakrez said.

“No, some people stop being cowards and leave,” Akos said. “But you’re just . . . staying. Hurting people.”

Vakrez cleared his throat. “I’ll tell him about your progress.”

“Will that be before or after you prostrate yourself before him and kiss his feet?” Akos said.

To his surprise, Vakrez didn’t say anything. Just turned and left.

Lazmet was seated at a table by the fire when Akos was escorted to his quarters again. The room looked like the one Akos had unlocked when he first came to this place: dark wood panels, reflecting shifting fenzu light, soft fabrics in dark colors, books stacked on almost every surface. A comfortable place.

Lazmet was eating. Roasted deadbird, spiced with charred feathergrass, with fried fenzu shells on the side. Akos’s gut rumbled. It wouldn’t be so difficult to snatch some of the food off the table and shove it in his mouth, would it? It would be worth it, to taste something that wasn’t pickled or dried or bland. It had been so long. . . .

“That’s a bit childish, don’t you think?” he managed to say, after swallowing a mouthful of saliva. “Taunting me with food when you’re starving me?”

Akos knew this man wasn’t really his dad. Not in the way Aoseh Kereseth had been, teaching him how to button up his coat, or how to fly a floater, or how to stitch up a boot when the sole came loose. Aoseh had called him “Smallest Child” before he knew that Akos would end up being the biggest, and he had died knowing he couldn’t keep Akos from being kidnapped, but trying—fighting—anyway.

And Lazmet just looked at him like he wanted to take him apart and put him back together again. Like he was something you dissected in a science class to see how it worked.

“I wanted to see how you would react to the presence of food,” Lazmet said, shrugging. “Whether you were animal or man.”

“You’ve brought Yma Zetsyvis in with the specific purpose of altering what I am, whatever I am,” Akos said. “What does it matter what the ‘before’ is, when you’re controlling the ‘after’?”

“I’m a curious man.”

“You’re a sadist.”

“A sadist delights in suffering,” Lazmet said, lifting a finger. His feet were bare, his toes buried in the soft rug. “I do not delight. I am a student. I find satisfaction in learning, not pain for the sake of pain.”

He covered his plate with the napkin that lay across his lap, and stepped away from the table. It was easier for Akos to deny himself the impulse to lunge at the plate when he couldn’t see it anymore.

Yma had told Akos to pretend his resolve was weakening. That was the goal of this meeting—to prove to Lazmet that his methods were working, but not to be too obvious about it, so Lazmet became suspicious.

Yma had helped him find his way again. He had been aimless since Ryzek died—and since his hope for Eijeh’s restoration died, too. He had not had a side, a mission, a plan. But Yma had helped him find his way back to the same pinhole focus that he had directed at his brother since his arrival in Shotet. He would kill Lazmet. Nothing else mattered.

He had betrayed Thuvhe. He had abandoned Cyra. He had lost his name, his fate, his identity. He had nothing to return to, when this was over. So he had to make it count.

“So you are a Thuvhesit, I hear,” Lazmet said. “I always thought the revelatory tongue was a legend. Or at the very least, an exaggeration.”

“No,” Akos said. “I find words in it that I didn’t even know existed.”

“I’d always wondered,” Lazmet said. “If you don’t have a word for a thing, can you still know what it is? Is it something that lives in you that goes unarticulated, or does it disappear from your awareness entirely?” He picked up his glass, which contained something purple and dark, and sipped from it. “You may be one of the only people who can possibly know, but you don’t seem to have the capacity to answer.”

“You think I’m stupid,” Akos said.

“I think you’ve programmed yourself to survive, and you have little energy for anything else,” Lazmet said. “If you had not had to fight to live, perhaps you could have become a more interesting person, but here we are.”

The only reason I care about being “interesting” to you, Akos thought, is because I’m pretty sure you’ll kill me if I’m not.

“There’s a word in Ogran. Kyerta,” Akos said. “It’s . . . a life-changing truth. It’s what brought me here. The knowledge that you and I were related.”

“Related,” Lazmet said. “Because I had sex with a woman, and she handed you off to an oracle? Everyone in the damn galaxy has parents, boy. It’s hardly a unique achievement.”