The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(88)

“Looks like it,” I said.

Zyt led us down two streets before approaching a small, ramshackle apartment building. A light above us flickered as he turned the key in the lock. The apartment beyond—on the ground level—was cramped and messy. There were tables and cabinets and chairs leaned up against the walls in the hallway.

I stood aside as the others filed in, counting Teka, Ettrek, and Yssa before I realized I had forgotten to check for Eijeh. Just as I felt the beginnings of panic, I saw him jogging toward the door.

“What kept you?” I snapped.

“Untied shoe,” he said.

“You know that you can just walk with an untied shoe for a street or two, right? It’s not actually life-threatening.”

Eijeh just rolled his eyes, and closed the door behind him.

The apartment wasn’t much. One room served as living room, dining room, and bedroom, the floor spread with slim mattresses, one of which had a hole with stuffing coming out of it. There was a bathroom, but the shower was just a pipe protruding from the ceiling, and there was no sink. Still, Zyt was heating water for tea when I went into the kitchen.

“We’ll rest here tonight,” Zyt said when I poked my head in.

“Need help?” I said.

“Not unless you’re skilled in the dangerous art of chopping hushflower.”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Oh really? Full of surprises, you are. Come chop it, then.”

It was crowded, with two people in the kitchen, but I took a place at the cutting board, and he stood at the stove. He handed me the fresh hushflower—contained in a jar—and the gloves I would need to prepare them without poisoning myself, and pointed me toward the knife drawer.

I set the hushflower on the cutting board, upside down, and pressed the flat of my knife to the place where the petals joined to split them apart. Then I sliced the dark red streak down the center of one of the petals, and it lay flat, as if by magic.

“Nice,” Zyt said. “How did you learn?”

I paused. I was tempted to call Akos a friend, but it seemed too simple for what he had been to me, too small a word.

“Ah. Forget I asked,” Zyt said, and he reached for a jar of something else, high up on the slanted shelves.

“Is this your place?” I asked. “Or someone else’s?”

“It was my mother’s, before she died. Chills and spills took her. That was before we had figured out how to smuggle medicine.” Zyt bent his head over the pot of water he had set on the only burner, and tapped the jar he held to dust the water with powdered fenzu shell.

I kept chopping the hushflower. It was my family’s fault that his mother had not had access to medicine—Lazmet had begun the practice of hoarding donated medicine from Othyr, and Ryzek had only continued it. I had gotten the expensive inoculation when I was a child.

“I was in love with him, the one who taught me how to prepare hushflower,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I was telling him this, except that he had shared some pain with me, and I wanted to do the same. The exchange of suffering didn’t have to be even—but it was a kind of currency, his sorrow for mine. A way toward trust. “He left me. No explanation.”

Zyt made an exaggerated disgusted noise in the back of his throat, and I smiled.

“What an idiot,” he said.

“Not really,” I said. “But it’s nice of you to say.”

We drank tea and ate warm bread for dinner. It was not the best meal I had ever had, but it wasn’t the worst. The other smugglers kept to themselves, except for Zyt, who sat beside Ettrek and told stories from their childhood for hours. They had us all laughing before long at Ettrek’s sad attempts to prank his older brother, and Zyt’s savage retaliations.

Then everyone found somewhere to sleep—not an easy task, in a room this small—and one by one, we drifted off. I had never been good at sleeping, particularly in places with which I was unfamiliar, so I soon found myself slipping out the back door to sit on the back step, facing the alley.

“Saw you get up.” Teka sat next to me on the step. “You’re not much for sleeping, are you?”

“Waste of time,” I declared.

Teka nodded. “It took me a long time to sleep again after . . .” She waved a hand over her eye patch. “Kind of a horrible memory.”

“Kind of,” I said with a short laugh. “I’m not sure what’s worse.” I paused, thinking of her mother’s public execution. “I didn’t mean—sorry.”

“You don’t have to be so careful around me,” Teka said, looking at me from the corner of her eye. “When I didn’t like you, it was because I made too many assumptions. After I let them go . . . well, I’m here on your crazy mission, aren’t I?”

I grinned.

“Yeah,” I said. “You are.”

“I am, so when I bring something up, I don’t want you to take it too personally,” she said, guarded. “Akos.”

“Yeah?” I frowned. “What about him?”

“Honestly?” She sighed. “I’m a little worried that when push comes to shove, you’ll prioritize saving him over killing Lazmet, now that you know he’s here, and alive. I’ve been worried about it since I told you about him.”